Onekka - The Tragedy of Jaqui Fennet (3 page)

Mr DePennier
looked like a typical movie bad guy, right down to the tinted glasses and
perfectly tailored black suit. He sat behind Garret's desk, apparently fully at
ease, and endured Jaq's pointed inspection without stirring.
She'd been about to comment on the questionable necessity of shades in an
environment where light levels were disparately controlled according to
people's individual eyesight and direction of gaze, but then she noticed
something. The glasses were not apparel - the arms, rather than sweeping back
to his ears, fused into the flesh of his temples. This guy was
augmented
.
That was rare whatever way you looked at it, and extremely expensive. He'd
either been blind and the glasses were prosthetic eyes, or they acted like a
Heads-Up Display for the world, providing him additional details about things
he looked at. The dark skin across his bald pate shone but didn't glisten, and
he kept his trim body so still it was hard to know if he was even breathing.
"They let me track mood and response," he said in a thick French
accent, "since you were wondering." He leaned forward and clenched his
gloved hands together on the desk, never breaking his gaze from Jaq's.
"They also let me know what direction somebody is looking in. You, Ms
Fennet, have a very direct stare, but you are also calm."
Never been so glad I took up smoking.
"What did you want to ask me
about?"
"This is not so much questions, Ms Fennet. This is being more ...
notification." The tiniest curve twisted one corner of his lips.
"Notification of what?"
"How long have you held this post?" His tone remained maddeningly
calm.
"Do you always answer questions with questions?" Jaq wasn't even sure
why she said that, beyond that she was frustrated and wanted to get a rise out
of him.
He snorted in amusement. "I would respond; why - does it bother you? But
that would be childish. Please answer the question."
"Just over three years." She didn't like the way this was going.
It's
not like I have anything else, especially down on that hell-hole called Earth.
"Uhuh," he nodded. "The authorities feel it is time you sought a
new challenge. You will be placed in the redeployment pool, effective
immediately. You will remain on full pay, of course, until a suitable position
arises. You will please acknowledge that your access to this floor is to be
removed from your profile."
Jaq could actually feel her nostrils flaring, and wondered how her readouts
were looking now, through those fancy eyes of his. "Are you saying, Mr
DePennier, that my performance has been satisfactory? I haven't done anything
specifically that's contributed to this?"
"No no, please do not think that, Ms Fennet. It is simply that people, and
the organisations they work for, need to move on periodically."
She glared into the reflective barrier across his face, fighting to keep her
expression and voice calm, even if it didn't fool his claimed augmentations. He
kept that tiny curve in place at the edge of his mouth. After several moments
passed, he extended a hand towards the door, inviting her to leave. Seeing no
other play to make, Jaq capitulated.
Outside the door to his office, Garret stood with his hands clutched together
and sweat lining his face.
Coward!
"So, how did it go?" he said with a fake smile.
Jaq tutted. "Sod off, Dane. It's not like you don't know. At least let me
grab my purse from my desk."
He nodded, and made a point of following her. A solid glare kept him at a
distance, and that was all she needed. Jaq didn't really care about her purse,
but she did care about the tiny storage device she slipped into it before
leaving, blocking Garret's view as she removed it from her work screen.
"Fennet, I had no idea. I'm sorry," he mumbled as she swept from the
office, but she didn't bother to reply.
Riding the glass lift as it swept down towards the sea of green foliage, she
let the tears fall.
Bastards! How dare they?
Jaq didn't know what to
feel at that moment, but she knew she was torn between drowning herself in a
veritable sea of alcohol and finding out what the hell was going on. The former
certainly felt like the easier option, and the latter would look to all and
sundry like sour grapes, or a woman in denial after losing her job, determined
to believe there was more to it. At that thought, her stubborn streak kicked in
- a rare gift from her father. Getting drunk and laid was one thing, but getting
fucked over was another matter entirely, and Jaqui Fennet wasn't the type to
just lay back and think of England.
The elevator doors swished open to reveal Helen, a determined look on her face.
"We need to talk," she said.
*
The arboretum may have been created by science, but it was populated by nature,
and close enough to reality that a sense of calm pervaded its hyper-real
colours. Jaq strolled with Helen and waited for the PA's conscience to prevail
against the fear that crawled through every shadow in her expression.
"He's lying to you, Jaq. Mr Garret, I mean."
With a snort, Jaq said, "Tell me something I don't know."
"He's been lying to you for months. I read all his comms, so I know what
goes on. I know why he's never tried to replace you, even though you've been
here longer than almost anyone else."
"I'd always kind of hoped it was because I was great at my job."
Helen gave her a sarcastic look. "Job performance isn't a factor. He kept
you around because you never asked questions, until recently. You were Little
Miss Reliable, getting on with your work and never causing a splash. Except
your behaviour changed. You got inquisitive. By the time you placed that call
to the hotel today, asking about the delegation, he'd been monitoring your
comms for days. It was already too late."
"Helen!" Jaq stopped walking suddenly. "Do you know anything
about the Armcorp delegation, where they went, what happened to them? Who is
this DePennier guy, and how is he wrapped up in all this confusion?"
Helen looked baffled suddenly and her voice switched to a near monotone.
"Mr DePennier is from upstairs, Jaq. He must know what he's doing."
Something dropped through Jaqui then, a cold dread that travelled from her
highest thoughts to the ground beneath her toes. Clearly, using DePennier's
name wasn't going to help matters. Helen had been
fiddled with
.
"Why are you telling me these things, Helen, when just talking to me could
get you in trouble?"
"I'm not stupid, Jaq." Her voice was once again her own.
"Something's going on here, and you're being thrown out to the wolves.
It's wrong, and there's no way I shouldn't know about it, given the job I do. I
have gaps, missing pieces in my mind. I don't think I'm meant to know, but
mentioning it seemed dangerous. I'm no use to you - an informant can only help
if they remember things. But Jaq, you need to know there's more to this than
your sanity. Don't give up." She looked more serious than Jaq had ever
seen her. Far from the blond bimbo she came across as, this was someone
clinging hard to their sense of reality. "Don't give up."
Jaq nodded. "Thank you, Helen. I believe you, but you're wrong about one
thing. There is a way you can help me, if you're willing."
Helen nodded as she listened to Jaq's request.
"Consider it done. If it's not, consider me caught instead, and look for
my suppurated body through your porthole."
*
Derek passed her the tube. "Why in fuck's name did you want me to chaff
this for you, Babes?"
Jaq took the black oil and dropped it into a drawer beneath her bed.
"Maybe I needed lube," she said with a cheeky grin. Her hand curled
round the nape of his neck. "Fuck me, bad boy. Pretend you're a shuttle
mechanic, and I'm here for my service."
"You never need lube with me, sweet-cheeks." He pushed her onto the
bed and pulled her leggings off, followed by his own. "I got everything
you need."
As he mounted her, Jaq found herself chuckling inside at his comment.
Little
does he know how true that is.
Well, almost true. There was one more thing
she'd need help with, and Derek was not the man for the job. The memory chip
she'd slipped into her purse before being frog-marched out of the office was
the mobile storage she'd used for the mechanics audit. As such, it held a full
set of station plans, and she intended to go through them with a fine tooth
comb. The difficult bit was the restricted plans - those rare corners of the
station she couldn't view. She had the data, but not the decryption keys.
The very fact that restricted plans existed frustrated her. Jaq had always been
a firm believer in the right to know. If the impact of the internet had proved
anything, it was that society couldn't function in an atmosphere of lies and
deception. On a facility such as Onekka, where the entire population was
dependant on the administrators doing their job correctly, it was more
important than ever that information was open and available. People should know
about the places they lived and worked, and that knowledge should not come with
a side dish of threat.
Derek was getting increasingly insistent in his movements, so she let out a few
sharp gasps and smiled while he shuddered and came in a single spasm. For a
moment, she fancied she could feel her birth control kicking in. An army of
mechanical bacteria - she refused to call them 'nanobots' - attacked her
lover's sperm and rooted out any rival infections that may have sneaked in.
Fight
fire with fire.
Derek rolled into a cigar-shaped heap of duvet and commenced snoring while Jaq
went back to planning. Breaking into the restricted schematics would require a
skillset she'd not yet encountered, or a miracle of learning on her part. In
the meantime, she flipped up her comp screen and began perusing the plans she
could access. If nothing else, she could identify anomalies and figure out
which of the specialised plans she required.
As the hours passed, she knocked back cheap whisky and squinted at the screen.
In three years, she'd never noticed anything suspicious, but then she'd never
truly looked for it previously. Then she noticed a pattern - a bulkhead
slightly out of place in the same area of every deck. The plans for the next
element along were all locked.
Bingo!
Jaq threw back her glass of drink in triumph, and felt gravity pivot suddenly.
Her bed shoved her in the back, which made her giggle. One too many drinks
poured while distracted! Against the backdrop of Derek's incessant snoring, she
slipped between layers of consciousness into slumber.
*
"You must not trust anybody," said the well-spoken voice.
"Number Thirty Seven?" Jaq smiled. Thirty Seven felt like her friend.
The chamber was a brain, she thought. Something in the deep redness and the
vibrancy of the atmosphere felt like drifting in thoughts, a sea of unconscious
cogitation. She floated once more with legs crossed, and felt settled.
"My sisters are here too, this time. Jaqui, it is very important that you
do not entrust your secrets to anybody. None can know what you plan to do, or
even suspect."
"I need someone to crack the decryption codes on the restricted
schematics. Without that, I won't know which places to look for the
delegates."
"The delegates are but a part of what you seek. Open your mind, and
understand the scope of what is hidden from you."
She sighed. "I think you over-estimate me, but it doesn't matter; I still
can't get into the plans."
"You must trust yourself, Jaqui." Thirty Seven's voice dripped
through her brain like a syrup balm. "You have the abilities you seek, it
is just a matter of unlocking them."
She felt herself sinking back towards consciousness, and almost panicked. She
liked it here, in this uncomplicated dream place. She appreciated the straight
talking and the simple interactions, but the visits were never for long enough.
"I can't learn the fine art of hacking in the space of a day!"
"Trust us, Jaqui. You do not need to."
*
The next morning, Jaq feigned sleep until Derek left for work in a babble of
false declarations and promises. As soon as she was alone, her cigarette met her
mouth and she fired up the comp screen. Ignoring the dull ache in the back of
her head, she resumed her close inspections of Onekka's schematics.
Something felt different today. Lines which had previously just been data on
the screen told a story of structures and spaces, walls and floors. As she
flicked between images, a virtual model of Onekka built itself in her mind. She
thought back to her dream, and wondered if this newfound insight was related.
She threw together the atrium, Central Park, and a slew of surrounding research
labs in her mental image, and then found herself reaching the upper levels.
The floors up there - including the floor she'd worked on - were classed as
restricted. For the first time, Jaq understood how her knowledge of that floor,
taken in the context of the rest of the station, helped to build a picture of
the other missing areas. It wasn't long before she'd identified several
anomalies. Smaller spaces existed all over the station exterior without
appearing in the drawings. Without the trigger of suspicion, Jaq had always
assumed these were contingency bulkheads; additional cladding and insulation to
reduce the impact of hull breaches. Now, it seemed mightily odd that they were
not on the official schematics.
Those areas were strange, but the real draw was 'upstairs', and it seemed
pretty damned obvious which door Jaq needed to get through.
Sector 5.
To gain access to that door, she needed all manner of things, but chief among
them was a simple key, and she was pretty certain of where to find it. While
she was at it, that board room definitely bore investigating. If the Armcorp
delegation was on this station, she was determined to find them. If they
weren't on the station, nothing she did would be in time.
Jaq glanced at the timepiece clicking away in the corner of her comp screen. If
she was going to do this, the window of opportunity was tight.
She slid her drawer open and pulled out the black oil. Purchasing what she
needed would have set off all sorts of monitor alarms in Mr DePennier's office.
The oil would do the job, and Derek would proclaim innocence if asked. Partly
because he had some semblance of honour, by mostly because he'd do anything to
save his own hide.