Ensnared Read online

  Ensnared

  (Detectives in Space 2)

  Second Novel of the SF Mystery Series

  By Clare Solomon

  Amazon Kindle Edition

  Copyright 2020 Clare Solomon

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without the prior permission in writing of the author, except for brief quotations used for promotion or in reviews.

  All names, places, characters and incidents in this book are fictional and any resemblance to any person, business, place or event is entirely coincidental.

  Cover design by Amai Designs

  Chapter One

  REESE ZAIL Kintore stared at the woman who had just killed her husband and taken over as captain of the spaceship. He blinked a few times but the scene remained the same and she was still wearing a dress covered in bunnies that wore bonnets – he could never have dreamt up something like that. She had seemed so harmless, unlike half the other members of the crew, whom he had thought might be capable of murder.

  “Will you also run the detective agency?” Poppy asked, ignoring the elephant in the room.

  “I’ll own it but you will be its leader,” Tanya Prince said and Reese saw Poppy’s eyes brighten.

  No one, he realised looking round, was going to object to this change. In fact, most of their expressions suggested that they thought this was a positive development. They had hated the last captain too much to make a fuss about his death and it wasn’t really possible for Tanya to do a worse job than Prince had.

  “Where are we going now, Captain?” Siglinde asked. Coming from a matriarchal planet, the lilac-furred alien would probably feel the change of leadership was fair.

  “We’ve been asked to take on a new case in the next star system. It will take us a couple of days to get there so I suggest you all relax for the moment. Poppy, you and your team did well on Ocean. You should be proud of yourselves.”

  Team? Did that mean she wasn’t going to fire Reese? The crew began to head out of the control room and he joined them, trying his best to be inconspicuous in case she decided to object to the fact that Reese had been sleeping with her husband. Of course, her crew would be lessened considerably were she to dismiss everyone Prince had slept with and it wasn’t as if she had seemed to actually like her husband. Perhaps this wasn’t the disaster he had initially assumed, although he remained off-balance after what had occurred. He had no idea what to do about his own secret investigation; his boss, Jolly, would have to decide about that.

  “I can’t believe it,” Nick was saying to his sister out in the corridor and Reese joined them to hear their opinions on this. “Are we going to stay here or what?”

  “Where else can we go?” she responded, not looking as self-assured as usual. “Let’s just wait for the moment and see what happens. This might actually be a good thing after the way the captain – I mean Prince – behaved, as he hardly cared about the welfare of anyone onboard.”

  “We’re supposed to arrest murderers, not cheer them on,” Nick objected.

  “Who would she answer to?” Reese said to him in an undertone. “Tanya’s just made it clear that Britain’s new government is a bunch of her friends.”

  “You’re from England, aren’t you?” Nick said. “Did you hear anything about this?”

  “I’ve never been interested in politics,” he answered truthfully, not needing to make up any details of his past right now. “Most people wanted the Democrat Rebels to defeat the landowners but I’ve no idea where they got the money from to actually achieve it.”

  “The point is that Tanya has made sure of her safety and the last thing we want to do is antagonise her,” Poppy said and nudged her brother’s arm.

  “Not unless we want our bodies to end up floating in space too,” Reese agreed.

  “I guess so.” Nick was still frowning but Reese couldn’t blame him as it had been a confusing few days. They had chased down and arrested one murderer, nearly come face-to-face with a giant sea monster and had their former captain killed and replaced by his wife. Reese hoped their lives wouldn’t remain this insane.

  “Let’s get some sleep and talk again in the morning,” Poppy suggested.

  “Okay,” Nick said and Reese nodded.

  She walked away just as Reese realised he had a problem. “Bloody hell, I don’t have anywhere to sleep!” He had been sharing the captain’s bed since he came aboard The Prince.

  Nick snorted. “You can move into mine.” Reese raised an eyebrow, wondering just how far the invitation extended, but Nick added, “There’s a spare bed in my quarters. They’re designed for two.”

  Well, that was disappointing. “I’ll grab my stuff.”

  They entered the captain’s spacious quarters and Reese gathered the few clothes of his that were strewn about, mixed in with Prince’s belongings. He felt an odd pang of regret. Unlike the rest of the crew, he hadn’t had any reason to hate Prince. The man had been vain and selfish and had lorded over everyone else but he’d been affectionate towards Reese and surprisingly generous in bed. It was odd to think that the captain who had had such a larger-than-life personality could now be gone. At least his death must have been quick.

  Reese bundled his things into his backpack and followed Nick out of the room, nearly walking into Tanya. He stopped abruptly. She eyed the room they had left and then fixed her gaze on him. Reese gestured to his backpack and faked a half-hearted smile. “Nick is letting me share his quarters, if that’s agreeable to you.”

  “Fine,” she said and walked past them.

  Reese gave a sigh of relief and they escaped to the safety of Nick’s cabin, which turned out to be a lot smaller and more basic than the captain’s. Instead of carpet, upholstered chairs, foot stool, framed holo-artwork on the walls and a private supply of good quality alcohol, there were two comfies, one of which was currently an armchair. There would barely be room to stand when both comfies were turned into single beds. There were a few holo-photos – family pictures from the looks of them – and a couple of invisibags hung up on one wall. Nick walked over to empty one of them. “You can put your clothes in here.”

  Reese smiled at this piece of kindness, typical of Nick, and decided that the company made this far the better choice of accommodation. He glanced into the tiny bathroom off the room and saw that, once again, every expense had been spared. “Did you used to share the room with anyone or is the extra space intended for a larger crew?”

  “I shared for some time with a pilot.”

  Reese stilled at the reminder of the man whose murder he had been sent to secretly investigate. “Baltid Athens?”

  “That’s right.” Nick got up from the now empty drawer, his lanky body straightening, and turned towards him. “How do you know about him?”

  “A few of the crew members talked about how he had died recently. A heart attack, was it?” The man had been stabbed but no one was admitting to knowing about that.

  “Yes.”

  “Who’s your ship’s doctor, just in case I need one?”

  “We don’t have a doctor. Keith knows a bit about medicine and I know basic first aid.”

  “Then who diagnosed that Athens had had a heart attack?”

  Nick shrugged. “Keith certainly can’t do an autopsy so I imagine he guessed from the symptoms.”

  “You weren’t there when the body was found?”

  “No. Tanya was the one who discovered it in the night. She was really upset. Why are you so interested if you never met him?”

  In his eagerness to find out more about the matter, Reese had been too obvious. As much as he liked Nick and wanted to trust him, he couldn’t let even him know that this was the real reason Reese was on board The Prince. He smiled. “It was just one of the
first things I heard about and it struck me as unusual.” He walked closer. “Maybe I’m a bit nervous about sleeping in the bed of a dead man too. If I have nightmares, will you soothe me?”

  Nick licked his lips and Reese’s eyes were drawn to them. They stared at each other, attraction dancing between them, but then Nick’s expression became rueful. “I’m sure you’ll be fine.”

  He couldn’t blame Nick for not wanting to rush into this, particularly when Reese had been sleeping with Prince the previous night. There would be plenty of time for him to win Nick’s trust and, now that Reese could apparently stay here without needing to be friendly with someone else, that was something he definitely wanted to do.

  Chapter Two

  “PLANET YARGU, this is The Prince Detective Agency. Please provide us with the landing coordinates so we can meet with you and investigate the murder you reported,” Tanya said. She sat easily in the captain’s chair and had an air of authority she had never showed before. She had fooled them all.

  Nick was here with his sister and Reese, and Sycophant Two was sitting at his computer as usual, which surprised Nick, who had expected him to refuse to work for Tanya after what had happened to Prince. Perhaps Nick’s powers of observation, where people were concerned, weren’t nearly as good as he’d always thought, or maybe he was surrounded by a lot of convincing liars.

  Tanya frowned and repeated her message. There weren’t any windows in the control room, or in any part of the ship, and the people who hired them hadn’t provided a holovid link, so she was speaking to no visible listener, which created an invisible barrier.

  Nick glanced at her as they waited to learn more about this new job. She was wearing a dress, this one covered in flowers, which was almost as bizarre – for her new role – as the new-Regency outfits Prince had worn. She was probably forty years old – like her husband had been – but there was something slightly haggard about her appearance. Perhaps it was the dark smudges beneath her eyes. Did she feel bad about what she had done to Prince?

  Finally there was an answer from the planet. “The murder hasn’t been committed yet but I’ll tell you right now that we’re the killers. Do you hear me, Alastair Prince? This is for the crooked deal you made with the planet Thibbis that caused the death of so many of our people.”

  Tanya swore and pressed a button. “Lyn, it’s a trap. Get us away from here.”

  “It’s too late.” The pilot sounded scared, her voice high-pitched. “There are multiple attack vessels heading towards the ship. If I turn to leave they’ll easily be able to destroy us. Our only chance is to fight them.”

  Tanya took this in with a grim but calm expression as she pressed the intercom. “Captain to soldiers. We’re about to be attacked. Take the shuttles out.”

  “On our way,” Carvisju’s voice responded and Nick mentally thanked the captain for the almost prescient move of bringing two soldiers onto the ship on their way here as new members of the crew, complete with two small attack vessels of their own, which were squeezed into the docking bay beside their usual shuttle. He wracked his brain for what might have happened on Thibbis but the name meant nothing to him – it must have been a job Prince had done before Nick and Poppy joined the crew.

  The new captain pressed the link to the planet again. “Tanya Prince to planet Yargu. My husband is dead, so you no longer have any reason to harm us. Cancel your attack and we can discuss this peacefully.”

  Nick stilled and closed his eyes, to better hear any response.

  A disembodied voice from the planet said, “We won’t fall for your tricks. You can all die for your captain’s dishonesty.”

  “This is Captain Tanya Prince. If you let us land you can search our ship for yourself and see that my husband is no longer aboard. I promise you that he is dead.”

  They waited but, as more seconds ticked by, it became obvious that their attackers didn’t intend to respond.

  Keith said, “I’m linked up to the probe, Captain. It has data on the approaching ships so you can use our weapons.”

  Tanya stood up to go to his station and then hesitated and looked round. “I don’t know how to do this. Has anyone had combat training?”

  Nick glanced at Reese, who was looking equally worried. Damn Prince and his selfish, underhand behaviour – it sounded as if they’d be lucky to survive this.

  “I have.” Poppy walked over to Keith’s station with Tanya and Keith jumped out of his chair to let the new captain sit down.

  “It’s just a matter of targeting their ships and firing,” Poppy said. She did something on the computer that showed the data in three-dimensional detail in the room around them: eight red dots moving in this direction from the larger circle which represented the planet. A computer avatar also appeared, standing opposite the women. “Just tell the computer to launch weapons at the specific coordinates given.”

  Nick and his sister had been here on two other occasions when the ship had been attacked but he was still impressed with her calm instructions. Poppy was unofficially the second in command of the ship and their old captain had, at least, been happy to show her what to do in this kind of situation; one of the few good decisions he’d ever made. Poppy had always been good in dangerous situations. There was only one time he could remember when she had fallen apart and relied on him; it had been the worst time of their lives but they’d got through it together.

  Tanya looked at the information from the probe on the screen. “Computer, access intelligent weapons and fire at the vessel that is at 22 IPS by 67 IPS.”

  “Do you wish to disable or destroy the ship?” the human-looking avatar asked.

  “Disable.”

  The avatar didn’t so much as blink but Nick felt the slight shudder of the ship as the missile was fired. Intelligent weapons could decide for themselves what level of force was necessary in any situation, something he’d never liked although it had saved his life in the past.

  One of the red dots shown in the air blinked and stopped moving. As he watched, their own attack ships appeared as three black dots which headed from the ship towards the enemy crafts.

  Tanya fired on another ship and their people did the same, crippling half the ships attacking them. Tanya pressed a switch. “Planet Yargu, I have disabled, but not destroyed, most of your ships. Call off your attack against us now or I will take deadly measures. I tell you for the final time that Alastair Prince is dead and this battle is pointless.”

  They waited and Nick watched, biting his lip, as lights flashed on the image above his head, giving a faint glimpse of the fight their crewmembers were risking their lives in. He knew nothing about ship-to-ship fights but he wished he was helping his crewmates instead of standing about here, being of no use to anyone.

  “Computer,” Tanya said, “access planet Yargu at coordinates...”

  “Wait!” Reese said, holding up a hand to stop her. “They’re withdrawing.”

  The red dots had begun moving away from them, which meant that the enemy ships were heading back towards the planet.

  It was over.

  Chapter Three

  “PRINCE HAS people hate him enough to want to destroy us all even when he is dead,” Siglinde observed as they sat in the canteen later that day, her fangs visible as she ate. “It doesn’t surprise me.”

  “What did new captain do?” Cee asked, the alien’s head only just above the edge of the table.

  “She handled it well,” Reese answered, glancing at Nick, who nodded in agreement. Tanya and Poppy were still in the control room, going over the battle protocol together in case of a similar situation occurring in the future. He really hoped they wouldn’t go through that again, but he wasn’t too hopeful about the possibility. Prince must have had numerous enemies and it seemed likely that other crew members did too. That wasn’t even counting the alien races that didn’t need a reason to attack passing ships. “She stayed calm and didn’t let the violence escalate.”

  “She managed it better than Pri
nce would have,” Nick added, which was setting the bar pretty low.

  “Naturally,” Siglinde said, licking the juice from the fruit she had just finished off her claws and lilac fur. “She will be a competent leader.”

  A leader who could show mercy but who could also kill without hesitation, Reese thought, remembering Prince’s death. Could she be the one who had killed Baltid Athens? According to Nick, she had discovered the body and her distress at the time could have been an act. He would need to speak to Jolly about her; he hadn’t yet even had any time alone to inform his boss of the change in leadership. He wanted to find out more about Athens from Nick too – Reese had spoken to other crewmembers about him but, having shared a room with Athens, Nick would know more about him than most people. Reese just had to be careful to be more cautious next time he raised the subject; Nick was a detective so he easily recognised someone fishing for information.

  Tem walked in – movements fluid on his multiple tentacle-like limbs – and Reese called over to him, “How are you and Lyro and the new soldiers doing after the fight.” He had only found out after the fact that Prince’s former bodyguards had joined the soldiers and taken a shuttle out to help defend them all. He wondered if this would be their job now. He couldn’t imagine Tanya strutting about with bodyguards, the way Prince used to, but she hadn’t dismissed them.

  Tem walked into the adjoining kitchen, saying, “Not hurt.”

  “I know none of our people were injured,” Reese responded as the large alien reappeared with a drink, “but the situation must have been disturbing.”

  “Not hurt,” Tem repeated and headed to the door.

  Reese turned his chair towards the bodyguard. “What do you think of the soldiers? Are they nice?” They had only been here for a couple of days and Reese hadn’t done more than say hello. He hadn’t recognised what planet the aliens came from but they were taller than humans with pale orange skin that had a darker layer of something above it that constantly moved – the effect like someone standing in front of an old-era projector and having flickering images appear on them.