Onekka - The Tragedy of Jaqui Fennet by Michael E Bell Read Free Book Online Page A

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