Zero Gravity Murder
Copyright© 2026 by THodge
Chapter 1
Part 1 of 2. Part 2 is free on my Patreon (no charge, no sign-up needed). The link is at the end.
Detective Mara Venn stared at the body floating in the observation deck’s zero-g recreation sphere. The victim - Marcus Chen, chief engineer - hung suspended in the center of the transparent dome like a grotesque art installation, arms spread, face frozen in what looked like surprise rather than pain.
No blood. No visible wounds. No signs of struggle.
Station medical had flagged it immediately: heart failure. Natural causes. Case closed.
Except Marcus Chen was thirty-two years old, passed his last physical with perfect marks, and had been arguing loudly with someone in the maintenance tunnels two hours before his shift started. Three different witnesses heard it. None of them saw who he was arguing with.
Mara pulled herself along the handhold, circling the body. Station Fourteen had eleven thousand residents and exactly one detective. Her.
She activated her wrist comm. “Control, I need the observation deck sealed. No one in or out.”
“Detective, medical already ruled—”
“I don’t care what medical ruled. Seal it.”
“Sealing now,” Control replied, tone clipped with disapproval.
Mara ignored it. She’d been a detective for eight years - four on Earth, four up here in the black. People didn’t just drop dead at thirty-two with perfect health records. And they especially didn’t float themselves into the most public space on the station to do it.
She pulled herself closer, examining Chen’s hands. Clean fingernails. No defensive wounds. But there - a faint red mark on his left wrist, almost like a pressure bruise. She photographed it with her ocular implant.
His clothing was standard engineering coveralls, pockets sealed. She checked them anyway.
Multitool, data pad, station ID. Nothing unusual.
The observation dome offered a panoramic view of the asteroid field Station Fourteen orbited.
Beautiful. Romantic. Chen came here sometimes with his partner, according to his file.
But his partner was on a supply run to Station Nine. Wouldn’t be back for another three days.
So who had Chen been meeting?
Mara’s comm chirped. “Detective Venn, this is Dr. Okafor. I need that body released to medical immediately.”
“Not yet, Doctor.”
“Detective, the body has been in zero-g for nearly three hours. Tissue degradation—”
“Will wait another twenty minutes while I process the scene.” Mara pulled herself to the dome’s entrance hatch, examining the access panel. “When did Chen enter this area?”
A pause. Dr. Okafor’s sigh was audible. “Accessing now. Entry logged at 0847 this morning.”
Two hours before his body was discovered. Mara made a note. “Any other entries or exits in that timeframe?”
“Checking ... no. The dome was empty until Chen’s biometrics flatlined and triggered the medical alert.”
Impossible. Someone had been with him. The argument in the maintenance tunnels had been heated - witnesses described raised voices, the sound of something metallic clattering. You didn’t have that kind of confrontation and then calmly float yourself into an observation dome alone.
Unless the confrontation wasn’t related. Unless she was seeing patterns that weren’t there.
But that mark on his wrist...
“Doctor, I’m sending you a photo. Can heart failure cause localized bruising like this?” Another pause, longer this time.
“No,” Dr. Okafor said slowly. “No, it cannot.”
“That bruising is consistent with injection trauma,” Dr. Okafor continued. “Pressure applied to insert a needle, possibly while the victim was moving or resisting.”
Mara’s gut tightened. “So someone injected him with something that caused heart failure.” “Theoretically. I’ll need to run a full tox screen, but that takes time. Station labs aren’t equipped for—”
“How long?”
“Forty-eight hours minimum.”
Two days. Mara looked at Chen’s body again, floating peacefully in the center of the dome. If this was murder, the killer had a two-day head start while everyone thought it was natural causes.
She pulled herself to the dome’s control panel, accessing the environmental logs. Oxygen levels normal. Temperature stable. Gravity generator offline per standard recreation settings.
Wait.
She scrolled back through the logs. The gravity generator had been toggled twice that morning - once at 0847 when Chen entered, and again at 0903.
Sixteen minutes later.
“Control, can you confirm something? Does the dome’s gravity generator auto-toggle when someone enters?”
“Negative, Detective. Manual control only.” Someone else had been here.
“Pull up all access points to this dome,” Mara said. “Not just the main hatch.”
Control’s voice carried reluctance. “There’s only one access point, Detective. The main entrance you’re using.”
“Maintenance hatches? Emergency exits?”
“This is a recreation dome. Transparent aluminum construction. There are no secondary—” Control stopped. “Wait. There’s a ventilation junction on the lower deck. Connects to the environmental system.”
Mara pushed herself downward, scanning the dome’s curved floor. There - partially hidden by the viewing angle - a circular panel maybe half a meter across.
She pried it open. The shaft beyond was narrow but navigable for someone small. And it wouldn’t require biometric access to open from inside the dome.
“Control, does this vent junction log access?”
“Negative. It’s maintenance infrastructure. No security protocols.”
Perfect. Enter through the main hatch with Chen, inject him, wait for the heart failure, toggle the gravity off to stage the body, then slip out through the vent.
Clean. Almost professional.
Mara photographed the junction. “I need maintenance records. Who has clearance to access environmental systems?”
“Environmental access is ... extensive, Detective.” Control sounded apologetic. “All engineering staff, maintenance crews, sanitation workers. We’re talking about three hundred personnel.”
Three hundred suspects. Mara’s jaw tightened.
“Narrow it by shift. Who was on duty between 0847 and 0910 this morning?”
“Pulling data ... twenty-seven personnel were clocked in during that window.” Better. Still too many, but workable.
“Send me the list. And I want security footage from all corridors leading to this section.”
“Already queuing the files.”
Mara took one last look at Chen’s body. Whatever had been injected, it had worked fast. Sixteen minutes from entry to death. The killer had stayed calm enough to stage the scene, make it look peaceful.
Her comm buzzed - incoming message from Station Administrator Walsh.
“Detective Venn, I’ve been informed you’re treating Engineer Chen’s death as suspicious. Is this confirmed?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Then we have a problem. Marcus Chen had Level 4 security clearance. He was working on classified propulsion upgrades.” A pause. “If this is murder, we need to know what he knew.” “What kind of propulsion upgrades?” Mara asked.
“That’s classified beyond your clearance, Detective.” Walsh’s tone was firm but not unkind. “What I can tell you is that Chen was close to a breakthrough. He’d requested additional lab time and submitted preliminary findings three days ago.”
Three days. The same time frame when Chen’s behavior had reportedly changed - he’d canceled his regular poker game, skipped two meals in the commissary, spent extra hours in the engineering labs.
“Who else knew about this breakthrough?”
“His direct supervisor, Dr. Reeves. The security council. And whoever Chen might have told personally.”
That argument in the maintenance tunnels. What if it hadn’t been personal? What if someone had been pressuring Chen about his work?
“I need access to Chen’s lab and his personal quarters.”