Oh, Zark!

I've been running around telling everyone that Space Janitor Three will launch today. But the bots are conspiring against me! This is the first time I've changed the date on a pre-order, and I didn't realize it still takes three days for the book to go live. If you just publish it usually takes less than 24 hours, but pre-orders take longer for some reason.

So Space Janitor Three will go live on Amazon on Thursday, and on the other retailers on Friday. If you've pre-ordered, that's the day you'll get the download. If you haven't, you still can pre-order, or just wait.

I'm so sorry if you were hoping to start reading today. As soon as I can find my time machine and space ship, I will bring you some Dolce Amour apology chocolates.

In the meantime, here's the first chapter:

Crossing the cargo bay requires timing, speed, and an unhealthy disregard for human life. Your own life, that is. If you get crushed by a cargo bot, you better hope it kills you. Because if it doesn’t, you’ll spend the rest of your life paying off the damage assessment.
I’ve been prowling around the cargo bays for years without getting hurt. Although, to be honest, it doesn’t really require anything except a good eye for patterns. Or access to the cargo bay schedules, so you can look for down times.
My name is Triana Moore, and I’m a station maintenance technician, so I have access to virtually everything on the station. I’m also the daughter of the chair of the station board of directors, which grants its own gold-card access. I try not to use that access unless I absolutely have to—explaining to my mother would be worse than paying off the damage assessment.
Tonight, Charlie Bay is quiet. Bots are unloading a freighter from Grissom over in Bravo Bay, and there’s a cruise liner taking on supplies at Delta. But the last ship docked at Charlie left two hours ago, and the next one isn’t due until morning.
With a wave of my holo-ring, the door to Charlie’s control booth slides open and lights spring on. I take a quick look at the console, but all readings are nominal. Out in the bay, five neatly arranged stacks of crates wait for tomorrow’s ship. I squint at the markings—looks like Kakuvian brandy from the surface and a shipment of zero-grav veggies from the farm levels. The brandy might merit some extra security scans, but it won’t require eyes-on inspection until just before loading.
I dim the windows so lights from the bay won’t disturb me. Then I hook my hammock into the tie down rings—thoughtfully placed at chest height so workers can tether in the event of gravity loss—and climb in for the night.

» «

Thump.
My eyes pop open and I stare into the darkness. The glow from the console power button gives the ceiling a faint blue tinge. I peek over the edge of the hammock, but the console itself is dark.
I lay back and listen. The faint, ever-present hiss of the air handlers sounds loud when I’m paying attention, but that’s all I hear. Wait. What is that? A kind of sliding sound, like something heavy being dragged across carpet.
I lean out of the hammock and reach for the window control. The hammock swings wide and I grab at the console edge to steady myself. My fingers smack the edge of the console, but I can’t—-waaaaghh!
Laying on the floor, I stare up at the dimly lit ceiling. From down here, I feel a rumbling vibration and shuddering thud. Something is going on in the cargo bay.
Rubbing my backside, I climb to my feet and clear the windows. The cargo bay looks just like it did last night. Six neat stacks of crates, waiting for the—
Hang on. Weren’t there five stacks last night?
The sixth stack doesn’t really merit the name. It’s two small crates, about a meter square and maybe two meters long. They have no visible markings, so I fire up the console to consult the manifest. Probably just a late delivery, but I’m awake now, and curious.
Tomorrow’s ship is a freighter headed for Sarvo Six. That’s out on the fringes and we’re the last stop before the long transit. The manifest still shows a huge shipment of Kakuvian brandy and a small produce pickup. Probably to be consumed by the crew on the way—the produce, not the brandy. Although the total bottle count might decrease by the time they arrive. Fresh fruits and veggies are provided by most big freighters to keep crew from jumping to another ship, and a tiny discrepancy in the brandy count will probably be overlooked. Good crew are hard to keep these days.
That’s odd. No other items appear on the manifest. It’s possible they were misrouted. I snoop around through the data for a few minutes, but no one has flagged a missing shipment, yet.
I look out the window again. There is something odd about those two crates. Beads of moisture have gathered along the sides of the crates. They almost appear to be… sweating? With a shrug, I crank up the lights and head out into the cargo bay.
A rapidly drying trail of splotches leads from the internal station doors, across the wide bay to the crates. Whatever it is, it’s leaking, which is not good. I follow the trail to the crates, and walk around them, shining a focused beam from my holo onto the shadowed side of the boxes. No markings, anywhere. No shipping chip, no bar codes.
A bead of moisture collects on the corner of the top crate. It grows, clinging to the edge, then lets go, sliding down the side. Eyes narrowing, I reach out towards the rolling drip. This crate isn’t leaking. It’s melting.
I yank my hand back before touching the crate and spin on my heels. I run back to the control booth. It takes three tries before I manage to get my hammock down and bundled back into its conveniently attached packing bag. I take a swift look around to make sure I’ve left no evidence and scoot out the door.
The warehouse takes up most of Levels 36 and 37. The ring of cargo bays occupies the outer ring, but the rest is a massive open space with bots pushing cargo from one bay to another and into the huge cargo float to distribute items to the rest of the station. I find a convenient stack of crates and sit down, flicking my holo-ring. A quick hack erases my visit to the cargo bay. Then I call Station Operations.
“Ops, Carter.” A small bald man with bright green eyes and a neck tattoo answers the call.
“Carter, it’s Moore,” I say. “I’m off duty, but I need to report a cargo issue.”
“Triana, it’s oh-dark-thirty!” He peers around me, obviously reading the data on his screen. “What are you doing in Cargo if you’re off duty?”
I shrug. “Couldn’t sleep, figured a walk would help.”
“A walk—through Cargo?” He gives me a look. “Does Kara have a visitor again? You can always crash in my place.”
“Thanks, Carter, but I’m fine. Besides I don’t think your partner would appreciate me randomly barging in.”
Carter waves his bony hand. “Not a problem. We’ve all had roommates before. Tracy gets it. But that’s not why you called.”
I flick a picture of the drip trail to him. “I noticed something dripping. I followed the trail to Charlie, but it’s dried up now. You might want to send someone in to investigate.”
A smile flashes across Carter’s narrow face. “You must be tired. You forgot to strip the metadata from this still, Triana. It places you inside Charlie.”
Zark.
He laughs. “Don’t worry, I deleted it. I’ll send Farquad up on a ‘routine’ check. You mind waiting to show him what’s going on?”
“I don’t think he’ll need me to show him,” I say. “But I’ll wait.”
I look for a place to stash my bag but give up after a few minutes. Carter obviously knows why I’m here, and I’m sure Farq does, too. He’s the biggest gossip in the station. I dash across the warehouse to wait for him by the float tubes in the center of the huge space. Forget what I said about crossing a cargo bay—if you want to take your life in your hands, try crossing the warehouse at peak time. It’s like playing that Ancient Earth vid game with the frog.
A few minutes later, Farq steps out of the float tube. I’m pretty tall for a woman, but Farq makes me feel tiny. He’s well over two meters tall—tall enough he has to duck to go through a standard sized door—and broad as a planet. His dark skin contrasts beautifully with his white teeth and sparkling gray eyes. Blond dreadlocks fall to the middle of his back, but since he’s on duty, they’re tied neatly back into a bundle.
“Yo, Tree, talk to me!” He smiles and slaps me on the shoulder. I stumble and catch my balance against a nearby crate. “I hear you discovered a mysterious trail of moisture!” His voice, like the rest of him, is huge.
He leads the way down the brightly marked safety path, carefully staying between the lines and stopping at the crossings. Farq rolls his eyes at me. I shrug and we both laugh. No doubt this “routine” check is being recorded, or Farq would have bounded across the space like I did earlier. Safety first, at least when the boss is watching.
Farq opens Charlie Bay and we hike across the empty space to the six stacks of crates. I half expected the mystery boxes to be gone, but they’re sitting there, dripping like crazy. In fact, a puddle has formed around the bottom one. We exchange looks, and Farq calls Ops.
“You seein’ this, Carter?” He asks, ignoring the standard protocol. “There’s no ID and it looks like the box piddled on the rug.” He waves a device near the box and puddle. “Nothing on the haz scan, so I’m going to open her up.”
“Roger,” Carter replies, his formality a rebuke. “Proceed with extraction.”
I snicker and Farq grins.
“Proceeding as ordered,” he replies in a robotic voice, shaking his head. He hooks his scanner onto his belt and pulls out another device. He reaches up and attaches it to the top corner of the upper crate. The device latches onto the corner and begins cutting around the top edge like an Ancient Earth can opener.
“Can you see anything up there?” I ask. If I stand on my tippy toes, I can peek over the top edge, but I can’t really see anything. Farq’s extra centimeters give him a distinct advantage here.
“Nothin’ to see. Grab a lifter, will you?”
While the cutter whirs away, I trot across the bay and pull one of the box lifters from the rack by its convenient handle. Bots do most of the heavy lifting, but these hand-held anti-grav lifters make shifting cargo much easier in tight spaces. I grab a second lifter and head back to Farq.
When the cutter finishes its circuit, Farq unclips it and sticks it back into his belt pouch. The smell of hot plastek curls the hairs inside my nose. He attaches a lifter to one end of the box lid and turns it on. With a soft hum the lifter lights up. Farq presses the link sequencer to connect the two lifters and attaches the second one to the other end. He presses a green lighted button. The lifters whine and with a grate and a chunk, the lid comes loose. He tugs the closest handle towards us, and the whole lid slides forward.
“Saints and angels preserve us!” Farq stares down into the box, transfixed. His hand makes a ritual gesture, seemingly without input from his brain.
“What?” I cry, jumping up and down like a spoiled child. “I can’t see! What is it?”
“Not what,” Farq says, still staring into the crate. “Who.”