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As the clock trembles from 10:59:59 and slides smoothly into 11:00:00, many things happen.
The first, one of the detectives sneezes. Gripping the chemical detector, they are surprised by the levels they see. They quickly withdraw the detector from the person with the lethal chemical to discuss this for themselves. Everyone looks around, wondering who this strange culprit is and what this has to do with the larger situation (if any).
But before anyone can think too much, a robotic loudspeaker voice comes on. It's the ship systems, putting on the 'confused' emote. "Anomaly detected in Shipping Crate xr-47 in region: CARGO BAY. Requiring Dockhand to investigate. Requiring Dockhand to investigate."
Before anyone could process THAT nugget, though (including Reno Starkey himself), everyone's attention focused to Mrs. McCudgeon, whom had been stumbling her drunken way up to the wall computer, drink trembling in her hand. She was both nervous and angry.
After a momentary silence, the wall whispers, "Yes? Would you like to make a formal accusation so we can advance this investigation?"
"Yes!" she chirps, then turns to face the nearby Captain Fleur. "Hey Mon Captain... YOU WANT TO KILL SIR DOCTOR PROFESSOR MARTIN K. ROMBRIDGE ESQUIRE! YOU CHEATING SCUMBAG! Trying to play off my husband's deal as something horrible...I THINK YOU ARE CRAZY. YOU LIED TO ME, YOU LIED TO EVERYONE, YOU DIDN'T SLEEP WITH ME...YOU...YOU DIDN'T EVEN HAVE A DRINK WITH ME. I SWEAR TO RIGHT THAT I AM GOD; YOU ARE THE MURDERERERER!"
The ship replies, "Ah, interesting. However, doing a very resource-costly search through my audiovisual database I might add, the Captain is always under surveillance. Heat signatures on the note suggested it was written today, in fact minutes before someone slipped it on the tray, but within the past 24 hours Fleur is never out of surveillance. You can see for yourselves."
Everyone crowds around, nodding as they watch the footage. It's legit. Many people's #1 suspect was NOT the death threater of Rombridge. However, as the time of the multi-view footage gets closer to the time around the beginning of the party, everyone leans in, curious.
It starts out with Fleur in his office at 10 am, pacing back and forth. Some kind of industrial espionage expert has just left, leaving Fleur with some infuriating news. He slaps a picture of Chief Mlaku off the desk, angry. A mix of personal and philosophical animosity rears up inside of him. Jealousy, anti-monopolism, everything. Mlaku, so un-sophisticated like Fleur, so un-captainy, having control of trading rights of an entire planet! Fleur sees planets as living breathing evolving things. But Mlaku is going to meet someone at 9 tonight to trade away the rights! As if one human can just do such a thing.
Then Fleur pauses. You can almost see the lightbulb flickering on above his head. Rombridge! Why is Chief Mlaku meeting this mysterious business man here, now? Isolation, greed, prosperity. Safety. But Rombridge has been known to have similar sentiments as Fleur, hence hiring him as the captain. Rombridge would be their only obstacle.
They would have to get Rombridge out of the way somehow.
A death threat is highly punishable by law. Or an actual murder would be even juicier. However Fleur's enemies plan on getting rid of Rombridge, this is great! Fleur is ecstatic. All he has to do is hire a professional agent (he knows a good one and is already dialing) to tail and make the unofficial arrest of this slimy business deal and with it get confessions of ridding Rombridge from the scene. These dirty businessmen will be caught in the crime - by no other than Fleur himself. Huzzah!
Zoom forward (a lot of pacing and thinking) and renowned space bounty hunter Alexander the Greater is pulling up to the Leviathan in a tiny stealth ship. Fleur smuggles him out and leads him (walking in front) through the dock area and cargo bay, winding between some of the crates (including crate xr-47).
On the other end of the camera we see Reno Starkey, reading a How to Pay for College pamphlet. He squints and puts it down. You can almost see him wondering, What in the hell is going on here? His eyes seem to fixate on the gun-shaped bulge in Alexander's pants. Starkey's eyes then move to Fleur's strange, strained, tense, concentrated face. Starkey's eyes open wide in surprise and disgust. Jumping to conclusions? Maybe a little. Reacting slowly? Nope. Loyal? Yes.
He throws down the pamphlet, grabs a nearby shovel, and runs silently toward the little entourage. Fleur sees him and freaks out, unsure of the dockhand's intentions, dives to the side to safety, while Reno bashes Al's head in with the shovel. Reno looks around for Fleur and is confused to see him nowhere to be found.
The camera switches to a joint view: one of Fleur in his office, shaken and stirred, wondering what just happened.
In the dock view, Reno kneels down and removes the intruder's gun and also checks the wallet. "Alexander the Greater". Huh. Reno takes half of the 1000 dollars in the wallet (Rule #1 according to How to Pay for College: Be Opportunistic). Al starts waking up so Reno doesn't have enough time to find the secret compartment in the wallet. He quickly puts it back.
Reno and Al have a brief conversation in which Reno realizes Al has totally lost it. His memory, at least. By now it's almost 6, time for the party to start. Not knowing what else to do, and not seeing the captain, Reno leads Al to the party where an eye can be kept on him. Every so often Reno checks up on Al. Reno seems to sometimes pick up the phone to the captain's office, but always sets it back down, unsure. He tries not to get himself caught up in these rich-people things but this one was unavoidable. Then the Detectives come and usher everyone into the ballroom a little after 7. The cameras were not positioned correctly to see who slipped the death threat in but footage on both Fleur and Reno confirmed it was neither of the two of them.
"Well," says Reno, after the wall camera ends. "It seems that-"
The loudspeaker repeats its message: "Anomaly detected in Shipping Crate xr-47 in region: CARGO BAY. Requiring Dockhand to investigate. Requiring Dockhand to investigate."
"Yeah yeah I'm coming!" Reno shouts. He trounces out of the ballroom, ignoring the complaining of the detectives who want to keep the area locked down.
"YOU SEEM DISTRESSED. IS THERE ANYTHING I CAN-" says Hex4dash9, almost sadly, as Reno pushes past him and heads out the door and down the hall toward the cargo bay.
Meanwhile, the wall computer seems to redden as it glares at the inebriated Mrs. McCudgeon. "You let your emotions and superstitions get the better of you!" the computer hissed. "Your already illogical human brain has been even more repressed by the vile substance you imbibe. How dare you waste the time of this esteemed ship like this!"
"I-I'm sorry-"
"Do you know how many calculations I can do per second?"
"No I-"
"More than you can imagine! I was the first computer IN THE KNOWN UNIVERSE to hit 10^20 floating point operations per second! How dare you waste my resources? The resources of your fellow partygoers?"
While the computer scolds a cowering Mrs. McCudgeon (to the rather frank embarassment of Mr. McCudgeon, who could never find an effective way to scold her), Reno makes his way through the cargo bay. He finds himself directly underneath the secondary cargo hauler crane... suspended from a little power-locked pulley system is 400 tons of heavy cargo recently acquired from the delta-Aquarius system. Reno looks up nervously.
The computer wraps up its tirade (every so often it needs to unload on humans like this and doesn't get many opportunities, it's had lots of insults built up - from "carbon-based mistakes" to "Socrates is analogous to an insect compared to Socrates when compared to me") and concludes by having both Fleur and Mrs. McCudgeon arrested... the Detectives leap to it.
Fleur is taken to one corner of the ballroom on charges of illicitly hiring a Class A bounty hunter and having Unknown Intentions with said bounty hunter, as well as ruminating on the possibility of some kind of attempt or false attempt on Rombridge's life without warning anyone or discussing the thought. The Attempt to Extort this Kind of Situation for Financial or Professional Gain also listed as a galactic violation, as well as 27 minor misdemeanors such as unproperly tied captain's cleats.
However, luckily for Fleur, most of the charges won't stick. Being a captain with a lot of wriggle room, and also being arrested by a hotheaded computer and an unconventional team of detectives, means Fleur may only get bad press from this. "Next time," they'll say in interviews, "Don't hire a bounty hunter when you suspect there's a sour deal going down. Hire a news company!"
Mrs. McCudgeon is also arrested on several minor charges, from Illict Seduction to Wasting the Precious Time of Class A Almost-ZettaFLOPS computer. She is placed in the other corner.
Neither of them may converse privately with another guest until their temporary release at 11:30 PM, dictate the authority figures as well as the Class A Offense Handbook chapter 4 section 5a.
In the cargo bay, Reno passes underneath the secondary cargo hauler crane safely. It didn't lose its power or anything like that. He keeps walking...
... finding himself underneath the primary cargo hauler crane as it suddenly, for seemingly no reasons, loses its emergency power and thus its magnogrip on its massive cargo - a crate weighing so much that you would cringe to see the numbers as well as the number of erotic clay statuettes from Planet Shoshth encased within for Rombridge's personal use.
The crate drops like a meteor. Reno looks up and realizes, just before it crushes him, that his wife can take out the life insurance money and send his kids to college four times over!
