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6
Crawford's Last Act Of Defiance
Mimi
ItwasthequietestI'd ever heard it being at the Academy since I'd got here. People walked the corridors with their shoulders hunched and their eyes darting. No one stopped to talk to a passing friend, there were no clumps of Technicians discussing how poorly the flight crews treated the Orions, no Hospitality staff offering up a joke when they served you lunch, no Interns and Novitiates arguing over historical events. No Surgeons anywhere.
The only cluster of gossiping nitwits I came across throughout the day was Jessica Harding and Mikaela Pratt and their moronic groupies, eyeing everyone suspiciously, and glaring at anyone who so much as put a foot wrong.
A Novitiate dropped a mug of coffee in the mess at one stage and Pratt practically disembowelled him for it. Another walked too close to the door to the hangar and Harding tore strips off him for disobeying Parliament. An imprisonable offence if you took any meaning from Harding's ridiculous rave.
It was bad enough that we had SWAT at every corner, down every corridor, and outside every door that led to somewhere important. The hangar was guarded. The storeroom was guarded. Dispatch was guarded. Our dormitory wing was guarded. There was no way we could get onto the Surgeon's floor for example. If Jack was being held in his own bedroom, then I couldn't tell.
But now we had to deal with Harding and Pratt trying to enforce things.
I managed to corner Dr Bauer outside the mess hall, eventually; an achievement that was far more astonishing than you would think. She'd ducked in for a coffee, and as she had been the first Surgeon I'd seen all day, I pounced. She saw me coming of course. Like a possum caught in the headlights of an on-coming eighteen-wheeler, she froze for a fraction of a second, and then she glanced around to make sure we weren't being watched.
We were, but the guard outside the mess hall was suddenly distracted by a commotion inside, courtesy of Dean Jordan and an unwitting accomplice, namely Jessica Harding, the Enforcer herself. With the guard otherwise occupied, I went in for the kill.
"Dr Bauer," I said in greeting and then before she could escape, I sidled up alongside her and encouraged her to start walking again.
"Miss Wylde," she replied uncertainly. Novitiates and Surgeons don't usually socialise together. They're a prickly and aloof lot, Surgeons; wouldn't want to get oneself tainted by the riffraff, would we? The fact that Jack and I were having a relationship was unusual, but not necessarily against the rules. What was against the rules was that until recently, we'd still been flying together.
For her part, Dr Bauer was a rule follower. Despite it not being illegal in any way, she would never get intimate with a Novitiate. Not that I wanted her to get intimate with me, right then. But she could see the writing on the wall with one glance at my face and she was ready to run in the opposite direction.
"Have you by chance," I whispered, making her lean in a little closer to hear me; a natural reaction to someone addressing you in a lower volume of voice, "seen where they're keeping Dr Evans and Miss Cockburn?"
She glanced over her shoulder again, but thankfully the guard was still inside the mess hall dealing with Harding and Jordan. She really was not good at this sleuthing thing.
"No," she said abruptly. "And I do not think this is a wise line of questioning, Novitiate."
I ignored her rebuff like any decent Novitiate would and asked, "Is there a guard outside his bedroom?"
"Miss Wylde," she started, then thought better of it. "Mimi," she corrected as if calling me by my Christian name would make me more receptive to her admonishment. She didn't bother with 'Mouse'. "We must do our part to keep RATS functioning."
It wasn't quite what I had expected her to say.
"Functioning?" I asked. "How can it function without the Deputy Chief Surgeon?"
"I should think, quite well," Bauer huffed. "Dr Crawford is still at the helm and so it is up to us to play our part in aiding him."
"To play our part in this charade, you mean," I pressed.
"Miss Wylde!" she snapped and then realised she'd raised her voice and glanced around the corridor again. Still guard-free. "Do you wish to be confined to quarters, as well?"
So, hewasin his room, then?
"There's a guard outside his room, isn't there?" I whispered.
"It'll do you no good," she said quickly. "There are guards at both entrances, and more along the corridor at the bends, all keeping line of sight. Then one guard outside his door. No one other than Surgeons is permitted to be on the floor, and only if they are off duty, otherwise we are in meetings and discussions and, possibly when appropriate, Dispatch all day. One does not simply wander the halls of the Academy any longer. We must have a purpose. As should you, I believe."
"Study or classroom," I muttered. "Flight simulator when a slot becomes available."
"Then I suggest you get on with your assigned role, Novitiate."
"You're just going to leave him there?" I demanded.
Her austere gaze softened slightly. "Mimi," she said, "to do otherwise is to invite the same treatment."
