Onekka - The Tragedy of Jaqui Fennet (5 page)

He tried to raise the baton in his good hand, but she bashed his arm and he
dropped it. Determined to end it there, Jaq dragged herself further onto him
and brandished the torch over her head threateningly.
Surely he'll yield now
- the man's beaten!
His eyes met hers, and what she saw was a burgeoning
madness. DePennier had truly scared him. It was while this thought raced
through her head that Garret pulled something sharp and shiny from his belt.
Before Jaq had a chance to react, pain blossomed in her side. He pulled the
knife out bloody, and she brought the portable lamp down on his face with every
ounce of might she could muster.
Blood burst from his eye and nose, and Jaq felt his cheek fold beneath the
solid pressure. Still, he wouldn’t desist. The knife moved back for another
stroke, and Jaq crashed her makeshift bludgeon down again. This time all
semblance of a face disappeared and his arm dropped, the hand opening to drop
the bloodied knife on the carpet. He coughed a blood bubble, spattering her arm
with mucus and viscera. She gasped through the revulsion, her breath bursting
from and filling her lungs in great, heaving gasps.
Something ticked in her head, then. A strange calm stole over her as reality
faded to a background buzz.
Garret's form shuddered. "Fuckshake finsh me," he spat.
Alone in a world of mental dissociation, barely understanding what she was
seeing, Jaq hit her boss again, refusing to look. His form finally went limp,
and she actually felt her eyeballs roll back in her head as the darkness took
her and she retreated from consciousness.
Her last thought was that she didn't want to wake up from the dream.

"You are
in control, Jaqui. You are strong, and capable, and you are doing the right
thing." Multiple voices, speaking in synchrony like a choir. They drifted
around and through her, a balm to her fear, a blanket for her apprehension.
"Huh?"
"Hush, brave Fallen one. You are in good hands." The words came from
a million miles distant to whisper in her ear. Sound throbbed like pulsing ship
engines in her ears; a heavy bass current that pressed unpleasantly and
repeatedly on her eardrums. Jaq tried to open her eyes, but something stopped
her. It took her a moment to realise they were already open - there was simply
nothing to see.
A snippet of memory flashed like a glint of reflected sun from a polished
surface in her mind.
"Am I dead? Did he kill me?"
"Dead? No, far from it. You are simply ... protected, for the moment.
There are things you need to do, and very little time in which to do them. We
will help."
The world seemed to be spinning, despite her lack of vision. Jaq wanted to
retch, and she was becoming increasingly aware of a sharp pain in her side.
Movement seemed mostly impossible, although her head and one arm were
functioning fine. At that thought, everything came flooding back - her
confrontation with Garret, the knife puncturing her side, and his face
crumpling under the blows from her torch. A tear tracked warmth down her face.
"He stabbed me! I'm bleeding out, aren't I? I'm lying in his office, next
to his corpse, and this is the dream I get to live out my final moments
in."
Suddenly there was vision, and those three familiarly indistinct shapes were
shifting in front of her, edges blending with the darkness.
"You must trust us, and listen well. No living being can harm Jaqui
Fennet."
"What? But ..." Absurd as the statement was, she found herself
flooding with reassurance at its sound. Thus far, her dream companions had not
been deceitful or mistaken about anything. Jaq found herself wanting to ignore
the rational thoughts that battered against her mind like a bee against a
window. She wanted to believe them, if only because it made things simpler.
"You only need to remain true to your course, and all will be well. We are
here to help. You have done well, Jaqui. We are very proud."
She chuckled, an edge of hysteria present in her head. "I have a few hours
of freedom left, then I'll be found with Garret's dead body, and I'll be placed
in suspended animation for the next hundred years."
"You have less than that - we have kept you here until your mobility
returns - but we will help you, Jaqui. You know what must be done. Let us
begin."
Their forms diminished into nothing and her awareness tumbled into a chasm of
confusion.
*
Jaq came to, and everything was a haze. She was back in Garret's office, and
it was dark as death, but everything was visible enough to navigate. Her body
felt stuffed with lethargy, but she was able to move all her parts with a
little effort.
As soon as she wiggled things, she felt herself drift. The ai gravity was off.
Of course! Witching Hour was long finished. The only internal systems currently
active were core life support and the backup generators, which remained in a
state of readiness at all times.
Jaq floated into the centre of the room and looked back at Garret's body. It
didn't seem strange that she could see well enough, or even that the room was
bearable in temperature when it should have been near freezing - kept at a
warmth high enough only to avoid overnight damage. Even the lack of pain from
her wound seemed appropriate. These things she simply accepted, whilst
acknowledging internally that they should bother her.
She had a job to do, and a harsh time limit.
As she neared the ceiling, she pushed from it, sending herself down to the
desk. Jaq sent a brief thanks into the ether that part of Onekka's induction
course was an introduction to zero gravity navigation. The desk drawer opened
without resistance, revealing several empty sweet packets, a plastic pass-key,
and a slip of paper with an apparently random collection of symbols and numbers
scribbled on it. As she pocketed the key and paper, along with an empty plastic
bag, Jaq felt a loose object shift beneath the rubbish in the bottom of the
drawer. Plunging her hand in, she grabbed something solid with a handle, and
pulled out a chunky pistol.
That caused her to pause for a moment. The weapon was large calibre - fifteen
millimetres, if she was any guess - and that meant ammunition beyond standard
ballistics. Not to mention, such weapons were strictly prohibited on Onekka. In
an environment where even the tiniest hole could grow to compromise entire
sections of the station, even the security forces packed non-damaging hardware.
Jaq slipped the weapon into her belt, unsure what else to do, and checked the
bottom drawer. Sure enough, wrapped in a canvas bag, she found two boxes of
15mm High Explosive bullets. Garret was a complete lunatic! She transferred the
gun to the bag and tightened it shut before fixing it to herself. Only the
insane carried such a weapon on a space station, but she was rapidly
re-evaluating her own mental qualifications.
A small part of her mind was zipping back and forth in a rage, urgently trying
to get her attention, but she knew that was a bad idea. At this time, she
needed to accept this calmness, and the strangeness of the situation. It was
her only chance at getting clear of this.
Taking a deep breath, she launched herself across the office to Garret's body.
The Sector 5 door had every type of security lock one could imagine. She had
the key and what she thought was a password, but there were two more devices
that she needed to beat, assuming even Garret had appropriate access. His knife
- the one he'd used to stab her - was drifting near the floor next to his
corpse.
Jaq retrieved it and, before she had time to think too much, dug it into the
wrist of his broken hand. As she'd suspected, her attack had broken his wrist
bone, and she was able to cut through the muscle, sinew and flesh, pulling his
hand free. Several blobs of blood and tissue drifted across the office, but
there was nothing she could do about that. She stuffed the hand into her
purloined plastic bag, which boasted its contents tasted yummy without making
one fat. Then she turned her attention to his crushed head.
Fully conscious, Jaqui would have thrown up or fainted at this point, but she
forced herself to dig around and took advantage of her numbness. Thankfully,
both eyeballs were unscathed by the damage she'd done to his skull. She freed
them with the knife, and they joined his hand in the sweetie bag. Jaq tied it
closed, and put it in the larger bag with her other collected items.
That was all she needed - now for the hard part.
She started by getting the door open. The bolt Garret had thrown to trap her
was straight mechanical, so she slid that first. Then she moved his body to the
door and used his remaining hand to activate the other lock. She wasn't sure if
the doors logged who used them, but at least this way Dane Garret would be the
last person to enter and leave his office. There was nothing she could do about
the elevator, which was now completely deactivated. The office door beeped, but
would not swing open without hydraulic power. Jaq braced herself against the
floor and shoved it wide.
Pulling Garret into main office area, she placed him carefully so he wouldn't
drift away, and flew back into the office. A quick survey told her there was no
point cleaning up. She might be able to catch the droplets floating around the
space, but there was no time to clean the deep stain in the carpet where
Garret's head had been. Instead, she retrieved her portable lamp, now bent and
useless as well as coated in blood, and closed the door behind her as she left.
She pulled the corpse over to the boardroom and logged in then out again with
Garret's hand, determined to cover as many bases as possible.
The next hour was spent descending the emergency stairs with Garret's body in
tow. It occurred to Jaq that body disposal was made far easier in zero gravity.
However, she didn't relish the thought of what was waiting when she reached the
living decks.
As she reached the bottom of the emergency stairs and faced the airlock-style
door into the residential zone, Jaq prepared herself. The closest incinerator
was only a hundred metres through this door, but that would be a hundred meters
carrying a dead body. Jaq was in pretty good physical condition, but Garret was
a chubby bastard and she didn't know if her wound, despite not hurting her at
the moment, would weaken her.
A quick check told her there was less than an hour remaining before 'dawn', and
that spurred her on. She arranged the body across her back, hoping its weight
would slump across her like a drunken companion when the gravity hit. Then she
activated the door, and braced herself. She got half his mass just inside the
door, where the gravity fields overlapped, and stumbled as she took it. Closing
the door, she took a step forward and fell against the wall. The weight was
incredible!
Motion-activated night lights filled her head with pain, but it was replaced
with relief when her squinting eyes adjusted to see she was alone. The white
corridors of Residential Zone A stretched out in two directions, disappearing
into the gloom. Night lights gave enough for moving around, but little more.
Using the wall for support, Jaq made her torturous way towards the incinerator,
plunging a step or two ahead at a go, then pausing to rebalance herself.
It took far longer than she wanted to get to the disposal station. Her legs
were quivering visibly and sweat drenched her clothes. Without time to waste,
she opened the vent, hoping against hope that she'd be able to fit the body in.
There was no time, and no inclination, to start portioning it off. The
incinerator took sacks of bunk waste and turned it into a power source for the
station. As she rested for a moment, prepared for the next part, Jaq wondered how
many minutes of light a dead boss would provide.
Moving past the opening, she let his head and shoulders fall into the space,
then quickly circled behind him. With a giant heave, she lifted him from behind
and got his torso into the incinerator. After that, gravity was on her side.
The legs were a tight squeeze, and she had to fold them in a way that no living
person would have endured, but she got the opening shut, and sighed in relief
as it started working.
While the waste facility cleared its chute, she placed her bag of grim trophies
to one side and stripped off. A quick run along the corridor she'd traversed,
using her removed cat-suit to wipe the floor and wall, was the last thing she
could think to do. Then clothes and portable lamp went into the incinerator,
and she peeled off her gloves and plimsolls to join them.
Grabbing her bag, Jaq made for her bunk at a jog. This wasn't the first time
she'd run through these corridors in just her panties, but it was the first
time she'd done it with blood in her hair instead of vomit.
As she reached her door, an electronic bell sounded and the lights came up
full. She whipped through the opening portal, aware that many residents would
be waiting to leave for work immediately the bell was heard. The swish of
several doors opening mixed with the sound of hers closing.
A sensation like crawling ants spread under her skin, the result of whatever
strange cocktail of emotions she was feeling, but she wasn't quite finished.
The key and password went into her personal locker - the one place on Onekka
coded only to her DNA. The squishy bits she wrapped in two more bags and
dropped into her small stasis chamber. The devices had replaced deep freeze
units in most homes. Jaq didn't completely understand the tech, but it had to
do with stopping light in a controlled space, resulting in the contents being,
effectively suspended in time. Her ice cream store came out to make space; a
necessary sacrifice.
Then she spent an age under scalding hot water in the shower, trying and
failing to scrub the filth from her skin and hair. At least the visible stuff
came off. The cut on her side appeared as only a scratch when she examined
herself in the mirror. Perhaps Garret had not penetrated as far as she thought
with his blade. Her dream friends had told her this would be so, that nobody
could hurt her, and now Jaq knew she could trust them.
She bounced onto her bed, naked and dazed, aware through blurring vision that
she had cut things extremely fine. Sleep beckoned and she wished for one of her
dreams, for someone to tell her it was okay and she had done the right thing,
for that sense of reassurance that only Number Thirty Seven and his companions
could provide. A question accompanied her to sleep; had this night even been real?
If so, she didn't think life on Onekka would ever be the same again.
"Three shall watch, one shall fall."