The Disasters

by M. K. England

  “Hey.” I rest my hand tentatively on her knee. She’s trembling, and there’s a faint sheen of sweat on the parts of her face that aren’t covered. “Hey, can you let Zee clean that cut on your arm? You don’t wanna get any weird space infections, right?”

  A single faint huff—a laugh, maybe? She pries one hand away from her face and props it on the couch next to her. Zee takes it and carefully begins to clean and spray the lacerations there, clucking worriedly over her as if she hadn’t been trying to set Case on fire with her eyes a moment earlier. Asra, seeming to sense the temporary truce, settles onto the floor next to the table with the tablet Case stole and taps at it with a frown.

  Rion glances up, meets my eyes, then flops back against the wall and leans his head against it. “I think maybe we should talk about what happened at the embassy.”

  Case stays perfectly still under Zee’s prodding fingers, but takes a deep shuddering breath and lets her other hand fall away from her face. “As long as you guys promise to hear me out completely before bringing out the ax for my execution.”

  Her voice is weak and ragged, but it’s a relief to hear a bit of her usual backbone in it. I squeeze her knee and take a seat on the couch beside her so she knows I’m in her corner.

  Rion’s lips quirk up at one corner, and he cuts his eyes over to mine before speaking. “I promise, definitely no axes, knives, or other methods of bloody death. I just want to know what happened.”

  I send him a tiny smile of thanks. What Case did was shitty, but I’d like to think we’re not the kinds of people who would gang up on someone who just had a panic attack.

  “Same for me,” Asra says from across the table. She throws the stolen tablet down on the rug in frustration, then picks up her own tablet and hardwires the two together. “I’ve been in there a hundred times to visit Jace’s office, and their security is pretty tight. If we hadn’t had access to the employee entrance, it would have been nearly impossible. How’d you manage?”

  Case hisses as Zee dabs at a particularly nasty cut on her shoulder where the flesh is ragged, gaping wide and raw. Her jaw tightens, but she grabs my hand and grips it tight, takes a slow breath through her nose, and talks through the pain.

  “I commed my mom’s friend, Ana, before I got there and told her to expect me. She took me to her office, I showed her the flight recorder, and together we went to the head of her division.” She takes a deep breath and keeps her eyes fixed on Asra’s patterned carpet. “It got weird. Like, instantly weird. He recognized me, and when I told him about the flight recorder, he started interrogating Ana, wanting to know if she’d seen what was on it. She had, but I guess she picked up on the vibe, because she lied, said she brought me straight to him.”

  She swallowed hard, and her cheeks darkened. “They had zero intention of ever hearing me out. Their number-one priority was getting the flight recorder away from me, and number two was locking me up where no one could hear me talk. I’m honestly surprised they didn’t just kill me, but I think they wanted the publicity just in case it would bring you all out of hiding. Which it did, you complete asses,” she says, and swats Zee on the leg. Zee swats her right back, then uses the opportunity to snag her arm and get a better angle on the gash to glue it shut.

  “Oi, you’re welcome, you know,” Rion protests, half-heartedly throwing his balled-up and sweaty outer shirt at her. She twitches away like it’s on fire, even though it came nowhere near her. Zee tuts in disapproval, chasing her with the can of skin bond.

  “Hold still,” she scolds. “What did you do to yourself, squeeze through a window of rusty nails?”

  “Something like that,” Case mutters, subjecting herself to Zee’s fussing. “Ana was able to work with me to disable the lock on the door, and I’d memorized the layout of the building before I left, but it was still a near thing. I wanted to bring more back with me, but security was right behind me, so all I was able to grab was that tablet from the chief’s office,” she says, and points to the tablet in Asra’s hands. Asra works in silence, ignoring us all.

  I pull away from Case and turn around to fully face her, propping my arms up on my knees. She’s looking much better, and the tension in the room has ebbed from “ready to kill” to “wary and annoyed,” which I’ll settle for. “Wait, so you memorized the layout of that whole building? Just in the time since we went to sleep?”

  She shrugs with her uninjured shoulder and studies her shoes. “I have a good memory for diagrams. Kind of had to, when I was doing my engineering degree.”

  I shake my head. Bit of an understatement; she must have a near-photographic memory. “Right. Genius Girl. Almost forgot.”

  I drop my head onto my shoulder to rest for a moment, then think better of it. Ugh, I reek. Rion catches the face I make, I guess, because he snorts and shakes his head.

  “The smell,” he says, “because I know you’re all dying to know, is entirely Nax’s fault. We had to duck through a bunch of back alleys to get away, and then O captain my captain here saw the goat herd in a paddock across the street and decided it would be the perfect hiding place. Apparently he had pet goats as a child, and it broke his brain.”

  He breaks off with a shudder. “The only herds we have in London are rats, bats, and corgis. The rats and bats mostly keep to themselves, and at least the corgis are potty-trained. Snappy dressers, too.”

  Zee, who’s been drawing closer to eruption by the second, finally explodes with a loud, infectious laugh, her eyes bright with mirth. The rest of us follow in a heartbeat, even Case, because come on; in hindsight, the whole thing really is hilarious. I’m wiping tears from my eyes, something about sartorial corgis on the tip of my tongue, when Asra yelps, her furrowed brow relaxing all at once.

  “I got it!”

  She taps at the stolen tablet in her lap, then frowns again. “There’s only one thing on here. It’s totally wiped clean except for the most recently received message.”

  Asra pulls out her cables and sets the tablet in a short stand, then syncs it with the large screen on the wall. The message appears, with a logo preceding the brief words: two bright overlapping circles, one turquoise blue and one bright green, with a bold number one painted through the center.

  All devices have been shipped to their final locations. Earth First personnel and any loved ones they want spared should make final preparations and arrange transport back to Ellis Station, if you have not already. Zero hour is 00:01 on 14|8|2194 UTC. Please click the attachment to securely delete this message.

  Loved ones they want spared.

  Spared from what?

  Case sucks in a breath as she finishes reading, reaching out to clamp a hand around Zee’s arm. Zee pats her hand, but her lips are pursed tight. Asra’s eyes have gone dark and furious. Rion, though, lets out a disbelieving laugh.

  “This is wild,” he says. “It’s ancient history. I can’t believe I even . . .” He takes a deep breath and blows it out slowly. “I know what this is.”

  Everyone falls still and fixates on Rion. He stares at the ceiling for a moment, his lips moving, whispering to himself, then nods.

  “Okay. So. The Global Colonization Commission was formed right after al-Rihla was discovered during the second space race, right? It was created in the first place because this really old treaty said that all space resources belonged to all of humankind, not just to the organizations or countries that found it. No one wanted to stick to the treaty, so they needed someone to enforce it.”

  “Yep, that’s Earth politics,” Case says, her voice dry.

  Rion huffs a derisive laugh. “Yeah, definitely not for me. So, at the same time as all that, there was a group that called themselves Earth First. They were against the creation of the GCC, because they were against colonization altogether. They wanted to make terraforming illegal and outlaw settlements outside of Earth and her moon.”

  I shake my head. Colonization has been a fact of life for the past hundred years, since long before I was born. It’s
strange to think of people actually debating it.

  Rion continues. “Earth First was a small group, and they never did enough lobbying to get media attention, but they were weirdly powerful because they came from everywhere and believed in the cause for all kinds of reasons. Some were religious people who believed their god put humans on Earth for a reason, or that Earth was sacred. Some were scientists who believed it was wrong to change another planet’s ecosystem, ecologists who thought our responsibility was to Earth first, that we should clean up our act there before messing up other planets. Businesspeople, economists, teachers, military officers, every kind of person you can imagine.”

  “Okay,” Asra says, drawing the word out. “So that was over a hundred years ago.”

  “I’ve never even heard of these Earth First people, and I minored in colonial history in college,” Case says. She actually sounds affronted that there’s something she doesn’t know. I nudge her foot with mine and fight back a teasing smile. She nudges back and leaves her leg pressed against mine.

  “There’s no reason for you to know about them,” Rion says, cutting everyone off before the discussion can derail too far. “The whole thing was swept under the rug before the movement could gain serious support. There was this guy, a member of Parliament, who shot himself in his office right after a major colonization debate. During that session, he said if Earth went through with the colonization of space, those loyal to Earth would correct their mistake. They voted in favor anyway, and the note he left was pretty threatening. Everything got covered up good. They were afraid of it getting into the media and gaining public sympathy, I think. Everyone loves a martyr.”

  “How do you know about all of this, then, if it was hidden so well?” Zee asks. Good point.

  Rion shakes his head and huffs an ironic laugh.

  “That’s the wild part. I only know because my dad forced me into an internship with a local member of Parliament’s office. I went through a lot of old paper records as part of an archiving project. Those records were never digitized, and they made me sign a nondisclosure agreement before they even let me into the file room. There can’t be more than a handful of people alive who even know about that incident.”

  Asra slams the stolen tablet down on the tabletop, and the memo on the screen winks out. “Jace does, apparently. I saw this logo all over the back room of his office last time I broke in. I’d bet you anything that the money laundering I couldn’t trace leads back to Earth First. He probably built up his whole scheme to help fund them. And here I thought I couldn’t hate him any more than I already did.”

  Zee gathers up the bloodstained wipes in one gloved hand and takes off her exam glove inside out to wrap them up, then packs the med kit as she speaks. “It looks like these Earth First people never went away. It’s ridiculous. Who could still be against settling in space after a hundred years of proving it works? But I guess logic doesn’t matter much if you’re obsessed enough. They must have been clinging to this and planning for decades, to get people into the positions they’re in. Politicians? Military officers?”

  Case’s knuckles go pale as she twists and bunches the hem of her shirt. “And using the Academy as a launching point for their ‘correction’ of the ‘mistake’ has a certain symbolism to it, you know? It’s like using the colonization system against itself.”

  There’s a beat of horrified silence.

  Then, BANG!

  Behind me, a voice—“Go around the front, cut them off!”

  I whirl around to see a head poking through the narrow window. The head of a uniformed enforcement officer, one of the ones who chased me and Rion from the embassy. Shit, did we lead him here? Rion plants his palm on the guy’s face and shoves, hard. The face disappears, and the horrific clang-CLANG of the fire-escape ladder rings out, followed by a sickening crunch.

  Ouch. That sounded like tears.

  I slam the window shut, check the readout to make sure it’s locked, then spin back around. Asra, Case, and Zee are all on their feet, breathing hard, their eyes wide. Below the floorboards, a door bangs open, and Nani’s furious voice follows. I can’t understand what she’s saying, but it sounds like she’s bitching them a new one. Her voice spurs Asra into action.

  “She might be able to hold them up long enough that we can get down the stairs and into the basement. There’s an exit there we can use. Grab your stuff,” she says, already putting action to her words. She stashes the tablets and runs into her room, the sound of slamming drawers drifting after her. Case grabs the bag from the shuttle, and the rest of us stow our tablets, facechangers, and guns. Asra flies out of her room and motions for us all to follow. Case and Rion go first, and I hurry after them.

  “Zee, cover our six, and be ready to kick,” I say, grabbing the strap of her first-aid kit and slinging it over my shoulder. Another bang at the window sends a jolt of energy straight to my legs.

  Time to go.

  In the stairwell, our nervous breaths rasp and echo off the walls, but our feet are light. As we descend, the furious yelling gets louder, joined by a horrible battery of jangling clashes, like Nani is deliberately banging things in the kitchen to cover our noise. More voices join the chaotic jumble: some strangers, some the faintly familiar ones of Nani’s staff, recent acquaintances from our brief stay.

  Rion’s and Asra’s bright clothes practically glow in the dim hallway. They should have stayed in their sneaking-around clothes from earlier. If the enforcers get eyes down here, they’ll see us for sure. Asra leads us with quick, sure steps, pausing only once to hold up a hand and peer around a corner. As we emerge onto the ground-floor landing on the other side of the wall from the commotion, the warm, pungent smells from the spice kitchen overwhelm my senses. If we’re going to get caught, this is the place. My breath burns in my lungs.

  Painfully loud crashes and clamoring reverberate through the narrow corridor, so I worry less about my footsteps and more about speed. Asra’s bright orange hijab disappears around the corner into the narrow basement stairwell, then Case right behind her.

  There’s a sudden surge and clatter in the kitchen, and a new group of authoritative roaring voices—reinforcements. I press forward, my chest pushing against Rion’s back in my haste to disappear into the darkness of the staircase. I make it down five steps when, right behind me, a deep voice calls, “The stairs!”

  Zee whirls around, and through the gap between her legs I see a single enforcer who managed to find the dusty old door at the back of the kitchen. No, not an enforcer—one of the guards from the embassy. Zee wastes no time. Her leg arcs in a vicious drive, catching the man solidly in his right knee, then again in his jaw as he drops. Hard. Judging from his groans, he’s still at least partially conscious, but not for long—I aim around Zee and send a pulse of sleep chem into the exposed skin of his arm. He won’t be following us.

  I stow the gun and back up farther to give Zee room to crowd into the stairwell, but she ignores me and grabs the man by the arms, then drags him over so his arms point toward the other staircase, the one we came from. She skips over the man’s body, graceful as a blue-and-blond cat, then steps into the stairwell and closes the door behind her with an ever-so-gentle click.

  I want to tell her “Good thinking” or “You’re a genius,” but any sound might screw over the brilliant advantage she’s given us, so I do the most helpful thing I can: I get my ass down the stairs as quickly and quietly as possible.

  When Zee and I emerge into the basement, Asra already has a crate of potatoes pulled aside, revealing a low crawl-space access hatch in the interior wall of the building. The bottom half of Case sticks out of the hatch, and Asra gives her a none-too-gentle kick in the ass to get her moving faster. Rion glances back, sees us coming, then drops to his hands and knees and disappears through. I put a hand between Zee’s shoulder blades, guiding her forward, ahead of me. She doesn’t argue, just follows the others. I look to Asra.

  “You following after us?”

  “
Yes,” she hisses, “but I’m gonna move this crate back as close as I can get it first. It might buy us some time.”

  “I’ll help—” I start to say, but she cuts me off.

  “You’re a lot bigger than me, Nax. I can fit through with the door practically closed. You’re wasting time—go!”

  I put my hands up in surrender and scramble into the crawl space as fast as I can. Barely a second later, the hatch closes most of the way, and the crate scuffs closer. As my eyes adjust, I can barely make out the outlines of Zee, Case, and Rion crouched among the exposed pipes and wires, trying not to bump their heads and give us away. With a quiet scraping of fabric on metal, Asra squeezes through the hatch opening, less than a foot wide, and pulls it closed behind her. The last bit of light goes with it.

  “How the hell are we supposed to see where we’re going?” Case whispers in the dark, but Asra makes a sharp sound through her teeth to shut her up. There’s rustling from her direction, then the glow of her tablet fills the narrow space with a pale white light, washing out our faces into ghostly masks. She crawls over to us, then motions for us to gather around.

  “Listen,” she whispers, barely audible over the distant footfalls above us. “This crawl space extends under the entire building, all the way to the end of the block. I have a place where we can hide once we’re out of here, but we need to decide whether to make a break for it now or lay low for a while. Think about it while you follow me.”

  She drops to her forearms and knees, shuffling along with the tablet held in front of her, illuminating the mess of beams and plumbing that reaches down from the underside of the building like metal claws. We crawl behind her in a line, like a caravan of pack animals, and while a part of me is still logically terrified of being caught, a small part of my brain is furiously willing Rion not to fart in my face. I slow my pace a little, just in case.

  By the time Asra comes to a halt against a mold-slicked wall, I’m feeling like an old man, all joint pain and cranky grumbling. I’m also no closer to figuring out what we should do next. Everyone’s still pissed at Case, we’re going to get executed if we’re caught, and these Earth First assholes are . . . what, planning to blow up the whole damn galaxy?