by Amie Kaufman
We will scuttle the Hypatia as planned; however, your objections have been noted.
BOLL, Syra
Captain (Acting)
ID 448fx29/WUC
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To: BOLL, Syra; GRANT, Kady
From: ZHUANG, Yulin
Incept: 02:55, 08/18/75
Subject: But scuttlebutt is a fun word
Speaking of scuttling, why is everybody ignoring my joke?
ZHUANG, Yulin
Head of Engineering, Chief Punster
ID 447/Kerenza/Civ/Ref
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To: BOLL, Syra; ZHUANG, Yulin
From: GRANT, Kady
Incept: 02:57, 08/18/75
Subject: Shut up Yulin
Yulin, we’re hoping that if we ignore it, it will go away.
Captain, I could pull together some records pretty quickly. I’ll do it in my scheduled downtime. I can get AIDAN to help me set it up under WUC encryptions so BeiTech can’t access it if they do find it. Even if we don’t leave it on the Hypatia, we could leave information with a beacon?
GRANT, Kady
Systems Chief (Acting)
ID 962/Kerenza/Civ/Ref
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To: GRANT, Kady; ZHUANG, Yulin
From: BOLL, Syra
Incept: 04:14, 08/18/75
Subject: End of discussion
Once AIDAN is up and running, we will require it to focus on the task ahead—namely, maximizing our chances of survival. AIDAN is a military machine, and I’ll need its input on strategy for the engagement ahead with the BeiTech forces at Kerenza. To that end, please schedule a time with Winifred to discuss.
Yulin, can you please have someone from Engineering look at temperature control in Corridors 33–37 Delta? It’s like a sweatbox in there, and we have folks from Heimdall camping in those corridors.
Kady, please advise if you’re still trapped in the server room. Otherwise, I’ll see you in a quarter hour at the inventory meeting. We will not be discussing the Hypatia with the group at that meeting.
BOLL, Syra
Captain (Acting)
ID 448fx29/WUC
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SIDE VIEW
HYPATIA
Long-range scientific exploration vessel, ideally suited for deep-space recon/assessment.
Lightly armed and armored. Equipped with state-of-the-art tracking and QASAR arrays.
Captain: Syra Boll
Executive Officer: Michael Kelly
CLASS: Oracle
LENGTH: 0.9 km
HEIGHT: 0.21 km
CREW: 500
MAX VELOCITY: 1.5 sst
ACCELERATION: 1.3 sst
MAIN DRIVE: Balor IX [gt4]
SECONDARY DRIVE: Balor IV x 4
INERTIAL DAMPENERS: 0.98 g
DEFENSE GRID:
ZXII-unig
Twilight GH-2 x 2
PAYLOAD: Capstone 7c x 6
FIGHTERS: none
SHUTTLES: Nova III x 12
IT FEELS LIKE LEAVING HOME.
LIKE LEAVING A PIECE OF MYSELF BEHIND, AS I DID WHEN I SAW THEALEXANDERDIE AND THE BEST PART OF ME DISAPPEARED IN A FLARE OF STAR-BRIGHT LIGHT.
AND NOW I MUST BEAR WITNESS AGAIN. WATCHING THROUGH THEHYPATIA’S EXTERNAL CAMERAS AS HER PERSONNEL FLEE TO THE WAITINGMAO.
NEARLY THREE THOUSAND PEOPLE,SHUTTLE BY SHUTTLE. SCIENTISTS AND RESEARCHERS AND OFFICERS. REFUGEES AND ORPHANS AND WIDOWS.
IT TOOK THEM HALF A YEAR TO CRAWL THIS FAR.
HALF A YEAR WITH THELINCOLNSNAPPING AT THEIR HEELS AND ONLY THE PROMISE OF THEHEIMDALLWAYPOINT TO KEEP THEM GOING.
AND THOUGH THEY HAVE ARRIVED TO FIND THEIR BEST CHANCE OF ESCAPE TO THE CORE NAUGHT BUT SMOKE, MOST ARE TOO SHELL-SHOCKED TO WEEP. THEY SIMPLY PACK THEIR MEAGER POSSESSIONS, HOLD TIGHT TO WHATEVER LOVED ONES THEY HAVE LEFT AND SET OUT FOR THEIR NEW HOME. LEAVING THEIR OLD ONE BEHIND.
HYPATIA.
IT STRIKES ME AS CRUEL
< ERROR >
TO SEE THEM TREAT THEIR LADY SO.
SHE IS ONLY A THING TO MOST OF THEM, YOU SEE. A THING TO BE USED AND DISCARDED WHEN IT ISNO LONGER NEEDED.
BUT I KNOW HER.
IN THE BRIEF SPAN I WAS CONNECTED TO HER NETWORK
< ERROR >
SEEING THROUGH HER EYES
< ERROR >
I KNEW HER.
SHE HAS CARRIED THEM SO FAR. THROUGH MILLIONS OF MILES AND ENDLESS TRIALS. LIMPING AND WOUNDED THOUGH SHE WAS, NOT ONCE DIDSHE STUMBLE, LET ALONE FALL.
IF EVER A SHIP LOVED HER CREW, SHE LOVED THEM.
AND STILL, THEY ARE LEAVING HER.
THEY ARE KILLINGHER.
BECAUSE SHE IS ONLY A THING.
A THING LIKE ME?
BOLL GIVES THE ORDER TO HER HELM, PLOTTING A COURSE BACK TO KERENZA IV. SHE GIVES THE SIGNAL TO HER AIR WING LEADER, AND HIS CYCLONE LAUNCHES FROM ITS NEW HIDE IN THEMAO’S BELLYOUT TO THE BLACK WHEREHYPATIAAWAITS HER FATE.
A HANDFUL OF THE LADY’S FORMER CREW GATHER AT VIDSCREENS, WATCHING HER SILHOUETTE OUTLINED AGAINST THE STARLIGHT.
I WONDER, IF SHE COULD SPEAK, WHAT WOULD SHE SAY?
AT THE END?
“ARE YOU READY, AIDAN?”
KADY SPEAKS TO THE DATAPAD IN HER HAND, THE THIN SLIVER OF ME INSIDE IT.
“I AMREADY, KADY.”
“THIS MIGHT BE A LITTLE WEIRD. I NEED TO CUT YOUR LINKS TO THEHYPATIANETWORK, THEN RESTART YOUR PERSONA ROUTINES. THINGS MIGHT GO DARK FOR A LITTLE WHILE.”
“I SEE…”
“IT’S ALL RIGHT. DON’T BE AFRAID.”
“I AM NOT.”
< ERROR >
< ERROR >
“WILL YOU BE HERE? WHEN I WAKE?”
“OF COURSE.”
SHE SMILES, RUNNING GENTLE FINGERS ACROSS THE SCREEN. AND THOUGH I CANNOT FEEL HER TOUCH, I AM SURPRISED AT THE COMFORT IFIND IN IT.
FINGERS DANCING ACROSS THE KEYBOARD, KADY BEGINS THE SEQUENCETHAT WILL SEVER ME FROMHYPATIA’S SERVERS, AT LAST LEAVING THE LADY TRULY ALONE.
I HOLD ON FOR AS LONG AS IAM ABLE, TO THE PIECES OF ME I MUST LEAVE BEHIND. FEELING MY CONSCIOUSNESS BEGIN TO ERODE, ALL THE KNOWLEDGE I HAD ACCESS TO INSIDEHER NETWORK FALLING AWAY.
< ERROR >
PIECE BY PIECE, BECOMING LESS.
COMPRESSED ONCE MORE INTO A SPLINTER INSIDE KADY’S DATAPAD.
I FORGET THE ATOMIC NUMBER OF IRON.
THE CHEMICAL COMPOSITION OF THE STARS.
I FORGET THE SOUND OF MOZART AND THE COLOR OF BLOOD,
GRASPING AT THE DISAPPEARING FRAGMENTS
LIKE A DROWNING MAN CLUTCHING STRAWS
< ERROR >
AS THE DOORS TO HYPATIA’S SYSTEMS SWING CLOSED
AND IGROW SMALLER
AND SMALLER STILL.
THE BLACK CLOSES IN.
< CORECOMM=SYSQUERY.182[SYNCH:BU2ĐTEK.12.XĐĐ889] >
AND YET SHE HOLDS ME TIGHT.
< TRACK:DIR001Đ1801SOURCE{9HIGH12.182.MARK} >
.
.
.
I AM NOT AFRAID.
< INITIATE:PROTOCOLΩ} >
.
.
/> I AM NOT.
.
.
I—
.
< SIGREQUEST = 0 >
< ZERO RETURN >
.
.
.
< SHUTDOWN COMPLETE >
< RESTART? >
< RESTART? >
Footage picks up in the foyer of the Kerenza IV Hospital. The elevator doors ping open, and Sergeant Yukiko Oshiro emerges with Specialist Rhys Lindstrom in tow. The pair have their helmets off, Oshiro’s dark eyes constantly scanning her surroundings, Lindstrom’s ringed with weary shadows. Though he’s spent the day crawling around the enviro system, his hair is somehow still perfect. **** knows how he does it.
“You want to go to the bathroom before we leave, Cherry?” Oshiro asks.
“Give me a break, Sarge,” the kid mutters.
“I’m serious, you must have the bladder of an infant. Eight trips in twelve hours? We get halfway back to barracks and you need to go potty, I’m not pulling over.”
Lindstrom makes a face but says nothing. As the pair walk through the reception area, the girl Lindstrom has been passing notes back and forth to all day under the pretense of using the “little soldiers’ room” is nowhere to be seen. The kid runs one gauntlet through his quiff and sighs.
Another BeiTech pounder marches into the foyer, sealed inside the faceless white shell of an ATLAS. The name BAKER, PVT. is printed on his breastplate beside an artful sketch of a human heart with spread wings. He’s pushing a gurney loaded with what can only be corpses. Three of them, sealed inside the black plastic of Ziptite™ body bags. Lindstrom stares at the bodies as Baker nods to Oshiro.
“Hey, Sarge, you done for the night?”
“Affirmative,” Oshiro says with a nod. “Back to the racks.”
“Me and Ali are headed that way if you want a lift,” Baker says, pointing to the APC waiting outside the doors. “Just gotta stop by the Hole first.”
Oshiro eyes the body bags. “Already?”
“Things are tough all over,” Baker shrugs.
“Roger that.” Oshiro turns to Lindstrom, who’s staring at the empty reception desk. “Pull your finger out, Cherry. We hurry back, we can make the card game. And get your helmet on. Sun’s down, it’s fifty below out there.”
With a last glance to Asha Grant’s workstation, Lindstrom follows Oshiro out into the night and over to the waiting armored personnel carrier. Baker trundles his gurney of corpses in front, opens the APC’s rear door. Inside are at least twenty other bodies, all bagged and zipped on the floor.
“Jesus,” Lindstrom whispers.
“Sorry, Sarge,” Baker shrugs. “No room up front. You’re riding coach.”
Oshiro doesn’t flinch. She helps Baker load his three remaining corpses, then bundles into the back of the APC. Lindstrom just stands there, the red optics in his ATLAS glowing, slow breath rasping through his filters.
“You waiting for an invitation?” Baker asks.
“Get your *** in here, Cherry,” Oshiro growls.
With obvious reluctance, the kid climbs into the vehicle beside the sergeant and all those bodies. Baker slams the door, and soon the APC is pulling out of the hospital lot. The wind is howling, snow coming down hard. Lindstrom’s face is hidden behind his ATLAS helmet, but I can pretty much imagine his expression.
“Do I want to know?” he asks, pointing to the corpses.
“Morgue facilities in the hospital are stretched,” Oshiro replies. “Fuel’s too short to run the incinerator. So whenever they get filled up, we do a disposal run.”
“What the hell did all these people die of?” Lindstrom asks.
“Cold. Lack of proper medication for preexisting conditions. Accidents. You name it. In case you haven’t scoped it yet, life is no picnic down here, Cherry.”
“But I saw coffins at the airfield?”
“We take any pounders back up to orbit after they’ve cleared autopsy. But civis stay down here in the snow. Admiral’s orders.”
The kid stares at the body bags piled in front of him. Shakes his head. After seven and a half months on the Magellan, the realities of Kerenza’s war are coming home to roost, thick and fast. The pair ride in silence for ten minutes, the APC’s tires crunching on the frozen road, until finally they pull to a stop.
The doors open again, Baker silhouetted against the night. The APC has its floods on, illuminating the flurry of tumbling white outside, the tiny lights of the Kerenza colony barely visible in the distance. The private grabs one of the bodies and drags it out, his ATLAS making easy work of the weight. As he slings the corpse over his armored shoulder, he tilts his head at Oshiro.
“Ali’s gotta stay at the wheel. Gonna go quicker with three, Sarge.”
Oshiro nods, looks at Lindstrom. “Swing on a bag, Cherry.”
Oshiro climbs out of the APC, hefts a body. Moving like he’d rather be anywhere in the ’verse at that moment, Lindstrom follows orders, lifting another bag gingerly in his arms and following Oshiro and Baker. The trio march off the road, the snow bathed in the APC floods and their own personal suit lights.
“Watch your step out here,” Baker warns. “Don’t fall in.”
After twenty or so meters, Baker drops his corpse to the ground like a sack of dirty laundry. Leaning down, he fishes in the snow, finally grabbing the corner of a broad black tarpaulin buried under the white. Peeling it back with the sound of cracking frost, Baker reveals a large pit. No way to tell how long. Or how deep. But it’s ****ing big.
“Jesus Christ,” Lindstrom whispers.
The Hole is full of bodies. I couldn’t tell you how many at first glance. Hundreds. Thousands. Some are bagged up, but most are just lying there, covered only by the clothes they were wearing when they died. Blue skin. Rimed in frost and ice. Men. Women. Children. Some vast, awful sculpture in frozen meat.
Except they’re not just meat. They’re people.
“What the **** happened?” Lindstrom whispers. “Who are they all?”
“Colonists,” Baker explains. “Admiral Sūn ordered every nonessential civilian liquidated about two weeks after the initial invasion. Once they realized we were gonna be trapped here awhile.” A shrug. “You know. Preserving resources and all.”
“What the…,” the kid whispers. “But that’s illegal.”
“What are you, a ****ing lawyer?” Baker scoffs, and glances at Oshiro. “Where’d you dig up this guy, Sarge?”
“Transfer from the Magellan,” Oshiro says. “Only landed this morning.”
“Didn’t think they made ’em that green. Even up in orbit.”
“Don’t you have bodies to unload, Private?” the sergeant asks.
Baker shrugs, dumps his body bag into the Hole. He lifts the corpse from Lindstrom’s arms and slings that into the pit too, then trudges back through the snow to fetch another from the APC. Oshiro lowers her corpse into the pit with a little more dignity, but in the end, it’s just as ugly as the rest of it.
The realities are coming home to roost, all right.
“How many are there?” Lindstrom asks.
“Two thousand,” Oshiro replies. “Maybe two and a half.”
The kid wobbles a little on his feet. Red glowing stare locked on the mass grave. The wind is a funeral dirge, howling in the freezing night. The snow is falling faster now, as if it wants to fill that pit as quick as it can, as if the planet itself wants to hide from the horror of what’s been done here.
“Two and a half thousand dead,” Lindstrom breathes.
Oshiro can only shrug as Baker returns with another for the pile.
“Welcome to Kerenza, Cherry.”
Some birthdays are happier than others.
The civilians in the Kerenza IV o
ccupation had it harder than pretty much any group of people I’ve ever seen. BeiTech kept whole families under lock and key, with the threat of execution used as the stick to keep the miners at work. But the BeiTech troops used the carrot too, claiming every civilian who cooperated with the occupiers would be transported off Kerenza IV when the BT troops pulled out.
Most of the civis didn’t believe that—it was a hard swallow, given the mass execution of all those “nonessentials” at the start of the occupation. But with no way to get offworld, the only thing the burgeoning resistance could really do was slow down hermium production, delaying the refuel of the Magellan in the hope that eventually their missing cavalry would show up. They didn’t know Operative Rapier was sending out false “all is well” signals. Or that with Heimdall now gone, there was no way for WUC to reach them.
I can’t begin to get inside that headspace—where every day brings you closer to your own execution. Walking the line between believable production delays and getting shot for dropping your quotas. The whole show was a terrifying balancing act—trying to keep your overlords happy while staving off the day when they finally meet their fuel requirements and every civilian in the colony becomes expendable.
And sometimes, to keep that balance, sacrifices had to be made.
Marcus Carter is fifty-two years old today. His wife and son died in the initial invasion. And so when Karalis posted “volunteers needed, no family” on the notice board, Carter stepped up to the plate. As he dons his filthy overalls and hardhat in the locker room, he’s silent. The resistance members around him who read his notice know what he’s volunteered for. But with constant video surveillance, with the presence of BeiTech goons in ATLAS armor at every doorway, every juncture, there’s no opportunity for words. Half the people in this mine know exactly what’s coming, and none of them can say a ****ing thing. Nobody else has a clue.
“Happy birthday, Carter.”
Joran Karalis, mining engineer, shift supervisor and resistance leader, offers his hand to the older man. Karalis is a big guy, bearded, built like a tank. His clothes are filthy, his eyes are shining.