Severance

by Chris Bucholz

  Another moan from the corner as the other naval engineer came to. Bruce knocked him out again. “Okay,” he said. “So, we don’t stop them from separating. But can we make it so they don’t want to separate?”

  Stein’s hands were shaking, sure she was close to the answer. “What, like make them feel guilty about killing fifty thousand people? Because no one but us seems to give a flying damn about that.”

  Bruce shook his head. “No, you don’t get it. What does the aft of the ship need?” he asked. “This has to be a separate spaceship, right? So, what can’t it live without? Like, can we eat all their food or something?”

  “That’s it!” Stein hissed. “Wait! No, it isn’t! They have farms all over the fifth and six decks. No. Craaaaap!” She kicked the edge of the reactor, hard. “They’ve got plenty of food, and fuel, and air…” she trailed off.

  Bruce turned around and looked at the door on the far side of the reactor room. “Oh, yeah. The scrubbers.”

  “The scrubbers!” Stein yelled. “They’ll need those.”

  “They’ll need the fuck out of those.”

  She laughed. If the core detached, it would need its own carbon dioxide scrubbers if it didn’t want to suffocate everyone within a few hours. She nodded, working through the details. “If the core’s attached to the rest of the ship, it doesn’t need its own scrubbers; it can stay hooked into the main circ system for as long as it wants. One spaceship.”

  “Blow the scrubbers?” Bruce said.

  “Yeah.” She began pacing again, piecing together Plan B. “Fuck, demolish the entire room. Everything in there. Something that would take years to repair. Years they don’t have.”

  “Gonna take a lot of boom.” Bruce patted himself down for show. “Out of boom.”

  Stein pulled off her own webbing and the explosives it contained. “Take these. And take the ones you set here. All but one,” she said, running around the reactor. She pointed at a single charge, on the pressure regulator.

  “Why leave one?” Bruce asked, leaping into the cavity to remove the other charges.

  She looked at the door. “Plan A. In case I’m wrong.” She looked around the room again, sizing it up for a different purpose.

  “How will you know you’re right?”

  Behind the reactor. She would have a lot of cover behind the reactor. She swallowed. “How do you feel about death threats?”

  Bruce paused for a moment, thinking about that. He looked up at her. “Pro.”

  “Pro–death threat. Good to know.” She looked from the reactor, to her unconscious boyfriend in the corner, to the door. “Well, while you’re planting those charges, I’m going to be death–threatening.”

  Bruce pulled himself out of the cavity again, laden with explosive devices. He jerked his head at Sergei. “And it’s just a coincidence that you’re asking me to leave you alone with your special hug buddy over there?”

  Stein sighed. “Probably not much chance of special hugs. I don’t think he’s pro–death threat at all.”

  §

  Two ensigns exited the elevator just as Helot arrived, immediately springing out of his way, backs pressed against the wall. Helot entered the elevator and jabbed at the controls violently. A bomb on an antimatter reactor. Laura Stein, the dupe he had tried to pin the failed detachment on, had evidently taken his slander really, really, personally. Apparently, just to spite him, she had actually become a terrorist. Or were his powers of suggestion so great that claiming she was a terrorist actually made her one? As the elevator rode up to the engineering deck, he wondered if a public announcement declaring Ms. Stein was a perfectly sane pacifist would help.

  The elevator stopped, and he lunged out, loping down the hall as fast as he could, taking only a few seconds to reach the hallway outside the main reactor. A squad of heavily armed security officers stretched out down the hall in front of him, bracketing the door on both sides. Their chatter stopped as Helot pulled to a halt in front of the officer in charge.

  “She’s inside,” Lieutenant Jensson said. After Thorias’ death, it had taken a bit of sorting out within the security corps to figure out who was in charge of what, a process which was immeasurably simplified when Helot had pointed at Jensson and told him he was in charge of talking to him. “There’s at least one other with her, we think,” Jensson continued. “They have three hostages, including a security officer. Only stun weapons we think, but, also, obviously a bomb on the reactor.”

  “Are we sure she has a bomb?” Helot asked.

  “We didn’t go in to find out. But in general, yeah, the Othersiders have explosives. So, we didn’t want to take the chance. Don’t know what it’d do to the reactor.”

  Helot stared at his new deputy, forcing a blank look on his face. “It would destroy a small part of the universe. A small, but to us, very important part.” He looked at the door and licked his lips. “Okay. You have any plans how to get them out of there?”

  “This is the only way in. We could try a stun grenade with an extremely short delay. But that’s still pretty risky.”

  “Stupid risky,” Helot agreed. “Any demands? Aside from me?”

  Jensson shook his head. “She just wanted to talk to you. Didn’t say why.”

  Helot could think of a few reasons. To beg for him not to split the ship. Or to beg for a ride on his part of the ship. Or either of those, with blackmailing swapped for begging. Or maybe just to kill me. “Okay,” Helot said. “Everyone back up out of sight. When I open it, don’t say anything or do anything. I’m going to see what she wants.”

  “She might just want to kill you.”

  Helot dug his fingers into his palms. “I had considered that, thanks.” Good to look tough in front of the troops. But as he reached out to the door control panel, he knew it was less bravery and more resignation. He didn’t have a choice.

  And maybe it was about time he risked his own life for this scheme.

  The door slid open. He stepped inside.

  §

  “Ms. Stein?” someone called out from the doorway. She had never met him but recognized the voice immediately.

  Stein swallowed. Here we go. On the far side of the room, her back pressed to the bulk of the reactor, she turned, pistol pointed in the direction of the door. “Captain,” she called out. “I’ve got a bomb.”

  “Okay.” A pause. “Please don’t blow it up.” She heard an inaudible discussion on the other side of the door. “I’m unarmed.”

  She didn’t think he was lying but saw no reason to trust him, either. “If you try anything…” she said, trailing off. “Boom.” She looked over her shoulder to the corner of the room at Sergei, who was just starting to come to.

  “Ms. Stein, just keep yourself together for one second, please. Okay?” Helot said. He was trying to sound annoyed, but there was a distinct tremble in his voice. It seemed she was believable as a lunatic. The sound of the door sliding shut. “I’m inside now,” Helot said. “Alone.”

  Helot’s hands appeared on the far side of the reactor, moving slowly, eventually revealed to be attached to his arms, which were in turn, as expected, attached to the rest of Helot. The captain stepped out from behind the reactor, moving across the room. He stopped and looked at the pile of bodies in the corner. “Are they hurt?”

  “I’m…urk,” Sergei said. He looked it.

  Stein fired a shot into the floor in front of Sergei’s feet. “Please just be quiet for a minute,” she said. “Please?”

  “What?” Sergei asked. He blinked several times, seeming to have a hard time focusing on Stein. “What the…urk…Laura?”

  “Just be quiet, please.” She smiled as warmly as the circumstances dictated.

  “Ms. Stein, you need to calm down,” Helot said, moving towards her. A shot at his feet stopped him in his tracks.

  She waggled the gun at him. “I’m plenty calm. Now, sit down. Back to the wall.”

  Helot watched her carefully for a moment before backing up to the wall
and lowering himself to the ground. “All right, Ms. Stein. Or do you prefer Laura?” Seeing her not immediately disagree, he continued by asking, “Do you really think you can blow up the ship?”

  She fished her terminal out of a pocket and set it down in front of her, a big button marked Boom glowing on it. “There’s a charge on the main antimatter fuel line. You tell me.”

  Helot’s throat contracted. “That’d do it. Okay. Second question. Do you really want to blow up the ship?”

  Her hand hovered over the terminal. She tried putting a cruel smile on but could only hold it for a couple seconds before it slipped. “No,” she said, setting her hand down on the floor beside the trigger.

  “Well, that’s a relief.” Helot turned his head, craning his neck a bit to look at the missing floor panels. “So, what exactly are you doing then?”

  “Dunno.” Her shoulders sagged. She worried for a moment that she was overplaying her role and looked down, not meeting Helot’s gaze.

  “Want to give up, then?” Helot asked.

  “Sure.”

  A relieved sound from Sergei’s direction. “Hey!” she shouted. “I’m serious, pig. Keep your mouth shut.” It might have been less painful just to knock him out again. But she really needed him quiet for the next bit. She pleaded at him with her eyes.

  The message didn’t get through. Perhaps because he was stung by the pig comment, or possibly because his vision still hadn’t cleared up, Sergei instead shouted, “Or what!?”

  “Or I’ll shoot you again,” she said, shooting him again. Her shoulders sank. And that was probably that; the second shot would be really hard to explain. Her mouth felt dry.

  After a moment, she looked up at Helot, at the relaxed expression he was trying and failing to shape his face into. He was terrified. It was working. “I’m not as crazy as I look,” she said. “But maybe that’s not saying much.” She took a deep breath. “I don’t want to blow up the ship. And I won’t. If you answer some questions for me, first.”

  The captain swallowed, but slumped back against the wall, seeming to relax. “All right.”

  “First, I want to hear you say it. You’re trying to split the ship in two.”

  Helot looked her in the eyes. He looked sad. Deeply, fundamentally, irreparably sad. “It’s true,” he said. “I’m trying to split the ship.” She shivered, not having ever doubted it, but still a little frightened to hear him actually say it. “Do you want to come with us?” he asked. “We could make room for you.”

  Stein snorted. It was essentially the same deal as Kinsella’s, though perhaps from a source more capable of delivering. She mentally weighed the offer and felt her resolve waver a moment when she realized it weighed pretty good. But she set it aside and took a deep breath. “Why are you doing it, Helot?”

  Helot looked away, shaking his head. “Honestly? We don’t have enough fuel to stop the whole ship. We messed up. Burned too much during course corrections, during the acceleration. We messed up,” he repeated. He looked back at her and shrugged.

  “That thing right there,” Stein said, pointing over her shoulder to the reactor console, “says we have 1.54 million tons of antimatter. That’s not enough?”

  A tremor from Helot’s hand. Was that a sign? Was he hiding something? Or was he just shit–scared of the crazy bomb lady? “No, it’s not enough,” he said.

  “Because I have it on good authority we need only 1.38 million tons to stop this ship.” She watched his eyes widen. “The whole ship.” His throat contracted. He is definitely hiding something.

  “Where did you hear that?”

  She grinned. She had him. She fired a shot into the wall beside him. “I’m asking the questions here,” she said, starting to enjoy her role. She wondered if this was how Bruce felt all the time. “And I’m right, aren’t I?”

  The shot seemed to startle him. He worked his jaw around, almost visibly assembling his next sentence piece by piece. “It’s not that simple, Laura.”

  Another shot into the wall on the other side of him. “Make it simple for me.”

  Helot held his hands up defensively. “Okay! Okay. That figure is accurate. I don’t know how you heard about it. You are a remarkably, infuriatingly resourceful young lady.” He rubbed his hands against his pants leg. “Yes, on paper, we only need about 1.4 megatons of antimatter to stop. But it’s not that simple; we have to account for all sorts of contingencies. Burn efficiency, equipment failure, that sort of thing. In simple terms, there is a chance we have enough fuel to stop the whole ship. But it’s not a great chance.”

  Stein felt her pistol sag. “What kind of chance?”

  Helot looked away from her. “Not a great one.”

  “What chance, Helot?” she shouted. Her gun snapped up to point directly at him. “What exact odds? You’ve calculated it out, I’m sure.”

  He rubbed his face. “About eighty–seven percent.”

  A strange mixture of emotions surged through Stein. She was right and felt suitably elated about that. Who doesn’t like being right? She was also talking to a monster, which tempered her self–satisfaction somewhat. “There’s an eighty–fucking–seven percent chance you could save the whole ship?” she hissed.

  “It sounds bad when you…hiss it…like that,” Helot said. “But there’s a ninety–five percent chance if we just decelerate the core. And when you do the math, with the right weightings, that is the better choice.”

  The flux of emotions slowly settled into a steady state of deep, primal revulsion. For the first time, she saw the simple truth and beauty behind the idea of ‘just killing a guy.’ But a better plan was on its way. “You’re an abomination,” she said, both stalling for time and meaning it sincerely.

  “Maybe,” Helot agreed. “Although I accounted for that, as well. If you get the weightings right, even a monster can make the right decision.”

  “The weightings,” Stein said, again nearly hissing. “You’re murdering fifty thousand people. For what? To save a few hundred? Your chosen few hundred? I notice you’ve stacked the invitation list pretty heavily with your buddies. Can you trust a monster to pick who lives and dies?”

  Helot looked away, obviously uncomfortable. “I guess not. But I did it. And compared to the hard decision that preceded it, that part was actually pretty easy.” He looked at the stack of unconscious people in the corner. “If you can only take a few, then yeah, you’ll take the competent people who can follow orders.”

  “And leave the rest of us ornery folk behind.”

  Helot chuckled. “Ornery is one thing. I could deal with that. But you people…” He paused, then shook his head. “Not you. You are actually different, aren’t you?” He smiled. “I read your file. The mostly sane canned baby. You’re okay, I think. Must have been something to do with the process.” Another chuckle. “Because you’re obviously not Sheeped.”

  “I’m not what?”

  “Very long story. Not relevant here. My point was, most of the people on the ship are…” he said, trailing off. “Did you know there are people out there who go around peeing on things? Just for the hell of it? Because of the interesting smells? I wonder how useful they’ll be on the ground. I wonder how long it will take for them to freeze to death. I wonder if they’ll make a fucking game out of it.” He shook his head. “No, picking the guest list was the easiest part.”

  “And what gives you the right? You’re not even elected, you fuck.”

  Helot tilted his head back, his mouth open, laughing silently. “Have you met our mayor? Would you want him to make this call?” Helot saw something on Stein’s face that he took for a sign of agreement. “Exactly!” He sat back triumphantly for a few seconds before his eyes flicked down to her hand hovering over the terminal and its glowing bomb trigger. Remembering where he was, his voice softened. “Look,” he said. “I understand why you’re upset. No one should ever be given the right to make the decision I made. But someone gave it to me. And once I had that right, that responsibility,
I couldn’t pass it off.”

  “It should have gone to a vote. Or a lottery.”

  “I looked into that. There would have been a riot. A larger riot. Way more people dead that way.”

  “You looked into it? You wrote a little report on it, did you? Looked up democracy in the dictionary maybe? Decided it didn’t fit here?”

  “Listen, you little shit,” Helot said, a single finger thrust out at her. “I’ve been making this decision for the last twenty years. Looking at it from every angle. This is the best way.” He looked her in the eye. “You’d have done the same, I bet.”

  “The hell I would.”

  “I felt the same way at first. You’ll come around.” Helot looked at his hands, turning them over in front of him. “Look, Laura. You don’t fully understand what we’re up against.” His hands clenched up for a moment, balled into fists, before he allowed them to relax. “Do you know what happened a hundred and ninety years ago? Well, it probably happened a millennia or so before that, but it didn’t really make a difference to us until we smacked into the light cone.”

  She couldn’t think of what he was referring to. 190 years was right around when they’d discovered they were off course.

  “The ship passed through a pulse of very high energy radiation. Our shielding wasn’t entirely effective. A lot of people became sick. Really, awfully sick. Does that ring a bell?” He waited for some sign of agreement, which she didn’t offer. But it did sound familiar. “It was, I’m told, worse than you’ve heard,” he continued. “Cancer rates through the roof. Birth defects — really bad ones. We almost didn’t make it.” He swallowed. “But a few years passed, and the anti–cancer meds seemed to work, and the gene–tinkerers stopped the worst of the damage. On the surface, it looked like we’d gotten through it okay.”

  Stein stood up, no longer comfortable on her knees, taking the terminal with her. Gun still carefully leveled at Helot, she took a couple of steps back and leaned on the reactor control console. “On the surface?”

  “There was a problem.” Helot looked away. He seemed uncomfortable. “Did you know that within a generation, the average IQ on board the Argos probably dropped about 45 points?” Helot wrung his hands together. “We’re the descendants of scientists and engineers, Laura. Some of the smartest people on Earth. Now, how many people out there,” he waved his hand to the north, “do you think have shit their pants today?”