I pray you do something more useful with it than I have.
Dr. Harold Stein, October 28th, 52 A.L.
A sharp intake of breath. She had heard that name before, owed her own name to him. But she had never thought twice about the man, and now that she was forced to, decided that she didn’t like him very much. Planting junk in people’s cells like some kind of asshole. An incompetent asshole too — he wrote his damned sign upside down, cut half of it off, and got the trigger wrong. “Thanks, Grandpa,” she muttered.
She stared at the list of files, almost tempted to toss the rest of them away, sick to death of ship–threatening conspiracies, only hours away from probable death thanks to one. But it was too tempting. However annoyed she was with her figurative father, she was holding a message buried in her own DNA. How do you not read that?
The next file was a note from a young naval officer called Kevin Delise, apparently written to a reporter. He explained that he had knowledge of a plot to split the ship in two. “Well, golly,” Stein said, rolling her eyes. She was mildly intrigued to see that the plan was far older than Helot, but everything mentioned in the note was all old news to her.
Kevin had also attached evidence to prove what was happening. Most of the evidence was a mass of information on navigational calculations, stellar drift, all of it impenetrably dense to her. But the logs and transcripts were more accessible, detailing conversations the captain and his senior officers had when discussing various operational issues. The section on their fuel problems also caught her eye. One log contained a discussion about how the matter/antimatter reaction wasn’t as efficient as they had first anticipated — some problem with the containment. This was potentially an enormous problem, as there was no way for them to generate more antimatter on board the ship. They had needed to run the M/AM mixture 2.3% rich to ensure complete reaction of the antimatter, leaving big wafts of un–reacted matter blowing out the exhaust. This caused their supply of deuterium to be used up faster than anticipated, forcing them to start mixing it with ‘powdered amorphous carbon.’ It took her a few seconds before she realized that meant chunks of the actual ship.
Which sure made it sound like the ship had the fuel problems that Kinsella had described. And a few pages later, she found confirmation in a transcript of a conversation between the ship’s senior officers. Huge chunks of the dialog was missing, but one of the surviving sections jumped out at her.
* * *
Medical Officer Kinison: “…doesn’t have to be us that decides?”
Captain Higgins: “Right. If we go with a Modified–B, we just set it up so that the captain at the time has the ability to make the call. He can evaluate the situation better than we can now.”
Security Chief Hatchens: “And the fuel?”
Medical Officer Kinison: “It’d be the same deal! We don’t have to decide. Just kick the can down the road. If they need to tell people about the fuel, let them.”
Captain Higgins: “Okay. But these calculations have been public for a long time. Burn rates, the delta–v budget, all of it. We’ve got to start quietly reeling that in off the network. If we need 1.38 million tons of AM to stop this bastard, that’s a number only the captain can know about.”
Security Chief Hatchens: “I’ve already got someone working on that problem.”
* * *
But you didn’t think to look in my fucking DNA, did you?
Stein sighed and scratched her head. She was intrigued and at the same time annoyed with herself for being intrigued. She didn’t have time for this. Another beep from the terminal saved her from considering it further.
Wait till you see what I’ve rigged up. It will give you an incredible climax. I am being totally serious here. I have already made a huge mess of my pants. — Bruce
Fucking Bruce. And fucking Bruce’s plan. She suddenly went rigid, thinking about what they were going to do.
“Come on, Laura,” she said. “Positive thinking.” She entered her bedroom, stripped out of her street clothes, and put on her spare orange jumpsuit. It was early yet to head to the bow, but she was done hanging around. Back in the living room, she picked up Mr. Beefy, took a step towards the door, then stopped. Setting him down on a neighbor’s porch was just as likely to result in him getting caught up with the local morons in a rousing game of Kick The Plant. “I’d never let that happen to you, Mr. Beefy,” she cooed. She turned and set him back down on his shelf. “You sit tight. I’ll be back.”
§
Stein looked down, the headlamp on her e–suit playing across the craggy features of the outer hull of the ship as it curved away beneath her. A long way down. Or a long way left. Bearings were a little hard to come by up here. She was looking towards her feet, that much was certain, and reason enough to call it down.
Below — or to the left of her — the outer surface of the ship’s bow stretched away out of sight. She was standing on the edge of an airlock mounted just below the axis of the ship’s rotation and not feeling good about it. Along with the weakened gravity, there was a more alien feeling dancing around her inner ear. The ship now had a distinct yawing motion, caused by the sudden explosion of air from the aft, and was now slowly flipping around front to back. The normal rolling rotation of the ship wasn’t affected by this, so the pseudo–gravitational effects weren’t readily apparent to those on the first four decks. But near the ship’s axis, it was causing a very noticeable tilt of gravity away from the vertical.
Beside her, Bruce stood in his enviro–suit, decked out identically to her, each with a small arsenal of weapons strapped to their bodies. Three piton guns, all fastened to a harness securely strapped around their suits. In the back of the room, Griese finished tightening his straps, identically equipped as the other two, with the minor addition of a small can strapped to his leg with some tool webbing.
The three of them had spent the last hour familiarizing themselves with how the piton guns worked, swinging around in the floatarium. The only preparation they would get before attempting the most ridiculous stunt in the ship’s history. “Feels like there should be cameras here to record this,” Bruce said via the commlink wired into his suit.
“I think that’d defeat the purpose of this, Bruce,” Stein observed.
“Amusing suicide?”
“No, not the primary purpose. Our tertiary purpose: shooting Helot in the face,” Griese said, his voice growing more cheerful with every minute. “Well, no time like the present.” After attaching himself to a tether secured inside the airlock, he jumped out into the void and swung around to Stein’s left, following the ship’s rotation.
“That was the dumbest thing I’ve ever seen,” Stein said, eyes wide. “Fuck.” She took a deep breath and followed him.
Vertigo. The stars pitched and wheeled around her, as she fell into the bottomless expanse of space. A yank on her harness and she spun around, facing the bulk of the ship, moving rapidly beneath her feet. She impacted the side of the ship, bracing the fall only partially with one hand and foot. “Oof.”
Beside her, Griese had landed on his feet and already fired one of his piton guns into the rock face. He gave it a sharp tug. Stein clumsily clambered around into the same position, then grabbed a hold of one of the piton guns tethered to her waist. According to Bruce, these pitons could hold “some amount of weight” in standard gravity. At no point did they intend to rely solely on that needlessly broad claim, which is why they each had two other identical piton guns. By using them in concert, they planned to have multiple pitons secure in the side of the ship at all times.
Beside her, Bruce thumped into place, landing gracefully on his feet. She glared at him, annoyed at his unlikely agility. “Tell me you’ve done this before?” she asked.
“Come on. It’s not too hard,” he said. She could practically hear him grinning through the commlink. She raised her gun and fired its piton into the rock at his feet, watching it bury itself. She gave it a sharp tug. It seemed to hold, and with a glance
at the controls, she saw it flash green. She did the same with the second gun, then sat back, taking a deep breath. She looked around. Bruce had already disconnected from the airlock tether, and had started descending. Griese was himself already several meters away, dangling beneath her.
“Hey, wait up, guys,” she said to herself, not triggering the e–suit’s communications. After another deep breath, she disconnected herself from the tether. She fell down, tumbling backwards, onto her ass, then her side. Her legs swung around until they pointed down. The pitons held tight.
“Careful,” Griese said. She looked down to watch him, her headlamp casting long shadows of him down the length of the ship. He had all three pitons in place now. He shifted down, putting all his weight on his pair of lower pitons, slackening the uppermost, then detaching it.
Stein grimaced and climbed back on to her feet. Best not to put these suits under too much abuse, she decided, looking at the rock, glad it wasn’t as jagged as they had worried. She pointed the third piton gun at the rock face, and fired it. Then, moving between the three guns, she allowed all three cables to unwind. She swung downwards in a semi–controlled fashion.
The first few transitions were slow, with much double and triple–checking of the pitons before proceeding. But within a few minutes, she had gotten the hang of it and was soon making fairly rapid progress. The bow of the ship curved substantially, so within a few minutes of their descent, they had to begin firing their climbing guns upwards at the wall rather than straight ahead. There had been no way to practice this inside, the ship’s interior, lacking massively tall, curving walls. Bruce claimed that he had heard of someone doing this on a habitat orbiting Earth, small comfort, when he announced that he couldn’t remember whether the fellow had survived the experience or not.
Passing the observation lounge was a little tricky, involving a gap to clear the window larger than they had been working with. But it was otherwise uneventful, and incredibly, unwitnessed. “I can’t believe no one’s here to see this!” Bruce said. Stein watched as he aimed a kick at the observation lounge window, only just missing.
The transition from descent to horizontal travel was gradual, due to the ship’s rounded cigar shape. But about a half hour after they started, Stein decided that they were definitely traveling in an entirely horizontal direction. From the perspective of an outside observer, they would look like three lumps, swinging around in an orbit of the ship, balls twirling on a string. Crazy balls, the outside observer would probably think, balls with little instinct for self–preservation. From their perspective, it was only marginally less crazy and now resembled little more than a three kilometer–long exercise in vine swinging, like something a monkey would do if he was trying to prove something. If the pitons weren’t secured directly to their harnesses, this would be completely impossible, their arms would have given out meters from the door. With the harnesses, it was merely improbable.
The process they established beforehand worked well. From a point hanging from two pitons, they would fire the third piton upwards and forwards, securing it into the hull. They would then adjust the lengths of all three guns, until they had swung forward and their weight was held entirely by the forward two pitons. From this point, they could release the rearmost piton and start the process again. This upside down caterpillar movement would ensure that they would always be supported by at least two pitons at any time and would hopefully minimize any swinging back and forth.
An hour into their journey, Stein marveled at how astoundingly smooth things were proceeding. By that point, they had managed to get their transition time down to about twenty seconds per step. Stein ran some calculations in her head. At that rate they were going, the whole three kilometers would take about six hours — a figure that sounded reassuringly achievable. Their biggest risk seemed to be a slip in concentration. The piton release buttons had warnings and fail–safes, but she knew it would still be possible to screw that up if they weren’t paying close attention.
§
They took breaks every twenty minutes or so, hanging, letting their arms rest. Although the harness held her entire weight, Stein found it exhausting work, requiring her to hold her arms over her head for extended periods.
“Try shooting from the hip,” Bruce suggested. “It looks way cooler.”
She ignored him, spinning around a bit to look at Griese, who had been lagging behind. “How you doing, Griese?” she called out.
“Not bad, all things considered,” Griese replied. Stein could hear him breathing harder than normal.
“This isn’t nearly as stupid as I’d hoped,” Bruce said.
“I think you’re selling yourself short, buddy,” Stein said. “This is cretinous.” She looked past Griese. “How far do you think we’ve come?”
“Maybe a third of the way?” Griese suggested. “Ship looks a lot bigger from out here.”
“Well, hang in there,” Bruce said.
Stein laughed. “Ass.”
§
It was Stein who had the first mishap. As she was reeling in her foremost piton, it slipped out of the ship’s hull, taking a chunk of rock with it. “Oh, balls,” she called out, a lump forming in her throat. Her other two pitons held tight, and she swung backwards, arms and legs flailing.
Griese, who was in front of her at the time, turned to watch. “What happened?”
“Piton slipped. Scared the fuck out of me.”
Stein waited for the swinging to die down. She reeled in her misfired piton gun, and fired again, aiming at a different part of the ship’s hull. The piton smacked into the rock and held.
After a short, unscheduled break for Stein to “change her pants” as Bruce put it, they continued on their way. They traveled a bit slower from that point, everyone a little more wary with each step. The section of the hull they were passing through seemed to be less stable, and slips of that nature began happening more and more frequently.
§
They were about two–thirds of the way through the trip when Griese fell. They had changed tactics and were now traveling one in front of the other, swinging in each other’s footsteps, minimizing their exposure to any unstable rock. Stein was behind Griese at the time and saw the whole thing happen.
After releasing his rear piton, Griese swung forward too quickly, having not adjusted his other pitons to split the load evenly, putting almost all his weight on to his frontmost anchor. The rock gave way, and he fell hard on his sole remaining piton. Stein’s heart caught in her throat as she watched him bounce once, hang motionless for a second, then fall away, the jolt having loosened the piton from the ship’s hull.
“Ohhhhh, crap!” Griese screamed out over the commlink. “Crap, crap, crap, crap, crap! Fuuuuuuuuuuck!” Stein watched in horror as he fell, curving to the left rapidly out of her view.
“Griese!” Stein called out, but her cry was drowned out by Griese’s continuing wave of exclamations.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck…”
“What happened?” Bruce asked. In the front of the group, he twisted around to get a better look.
“Griese fell,” Stein replied, raising her voice to be heard over the stream of cusses.
“Oh, no…”
“…fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.” The sounds grew fainter and fainter.
“Griese?” Stein called out nervously after a few seconds. Nothing. “Griese?” she tried again.
“Is he out of range?” Bruce asked.
“I don’t think so,” Stein said. “Maybe he’s behind the bulk of the ship.” She waited, calling his name every few seconds, hearing the panic in her voice.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck. Fuck.” Griese’s voice poured through the commlink again a minute later. She looked around frantically, trying to pick him out, not knowing how far he had traveled. He stopped swearing. “Ahhhhh, crap.”
Despite having some time to think about it, Stein realized she didn’t have anything to sa
y. “I’m so sorry, man. I’m so, so sorry.”
“It’s not your fault.” A pause. “It’s not your fault, is it?”
“Uhhh. I don’t think so.”
“Okay, then.”
“Dammit, Griese,” Bruce said. “I’m sorry, too.” Silence. “Griese?” More silence, Griese having swung over the horizon again. Stein hung from the bottom of the ship, her eyes closed, listening to Bruce call out their friend’s name.
“Ship doesn’t look so big from here,” Griese said his next time around. Some more soggy apologies from Stein and Bruce, which he cut through simply, saying, “Shut up, guys. Just go on. There’s nothing you can do. Don’t worry about me. I’ll keep myself busy.”
“Griese…” Stein said, the word coming out more as a moan.
“How will you keep yourself busy?” Bruce asked, a banterer to the bitter end.
“You’ll see.”
Stein watched Bruce hanging in front of her. He seemed to shake his head. Just as she was about to say something, the sound of Griese’s voice jumped into her ears: “Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck…”
Stein choked. Tears welled into her eyes, at least some of them from laughter.
“What if we made it to the aft and got one of the landing crafts?” Bruce asked.
“Yeah. We could try.” Stein had already considered it and found too many problems with the plan to count. Didn’t know how to fly a landing craft. Didn’t know if they actually worked. Didn’t know where Griese was. Didn’t know where he was heading. He could survive out there for another few hours in the suit, but at the speed he was traveling, she didn’t know how they would ever find him. But she didn’t want to shoot the idea down. “Yeah, could work,” she said.
“Don’t waste your time,” Griese said, evidently having heard Bruce’s suggestion. “Just,” he said, then stopped, making a choking sound. “Just don’t. I’m gonna turn this thing off in a second. That will be it.”
Severance Page 39
