by Guy Haley
“Fifty-eight per cent of the cargo has been delivered,” said Posth. “We have the majority of the wakened colonists on site.”
“How many?” asked Amir.
“Seven hundred or so. There are three hundred still awake on board. We will begin sequenced waking of the remainder once they are down,” said Posth.
“Good work, captain,” said Leonid, because he felt someone should say it. “If I might make a further suggestion?”
“Please do,” said Posth.
“Could we consider the...”
There was a wrenching noise. The ship bumped. Under the low gravity, Leonid drifted up, then down. There was a rumble, felt rather than heard. A gentle push shoved them toward the wall.
“What the hell was that?” said Yuri.
“Acceleration?” said Amir.
An alarm whooped.
Posth shouted, “Helm, report.”
“I – I...” The man in the primary pilot’s station looked over. “I don’t know...”
“Hankinson! Pull yourself together.”
“The engines, ma’am. They’re online!”
“The reactor, too, it’s gone through a complete cold cycle, started from nothing. I’ve got a breach on containment spiral four,” said the woman at the reactor station.
“Shut that damn alarm off!” yelled Posth.
The rumbling grew.
“Helm! Shut the engines down.”
“I can’t, I can’t!” Hankinson hammered at the touchscreen in front of him. “It’s not responding.”
“Ma’am! We’ve instability in the rotational cycle.”
“I’ve been locked out too, captain,” said the woman by the reactor control station.
“Have we got anything?” Posth shouted. “Systems?” Posth hauled herself along the grabrails to a recessed station. The man there did not look up. Cold light bathed his face.
“I’m losing access all across the board,” he said. “We’re being shut out.”
“How long until you can get it back?”
“I don’t know!”
“We have seven minutes before we begin uncontrolled re-entry, ma’am,” said Maalouf.
“Who still has control over their station? Tell me! Now!”
“Cargo system online, ma’am.”
“Hibernation decks online.”
“Sensors online.”
“Traffic control online, ma’am.”
No-one else spoke.
“Is that it?”
Eyes flicked backwards and forwards in worried faces.
“Hankinson, do you have thruster control?”
“I... I...”
“Spit it out! Yes or no!”
“Yes, ma’am. Manoeuvring thrusters are online, ma’am. I’ll do what I can.”
“Orient this vessel so that it will descend as slowly as possible. Alter heading. Five degrees northwest. I want the descent corridor well away from First Landing.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Traffic control, shuttle status.”
“Kraków and Gdańsk are returning from the surface. Lublin is docked, loaded and ready to fly.”
“Get Sand out of here. Kaczynska, pull the plugs on all the pods that have not yet woken. Blow them out, all of them, emergency evac. They’ll stand more chance off the ship than on it.”
“All of them?”
“All of them. There’s not enough room on the shuttles for everybody, and we certainly don’t have time to wake them up! Get them off the ship!”
“Shall I prioritise the Pointers’ men’s decks?”
The captain’s face went hard, and she did not answer. She stared hard at Leonid, with a look of hatred that took him aback.
“Captain?”
“Yes! Yes! Do it, follow protocol.”
Some semblance of order returned to the bridge. Posth spoke, calmly and clearly, cutting through the hubbub.
“Men and women of the Mickiewicz. We do not know what has happened. We do not know where we are. We are presented with a stark choice. We have to work as hard as we can to ensure that as much of our cargo manifest and our passengers are deposited on the surface of this world. I cannot order you to stay by your posts. I will not ask you to stay by your posts. Each and every one of you is free to leave and board the evacuation pods, but every one of you that does not do so will buy time that will enable more of our fellow men and women to survive, and with it, perhaps ensure the survival of the human race.”
They looked at her, then returned to their posts. Only two left, quickly, and with a haunted air that would cling to them for the remainder of their lives.
Posth gripped the rail.
“Hankinson, I want you to stabilise us for as long as possible. Get as many of our people down as we can.”
“De Mona is on the line, sir!” shouted flight control.
“Tell her what she needs to hear. Wait till she’s clear before ejecting the first of the decks. The settlement will need that shuttlecraft, and I want her down in one piece.”
Posth turned to Leonid’s party. “You better get out of here, sir.”
“I should stay.”
She shook her head. “I’ve always despised Pointers, and I hope to hell they overthrow you and make you clean toilets for the rest of your life once things are up and running down there, but I’ve no wish to see you die, and you’re no use on the bridge.” She pushed something into his hand. A glass capsule, with a piece of broken glass inside it. “The DNA sample of our saboteur. Keep it safe. Find out who he was. Go! All of you!”
“I... Thank you, captain,” said Leonid. She turned her back on him. Yuri was pulling at his arm. The ship shook.
“We have to go now,” his brother hissed in his ear.
In a moment, Leonid’s new-found confidence deserted him. After a lifetime of feeling privileged and useless, Leonid had never felt quite so privileged, nor quite so useless.
LEONID ALLOWED ANDERSON to hustle him out onto the lift platform, and Amir joined them. The ship rumbled alarmingly, shifting from one side to the other. A ship’s junior, sweat on his forehead, met them at the shaft base.
“This way, sirs,” he said.
The corridor was a scene of panic. People were running toward the escape pods. They moved too fast for the erratic simulated gravity, banging into each other and tripping.
“There’ll be a place for us, sir,” said Anderson. “The evacuation pods are code locked. They won’t be able to get in.”
The junior officer nodded. He swallowed constantly, checking over his shoulder every couple of seconds as if he expected death to ride up behind them. His hands pawed at Leonid and Yuri’s backs, urging them on.
Anderson had his gun ready, fixing those who looked like they might cause trouble with a murderous eye. A gesture from the gun cleared their path.
They were nearly at the door leading into an evacuation pod bay when a tearing wrench sounded throughout the vessel. They stumbled with it. People crashed into one another, alarms howled. The lights flickered off for one terrifying moment, red emergency lighting taking their place.
“The ship’s rotation!” said the junior. “We’re losing gravity.”
Colonists and non-essential ship’s crew drifted in tight knots, wrestling with one another as they fought for space and stability. The spin cut out completely, the centrifuged gravity going with it..
“This way, sir!” Anderson hung from a strap in what had been the ceiling, his face demonic in the red glow. He reached out his hand. “Take hold!”
Leonid fought his way through the air. The sensation was akin to dreams he had had as a child, where he could fly, but barely, and had been forced to swim inelegantly through the air to escape his enemies. The ship juddered. He slammed into Anderson.
“I’ve got you, sir, come on,” said Anderson. “Grab my belt.” Amir and Yuri latched hold of Leonid, dragging the junior along with them. They formed an ungainly train. “The pods are this way. Only another twenty metr
es to go.” The acceleration of the ship pushed at them. Men and women screamed as they were ripped from their straps, but Anderson hung firm, moving hand over hand with unnatural strength, dragging the rest with him.
More people were shaken loose as the ship convulsed, sent into the wall opposite the direction of travel. Alarms sounded. From somewhere came the hiss of escaping air. “Hull breach, hull breach, hull breach,” droned a notification. “Hull breach, hull breach...”
The air stirred, a breeze that picked up strength.
Anderson grabbed a man by the evacuation pod bay door and yanked him out of the way. “In! In! In!” he bellowed, deference gone. “Get in!”
Leonid stared as the man Anderson had ripped from his mooring hit a wall.
“Get in now!”
He shoved the Pointers, Amir, and the junior through the door into a short, kidney-shaped corridor with twenty large hatches in it, surrounded by red bands. Leonid flew without control; the ship was accelerating, g-force growing. Seven of the pods had already flown, the rest were becoming out of reach as the geography of the ship shifted. The pods were in line with the ship’s spine. The pod hatches were set into the subjective floor, to take advantage of the spin in sending them out into space, but the craft’s acceleration had shifted to pull toward the back wall. Colonists were pinned against it, a tangle of bodies, a moaning, multi-limbed horror that shed more and more of its humanity as the g-force increased. Other people lay, gripping pod hatch handles that they lacked the clearance to open. The ship vibrated violently; it would not be long before it broke up.
Anderson grabbed Leonid roughly as he spun toward the clot of bodies. The junior opened an escape hatch door with a thought.
“Open them all!” shouted Leonid. “Deactivate the passcodes! The colonists cannot get in!”
The junior nodded. Lights flashed above each of the doors as they slid open. Grateful colonists clambered in where they could, some fighting to get in, others leaning, stretching arms to grasp the desperate hands of their fellows.
Anderson shoved Leonid into the pod. The planet tugged at them. They were exiting the microgravity environment, deep enough into the gravity well of Nychthemeron for them to feel it.
The pod was small, with four seats. Twenty pods per bay, three bays around the primary deck. Enough to get two hundred and forty people off the vessel, if they were all used. Not enough, there were not enough for everyone, Leonid thought. Yuri came in next, then Anderson. The brothers strapped themselves in. Amir gripped the door aperture. “What about me?”
“Get out,” said Anderson. “You are superfluous to my mission objectives.” Leonid was chilled. Anderson said it without malice, matter-of-factly.
“What about him?” Amir stared at the crewman, spit flying from his lips.
“He can operate this craft if anything goes wrong. Him we need, you we do not.”
Clunks and roars as first one, then two, then three, of the other pods disengaged. The ship lurched.
“Get out!” said Anderson.
“Get in one of the other pods!” Yuri pleaded. His face was white.
“No!” spat Amir.
“Very well.” Anderson raised his gun.
“I’ll remember this, Anderson,” said Amir. “You’re a marked man.” He shoved himself off from the lip of the pod.
“Now! Go!” Anderson shouted.
The doors slid shut. Escape rockets vented gas, pushing them out of the trailing edge of the shield cap.
The pod lacked all but the most basic guidance systems. It tumbled end over end. Despite his enhanced physiology, Leonid vomited. He was wrenched to and fro, until the pod was caught in the planet’s grasp. Somehow, it righted itself, presenting its heatshield to the atmosphere. The passage of air drew dragon’s fire from the skin of the lifeboat, and it became unbearably hot.
Leonid was conscious for the entire descent, a tumbling confusion, a blast-furnace roar that ceased with the snap of parachutes deploying, then a minute later, an impact of bone-crunching force.
SAND AND CORRIGAN were returning from a break aboard the Mickiewicz when the engines flared into life.
“Shh!” Her hand went onto Corrigan’s arm. “What the hell is that?”
“What?”
The ship jerked.
“The engines? Why the hell are they firing the engines?” Sand tapped into the ship’s internal comms via her inChip. “Bridge, Bridge, I’m feeling some movement down here. Please advise.”
The deck vibrated. Colonists looked alarmed. They looked to Sand; one started to speak, and she waved a hand at him. “Sorry, Bridge, say again?”
The voice in her subdermal was scratchy.
“What are they saying? What the...” The ship lurched suddenly, sending them sprawling. The axial spin accelerated and decelerated without warning.
Sand found herself atop Corrigan. “It’s the engines. Looks like whoever pulled the sabotage did a real number on us. Get up. Keep walking. Don’t say anything.” She grabbed his arm by the elbow. “We have to get off the ship.”
“The engines firing is bad?”
“Way bad, my friend. Remember I said to you we had a few days before the ship’s orbit decayed and we all had to get the hell out of Dodge?”
“Sure I do.”
“Make that about five minutes. We have to get off the ship!”
“What about everyone else?” said Corrigan.
“We let on to what’s happening, they’re all going to want a ride, and that isn’t going to happen. It’ll take eight minutes to swap our cargo loadout for pressurised passenger units, longer to get it full of bodies, and we do not have that time.”
The ESS Adam Mickiewicz groaned as Sand and Corrigan made their way toward the shuttle decks. The other two shuttles were off vessel, and holding back. “SS Lublin, status,” she asked her inChip. Systems were patchy and she had to ask three times before they spat out an answer. The vessel was loaded with its container of heavy autonomous construction robots and ready to fly.
“Okay, we’re good to go. Just act as if everything’s normal.”
Corrigan twisted his arm out of her grip. “We can’t leave all these people to die, De Mona. You have to do something.”
“Yeah; they can die with us, or without us. Make your choice.”
There were too many colonists walking toward the shuttle deck for Sand’s liking, all of them scrubbed up and carrying kit bags. Kraków and Gdańsk’s next batch of passengers. But the other two shuttles were holding off, and weren’t coming back in.
A sense of pressure was growing on Sand as the ship accelerated. They staggered as the spin increased. Panic rippled through the knots of colonists in the atrium of the loading bay. Some of them were looking at her and pointing, walking down the walls toward her.
“Shit. Come on. If we hurry, we might be able to get away.”
“I’m not happy about this, Sand.”
“Fine, stay here and die, then.”
The Lublin’s docking bay was empty, but it did not stay that way long. A gaggle of colonists followed her, shouting, more coming in to the Lublin’s dock.
“What’s going on?”
“Pilot, hey, pilot. Goddamn it, talk to me!”
By the time she and Corrigan had made it to the access hatch, a crowd was gathering around them. Corrigan unslung his gun and pointed it at the colonists, keeping them away.
The Mickiewicz groaned. The grumble of the main drive unit was now obvious.
“Why are they firing the engines?” shouted someone.
“Will we still be able to get on our shuttles?”
A man close enough for Sand to see his face said it first. “We’re going to crash, aren’t we?”
Fearful murmurs went through the crowd.
Sand shouted. “Back away! Back away! We do not have capacity for you.”
“You’re going without us?”
“What about him?” A woman pointed at Corrigan.
“Do as she says,
ladies and gentlemen. Stay away from the access hatch.” He was stone-faced as he said it.
“Take the children, please, take the children!”
The crowd surged forward. Fights were breaking out.
Corrigan let off a shot. Sand looked nervously to the ceiling where the round had impacted. The crowd backed away, giving them a clear five metres space in the centre.
“Look!” Corrigan shouted. “Yes, the ship is going down! There is no room for anyone aboard this shuttle. Now either you can let Sand here do her job and get this shuttle off the ship so whoever comes through this mess can make use of it, or you can let them die slowly for lack of it, do you hear?”
“What you got in there that’s so important, what’s in there that’s more important than our lives, the lives of our families?” A man with the violence of desperation in his eyes shouted.
“It’ll take too long to swap out the modules!” cried Sand. “I’m sorry!”
“What have you got in there?” the man shouted.
“Yeah! Tell us!” Demands went up from various parts of the crowd.
Sand realised that she should keep her mouth shut, but it just slipped out. “Heavy construction units,” she said.
“Robots? Robots are more important than our lives?”
The crowd seethed, pushing and pulling in at the centre.
“Let us in! Let us in, you bitch!”
A man rushed at the ship access; a small knot of people surged about him like waves around a rock, and then were sucked in his wake. The deck was pandemonium, shouting and screaming and shoving.
Corrigan brought his gun up, drew a bead, and felled the leader with a burst. He went over backwards, feet flipping up in the air, blood spraying over the crowd.
“Rush him! He can’t kill us all!”
Corrigan’s gun tracked over to point at the new speaker.
“Say another word, and you’re next. I said, stay back! Think of the bigger picture!”
“What about the kids?” A woman, her voice trembling. She wore the uniform of a third class social technician, a child huddled into her shoulder. “Can’t you take at least a few?”
