“I’ll finish the job aboard Trikon,” Hugh said, feeling stronger with each word. “Otherwise no deal.”
“I’ll have you in the slammer so fast your goddamned ass’ll be singed!”
“Hey, wait up a minute, Mr. Welch.” Freddy’s gold tooth glimmered in his smile.
Pointing a finger, Welch said, “You keep out of this, Aviles.”
Ignoring the order, Freddy said, “You want O’Donnell to finish the cocaine project, right? O’Donnell wants to finish it. What’re you arguin’ about? What difference does it make where he finishes, huh?”
“It makes a difference to me,” Hugh said, tapping his right thigh. “I finish the project in micro-gee or you find yourself another boy, Welch.”
Welch started to reply, but Hugh added, “And Freddy comes with me.” Freddy’s smile dazzled. He turned to Welch. “An’ you can have these tin legs back. Give ’em to somebody who really needs ’em.” Welch growled at the two of them. But he did not say no.
BRITISH LORD MURDERED
BATH—Sir Derek Brock-Smythe, outspoken former foreign minister and well-known philanthropist, was found murdered in his Avonshire home this morning. According to police, he had been shot to death sometime Friday night, but the body was not discovered earlier because he had dismissed his servants for the weekend.
Police stated that his unclothed body was found in bed, wrists and ankles tied to the bedposts with a woman’s nylon stockings. He died of a gunshot wound to the head. Apparently the pistol was held in his mouth when the trigger was pulled.
“It’s a grisly sight,” said Inspector Carlin Mayes. “Some sort of sexual thing gone wrong, undoubtedly.”
Police are questioning the household servants and known friends of Sir Derek’s.
Ms. Joanna Ames, a frequent houseguest, revealed that he had “unusual” sexual tastes. “It might have been some game he was playing with someone that simply went too far,” she said.
Sir Derek had been a member of Parliament since 1976 and served as foreign minister from 1990 to 1994, when he resigned over the government’s decision to quit the European Community.
After his resignation he devoted most of his time to philanthropic and scientific pursuits, He founded and financed the Sir Walter Brock Laboratory in Lancashire in the hope of attracting “the flower of British science to forge a technology worthy of the coming millennium.”
Sir Derek’s adoptive brother, Dr. Chakra Ramsanjawi, is currently in a Zurich prison awaiting trial on charges of criminal conspiracy and theft brought by Trikon International Corp. and Ciba-Geigy A.G. He is also fighting extradition to the United States, where he has been indicted on drug and assault charges stemming from the recent Trikon space station incident.
When asked if there might be any relationship between Dr. Ramsanjawi’s arrest and Sir Derek’s murder, Ms. Ames replied, “I simply don’t know. That’s something the police will have to consider.”
Ms. Ames, who was in London for the weekend, said the news of Sir Derek’s murder reached her just before she left for Italy. She is taking sabbatical leave from her faculty position at Oxford to spend a year teaching in Venice on a Trikon International fellowship.
—The London Express, 2 November 1998
FIRST WEDDING IN SPACE
HOUSTON (ap)—Commander Daniel Tighe and Dr. Lorraine Renoir were married yesterday aboard the space shuttle Constellation while it was docked to the Trikon Station in orbit 300 miles above the Earth. It was the first wedding ever performed in space.
N.J. Williamson, commander of Constellation, officiated. The groom is the commander and the bride is the medical officer of Trikon Station, a commercial and industrial space station owned and operated by the Trikon International consortium.
Best man was Dr. Hugh O’Donnell; the bridegroom’s son, William Tighe, served as usher. Maid of honor was Dr. Thora Skillen, former head of the Trikon/North American research group aboard the station.
The station was severely damaged three months ago when a crewman suffering from a delusional illness known as Orbital Dementia seized control of the command module and fired a series of thruster bursts that sent the station into a spin.
Though the station was crippled and virtually without electrical power, Cmdr. Tighe single-handedly reoriented the station and maintained life support until help arrived.