CHAPTER 14

 

 

 

Kari rifled through the desk drawers but found nothing more valuable than a few discarded screens. She watched Wren out of the corner of her eye. The other woman stood staring at the opposite wall, her back stiff. Kari didn't have to be a mind-reader to know that something had bothered Wren. It had to do with the message she'd received on her communicator. Kari had heard it vibrate from across the room. It was probably a new job, although why that would bother Wren, Kari had no idea. The other woman loved her job as an assassin, or at least it always seemed that way. Maybe her conscience was finally catching up with her? Either way, Kari wasn't going to pry into her business. If Wren wanted to go around killing people—clear conscience or not—that was her business. As long as she didn't put a target on Kari's head then they were fine.

Kari turned away from Wren, she didn't have time for that, they had to start loading up goods before any hostiles arrived. And where was everyone?

Kari fiddled with the clasps at her neck. The suit made it hard to breathe, hard to feel, hard to move. Wren didn't appear to be dying from anything in the air. There could be something slow acting… but all the sensors said everything was fine. Kari let out a huff, tore off her helmet and clipped it to her waist. She then tugged off both gloves and crammed them into her pockets.

The acrid smell of antiseptic made her head spin. She staggered and fell against the nearest bed. Her palm landed on the mattress. The firm padding hardly gave way—the same as most hospital beds Kari had ever encountered.

There was more though. The sheet was ice-cold. Even though the sheets lay tussled and twisted, as if someone had just got up, there wasn't even a hint of warmth. Whoever had been lying there had got up some time ago. Where were they?

And for that matter, where were the Red Coats, and the Imperium enforcers? None of it made any sense. It was like the whole ship had been abandoned with no hint of what had happened. The hairs at the back of Kari's neck stood on end. The sooner they got out, the better.

Obviously, the Red Coats hadn't started salvaging either, because the medical cabinet was untouched. Kari tried the door. Locked. A hard wrench made the frame rattle, but the door wouldn't come free. She should have brought a toolbox or something, then she could have taken the door off no trouble. Oh well. There had to be an easy way to get to the supplies; hospitals needed quick access to their inventory. The lock looked ancient, rusted, with a hole for an actual key, not a card or chip reader. Who used physical locks nowadays? Hopefully it meant the key would be nearby. She rifled through the desk a second time, but other than a rumpled white coat and a half-dozen memory chips, found nothing useful, and no keys.

Kari smacked her fist on the desk which made a solid thud that echoed through the empty hospital bay.

At the other side of the room, Wren whirled, crouching and lifting her knife. She scowled when she saw that it was just Kari making the noise.

"Sorry," Kari said. But her attention was already moving around the hospital. There had to be some way to open the cabinet; the drugs inside were the most valuable thing they'd stumbled across so far.

The IV bags dangled over the empty beds like grim sentinels. How long ago had the room been full? And where were they all?

Kari wandered past a defibrillator to a bright yellow bin with biohazard warnings plastered all over it. Blue gloves and scrunched pieces of paper towel threatened to spill over the edges, but nothing of value, and certainly nothing she could use to open the cabinet. She considered trying to smash the cabinet door with one of the IV poles, but there was no way the flimsy metal would break through the solid steel. Whoever had designed the cabinet knew what they were doing.

Kari's gaze traced across the floor and then up the wall to a glass box surrounded by a bright red strip of paint. A small panel above read 'break glass in case of emergency' and inside rested a tiny hand laser. Perfect. Kari grinned, strode across the room, and drew back her arm. She smashed her elbow through the glass—protected by her environmental suit—and let the shards scatter across the floor. Holding her breath, she waited for the wail of an alarm. Nothing. She snatched the laser from the wall, aware of Wren scowling at her from across the room.

Emergency hand lasers were supposed to be used during fires and other emergencies. They had two settings: one for cutting through metal, like locked doors, and the other for welding things shut. Both options could come in handy on a spaceship in the middle of an emergency. Kari hefted the small device, which was like a tiny pistol in her palm, and returned to the medical cabinet.

Setting the device to 'cut' she aimed just to the side of the lock and squeezed the trigger. A bright light, so thin it was almost invisible, burst out and bit into the cabinet.

Kari dragged the laser down and around, circling the lock. The device left a line of blackened metal on the cabinet and wisps of smoke drifted up, mixing with the smell of disinfectant. Something clicked. The lock fell out of the cabinet door and landed on the metal floor with a solid thud.

Kari grinned and tucked the laser into her belt. It would definitely come in handy in the future. She'd wanted to buy one for ages, but somehow there was just never enough money left over. Ah well, now she had one. At least that was one piece of salvage from this damn mission.

The door of the medicine cabinet swung open to reveal tiny shelves crammed full with bottles and vials.

Kari pulled a compressed bag from one of her many pockets and opened it beneath the cabinet. She then used her arm to scrape all the bottles and jars into the bag. They clinked and rattled; there had to be more than a hundred different medications. They'd make her a fortune on the black market, and more importantly, they could do a lot of good for the people on Zenith who desperately needed them. That was her, a real modern-day Robin Hood. Kari snorted at the thought. She was no more a righteous Robin Hood than Wren was a nun, but she would make sure the medicine got to the right people.

Once she'd emptied the cabinet, Kari surveyed the rest of the room. They could try to take some of the bigger medical equipment, but it was heavy and it would be hard to sell. It would be better if they looked for more movable items—in both senses of the word.

Wren rummaged through boxes in the far corner but hadn't found anything valuable. Kari returned her attention to the desk and the single functional screen that sat atop it. It had caught her attention before because it was chained to the desk, with a thick piece of metal pierced through the corner of the casing. Whoever had done it must have known what they were doing because the computer still worked when Kari turned it on, despite the hole that had been drilled through it.

A simple lock screen lit up the display.

Kari chewed on the inside of her cheek. She could stand there trying to guess, but she suspected—based on the chain—that the security would be high. May as well take the whole thing back to Ghost and run decryption software. She tugged and the chain rattled.

The emergency laser cut through the heavy chain in just a few seconds. The links clattered to the desk as Kari dropped the computer into the bag with the drugs. She couldn't wait to find out what was on it; a locked Imperium device, chained to a desk, in the middle of a hospital, on a mysterious ship? What more could a girl hope for?