The Edge

by Leslie Lee

some of the zombies, they don't know you. They don't listen. We ran."

  "We cannot let them onto the Bridge. I'll see about moving the Bridge with the door open."

  The engineers shook their heads. The Bridge had self contained life support. The Bridge would not move if life support was compromised by an open door.

  P'leh'run suddenly ran up with some security men.

  "They're coming,"

  "Leave the outer door," one of the engineers shouted. "Override the inner."

  There was a burst of activity as the engineers realigned themselves.

  "Sir," said the young officer. "Are we going to fire on our own people?"

  "Yes," Mak said drawing his own weapon. It looked pathetically weak next to the firearms the Soldiers and security personnel hefted.

  The men and women were silent. Some looked at the techs still working to close the inner door. Other just stared through the haze in the corridor.

  There was movement in the smoke. A single figure, then two, then more. They walked as if going out for a stroll in the park. No rush, no hurry. And no sound. The first person was small and round. It was Ives. She was armed with a stick. The others were packed behind her in the hallway like sardines.

  "Get back!" the young officer shouted. "We don't want to hurt you."

  They ignored him.

  "Fire a warning shot, P'leh'run," Mak said.

  "Yeah, we tried that too," the Soldier said. "Everybody! Hold your fire!"

  P'leh'run fired right in front of Ives. A single shot that tore up the deck plating. Then a trace of automatic fire. They didn't even blink. They advanced three and four abreast packing the hall. The zombies on either side of Ives raised their weapons. The one's behind poked their weapons over the top and between. And there was Ives raising her stick. They were still fifty feet away.

  If they got too close, then they would not be able to stop them.

  "That's Colonel Newton in front there," he heard the Soldier say in a shaky voice. "She's the best officer."

  "These are all people we know," P'leh'run whispered. "There's Chavez. He has two kids back on Earth. He's a real dick, goddammit."

  "Nobody fire until I do," Mak said, loudly.

  He sighted on Ives.

  He could clearly see her. She had to see him. And the gun he was holding. He'd never killed anyone with this gun, just fired it at some targets. But he knew killing well. He had grown up amidst the killing of the lower levels. And he had killed. He always felt they deserved to be killed though. They had forced him into a situation where he had no choice but to kill them. So he killed them. The killing he did from his pod was war. He didn't know the people he killed out there. Didn't even see them to kill them. But he killed them nonetheless. He was a killer. He killed. He would always be a killer. He would always kill.

  Ives was staring right at him.

  This situation was no different from the times in the lower levels. He had no choice. That's what he told himself. She'd understand. He whispered the words he had heard her say a long time ago to some dying crewman. It didn't take long to finish the soft words.

  He fired and Ives head jerked back.

  The defenders opened fire. The noise deafened him. Mak watched Ives disappear in the hail of bullets and pulse energy bolts. Blood splattered into the hallway and the bodies fell only to be stepped on and climbed over and pushed forward. The attackers had no strategy. Sometimes they had weapons that they wielded like clubs. Sometimes they fired wildly at the defenders.

  P'leh'run dragged him down behind the barriers as they fired back.

  The attackers pushed forward slipping on the blood and clambering over the bodies. It was a slaughter but still they came.

  Reinforcements came to the defense perimeter. The defenders were starting to take on casualties. And the attackers were in the doorway, pushing their dead into the Bridge.

  Suddenly, the inner door started to slide shut. Mak leaped over the barriers and pushed at the attackers trying to force them back, but they punched and scratched at him, forcing him back. More joined him and the firing ceased to be replaced by the grunts and groans of the Bridge defenders pushing against the mass of bodies trying to get in. But the door slid inexorably closed trapping limbs and a head that were then crushed and amputated. Mak could hear the pounding on the door as they continued to try to get in.

  He could also here the sobbing of the people around him. Some were holding their heads. He felt it too. A dull throb.

  "Get us out of here," he yelled. The alarms lit up warning everyone the Bridge was about to move. "Punch it!"

  The Bridge lurched knocking many to the ground, then juddered into motion. The throbbing in his head started to subside and he managed to regain his footing.

  Someone, not a Soldier, was retching in the corner. The crew of the X were not used to this kind of combat. Some wept. Others were frozen, shocked by their own actions. The Soldiers themselves, veterans to ground combat, were only a little better. Killing people who were friends was unknown to them. Ruefully, he recognized that growing up in the lowers had for what it was worth, toughened him more to this horror. He saw the young officer standing, looking around dazed.

  "Lieutenant," he said softly, then more loudly. "Lieutenant|"

  "Huh?"

  "Get these men to clean this up!" He shouted over the noise of the Bridge rumbling. "Bag it up and make sure we have a clear path. Get these barricades back up. We're going to be getting the same reception everywhere we go."

  The officer snapped awake. "Yes sir," he turned and bellowed orders at his men.

  He noticed too much activity at the Bridge control station.

  "Report," he shouted as he ran up.

  "Brakes have failed," one of them said, pounding a console. "We're going to slow down by smashing into the end of the core."

  Great. "How long?"

  "Thirty seconds."

  "All hands," he started shouting. "Brace for impact in thirty-seconds."

  The shout was taken up by others.

  The Bridge smashed to a stop. Debris flew through the air. Fires broke out. The Bridge plunged into darkness until the emergency lights flickered back on. Amazingly, there were no serious injuries and although some of their repairs had been broken, things continued to work, generally. And like a noise which makes its presence felt only when it stops, the pressure in his head was almost gone.

  "Last stop, Engineering." One of the crew grinned at him. A gash in his scalp spilled blood onto his face which he didn't seem to notice. "All passengers are requested to please disembark and proceed directly to baggage claim. Thank you and we hope we see you all again real soon."

  They laughed. It was hard to stop.

  Finally, Mak asked, "Could we move again if we had to?"

  The man shrugged finally noticing the blood obscuring his vision. "Maybe. Eventually. The mobility engines are offline. Looks like we've lost power."

  "Okay, leave it. See if anybody else needs help."

  "You certainly know how to make an entrance," the Security Chief comm'd into him.

  "Yeah. Hope nobody had their beauty sleep interrupted. We need supplies and relief if you got any to spare."

  "Got it. You're going to have to unseal."

  The Engineering station for the Bridge differed from all the other stations along the core of the X. Instead of corridors, the Bridge opened up onto a huge warehouse area. Under normal conditions, the crew performed Bridge maintenance here.

  The Bridge personnel unloaded the dead and got help for the injured. The med staff was seriously depleted although they were bolstered by a few Soldier corpsman. They had set up a field hospital with what equipment was available. Mak saw how the sheer number of casualties overwhelmed them. Wounded flowed in from all different parts of the ship.

  With a lot of engineering help, the Bridge started to come alive again. Mak looked at a map of the ship in Squad Ops. Th'han'dra had managed to coax the ship's internal sensors to show their situation
. She seemed so calm, hardly disheveled, though a nasty bruise marred her forehead. He wished he didn't look like he'd just climbed out of a garbage dump.

  "The rock is here," Jamaal said, pointing at a spot a third of the way from the front of the ship. "We think everyone from halfway to the bow of the ship are now zombies. We estimate the number at around five thousand ship's personnel and Soldiers. In our part of the ship, we have about seven hundred ship's personnel and Soldiers. Everybody else is probably dead."

  "Brenn is weakening," Th'han'dra said. "We can feel it. We have to get closer and closer to him and even then I'm not sure the meds can keep him together."

  "Have they had any luck trying to combat this zombie stuff?"

  "Negative," Jamaal answered. "We've captured a few but all they want to do is kill you."

  "Any movement towards us?"

  "We don't think so, but we've managed to seal off most of the decks leading here. Right now they seem content to sit and wait. Which leads us to another problem. Life Support is on emergency. We're only going to have enough air for about forty-eight hours."

  "Can we cut off life support in that part of the ship?"

  Jamaal looked at Thurber who had been silent.

  "It's possible," she said finally. "But we can't completely seal ourselves off. And everybody in that part of the ship would die."

  "Assign somebody to that solution," Mak said.

  "Who the hell are you?" she snarled. "Didn't you hear Jamaal? That's five thousand people, PEOPLE, you're asking me to kill. You're just a pod jockey. You're not in the chain of command."

  Mak nodded and turned to Jamaal. "You can stop searching for Ives. I