Severance

by Chris Bucholz

  Curts’ two team members, the man and woman who had come so close to stumbling upon the plan, were different. Helot was glad they were around. They had fallen perfectly into his lap — the footage of the fat one shooting his way out of the Bridge was almost too good to believe. He knew now that he should have been planning something similar all along, had contingency plans with fake scapegoats ready to go, so that he wouldn’t be scrambling now. Even with the painstaking years of preparation, it was amateurish to think that everything would have worked perfectly on the first try.

  And now they had to try again. He felt his frustration start to mount and ducked into his cabin, closing the door behind him, preparing for a frustrated bellow.

  The bellow never came, but swallowing it didn’t feel much better. Dragging the process out like this was going to be awful. He would have to keep thinking about it, thinking about his choice. A multitude of opportunities to change his mind would present themselves, and each one would require a new gut check. He sat down heavily behind his desk and pulled up the math, the interlinked series of files and tables he had dwelled in for the past twenty years.

  He knew that separation was the right decision. He had run the calculations a thousand times, tweaked every variable, agonized over every probability and weighted value. More people would survive this way; he knew it. They had left the decision to him, those old, dead bastards, not wanting to play the villain in the story they had written. Well, he had made the decision. And taken it seriously. Years spent alone in his office with his awful spreadsheet.

  He had stopped crying about it at least, after spending the first year of his captaincy hiding red, swollen eyes. And he would have to keep holding it together, especially in front of his crew. And doubly especially in front of Thorias. Helot didn’t want to show any blemishes in front of the man, even if he knew the chief would ultimately follow orders. That was one perk the old, dead bastards had left behind: a loyal staff.

  He closed his calculations and brought up the navigational display, scrolling it over to center on Tau Prius. 11.8 light–years from Earth, one of almost two dozen habitable candidates within twenty light years of home. Not the closest, nor the most attractive, but somehow the consensus favorite of the various members of the Argos Development Consortium. None of them would admit to it being their first choice, but because it wasn’t anyone’s adversary’s first choice either, well, there you go. The system, working.

  Helot zoomed in on Tau Prius III, his booby prize, a cold and soggy orb on its best day, less pleasant in the winter. If anything, he was doing these people a favor by not landing them on that dump. They’d hate it there.

  This was a good lie, and he told it to himself often.

  Previously

  They were watching him. When Harold returned home from work the day after he had visited Kevin’s apartment, a misplaced hair told him the book had been moved. They had seen him take it, wanted to know what was so special about it, broken into his place, and stepped over his dirty laundry to find out. He was surprised to find that he was comforted by this. Paranoia was a lot easier to live with when it was justified.

  Knowing he was being watched made everything that followed proceed much slower. Harold spent the next few weeks going through the most mundane routine possible, trying to bore even himself. Work, home, sleep. Work, home, sleep. Work, sleep, home, sleep. By the time he found himself in the skating rink, almost a month after Kevin’s death, he hoped that anyone watching him had long since died of understimulation.

  The skating rink was the largest of the many broken and forgotten toys on the Argos. Wildly popular when the ship first launched, there had been problems maintaining it, something to do with the artificial surface not regenerating as expected, or that it was more bother to manufacture than it was worth, or that it was really hard work, or something. As the surface grew grittier and stickier, skating had grown less popular. The rink was all but abandoned now, the ship’s elected officials having spent the last decade farting about deciding what to do with the space.

  But as a kid, Kevin had loved the rink, his eight year old brain not knowing or caring that it had gone out of style. Harold had taken him here a couple of times a week, marveling at the pace at which the boy’s skating skills outgrew his own, while hoping that wasn’t a metaphor for something.

  And when Kevin ran away a few months later, Harold wasn’t surprised that he would run here. Harold couldn’t even recall the reason he had run — some childish fit with one of his case workers. Security hadn’t paid much attention. Their thinking, that runaways couldn’t run very far on the Argos, was solid. But Harold had paid attention, more father than not at that point in Kevin’s life.

  Harold finished strapping up his awful, smelly skates — they were reason enough for the sport to go out of fashion — and stepped out onto the surface. Not ice, but a special self lubricating polymer, it had supposedly worked fantastically for the first forty years of their voyage before running into its life expectancy like it had hit a wall. Harold lurched and stumbled about the rink, plowing through the areas of inconsistent friction. He was the only one skating — the attendant had been sleeping when he had arrived. So, anyone watching him would look suspicious as hell. But now that he was a full month into ‘Operation: Bore Big Brother,’ he didn’t anticipate anyone else showing up. He was safe, though perhaps not from his skating skills he realized while halfway to the ground, one of his skates having stopped dead in a divot.

  After another five minutes of lurch–filled, chancy skating, with no suspicious–looking goons arriving to watch, Harold decided that he was probably alone. He picked his way to the edge of the surface and hobbled along the side of the rink to the locker rooms.

  This was where he had found the boy when he had run away. Kevin had already been gone for a day by the time anyone bothered to inform Harold. Harold had come to the rink almost immediately, guessing the boy’s thinking. One of the rink attendants mentioned that he had seen a kid that looked like Kevin hanging around, and Harold had spent the afternoon searching the place. The lockers were an obvious choice, as Kevin himself later attested. His first night away he had tried to sleep in one of them, learning the hard way about the human body’s preference for consciousness when upright.

  Harold checked the lockers now, just for the sake of completeness. No lost little boys. He backed up, returning to the entrance to the locker room, where, partially blocked behind the swinging doors of the entrance, was a smaller door. He opened this, the janitor’s closet. It didn’t look much different than the first and last time he saw it eighteen years earlier. The only difference was the shelf full of cleaning pads, which was now a little further away. During his time here, Kevin had moved the shelving unit back off the wall, creating a gap behind it, wide enough to build a little nest. It was artfully done; Harold didn’t know that there were any janitors actually using the closet, much less any janitors capable of caring about a shelving unit that had moved.

  Harold moved some of the cleaning pads out of the way, setting them down on the floor beside him. Leaning into the shelving unit, he peered along the edge of the wall. A terminal. He had to rearrange a few more stacks of cleaning supplies before he could get at it, but once he did, he turned it over in his hands, examining it. Someone had vandalized it somehow. With a flash of recognition, he realized it was a dummy terminal, the network interface crudely deactivated with something sharp.

  He turned the terminal on. Front and center was a video message, sitting in a directory full of confusingly labeled files. Harold opened the video. It was a tight shot of Kevin, sitting on the floor of the same closet, speaking quietly at the camera. His face was shiny — oily or sweaty, Harold couldn’t tell — and he seemed to be blinking too much.

  Hey. I don’t know what I’m doing. I don’t know who’s watching this. I hope it’s you, uh…you know who you are. But if it’s not, then oh well.

  I really don’t know what I’m doing.

  Ok
ay. The basics. The captain of the ship has a plan to split the ship in two. Yeah. Just look at the attached files. It’s all in there.

  I know this because I’m a lieutenant in the navy. Three months ago, I discovered we were off course. Not badly, but we’re definitely off course. We can correct it, but it will cost us a lot of reaction mass. Fuel. I don’t know the complete details, but that means we might not have enough fuel to stop. Not stop the whole ship, anyways. A smaller ship could arrive at Tau Prius. And this ship can do that. Split in two, I mean. But the thing of it is, there’s stuff that doesn’t make sense about the fuel. But then I’m told to shut up, and…Listen, like I said, it’s complicated. Look at the attached files. It’s way clearer there.

  Anyways, whether I’m wrong or not, the ship needs to know about this. The public. These kinds of decisions can’t be made behind closed doors. You should hear the way they talk. So, I took copies of everything. For weeks, I’ve been copying everything I’ve seen. It proves everything. You’re holding this right now.

  Actually, what you’re really holding is my backup plan. I’m going to try sending this into the feeds. That won’t be easy. I think IT is scanning for this. And they’ve got programs to wipe material off of the network. But I think I’ve got a way around that. I’ve taken some precautions.

  And if it doesn’t work, well, I guess that’s my career over, then. It’s worth it, though, I think. Gotta try.

  But that’s why I’ve hidden this here. The backup, the last copy. The proof. If you find this, be careful with it. Maybe just pretend you didn’t see it? It hasn’t done me much good. But I couldn’t let it disappear. This has to get out sooner or later.

  I better go now. Good luck confused janitor, or whoever you are.

  Harold realized he was leaning heavily against the wall. Oh, Kevin. You brave, foolish boy. Ignoring Kevin’s warnings, Harold tucked the terminal into the waistband of his pants, rearranging his clothes atop it. Then, he returned to the locker room. As he was leaving, he caught a glimpse of himself in the mirrors and stopped, suddenly light–headed. There, looking back at him, was the same bleached and hunted look that he had just seen on Kevin’s face.

  Chapter 5: The Lam

  “This is bullshit,” Bruce wheezed as they jogged along the first level.

  “Bullshit,” Stein agreed, measuring her pace so he could keep up with her. “We haven’t done anything!” Beside her, Bruce came to a stop, hands on his knees. She stopped to watch him vomit noisily on the ground.

  “No, not that part,” Bruce said when he was done. “That part’s okay. I have done things.” Extending his finger like a gun, he shot Stein several times. “No, the bullshit is how they waited for us to get drunk first. They coulda…they coulda…waited for tomorrow. Issss bullshit.”

  Stein didn’t remember much after the violent shaking had rattled the ship. Dust everywhere. People rushing into the streets. People rushing off the streets. She saw at least two people literally running in circles. She might have herself for all she knew. Mostly, she had wandered in a daze, replaying what she knew. They had split the ship in two. She could see it, a model of the ship spinning around in her head, as the aft of the ship detached like a cork and rocketed away. They had been working on disconnects and cutting the ones that were jammed. They had been evacuating and evicting people from the aft. And when Gabelman had stumbled upon this, a week too early, they had killed him for it.

  And now, it was over. She was on half a ship.

  She didn’t know why they had done it. She still didn’t even know who had done it. Kinsella and his trolls? The navy, alone? She didn’t care. She eventually washed up at a table in the Prairie with a bottle of Orange in her hand. She was mildly surprised to find the bar mostly empty; apparently, everyone else had gone south to gape at the bulkhead doors. A few messages had convinced Abdolo Poland to leave his nest — the promise of booze worked well. And there was no need to hide any longer. Their hunters were thousands of miles away by that point and weren’t coming back.

  Reunited, the pair quickly got obliterated. Ellen arrived not long after they did, easily lured to midday bar missions, and protested that she had trouble keeping up with their self–medicating — “No small statement, coming from me.” Bruce and Stein told her what had happened, Bruce pantomiming maybe a few more karate chops into his part of the story than were probably accurate. Ellen didn’t believe a word of the plot, it all being too big for her to swallow. “Also, no small statement, coming from me.”

  And then the news feeds announced that the doors had opened back up, revealing the security troops and all the rest of the ship still there. Ellen had fallen out of her chair laughing. The drinking didn’t abate, taking on a lighter but more confusing tone.

  Stein had been so sure. Everything had made sense. But there were the security officers, coming back through the just opened doors. Her mind lurched through explanations, trying to shoehorn this new information into her theory.

  Helot’s announcement an hour later, informing Stein and Bruce that they had nearly destroyed the ship, had not clarified matters. It did get Ellen’s attention however, their friend leaping into action, immediately hustling them out of the bar. She whispered instructions to Bruce as they swerved down to the first level, then parted ways with the pair. Together, Stein and Bruce moved as quickly as their equilibrium allowed to a safe house, one Ellen and Bruce had used in a previous life.

  “Are you hurt?” Stein asked Bruce, who had been walking for the past half block with his hands over his face.

  “No. I’m hiding.”

  “You’re a bit bigger than your hands there, buddy.”

  “Your face is bigger than your hands.”

  Stein checked. “Nope. I’m good.”

  “You should disguise yourself, too. We’re fugitives now.” Stein had noted a few curious glances as they retreated. All people who could point them out to security later.

  “You don’t think that a couple people walking down the street with their faces hidden in their hands won’t attract more attention?”

  “Yeah, because that’s the weirdest thing anyone’s ever done in public.” That argument seemed airtight to Stein and the two bottles of Orange she’d had. The pair covered the rest of the distance clutching their faces.

  The neighborhood around their hideout on the first level was almost completely abandoned. The lights and heating didn’t work as reliably in that part of the ship, and aside from people who didn’t like other people, it was mostly deserted. Most importantly, none of the security sensors in the area were working — something Ellen evidently checked as a hobby.

  “In here,” Bruce whispered, flicking his eyes at the non–descript door of what looked to be a disused fabrication plant. The pair huddled around the door while he did something funny with the locking mechanism. Stein looked at his hands; they seemed to be tapping a hidden sensor underneath the lip of the door panel. It slid open, and they entered into what Stein now understood to be a Breeder safe house.

  “What’s that smell?” she asked. “Did someone die in here?”

  Bruce looked at her, his face suddenly tight. “Yeah.” The door slid shut behind them.

  §

  Hogg slowly panned the terminal back and forth, looking for heat signatures in the room across the street. Scattered up and down the block, his team was doing the same, half of them with their sidearms ready. They had all seen the footage of the terrorist rampaging through the Bridge — it was one of the most popular clips of the day — and Thorias had reported that two officers were killed in the explosions last night. Enough to put an itch in any cop’s trigger finger. Especially if the cops in question didn’t get to use guns very often. No one had shot themselves accidentally yet, but Hogg sensed it was coming.

  They were searching a nearly abandoned section of the first level in the northern end of the ship. The streets were more unkempt than usual for the bottom deck, littered with broken furniture and disused machinery. These
rooms and buildings were mostly warehouses and machine shops, clustered in one of the ship’s original and long unneeded fabrication centers. At different times in the ship’s history, this area had been repurposed into various forms of residential and commercial space, but in the current epoch, living in chilly caverns wasn’t that popular, leaving many of the spaces vacant. A good place to hide, and when sensors had spotted Stein and Redenbach descending to this area a few hours earlier, Hogg and his team had been ordered after them.

  Stein had completely fooled him. During their first meeting, he had only had the vaguest sense that she was concealing something, but as he got that feeling from most people, he hadn’t thought much of it. Not a very useful skill, really, thrown off by the simple truth that most people were concealing something.

  He hoped they weren’t all concealing murder.

  He supposed it might not have been her specifically, more likely that Redenbach character with the blood on his hands. But it was clear that one of them murdered Gabelman after he had stumbled upon their plot. The background check on Stein had changed within the past few hours, now heavily stressing her connections to the Breeders. He wondered what other surprises Stein had that he would find out about too late.

  This was a logical place for them to run. Along with half the criminal groups in the ship’s history, the Breeders were known to have used some of the buildings in this area. All the sensors were scrapped, and few people were around to see something they shouldn’t.

  Though not completely abandoned, Hogg’s team had already scared up a half–dozen false positives. In one room, a couple of teenagers had been interrupted practicing basic population growth techniques. He had also kicked in the door on a group of fake homeless squatting in an old hydroponics bay, gathered around a cooking fire. Hogg hated the Fauxmless. No one on board the Argos could be homeless — there was just too much damned space. Indeed, the minimum standard of living had always been very high by most human standards. Compared to the slums of the big inland cities of Earth, it was a utopia. Which inevitably meant that after a couple of generations, homelessness had turned into an exotic hobby for certain types of Argosians. Hogg was not among that type — he thought they were idiots, an opinion that wasn’t changed by this particular group. They weren’t even cooking, just singeing meal bars over a fire. He’d had to fight off an urge to launch one of the idiots into the flames himself.