Onekka - The Tragedy of Jaqui Fennet (7 page)

"Do not
let life bother you, Jaqui. Your reality is what you make it. You must focus on
the important things, those areas of significance that define your
purpose." The voice, the one she knew to be Thirty Seven, always calmed
her. The darkness of her dream never felt threatening now. It was more like a
mental blanket, wrapping her in a cocoon of reassurance. Jaq was still certain
the dreams took place inside a mind, but no longer found that sinister.
Instead, it felt familiar; more so even than her own bunk.
"But how will I know what is significant?"
There was a pause, and she knew the three dream companions were conferring.
There was no audible voice, but a strong sense of mingling thoughts. She'd
become used to this. The dream space seemed formed of thoughts, and as such,
when the entities were thinking, she inhaled the concepts they pondered. She
could think of no other way to articulate the sensation. After some time, she
felt a sense of calm and knew that agreement had been reached.
"Three things, must you watch for, Jaqui Fennet." Thirty Seven's
voice was no longer alone, joined now by the other two. Jaq wondered idly
whether they were also referred to as numbers.
"Three things?"
"Three signs, three portents must you heed."
She smiled. "Guys, why are you suddenly talking like Yoda? It's just me
here." There was only silence in response, accompanied by a vague sense of
mental sternness. They were dead serious, she realised.
"First: Beware the human voice without breath's benefit, for its words can
beguile. You will know of what we speak. Second: Trust not the thought that
comes unbidden and dreams of gallant knights. You must only follow what comes
within. Third: When Earth is lost to the humming dark, Onekka will be undone.
You must watch for these signs, Jaqui. Do not forget."
Jaq tried to think of a response to that. Had one of her waking acquaintances
said such things, she would have laughed and punched their shoulder. Here, it
seemed more appropriate. Thirty Seven had always spoken in that very careful,
correct English anyway, so hearing her talk these prophetic words was not such
a stretch. Married to that, her dream companions had not yet been wrong. Jaq
felt she could truly trust them. Perhaps they were just exaggerating for
effect? Yes, that must be it.
"How do the three things help me?" she asked.
"You must stay upon your path, Jaqui. Your way forward is clear - keep
yourself safe and free. Infiltrate Sector 5. This is the only way to answer the
questions you have. To give up now would be to let them win, and deny yourself
the satisfaction of completing the task for which you have already given the
sacrifice."
"I have such doubt, such gnawing pain inside me. This is a mess!"
"You are not responsible for what has happened, Jaqui. You are a victim,
and victims should not be punished. The authorities will not understand that.
They will see only the murderer on the surface, not the victim beneath."
She shifted in discomfort. "But I am a murderer."
"No, you are a killer. There is a difference. You had no choice."
"I feel so guilty, Thirty Seven. If I'm not to blame, why do I feel so
bad?" If she was awake, Jaq knew she would be wringing her hands. She
hated that.
There was a wave of soothing emotion from the direction of her companions.
"You are conditioned that way, Jaqui. By convention, culture, routine and
hierarchy. People are cruel, and believe all must exist in a perpetual state of
guilt, required to prove their worth continually in order to deserve innocence.
Pay no mind to the effects of this regime."
Jaq smiled. "You are so wise."
"We are always here for you, Jaqui. Remember the three signs."
"Breath, knight, dark," she muttered.
"Yeeeessssssss."
*
At lights up, Jaq was feeling a whole new sense of wakefulness. She didn't know
why DePennier hadn't called for her yet, but every minute he left her alone was
a chance to slip his grasp.
She started with an inventory of the items she had available. The gruesome bits
- one hand, broken and two eyeballs, unsquished - were in her stasis locker.
She decided to leave them there, not willing to risk decomposition by having
them out for any length of time. She knew her own, personal bunk was a
dangerous place for them, if only because DePennier would certainly think to
check it, but there currently seemed no alternative.
The passkey and scribbled-on scrap of paper - she couldn't remember the random
combination of characters that seemed to be a password, regardless how many
times she tried - she slipped somewhere nobody would look. At least, she
thought, if they got as far as looking there, she'd already be so caught that
it wouldn't matter any more. That just left the monster handgun and its boxes
of ammunition. Even looking at it made Jaq shiver. Ballistic weapons were
banned in space for good reasons. Combine that with high calibre, HE
ammunition, and the situation reached a whole new level of insanity. What had
Garret been mixed up in, and did Jaq really want to find out?
Damned right, I do!
She ran through the procedures of loading and unloading the weapon. She'd never
fired a handgun, but with a little movie-based knowledge, they turned out to be
terrifyingly easy to use. Forty eight rounds, she had - four full clips of ammunition.
That was enough to kill every person on board, especially if you knew which
parts of the station to hit. If, for example, you had a full set of Structural,
Mechanical and Electrical schematics to hand. She put the weapon under her
pillow, not quite knowing why, and secreted the ammunition beneath her bed.
At that moment, Jaq's comm unit binged and she almost fell off the mattress
she'd been perched on. A single bing meant there was a message, and that meant
somebody had called during her abortive date with Derek, since she felt sure a
night call would have woken her. She moved to the unit and stopped, her finger
hovering over the message button. What if it was DePennier, calling her a
traitor, demanding she hand herself in? Jaq fought that thought down. Even if
it was, this would only be a recorded voice, and it was better to be in the
know.
It was a vid message from Helen, and the woman looked liked she'd been put
through an auto wash and wringer cycle. Her hair splayed from her head in
random, damp bunches, her eyes were bloodshot, and her skin had that pallid
looseness of complete exhaustion.
"Jaq!" she said, her gaze dancing from the camera to her hands, to
the door of her bunk behind her. "Jaq, you have to help me. I don't know
who else to turn to. I think I can trust you. Please call me, we need to meet.
Hurry!"
The screen went blank, leaving Jaq with her thoughts. Her first reaction was
that it smelled like a trap. Had DePennier planted Helen to draw Jaq out,
entice her to confess something?
You're paranoid, Jaq.
She closed her eyes, suddenly finding thought impossible. When the very walls
seemed to be pulling in, pulsating in time to her heartbeat, she knew it was
time to hide the world. Sure enough, in the self-imposed darkness, she was able
to calm her breathing and look at things as rationally as possible.
Was this a trap? Perhaps - DePennier had shown he had no qualms about using and
abusing Helen's mind. Jaq replayed Helen's message in her head, studied the
haggard features, the terror in the eyes. That was genuine, and Helen had
proved in the past she knew, or at least suspected, that her memory had been
fiddled with. That meant, surely, she would be less responsive to more invasive
suggestion. Jaq was fairly sure Helen was not involved.
Most importantly, though, Helen could be an accomplice. As this thought
burgeoned in her mind, Jaq saw a way forward. She'd been stuck, unable to
proceed with the office a crime scene, just waiting to be caught. Now, there
was something she could do.
Opening her eyes, she moved to the comm unit. From the look of her, Helen would
not be at work today. Time to find out what was going on.
*
"I'll have a coffee, please," said Jaq to the waitress in the park
cafe. No computerised table menus here - something for which she felt very
thankful. The 'outside' environment extended to a light breeze that ruffled
leaves on the surrounding trees and bushes, and played with the hair of diners.
Across the table, Helen sniffed productively. Her hands were shaking as though
charged with electricity and her hair, despite some apparent effort, looked
like an overcrowded bat sanctuary. "One double Espresso, an Americano with
an extra shot, and two energy bars."
Jaq caught the waitress' arm as she scribbled. "Make that a camomile shake
for my friend, please."
The waitress nodded and departed, and Helen gave Jaq a shaky look, her eyes so
wide there was white all round. "You think that's best? I feel exhausted.
I need the energy."
"What you need is a week in bed," said Jaq with a smile.
Not to
mention a break from having your head messed with.
"What's the matter,
Helen? You're a wreck."
Helen glanced around before talking, and then leaned forward across the small
table so she could whisper. "It's DePennier, I think. It can't be anyone
else."
"What's he done?"
"I had memory gaps. Things ... Things didn't make sense, Jaq. I have clear
knowledge of what I did three weeks ago, but nothing for two weeks after. It's
not the first time. I ... I think I see things I shouldn't, and DePennier
rectifies the breach. My doctor told me it was trauma; that my brain locked off
the memories to protect me, but I wasn't sure."
Jaq smiled in what she hoped was a sympathetic manner. "That would make
sense once, but not if it's happened a lot. Helen, we had a conversation right
after I was laid off. We spoke about my access rights. Do you remember
that?"
Tears bounced from the woman's cheeks as she stared at Jaq, her fingers curled
beneath her jaw. Clearly she had no idea about the conversation.
What a
poor, used soul she is.
"I don't think you have a natural problem, Helen. I think this was done to
you."
Helen nodded her head emphatically, sending her wild curls bouncing. "I
know now, Jaq. I've been a bad girl." She sniggered and covered her grin
with a nervous hand, then rolled her eyes conspiratorially. "I looked at
the files I shouldn't know about. There's loads of them in a hidden folder on
the system. Personnel files, listing everyone aboard Onekka and their profiles."
"Profiles?" Jaq wasn't sure she wanted to know.
"Psych evaluations, behaviour mapping, that sort of stuff, and erm ...
what they call corrective treatments."
Jaq sighed. She'd read about cutting edge medical techniques for treating Post
Traumatic Stress Disorder. They worked by suppressing the problematic memories
until the patient was better able to cope with them. With the memory out of the
way, the patient could undergo mental robustness therapy, protected from their
debilitating sensations of helplessness. Trouble was, all the top minds agreed
that the process itself was mentally destabilising. A single treatment would
not likely cause lasting damage, but repeated use could have terrible
consequences. A month ago, Jaq wouldn't have believed the station
administration had access to such tech, or the will to use it. That was before
she met DePennier.
"Did you look up your own profile?" she asked.
Helen grinned. "Seventeen treatments over two years. I'm a record breaker!
Thing is, I'm also broken, Jaq, and I don't think the king's horses and the
king's men can put me back together now. I'm too far gone." She danced her
fingers around on the table for a moment, and then spread her hands flat.
"My pieces are too scattered."
"Do you know who did this to you?"
"We both know the bad man. He haunts our dreams."
Jaq sat back as the waitress returned with their drinks and took a sip of
scalding liquid while she thought. Unfortunately, there was no process to
follow, no starting point she could imagine to get Helen on the road to
recovery. Any doctor aboard Onekka would be complicit, as would the research
scientists. There was simply nobody to trust. "I don't know how to help
you, Helen." She felt emotions pushing up through her stomach and chest.
"I'm so sorry."
Helen drained her milkshake in one long, drawn out mouthful, placing her empty
glass down on the table and smiling through a foam beard. "I love watching
the bubbles slide down the glass. They look like they're having fun. I'd like
to be a bubble, I think." Then her gaze locked to Jaq's and she drew the
back of her hand across her mouth. "You can't help me, Jaq. That time has
passed, but you can stick it to DePennier for me. That bastard has a lot to
answer for. I know you're onto something - that's why they got rid of you. Make
him pay, Jaq."
"I'm amazed he hasn't picked me up already."
"Oh!" exclaimed Helen, then spoke in a taunting, sing-song voice.
"He's in a lot of trouble!"
Jaq couldn't help but laugh. "What do you mean?"
"
Somebody
told the police he'd been threatening Mr Garret, and now
they keep wanting to talk to him. He's so angry!"
That raised a thought in Jaq's mind. "Can you do me a favour?"
"I can help! Just don't rely on my memory. Just kidding!"
Jaq nodded. "Thank you, Helen. Come with me."
They spent an hour making arrangements. Jaq had just left Helen's company and
was heading for the fitness centre when her personal comm beeped. She activated
the ear mic to answer.
"Ms Fennet!" The voice had a deep growl to it, and spat her name
across the comm link with a French accent. It was DePennier, and he sounded
mightily pissed off. A hand dropped onto Jaq's shoulder from behind, and she
turned to see a squad of private security operatives behind her. "Please accompany
these men. We need to talk."

Jaq was
escorted into a room that put her in mind of a prison cell. Rather than heading
to the administration building, the security operatives had marched her through
the bowels of the station. Apprehension blossomed as she walked, leaving a
wheeze in her chest as though she'd caught an infection. They went through a
door everyone assumed was a maintenance portal, but Jaq knew from her plans it
led to an unnamed corridor, culminating in an area classed as restricted.
When she walked into the room - a plain white box with a mirror wall and a
table - the door was closed behind her. DePennier was sitting on the other side
of the table, and he indicated a vacant chair her side with a flat hand. He
looked larger than life, as though he was a character from a cartoon, just
waiting to burst from his suit and reveal a costume of some kind. This guy was
packing some serious bulk, she thought, leading her to wonder if he'd had more
enhancement work done than just his eyes. Those shaded glasses looked at her
impassively, and he moved his hand ever so slightly, as if to reaffirm his
gesture. Unsure of any other way to proceed, Jaq obliged and sat down.
DePennier leaned into the comm unit on his wrist. "She's here now. Search
her bunk." Jaq made as if to object, but then realised it was pointless.
She watched him shift in his chair as though seeking a comfortable angle.
"You've caused me quite some difficulty, Ms Fennet," he said.
He
intones everything, as though he's reading from a tome of prophecy. Pretentious
arse!
She shivered.
Pretentious, but still bloody intimidating.
"The security forces find themselves irrationally interested in me and the
part I may have played in Garret's demise. I assume it was you that gave them
the notion I was involved?"
Despite her nerves, Jaq objected to being put on the back foot. Her reflection
in those mirrored glasses was glaring back at her, arms crossed in anger. The
feeling of self-disappointment led her to shrug in response to DePennier's
question. Then she kicked herself further, knowing it was a reaction designed
to antagonise rather than help her situation, and annoyed that she'd defaulted
to 'surly teenager' when threatened.
With no pheromone buffer, she needed to find a calm place to hide from his
tech-augmented vision. Her only chance to avoid giving herself away was to be
genuinely calm, to avoid giving off any of those telltale stress responses.
Easier
said than done, idiot - look where you've gotten yourself!
No! That definitely
wouldn't help. She fought to steady her breathing and tame that wild heartbeat.
If she could switch off while men had their way with her body, she could surely
do the same with her mind.
"I am forced to secrete myself down here," he continued, "in order
to maintain the illusion of cooperation on the part of my employers. Thanks to
my being a suspect in the eyes of the security forces, I cannot conduct my
investigation openly. Let me assure you that your little gambit will not go
well for you."
A silence ensued, and Jaq quickly realised he was trying to discomfit her by
opening a silence without asking a question. "What did you want to speak
about, Mr DePennier?"
"Mr Garret was in possession of certain items," he said, his lips
curling at the corners as if he found the verbal sparring amusing. "These
items were sensitive in nature." He paused again, studying her intently.
Where's
my cigarette when I need it? Arsehole must know I'm nervous this time. No, Jaq.
Think calm, pleasing thoughts. You don't need the cigarette, just willpower.
Jaq fought the urge to shrug again. "Why are you telling me about it? I
was Mr Garret's Admin Overseer, not his inventory manager."
He leaned forward, and that deep voice took on the harsh undertone of anger.
"Because those items are missing, and it is you who was prying into
restricted matters before Garret's death."
"I have no idea what yo-"
"DO NOT LIE TO ME!" he thundered, standing up hard enough to topple
his chair and towering above her, his balled fists crashing down on the desk.
"Only you benefit from this. You, and whatever clandestine purpose you
pursue. I think you killed Garret, and I think you did it so you could steal
those items!"
Jaq leaned back in the face of his intensity. The man looked a hair's breadth
from pounding on her face with those huge, meaty hands of his. Her breath was
stuck, cold as ice, in her throat and her heart fluttered like a dying bird.
Before she could formulate a response, he shrank back, turned to pick up his
chair, and sat down once again opposite her. He leaned back, those reflective
glasses never facing anywhere but straight at her face.
The ensuing quiet was thick and choking. DePennier's recently unleashed anger
beat upon the air, infesting the silence with malice. Jaq fought to bring her
heart rate under control, but it wasn't willing - the apprehension was still
too strong inside her. All her mental defences were flapping in the winds of
his assault. She felt uncertain as she wondered what he was seeing - had he already
figured her out? No peaceful thoughts were going to help now. If he'd stayed
angry, perhaps he wouldn't have noticed, but he looked as calm as a landlocked
lake on a still summer night.
"Tell me about your father," he said in a voice close to a whisper.
Jaq was so shocked, she found herself answering without thinking about it.
"He died, several years ago."
"How?"
"Why do you need to know about my father?"
"How did he die? Please just answer the question." The man seemed
utterly calm, his breathing constant and even. Jaq found herself studying the
stems of his glasses, tracking their progress across his temple and into the
skin above his ears. Anything was better than being hollered at, than that
terrible lack of power as she looked up at his overbearing form, so Jaq went
along with things. She didn't feel like there was any other response.
"He was robbed and stabbed in the alley behind his house. My mother found
him."
"Did you love him very much?"
Her vision swam as tears welled.
"You're repulsive! How could anyone
love a half-breed like you?"
"Yes, I loved my father. I always
wanted to please him."
A smile crawled across DePennier's face. It was dirty and menacing, she
thought. A shiver worked its way from her groin into her abdomen and a shadow
cast its pall over her thoughts. Her father was behind her, ticking off on his
hands all the ways she'd disappointed him, all her faults and issues.
"But you never did," he whispered.
Jaq sniffed, but managed to speak in a tone so quiet it barely moved the air.
"Fuck you, DePennier."
"You were always going to lose that battle," he said. "Your
father was a vicious bastard who never returned his daughter's love. He got
what he deserved."
Yes!
"No." Her stomach wrenched, and it was all she could do
to keep down her last meal. A flush burst from her abdomen, up through her
chest and across her face. Heat was replaced by a sensation of cold. Jaq felt
like she'd been dunked in an ice bath. Right then she'd have given anything to
have him hitting her. Anything was better than this terrible bombardment of
insight.
DePennier shifted slightly. "What was it like, growing up with him? Did he
treat your mother well?"
She was crying silently, but so hard that salty droplets pattered on the table.
From nowhere, DePennier was offering her a tissue. Emotions buzzing in a haze
of confusion, Jaq accepted it and dabbed at her face. "I don't think I
want to talk about this any more."
"Your mother was tenth generation Bangladeshi," he said. The quiet
baritone of his voice soaked into her, vibrating her lungs with its cadence.
"Your father, a Yorkshireman, born and bred. They should never have been
together."
How does he know all this? He can't have access to all this information ...
Who the hell does he work for?
"Why are you torturing me?" she
sobbed.
"Ms Fennet, I'm not trying to torment you. I'm trying to help you remember
the truth." He held his hands open in a gesture of empathy.
"What truth?"
"How did your mother die?"
Jaq's heart turned to a cannonball in her chest. "No. I don't want to
think about this!"
"Your father couldn't stand the sight of her by the end. The goading of
his colleagues and the alienation from the rest of his family wore him down. He
felt dirty and traitorous, abandoning his roots and putting his lot with the
foreigners that invaded his homeland, stealing the jobs from his friends."
"You don't know!" she whimpered.
But he does, he does!
"You don't know... what it was like."
He continued in that low voice, never a ghost of excitement infiltrating his
tone. "Sure, he loved her at first. She was a pretty face, an exotic catch
with those prominent cheek bones and big, dark eyes. All his friends were
jealous, and he showed her off at every opportunity." DePennier paused for
a moment, but only to draw breath. "Then she had you, and his world went
stale. One look at that half-cast skin, and he knew what he'd done. He saw the
muddied waters and it was too late to stem the tide. The more you grew, the
more desperately you sought his acceptance, the more bitter he became. It was
you that sickened him, but your mother he blamed."
Jaq blubbered helplessly into the sodden mass of her single tissue.
"Please stop. Pleeeease."
His voice dropped to a faint whisper. "How did your mother die?"
And
just like that, the ground falls out from under me.
"He hated her! He never had a good word for her or a touch that wasn't
necessary. No compliments, no smiles or platitudes, no light or air. Just barbs
and complaints, brush-offs and orders. She never did anything right or met his
standards." Jaq's mouth just seemed to be moving without her input. She
wasn't even sure where the words came from, they just wanted release. "She
spent too much time with me, not enough on the cleaning. Spent his money on
school uniforms instead of his dinners. He couldn't take her out, because his
friends called him a paki-lover. It wasn't even accurate." She felt
herself gurning beseechingly at DePennier. "It didn't even make sense, as
insults go. She was Bangladeshi."
Jaq drew in a shuddering breath before continuing, her eyes now cast down at
her hands, fidgeting on the table top. "That night, he really laid into
her. He'd never hit her, only put her down time after time. I was visiting for
Mum's birthday, and she'd spent too much on food he didn't like. She did her
usual thing; apologised and promised to do him something else, but I got angry.
I was a grown woman by then, working full time, full of my own adulthood. I
thought I could help by confronting him."
She sniffed and looked at DePennier. He was utterly motionless, watching her,
waiting for her to continue. "I didn't help," she said. "I just
made him blow his top. He threw his plate at her, right at her head. She
screamed and ran out the back, but he grabbed the bread knife and followed her.
I followed too, pleading with him to stop, but he just kept shouting. 'See what
you made me do? Filthy whores, see what you make me do?' I'd never seen him
like that. It was like all the anger he'd felt over the years burst in one
massive explosion.
"We all ran into the alley behind the house. That's where he caught her;
grabbing her hair and dragging her to the floor. He didn't care about her
screams, didn't care about anything, I don't think. He just kept roaring, and
when the knife came up in the air, I knew he wasn't going to stop." Jaq
found herself just staring at a blank white wall, her voice a monotone. "I
shoved him over and he dropped the knife. I swear, when I picked it up I just
meant to keep it from him. That's all I was thinking; take the knife so he
can't hurt Mum. He kept roaring, incoherent, like a wounded animal.
"Next thing I knew, I was stabbing him. It didn't feel like my hand, it
was just happening. When I realised what I was doing, I stopped, but it was too
late. I'd cut through his neck and the blood was like a pulsing fountain. He
was dead in moments after that."
A long silence floated through the interrogation room, punctuated only by Jaq's
faint whimpers. She'd never told anyone that story. Even in her own mind, it
was almost myth - just the terrible catalyst for her hatred and mistrust of
Earth. The memories, once blurs, now felt like high definition snapshots in her
mind. It was like DePennier had painted pictures of her nightmares, and used
them to wallpaper her reality. Just as she was starting to recover and find
some order to her thoughts, he spoke again.
"How did your mother die?"
Jaq slumped into her chair like a sack of misery. "She looked at me with
horror in her eyes. Even in the dark alley, I could see the shock in every line
of her beautiful face. She really loved him, despite everything he'd done to
her, and it didn't matter to her that he'd been on the verge of killing
her."
"Jaqueline, what have you done?"
"I couldn't let him hurt you any more, Mum. Couldn't you see he was going
to kill you?"
"No! He's a kind man, a gentle soul who just lost his way. He would never
do such a thing."
"He was terrible to you, Mum. He never loved you."
"You mean, you never loved him!"
Jaq looked up at DePennier, her defeat total. "She called me a murderer
and ran from the alley, shrieking. I ran after her, but she was going like an
Olympic athlete. I think... I think she was actually frightened of me. Can you
imagine that? Frightened of her own daughter, who only want to save her. She
raced out into the road, never looking where she was going. I think that was
the worst part of it - how utterly senseless and incoherent she'd become.
"The car that got her was going fast on an empty road and didn't have a
chance at avoiding her. I watched the impact break her legs sideways at the
knees. I'll never forget that image. Not just violent, but impregnated with the
knowledge that my mother had no chance of surviving it. She made a dent in the
car bonnet when she bounced off it, and then flew twenty feet through the air,
where a lamp post turned her spine to shards. She wrapped round it backwards.
Even from a distance, I heard every crack.