Children of the Divide

by Patrick S. Tomlinson

  “What are you doing with my ship?” Jian asked, but the ceiling went silent again. “Madeja?” he demanded.

  Nothing.

  Jian pounded the bulkhead with his fist until he was afraid his hand would break, then took several deep, furious breaths. He felt Kirkland’s hand on his shoulder, even through the thick compressive mesh of his skin-suit.

  “What are we going to do, boss?”

  Jian looked around at the rest of his team’s anxious, confused, expectant faces. They were looking at him. Looking to him. He held his arms out and motioned for everyone to huddle up. Everyone except Rakunas, who’d come to rest at the rear of the cargo hold. Jian motioned to him to stay in place.

  Once they were all in a floating circle, Jian opened an encrypted plant link between them, bypassing the shuttle’s systems entirely by setting up a temporary dedicated network. It wasn’t inconceivable that Madeja could hack into it and eavesdrop on the conversation, but breaking the encryption would take time and attention that he strongly suspected she didn’t have to spare at the moment.

  Jian started. He glanced up at the folding cargo doors than made up the shuttle’s ceiling.

  one of the techs pleaded.

  shouted another.

  Kirkland said.

  Jian barked.

  Kirkland shook her head.

  Jian snapped.

  the fretting tech said.

  Jian said.

 

 

  “That better be a prayer circle, children,” Madeja said through the PA system.

  Jian held his hands together in a rather half-hearted display of piety.

 

  Jian let a few seconds slip away while the full implications of his words settled.

  Kirkland said.

  Rakunas followed.

  one of the techs said.

  Kirkland pointed out.

  Rakunas asked.

  Jian shook his head.

  Kirkland said.

  Rakunas said.

  Everyone turned to quizzically look at him floating at the far end of the cargo bay.

 

  Kirkland said.

  Jian said.

 

  Jian ignored this.

  Rakunas said.

  Jian said.

 

  Jian said.

  Kirkland said.

  Jian said.

 

  Smartly, Rakunas floated behind a row of containers that had been lashed down tightly to holdfasts built into the floor for the return journey. It kept him mostly out of sight of the compartments’ cameras while he worked his way towards the container where Polly had been stored.

  But not entirely concealed. He risked being spotted, to be sure. Jian just hoped that whatever fraction of Madeja’s focus was being spent on the cargo compartment, the majority of it rested on the circle of crewmembers and not Rakunas sulking alone among the shadows.

  He reached the sealed crate and broke the negative pressure inside with a small hiss, then let the lid float gently to the side. With more than a little hesitation, Rakunas stuck a hand inside the container.

 

  Jian said.

  he protested.

 

 

  Jian swallowed hard. Clever little bug. His confidence in this crazy idea started to waver.

  Rakunas held up the sample jar which, once again, contained Polly. The little bug seemed quite agitated.

 

  Rakunas said.

  Jian said.

  one of the others said.

  Rakunas shoved the sample jar into the helmet and braced himself with the fixed container.

 

  Jian put a toe through an anchor loop in the floor and nodded.

  Rakunas hauled back his arm, then sent the helmet hurling through the air.

 

  Jian’s eyes locked onto it as it tumbled towards him. He hadn’t been old enough to play Zero before they’d arrived at Gaia, but his hand-eye coordination was certainly adequate to catch a helmet moving in a perfectly straight line.

  Which was when it took a hard turn to the left and bounced off the wall.

  “Shit!” Jian said aloud before cursing himself.

  Kirkland said. She kicked off from the bulkhead and angled towards the ricocheting helmet, expertly compensating for the curvature of her path caused by the changing direction of the shuttle. With her arm stretched out to its absolute limits, she managed to get a single finger looped inside one of the helmet’s equipment anchors, but it was enough. Without a second glance, she swung it back towards Jian. At first, his eyes told him it was going to go wide, but then it curved sharply towards him as the shuttle’s course correction took hold of its path.

  It plowed into Jian’s chest like a guided missile. He slapped both hands around it and cradled it like an infant.

  he said.

 

  “Commander,” Madeja’s voice boomed from the ceiling once more. “I don’t know what you think you’re up to, but if you move to put on that helmet, I push the button.”

  “Go ahead,” Jian said.

  “I’m serious, Feng!”

  “So am I. I don’t think you’ve got the stones. Otherwise you would’ve done it already.”

  “Do it, and their deaths will be on your head, Feng.”

  “I’m not going to let you use my ship to hurt people, Madeja. And it’s not my finger on the button.”

  Silence.

 
Jian pulled the sample jar out of the helmet, careful to keep his back to the cargo compartment’s security camera. Much to his surprise, it was empty. He glanced down into the helmet to find Polly had already worked the cap off again.

  Polly looked at Jian with its spikey forelimbs held up threateningly, just as it had done when they’d first met. But then, recognition dawned across its three-eyed face. Jian held out a finger and the tiny alien AI scrambled up his arm and took its place on his shoulder, despite the null-gee.

  “OK, little buddy,” Jian whispered to the AI, reasonably sure it couldn’t understand a word he was saying. “I need your help. I need you to open this door.” He pointed at the hatch and made a sliding motion with his free hand. Polly imitated the gesture, but didn’t break eye contact.

  “No, look at me–”

  one of the techs they’d picked up at the telescope site said.

  Jian said. “The door.” He pointed directly at the hatch. “I need you,” he pointed at Polly, “to open,” he made a sliding motion, “the door,” he pointed once more at the hatch.

  This time, Polly followed his finger. Its tiny head shot to the four corners of the hatch, then to the small control panel to its right. After a moment of careful study, it turned back to face Jian with its slick, inky black skin and green glowing eyes, and blinked the middle one.

  Jian smiled.

  Kirkland demanded.

 

 

  Without warning, Polly shot off Jian’s shoulder like a dart. Its eight clawed legs bit into the bulkhead and stalked towards the control panel. Jian moved his body to block the camera angle on what Polly was up to. The gooey construct probed at one of the panel’s fastening screws with a claw. As Jian watched, four of Polly’s claws morphed into screwdrivers a mirror image of the screw’s face. Then, he unscrewed all four fasteners simultaneously, cast the panel aside, then just… melted. His liquefied body poured into the opening.

  Kirkland said.

 

  Rakunas said.

  Jian said, with far more confidence than he felt. He needed to believe it, for their sakes as much as his own.

 

  Jian looked around at his crew, looked deep into their faces. He saw the same fear he felt reflected back half a dozen times, magnifying it like feedback. But he saw more in their eyes. Pride. Resolve. Anger.

  Their faces magnified those feelings inside him as well. Jian took a deep breath and slipped the helmet over his head. Kirkland’s hands were there to secure the seals and attach the hoses.

  Through the muffling of the helmet, Jian heard what he assumed was Madeja making another announcement, although he couldn’t make out the individual words with the helmet’s mics and internal speakers fried. But then, he didn’t need to.

  Kirkland looked up at the ceiling and her eyes went wide.

  Jian said.

  Kirkland tried to smirk and hide her fear, but her eyes told him everything.

  As if on cue, Polly popped open the hatch from wherever it had gotten to inside the bulkhead. Jian pushed through even before it had finished opening. But as soon as he crossed the threshold, he felt a sudden change in air pressure. He looked back, and his stomach clenched at the site of a black line running down the length of the cargo bay doors, growing wider by the moment. She’d done it, she’d actually pushed the button.

  Rakunas said, somehow able to crack a joke in the face of his impending death.

  Jian shouted and pushed off from the doorframe towards where the helmets were strapped down.

  Kirkland said even as the rest of the crew started swearing, screaming, and crying into the plant link. But Jian ignored her. On a single breath of air and with the tension of their skinsuits keeping their lungs from bursting, they had maybe a minute of consciousness to get lids on before they passed out. Jian reached the rack of helmets and started frantically unlatching them, then threw them at the hatch, banking them off the doorframe and into the cargo module.

  he shouted into the link.

  Kirkland yelled.

  Jian turned back to the flight deck and to Madeja strapped into the copilot’s seat. But it was the image floating in the viewscreen that filled him with both dread and terrible purpose. Hanging there in the backlight of stars was the Ark, barely as big as his thumbnail held at arm’s length. But it grew, and would grow more quickly with each passing second at their velocity of almost thirty thousand kilometers per hour.

  Madeja saw him come, but made no move to leave the controls. Instead, she just hit the throttle. Jian watched in horror as his relative motion inside the flight deck slowed, then stopped, then reversed entirely. As he started to “fall” backwards, he got a hand onto the frame of one of the passenger seats. He pulled himself into it even as his effective weight started to grow.

  The gees grew. Everyone else was surely being pressed flat against the rear of the cargo bay. Anyone who hadn’t already gotten their helmet on was having the air squeezed out of their lungs by now. Jian tried desperately to fight against the weight pressing down on his chest, but he could scarcely lift his arms.

  They were piling on even more velocity, all of which he would need to bleed off again in the increasingly shrinking window between now and impact, but stuck in the passenger chair, with no way to peel himself out of it and regain control, Jian–

  A violent shudder rocked the Atlantis. A moment later, the elephant sitting on Jian’s chest lifted. He knew instantly what had happened. In her haste to deal with him, Madeja had firewalled the throttles as a single unit instead of individually. The number four motor’s damaged turbo pump had succumbed, blowing the motor out completely and sending the entire array into an automatic safety shutdown.

  It was the first real mistake she’d made since hijacking the shuttle. Jian kicked hard out of his seat towards her station to make sure it was also her last. Rocked by the explosive deconstruction of the turbo pump, Atlantis lurched as its nose pitched down. The Ark drifted out of view, but not out of danger. The shuttle was tumbling around its center of mass, but the immutable laws of momentum meant it was still traveling straight and true for its target.

  Jian hit the ceiling, reoriented himself, then kicked off and finally reached the back of Madeja’s chair. She took a half-hearted swing at him, but her attention was split between him and desperately trying to counteract the shuttle’s tumble. But whatever else she was, Madeja was no pilot. Without thrust vectoring from the main engines, bringing the hundred-and-fifty-meter-long bird to a heel was going to be a real challenge.

  But first, Jian needed to be sitting where she was.

  He tried to open a direct link to Madeja’s plant to try and talk her down, but the connection was blocked at the source. OK, the hard way, Jian thought. He spun up and over the seat’s headrest, lunged at Madeja’s wrists, and tried to pry her hands away from the controls. She twisted her left wrist free of his fingers and threw a vicious elbow into Jian’s head, but his helmet absorbed most of the blow. Still, he couldn’t maintain a grip on her. Madeja was strong, owing to her youth spent deep in Gaia’s gravity well. Despite appearances, she was an even match for Jian, and effectively fought him to a draw, even while maintaining her death grip on the shuttle’s joysticks.

  “Stop!” Jian saw her mouth through the clear polymer of her helmet. More words followed, but Jian couldn’t read them fast enough.

  Jian needed to complic
ate things for her. He blocked a randomly thrown forearm, then stretched down and jabbed two fingers into the release on her harness. Like startled snakes, the five belts of the crash harness retracted into the seat. No longer strapped into the chair, Madeja suddenly found herself weightless. And that, Jian was plenty strong enough for.

  With both hands, he pulled Madeja out of her seat even as she was grabbing for the retreating harness belts and threw her against the ceiling. In the vacuum, Jian couldn’t hear the thud of her body crashing into the overhead panels, but he imagined it made a satisfying sound all the same.

  Wasting no time, Jian shifted himself into the copilot’s seat. He hit the icon that would close the cargo bay doors, and then the one to begin repressurizing the compartment. Then, he grabbed the shuttle’s dual joysticks. With the main engines in shut-down, he only had maneuvering thrusters to work with. It would have to be enough. He focused on the artificial horizon display directly in front of him, which was completely arbitrary in space but was still critical to help pilots orient themselves in three dimensions.

  He should have worried about what was above him.

  Madeja came crashing back down onto him from the ceiling and smashed his head into the instrumentation display. Again, the helmet absorbed most of the blow, but his forehead hit the inside of the face shield and sent little stars shooting through his vision. He shook it off, but by the time his eyes straightened out again, Madeja was trying to tear out his air hose.

  Jian grabbed her thumb and tried to wrench it free, but she was locked in like a vice. Jian shot two quick, desperate jabs into her side, hoping to pop a rib, but the material of her skinsuit blunted most of their force. He switched tracks and grabbed Madeja’s air hose, but the angle was wrong for his fingers to get enough grip on the hose’s collar to unscrew it, and he didn’t have the pure strength to rip it loose.

  The grating sound of his air hose being slowly, methodically unscrewed ground into Jian’s consciousness. His eyes, rapidly filling with terror at the growing chance that he was drawing his final breath, locked with Madeja’s. They were cold, hard, like staring into pearls. There was no mercy to be found there.