by Amie Kaufman
Everyone, chum.
Everyone’s right, and everyone’s wrong.
And as Garver walks out of that huge room full of ghosts, holding a toy for his godson, Luke, in one hand, I see the moment he swears to himself he won’t go unheard again.
TRANSLATION
Alma
All right, we’re going. We can’t go on like this. Two thousand people die on her watch and the best she’s got is I’m sorry? Seventeen days of this ****, I’ve had enough.
I need you to get Fred, Johannes and Tran. I’ll get the others. Meet in storage this time tomorrow on Level 6, 20:00. Sharp. Tell them to arrive individually and by different stairwells—the last thing we need is for a group of us to get spotted by McCall and her puppets before we get off the ground.
Tell Tran to make the trade for that pistol. We’re going to need all the firepower we can get. And make sure McCubbin is sober this time, for crissakes.
Ben
THE MAO - SIDE VIEW
1. BRIDGE
2. SERVER CORE
3. CREW QUARTERS
4.ENGINEERING
5. ENGINE ROOMS
6. HANGAR BAYS
7. NUCLEAR BAY
What happens here is complicated, no two ways about it. I’m going to lay out where everybody starts and then give you the play-by-play. Are you paying attention? This is going to require focus.
In compiling this, I’ve drawn from cameras on the Mao’s bridge (Cameras 187, 188 and 189), in Engineering (Cameras 556, 557 and 560), in the Server Core (Cameras 222 and 223) and in the hallways (Cameras 242, 297, 544, 112 and 116). I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: I deserve a pay rise. Or, in fact, to be paid.
So let’s begin with a survey of where the main players are before all hell breaks loose.
Bridge (Level 1):
Captain Syra Boll is in conference with Navigator Yuki Hirano and Second Navigator Ronan Wells.
Systems Chief Kady Grant is seated at a console with one of her old neurogramming classmates, Michelle Dennis, and together they’re trying to figure out Travis Falk’s highly customized weapons system.
Sixteen other crew members are either busy or looking busy in various locations around the bridge. They include Brendan Ward, Rachael Craw, and more whose names you won’t need to learn for our purposes today.
Server Core (Level 2):
Felicity Vallence and Anna McFarlane have the Core all to themselves. They’re on a routine security sweep, and they’re meant to be in a group of four. They’re hoping the other two members of their team hurry back from their meal break.
Engineering (Level 4):
Yulin Zhuang, head of Engineering, is in a meeting with Peyak Trafford, head of Maintenance, and Kate Irving, his 2IC.
Danny Corron from Catering has just delivered a meal, because it doesn’t look like the meeting’s wrapping up anytime soon.
Twelve other crew members are busy coaxing the optimum combination of speed and efficiency out of the Mao’s engines.
Corridor Zeta-P (Level 6):
Ben Garver is holding a quiet meeting with the thirty men and women he has mustered to his cause. They include Garcia, McCubbin and French, three of Ezra Mason’s former pupils, and though the group consists mostly of Heimdall personnel, there are nine Hypatia alumni present. They’re armed with hand weapons.
Let’s see where this takes us, shall we? Spoiler alert: nowhere good.
In Corridor Zeta-P, Ben Garver is speaking to his group of thirty. His tone is low and urgent, and the sheer number of bodies packed into the narrow hall muffles the audio, but I can still make out most of what he’s saying. “The captain is doing what she believes is best,” he’s reminding his companions. “We can respect her intentions without bowing to her authority. This isn’t a matter of following flawed orders and complaining to someone else later. We’re less than two days out from Kerenza. If the wrong decisions are made when we get there, we die. That’s why we’re doing this.”
His followers murmur their agreement, shift their grips on their weapons. They mostly hold guns they grabbed from the weapons lockers on Heimdall but never got the chance to use.
“We’ll need every skilled person aboard this ship alive,” Garver continues. “Don’t kill unless it’s unavoidable. The person you shoot might be someone who has vital information. Be quick. Be smart. Report in when you’re done. Good luck.”
They part, breaking into preassigned groups and making their way throughout the ship. They walk quietly, with purpose, and other Mao refugees part for them, though it’s unlikely they know where they’re going.
We’ll start in the server room, where the story is simplest. Vallence and McFarlane are making the required eight-hourly visual inspection of the Core. The two women are slowly walking up and down the rows of servers, and though the servers are nowhere near as extensive as the set we saw on the Alexander—they’re not designed to power an AI like AIDAN—it’s still a long trip. Until its shutdown, AIDAN was housed here, and Vallence and McFarlane look like they’re walking through a graveyard. They’re jumpy, hands on the weapons at their hips, footsteps echoing.
Vallence is saying something brave, perhaps trying to impress McFarlane—romance might well be in the air here—when the pair round a corner and find themselves face to face with Frederick McCubbin and his squad of four. Or rather, face to gun.
McFarlane blinks and Vallence laughs nervously, maybe assuming this is a joke, until she registers McCubbin’s expression. “****,” she whispers. “What are you doing?”
“Giving you a choice,” McCubbin says, his voice a little thick around the nose Nik Malikov broke. He’s a big, bearded man, a fine network of veins tracing across red cheeks made redder by the flush he’s sporting courtesy of the brisk walk here. But his hand’s steady, his eyes steely. “Let’s do this the easy way.”
“You can’t fire in here,” McFarlane points out. “You can’t afford to hit the servers.”
And as if the words are an unspoken signal, she and Vallence throw themselves at McCubbin and the man behind him, grabbing for their weapons. They go down forty seconds later, clubbed from behind by two other members of the Hypatia crew.
As they crumple to the ground, McCubbin steps forward, thumbing off his safety and taking aim at the unconscious McFarlane’s temple.
The woman beside him, still rubbing her jaw, grabs his arm.
“I’m aiming at the floor,” McCubbin hisses. “I can’t hit anything important.”
“Garver said no unnecessary deaths,” she reminds him. “We need them all on our side after this is over. We’re doing this for them. Tie them up instead.”
So they do.
* * *
• • •
Meanwhile, Bea French leads the team heading for Engineering. There are two entrances to the department, and the team divides to cover both. She has five members behind her, four manning the second entrance. They’re not a trained fighting force, but they enter with guns lifted, and nobody in Engineering or Maintenance wears a sidearm.
All sixteen crew members present raise their voices in query or protest. French roars her orders: Sit down, shut up. Yulin Zhuang, a regular practitioner of xing yi quan, steps to the man nearest him, slamming him into the ground and taking his gun. Zhuang’s on his feet in an instant but finds himself looking down the business end of no fewer than five weapons. Slowly, he sets his pistol on the nearest console.
Two crew members make a run for it and come face to face with the mutineers. Bodies crash together, voices rise to screams and a shot is fired. It ricochets off the table where Peyak Trafford and Kate Irving are sitting, and every unarmed crew member hits the ground in a shower of sparks.
The sudden movement is diso
rienting, distracting, and it provides cover for Danny Corron to crawl to the intercom. The same nerve that held when Kady Grant and Winifred McCall led the Alexander survivors to safety shows through now. He slaps at the green button, lifting his voice. “Captain, there’s a—”
He gets no further, slumping to the ground as a pistol butt catches him across the back of the head, and twenty chaotic seconds later, order is restored. The crew lies on the ground, hands folded behind their heads, French and her team above them, and Irving is softly pleading to be allowed to tend to Corron’s wounds.
The intercom hisses, and an unconcerned voice from the bridge speaks. “Engineering, we didn’t catch that, could you please repeat?”
* * *
• • •
Down on Level 5 near the engine room a security team led by Winifred McCall is just finishing their sweep. Things seem quiet—there’s no hint of the violence breaking out elsewhere down here. McCall is set to call in to the bridge when an alarm starts screeching over the public address speakers.
“Warning: Fire. Level 5. Engine room. Warning: Fire. Level 5.”
“****,” McCall curses. “Let’s move!”
Weapons up and ready, the team moves quickly down the corridor. Red globes are spinning, the alarm’s screeching. The four SecTeam members sweep through the heavy door into the vast tangle of the engine room. They’re expecting sabotage, expecting hostiles, expecting anything but Engineer Sean Williams and four other tech personnel to saunter out and meet them with confused frowns.
“Williams?” McCall asks. “Where’s the fire?”
“No fire down here, Fred,” he shrugs. “Everything’s tip-top.”
“Then why is the goddamn alarm sc—”
Realization dawns. And just as McCall turns back to the engine room entrance, we see the smiling face of Alma Garcia as she slams the door shut, cycles the mechanical lock. Garcia busts open the keypad controlling the mechanism and tears out the wiring with her fist. Sparks rain onto the floor as the system dies.
On the other side, McCall slams into the door, kicks it with her boot.
“****! Garcia, open this ****ing door!”
She thumbs the intercom at her throat, speaking quickly.
“Syra? Syra, this is Fred, do you read me? Lock down the bridge!”
* * *
• • •
And now to the bridge, where a comms officer is leaning over his console, stabbing at the button in front of him, as if pressing it one more time might be the answer. “Engineering, we didn’t catch that, could you please repeat?”
Static is his only reply. He throws his head back, appealing to some unseen deity under his breath, and turns to look for someone he can push this problem onto.
Syra Boll stands with Ronan Wells and Yuki Hirano near the entrance, going over course calculations. She used to be the Hypatia’s navigator, after all. Perhaps it’s a comfort to her to tackle a question she feels confident she can answer.
When the doorway slides open to reveal Garver, it’s Wells, the most junior of the trio, who trudges over to deal with the interloper. After the funeral, Wells is expecting trouble but not bona fide physical assault.
Garver grabs the back of Wells’s neck and presses a gun to his head, making him a hostage in under three seconds. Wells shouts, eyes wide, and everyone on the bridge turns to Garver and his prisoner.
The pair shuffle forward, pistol pressing into Wells’s temple. Garver’s team slowly files in behind, guns already lifted. There are five armed officers on the bridge. Three draw their weapons, train them on Garver. Two keep their guns hidden, holding them low.
Kady Grant stands with student neurogrammer Michelle Dennis beside a large console, where they’ve been trying to untangle the weapons system commands. Both girls hold still, keeping their hands on the large portable console they’ve been using.
Kady’s shaking hand slides forward, very slowly, her index finger pressing on the touchscreen. The first keystroke of a command.
Boll has her hands up, and her voice is calm. “Garver, let’s talk about this. You know and I know that we need to find a way to end this peacefully. We—”
Ronan Wells bucks, trying to shake off Garver’s grip, no doubt praying the other man is distracted. Garver’s trigger finger tightens, there’s a muffled bang and Wells’s blood sprays across Yuki Hirano’s uniform. She screams as he folds to the ground, clamping her hands over her mouth to smother the noise.
None of the three cameras show Boll’s face, so it’s impossible to be sure of her expression in that moment. Is she trying to remain calm, or does she show her fury? Is she reliving the moment on the Hypatia when she saw Captain Chau shot? She’s a research scientist, and for all the danger she’s been through so far, this is only the second time she’s ever been held at gunpoint. She’s shouting something, but it’s impossible to make out over the screams on the bridge.
Garver steps over Wells’s body, raising his voice. “Lower your weapons—we don’t want to hurt you!”
He’s yelling at the officers holding the guns, but all the noise on the bridge dies at the sound of his voice. It subsides to ragged breathing and whimpers, and the three with their guns in plain sight comply, dropping them to the floor. Brendan Ward and Rachael Craw keep their weapons hidden.
McCall’s voice rings out over the bridge PA. “Syra? Syra, this is Fred, do you read me? Lock down the bridge!”
Garver whirls on Communications Officer Ellie Marney. “Shut that off.”
Grant’s shaking fingers slide again as Marney complies, punching in another couple of commands. Beside her, Dennis sees what she’s doing and moves her own hand fractionally, pressing the next key in the sequence.
Syra Boll speaks, her voice shaking: “Garver, are you insane?”
“I’m starting to think I’m one of the only sane people aboard.”
“You will not take command of this ship.”
Garver looks pointedly around the bridge. “I’m not sure what else you’d call this. We have the Server Core and Engineering. Now we have C & C. We only want what’s best for the people aboard.”
Boll raises her voice and firms it. “I will not yield command to you.”
An instant before Garver replies, Ward takes his safety off. The click it makes is the tiniest noise. But it’s audible.
Which means it might as well be deafening.
Ward swings his hand up, Craw a second behind him. Half a dozen pistols fire simultaneously, muzzle flashes blinding the cams, gunshots rising over the screams. It’s Garver’s bullet that rips through Boll’s throat. The captain’s hands fly up, grasping at the wound, blood bubbling through her fingers as she falls to the ground. As the officers and mutineers blast away at each other, she’s staring at the man who shot her, heaving wet, gasping breaths as her lungs fill with blood, crimson flowing from her hands down her arms as she tries to stanch the flow.
Then her hands fall away, and though the blood keeps pumping another twenty-three seconds, she’s unconscious from that moment onward. On her way already to meet the many gods she’s studied in her thirty-nine years.
Garver’s down on his knees behind a console, his right hand pressed to his bloody shoulder. Rachael Craw tagged him, then threw herself behind the navcomp, escaping the hail of gunfire that followed her. Screaming starts again, officers breaking and lunging for cover, Garver’s mutineers striding forward to take aim, to fire at those who refuse to hold still, who refuse to yield.
Kady Grant and Michelle Dennis huddle shoulder to shoulder beneath a bank of workstations, flinching and wincing as the gunfire rings across the bridge, Kady still gripping the portable console.
Five more of the sixteen officers and crew die in the next sixty seconds. Ward. Craw. Keighery. Bray. Seaborn. The gunfire and screams fade beneath Garver’s hoar
se shout: “Cease fire! Cease fire!”
Blood’s seeping between his fingers, but the bullet only grazed his shoulder, tearing through his shirt. He rises to his feet.
Syra Boll is dead. Her officers are outmatched.
He has command of the Mao.
What will his first order be?
His new command has cost lives—how does he imagine he can ever win loyalty now? Will he be forced to lead through fear?
But here are a few more questions we should be asking ourselves, and maybe some of you clever souls already have: Where is Ezra Mason during all this?
Where’s Hanna Donnelly? Nik Malikov? Ella Malikova?
Kids, Ben Garver called them at their first meeting.
Little Bumblebee, Travis Falk used to call Hanna Donnelly.
Travis Falk could pass on a warning or two to Ben Garver about unexpected stings, if he was still around to do it.
But he’s not.
And so…
PALMPAD IM: D2D NETWORK
Participants: Kady Grant (ByteMe)
Ella Malikova (Pauchok)
Date: 09/03/75
Timestamp: 20:20
ByteMe: el
Pauchok: sup k
ByteMe: garvr
Pauchok: sec, this crypter is making my rig run like a three legged dog. Some of these files u got me r ****ing huge
Pauchok: hanna sent me nik’s transcript of first few vid files btw, he’s actually pretty good at it. I mean he’s not dostoyevsky or anything but he can spell
Pauchok: btw u know where I can get some goldfish food? Mr biggles II is looking at me like he wants to eat me
Pauchok: kady?
Pauchok: u there?
ByteMe: bridge
Pauchok: wut about it
ByteMe: grver
ByteMe: murimyu
Pauchok: wut
Pauchok: is this ****ing language file corrupted again?