Yellowknife

By Francis Bass

Inspector Naval is not that sort of inspector. He examines safety code violations, claims of mismanaged funds, workplace accidents. He is not a private eye, he is not a detective, he is not a genius of deductive reasoning. But Mars has scarcely any law enforcement, so when Margaret Hoehn turns up dead at an International Martian Program facility, Inspector Naval is the best the IMP can send.

Margaret Hoehn died at Yellowknife, an isolated research base mainly dedicated to studying the extraterrestrial bacteria found there. It was in the room containing this very bacteria that Hoehn was found dead from CO2 poisoning. In such a small facility, with constant surveillance footage ruling out most suspects, there’s a narrow pool of people who could’ve killed her—or maybe it was suicide, or just an accident. Regardless, Naval is still out of his depth, and he’ll have to adjust to the peculiar rhythms of life at the small, insular colony if he’s ever going to find out what really happened.

In addition to the novelette, this publication also includes an afterword by the author about how a mystery fiction class and research on Antarctica influenced the writing of the story.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Francis Bass
• Release date: May 29, 2020
• ISBN: 9780463603536

Francis Bass

Francis Bass is a writer of science fiction and fantasy. His work has appeared in RECKONING, ELECTRIC LITERATURE, and others. He lives in Philadelphia.

Book preview

Yellowknife

Copyright © 2020 by Francis Bass

All rights reserved.

Cover font Viafont by JLH Fonts.

COVER PHOTOS: Bottom left courtesy of NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona. — Bottom right courtesy of Archivo Angels Tapias y Fabrice Confalonieri.

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Table of Contents

Yellowknife

Afterword

I’m not that sort of inspector. I’m not the quirky hyper-intelligent fellow that glides through a room and quietly constructs an exact understanding of the felony committed. I don’t work with felonies at all, I work with neglect, misconduct, embezzlement on wild days, minor accidents on most. I wrangle secretaries and lab techs. I write reports suggesting further inspection by further inspectors. I do not examine blunt, violent crimes and point the finger at a perpetrator. I do not inspect murder.

I shift around in my seat on the plane. Not murder. Don’t think of it as murder. It’s just like any other system malfunction. Bring no assumptions to it. Investigate the failure of the surveillance system, investigate the blocked vents, not the corpse. I shift around more, laying my hooded head against the thrumming metal of the fuselage. I’ve been trying to get some sleep for an hour. It’s a 12-hour flight, and because Yellowknife is on almost exactly the opposite side of Mars from Marineris Colony, where I am based, I’ll be arriving at the same time I took off—dawn. I don’t want to arrive and instantly have to sleep, which means I have to get some rest on the plane. I bury my hands deeper into my jacket pockets and close my eyes.

Simultaneous blocked vents and a total failure of the surveillance system are not accidents. They are purposeful. Which means there is a purpose.

I’m not that sort of inspector. But the International Martian Program has no detective agency, and hardly any law enforcement, even in Marineris. One court. An inspection bureau—the MIB—which investigates everything from sanitation to sexual harassment. I did investigate an assault claim one year ago, which is probably why the job landed with me.

I cross my legs. Uncross them. It’s fruitless. I take my tablet out from the bag under my chair, and open the Terran news I downloaded before I left. I read it as entertainment now. It’s a joyful feeling, reading about that muddy, swampy world and knowing I don’t have to live in it anymore. And it manages to distract me from the murder. No. The death. No. The case at Yellowknife.

* * *

When I step out onto the runway at Yellowknife, the sun’s blotchy glow sits just above Mount Sharp, and below Mount Sharp is the colony—just a few painted bricks before the vast slope. The pilot who took me here hands me down the last of my luggage, then clambers back into the plane. I realize that, once the plane takes off, I will be profoundly stuck here. People say that Yellowknife is on the other side of Mars, meaning the other side from the side with Valles, which is maybe the side, or the real side, or the best side.

I clap my hands together, already feeling the tips of my fingers getting cold in the morning chill, then grab my bags and start walking.

On Earth people fetishize the isolation of Mars, though they’re hardly accurate in that portrayal, with almost ten thousand people in Marineris Colony, twenty thousand in all the Valles stations put together—but Yellowknife is truly isolated out here. There are only two colonies in the entire