Read Onekka - The Tragedy of Jaqui Fennet for Free Online

like burnt candy on the breeze, as though someone had over-toasted a
marshmallow at a campfire.

Jaq shook her head to dispel the fanciful thoughts and flicked on her portable
light. Nothing seemed amiss. Table, chairs, vid comm screen, automated refs bar
- all were present and correct. She did a slow lap of the room, shining her
light beneath the furniture and behind panels. Nothing different. So why
lock it?

It was then that something gruesome occurred to her. Bile rising as fear
clutched at her stomach, Jaq switched her light to ultra violet. She almost
dropped the light, and suppressed a gasp.

There were blood stains everywhere. Pools had flooded the floor and chair
seats, arcs had splashed across the table, and spatters formed a layout like
stars on the ceiling. They glowed with ghostly light, pale stains of humanity
against the dark. Worst of all, great round impact patterns adorned the walls.
As clean as the placed looked now, this had been a hideous mess not long ago.
That explained the smell - somebody had used a heat cleaner in here, and the
remaining residue was toasted.

The fact that all the surfaces were intact told Jaq what type of weaponry had
been used. Air cannons, often deployed for riot pacification, fired boles of
compacted air that burst explosively when they met a surface. Usually, they
were enough to knock people over, perhaps cause concussion or unconsciousness.

Turn them up high enough, though, and you could... well, she was looking at the
result. In a sound-suppressed boardroom, not a peep would have escaped to those
out in the office. The walls were vid screens, and could show anything they
were told to. Yes, air cannons were the perfect weapon for this and, worst of
all, Jaq knew Onekka held several of them against a breakdown in public order.
When the whole station relied on hull integrity, such weapons were the only
choice.

Jaq forced herself to pause in her thinking for a moment and breathe. What was
she looking at here - had the Armcorp staff really been massacred in the
familiar board room of her office? Two weeks ago I was serving purple cup
cakes to school children in here, and helping them pour tea for their teddy
bears. It all just seemed a little nuts.

A sound made panic jump in her heart. Suppressing a hiss of surprise, she switched
off the light and crouched behind the table. No sounds should intrude through
the audio dampening, which meant the door was the only thing that could have
caused it. Was there someone else here? The UV light should not have been
obvious and the door would have returned to its locked status when it closed,
in the absence of a different setting. Even if there was another person out
there - a security guard or particularly dedicated employee - Jaq may not have
been exposed.

For what seemed like an hour, she squatted motionless, barely daring to
breathe. The very air throbbed, thick silence threatening to deafen. No further
sound came, but Jaq was coming to understand how vulnerable she was here. If
she got caught now, losing her job would be the best thing that happened to her
in the next year.

After a few more minutes with her ear pressed up to the door, she risked
peeking out - empty. A glance at her comm unit told her Witching Hour was more
than half gone, and a sensible person would hightail it back to their bunk. She
actually got to the elevator doors before stopping herself. After what she
found in the boardroom, it was more important than ever that she discovered
what was going on. What she had was half a story and a great big heap of
suspicion. What she needed was through that door, and access to it meant
Garret's office.

Excitement rifling through her lungs while nerves laid mines in her gut, Jaq
left the elevator and headed for her goal. It boiled down to one's purpose, she
thought. Without even her day job for distraction, this seemed like the right
thing to be doing. Her dreams goaded her like dimly recognised ambitions,
beckoning her