Severance (14 page)

In the back of the room, set on the floor, was an enormous wall
panel off its mounts. Bruce walked over to examine it, leaning it away from the
wall it concealed. Behind it lay a massive hinged access hatch, much bigger
than anything he had ever seen before, set into a steel bulkhead wall. Normally
held in place by large fasteners, Bruce could see most of them hanging loose.
He loosened the rest of the fasteners and swung the hatch open.

Behind the hatch, a dark cavern. Turning on his terminal
light, he directed the beam into the darkened space. It was room–sized, a bit
smaller than the room he was in now, and cramped by an enormous piece of heavy
machinery sitting right in the center. He stepped into the cavity and looked
closer at the equipment, still not recognizing it.

The room smelled, oil and metal and something acrid. Moving
around, he could see the machinery looked like someone had carved an enormous S
out of incredibly thick metal. After circling it once, he decided it was
actually two interlocking C’s. Each half of the machine — each C — was braced
by enormous pistons. Flecks of corrosion covered the surface, but after looking
closer, Bruce could see scratch marks, as well. It looked like it had been
scrubbed clean recently. Each half of the mechanism was supported by massive
metal pillars extending out through either side of the cavity. Bruce recognized
those as the ship’s main structural members, laid out along the length of the
vessel like ribs.

For all the mysteries the room did contain, notably absent
was the secret hiding spot of a cabal of assassins who possessed the answer to
Gabelman’s death. Disappointed, Bruce snapped a couple of pictures of the
mechanism with his terminal, then stepped outside to cover his tracks.

§

“Thanks, Forth,” Stein said, noting down another set of
figures on the desk display in front of her. Her eyes lingered on the clock. It
had been almost twenty minutes since she had checked in with Bruce. He would be
in the midst of doing something pretty stupid right about then. Hopefully,
Curts hadn’t noticed she had stopped using Bruce, and he hadn’t seemed to — he
had been busy tapping out messages on his own terminal for the last few
minutes.

He looked up at her just then, seemingly startled by her
staring back at him. He smiled thinly and asked, “S–s–sorry about that. How’s
it going?”

“Okay,” she said. “Been making good pace.” Seeing a chance
to stall and buy Bruce some more time, she tapped the clock on the desk
display. “Might use a break though. Could go for a quick walk to work out the
kinks.”

Curts nodded slowly, then stood up and moved behind her,
looking down at the data she had been gathering. “Sounds like a plan. But how
about we finish this next batch of p–points first, okay? That’ll t–take…what?
Another ten minutes?”

Stein suppressed a low growl. “Yeah, about that. Okay. No
problem.” Curts patted her on the shoulder and returned to his chair as she began
ordering her troops around to the next batch of control points. They were at a
perfectly good stopping point as near as she could tell. But if Curts wanted to
micromanage, she wasn’t going to rock the boat. Not today.

§

The two security men who found him in the fan room evidently
hadn’t found the pile of unconscious bureaucrats first, or they would have had
their weapons drawn when they entered. Bruce would later conclude that this
meant they were guarding the fan room specifically, or at least had sensors
nearby that were. It was probably how they had found Gabelman.

Bruce didn’t have his weapon drawn either, but he did have
the enormous plastic wall panel in his hands, which served first as a useful
method of concealment while he did arm himself, and then as a shield during the
brief and haphazard firefight which followed. Emerging victorious from the
gunplay, Bruce spun his pistol around on his finger.
That was exciting
.
He hadn’t had anyone shoot back at him for a long time, either. This was
probably a good sign that his welcome was worn out, and along with the slight
twinge of fear which signified the wearing off of his Brash, he decided that
was enough reason to go ahead and make his escape. Stepping over the
unconscious security officers, he exited the fan room and jogged down the hall
towards the main staircase.

At the bottom of the stairs, Bruce saw another security
officer waiting, and cheerfully shot him in the face. He then ran down the
stairs two at a time, waved to the young man at the reception desk as he
sprinted by, and gave him one last blink for old time’s sake.

“Hey, Bruce? You got that reading on VAV–4H–340–20 yet?”
Stein’s voice, sounding distant over the terminal. Bruce snatched it from his
pocket as he ran towards the escalators half a block away.

“Yes, I got it right here. It’s fuck all percent, sir.”

“Ahhhhhh, gotcha. Forty–five percent.”

“Can’t talk for long, chief,” Bruce said as he reached the
escalator bank. He pushed a couple of people out of his way as he descended. “Fan
room on Bridge third floor. Behind the south wall panel,” he gasped into the terminal
as he reached the bottom of the escalator. He ran around the bank of escalators
to go down another floor, trying to think of how to describe the mechanism he
had seen in the cavity beyond. Suddenly, it hit him, the device and its purpose
rendered clearly in his mind. He blurted a single word into the terminal before
the sizzling sound of gunfire cut him off.

A cloud of dust erupted in the wall beside him as a cloud of
charged particles smacked into it. Two more sizzling sounds and clouds of dust
bracketed him before he dove forward, rolling onto the escalator.

He gracelessly descended to the second level in a series of
bumps and tumbles. The terminal fumbled out of his hands and bounced across the
street. He regained his feet and scrambled after it, more gunshots impacting
the ground beside him. The terminal danced and skittered away from him, evading
his clutching hands, before he finally was able to scoop it up and turned
again, running to the other side of the escalator bank. Here, he stopped and
waited.

The security officer on his heels rounded the corner of the
escalator bank and gaped like a fish for a second before he caught a blast
right in the chest. Bruce mentally applauded his cool hand as he ran down the
final escalator to the first level. From here, he picked his way down familiar
side streets and corridors in a roughly northeasterly direction, heading to the
dankest part of the ship he knew. This area had had its security sensors
obliterated long ago, so that by the time the next security officer cautiously
set foot on the first level, the big man had effectively disappeared.

§

“Bruce? Bruce?” Stein said, staring at her terminal
accusingly, blaming it for the dropped connection. It was therapeutic, but a
frivolous act. She knew it was Bruce who had stopped talking.

She ran Bruce’s words over again in her mind. It sounded
like he was asking to shut the power off for some piece of equipment in the
Bridge fan room. But Stein couldn’t tell what specifically. He was pretty
excited about it, whatever it was, but whether that was about Gabelman or his
own easily excitable nature, she couldn’t figure. What she did know was that he
was probably in trouble.

Stein looked up at Curts, who was staring back at her, wide–eyed.
“What was that about?” he finally asked, a forced edge to his casual tone.
Stein looked down at the desk, trying to mask her expression. “Bruce being
weird,” she said, which was normally a fairly conclusive explanation.

She wasn’t sure there was much she could do to help Bruce at
the moment. And she wasn’t in any danger herself — she hadn’t actually done
anything. But as Curts continued staring at her, her eyes drifted over to the terminal
clutched in his hands, the terminal he had been rapidly tapping out messages on
over the last few minutes. It hit her.
He knew
. He had been dragging out
the diagnostic process, stalling for time. But stalling for what?

Not wanting to find out, she stood up and walked past Curts
towards the door. “Where are you going?” Curts asked, standing suddenly as she
passed him. She ignored him and broke into a jog. This was going to look
suspicious as hell if it turned out she was wrong. And even if Bruce had been
caught, she could simply plead she knew nothing about his antics.
I simply
thought my team member was assisting with the sensor diagnostics, Officer. Now
that you mention it, he has been acting unstable lately, yes.

When she reached the door her ruminations on cowardly
betrayals were cut short when she spotted the security van, a block away and
moving towards her. Free of rails, and only allowed on the first level, they
were permitted to be used by few people, usually for cargo. The smaller, faster
vehicles were used exclusively by security, one of which was rapidly heading in
Stein’s direction now. A bit too much of a coincidence for Stein, she turned
the other direction and broke into a sprint, no longer mindful of looking
suspicious.

Behind her, she heard shouts as the security van
accelerated, plowing its way through a population unaccustomed to avoiding traffic.
A loud thump behind her announced that someone hadn’t gotten out of the way
fast enough. Stein looked back to see a pair of security officers exiting the
van, one yelling at the person he had just struck, the other chasing Stein. As
she ducked around the corner, Stein silently thanked the man who had bounced
off the front of the security van, and in doing so, bought her that valuable
time. And himself some broken ribs, judging by the way he was bleating.

Two blocks down the street, Stein ducked inside a
pressurization–fan room, where she knew there would be an access point for a
utility pipe–chase. Hurling herself to hands and knees, she scrambled into the
tiny crawlway. These spaces were completely unnavigable to anyone who didn’t
regularly work in them and only marginally less confusing to someone who did. By
the time she heard the security officer enter the room behind her, she was
already out of sight behind the first turn.

A few minutes of frantic crawling passed before she
remembered to turn off her terminal to prevent security from using it to trace
her. Several more minutes of more labored crawling passed before she stopped
for the second and final time, this time over a metal panel set into the floor.
Popping it up revealed a space not much larger than herself. She rolled into
this, then carefully reset the cover in its spot above her, sealing herself off
in a secret coffin, alone in the dark.

Whether he had been preoccupied or simply lying, Security
Chief Hatchens had yet to contact Harold since their first meeting, when he had
breezily passed on the news of Kevin’s death. What little Harold had learned
since then was thanks to the news feeds, though judging from the lack of useful
information they had, it seemed Hatchens wasn’t talking to them much either. Most
of their content consisted of artistic reinterpretations of the murder, none of
which Harold found terribly helpful. Or tasteful.

After a day of waiting, Harold finally decided to go to
Kevin’s apartment himself. Kevin didn’t have any relatives to bestow his
belongings to, and Harold supposed he should go there to safeguard anything of
value before the government packed it all off to the recyclers. He might be
obligated to, in fact; he realized there was a good chance he may actually be the
boy’s next of kin.

A block away from Kevin’s apartment Harold stopped, a thick
security officer blocking the door. Harold hesitated and considering turning
back for a moment, until the officer swiveled his meaty neck around and looked
straight at him, at which point Harold gritted his teeth and continued on his
way. As he approached, the officer leaned inside the open door and said
something to an unseen figure inside. A moment later, Chief Hatchens stepped
out and moved to intercept Harold before he could reach the door. “I’m afraid
you can’t come in right now, Doc,” Hatchens said, placing his own bulky frame
between Harold and the apartment. “This is a crime scene.”

Harold looked over the security chief’s shoulder to Kevin’s
front door. It was open, but from this angle he couldn’t see very far inside. “I
thought his body was found on the first deck?” he asked. “Why’s this a crime
scene?”

“Because I said so,” Hatchens said in a tone meant to end
conversations. An uneasy moment passed between the two men. Hatchens cracked a
thin smile. “Come on. I don’t tell you how to do your job, Doc.”

Harold stared back at Hatchens’ face and its display of
false mirth. “I’m the next of kin,” he said, guessing. “I’ve got a right to go
in there.”

Nothing changed on the man’s face, but Harold could feel the
security officer working through the implications of that. “You’re right,”
Hatchens said finally. “I’ll personally ensure that nothing is disturbed beyond
what needs to be for the sake of our investigation. I don’t think it’ll be much
longer. I’ll let you know when we’re done.”

Harold grunted something which he hoped would be interpreted
as sounding appreciative and left the security man. Although he had always kept
his distance, he had never held any specific ill will for the security
department, and had always been suspicious of those who did.
Students and
assholes, with student and asshole theories.
Even here, he knew Hatchens
was well within his rights; it was entirely legitimate for them to secure Kevin’s
apartment to conduct their investigation. But he was starting to get a sense of
what the students and assholes were on about.

The next day he awoke to find a message informing him that
security had cleared out of the apartment and Harold could attend to Kevin’s belongings
as he saw fit. When he arrived at the apartment a half hour later, Harold found
the front door closed, the area completely vacated of thick people.