Claustrophobia

Chapter Six - In Transit - 5

The cuffs bit into Grohaw's wrists, and two armed guards bustled him out of the little room, his broken mouth dripping blood in a trail behind him. Three others were stood there whilst a woman with her hair up in a bun began barking orders. Lar.4G smiled, flexing his muscles for admiration of the security woman who blanked him with the expertise of a woman who sees a Damoclesean sword hanging over her job if word gets out of the several bodies lying strewn around.

'I have to say,' the woman said once she had ordered her men to begin cleaning up the blood, 'I'm surprised that you managed to do all of this by yourself.'

Lar.4G flashed a winning smile. 'HyperGP does many things, including muscle-building and general strength and athleticism. One of the more often-forgotten things it does is helps with reactions.' Lar.4G moved to the side of the room and began to act out his explanation of just how he had come to storm the room and overpower the men that were gathered there.

The security chief listened with one ear and looked around the carnage with a critical eye. Here was a bloodstain, the remains of someone's blasted cranium here; it wasn't so much a battleground as a straight up abattoir. It would have taken three of her guys to come in, blasting, and do what Lar.4G had done in a single attempt.

And then there were the implications of this to begin with. A maiden cruise, with an armed gang storming the maintenance section of the ship? The implications would be huge. She could see the headlines all over The Empire, Celestrian Times would have a complete field day and rip the company to shreds. She'd never work again in security, and within days she'd be sleeping on a couch at a friend's place. There was no way a single whisper of what had happened down here could be allowed to get out of here.

'Lar.4G,' the security chief said, beckoning him over with a single, deft wave of her hand.

'What is it, ma'am?' he asked, lowering his hands that had been raised in a choking mime of one of his great antagonists.

'I will contact you to come and make a full statement on what the hell went on here, at a later time,' she said. 'I would do it now, but everything has to be checked over, and we're still days from landing.

'In the mean time, there is not to be a single mention, word, whisper, rumour, that anything has happened. If there is but an inkling of any kind of violence on this ship, and I pick up on it, I will hold you personally responsible, have you thrown off the ship and sue you for every single corvent you possess. Is that at all clear?'

The wry smile that had been on Lar.4G's lips dropped quicker than his HyperGP car could ever manage. He nodded solemnly, 'you've been unmistakably clear, ma'am.'

The chief turned away from him. 'That's Chief Betta to you.'

One of the guards went to move the body of the woman with three eyes, her arms falling away as it moved, blood and bone spilling onto the floor. Lar.4G put a hand to his mouth, Chief Betta quickly turning her gaze away.

'Chief,' said a man in the doorway.

'What is it, Hannan?' Betta asked, eager to move away from the disintegrating corpses scattered around her feet.

'The captain,' he whispered, moving out into the maintenance bay's glaring lights high above them. Shadows struck them as the chains hanging down shifted as the ship altered course ever so slightly. 'The captain wants to know what's going on.'

'Nothing that concerns him,' Betta said stiffly, Halo-Core coming out of her breast pocket. 'I'll alert Celestria and ask for their input, but for now stay on course. We don't want a panic on our hands.'

'Very good,' the young man said, nodding in agreement.

Chief Betta cast a glance down to Hannan's shoes. 'Freshly polished, Hannan? They had a streak of dust on them an hour ago.'

'I like to follow advice when it's given to me,' the man said.

'As you should,' Betta said. 'Now run off to the captain and keep him calm. We all need to remain calm right now and do this in an orderly fashion. There are too many questions here and not enough answers, answers that won't be provided by letting this get out.'

'Understood, Chief,' Hannan said, bowing quickly before turning tail and swiftly descending the steps.

Chief Betta watched him go, drifting out of the room like smoke. Smoke was what she felt like she was looking at now. Nothing made sense. She was fairly sure that Lar.4G hadn't done all of this by himself; in fact she was certain of it, and had a suspicion that he hadn't done a single thing.

Which left the obvious question; who exactly had stormed the keep?