With Travis Taylor, Les is the co-author of Saving Proxima (book one of a three-part series), a new Baen universe in which this story is set. If you enjoyed this story, you might want to read Les’s 2018 novel, Mission to Methone, or the forthcoming, The Spacetime War. You can learn more about Les on his website: www.lesjohnsonauthor.com
December 1, 2086
Charlie Shattles looked at himself in the hotel mirror and did not like what he saw. Here he was, a man in his early fifties with more than enough money saved to retire early and recline on a beach somewhere studying heavenly bodies. Yet he was in a run-down hotel near Zvyozdny gorodok, Russia, freezing his butt off because the owners of place refused to turn up the heat beyond what was needed to keep the pipes from bursting. Global warming or not, Russia in the wintertime was cold. Damn cold. But he was on a job and the cold and other inconveniences did not really matter. He liked putting the pieces together and getting to the bottom of a case. In cases like this, if murder were involved, then ninety percent of the time the motive was money, sex, or power. He corrected himself; the ninety percent was for men, who committed the most murders. If the perp was a woman, then he could add jealousy to the list and be within the same ninety percent statistic. For this case, he had not even determined if it was murder. Time would tell.
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