Carrier

by Timothy Johnson

  "No," Arlo said. "They're not. They're like Carter."

  "How do you know!? I mean, how can you be sure?"

  "He isn't tearing them apart."

  Evans' hope vanished when he realized Arlo was right. Even though he knew it in his heart, Evans refused to believe it until he looked into their eyes and saw what he had seen in Carter's eyes. The nothingness prevailed, their humanity extinguished.

  "Promise me something, Arlo," Evans said. He moved some files around on his workstation and then swiped his hand across the interface and confirmed that the Atlas had begun to depressurize the cargo bays one by one. The artificial gravity system deactivated, and the dead who had risen floated in the cargo bay along with the dead who would not return. They kicked and swung their arms, feebly struggling to regain their footing. That much, Evans thought, survived in them. The inclination to maintain balance was innate in the human vehicle they now drove.

  "What's that, Coop?"

  "If that happens to me," Evans said, "I don't want to hurt anyone. Promise me you'll put a bullet in my brain."

  Evans pressed the command on his terminal to open the cargo bay doors and jettison the load. Arlo's terminal prompted him to confirm. He removed his cap and rubbed the top of his balding head, the finality of it almost too much to bear.

  "I don't think you'll have to worry about that," Arlo said. "One way or the other, the captain's going to have that under control."

  Arlo pressed the command to confirm, and they watched in silence as the Atlas' cargo bays opened wide, the ship unzipping a coat and exposing itself to the vacuum of space. The floor of the cargo deck, the very underbelly of the ship, slid away, and their cargo drifted down and out as the ship pulled away from that which was not attached to it. Amid the scattering payload, the dead drifted into space. Some of the crates carrying the Apophis material knocked together and smashed some of those intermingling bodies.

  Arlo and Evans gaped in disbelief as the reanimated dead continued to kick and swing their arms without concern, still unaware of what was happening to them as the deep freeze of space halted their limbs and the knocking payload shattered their frozen bodies, like the hands of an invisible alien giant crushing the monsters it had created.

  Thirteen

  It hurt.

  In Pierce's quarters, everything hurt. In his head, he hurt. He hurt in his heart and in his stomach. Deep down, in what he knew was his soul, he hurt.

  The pain was what convinced him he was not evil.

  Pierce sat at his desk, rolling a glass of whiskey across his forehead. His terminal played back the message Emra left in the beacon, and the meaning of it left him in despair. It wasn't the sight of the Shiva burning on the surface of the planet. The source of his sadness was the realization that everything she'd done would create her legacy, and that was all that existed of her now. He'd lost many men in combat and knew many of them well. He'd made peace with even his own inevitable death. But he couldn't handle the thought of Emra existing only in memory. She existed now merely as a piece of public record, and he wondered if maybe the senselessness of it was what made it difficult. The most beloved person to him had died for nothing. At least, when he believed in the righteousness of killing to make a better world, he thought his men died for a cause.

  Pierce began to weep for the first time in as long as he could remember. He allowed himself to shed tears because he knew it might be the last opportunity he had.

  The tears provided some respite, physical confirmation of his guilt, and he thought that, if he felt guilt, real physical pain, for the lives he'd sacrificed in hopes that others might live, he could not be evil. Could he?

  After all, what was the nature of evil? How did it occur naturally? As in all things, the illusion humans constructed was that mankind created it. Mankind wanted to believe in a perfect world without it, where warmth came from fire that would not consume, where the lion would be beautiful without feeding. However, the king of the jungle was a predator. Evil was necessary for balance.

  He considered the nature of sacrifice. Was it nobler to give your life or your soul so that others may have a chance?

  When his tears cleared, it occurred to him that Emra had said something that rang his old soldier's bell. It couldn't be allowed to reach New Earth. Nothing was more important. Her death and the deaths of her crew were for a cause, and it was to protect innocence.

  Suddenly, her death made sense. He began to accept it not because he had to, but because he'd understood it in terms to which he could relate.

  Her death had been necessary for the greater good.

  There was no such thing as a perfect resolution. Only perfect resolve to make things as right as possible, to do what was necessary to see through good and evil, right and wrong, and to remove the chains of morality, to accept that someone had to be the bad guy because sometimes it took a bad guy to move forward or prevent an even greater disaster.

  Sometimes, people just had to die, and it wasn't about simplicity. It was about efficiency. When the ends were worth it, the means were irrelevant.

  The door to Pierce's quarters scuffed, and Pierce stood up purely on instinct and reflex, flicking off his sidearm's safety and chambering a round.

  Agent Adelynn Skinner peered around the corner from the foyer into his office. He couldn't help but appear shocked. As she'd expected, while the crisis on the Atlas elevated, he'd forgotten all about her.

  "Where have you been?" he asked.

  "Around," she said, stepping carefully through the doorway into the room. She flashed her green eye at him, a warning, and proceeded to move toward him. Pierce felt frozen.

  "I know," she said. "About your loss. I know how deep it cuts, deeper than Commander Ashland. You've taken a wound you'll never recover from, and I know how that feels."

  "You do," Pierce said. "You're too damn young for it. We're all too damn young."

  She smiled and sauntered around his desk. She touched his shoulder and leaned close to his ear.

  "You did the right thing," she said in her best consoling voice, which would have sounded alien to anyone else. "You did what had to be done."

  Pierce trembled. Not because she told him anything revolting. He trembled because she was right.

  "I always knew you were disappointed," Adelynn said. "With all your strict lessons, you really only taught me one thing. No one likes change, and everyone will hate the one who changes everything. That hate will blind them to the fact that the changes are for the better. One day, they will see."

  She leaned in closer and then wrapped her arms around his broad shoulders. He did not return the embrace.

  "I was never disappointed, Addie," Pierce said. "Life is confusing, and if anything, I was proud of your strength to choose a path. Being a parent means accepting the child you have raised, not the person you hoped he or she would become."

  Pierce felt her smile as she rested her head on his shoulder.

  "We can't ever stop hoping," Pierce said. "That's why I hope you can forgive me."

  "For what?"

  He wrapped his arm around her waist, and the tightness of his grip alarmed her.

  "At first, I deluded myself into believing you wouldn't lie, not to me. Now I know I lacked the clarity to see what I had to do, not for good or evil, but with the hopes that someday, it would be right."

  She raised her eyes to meet his.

  "I know now why you're here," he said, "and I can't let you do it."

  Pierce placed the barrel of his sidearm to Adelynn's abdomen, and she did not fight back.

  Her body muffled the gunshot, and he heard the spray from the exit wound splash against the wall. Her knees weakened, and her body trembled. Slowly, she fell to the floor, and he let her go.

  Pierce didn't look back as he left his cabin. If he had, it would have been the end of him. He wouldn't have been able to handle it. Instead, he focused on what was necessary. Even as he closed the door and she spoke, he was too focused on moving forward to
hear it.

  "It's already done," she said.

  Fourteen

  Pierce descended in the lift. He didn't think about the past. He didn't have time for reflection. Harder times lay ahead, but he knew they'd get through them. They just had to keep moving their feet and pushing forward. They couldn't let anything get in their way.

  The lights flickered, and the lift stuttered and stopped. The holographic control panel changed to solid blue.

  "What the hell?" Pierce said. A moment later, the control panel returned to its familiar command display. Pierce pressed the button for the command deck, and the lift continued its descent.

  When the doors parted, Pierce jumped forward out of the lift. The sounds of his footfalls had no effect on the department heads, who frantically worked at their stations, some of them crying out in frustration.

  He passed them and walked straight to his command platform. "What the hell just happened?"

  "Network's down," Arlo said.

  "What!?" Pierce said. "How in the hell did that happen?"

  "No idea. It's supposed to have redundancies out the blowhole, but it's crashed."

  "Do we have maneuverability?"

  "Yes," Evans said. "All the systems work independently, but they no longer have the ability to communicate with each other. Integration is lost without the network. File access is gone. Comms are down, too."

  "Yeah, yeah," Arlo said. "Thrusters are responding. IR's good. EM shield's holding. Proximity systems are still online. All that is just gravy. Tell him the bad news."

  Pierce's increasingly worried eyes darted between his control team.

  "In the event of a network failure or disconnection, for safety reasons, any affected equipment returns to its default state," Evans said.

  "English, Cooper," Pierce demanded.

  "Quarantine has been lifted throughout the entire ship," Arlo said. "We can't reinforce it from here."

  Throughout the Atlas, hatch wheels turned and released a flood of bodies.

  Fifteen

  When you fail the man whom you respect absolutely but to whom you've never adequately conveyed that respect, what do you say? If you're Douglas Fowler, a large dam of a man whom many avoided out of fear and, therefore, ignored, how could you put a positive spin on arresting the only good man you've ever known, the only man with relentless good intentions, the only man who ever gave you a chance?

  Doug couldn't. There was no way to bring light to such a dark situation. Even if he had the words, they would be inadequate. He felt hopeless because he was not a freethinking man. He did as he was told. He followed orders.

  Stellan told him it was all right, that he understood all too well the chain of command, and Doug felt it was okay.

  Still, he wished he didn't have to do it, and then it occurred to him that he didn’t. He had a choice. He looked at the cuffs around Stellan's wrists and wondered about the chances of a mutiny with him because, if it was unsuccessful, he might regret it. Furthermore, it could just be a waste of time. It could cost lives, if not the entire ship.

  And, as if Stellan could read Doug’s mind, he said that it was not a good idea. The crew was more important, and putting him away would make things easier. He told Doug that he was counting on him, and Doug swelled with a pride he’d never known.

  That was when the madmen set on him. He heard them, echoing through the corridors, their position difficult to discern and pinpoint. The moans and growls rose from the belly of the Atlas. Shadows danced on the walls in the irregular light, which hadn't been the same since that blackout moments ago.

  Finally, he saw them, and the choice was made for him. Their pace slowed when they found him. He could tell they were evaluating him, trying to work things out in their minds. It bothered him that he wouldn’t be able to claim the nobility of standing up for what he believed was right. He wouldn’t be able to share in that glory and respect he'd earned through sacrifice. Doug released Stellan not because Doug was as good of a man as he. He released him now because he needed him to have his weapon in his hand. Doug needed Stellan to save his life.

  What was really messed up about it was, on some level, Doug resented him for it.

  Chapter 9: The Hunt, The Kill, And The Execution

  One

  Stellan grew up in the Appalachian Mountains of the Mid-Atlantic, District of America, part of the former United States of America, a country that global unity had dismantled. Although, some said the spirit of that once-great nation had long since died, one of the last inevitable cornerstones to fall and give way to the New Earth Council.

  When Stellan was a boy, there were still stretches of land in those mountains where people lived away from civilization by their own rules, independents that the Council allowed to exist. The New Earth Registration Act changed all of that, and some said it birthed the revolution.

  For a time, Stellan knew nothing of politics or corruption. All he knew of the New Earth Council was that, while it could reach out and take them if it wanted, it seemed satisfied to let them be. He experienced pure, unbridled freedom. Maybe that was why he later sought out life on the Atlas.

  Freedom didn't come without a price, though. Life was simpler in those hills, but in some ways, it was more complicated. While other children learned about base ten mathematics, how to work around Einstein's laws of relativity, and the subtleties of sociopolitical interaction, Stellan's family hunted for its own food.

  He would never forget killing his first deer, how eager he was to contribute, to make his father proud, but sentimentality did not burn it into his memory. Horror did.

  At the age of thirteen, Stellan had more experience with firearms than most people ever had in their lives. He had never fired at a living target, though. His father only let him shoot at painted bales of hay and stacks of wood. Learning to put the bullet where it needed to go was the most important part of shooting, he had told the boy. It was a responsibility. Stellan wouldn't be allowed to fire at a living animal until he could accurately place his shots, which was hard for a boy who struggled to hold the weight of his father's old-fashioned, bolt-action hunting rifles.

  The morning he became a killer, the autumn sunshine poured through the treetops and spotlighted the grassy forest floor with golden rays, burning away the mist. The leaves had turned, but most still clung to the branches. They would fall soon, leaving little cover for hunters.

  Stellan had grown up accompanying his father on hunts. He learned to appreciate the anticipation of the kill. The waiting had seemed uncomfortably indefinite, but as his mind matured, he began to understand that they weren't simply waiting for an opportunity to present itself. They had to be ready, and they had to recognize it when it was there. A large part of hunting was maintaining focus for long periods of time. Remaining still but in a state of readiness was hard, and it was something snipers trained years to master: the power of will and patience and having enough energy to focus it on the target at the right time.

  It took Stellan a long time to master his attention span, and on the morning of his first kill, he had not yet mastered it. So, his father spotted the doe one hundred meters away before Stellan did.

  Stellan's father placed an index finger over his lips and then pointed into the distance. Even though Stellan's eyes were young, they were not as well-trained as his father's, and he could not decipher the fawn fur through the turning foliage.

  Stellan shook his head to indicate he could not see the deer. His father lifted his rifle and motioned for the boy to look down his scope. Stellan did as he was instructed.

  He peered down the high-powered scope, scanning the edge of the tree line before the clearing. His crosshairs passed over a whipping tail, and Stellan followed the curvature of the animal's flank until she seemed to stare right back at him, as if she knew he was there.

  "Let your weapon fall until it finds its target," Stellan's father whispered.

  Stellan let the barrel of his rifle descend until it settled on the doe's chest.
She looked in their direction, ears twitching. The wind blew through the trees like a sigh.

  "Breathe," Stellan's father said.

  Stellan breathed deep and then released the air through puckered lips. His heart slowed, and his body became still. His hands never felt so steady.

  "Take your time," his father said. "You have all the time in the world. Imagine you're holding the bullet in your hand, and when you're ready, just let it go."

  He listened for a lull in the wind to ensure minimal bullet trajectory variance. He smelled his father's chewing tobacco, the cordite on their hands, the conditioner on his weapon. Under his father's watchful gaze, Stellan thumbed the safety and curled his finger around the trigger. He heard the creak of their tree stand and the distant caw of a crow.

  Peering down the scope, his whole world became the deer and the trigger. He squeezed gently and was surprised when the rifle stock recoiled against his shoulder. The gunshot rolled over the hills like the voice of God, speaking a language he was only just beginning to understand. That crow he'd heard took flight.

  The space between the bullet leaving his weapon and entering his target felt like powerlessness. He battled doubt for just an instant.

  The wind picked up through the trees again but, this time, stronger, more of an applause.

  The doe fell to the ground in a fine red mist, and Stellan looked to his father with excitement. He'd never felt so proud of himself. The bullet had landed its mark, and he knew most men would not have been able to make that shot.

  His father's gaze had lingered on the doe through a pair of binoculars. He did not smile. He lowered the binoculars and let them hang from his neck, looking at Stellan grimly.

  "Good shot," he said.

  They shouldered their rifles and climbed down from their tree stand. His father said nothing as they walked toward the doe. He made no effort to conceal their movement, snapping twigs underfoot, and Stellan didn't understand why. The gunshot would have spooked any other deer off, but he felt powerful enough that, if they saw another, he would shoot it, too. He wanted that chance.