The Black River (The Complete Adrift Trilogy)

by K. R. Griffiths

  Vega stared at him thoughtfully, and Dan suddenly saw something beyond the starchy exterior the man presented. Something that made Dan suspect that the man wasn't just pretending to have been a soldier.

  "What's your cabin number?" Vega rumbled.

  "217."

  Vega turned and looked at a huge schematic of the ship that dominated the wall behind his desk.

  "Hmm. You have any idea how many decks down the object you saw being tossed overboard was?"

  Dan frowned as he tried to recall.

  "Not really," he said. "A long way down, I think. It must have been one of the lowest decks."

  Vega stood abruptly, making Dan flinch.

  "Follow me, son," Vega said without emotion. "And if it turns out that Ledger put you up to this, I'll throw you overboard myself."

  "I already told you, I don't—"

  "Yeah, I heard you," Vega snapped. "And I've been around long enough to know that if something smells like bullshit, that's exactly what it usually is."

  Dan blinked. The conversation wasn't going as he had envisioned at all, and the security chief's constant references to someone called Ledger just left him feeling confused and nervous.

  "Look," Dan said. "I've done my bit, and I've reported what I saw. I think now I'd like to go back to my—"

  "You'll be released in short order, Mr Bellamy. For now, I'd like you to follow me, please. This way."

  Dan stared at Vega, open mouthed, as the big man made his way around the desk and moved to the office door, gesturing for Dan to follow. After a moment, Dan traipsed after the head of security, keeping his eyes pointed at the floor. His mind was filled with a single, utterly confusing and worrying thought.

  Released?

  10

  Mark pointed his flashlight up each of the four ventilation ducts that connected to the junction he had stopped at to smoke, and he frowned.

  The beam of light revealed nothing, of course, but instinct made Mark look anyway, as though he expected to find the owner of the voice he had heard crouched in the shadows waiting for him.

  Get a grip, Mark. There's nobody here but you.

  Mark held his breath, straining his ears to catch a sound. The voices—assuming Mark hadn't imagined them in the first place—had fallen silent, but he thought he could hear something else. A sort of tapping. A scrape. Something metallic.

  Someone was close by, Mark was sure of it. If the missing security guard he was supposed to find actually existed and was down in the ventilation system, it didn't sound like he was alone.

  Maybe maintenance got called in. Maybe there's a problem with the air con. Sure, that's it. Has to be.

  So why are the air con staff talking about being terrified?

  Vega was right, Mark thought abruptly. He was a smartarse. Even the voice in his head was a sarcastic bastard. All of a sudden, Mark felt a tiny surge of sympathy for his boss. Just a little one, though.

  That thought struck Mark as funny, and he might have chuckled, but for the growing suspicion that maybe Vega hadn't sent him on a wild goose chase after all.

  That couldn't be true. Mark thought it very unlikely that Vega would send him to deal with an actual security threat. No way in hell he'd send him alone. No, Vega would send somebody he trusted to deal with something like that.

  Given that Mark wasn't sure that the ex-marine trusted anybody, he thought that if there was a genuine threat on the Oceanus that needed investigating, the man would do it himself.

  He would never send Mark.

  Whoever the men in the air con system were, Vega surely didn't know about them.

  So what the fuck is going on?

  For a brief instant Mark wondered if maybe Vega was playing some trick on him, but he dismissed the idea. That would have suggested a level of friendly banter that just didn't exist between the two men. Besides, Vega was hardly the type for humour.

  Mark listened intently, and heard nothing.

  The noises he had heard must have been his imagination, he decided. Maybe the previous night's hard drinking had addled his mind more than he realised.

  Clang.

  Mark jumped.

  The noise was loud, like somebody dropping a hammer onto a metal floor. Mark thought he heard a muffled curse as the metallic sound echoed away to silence.

  No fucking way I imagined that.

  Mark slipped his radio from his belt and depressed the button. He whispered into it.

  "Steve, it's Mark. Uh...is there actually a threat in the air con system? Because I thought you were just trying to piss me off, you know, but...uh..."

  Mark frowned, unsure what to say next. Any possibility he came up with made him sound either crazy or afraid, and both would be like red rags to Vega's charging bull.

  "Look," Mark said. "I think there is something weird going on down here; I just wanted to know what you know about it, okay?"

  Mark released the button, and was met only with silence. He waited a few moments, and then let out a soft, weary sigh and rolled his eyes.

  He depressed the button again.

  "Over," he whispered.

  Still nothing but silence.

  Mark waited for as long as thirty seconds before he decided that Steven Vega was definitely not going to answer him, and he turned his mind to what he should do next.

  You're part of the security team, right? Investigating potential threats? So do some damn investigating.

  Mark grimaced, and swept his flashlight around the four ducts that led away from his position, trying to figure out which one he should take.

  As if in response, he heard low muttering; at least two voices, maybe three, and trained the beam of light on the duct to his left.

  That way.

  *

  Did I take my pills?

  Dan grimaced. His short term memory frequently played devious tricks on him, and when his anxiety reached a certain level, he found it difficult to catch the thoughts in his mind. They slipped from his grasp effortlessly, like he was trying to catch fish with his bare hands.

  He thought he had taken his pills, but he also thought that dealing with the strange head of security was bewildering and terrifying, and so had to concede the possibility that his spiking anxiety might mean that he needed to take his medication.

  Yet he thought he had taken his pills. In fact, he was sure of it. That's right. Dry-swallowed them after waking up. Can still taste a little of that sour chemical flavour at the back of my throat.

  Only one possibility remained: Oceanus Head of Security Mr Steven Vega was a scary guy to begin with, and Dan's medication was having trouble keeping the big man's intimidating air at bay.

  Just gotta stay calm, Dan. This will all be over soon. Right?

  Dan trotted after the security chief, nervously trying to keep pace with Vega's long, loping stride.

  "Uh...Mr Vega? Did you say released?"

  Vega didn't respond; didn't even blink, and Dan fell back a little, frowning at the floor as his cheeks flushed a furious crimson. Somehow over the past couple of years, during which he had only conversed with Elaine and a kindly therapist, he had all but forgotten how to make conversation with people. The idea of demanding answers from a guy like Vega made his head swim and a stinging cold sweat broke out across his forehead.

  The anxiety worked like that; in cycles. Let one damn thought put down roots and a physiological response was inevitable. Sometimes it was sweating, sometimes shaking or stuttering.

  Once the physical effects manifested, Dan began to focus on how strange his behaviour must appear; how abnormal, and that merely fed the anxiety.

  He felt himself locking into one of those cycles now, and knew where they usually ended up.

  Panic attacks.

  All-encompassing; paralysing and humiliating.

  Familiar sensation.

  Crawling up my neck.

  Spreading like poisonous gas in the basement of my mind.

  Unsafe. Get away.

  Must ge
t away.

  Adrift on the terrible black river, surging and boiling; carrying me toward something awful. Something unstoppable, and—

  "Here," Vega barked, and thumped the base of a clenched fist into a solid-looking white door three times. The noise jolted Dan, and he peeled himself away from his thoughts, and focused on breathing, just as the therapist had instructed.

  You have to learn to focus on your feelings. You have to be mindful of how illogical they are. Separate yourself from the anxiety. Look in on it from a distance and realise how unhelpful those feelings are, and how you don't have to let them control you. Breathe. Count. Breathe.

  In, out, in...out.

  The feeling that his heart was trying to hammer its way through his ribs abated a little as the door opened, and a bored-looking young woman stepped aside to let Vega in. Just having Vega's attention diverted to somebody else for a moment helped to ease the pressure building in Dan's mind.

  "Mr Vega?"

  The woman looked at Vega and Dan inquisitively. She was young and attractive, and Dan felt a surge of embarrassment at how he must look to her: sweat dripped down his brow, and no amount of wiping it away with his palm seemed to staunch the flow.

  He was shaking, he realised, despite the warmth of the air on the Oceanus.

  "He's with me," Vega said, and stepped into the gloomy room beyond the doorway. Once inside, he turned and beckoned Dan in.

  "Show me what you saw," Vega said as Dan neared the doorway. Inside the room, he saw a bank of monitors casting a dim glow over a desk and a not-comfortable-enough looking chair.

  "This ship is carrying almost as many CCTV cameras as passengers," Vega said, motioning to the monitors. "If what you saw is real, Katie here will find it."

  Dan stepped inside, and stared at the array of monitors in wonder, his anxiety suddenly forgotten. He saw sixteen small television screens, cycling through images every few seconds. As he watched, he saw the pools, the casino and nightclub, the park and gift shops and dining areas. From almost every conceivable angle, he saw a different part of the ship, and not once did he notice an image repeating.

  Vega wasn't kidding. There had to be a lot of cameras on the ship, but Dan hadn't noticed any. Surveillance wrapped in a velvet curtain of luxury. He tried not to wonder just how much of the interior of the cabins might be covered. Failed.

  "Jesus Christ," he breathed.

  "How long ago?" Vega barked.

  Dan frowned. He'd looked at his watch, hadn't he? He dropped his eyes to the glowing digits at his wrist.

  "I got lost on the way here," he said a little apologetically, "so I make it something like twenty-seven minutes, give or take."

  Dan looked up at Vega, and saw the big man's eyebrows rise, just a little. Vega had thought Dan was bullshitting, for whatever reason—Dan didn't much care anymore—and had clearly expected Dan's response to be vague and noncommittal.

  Starting to believe me, huh?

  Vega closed the door behind him, and stepped closer to the screens to get a better viewing angle. He watched the cycling images thoughtfully.

  "Katie, Mr Bellamy here thinks he saw a body being dumped overboard. Twenty seven minutes ago, directly below his cabin."

  Katie arched an eyebrow in surprise, but said nothing, and slipped into the single seat before the bank of monitors. Her fingers danced over a small keyboard, and the images on the screens began to move backwards.

  "What is your cabin number?" she asked.

  "217."

  "Cheap seats," Katie said, and grinned.

  "Not cheap enough," Dan said, and felt himself ease up a little at her friendly demeanour. Compared to the bluster and intimidation that radiated off the head of security, talking to Katie seemed like a walk in the park. Even if she had looked curiously at the beads of sweat running down Dan’s face.

  "Starboard side," Katie said, and flicked at a couple more keys. "How far down from where you were standing, would you say?"

  "Near the ocean. One of the lowest decks. Below the passenger decks, I think."

  Katie jabbed at the controls again and suddenly only fourteen of the monitors displayed pictures. Dan straightened, and examined them closely.

  "These are the main public areas covered directly beneath cabin 217, on decks 1-5," Katie said.

  "It won't be the first deck," Dan said softly. "The body fell for a second or two before hitting the water. It was a little way up."

  When Katie hit the keys once more, the screens went dark for a moment, and were replaced by sixteen images once more.

  "That helps," Katie said. "Okay. This is every camera we have in the common parts on decks three to five. We'll start there."

  "The common parts?"

  "Hallways, mostly," Katie explained. "If we need to go into any of the cabins we can, but this should—"

  She trailed off, and when Dan followed her gaze to the bottom left screen in the array of blinking monitors, he drew in a sharp breath.

  The image was a little blurry, and colourless, but there was no mistaking what it displayed. Two men, dragging something large down a narrow hallway before opening a window and pushing the object out. When they were done, one of the men stopped to clean something dark from the window frame. Something that could only have been blood.

  "Well, holy shit," Steven Vega said.

  11

  Steven Vega strode out of the CCTV room like a man reborn. He knew what the other staff thought of him; knew it full well, but he didn't need to be liked to do his job. He needed to lead, and so he led, in the only way he knew how.

  It was damned difficult, though; so different to what he had experienced before. Leading a security team on the Oceanus felt like leading an army with no enemy, and no war to fight, and it frustrated the hell out of him. The salary was good—no, way better than good; virtually obscene—but he was already feeling restless and it was still technically his first day of active duty.

  Not his first day on the boat, though. He had been cooped up on the Oceanus for a couple of weeks already, getting used to his role and surroundings while the ship was docked and preparing for the big launch.

  The Oceanus was huge, there was no denying that, but somehow it already felt small to Vega, like a too-tight sweater that clung to his throat and made breathing difficult. He had a feeling that anywhere he went might feel the same, after years spent out in the endless desert, but on the ship, the feeling of being trapped had come to feel pervasive almost immediately.

  His discomfort was deepened by the fact that there was so little for him to do. The rest of the security staff seemed perfectly happy in their lethargy; to them, the time spent on the ship was as much a holiday as it was for the passengers.

  That wasn’t Steven Vega’s style: he had joined the forces as soon as he left school, and had fallen deeply in love with the military lifestyle precisely because it was so ordered. He didn’t sign up for glory or for the thrill of action, but for purpose.

  He hadn’t ever wanted to leave the military. He foresaw the life of an officer when his time in combat was up.

  And then the recession hit, and the government began to make cuts. The British military haemorrhaged numbers even as the politicians’ foreign policy continued to alienate half the planet and create new enemies for them to fight. Wars were ongoing, and Vega doubted they would ever truly end, but increasingly they would be fought by computers and drones.

  Boots on the ground were expensive. Dead soldiers were bad publicity.

  Vega had been cast aside at the age of thirty five. Abandoned by the career that he loved; told to piss off and find a job in the private sector.

  Most of the men and women in his position would have envied him, he thought. They would probably think he had landed on his feet. A nice, relaxing job that paid better than the military ever could.

  Yet it brought Vega no joy, and no satisfaction. He barely slept, and on several days recently he had found himself locked into depressive moods that had never afflicted h
im once when he went to work with a gun in his hand and a target on his back.

  Increasingly, he began to run into conflict with colleagues; men like Ledger, whose blasé attitude would have been stripped out of him in five minutes at Basic Training. Once, the kind of surly, juvenile demeanour that Ledger displayed would not have affected Vega in the slightest. Yet now, with so little else to focus on, the running conflict with the man dominated his thoughts.

  That was the trouble with having no enemy, Vega thought. It left too much time to construct some in your head to make up for the lack of real adversaries, and the enemies built in the mind were always far more difficult to fight. Working in security on the ship was a great job, but increasingly, as it became more and more obvious that security guards on the Oceanus were just glorified scarecrows, not required to do anything other than be visible, Steven Vega began to realise that it wasn't a great job for him.

  But that had all changed.

  Because all of a sudden there was an enemy, and Steven Vega had something to fucking do at last.

  He strode back to his small, sparse office and tapped a four-digit code into a keypad on the wall behind his desk, which popped open a discreet cupboard.

  Reaching inside, Vega pulled out a pistol and holster. He shrugged the holster over his shoulders, and almost sighed in relief. Carrying a weapon again felt so damned right. So natural. He hadn't realised just how much he had missed it.

  He snatched up the walkie-talkie he had left on his desk, and flipped it to the open channel, barking into the small microphone.

  "Saunders, Phillips, Ferguson," he said. "I want you in my office, right now. Over."

  The radio fizzed for a moment.

  "Yes, Mr Vega. Over."

  With a satisfied nod, Vega moved to tuck the radio into his belt, and sighed before lifting it back to his lips, flipping it to another channel.

  "Ledger, get the fuck away from that deck and do it quietly. We have hostiles on board, and they are somewhere in your vicinity. Vega out."

  Vega flicked the walkie off and strode out of his office to wait for his team to arrive. Saunders, Phillips and Ferguson were a far cry from the well-trained men and women he had fought with over the previous twelve years in active service, but Steven Vega generally had a good nose for people, and how useful they might be if the shit hit the fan. The three he'd chosen were the best he was going to get; the few who hadn't worked cruise security so long that they became complacent.