by John Scalzi
Walk the Plank
( The Human Division - 2 )
John Scalzi
John Scalzi
Walk the Plank
CHENZIRA EL-MASRI: — okay, I’m not really interested in who you have in the medical bay, Aurel. Right now I’m focused on finding those damn cargo containers. If we don’t track those down, it’s not going to be a very happy next few months around here.
AUREL SPURLEA: If I didn’t think the two of them were related, I wouldn’t be bothering you, Chen. Are you recording this, Magda?
MAGDA GANAS: Just started the recorder.
SPURLEA: Chen, the guy in the sick bay isn’t from around here.
EL-MASRI: What do you mean, “not from around here”? We’re a wildcat colony. It’s not like there’s anywhere else to be from around here.
SPURLEA: He says he’s from the Erie Morningstar.
EL-MASRI: That doesn’t make any sense. The Erie Morningstar isn’t supposed to be landing anyone. It’s supposed to be sending down the containers on autopilot. The whole point of doing it this way is to take humans out of it.
GANAS: We know that, Chen. We were there when the cargo schedules were drawn up, too. That’s why you need to see this guy. No matter what else, he’s not one of us. He’s come from somewhere. And since the Erie Morningstar was supposed to deliver two days ago, and he’s here today, it’s not a bad guess that he’s telling the truth when he says he’s from there.
EL-MASRI: So you think he came down on one of the containers.
GANAS: It seems likely.
EL-MASRI: That wouldn’t have been a fun ride.
SPURLEA: Here we are. Chen, a couple of things real quick. One, he’s messed up physically and we have him on pain relievers.
EL-MASRI: I thought I gave orders-
SPURLEA: Before you bitch at me, we’ve watered them down as much as we can and still have them have any effect. But believe me, this guy needs something. Two, he’s got the Rot in his leg.
EL-MASRI: How bad?
SPURLEA: Real bad. I cleaned it out best I can, but it’s a pretty good chance it’s in the bloodstream by now, and you know what that means. But he’s not from around here and he doesn’t know what that means, and I don’t see much point in telling him at this point. My goal is to keep him coherent long enough for you to talk to him and then keep him from too much pain while we figure out what to do with him after that.
EL-MASRI: Christ, Aurel. If he’s got the Rot, I think you know what to do with him.
SPURLEA: I’m still waiting for the blood work to come back. If it’s not set in there, we can take the leg and save him.
EL-MASRI: And then do what with him? Look around, Aurel. It’s not like we can support anyone else here, much less a recovering amputee who can’t do any work.
GANAS: Maybe you should talk to him first before deciding to leave him out for the packs.
EL-MASRI: I’m not unsympathetic to his situation, Magda. But my job is to think about the whole colony.
GANAS: What the whole colony needs right now is for you to hear this guy’s story. Then you’ll have a better idea what to think.
EL-MASRI: What’s this guy’s name?
SPURLEA: Malik Damanis.
EL-MASRI: Malik. Fine.
[Door opening, stops.]
EL-MASRI (quietly): Lovely.
SPURLEA: There’s a reason we call it the Rot.
EL-MASRI: Yeah.
[Door opens all the way.]
EL-MASRI: Malik…Hey, Malik.
MALIK DAMANIS: Yes. Sorry, I was dozing.
EL-MASRI: That’s fine.
DAMANIS: Is Doctor Spurlea here? I think the pain is coming back.
SPURLEA: I’m here. I’ll give you another shot, Malik, but it’s going to have to wait for a few minutes. I need you to be all here for your conversation with our colony leader.
DAMANIS: That’s you?
EL-MASRI: That’s me. My name is Chenzira El-Masri.
DAMANIS: Malik Damanis. Uh, I guess you knew that.
EL-MASRI: I did. Malik, Aurel and Magda here tell me that you say you’re from the Erie Morningstar.
DAMANIS: I am.
EL-MASRI: What do you do there?
DAMANIS: I’m an ordinary deckhand. I mostly work loading and unloading cargo.
EL-MASRI: You look pretty young. This your first ship?
DAMANIS: I’m nineteen standard, sir. No, I was on another ship before this, the Shining Star. I’ve been doing this since I turned twenty in Erie years, which is about sixteen years standard. This is my first tour on the Morningstar, though. Or was.
EL-MASRI: Was, you say.
DAMANIS: Yes, sir. She’s gone, sir.
EL-MASRI: Gone as in left? She’s gone off to her next destination.
DAMANIS: No. Gone as in gone, sir. She was taken. And I think everyone else who was on her might be dead now.
EL-MASRI: Malik, I think you need to explain this to me a little better. Was the ship all right when you skipped into our system?
DAMANIS: As far as I know. The ship stays on Erie time, and it was the middle of the night when we skipped. Captain Gahzini prefers to do it that way so that when we move cargo, we do it in the morning when we’re fresh. Or that’s what he tells us. Since the cargo we had for you was already packed when it came on board, it didn’t really matter. The captain does what the captain does. So we arrived in the middle of the night for us.
EL-MASRI: Were you working then?
DAMANIS: No, sir, I was asleep in the crew quarters, along with most of the rest of the crew. We had a night’s watch on at the time. The first thing I knew about anything going on was the captain sounding a general alert. It blasted on and everyone fell out of their bunks. We didn’t think anything of it at the time.
EL-MASRI: You didn’t think anything of a general alert? Doesn’t that usually mean you’re in an emergency?
DAMANIS: It does, but Captain Gahzini runs a lot of drills, sir. He says that just because we’re a merchant ship doesn’t mean we shouldn’t have discipline. So every three or four skips he’ll run a drill, and since the captain likes to skip in the middle of the night, that means we get woken up by a lot of general alerts.
EL-MASRI: All right.
DAMANIS: So we fall out of bunks, get dressed and then wait for the announcement about what the drill is this time. Is it a micrometeor puncture, or is a systems failure of some sort, or what is it. Then finally Chief Officer Khosa comes on the public address system and says, “We are being boarded.” And we all look at each other, because this is a new one; we haven’t ever practiced something like this. We have no idea what to do. Doctor, my leg is really hurting.
SPURLEA: I know, Malik. I’ll give you something as soon as you’re done talking.
DAMANIS: Can I get something in the meantime? Anything?
GANAS: I can give him some ibuprofen.
SPURLEA: We’re running low on that, Magda.
GANAS: I’ll take it out of my own stash.
SPURLEA: All right.
GANAS: Malik, I’m going to go get you that ibuprofen. It will be just a minute.
DAMANIS: Thank you, Doctor Ganas.
EL-MASRI: You said you never drilled for being boarded. But there have always been pirates.
DAMANIS: We’ve drilled for being pursued by pirates. For that, most of the crew locks down while defensive teams prep countermeasures and the cargo crew preps to jettison the cargo. We work in space. Pirates can’t swing over on ropes and take a ship. They run you down and threaten you to get you to hand over your cargo. Only then do they board the ship, take the cargo and go. That’s why the last resort is throwing out the cargo. If you don’t have it anymore, they have no reason to keep pursuing you.
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br /> EL-MASRI: So these weren’t pirates.
DAMANIS: We didn’t know what they were. At first we didn’t know that there was anyone. We still thought it was a drill. Chief Khosa tells us we’re being boarded and we have about two or three seconds to wonder what that means, and then he comes back on the PA and says, “This is not a drill.” That’s when we knew something was really up. But we didn’t know what to think. We weren’t drilled on this. We stood around looking at each other. Then Bosun Zarrani came into the quarters, told us we were being boarded and that we were to stay in quarters until they heard from him or the captain sounded an “all clear.” Then he picked seven of us to follow him. I was one of the ones he picked.
EL-MASRI: Why did he pick you?
DAMANIS: Me or all of us?
EL-MASRI: Both.
DAMANIS: He picked all of us to be a security detail. He picked me, I think, because I was where he could see me. I didn’t know he wanted me to be part of a security detail until he took us into his office, opened up a footlocker and started handing out shock sticks.
SPURLEA: Shock sticks? Why didn’t you have firearms?
DAMANIS: It’s a spaceship. Guns with bullets aren’t a good idea on any ship that works in vacuum. And the only reason to have weapons on the ship at all is to deal with someone who’s gotten into a fight or is drunk and out of control. And for that, a shock stick is what you want. You zap someone, they go down, you shove them in the brig until they sober up and calm down. So we have shock sticks. Zarrani handed them out to us. There were six of them and eight of us, so I and Tariq Murwani didn’t have any. Bosun Zarrani said that we got to be scouts and told us to turn our PDAs to a general channel so that everyone would know where the enemy was. That didn’t make much sense to me. I figured that we knew where they would come in.
EL-MASRI: Through the airlocks.
DAMANIS: Yes, sir. They’d open them up from the outside and then get through that way. I think Zarrani and Captain Gahzini were thinking the same thing because Zarrani took two of the crew with the shock sticks with him to the port maintenance airlock while the other three went to the starboard maintenance airlocks. But we were wrong.
EL-MASRI: How did they get in?
DAMANIS: They cut through the hull forward and aft and dropped in maybe a dozen soldiers in each spot. I saw the aft breach and the soldiers dropping in and yelled into my PDA about it and then ran, because the soldiers were carrying assault rifles.
SPURLEA: I thought you didn’t want projectile weapons on a spaceship.
DAMANIS: We don’t, sir. The soldiers did. Their job was to take over the ship. And maybe they thought that since they were cutting a couple of holes through the hull anyway, what’s a few bullet holes here and there, right?
GANAS: Here we go. Three tablets.
DAMANIS: Thank you.
GANAS: Let me get you some water.
DAMANIS: It’s too late. I already swallowed them. How long will it take for it to start working?
GANAS: Those were extra-strength, so not long at all.
DAMANIS: That’s good. My leg hurts a lot. I think it’s getting worse.
SPURLEA: Let me look.
DAMANIS: Ahhhhh-
SPURLEA: Sorry about that.
DAMANIS: It’s okay, Doctor. But it’s like I told you. It hurts a lot.
SPURLEA: I’ll see what I can do about cleaning it out again after we’re done talking here.
DAMANIS: I’ll definitely need some real painkillers for that. The last time you did it I thought I was going to hit the roof.
SPURLEA: I’ll be as careful as I can.
DAMANIS: I know you’re doing your best, Doctor Spurlea.
EL-MASRI: You say these were soldiers. Were they Colonial Defense Forces?
DAMANIS: I don’t think so. They weren’t wearing CDF uniforms. These were bulkier and black, and there were helmets covering their heads. We couldn’t see their faces or much of anything else. I suppose that makes sense, since they were coming in from space.
GANAS: If they were cutting through the hull, wouldn’t bulkheads close off to contain the breach?
DAMANIS: I think they’re supposed to, but the automatic systems are sensitive to pressure loss. These guys were coming through without any air going out behind them. I think they must have made a temporary airlock on the outside hull before they cut through.
EL-MASRI: Your captain still could have thrown up the bulkheads to keep them contained.
DAMANIS: The forward breach was right above the bridge deck. The very first thing they did, as far as I can tell, was to take the bridge and Captain Gahzini. Once they had the bridge, they had control of the ship. I was told by one of the bridge crew that when they came through, they ordered the captain to give them his command codes. He refused and they shot Chief Khosa in the gut. He was lying screaming on the deck and they told the captain they would gut shoot every person on the bridge unless he gave over the codes. Once the captain did that, they shot Khosa through the head to put him out of his misery, and then they had the ship.
EL-MASRI: What happened then?
DAMANIS: The soliders went through the ship and collected the crew at gunpoint and took them to the cargo bay. I and the others on the security detail were trying to avoid the soldiers as long as we could, but eventually they found us all. I got caught near the mess hall. I stepped out into a corridor and there was a soldier on either side of me, rifles pointed at my chest and head. I tried going back where I was, but when I turned there was another soldier behind me, rifle up. I put up my hands and that was it. I was taken to the cargo bay like everyone else.
EL-MASRI: And through all of this none of the soldiers told you what they wanted.
DAMANIS: No, sir. When I was taken to the cargo deck, I saw all the other crew members on the deck, kneeling, hands behind their head. The only one standing was Bosun Zarrani, who was quoting Colonial Union merchant maritime law to one of the soldiers. The soldier seemed to ignore him for a little while, then drew a sidearm. He shot the bosun in the face, and then Zarrani was dead. And that was it for anyone asking questions.
SPURLEA: So the entire crew was there.
DAMANIS: Everyone but the captain and a helmsman named Qalat. And Khosa, but he was dead already.
EL-MASRI: So you were all in the cargo bay. How did you get from there to here, Malik?
DAMANIS: The Erie Morningstar had four autopilot container carriers. Two of them were full of the supplies for your colony. The other two were empty. The soldiers opened up those two and ordered us in, half into one, half into the other.
EL-MASRI: And you just went in?
DAMANIS: A couple of us resisted. They shot them in the head. They didn’t waste any time talking to us or bargaining with us. As far as I can tell, except for the ones on the bridge getting the command codes from the captain, they didn’t talk at all. There was no point in it, and they didn’t have to talk to get us to do what they wanted.
EL-MASRI: After you were all in, what happened next?
DAMANIS: They sealed us into the cargo containers. Everything went pitch black and people started screaming, and then a couple of us turned their PDAs on so their screens would give light. That seemed to calm people a bit. After that we could hear the sounds of people moving and talking-the soldiers would apparently talk to each other, not to us-but I couldn’t hear anything clear enough to make out what they were saying or doing. And then there was another sound. It was the sound of the cargo bay’s purge cycle. That’s when people started screaming again. It meant the cargo bay door was being opened and we were being thrown out.
GANAS: They were tossing the crew over the side.
DAMANIS: Yes, ma’am. Although one of the crew members in my container suggested something else. Once the container started moving and it was clear it was thrown off the ship, someone in the container started screaming, “We’re walking the plank! We’re walking the plank! We’re walking the plank!” He kept doing this for a minute or two befor
e I heard a thump and he shut up. I think someone punched him to make him quiet.
EL-MASRI: The cargo containers aren’t designed for live transport.
DAMANIS: No, sir. They are airtight and they’re insulated, so the cargo inside won’t freeze in space or heat up excessively on reentry. But there’s also no artificial gravity or anywhere to secure yourself. The closest thing to that are the pallet restraints at the bottom of the container. We use them to strap down the cargo pallets, but they don’t do much good if you’re not a pallet. I still grabbed one and tied it to my arm, as close as I could to the restraint anchor so at least I wouldn’t go floating off. I thought it might help when we hit the atmosphere.
EL-MASRI: Did it?
DAMANIS: A little. We hit the atmosphere and everything began to shake and move. I held on to my pallet strap, but even then I was being whipped back and forth as the strap rotated around its anchor. I’d be slammed to the floor of the container, whip around in an arc and be slammed down again on the other side. I curled into a ball as much as I could and put my arms around my head to protect it, but it wasn’t enough; I lost consciousness a couple of times in there. If I hadn’t wrapped the strap around my arm, I would have been flung up into the container with the others.
GANAS: What happened to the others?
DAMANIS: People began to be slammed into wall and floors and into each other, harder and faster as we dropped. A couple of times people hit me, but I was down near the floor, so most of the time they were hitting each other or the walls. They were screaming as they were flying about, and every once in a while you would hear a snap and then someone’s screaming would either get louder or it would stop. After one really hard bump, a woman hit the floor next to me headfirst and I could hear her neck go. She stopped screaming. There were at least fifty of us in the container. I’d guess about ten or fifteen people died during reentry, and maybe that many others broke their arms or legs.
SPURLEA: It was a good thing you held on to that strap.
DAMANIS: [laughs] Look at my leg now, Doc. Tell me again how lucky I am.