Read Onekka - The Tragedy of Jaqui Fennet for Free Online Page A

forward with a sense of need. Is this my destiny - knocking
around in the dark, trying to uncover half-understood secrets?

As with the boardroom, her hand opened Garret's office door. When it clicked
shut behind her, she was in a world of thick silence. Where would he keep his
key? Jaq sneaked to the back of his desk, intending to check for any drawers.
When she crouched next to his chair, a sound intruded from the direction of the
door. She wasn't alone!

Before she had time to react, the world burgeoned into a blinding morass of
pain and light. Jaq toppled back, bashing her coccyx on the floor and yelping
in pain.

"You just couldn't leave it alone could you?" roared a voice. It took
her a moment to realise it was Dane Garret speaking - she'd never heard him so
angry. As her vision cleared, his face came into view, incandescent with rage
as he took his finger from the light switch. "You stupid bitch! I was
trying to protect you. DePennier wanted you out the way - permanently. I
convinced him to just move you, but you've blown that now."

Anger rose in Jaq's breast at his tone; partly, she thought, because common
sense said he was right. Suspicious or not, she hadn't been screwed over. She
could have walked away and been no worse off - after all, was anything going to
be worse than working on Onekka? Oh yes, there is something much worse, but
it isn't a rational thought, is it?

"Fuck you, Dane!" she spat. "What happened to the Armcorp guys?
You're riding me for wanting the truth when someone's committed mass
murder!"

He rolled up his sleeves. "You have no idea what you're messing with,
Fennet. You should have just taken your medicine and slunk off to your next
posting. Now I can't give you that option." She squinted at his face,
astonished to see a tear tracking its path down his cheek. "DePennier gave
me no choice, Jaq."

He strode towards her from the doorway, slipping something foot-long and
cylindrical from a belt loop. Was that ... it was a night stick! Jaq had only
seen them on the private security officers before, and never been on the
receiving end. Despite looking like a simple baton, the stick caused instant numbness
wherever it struck. It was designed to pacify by paralysing the limbs of
aggressors but, like the non lethal air cannon, could be applied inventively. A
solid strike to the back of the neck would cause instant death.

Jaq scrambled back, trying to reconcile her established image of Garret -
awkward, shy and hesitant - with the man approaching her, violence shining in
his eyes. As he turned the edge of his desk, she threw herself across it,
sliding on one hip and an outstretched hand, and made for the door. She jammed
her hand onto the release, but nothing happened. Panic grasped at her then, and
Jaq found herself yanking impotently at the door handle. Pull yourself
together, woman! She found calm, and ran her hand up the door edge, seeking
a secondary lock.

"I bolted it," said Garret's voice in her ear, and suddenly she was
falling. Pain bit at her lower back as her legs folded beneath her - the
bastard had numbed her spine!

"Dane, there has to be another way!" she shouted from the floor.
"You don't have to do this."

He lifted one leg across her to stand astride her prostrate form, positioning
himself over her chest. "Actually, yes I do." He brandished the night
stick, holding it over his head for a good swing. Jaq wondered briefly if he'd
chicken out and not finish her, but the tick in his eye was dancing with
stress. He really would kill her, she realized. "I'm sorry, Fennet."

I'm sorry, too, but if I have to fight, I may as well fight dirty. She
slammed her portable lamp into his unprotected genitals. He clamped one hand to
his groin and slumped forward with a shocked groan, but didn't drop the night
stick. Jaq, still paralysed from the waist down, used her empty hand to shove
him backwards. As he fell, the stick swung round and connected to her forearm,
which promptly went dead.

He was