Playing God

by Sarah Zettel

  “And the ty Porath came in on our side, and the Getesaph fled behind their own walls. A week later, we lost the island to our erstwhile allies. Because my blood sisters and I ordered our troops to do nothing about it, we were hounded into exile. The Queens let us get away because they knew who had given the orders and that we would still be believed if we spoke before we could be killed.” Her skin trembled. Theia pressed against her, and Praeis could feel the waves of horror, sorrow, and confusion spilling off her. She wrapped her arm tightly around her daughter, and kept on speaking. “They will give their consent to this mission. They will not make me speak now.” She turned one ear toward Neys and the other toward Silv. “Are you with me in this?”

  They hesitated just the barest instant. “Yes, Task-Mother,” said Neys. Silv echoed her a second later. Then, with surprising force, so did Theia.

  “My Sisters.” Praeis grasped their hands. “My Daughter. We will do this. The Getesaph will pay.”

  Chapter XV

  CLANG!

  Marjorie Wilkes, junior engineer and victim of the graveyard shift, shot straight up in her chair. She sat in one of the engineering center's side cubes, sneaking in a little study for her mid-grade exams. Outside, a jumble of shouts and curses were muffled by the calm, forceful voice of Ozone, the ship's overarching artificial intelligence, ordering everybody who wasn't already there into the secondary domes immediately. Over it all, the chief engineer, her Uncle Teige, shouted:

  “Ozone, clear the dome!”

  Marjorie leapt to her feet and fumbled with the door latch. Barely an hour ago they'd gotten the order to stay in the secondary domes when the shift had finished. Most of the conversation since then had centered around the question of whether this was a drill, or the Old Woman catching paranoia from her friend Commander Keale, or whether there was something ready going on over in the dome most of the crew called Pogo Town. Marjorie had been on the contagious-paranoia side of the argument. Especially since she'd spent most of the week before helping put together Keale's “extra precautions.”

  Now, as she slammed the cube door open, she was flooded with the sick feeling that she might have been wrong.

  Out in the main dome, Marjorie was greeted by a wall of engineers’ backs. On tiptoe, she was almost as tall as a Dedelphi, and she stared over shoulders and between heads, not believing what she saw.

  The normally opaque dome was, by Uncle Teige's order, as clear as glass. Everybody's attention pointed toward the big dome of Pogo Town. A ragged hole gaped in the side. Debris spun off into space, blown by escaping air. One piece must have hit the engineering dome, causing the noise.

  Where're the patch jobbers? thought the engineer side of her brain.

  A pair of ladders had been laid against the deck. Two Dedelphi in white-and-yellow-webbed pressure suits gripped the rungs and crawled through the hole in the dome. Behind them, more Dedelphi handed out additional sections of ladder. One Dedelphi joined these to the ladder she was leaning against, as if she were laying down track. The other reached back to receive a big square of sheet metal, which she shoved against the dome. She was handed another sheet. She leaned that against the first, making a little tent over herself and her companion. Two more sheets made another tent smack up against the first. More sections of ladder were handed through. Another pair of Dedelphi climbed up behind the first These had welding torches, braces, and clamps.

  All at once, Marjorie saw what they were doing. They were building a tunnel. Out of steel. A tunnel heading straight for the engineering dome.

  “Ozone, get the captain. Dump the video logs to security with a red scramble and a red alert.” Teige's voice was more calm than she'd ever heard it. Normally, he seemed on the verge of an early heart attack. Marjorie glanced at him. His face was white as a ghost. “People, let's not stand here,” said Uncle Teige. “Everybody get—”

  “What the …?” Someone pointed.

  To the left and right of the tunnel, hatches in the deck, maybe half a meter in diameter, slid open. Four of them all together. Out of each rose an elongated mechanical assembly.

  Here it comes. Marjorie actually crossed her fingers. I swear I'll listen to anything Keale ever says after this if this just works, I swear. I swear.

  The guns unfolded themselves into a sleek shape that allowed for rapid fire and continuous reload.

  “That's not in the spec,” said someone else, high and sharp, on the verge of hysteria.

  The guns, silent in the vacuum, opened fire. The hand of the nearest pogo exploded into a red cloud. She fell back. The helmet on another cracked and in the next second she had no face. She fell, too. The steel sheet she held began to topple. Two more pogos grabbed the steel. The wounded ones were handed down the ladder. A pogo with a welding torch fell next, blood and skin splattering against the improvised tunnel. Another pogo grabbed the equipment up and took her place, welding the steel sheets together. More sheets, more ladders and more braces. One of the Dedelphi glanced up at the Humans, stunned and staring inside their dome, and looked down to her work again as if they were nothing more than fish in an aquarium.

  “All hands!” Captain Esmeraude's voice exploded over the intercom. “Cut and run! I repeat, cut and run! Reassemble at the main hangar!”

  Marjorie felt her jaw drop. Cut and run. Sabotage what you could and get out of there. She knew the order existed, but she'd never in a million years expected to hear it given. All at once, exit instructions started scrolling across her camera eye.

  “Ozone, cloud the dome!” shouted Teige, sounding more like his usually outraged self. The roof and walls resumed their normal milky color. Whatever was going on outside was going on without them. “Bran, Gale, get in the hole and find out what's going on down there. Do what you can. Colin, we're cutting out here. Everybody else, evac! Let's move it!” Uncle Teige's hands flew across his station while he talked. One by one, the engineering stations shut down.

  Bran and Gale opened the floor hatches and clambered down the ladders. Colin yanked his pry-key off his belt and flipped open the nearest station's paneling. A pair of wire cutters gleamed in his other hand.

  Marjorie forced her way out of the crowd of engineers and headed for the equipment locker. They had time, not much, but time. The welding equipment the pogos carried had given her an idea. They could melt large sections of wiring if they hurried.

  “Marjorie …” began Uncle Teige angrily.

  The dome shivered. A deep, resounding boom filled the chamber, followed fast by the sound of shattering doped-glass and a hurricane wind rushing toward the mouthlike hole in the dome's side. A few people fed onto their backs and were dragged out of the main path of the wind by friends. Through the ragged hole, Marjorie saw the Dedelphi and their tunnel just three meters away. The bullets sparked and ricocheted off the steel, but didn't cut through it.

  The interior hatches slammed shut. Until the pressure stabilized, the hatches would not open again. They were trapped. Marjorie leapt for the patch locker.

  “Two-by-two!” shouted someone.

  Marjorie scanned the red labels on the patch frames and hauled out the two-meter-by-two-meter polymer patch. Hands grabbed the handles on the far side of the transparent patch. She looked up. Harry Dale. Together, they angled the patch into the wind. Through the new hole, the pogos looked up at them. They had packs strapped to their backs, and guns strapped to their sides. They slapped brackets onto their sheet metal to hook them together until the welders could get to them.

  Marjorie's hands gripped the patch handles until her knuckles turned white.

  “Let it go!” shouted Harry to be heard over the wind.

  Marjorie let both handles go. The wind pushed the patch over the hole, and died away.

  Through the transparent polymer, Marjorie saw the lead Dedelphi receive two more sheets of metal and set each up in turn until her colleague could bracket them in place.

  “What in the shadow of sanity are they doing?” asked Harry.

&nbs
p; Marjorie heard the distinctive snickt of the hatchways loosening again.

  “One at a time, people,” said Uncle Teige. He pulled the command word out of its slot.

  Marjorie turned to join the line for the hatch. Behind her, something thick began to rip.

  Calm vanished and took order with it. The air was filled with screams and shouts and everybody trying to cram themselves through the hatchways.

  “Stop!” called a Dedelphi voice. “You will not be hurt if you stop right now!”

  Without thinking, Marjorie looked for her uncle. He dropped the command key to the deck. A Dedelphi leapt forward and tackled him just as he brought his foot down to smash it. Another snatched the key off the deck.

  Marjorie launched herself at the Dedelphi and seized the Dedelphi's wrist, grappling for the key. The startled pogo's eyes widened and despite its helmet, its nostrils slapped shut. Marjorie snatched at the word, but hands grabbed her around the waist and hauled her off.

  As she was swung around she saw pogos in the middle of the crowd of Humans, dragging them out of the way and tossing them aside, ignoring the blows that some tried to fight back with. Two of them held Uncle Teige's hands.

  Then she saw two more holding a polymer bag. She kicked out, connecting with leathery flesh. Something smashed into the side of her head, and she saw stars. Before she could regain control, her captors shoved her into a fetal position and stuffed her into the bag. She heard a zip and a snap, and they dropped her onto the deck.

  She scrambled onto her knees. Her hands pushed at transparent polymer and her lungs heaved hard as she imagined her air being cut off. After a long, terrified minute she was able to identify what had happened.

  They'd shoved her into a rescue bad. She'd been in one before. They all had training in the things before they got space duty. It was a very cheap, very compact escape capsule. When the thing hit vacuum, its micropores would seal and its autopressure would activate. She'd find herself in a thick-skinned bubble, with minimal directional control, and about six hours of air.

  Where'd they get them all? Oh, right, the emergency lockers are stuffed full of the things. There should be one for everybody.

  As her head cleared, her hands reached immediately for the zipper seals, and didn't find them. She blinked away the last of the stars and looked more closely at the opening. The inside tabs had been cut clean off.

  “Bastards!” she breathed as she scrabbled at the seals, trying to find any kind of purchase to get them open. Nothing. She reached for her tool belt. It was gone.

  Four other crew members lay similarly bagged on the deck. Harry, Toshi, Liv, Anjai. She couldn't see Uncle Teige. She squirmed around. He was on the other side of her. More bodies in more rescue balls were tossed next to them. She twisted toward the entrance hole. The tunnel was finished. Pogos swarmed up the ladders in an unbroken stream to meet their compatriots and receive their orders. A whole crowd of them barreled through the hatchways and into the ship. Another gang opened the deck hatches and swarmed down the ladders.

  Five minutes, Marjorie crawled backward as far as her ball would let her. Five minutes and they got us.

  “Marjie?” said Uncle Teige.

  She turned around, shoving polymer out of her way as she did. “Hey, Unc,” she said weakly.

  “You're okay?”

  “Yeah.” She crossed her legs and tried to ignore the polymer pressing against her head like a tent falling down on its occupant. “What now?”

  He cast a worried glance at the pogos taking over his command. She knew he must be seeing how every one of them carried a gun, and how there were no Humans left free. From the look on his face, he was also kicking himself for losing the command word.

  “Now we wait and see why they've left us alive.”

  “All hands!” Captain Esmeraude's voice exploded over the intercom. “Cut and run! I repeat, cut and run! Reassemble at the main hangar!”

  “Name of God!” Commander Rudu King shot out of his chair.

  The rest of his crew was on their feet with him. His heart beat out of control. All twelve of them were expert at their jobs, but right now they were all looking right at him to ask what to do about a … What? Mutiny? Revolt?

  Anger flared inside him. If their guests wanted the ship, they were going to have to work for it.

  “You heard the order. Get to the hangars.” He threw open the locker door and grabbed a pair of magnetic slippers. “I'm going to dump the grid.” He kicked off his shoes and shoved the slippers on over his boots.

  The crew looked at each other. He saw them thinking: Dump? He's going to shut the gravity down?

  “It'll do the most damage and be impossible for them to undo.” He drew the command word out of its slot in the central table and tucked it into an inner pocket of his coverall.

  Each tractor unit held a toroid of fast-rotating neutral particles. If charged particles were dumped into the mix, the carefully balanced particle doughnuts would start to burn out, letting loose X rays and good, old-fashioned heat. Lots and lots of heat. If you had to shut a tractor down, you were supposed to do it with the shields down and the area cleared. Shut them all down at once, without the proper precautions, and you could fry all six maintenance decks.

  “Commander, it's not worth it,” said Elisha, a good gravitor with a lousy singing voice that he exercised whenever he thought no one was listening.

  “I say it is.” King yanked open the floor hatch to the inner stairway. “Now, get out of here. Make it look like we all just ran for it.”

  Rudu climbed down the ladder into the grid shaft. It was a glass tube that was never as well lit as he'd like. The work platforms that stuck out at regular intervals all had their own little sources of white light. All around him, through the glass, he could see the tractors in their yokes. Their familiar push-and-pull buffeted at his body and his senses.

  Gravity at this level was tricky. With luck, that would slow the Dedelphi down. If they got into the wrong sections, the opposing forces and sudden flip-flops might actually make them sick and take them out of action. Most first-year gravitors puked their guts out for weeks.

  On the other hand, the Dedelphi were incredible swimmers. Half possum, half seal, someone had once said. Who knew if the sensations of falling and not being upright would bother them as much as ground-based Humans.

  King redoubled his speed.

  At its least subtle, the gravity would turn you upside down if you climbed down too far. The grid was actually two grids, one for the A side, and one for the B side. Each grid pulled the objects on the surface toward the decks. So, when you crossed the ship's equator, up and down reversed themselves and no matter what your eyes told you, your whole body told you your feet now pointed at the ceiling. There was a red line at the switch-over point, but it didn't do anything to ease the transition.

  This shaft took him down between sections AX-12/AY-12; 12/12 stretched into Pogo Town. From any one of the work platforms, he could angle the tractors out of phase, send gravity in all directions, shoving people sideways into the sides of buildings, or plaster them against the top of the dome. Do that first? Create some confusion?

  No. It'd throw off any security actions. Worse, if he got it wrong, he could send one of those apartment buildings shooting through the dome like a rocket and endanger all their allies as well as their enemies. Anyway, rotating the tractors was something the Dedelphi could undo with the help of the computer, or a scared engineer.

  No, shut off gravity and see how they liked dealing with all that water and everything from Dedelphi, to fish, to furniture, not to mention the soil, and all those plants rooted in it going into uncontrolled free fall, and as a bonus having the ship's vital works turned into one gigantic oven.

  Bioverse would be taking the damage out of his pay from now ’til Doomsday, but he was not leaving his ship to the pogos. He was not.

  Overhead, the hatch clanged shut, cutting off the shaft of light from the main control chamber. Somebody mu
st have shut him in. The pogos must have made it down to gravitor's ops. If that hatch opened now, they'd see him, or they'd hear him. There was nowhere to hide.

  Except maybe there was.

  There was a platform just above the changeover line. King opened the gate in the safety rails and climbed onto it. Above him, over the humming of the grid, he heard someone crank open the hatch.

  King swung over the safety rail. He lowered himself over the platform's edge until he hung by his hands and his body dangled straight down the shaft. His feet were still a good meter from the changeover line. He prayed he was close enough and raised his legs until his toes touched the underside of the platform. He felt a slight push underneath him, like he was sitting on water, and he let go.

  His head swooped down. He bit his lips. The soles of his slippers grabbed the bottom of the platform, and he hung there, head down. The weak magnets were helped just enough by the confused gravity so he stayed in place, an exotic icicle growing from the bottom of the work platform.

  He gripped the support girders and pulled himself “up” until he crouched like a spider in the shadows.

  Dedelphi climbed down the ladders. The Dedelphi, with their long, grasping toes, loved ladders. They called to one another in their own language, curses or orders, or shouts of excitement, King couldn't tell. He held his breath.

  Don't think of it. Please, don't let them think of it.

  One of the Dedelphi barked out a set of syllables. Two of them split off and started down a horizontal access tunnel. Two of them kept going down the shaft. They exclaimed loudly as they hit the changeover.

  King let himself smile in the darkness.

  He waited until the sounds of voices and struggles faded. He strained his ears. Nothing.

  King crawled back onto the upper side of the platform and pulled himself back over the security rail. He faced the comm station and slid the command word into the auxiliary slot. He poised his hands over the keyboard and lined up the procedures in his head.