Onekka - The Tragedy of Jaqui Fennet (9 page)

When Witching Hour approached, she went through her inventory. As well as
Garret's eyes and hand, she carried his passkey and scribbled access code.
She'd also borrowed Helen's ID card and Derek's security pass. One way or
another, she should be able to get anywhere on the station. Lastly, she picked
up the handgun, swallowing as the weight settled in her palm. This was the
point of no return.
"Is this death, I hold in my hand?" she whispered. "Born in the
womb of rejection and carried on the wings of human ingenuity. Am I the pariah
to end them all, crouched in secretive fear, contemplating espionage against my
fellow man? Her finger curled into the curve of the trigger, caressing its
smooth lee. It shifted slightly under the pressure, eager to be pulled, begging
to be used. "This is death."
She shook her head.
Snap out of it, Jaq!
The next several minutes were
spent loading a clip full of 15mm HE rounds, and then slipping it into the
weapon.
As the lights across Onekka blinked out, she made her move.

It seemed
less intimidating this time around. The darkness greeted her like an old
friend, beckoning her steps to their destination. The station at night, so
desolate before, was now a home, complicit in her clandestine activity. Jaq
moved with a confidence she didn't feel, availed of a sensation that she had
nothing to lose. No family would weep if she were gunned down; no husband would
investigate. She'd be a footnote in a long and tedious history, penned by the
very people she sought to expose.
Far from problematic, she found this thought helpful. There was no pressure for
a mind that had already given up on reality. She would succeed, or end up dead
- the difference, she thought, was marginal.
The curled leaves of the arboretum watched her pass and she imagined them
cheering her on. Through all those hours spent running laps of the park, she'd
come to think of the various plants as companions. Her black attire blended her
with the darkness, and she was a part of the environment, not an invader.
At the elevator, she swiped Helen's pass card. The PA was still an employee, so
Jaq hoped no alarms would sound. She would be another worker who left something
in the office, and couldn't go a night without it. The transparent doors
slipped open obediently, and she took that as a good sign.
As she flew into the upper reaches, she wondered about Derek. Either the man
had undergone a significant personality change, or she'd previously been so
deluded she'd seen only the cynical projections of a tired mind. Right now, she
was opting for the latter. Asking him to invent evidence for Henrickson without
admitting her involvement in Garret's death had been no easy feat, but he was
so willing to help he didn't analyse her request too closely. She smiled as she
remembered how he'd helped her unwittingly before, happy to reside in ignorance
as long as he got his end away.
The elevator approached Administration, and Jaq prepared herself for the first
real test. There was no way her access would still be active; DePennier would
have personally seen it revoked by now. Instead of risking her own identity,
she steeled her senses and pulled Dane Garret's eyes from her hip bag.
When the car stopped, she held the eyeballs up before her own, gripping each
between a thumb and forefinger. A part of her knew she looked ridiculous,
simultaneously hilarious and macabre, but it was the only chance she had. With
luck, nobody would have thought to revoke a dead man's security access.
DePennier might have, had he known the eyes and hand were missing, but Jaq
hoped that secret detail would see her through.
Sure enough, with barely a pause, the doors opened.
Jaq strode into the office area, which was now swathed in police tape and
temporary comp stations. When she flicked on her torch - another item borrowed
from Helen - it drew a funnel of daytime before her but blinded her vision to
everything else. Thinking better of it, Jaq switched it off once more and
relied on the latent electrical illumination. Everything looked like the
silhouette of a shadow, but at least her peripheral vision remained intact.
The Sector 5 door was obvious, even in the near black. Nothing else was around
it - even the clutter that had overtaken the rest of the office didn't bother
the area around the door. It was as though everyone and everything was afraid
to approach it. Jaq sneaked across to the portal, suddenly nervous. A door that
nobody ever saw used, no matter how innocuous to outward appearances, was a
powerful thing.
She slipped the pass card into an appropriate-looking slot and held her breath
for several moments until a tiny green LED sprang to life. A small panel
appeared, the word 'scan' displayed in the centre. Jaq pulled out the eyeballs
and held them up again. Several further moments passed before a red light
flickered on in the upper half of the door. It zipped around as if seeking
something, then settled over her face. Jaq inched her fingers slightly round
the front of the eyeballs, top and bottom, trying to emulate lids. After an
agonising space of time, another green LED lit up above the first. The panel
acknowledged success briefly before displaying a keypad with a collection of
characters in apparently random order. Placing the eyes safely away, Jaq typed
in the code from Garret's scrap of paper, earning herself a third green light.
As she was about to place the disembodied hand on the door handle, Jaq thought
to check for bolts. Sure enough, there was an old fashioned, metal slide bolt
also in position. She slipped it.
What the hell is that for - to keep people
in
the secret department?
The hand resulted in a fourth and final
LED, and Jaq pushed open the door, slipping into Sector 5.
It was dark on the other side, but that was no change. A faint cool breeze
washed over Jaq's face, accompanied by a subtle aroma of burned electric
components. Apprehension invaded her stomach, to the degree that she actually
felt her muscles tighten and blood thump at her temples. Was she just
frightened of the unknown, or was her gut trying to tell her something?
Brushing the thoughts to one side, she stepped forward determinedly.
When it shut behind her, the surprisingly thick door let out a small hiss. That
told her it was also a systems seal. Gravity, atmosphere, power; all could be
individually controlled for this area without affecting the rest of the
station. Something stopped her thoughts dead in her mind. If that was the case,
perhaps...
As if on cue, light flooded her vision. Blinded, Jaq's first instinct was to
find cover, but she had no idea which direction that cover was in. Instead, she
crouched without moving, placing her hand to her lower back on one side. The
massive handgun lay in wait, pushed through the loop of her belt.
As her eyes adjusted, Jaq saw a corridor heading back to some stairs that went
up. The walls were decked out entirely in gunmetal grey, and a single door led
off to the right before the stairs. She was now in an area the maps knew only
as 'restricted'.
Here be monsters.
There was no commotion to accompany
the activation of the lights, so it seemed like nobody was home. No vid screens
to coat these walls, no advertising or false pretensions for the workers
upstairs. This place was all about function, and form took a resolute back
seat.
Jaq padded along to the bottom of the stairs, passing the closed door for the
moment. She could see nothing upwards - the steps receded into a pall of
shadow. Clearly, the lights on the next deck had not yet been activated. She
felt her chest rising and falling with sudden excitement.
Upstairs.
It
had become a phrase of common usage on Onekka, thanks to the restricted nature
of the upper floors. Everyone talked about 'upstairs' as though it was either
posh or the biggest conspiracy known to man. Now she was staring into the
darkness of the most literal interpretation of the phrase. Dare she move
forward?
It was as she stood there, breathing lungs full of air that felt packed with
dancing mosquitoes, that Jaq noticed something. Peering up into the darkness,
she became aware of a pulsating warm sensation by her cheek. The lights dropped
to half brightness, a reaction to her not having moved for a set amount of
time, and she could see where the heat came from.
There was a spider's web of gossamer-thin light spread across the opening at
the bottom of the stairs. Her face was so close to it that, if she blinked, her
eyelashes might touch it. Jaq backed up a step and the light web immediately
became invisible. The lights snapped back to full brightness.
Close call,
girl.
The lasers might be a warning system, or - given where she was -
something more instantly painful. Either way, she had no easy method for
getting past it.
She crept back to the door and put her ear to it. Dead silence. That didn't
necessarily mean anything - most doors on a space station would be impervious
to sound - but there was no harm in being careful.
She dug Garret's hand from her bag once again and activated the door. Slipping
through and closing it, she stood with her back to the door for a moment while
the lights flickered on.
It was a security office, and it was occupied.
Jaq's heart leapt into her throat. She'd heard the phrase before, but this was
the first time she'd actually experienced the sensation - a near complete
closing of the throat as shock barged its way up her windpipe. She'd entered
the room behind a chair. In classic cliche style, it sat facing a bank of
monitors displaying a combination of camera views, graphs, and status
read-outs. In the chair sat a human form, facing the screens and barely moving,
but for its head turning left and right in tiny increments.
Something wasn't right. The motions of the head were jerky, as if the guy's
neck was stiff and he had to force it to move each time. Not to mention, the
room had been dark when she entered. Even if this bloke was mad enough to sit
here in the dark, doing his job, the activation of the lights would have caused
alarm.
She side-stepped along the door wall, edging round one side of the figure, and
stopped in her tracks when a mixture of surprise and awe rose up inside her.
Facing the bank of monitors was a corpse. Her initial thought was that it was a
mannequin, but closer inspection brought out the details - waxy flesh, a
collection of cracks and liver spots, and a
depth
to everything that
made it human, or at least ex-human. Someone had gone to a great deal of effort
to preserve the body so it could be put to use; and what use!
Although the body itself was complete, the face had been completely removed.
Instead of features, the head sported a mass of tiny camera lenses, each
mounted on a small metal ball joint. They moved constantly, the motion
accompanied by a chorus of faint metal whirrs. The shifting morass looked to
Jaq like a seething crowd of insects, feeding on the mummified remains of a
person's face. The head jerked from left to right and back again in small
degrees, clearly controlled by a motor, and this had been aided by cutting
through the neck so it could twist without distressing the preserved skin.
Jaq felt her last meal working its way to her throat, and looked away from the
macabre sight, trying to steady her breathing. It seemed there was always a new
level of grimness that someone was willing to investigate. Forcing herself to
move back behind the figure, she investigated what remained of the security
room. Locked cabinets occupied the wall opposite the monitors - floor to
ceiling filing drawers that reminded her of a morgue.
Maybe that's what it
is.
She tried Garret's pass key, but it didn't open any of the doors.
Opposite the door was a weapons cabinet - she knew because of the transparent
doors - and resting carelessly on top of it...
Air cannon!
Jaq strode
across and hefted the weapon. It was heavy, but not hugely so, and balanced
across two hands. It looked more like a shotgun than anything else, but with a
readout on the top to display settings. The panel currently said 'initialising'
- apparently picking the weapon up was enough to spring it to life.
After a few moments, the display activated, accompanied by a rising whine like
a camera flash warming up. There were two settings; bole size and release
intensity. Jaq set the first to its lowest - one centimetre - and the other to
maximum.
An utterly lethal non-lethal weapon.
There was a loud click behind her. Adrenalin pounced on Jaq's stomach and she
was reacting before she had time for thought. She dropped the air cannon back
on top of the weapons cabinet, and whipped the handgun from her belt. Spinning
in place, she brought the weapon up to bear on the doorway, one hand curled
round the grip, the other steadying it in front, palm-to-fingers.
DePennier stood there, a sardonic smile on his face as he closed the door
behind him. It faltered slightly when he caught sight of the gun, and he put
his hands up, somehow still maintaining an air of complete confidence.
So,
you didn't know Garret had this in his bottom drawer, or you'd have expected me
to have it.
"It's a foolish or desperate person," he said, "that bears a
ballistic weapon on a space station." His voice had that level baritone
that now sparked an inkling of panic in Jaq's abdomen whenever she heard it.
She kept the weapon pointed steadily at his face. "Colour me desperate,
then."
"Is it even loaded, or are you hoping to frighten me with a bluff?"
"The ammo box said HE on it. I'm pretty sure that's bad." She wasn't
certain, but it was possible his nostrils flared ever so slightly in response.
"What gave me away, DePennier? How did you know I was here?"
"You really shouldn't have trusted Helen. The woman's mind is a wreck, and
I can pick through it like a fox through the garbage. When I found out she'd
hidden items for you, I knew you'd be coming here. Our friend," he
indicated the cyborg corpse in front of the displays, "and his proximity
sensor did the rest.
Jaq glanced across at the stiff figure in the chair, and then glared at
DePennier. "What in god's name is that thing?"
"In god's name? Nothing. Our name for it is a mummy. Did you know that
human security operatives miss 78% of movement on monitor displays like this
one? It's an incredibly inefficient security system. Our mummy misses nothing,
and can be placed in front of any standard set-up without any need for
customisation."
"Did you have to use a real body?"
He smiled. "We didn't
have
to, no. Come along, Ms Fennet." He
made to step forward, raising one hand in request. "Give me the weapon. We
both know you're not going to kill me."
She widened her eyes at him and he stopped in his tracks, perhaps interpreting
the chemical reactions he'd inspired. "After what you put me through in
that interrogation room, do you really think I'll have any difficulty pulling
this trigger? Besides, you said yourself I have the instinct. Back me into a
corner, DePennier, and I'll be the only one walking out of it."
For the first time, she saw frustration in his expression. He'd put on a good
display of anger when threatening her before, but this was subtly different.
There was nothing as obvious as Garret's nervous tick, but the tightening of
muscles around DePennier's mouth was a mental pat on the back for Jaq.