Severance

by Chris Bucholz

  Another block south of her, a crowd had gathered in front of a massive wall that wasn’t supposed to be there. Stein cautiously approached them, coughing, the air unusually dusty. She moved carefully through the crowd until she could get a better look. It was a bulkhead door, having slid out from concealed pockets on either side of the street to meet in the middle, sealing the street off. “When did that happen?” she asked a young woman.

  “Couple minutes ago. Just came out of the wall, all rumble bumble rumble, you know?”

  “It was more of a gnsssssssh gnsssssh gnssssssh sound,” someone else offered.

  “You’ve got too much shit in your ears,” the young woman said.

  A heated disagreement broke out amongst the people gathered there about what noise the doors had made, which Stein escaped, confident she had acquired the total of useful information available from the group. Retreating back to the intersection at 9th, she could see more people a block east, also gaping at something to the south. She hurried over to see for herself. There, a small crowd was watching a security officer, his pistol drawn and aimed at the floor, guarding a maintenance worker, whom she recognized from the skeleton shift. He didn’t see Stein, instead intent on something behind a recently removed wall panel. A small cloud of dust emerged from the wall, serving as the honor guard for another bulkhead door, which slid into the street accompanied by an unpleasant grinding sound. Only a single door on this smaller street, it slid across dirt encrusted tracks in the floor and embedded itself into a thin gap on the far wall. The security man, the technician, and everything else south of the door disappeared from Stein’s view.

  She continued like this for a while, walking along 9th, following the gentle curve of the ship uphill as she did so, looking at closed and closing bulkhead doors. Arriving at Asia Street, she found the same situation, only with a larger, angrier crowd. One of the men gathered here, an anarchy–dancer to judge from the facial hair and stench, accosted Stein.

  “What the fuck, man?” the filthy man yelled, his hands flailing in the air. “You can’t just kick us out of our homes like that, you fucking fascists!”

  Stein realized that, still in her orange uniform, she looked like someone in charge of things like doors. “Sorry, buddy, I just got here,” she said. “I haven’t done anything to anyone. Where’d they kick you out of?”

  He explained, using language filthier than his appearance, that he had been dragged out of his home — an illegal squat it sounded like — by a half–dozen security officers and hauled to this side of the bulkhead doors. More people gathered around, shouting similar tales of woe at Stein. Offering brief and completely false promises to fix things, she managed to extract herself from this group and continued down 9th.

  Stein didn’t know anything about bulkhead doors, having never seen one closed in her entire life. Curious, she continued to the next side street, and finding this one deserted, walked south towards the obstruction. On one side of the street, she spotted a likely wall panel and opened it. Sure enough, there were the bulkhead door controls. Examining it for a few seconds, she found she could see the current status of the door and environment. Atmospheric pressure on both sides. She hit the button marked “Open.” Evidently, whoever was shutting these things had already thought of such a countermove, and an error message flashed across the screen, reading “Access Denied.” She saw a couple of potential ways to override that if she had had her tools with her, but she had left those behind during her flight from the law. She dropped the panel cover on the floor and returned back to 9th Avenue.

  Everywhere she looked on the first level, bulkhead doors were shut between 9th and 8th Avenues. Curious, she walked back up to the escalators on 10th and ascended to the second level. Stepping into the middle of the street, she looked south. The bulkhead doors were closed here at the same latitude as below. Taking another escalator up, she saw the pattern repeated. She stopped and tried to figure out what this looked like. They were sealing the entire aft of the ship, kicking people out from the other side. She immediately assumed that it was related to what she and Bruce had uncovered, and although she didn’t know who precisely ‘they’ were, it was clearly not a small group. The entirety of the security department at least. And, probably, her goddamned boss.

  Whatever was going on, it seemed no one was paying much attention to her. She turned on her terminal again, hoping to get in touch with Bruce. As soon as she started it, a dozen different messages came in, which she paged through. Most were work related, notes from her team asking why she had stopped the diagnostic process so early. One message jumped out at her from an ‘Abdolo Poland,’ a name she didn’t recognize. She opened it, realizing immediately that it was from Bruce, who had somehow managed to doctor up a terminal to send from a false identity.

  “I’m OK. Playing Hide and Seek and kicking ass at it. You?”

  The message had been sent hours earlier. She sent him a quick note indicating that she was fine, asking if he knew what was going on. She set off exploring once again, this time picking her way back west. It was more of the same everywhere she went. Closed doors and confused people coughing in the dusty air. Children asking their parents what was going on. Parents wishing they had someone to ask themselves.

  At Europe, she found another crowd, this one in an angry mood. Here, Stein could see that the bulkhead door hadn’t closed yet; in its place was a massive group of security officers in riot gear, standing in a line. Periodically, the line would part, and a civilian would be shoved across. None of these evictees appeared terribly happy about the situation, but the security men were being very liberal in the application of their clubs, and no individual protest lasted very long.

  Stein looked around. This was the biggest crowd she had seen yet, composed of a slightly rougher representation of the Argos’ population. Aft dwellers. Recently evicted ones. Word seemed to have spread that the doors hadn’t shut on this street, and people were filtering in from the escalators and side streets. Stein sensed an ugly mood in the air. Even without knowing exactly what was going on, the mere presence of cops in riot gear was enough to aggravate many people. Stein had seen situations like this before and moved sideways through the throng, backing into a doorway.

  There was no obvious signal, no leader shouting a call to arms or firing a gun in the air. Suddenly, some sort of critical mass of anger had been broached, and the crowd surged forward. They advanced on the line of security guards, a storm of filthy language filling the air. Stein kept her back pressed into the doorway, confident about what was going to happen next.

  But before things could reach a head, a deep rumbling sound announced the closing of the bulkhead doors. Stein could see over the heads in the crowd as the doors slowly slid out of the walls, presumably just in front of the battle lines the security officers had formed.

  Her terminal buzzed, and she looked down to see another message from Abdolo.

  “I’ve got no idea. What do you think of the disconnect?”

  Stein frowned. That was the word Bruce had squawked at her just before they’d got cut off. To a maintenance worker, a disconnect was a switch used to isolate a piece of equipment from its power source. Disconnects were completely innocuous — there were literally thousands of them scattered around the ship. And that’s what Stein had first thought Bruce was talking about.

  She wasn’t thinking that any more, as she looked at the picture Bruce had sent of a massive set of clamps hidden in a cavity of the ship. She looked up at the just closed set of bulkhead doors as the cloud of dust washed over her.

  They were now dealing with an entirely different type of disconnect.

  §

  “You’re going to do what?” Kinsella asked, his mouth suddenly dry.

  Helot had stopped smiling. The corners of his eyes sank, and his throat clenched. “We’re going to split the ship in two,” he repeated.

  Kinsella closed his eyes. He frantically shook his head, rubbing his hands over his face, trying to hide
from Helot’s words. “No way. Not possible.”

  “Very much possible,” Helot said. “The ship was designed to do it. It’s a backup measure. Obviously. The ship was always intended to arrive in one piece, just as you learned in school. But if you look at the complete plans for the ship — and you couldn’t, because they’ve been very well hidden — you’ll see the entire aft core of the ship can pop out like a cork. Engines, fuel tanks, and a modest amount of living space. Life support, hydroponics, water treatment. All inclusive. A smaller ship hidden within the larger one.”

  Kinsella struggled to assemble a picture of the ship in his mind. He knew that above the fourth level the aft portions of the ship were substantially more spacecraft–like. But there was never anything to indicate that the whole apparatus was designed to separate. “I don’t buy it. You’re talking about a cork that’s a hundred meters wide. And I’ve never seen any seams.”

  “The seams are artfully hidden, most between decks. But they’re there.”

  “Let’s say for the sake of argument that you’re not insane…”

  “For the sake of argument, I’ll allow it…”

  Kinsella ignored the interruption. “And you take your cork–ship to Tau Prius.”

  “Right…”

  Kinsella started to quake with rage. “Leaving the rest…”

  Helot swallowed. “Leaving the rest to go past Tau Prius without stopping.” He stared down at his shoes for a moment. “I’m sorry, Eric,” Helot mumbled before looking Kinsella in the eye. “I really am. I’d have told you sooner, but…well. You know. You’d just have gotten upset.”

  Kinsella lashed out at Helot’s desk with his foot, knocking it back against the captain. Behind him, Thorias threw his massive arms around Kinsella, clutching and squeezing. Kinsella didn’t struggle, just screamed, “Upset? You think I’d have gotten fucking upset? Upset that you’re about to murder us? Why would that fucking upset me?”

  “We’re not murdering you, Eric. Just letting you go on without us.”

  “To die alone in space!”

  “We’ve been dying in space for centuries, Eric. It’s no big deal. You’ll have a hundred years worth of energy to get your affairs in order. More if you ration it carefully.”

  “But we can’t fucking stop,” Kinsella screamed.

  “There is that,” Helot allowed. “But this is the best chance for at least some part of the ship to form a viable colony.” He blinked, his eyes glistening.

  Kinsella twisted in Thorias’ grip, which only caused it to tighten further. “Why can’t we all stop?”

  Helot breathed deeply, obviously fighting to control his emotions. He shook his head, once, twice. Another swallow. He continued to stare at the wall above Kinsella’s head, avoiding the mayor’s gaze. “It’s a fuel thing.”

  “What?”

  “We don’t have enough fuel left to stop the whole ship. We made a mistake, okay? We used some during the course correction. And we’ve had annihilation efficiency problems. We don’t have enough fuel left to decelerate. Not the whole ship.” Helot took another deep breath, growing more comfortable while describing the nuts and bolts of his plan. “But if we detach the aft core of the ship, we’ll only have a fraction of the mass to decelerate. Plenty of fuel to spare.”

  Kinsella stared at him. He started to laugh. “That’s insane.”

  “It’s the truth,” Helot replied, his voice trembling.

  “You’re going to murder thousands of people because we ran out of gas?”

  “I’m not murdering them,” Helot whispered, barely audible. “I have to save at least some of the ship. I can’t save them all.” He looked away from Kinsella, staring at the wall in front of him. “I’m not murdering them,” he repeated.

  Every muscle in Kinsella’s body tensed. He could feel Thorias squeeze tighter, but he didn’t care, full of hate for the pathetic figure in front of him. Through clenched teeth he said, “Chief, would you please bring me close enough to the captain to pull his throat out with my teeth?”

  Helot snorted, blinking rapidly. He sneaked a quick look at Kinsella. “Brave, Eric. But it’s over.”

  “You fucking murderer!”

  “I’m not murdering anyone. Security’s been closing bulkheads for the last half hour, shepherding people to safety.” Helot looked at something on his desk and nodded. “We’ve already quietly relocated a lot of them over the past few years. It’s just a safety measure — the aft of the ship has an excess of bulkhead doors, so with luck you’ll lose almost no space to vacuum. But we’re evacuating a much larger area just to be safe. You’ll be taken back to the other side of the doors in a few minutes’ time.”

  Kinsella’s mouth hung open, wanting only to scream obscenities at the man, but unable to think of anything foul enough. “Look, Eric,” Helot said, getting up from his chair. “I know you. You’re an adaptable guy. Look at what you were planning to pull on me today. That showed real gumption! This ship is going to need that part of you now. You’ll still get to be mayor of the Argos. I’m not taking that away from you.” He paused, smiling weakly. “Just part of your mandate.” He walked around his desk towards Kinsella, then stopped, seeming to think better of it. “I know we’ve never been friends, but I always admired you. You’re a pragmatist. Not one to fight the hopeless fight. You’ll get on with your life, and you’ll die an old and happy man,” Helot said. He returned to his desk and shoved it back into its original position. He looked down at something on the display. “Now, I have a bit of work to do here, so if you’ll go quietly with the Chief…”

  Kinsella did not wish to go quietly and explained as much using the strongest language available. A brief and lopsided struggle followed, which inevitably left the mayor of the Argos unconscious on the floor.

  §

  The entertainment value of seeing their mayor’s body dragged from the captain’s cabin and out of the command center was appreciated by the naval personnel present, whose morale had been suffering of late due to the implications of recent job–related duties.

  §

  In the fan room on the third floor of the Bridge, the heavy access hatch had been resealed a few hours earlier by a couple of harried naval technicians. The lighter wall panel remained on the floor, where it had sat since Bruce had removed it. The technicians had long since left the room, as it was located on the wrong side of the gap that would soon form.

  The mechanism located within the cavity came to life. With an audible clunk, the disconnect sprang open, both halves of the enormous clamp releasing the handshake they had begun two hundred and forty years previous. At the same time, at a hundred and seven similar spots throughout the aft, a hundred and seven identical clamps did the same.

  Pistons mounted within the cavities began to push off against each other. Six months of accelerating at a tenth of a G, followed by two hundred and forty years of waiting, had caused the two halves of the Argos to bond tightly together. A shove would be needed to knock them apart.

  As the pistons began pushing off, the cavities began to be exposed to vacuum, beginning with the ones closest to the exterior of the ship. The thin insulating foam began to crumble away as the two halves of the ship struggled to free themselves from each other.

  But after so many years, not all of the pistons operated properly, even with the secret maintenance that they had received over the past half–decade. Knowing this could happen, a contingency plan for such a failure was in place. The pistons that were operational began pushing and relaxing in concert, trying to rock the aft end of the ship back and forth, working to pry it off like a champagne cork. Terrifying, otherworldly groaning noises permeated the ship as forgotten joints and bonds began flexing.

  After minutes of this, the aft of the ship finally broke free, but critically, along one side only. The other side held fast, metal screaming in protest. The pistons continued their frantic rocking action, as the separation on the other side of the ship increased, growing to almost half a meter. The
creaking and groaning noises increased, as the whole ship started to vibrate.

  Suddenly, the pistons in the disconnect cavities ceased their fruitless shoving match. The aft of the ship, still partially attached, hung motionless for a second. Then, the massive forces stored in the bent metal on the stuck side, began to slowly tug the ship back into alignment, like a spring returning to its original shape. The ship slammed shut, unimaginable forces smashing the separated sides back into each other.

  Some of the pistons leapt into action again, this time much more feebly. Many had been destroyed in the impact, and a significant chunk of the disconnects, having tasted freedom ever so briefly, slammed shut around their opposing members in the sudden impact. The ship was together again.

  §

  “All sections report they’re intact. No penetration of core compartments reported.”

  “Disconnect 6–3–2 reports full connection. 5–3–1 does as well…fuck. Okay, let’s just say that a lot of them are reconnected. Most are still offline though, no reading.”

  “I’ve lost readouts on the rest of the Argos. Have we lost the hardline?”

  The control center was a flurry of activity, men and women hunched over their control screens, shouting status reports to the room, all assuming that someone was listening.

  “Everyone, shut up!” barked Helot from his perch on the upper–level of the command center. “I want everyone to calm down. Nobody say a thing unless I ask for it.” Helot scanned the room slowly, locking eyes with every officer in turn, reassuring them that he was still in charge. That done, he stood up straighter. “Okay, first things first: how’s the core envelope?”

  “Okay, sir,” replied the officer sitting at the engineering panel. Curts, hovering right behind him, nodded at Helot. “There is no sign of vacuum in the core, sir. All bulkhead doors are online and appear to be intact.”