Colony

by Rob Grant

  'That's right, soldier of Satan,' Peck mocks. 'We had three engines, we lost three engines. Now we have no engines. Would you like to borrow a calculator and confirm that for yourself?'

  This is supposed to be a code alpha emergency meeting, yet only Peck, Oslo and Apton Styx have shown up. It's hard to believe the rest of the Pilgrim Parents have found something more urgent to attend to. The alternatives are not good. Either the communication system has broken down or the rest of the Committee are incapacitated.

  Injured... or worse.

  Certainly, the medical bay where Eddie dropped off Jebediah Styx was otherwise unoccupied.

  Eddie runs the graphic again. There is no ambiguity. The hull quivers, then rips itself apart around the giant engine. The engine crumples like an empty cigarette packet and seems to fold into the ship, leaving only a raised scar along the length of the fissure. 'So now we don't have any engines left at all?'

  'Mercy me. How did we ever get by without your expert analysis?'

  Eddie doesn't take his eyes off the display. 'Frankly, you didn't. You managed to lose two entire engines and eighty per cent of the manoeuvring thrusters before I was even revived, baby.' Why, Eddie? Why can't you rise above this pettiness?

  Oslo waves her hand over the monitor, blacking out the display. 'So you didn't find anything? In the hieroglyphics?'

  'No. Nothing yet.'

  'Then there's still a chance?'

  'A chance? Maybe there was a chance, before we lost the engine. But now...'

  'You've got to keep looking.'

  'Why? What do you expect me to find? A neat little booklet entitled Fifty Ways to Steer an Enormous Space Ship Around Gigantic Gas Planets Without Engines? How to Make a Space-worthy Parachute for Five Thousand People -- Volume 7?'

  'OK. What's your plan, tin man? Give up? Lounge in your apartment and sip a Blue Lagoon while you enjoy the spectacle of the hull collapsing around you, crushing us all?'

  'Oslo.' Apton Styx steps up to the monitor. 'Would you mind running the reconstruction again?'

  'May I ask why, Mr Styx?'

  'No reason. I just enjoy watching it.'

  Oslo shakes her head in despair and waves her hand over the screen, too worn out even to insult the drone. 'Maybe it's best we all die in horrible crushing agony. Maybe it's the best option for the future of the human race.'

  Eddie turns to face her. He gets a sense, a strange, unfamiliar sense, that he's supposed to do something here. That, for all their insults, put-downs and exasperations, Peck and Oslo are in some way looking to him, looking for some kind of lead.

  Eddie, a leader? Invisible Eddie? How did this moment ever arrive?

  He does his best to rise to the occasion. 'I'm not saying we should give up. I'm not saying things are hopeless. Things are never hopeless...' Suddenly, an image of the gas giant pops into his brain, looming towards the helpless, doomed ship. He tries to shake it off. Succeeds, for the moment. '... So we're not going to abandon ourselves to hopelessness.' But the image returns, in even more graphic detail. He imagines the poor, wounded Willflower crushed by the immense gravitational force of the unavoidable planet. '... That's the important thing...' Flash frames leap into his head of the individuals he's facing dying in an alarming number of hideously violent ways: getting blown up by random explosions, pulverized by crumpling walls and blasted into space through sudden lesions in the hull. He tries to put the ghastly visions out of his mind and give his rallying speech a final little upbeat turn, find some kind of positive spin. Sadly, the best he can dredge up is: 'It's just that, well, in this particular scenario, there isn't exactly a tremendous abundance of... hopefulosity.'

  Nice speech, Eddie. Inspirational. He has to think of something to break the baffled, incredulous, staring pause that follows it, so he changes gear with: 'Anybody seen Father Lewis?'

  Oslo and Peck look at each other, then back at Eddie. Oslo says: 'Wasn't he with you?'

  'He left.'

  'He left you? Why?'

  'Well, I was wedged upside down in a snack machine, Styx was comatose, and he probably thought he'd make better time without those little handicaps.'

  'That sounds like the Padre all right.'

  'What are you saying?' Peck rounds on Oslo. 'Are you insulting the integrity of a man of God?'

  'Come on, Trinity. Wake up and sniff the transubstantiated wine, honey. He left the man helpless in the middle of a shipquake.'

  'He must have had a good, devout reason.'

  'Yes. Like saving his own sorry, devout ass.'

  'Bernadette, it's one thing that this unholy anti-life,' Peck flicks a tiny nostril sneer in Eddie's direction, 'despises the Padre. It's in his soulless nature. But I expect better of you.'

  Oslo touches her chest. 'Me? I don't despise Lewis. True, I think he's the moral equivalent of single-cell life forms that reproduce in toilet basin scum, but I also think he's in possession of the nearest thing we have on board to a working intellect. And we need him here, now.' She turns to Eddie. 'Where did he say he was heading?'

  'He said he was coming up here to calm things down.'

  'Really.' Oslo's long legs stride over to the coms panel. She waves her hands over the controls. 'And you were lodged in the snack dispenser... here.'

  A low-resolution image appears in the monitor above Oslo. A corridor. It looks similar to the corridor Eddie was in when the quake struck. Oslo looks over at him. 'Yes?'

  'Well, it can't be. I mean, it looks like the same corridor, but there's no damage.'

  'There was a lot of damage?'

  'There wasn't much else but damage. Look. Even the vending machine's still intact.'

  'Well, according to your playback, this is the same corridor.'

  'Playback? What playback?'

  'I keep telling you: the suit is hooked into the shipwide coms systems. Effectively, you're part of the ship.'

  'What are you saying? You can track me? You can trace everywhere I've been? Everything I've done?'

  'Of course. Now...' Oslo starts waving her hands again. 'He would have taken some kind of transport...'

  Eddie is aghast. Not only is Lewis spying on him -- everyone on board can spy on him, any time they feel like it. They can follow his every move, his every word. They can replay it all, even, at their leisure. They can relax in their sofas of an evening with a bag of popcorn and tune into the Eddie O'Hare show. And when they're not doing that, they can project their huge faces into his helmet at will. Sensational.

  'Got him.' Oslo looks up at the monitor. 'He took a kart to the transway, and headed to his office. Seven minutes later, he was back on the transway, and he got off... here.'

  Another lo-res image, another part of the ship. A high, wide-angle shot of two huge bay doors, with boxes stacked outside. A corridor kart is parked with skewed eagerness by the pile of cartons. There are more boxes on the kart. No sign of the Padre.

  Oslo pans the camera around. 'He must be somewhere arou...'

  The camera pauses on a box on the kart which is wobbling. The image zooms in as the box rises, revealing a cassocked body behind it.

  Lewis staggers under the weight of the carton as he carries it over to the stack. In this tighter focus, Eddie can see the stack is resting on a pallet, with a forklift trolley parked near by.

  Oslo shakes her head, sporting a quarter smile. 'I really should have guessed.'

  Eddie peers closer. 'Guessed what?'

  'Don't you know where this is?'

  Eddie peers closer still. There is a sign by the bay doors, but it's in blurred focus. He can barely make out the three largest letters. 'STP?'

  Oslo nods. 'Right. He's loading up the STiP.'

  'STiP?'

  'The Ship to Planet module.'

  'Some kind of craft?'

  Apton Styx looks at Eddie with something approaching disdain. 'The STiP is a Ship to Planet module, which is a module for travelling between the ship and a planet. See?' He flattens one hand. 'Ship...' He makes a ball with h
is other hand. '... Planet.' He moves the flat hand towards the fist, slowly and deliberately. 'Ship ... to Planet.' He repeats the demonstration in reverse. 'Planet to ship.'

  'So it is a craft?'

  Styx holds up the flat hand. 'It's a module. A Ship to Planet module.'

  Eddie smiles indulgently and wishes his headache would go away. 'Thanks, Apton. That is so much clearer, now. Would you like to go away and lift some heavy weights with your neck?' He turns to Oslo. 'What kind of passenger capacity does the module have? How much cargo can it carry? What's its range?'

  'It can hold ten people, at a squeeze. There's lots of cargo space, but it's not sealed -- there's no life support there. It's really only meant to cruise between the ship in orbit and the planet's surface. The plan is, it carries an advance party, with sufficient supplies to construct what we call a "stairway" -- a kind of...'

  'I know. A Stairway to Heaven. I've seen one.'

  'Seen one? You mean, you've seen a simulation.'

  This is awkward. Of course, the only people who can have seen the stairway in operation would be the founding pilgrims. The Originals. Eddie's not sure this is a good time to get into the subject. Fortunately, something on the display distracts Oslo's attention, and he's off the hook, temporarily.

  Lewis is looking up at the monitor, his eyes narrowed in suspicion. He must have heard the camera's servo tracking him. A flustered look crosses his face only momentarily. His eyes dart from side to side. He puts the box he's carrying on top of the pile, and smooths back an unruly lock of hair from his forehead. Ignoring the camera now, he crosses to the com panel by the STiP bay doors and flips the switch. 'Hello? Can anybody hear me?' His voice sounds suitably desperate. 'Is this darned thing working yet?'

  Oslo flips her own com switch. 'Nice try, Padre. Going somewhere?'

  'Bernadette, is that you? Praise God. I've been trying to reach you for ages.'

  'Right. And in the meantime, you thought you'd pack for a little trip.'

  Lewis looks over at the boxes. 'This? Yes. Look, I don't know how to break this to you, but that last quake, it destroyed the one remaining engine.'

  'We know.'

  'So that's it. There doesn't seem to be any option left, does there? We'll have to pick a small group to try and make some kind of escape in the STiP. I thought someone should start packing it up with supplies.'

  'And that group would, presumably, include you?'

  Lewis's eyes do their darting thing again. 'I hadn't thought, to be honest. But, yes, I suppose I assumed we'd select key personnel from the Committee.'

  'He's right,' Peck nods. 'If we are forced to abandon ship, it would be vital to have a priest among the survivors.'

  'Really?' Oslo zooms in on a packing box bulging with video discs. 'And presumably, it would be equally vital for that priest to bring along his sacred pornography collection?' Eddie squints at the image on the disc label. It seems to depict two naked females in a shower attempting to accommodate an unreasonably giant loofah.

  Lewis manages to interpose his body between the screen and the boxes and make it look accidental. 'I don't know what you're talking about, Bernie. I was in something of a rush. I just threw a few boxes in the kart, that's all.' He turns and pretends to check the boxes. 'Are there really filthy videos in here? Damn.'

  Oslo flips off her com switch and turns to the others. 'Look. Much as I hate to admit it, Lewis has a damned good point. With no engines, our only choice is to abandon ship.'

  'Wait a minute.' Eddie's not sure what his chances would be of making the ship's top ten list, but he has a good idea. Certainly he doesn't seem to have a massive fan base on the Committee. 'How many of these STiPs are there?'

  There is a guilty silence. Peck answers. 'One.'

  'One?'

  'There were more. There's only one left that's operational.'

  'So we have a single lifeboat that can hold ten people? Out of a population of over two thousand?'

  'Once again, demonic incubus, your arithmetic is flawless.'

  'And it's not a lifeboat,' Styx chips in, 'it's a module.'

  'And just who gets to decide?' Eddie's praying it's not a democratic vote. 'Who chooses the survivors?'

  Peck looks towards Oslo. There's something going on between them. Oslo looks down. 'I think it's pretty obvious. We should include our brightest people, and those with the most useful skills. If you're worrying whether or not you'd be included...'

  'I'm not.' He is.

  'Well, you would be.'

  'Really?' Eddie tries not to look smug.

  'Not for you, yourself. For your suit.'

  'Of course.' Eddie tries not to look crestfallen.

  'It's strong, it can survive extreme conditions, and you wouldn't be a drain on our consumables.'

  Good lord. They've discussed this. In detail. This is what they've been planning. Eddie looks over at Peck. She's literally biting her lip. The decision to take Eddie along would not have sat sweetly with her. 'Well, it's nice to be appreciated. But that's not the point. You can't just select ten people to live out of the whole population. Less than one half of one per cent of the crew. It's inhuman.'

  'And so what, then?' Oslo's angry. She probably doesn't like the situation any more than Eddie does. 'We all die? Everybody dies, because the alternative's immoral?'

  Eddie turns to Peck. 'And what about you, Joan of Arc? Are you on the saved list?'

  Oslo cuts in. 'Of course she is. We need someone with a science background.'

  'Who else then? Styx?'

  Oslo nods. 'We don't know what we'll be facing out there. We'll probably need muscle. Especially recyclable muscle. We can take his regeneration equipment. Churn out as many drones as our resources allow.'

  'So, us four, Lewis -- presumably because we're going to need someone to say grace at meal times -- and who else? The Captain?'

  The same guilty, conspiratorial look passes from Peck to Oslo.

  Suddenly, Eddie understands their naughty little secret. 'Wait a minute. You're not taking Gwent. You haven't told him, have you? You're keeping him out of the loop.'

  Oslo sneers. 'What use would that silly little turdpot be? What special skills would he bring to the party? The ability to masturbate non-stop for eleven hours out of every twelve? That should come in useful on a hostile planet. "Look! There's a river of molten lava cascading down that mountain towards the camp. Quick, Captain! Try and douse it with seminal fluid!"' She mimics the actions, the bent body and the ugly facial contortions of an orgasming adolescent. '"Say, sure thing, Ozovitch! Eeee eeee eeee! Blarhhhghhhh! It's not working. Maybe I should try squirting it with, say, copious amounts of my acne pus."' She mimes squeezing facial spots. 'Schtppp! Schtppp! Schtppp! No, Captain, stop! We're going to need that pus to poison predators! "Don't worry, Oz!" Schtppp! Schtppp! "I have an unlimited supply!" Schtppp!'

  Once again, Eddie is taken aback by the intensity of Oslo's hatred for Gwent. 'Ooh, but he's the Captain, Bernie. Useless or not, that's the bottom line. Who stays and who goes, that's his decision. What you're proposing is mutiny, in fact.'

  'Mutiny? You're not serious?'

  'Technically, it is. Technically, Gwent could have you removed from your body just for having this conversation.'

  'All right.' There is the ominous clack of a cocked weapon, and Eddie turns slowly towards it.

  Styx has his assault rifle trained on the group. 'Hands in the air, one and all.'

  Nobody raises any hands. Oslo closes her eyes, fighting despair. 'What the frot are you doing, Styx?'

  'My duty, ma'am. You're all under arrest.'

  'What for? Mutiny? He wasn't being serious. You weren't being serious, were you, Dr Morton?'

  'No, Apton. I was making a theoretical point, that's all.'

  Without further warning, Styx snaps the barrel low and fires the weapon at the floor beside Eddie's feet. Eddie's arm shoots out involuntarily and crashes into a bank of electronic equipment. A high-voltage shock runs through his
suit, and Eddie begins to judder uncontrollably. He screams for someone to turn off the juice, but his free arm is flailing randomly, making it hard to get near him. The liquid in his helmet starts to bubble. Oslo strides over to him calmly and kicks his arm clear of the console.

  Eddie can't speak for the moment. He can't see, and he can't move. All he can do is wait for the juddering to subside, and for his green gloop to drop below boiling point. The voice box in his throat is making alarming, intermittent fizzing noises. Finally, his foaming vision clears sufficiently for him to make out Styx, through a haze of smoke, who looks shocked and a little scared, but none the less still has his weapon trained on Eddie.

  'Don't ever, ever, do that again.' Eddie's voice doesn't carry the weight it might, his vocal unit having shorted out. He sounds like he's been breathing helium. 'Ever,' he squeaks.

  'Next time, I'll be aiming at your helmet. Now,' the drone waves the rifle in the direction of the door, 'I want you all to file out of here, one by one, in a kind of... single file, with your arms raised above your heads.'

  Oslo takes a step towards him. 'I'm losing my patience, Styx. Put the weapon down.'

  Styx backs away nervously. 'Ma'am, I will use this weapon, ma'am. You're under arrest.'

  Oslo takes another stride. 'We haven't got time for this, Styx. We have to abandon ship.'

  Styx backs off a step, his rifle aimed at Oslo. 'There will be no mutiny, ma'am. Not on my watch. Now, let's all file off in the file formation I previously described, in single file.'

  'Look, if it really was a mutiny, you'd be a mutineer, too, wouldn't you?'

  Styx's eyes flit from side to side. 'Begging your pardon, ma'am?'

  'You were going to come along with us, were you not?'

  'Ma'am, yes ma'am. But that was... I didn't know... Nobody said it was a mutiny.'

  'So, is it a mutiny or not?'

  'I don't... I think it probably... If the Captain doesn't know, then... yes, it is.'

  'In which case, I'm ordering you to place yourself under arrest.'

  Styx's eyes lose their focus completely. 'Ma'am, you're right, ma'am. But how...? I don't know how I could arrest myself, exactly.'

  'All right, no need to make this difficult.' Oslo holds out her hand. 'Give me the rifle, and I'll arrest you for you.'