Chapter 3 - Part II

(Whirlander)

I steepled my fingers under my chin as I sat in my high chair and observed proceedings within the large rectangular window centered on the immense curved wall of the observation room.

In the middle of the screen, a girl in a hospital ground knelt on the metal floor of a giant sphere, with one hand touching a square metal access hatch.

For the past minute she had not moved an inch.

With her eyes closed, her expression was serene, though I doubted she was asleep. Instead, she appeared to be in a state of deep meditation.

I clenched my jaw, then tapped an armrest control and adjusted my high chair a little higher.

What was she up to?

Off to my left, the sound of food crunching between teeth was beginning to grate on my nerves.

In the corner of my eye, I glimpsed Akane toss a handful of popcorn into her open mouth.

The young woman munched away like a bovine with flat teeth.

I did my best to ignore her, but under the circumstances that proved difficult.

Another mouthful of popcorn and more loud munching.

I strongly suspected she was deliberately being obnoxious.

Akane spoke with her mouth full. “By the way, isn’t that the isolation cube you built for the military so they could contain Rygellian prisoners of war?”

I concentrated on the screen and proceeded to ignore her.

She dropped more popcorn into her gaping maw. “I thought you were going to put her in the same cell you put me.”

I inhaled long and deep, somehow refrained from sighing, and refused to be baited.

Akane continued eating noisily. “Rygellians are ugly but very strong. It’s no wonder the Ground Pounders hate them.”

I considered tossing Akane into a cell full of the alien reptiles.

Suddenly an immense box of popcorn was shoved directly in front of my eyes, filling my view of the world.

Akane shook the box. “You want some? They’re very good.”

I blinked slowly, then calmly tried pushing the box aside. “No, thank you.”

“Oh? You don’t want to spoil your appetite?”

“If you don’t mind, Akane, I’m trying to watch the screen.”

“She’s not doing anything. You’re not missing much.” She waved the popcorn box. “Go on. It’s a good batch. You won’t get sick like last time.”

Touching an armrest control, I spun the chair around to the left in order to face her. “I believe I instructed you to be on standby.”

She nodded while withdrawing the box from my vicinity. “Yeah. That’s why I’m here keeping an eye on the situation. You have a better idea?”

“Absolutely.” I pointed at the screen. “Go out to the boarding gantry and be prepared for anything.”

“Oh?” Akane used the popcorn box to gesture at the screen. “You mean like that?”

“What?”

I turned to the screen in time to see the sphere’s hatch swing down like a trapdoor.

A heartbeat later and the girl fell through the hatchway with a startled scream.

The view instantly changed to an exterior shot.

The girl fell through the air, but at the last moment she reached out and caught the edge of the open hatch door.

Now she dangled in open air, hundreds of feet above the waves.

And her gown billowed upwards in the wind, revealing her au naturel beauty.

Akane laughed and slapped her right thigh. “I told you she was a natural blonde.”

I stared at the screen…and suffered an instant nosebleed.

Frantically reaching for my tissue box on a tray hanging from my chair’s left armrest, I pinched my nose and desperately tried to avoid staring at the screen.

Of course Akane noticed and made the situation unbearable.

She quickly snatched the tissue box before I could get to it.

“I can’t believe you,” she laughed. “You had a nosebleed from just one look? Dear gods—how depraved can you be?”

“Give me that back!”

Akane waved the tissue box around and out of my reach. “You really are a pervert—an ero midget of the most perverted kind.”

“Akane, you are testing my patience.”

She continued waving the box, an evil smile curling the ends of her mouth. “Tell me something, Madam Director. Do you spy on me when I’m in the shower? Hmm?”

“What? Of course not!”

“Really? Why not?”

I hesitated before demanding. “Akane, give me the box.”

She cocked her head a little. “Why don’t you spy on me? Even after I put on such a show for you when I’m taking a shower.”

“The box, Akane.”

She shook it in the air. “Not until you answer my question.”

“Akane—”

“I’m waiting for an answer.”

I held my breath for a long moment. “Because you’re not my type.”

Akane’s smile grew wider. “Of course not. Anyone—including a pervert like you—would be disgusted by what that they see.”

She crushed the tissue box and tossed it away over her shoulder, all while still smiling.

That made the casual gesture somewhat terrifying.

Akane spoke softly. “I do miss the days when I could wear a miniskirt, or a sleeveless dress.”

Quietly and cautiously, I fished around for a handkerchief in a skirt pocket. “We all have things we miss, and things we regret, Akane.” I found the handkerchief and quickly retrieved it, then dabbed at my nose and lips. “At least you experienced what some of us never have.”

“Don’t patronize me.”

“I’m doing no such thing.”

I met her gaze and held it, but it wasn’t easy staring into Akane’s turquoise eyes – not when she was smiling so coldly it actually chilled the air in my lungs.

She dropped the smile when the door to the observation room slid open and admitted a quartet of harried looking people. Turning toward the curved wall, Akane kept her attention glued to the image on the screen as she resumed loudly eating her popcorn.

I thought she might have grimaced faintly when Erina Kassius called out to me.

“Madam Director, why did you bring us here?”

Tapping the orientation rollerball embedded in the armrest, I swiveled the chair around to face the room’s entrance.

Kassius stood there, cradling her broken left arm in its regeneration cast, and a troubled look on her face. Her companions wore expressions that ranged from scared to contemptuous, especially Uma Pearson who made sure to keep her arms crossed protectively over her chest.

Now that was one body I wouldn’t mind spying on.

Kassius distracted me from Pearson by stepping closer. “Madam Director?”

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I waved them to come deeper into the semicircular room. “Doctor Kassius, please, please, no need to be afraid.”

She took a deep breath, then stormed up to me. “Director, we have a situation unfolding—what the Hell?”

She caught sight of the image centered on the curved wall and visibly paled.

In fact, they all did.

Kassius swallowed with difficulty. “What the Hell is happening out there?”

Pearson stated the obvious. “She opened the hatch…and now she’s hanging on for dear life.”

“What a remarkable observation,” I muttered.

Pearson threw me a sneer, before facing Kassius. “But how did she open that reinforced hatch? Could it be—?”

“Let me think,” Kassius snapped, her eyes intent on the screen with the Princess treading air.

I sat back in my chair. “Well, Doctor. Care to shed some light on how the Princess managed to escape?”

The young woman continued studying the screen, then proceeded to run her gaze on all the other screens on the curved wall. “We’re at sea. When did we set sail?”

Akane laughed, spitting out bits of popcorn as she did. “We put out to sea as soon as you returned. Didn’t you hear the announcement? Just what have you been up to?”

“What?” Kassius blinked as though noticing Akane for the first time. “What are you doing here?”

Akane threw her a disparaging look over one shoulder. “Focus on what’s important, Erina dear.” She pointed at the screen. “Or haven’t you noticed that the ero midget deployed the containment sphere out over the side of the ship.” She tossed more popcorn into her mouth from the bottomless box she carried. “And it’s a long way down to splashdown.”

I folded my hands on my lap. “Indeed. As your colleague—former colleague—pointed out, the Princess has escaped her confines and now dangles perilously high above the ocean waves. Do you care to comment?”

“No. I do not.”

I forgot to blink. “What?”

With a stern expression, Kassius faced me while pointing at the screen. “However, I am going to tell you to save her before you lose control of the situation.”

“Oh. In what way?”

“You know as well as I do, that with her structural strength a fall like that won’t come close to harming her.”

“I am well aware of that. I read the specs on her.”

“And if she hits the water, you’ll fish her out with a rescue boat ready to launch.”

“Quite correct.”

“But you’re not the only one ready to step in at a moment’s notice.”

I blinked slowly. “Whatever do you mean?” I regarded the various screen windows on the wall. “There’s no one around us for kilometers. Why do you think we put out to sea? No one is going to swoop in and steal her from us.”

Kassius swept her hand at the curved wall. “You’ve got eyes everywhere except the most important room in this ship.”

“What are you—ah!”

The proverbial penny dropped.

With a swipe of the trackball, I spun myself and the chair around to face the projection wall. A handful of taps later on the armrest console panel, and a second large screen appeared on the wall.

This screen offered a view into Kassius’s lab…and the Sarcophagus.

Steady pulses of phantasmal emerald light swam up its burnished metal body. The visible signs of a propulsive field.

“…oh dear….”

I glimpsed Kassius nodding as she lowered her hand. “The Sarcophagus is aware that Cassidy—no, Mercedes—is in danger. It’s getting ready to make its move.”

“But I thought we had complete control—”

“We’ve never had complete control!” Kassius snapped, and I heard the undercurrent of fear in her voice. “We don’t know what it will do if something happens to her. This is a different situation from when she’s fighting in a Sliver. We don’t know what directives the Sarcophagus is ready to enact should she come to harm out here.”

Before I could muster any form of retort or reply, a holovid window winked to life between the curved wall and me. It encapsulated the head and shoulders of a mustached man with dark, closely cropped hair. He looked to be in his early forties, with touches of grey on his sideburns.

“Chief Directory—apologies but we have a situation.”

Another situation?

I stared at my head of security aboard the Periphery with a sinking feeling while holding back the reigns of my imagination.

“Chief Director?”

“Yes, yes. Go ahead, Captain Bolton. What’s this about?”

“It’s about the containment sphere. An unexplained structural deformation of the access hatch triggered the release mechanism.”

“What do you mean ‘structural deformation’?”

“I can’t explain it yet without having my people examine the door, but something appears to have altered its dimensions in a way that caused the safety system to spool open the locking bolts.”

“And this opened the door?”

“Yes. But that’s not all. The door’s failure has kicked off a security procedure we didn’t know about. Well, actually it appears to be a bug in the system.”

“A bug? Are you serious?”

Bolton nodded fervently. “Chief Directory, this bug in the security protocols has triggered the emergency release of the isolation cube—and we can’t stop it!”

I frowned. “Release?”

“Ejection.”

Kassius yelled out, “Oh no—Cassidy!”

Everyone in the room, including Bolton in the holovid bubble, turned to face the central screen.

Within the display window, the Princess had been deliberately swinging her body to and fro as though in an effort to gain momentum. It was clear she was gearing up for an acrobatic leap onto part of the Periphery’s superstructure that was out of sight.

Suddenly the isolation cube dropped out of the bottom of the sphere.

It crashed into her body, knocking her out of the window’s frame.

The external holocam swung its eye in an effort to track her.

I watched in horrid fascination as the young girl sailed through the air like rag doll.

However, before she could crash into the Periphery’s superstructure, a dense white cloud burst to life and enveloped her falling body.

The shadow of something large and dark swam through the cloud before the latter degraded down to a mist that quickly dispersed into the air beside the speeding ship.

Just like that the Princess was gone…spirited away by the Sarcophagus that had vanished from Kassius’s lab.

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End of 3.

Chapter 4 is next.

Cheers.

__________

Simkin452