Soundless Conflicts

by S. Walker

  Almost against her will Jamet backtracked to the top, checking headers for an ID on the sender. Then she put her head down, eyes squeezed shut and breathing painful. "Dead freaking stars. Thomas Minyer. Well... damn. I guess you weren't a total bastard. At least in the end." She put a foot up, banging her heel on the console until the message closed up and swiped away.

  It took another few tries to get the system notifications sorted out: Everything from successful startup icons to angry "tamper detected" warnings and sanction violations wanted a piece of her foot. When Jamet finally got the workspace cleared enough to access the smelter icons her hip was starting to cramp up, toes twitching wildly back and forth. She had to switch legs to start going through options for plasma generation and Krepsfield singularities.

  A quick glance at the clock and some mental math said it was getting close to safe range for Janson's lifeboat. Nearly showtime.

  Jamet was laboriously dragging plasma control and singularity callouts side by side for easy toe-tapping when the workstation abruptly blanked out. She blinked once, then hmm'd in surprise as the borders of her viewing area went a glowing, angry shade of carmine. White text flashed on screen, giant font and blinking, impossible to miss or close out.

  Incoming Priority Transmission: Emilia Rounds, CES Kipper, Tech/IT/Comms/Stat/Qual, CS rank Shareholder [Conference Call Req]

  Subject: I will break you into tiny pieces and beat the itty bitty titty bits out of them if you don't answ- [TRNC]

  Even alone, drugged up, arm broken and using her bare toes to start plasma-assisted suicide... Jamet couldn't help but laugh. "Well, this is now happening."

  Chapter 39

  Reals Good Decisions

  Loopy, floating by on painkillers and operating a console with her feet wasn't how Jamet Reals expected to go out.

  But if it was a choice between dying or listening to Emilia lay out everything wrong with her personally... well, it would be a toss up. Possibly weighed heavily in favor of a less painful permanent solution. Unfortunately the smelter console was a product of Corporate bureaucracy, which (among other things) meant priority transmissions couldn't be closed. Only accepted and suffered through.

  It took three tries and a leg swap to tap the 'Accept' prompt with her big toe. Jamet fully expected to take a verbal beating, the kind of tongue lashing she'd routinely given out back in her Management days. Emilia seemed fully capable of delivering that sort of destruction and her love of Corporate in general... and Jamet in particular... hadn't been high to begin with.

  So when the connection clicked open and her workspace cleared Jamet was surprised to discover how tensed up she was. Hell she was even wincing in preparation. When did she start caring this much? It wasn't a bad thing, just surprising. It didn't matter anyways, this was about to be a flood of anger coming over a crystal-clear link.

  But the first thing Emilia said wasn't a threat, or blame, or any of a thousand things Jamet unconsciously expected. It was worse.

  "I am so disappointed in you I don't even want to talk." She sounded like a worn down single mother, caught between rage and exhaustion at a wayward child. "And to Janson? Really? He didn't deserve any of that!"

  The sheer unfairness made her jaw drop. "Did he mention breaking my arm!?"

  "You deserved it!"

  "For trying to save-?! I'm not even going into this right now." Jamet threw her head back and glared at the ceiling. Then jumped in shock-- she'd forgotten about the portrait up there. In a weird way it was like having a third person judging the conversation. "I'm just answering to clear the notification off this workspace, anyways."

  "Fine, then!" Something banged from her end of the link, exactly like a set of hands slapping the console. "Captain, you try talking to this... this Corpo. I can't do it!"

  In a weird way that 'corpo' shot made Jamet smile. Both because it was the worst thing Emilia could think of to throw her way and because it was so obvious her heart wasn't in the insult. The hatred and bile normally reserved for anything related to Management just wasn't there. It was more of a halfhearted punch at something they both knew was in the past and didn't matter any more. That meant a lot to her in a weird "backhanded compliment" kind of way.

  Jamet started working through menus to activate the magnetic bottle plume. It was surprisingly difficult. She'd imagined some sort of easy start option, like a 'press here for smelting' callout. The reality was a frustrating series of required steps, references, monitoring controls, mandatory safety reading...

  She started laughing. Checklists! She was fighting checklists. Her entire life revolved around preparation and now she was stuck here, trying to speed things up while doing quizzes on required reading! The irony was thick enough to choke on.

  "Lieutenant, this is Siers."

  Jamet hesitated briefly, then tapped through another menu to assure the system she really had caught up on the last month's worth of operator training. Would it do any good not to answer, maybe fake interference? Probably not. Emilia would clear that up. "I hear you, sir." The next prompt asked if she'd started the cooling system yet. What cooling system?

  "I thought you'd want to know Medical says our Engineer pulled through his allergy to that injection."

  "What?!" She almost fell out of the chair, only saved by ridiculously indented cushions holding onto both hips. Although her leg did wrench hard enough sideways to leave a bruise. "I didn't- I mean, what? He has allergies? I'm so sorry!"

  "Actually, he doesn't." Siers paused just long enough to let her absorb that. "Which should be a lesson in unforeseen consequences."

  Molars took a turn on the grinding wheel. "That was dirty play." Then, belatedly: "Sir."

  "Coming from you I'm strangely complimented by that." His tone was dry enough to dehydrate her ears. "If I understand our slightly drugged Engineer correctly, your plan was always to stay behind to trigger an explosion?"

  She found the cooling system buried in Environmental. That one did have an easy start button, but the callout itself wanted to sit on top of every other menu. Jamet swiped angrily with her toes, calf muscles straining. "Not originally, captain. But I knew it was always a possibility. I'd apologize but, well." Somewhere nearby machinery started with a deep thrum of vibration she could feel through the seat. That would be cooling. Moments later her workspace updated with a green light for magnetic containment. "You understand, I hope. I'm not very good at this 'explaining myself' thing."

  Siers didn't sound mad, only resigned. "After thinking about it, yes. I understand. However a head's up would have been greatly appreciated. In this particular situation I happen to agree with Janson: We could have put our heads together, thought of something else."

  "Still open to ideas, here. But time constraints are the real problem," Jamet awkwardly circled back to the magnetic system, finding the option for initiating the bottle. "Any plan that takes more than a few days would run into escalating issues." Power indicators suddenly eclipsed the top of her workspace, slowly charging up an outline of the plasma bottle next to a countdown timer. She started hunting for the Krepsfield generator controls.

  "Alright. If you're not closed-minded about alternate theories, may I ask a question?"

  She switched legs, flexing ankles and toes to try and relieve stress. There wasn't a workout program in the entire Corporate physiology index that could have helped with this sort of arch abuse; without the painkillers Jamet was fairly certain she'd be crying through several horrific muscle cramps. "Go ahead, I'm listening."

  "Have you checked the smelter's external sensors lately?"

  "Um," Jamet frowned. Were there external sensors on the station? She tried to picture the schematics again. Checking for arrays on the outside hadn't been on her list of Important Things To Note. It didn't seem likely; why would a smelter need to watch their surroundings? Actually, flip that-- a normal facility wouldn't, but what about this super modified monstrosity? How likely was it some budget hawk would authorize an addition, if only to ke
ep the lone operator from going crazy?

  Siers managed to sound like a man holding all the winning cards at once. "I'm going to take your silence as an admission. If you could spend a few moments looking outwards, possibly towards the arrival point, I would like to be the first to announce that rescue has arrived in-system."

  Both feet dropped to the floor. "That's..." Derailing? Relieving? Wonderful? Going to cause multiple problems when she inevitably had to apologize face to face with a certain Engineer? "...awkwardly timed, sir."

  "You're not wrong, lieutenant. Especially considering our only lifeboat is currently drifting slowly back to the ship as we speak. Thoughts on recovering you? I would appreciate some input, considering you happen to be our navigation expert."

  The console beeped, happily notifying Jamet the plasma plume was fully capable and magnetic containment working at capacity. She stared at it, thinking for a moment, then slowly narrowed both eyes. "How many ships?"

  "Pardon?"

  Jamet brought her leg back up, deliberately tapping the initiation sequence for the plasma plume with an aching big toe. Which was a bit of a problem, actually-- her arm was starting to noticeably throb, toes aching, calves and thighs quivering. Emergency painkillers apparently didn't last very long. "Those rescue ships at the arrival point. How many are there?" She tried to sound casual. "Going to take a lot to pick up several million people."

  "There are only a few dozen people, lieutenant. Even counting us. I think they sent enough ships."

  The plume fired in a shrieking thrill of energized fields that made every hair on her neck stand at attention. She couldn't see it but that much power focused in one spot gave her itches everywhere underneath the suit. "But captain, how would rescue know there weren't millions of personnel to evac? Wouldn't they have sent hundreds? Or construction and repair vessels?"

  "...I'm missing your point. Regardless, I believe you were about to list options on how to retrieve you? Waiting to hear your thoughts on that; all we can come up with is attempting to retrieve a lifeboat from the habitation ring and repairing it."

  "That's not a bad thought, although you'd probably end up just fixing the retros and living in skinsuits for the trip. Janson could- wait, no, he's going to be a minute. Get that Independent on it; he's probably certified in repairing those systems." Ah, there were the Krepsfield control options, grouped underneath a personalized folder labelled Cargo Resource Admin Processes. She read it twice, then checked the acronym and rolled her eyes. Someone had a sense of humor. "But that doesn't matter, anyways."

  Give the captain points: He played a gambit all the way to the end. "It certainly matters to us, lieutenant. We need you back here as soon as possible."

  "Alright, you have me convinced. Have Emilia send me an image of the rescue ships, I'll let you know how soon we can expect them and the best way to meet up."

  The communications link went silent. She used the time to start fighting checklist controls on the singularity generator. "Really? Required reading on this is just," Jamet muttered. "Come on, now."

  "Is it worth keeping this going, or should I stop?" Siers finally sounded defeated, voice aging noticeably. She actually felt pity for the poor man-- he was good, no doubt about it. But he wasn't Corporate levels of good. When it came to bluffing at her level of experience you had to be a virtuoso to pull off something so blatant.

  "Honestly you almost had me, sir. But if there were rescue ships you would have started out with that, or had Emilia cuss me out and then let her rub in how stupid I was. And I know you're eavesdropping, Em: Tell me you wouldn't love a chance like that." Swipe, tap, confirm, quiz?!

  "You don't get to call me that." She sounded upset, nearly on the edge of tears. "That's for friends, not... not dropouts! Who pretend to change and then cut and run on me! Like you."

  Jamet stared upwards at the silent benefactor on the ceiling, wishing death and destruction on whoever designed this system. Then she started tapping quiz answers, engaging with the stupid Worker Attention Management system long enough to satisfy its evil requirements. "I'm not running out on you, Em. And if I can't call you that come over here and stop me."

  "Sure seems like it!" Singularity control popped to life, offering options for systems boot. "You didn't have to go, what do you even owe this system? These stupid Corporates? We could have figured it out, some way to get out of here with everyone and just leave them to clean it all up later!"

  Jamet timed her wavering foot until it lined up with menu options, then hit it with her heel. Readouts popped onto the workspace for power relays, reactor control and singularity generation. Her first attempt to activate relays pulled the entire menu off-screen when a particularly bad thigh cramp hit at the wrong moment. This was incredibly tiring to do, she really wanted nothing more than to take a nap right now. "So abandon everything, leave and let someone else fix it? Not trying to be rude here, but that sounds pretty-"

  "Don't you even-"

  "-Management of you." She got the menu back on-screen, then awkwardly traded feet again. Why was she shivering this hard? Was it the drugs? Everything still felt like a soft, warm blanket, but that shouldn't give her goosebumps this bad. Dead stars this was so weirdly tiring.

  "You rotten, dirty, evil-"

  "That's enough, Comms." Siers apparently cut Emilia out of the connection mid-word, leaving her to rant somewhere away from their talk. "For what it's worth, lieutenant, I am more than a little proud of you for not taking that route. Although I highly dislike your solution. Are you willing to stand down for, say, a day? That would give us time to brainstorm. It doesn't have to come to this."

  Jamet frowned, then deliberately pursed both lips and huffed. Her breath came out as a visible cloud of white, drifting overhead until an Environment vent sucked it away to be-

  Environmental! "Paul, you son of a bitch." She started frantically beating her heel against menu options, minimizing callouts and closing icons, quickly backtracking to the one system she'd seen earlier.

  "Lieutenant? That didn't come through, please repeat."

  She ignored the captain, still drilling through menu options with hard heel bangs. There it was: Temperature and atmosphere control, listed under Environmental. Facility temp was set to a balmy twenty degrees, oxygen saturation steadily ticking downwards below... whatever eighty kilopascals was. Both systems were currently under remote request from the one person who hadn't said anything on the conference call yet.

  Jamet overrode each, setting the temperature and atmosphere mix back to baseline. "Paul, that was a hell of a try."

  And there he was, atonal voice cracks riding the transmission like a guilty ghost: "I have no idea what you mean, ma'am."

  She shivered hard enough to rattle around in the chair, yawning hugely and eyes glued to the current temperature indicators. "What was that supposed to do? I'm guessing the atmo going low would have-" she yawned again, body recovering from stealthy oxygen loss. "Maaaade me pass out. But why the temp, too?"

  "...less likely to induce ataxia and a possible aneurysm." He sounded clinical about it, but also slightly guilty.

  "You were going to risk killing me to stop me from blowing up?" She couldn't believe it. "How can you be so smart and so colossally stupid at the same time?"

  "It was not my first recommendation!"

  "Well what was your first idea?"

  "Putting a Cormorent torpedo straight through the smelter generator, actually."

  Jamet's blood ran cold in a way that had nothing to do with the room temperature. "Holy shit, Paul. You play for keeps. Glad I'm going to miss that card tournament-- you're straight diabolical."