A Protocol for Monsters by John Birmingham

Author:John Birmingham [Birmingham, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: John Birmingham
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SEVEN

“Emmeline, a word, if you have a moment?”

Compton drew her aside as the Exploit team filed out of the makeshift morgue. Heath and Hooper were already gone, apparently to feed the engineer, who was complaining of hunger and fatigue.

“Yes, Professor,” Emmeline said. “I do have a moment and we do need to talk.”

That surprised him a little. She’d been working for more than twelve hours and he’d expected her to beg off. Ashbury thanked her team as they filed past. It was probably an item on a checklist for her. She had explained to him once that she did that sort of thing. It helped regularize the way she dealt with people. Compton nodded to a few of the stragglers, wishing Cadence Ramsay a good night after she had closed up the room. He could hear the rumble of a portable generator that would keep the room refrigerated overnight, delaying putrefaction.

“Night, Em. Professor,” said Ramsay. “Six tomorrow, right.”

“Yes, and thank you, Cady,” said Emmeline. A simple courtesy, but weighted with extra meaning.

Compton and Ashbury waited until they were alone, aside from the two marine guards posted outside the improvised mortuary. He was about to draw Ashbury away from them, heeding his natural caution about the need to control all information, but again she anticipated his move, taking him by the elbow, which was unusual. She was notoriously prickly on issues of personal space. He couldn’t recall the last time she’d laid a hand on him, or anyone for that matter. But her fingers dug painfully into his upper arm as she steered him around the corner into a poorly lit corridor leading to the recreation room where Hooper had killed the hostiles. Another pair of marines stood guard at the end of that walkway, and Ashbury appeared to stop at the midpoint between the guard posts.

“We have a problem with Hooper,” she said, leaning into him.

“I hope you don’t expect me to put you up for a Nobel prize on the basis of that revelation,” Compton deadpanned. He saw the flicker of confusion and then annoyance pass over her face as she processed the surface meaning and then the actual meaning of what he had said.

“Please don’t fuck around,” she said. “This is serious.”

“I am sorry,” he replied, genuinely curious about what she might say next. “I should know better by now. Please, go on. Is this to do with Mr Hooper’s off-the-cuff tutorial back there?”

Ashbury appeared to give the question more than a moment’s cursory consideration. A frown line appeared between her eyes as Compton listened to the stomping boots of a patrol on the deck above them.

“No,” she said at last. “Not really. That is a separate matter. More your area than mine, actually. This is something different. Something else about Hooper.”

She looked as though she was about to say something, even opened her mouth to do so, but then blushed slightly and shook her head as if trying to clear it, rather than deny something.

This was not at all like her and Compton frowned.

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