No one moved.
“Everyone present, disperse, or be dispersed. Last warning.”
Konami steeled himself to rush into the crowd and whispered instructions to his deputies. If they pushed off hard from the storage block, they’d have a good head of steam going into the crowd, and the shock of a handful of stuns ought to knock sense into the crowd. But just before they set their feet, the hundred-some-odd Aoteans started to break up. He supposed that it was harder for a freefall mob to disperse, with little to grab onto aside from each other, but they managed, awkwardly, to separate and get on their way.
When the crowd was mostly broken up, he thumbed in another call. “All clear, Mayor.”
“Thanks, Cy. What a fucking mess!”
Konami detailed his three constables to remain to guard the Civil building before heading forward to man the main Constabulary. Anticlimactic as the confrontation turned out, he had the feeling they were in the calm that came before the storm.
“Whatever’s going on, it’s not going to be over soon, you know.” It was Journalist Conneer, pulling herself along on a parallel guycable.
Konami nodded as he continued along.
CHAPTER 36
The emergency announcement repeated while Captain Horovitz stoically doled out assignments, her stoney expression as indomitable as ever. “…Hold! Twenty thousand people look to us for leadership. We will not panic here. GravTran, to the scene. CHENG, aft. chief inspector, the Constabulary. XO, report to Casualty Control Central and take charge. Pohamba...”
Mattoso’s eyes followed the chief inspector as he charged out of the conference room. The XO gave her an impatient look and a gesture, and she followed him out. She briefly wondered if she ought to head forward to the Bridge, since she was technically the acting Operations officer, but then realized that would be where the captain herself would surely be headed. Captain’s place on the Bridge and all… The conference spaces were on the first level under the surface, so they made their way to the nearest ladderwell.
Unlike the relative calm of the conference level, the thoroughfares of the surface were crowded with gawkers and emergency watchstanders. Two techs struggled with a cable-launcher for the zero-gravity rig, but there was no catch-net on the other side of the Can.
“There’s an extra catch-net under the launcher tube,” yelled Mattoso as they passed. “One of you, take it to the other side!” Didn’t they learn their basic rig quals?
Outside a four level hab, whose residents were gathered outside, two roving watches were attempting to maintain order. They appeared to be questioning each resident, and in comms on their wearables, to find out where each individual should be.
The XO clawed his way to the roving watches and addressed the crowd, directing those without immediate orders to return to their quarters.
When they didn’t move, Mattoso spoke up. “Don’t any of you have pets? Do you really want to find out what zero-gravity does to the digestive system of a dog?” She left unsaid that it could have the same affect on humans who hadn’t taken anti-nausea meds.
But it worked, and half the crowd rushed back inside, with the rest reluctantly following. The XO gave her an amused look, and they continued along their way.
Self-rigging Bots scattered to get out of the way as they sprinted between a pair of habs. The emergency announcement repeated, along with the sounds of some metallic catastrophe in the rotation gears.
From somewhere in his uniform, XO Criswell produced one of the new dart guns. As he handed it over, his features softened in a way she couldn’t recall ever seeing before. “Mattoso, whenever you get a free moment, you will have the chief inspector issue you one of these, and carry it with you at all times.”
“Understood,” she responded, returning the weapon, though she felt as confused as the wailing children they passed.
“ALL HANDS PREPARE FOR SPINDOWN! SPINDOWN OF THE AFT CAN IMMINENT!”
“Double time,” ordered the XO, and they sped up. The aft Casualty Control Central station was just a few hundred meters from the conference room, but getting through the twists and turns and knots of confused Aoteans made it seem like twice that.
“SPINDOWN IN thirty SECONDS; ALL HANDS PREPARE FOR SPINDOWN OF THE AFT CAN! thirty, 29, 28...”
They reached CC Central seconds before the countdown finished. “I relieve you,” said the XO to the wide-eyed young Third that was manning the station. He ordered Mattoso to primary communications, and put the Third online with Emer.
“SPINDOWN COMMENCING! ALL HANDS BRACE FOR SPINDOWN OF THE AFT CAN!”
The seats in CC Central were helpfully supplied with belts, and Mattoso strapped herself down at the primary communications console. Her stomach started to lurch as the simulated gravity lessened, but she swallowed down the urge to vomit.
The XO ordered her to get GravTran on the line.
The console reported that multiple stations were trying to call CC Central. She set the auto-response to Text, sent out a general status request to all stations, and after a moment, messages started to trickle in.
“CCC, GravTran. Received ‘Rotation Obstruction’ alarm, and seconds later the vibration sensors went haywire. We took action for Rotation Emergency procedure, which mandates Emergency Spindown.”
Mattoso acknowledged the report and parroted it to the XO, adding that minor injury reports were starting to pile up.
The Third reported from the Constabulary that all reserve constables had been activated.
The next several hours flew by, with minor emergency after minor emergency. The hasty freefall rig was responsible for dozens of broken bones and hundreds of scrapes and bruises, and for the first time, Mattoso heard the word “triage” used for real. Angry, confused crowds had to be confronted and dispersed, and gawking bystanders directed to their quarters.
Most distressing was the push and pull on GravTran in dealing with the damage to both Cans. Commander Konrote’s engineers quickly discovered the cause of the damage — one massive geartooth, almost a cubic meter in volume, had broken off its gear and wreaked havoc in the innards of the Can’s rotation system. The remnant was so huge that the Diagnostic Techs had to set up a temporary lab around the chunk of super-hard and super-dense alloy, rather than bring it to their own station, and they discovered the same signs of chemical damage, though much more severe, that caused the forward Can Spindown. The hidden monitoring device, installed by senior GravTran techs as part of the corrective action after the first Spindown, had been destroyed. Which just confirms Cy’s suspicion that someone senior is involved, realized Mattoso. Only the department heads were supposed to know about the hidden devices that would sound an alarm if any of the rotation components were tampered with.
CHENG Papka insisted that the new damage be dealt with, while Commander Konrote wanted to finish the repairs to the forward Can, and finally Captain Horovitz stepped in and sided with the GravTran Officer, ordering him to devote his department’s full efforts toward completing the repairs of the forward Can.
After nearly a day, the pandemonium died down, and Mattoso felt able to breathe easy for the first time.
And then the screams began.
CHAPTER 37
The lights in the Constabulary dimmed for the barest second. “…injured! No, the bot. It’s the bot! Get the—”
The emergency call cut off, and a shiver ran down Konami’s spine. The call came from Food Service station number 7.
Forward can, so that’s us. Konami had relocated shortly after Gregorian got it up and running. “Shofstahl, Lo, Goodluck, with me.” He had already given the order for every qualified constable to arm themselves, and he instinctively checked his own belt for the stunner and dart gun as they departed.
The surface passageways outside the Constabulary were deserted. The ship’s complement had been under a general curfew for hours. Konami tried to call the Food Service station, but there was no answer. He eyed the crisscrossing guycables and selected one, urging along his
constables, pulling himself along awkwardly hand-over-hand. At the bottom of the cable he pulled himself down to a squat, took hold of the friction guide, and bounded upward with all his might.
The sensation was like falling headfirst, and he had to struggle not to lash out with panic. He gently pulled himself back in line by the friction guide as he drifted slightly to the side, and accelerated by pulling himself forward along the cable with his free hand. As he approached the other side of the can, he carefully squeezed the handle of the friction guide to brake, and landed almost in a tumble.
A scream rang out just as he adjusted to the new orientation.
“Help!” A faceless voice among the abandoned passageways of the surface struck Konami as the most eerie thing he’d ever heard.
“Where are you?” answered Konami. Damn it! The voice came from the opposite direction from Food Service Station number seven.
“Ugh… trash compactor. Hab 7B.”
“Lo, Shofstahl, to the compactor. Call for MedTechs. Keep me informed. Goodluck, with me.”
As they pulled themselves down the passageway, Konami had to suppress the urge to say something to break the silence. He couldn’t recall the surface of a Can being this quiet. It wasn’t just the lack of people — the low, rumbling sound of the rotation would fade into the background, but it was always present. Until it’s sabotaged.
“Food Service station seven, if anyone is present, please respond,” he said into his wearable as they approached the structure. If the call had been from a wearable, the Emer system would have reported who made it, but the call had been from the station console.
There was no answer. Konami’s stomach did somersaults. They rounded a corner and approached from the back — Food Service stations consisted of a kitchen on the back side, and a cafeteria mess in front.
The back door was open, and brightly lit. Somehow he expected it to be dark — he took off his low-light goggles in a hurry before the enhanced light blinded him.
“Hello?” he called out into the doorway, small enough not to require a guycable. When there was no answer, he gestured to Constable Goodluck and they maneuvered inside. A slight, high-pitched buzzing sound greeted them in the short passageway.
“CI, Lo, we’re at the compactor—”
“Is it under control?”
“Yes—”
“Then I’ll get back to you.”
Hints of an old smell, one he hadn’t smelled in over a decade. Blood. Blood in an enclosed space — there was no odor like it. His stomach was a brick, somehow pulling him to the deck even in zero-gravity.
They rounded the corner to a grisly nightmare, all the more shocking in the bright overhead lighting. After a confusing moment, a pile of limbs floating against the aft bulkhead resolved itself into two people, a man and a woman, in Food Service coveralls, covered in blood. The whirring noise came from the bodies. Globules of blood leisurely pooled aft, drawn very slowly by the miniscule but continuous acceleration of Aotea’s propulsion drive.
“Oh my god,” said Constable Goodluck, open-mouthed.
“Medical emergency!” shouted Konami, as if the volume helped, into his wearable. “Food Service station seven — extreme trauma, two victims.”
“Acknowledged.”
Between the casualties and the constables floated a blood-smeared TaskBot, waist-high, in the center of the kitchen, with its extra limbs secured to a diagonal guycable. When rigged for freefall, the TaskBots changed from a gnomish but humanoid countenance to some degenerate cross between turtle and spider.
“Wait!” Konami cried as Goodluck started to approach, recalling the brief emergency call. “TaskBot — yeah, I’m talking to you — what happened here?”
The Bot’s domelike head swiveled. “Please restate your question.”
“What happened — damn it. Where did all this blood come from?”
“The blood came out of the bodies of Food Service Technicians Correa and Barr—”
Goddamn literal Bots… “I know that, TaskBot. How were they wounded?” Anxious as he was to check the status of the casualties, that frantic Emer call made him wary to come within reach of the Bot, and in the small, cluttered kitchen, that was nearly everywhere.
“Food Service Technician Correa was wounded when a chef’s knife penetrated his thigh, abdomen, neck, and face, and Food Service Technician Barrow was wounded when a chef’s knife penetrated her upper arm, shoulder, and back.”
Some old lesson about robotic and automated safety programming came to him. “Why didn’t you notify Emergency station when they were wounded?”
The Bot paused. “I am unable to answer that question.”
Konami snorted. “Where is the chef’s knife that caused the wounds?”
The Bot’s body swiveled, revealing the bloody knife in an appendage that had been hidden on its other side. “The chef’s knife is here.”
Konami instinctively put his hand on the dart gun. Fat lot of good that’ll do to a Bot… He shifted his hand to the stunner, though he was less than confident that even the contact stunner’s high voltage would damage a Bot.
“Oh god oh god…” muttered Goodluck, stopping after Konami gave him a brief glare.
Konami put in a call. “Kiro, Loesser, it’s Cy. Don’t argue. From now on, every constable or deputy on duty will carry a melee weapon. Something heavy and metal — hammer, fire axe, wrench, whatever. For now, improvise. Clear?”
“Clear,” they echoed, confusion apparent even in this one word.
“CI,” said Loesser. “We’ve had several more—”
“Can’t talk now. Casualties.”
“Understood.”
“TaskBot, let go of the knife.”
The Bot’s appendage dutifully released the knife, which remained floating in the center of the kitchen.
“TaskBot, move to the pantry — that one. Open the pantry.” It was fully stocked. “Okay, pick up the oil canister — yes, the big one. Release it behind you. Now go into the pantry and shut the door.” He turned to Goodluck. “Watch that pantry, but stay back!”
Konami pulled himself across the kitchen, avoiding the bloody, drifting knife. Up close, he could see that the wounds on the two Food Service Techs were deep, but haphazard. The two techs were stuck together, and he quickly figured out why — a mass of blood had clotted between Correa’s side and Barrow’s back. He reached for Barrow’s neck, but stopped short — something was stuck to her head. It was round, black, and convex, and with a start he realized it was a DustBot, and the source of the whirring noise.
What the hell? Very carefully, he reached for the Bot, which gave a shiver. “DustBot, let go.” He couldn’t recall if they were programmed for voice commands — ubiquitous as they were, Konami didn’t remember ever having interacted with one. Throughout the ship, DustBots consistently moved out of the way any time anyone approached, no matter what they were doing. Like birds and critters on Earth.
He tried the command again, but the Bot did not release its hold of Barrow’s hair, a length of which was deep inside its intake. Shit. Gingerly, he reached for the Bot. The barest moan escaped Barrow’s lips just as he grabbed the DustBot. It struggled as he tried to pull it free, and he gathered up the Tech’s hair in one hand so he wasn’t pulling against her skull. Damn, this thing is strong! He instinctively looked around for a pair of scissors, or something to cut her hair. His next thought — like a chef’s knife — stopped him cold, especially when he recalled the obedience of the TaskBot. TaskBot, bring me that knife… what the hell is going on?
“What in the moons of Jupiter…?” Konami looked up to see that the MedTechs — two of them — had arrived.
Konami pulled himself away. “Quickly, now — she’s alive, I think. Don’t know about the other. You’ll need to cut her hair — there’s a DustBot stuck… don’t ask.”
Konami checked with Goodluck as the MedTechs got to work. The pantry had stayed shut; apparently the TaskBot was as obedient as it was when they arr
ived. So what the hell happened?
He put in a call to his deputies. “Lo, Cy. Report.”
There was no answer, and he realized his wearable was dead. So was Goodluck’s. What the hell? Luckily, the food service console had a charging plug, and it restarted with no problem.
“Lo, Cy. Report.”
“We’re under control, CI. Wearable problems, but we got ‘em charged up again. Trash compactor hatch was stuck shut on someone’s arm. We looked up the specs and pulled the fuse on the panel underneath, and with no power, it opened up. Just bruises; no broken bones, but I had Shofstahl escort him to Medical anyway. Didn’t want to tie up Emer, especially with all the calls.”
All the calls? Don’t like the sound of that… “Good work. Report to the Constabulary, and arm yourself.”
“Already armed, CI. Stunner and dart gun.”
“Just ask Loesser or Kiro.”
“Understood, Lo out.”
He called up his two subordinates for a report on the latest Emer calls.
After they briefed him, his insides were knotted to the point of causing sharp pain.
He fingered another call. “Captain,” he said. “We’re under attack.”
CHAPTER 38
The XO ordered the latest casualty count through gritted teeth. The comms circuit was open, and the captain and other department heads were listening in.
The push to regain control of the ship had been going on for almost a day. “Safe” zones were rendered Bot-free and guarded at all access points, with melee-armed crewmen slowly extending the safe areas of the ship, room by room and passageway by passageway. Engineers and technicians followed, restoring systems and equipment to normal operation, though still on manual mode for any potentially dangerous gear.
Mattoso wiped her eyes and looked down at her console, operating in low power mode. “Thirty-seven major casualties,” she droned. “Five confirmed dead. Ten in serious or critical condition. Twenty-two fair or good.” Dozens more unaccounted for. Something had happened to nearly every wearable onboard — within an hour after the Spindown, they spontaneously discharged all their battery power. Anyone who had the bad luck of not being nearby a charging port might have no way of calling for help, at least not until the ambient bioelectric trickle, the backup, but glacially slow, method of charging that took advantage of the natural electric fields generated by the human body, got going.
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