The End of All Things #2: This Hollow Union

by John Scalzi

  “It’s safer for the people running the rescue,” Aul said. “Makes the two ships stable relative to each other. But it’s difficult to do because the Chandler pilot has to track the Odhiambo’s movements precisely.”

  “Once the ship started tumbling it should continue to do so in the same manner,” I said. “I think that’s close to a thermodynamic law.”

  “Yeah, but that assumes no additional input of momentum,” Aul said, and pointed to the Odhiambo in the monitor. “But the Odhiambo is damaged and venting all sorts of things. And we can’t tell when those venting events will happen. No, it’s a mess. So the Chandler pilot’s tracking all of that in as close to real time as it can.”

  “Could you do it?”

  “If I wanted to show off, sure,” Aul said. I smiled at this. “But I wouldn’t do it with anything larger than this shuttle. Whoever the Chandler’s pilot is, it’s doing it with an entire ship. If it messes up, you’re going to have two ships tumbling down on headquarters, not just one.”

  “We need to tell them that,” I said.

  “Trust me, Councilor, they’re way ahead of you,” Aul said.

  “Hail the Chandler, please,” I said. “Tell them we’ve come to offer assistance if they wish it.”

  Aul did as ze was told, muttering into a headset in zis own language while I watched the two human ships tumble in tandem.

  “The captain of the Chandler is named Neva Balla, it sends its compliments and says that it requires no assistance at this point,” Aul said, after a moment. “It says that they are under some time pressure and incorporating us into their plans would just add to the pressure. It asks us to hold position at twenty klicks relative—that’s about twenty-five chu—and to monitor the Odhiambo for power surges or rapidly rising temperatures.”

  “Can we do that?”

  “Maintaining a twenty-five-chu relative distance is something we can do on auto pilot. And this shuttle’s packed with a good amount of sensory apparatus. We’re good.”

  I nodded up to the monitor. “Any way we can stabilize the image of the ships so they don’t look like they’re tumbling? I want to be able to see what’s happening without getting vertigo.”

  “No problem.”

  “If the captain of the Odhiambo is still on the ship, ask it to send us a real-time data feed, please,” I said.

  “Will do.”

  “Also, Captain Neva Balla is ‘she,’ not ‘it.’”

  “You sure?”

  “I’ve met her before,” I said. “Humans generally prefer to not be called ‘it’ whenever possible.”

  “The things you learn about people while you’re on the job,” Aul said.

  * * *

  “Here we go,” Aul said, nodding to the monitor. On it a lone figure stood in an open airlock on the Chandler, directly across from the Odhiambo. The distance between the two ships was less than thirty plint—about fifty meters in human measurement. Aul was right: Whoever was piloting the Chandler had impressive control.

  The figure in the airlock continued to stand, as if waiting for something.

  “Not a good idea to run out the clock,” Aul said, under zis breath.

  A stab of light shot from the Chandler, striking across and at a small angle from the figure in the airlock.

  “They’re firing on the ship,” I said.

  “Interesting,” Aul said.

  “Why is it interesting?”

  “They need to cut into the hull,” Aul said. Ze pointed at the beam. “Normally for a rescue we’d send a crew over with some particle beam cutters to get through the hull. We have a couple here on the shuttle, in fact. But it takes time. Time they don’t have. So instead they’re just burning a big damn hole in the hull with a beam.”

  “It doesn’t look very safe,” I said, watching. A venting blast of air puffed out of the Odhiambo, crystalizing in the vacuum wherever the beam didn’t turn it into plasma.

  “It’s definitely not,” Aul said. “If there’s someone in the cabin they’re cutting into, they probably just died of asphyxiation. That is, if they weren’t vaporized by the beam.”

  “If they weren’t careful they could have blown up the ship.”

  “The ship’s going to blow up anyway, Councilor,” Aul said. “No reason to try to be dainty.”

  The beam shut off as abruptly as it began, leaving a three-plint hole in the Odhiambo’s hull. In the monitor, the figure in the Chandler airlock launched itself toward the hole, trailing a cable behind it.

  “Okay, now I get it,” Aul said. “They’re running a cable from the Chandler to the Odhiambo. That’s how they’re going to get them off the ship.”

  “Across a vacuum,” I said.

  “Wait for it,” Aul said. The figure disappeared into the Odhiambo. After a moment, the cable, which had drifted slightly, tightened up. Then a large container started moving across the cable.

  “I’m guessing vacuum suits, harnesses, and automatic pulleys in that,” Aul said. “Get them suited up, secure them in a harness, and let the pulleys do all the work.”

  “You sound like you approve.”

  “I do,” Aul said. “This is a pretty simple rescue plan with pretty simple tools. When you’re trying to save people, simpler is better. A lot fewer things to go wrong.”

  “As long as the Chandler can keep in sync with the Odhiambo.”

  “Yes,” Aul agreed. “There is that. This plan has all its complications in one place, at least.”

  There were several moments of nothing obvious going on. I took the time to look at the co-pilot monitor set, on which we were tracking the Odhiambo’s power and heat signatures. No excitement there either, which was a good thing. “You might suggest to the Odhiambo’s captain that any remaining crew might want to disembark as soon as possible,” I said to Aul.

  “With all due respect, Councilor,” Aul said. “I’m not going to suggest to a captain that it abandon its ship a single second before it makes that decision on its own.”

  “Fair enough.” I glanced back over to the monitor with the Odhiambo on it. “Look,” I said, pointing. The first of the diplomats was making its way across the line, swaddled in a highly reflective vacuum suit, chest in a harness, trailing behind a pulley.

  “That’s one,” Aul said. “Nine more to go.”

  The Chandler collected seven before the Odhiambo blew itself up.

  There was almost no warning. I glanced over as the seventh diplomat disappeared into the Chandler’s airlock and saw the feeds on the co-pilot’s monitor spike into critical territory. I yelled to Aul to warn the Chandler just as the external monitor showed a wrenching jerk, severing the cable between the two ships. Aul zoomed out the picture in time to catch the eruption on the Odhiambo, mid-ships.

  Aul yelled in zis headset and suddenly the image in the monitor began spinning wildly—or appeared so, as the monitor had stopped tracking with the two ships’ movements and had reoriented itself to our perspective. The Odhiambo had begun tearing itself apart. The Chandler had begun moving away from its doomed compatriot.

  “Come on, come on, come on,” Aul was yelling at the monitor. “Move it, you stupid shit-for-brains, you’re too close.” I had no doubt ze was yelling at the Chandler’s pilot.

  And ze was right; the Chandler was too close. The Odhiambo had now split in two and the pieces were moving independently of each other, with the fore portion now careening dangerously close to the Chandler.

  “They’re going to hit!” Aul yelled.

  And yet they didn’t; the Chandler’s pilot yawed and skewed its ship, moving it across three axes in a mad ballet to avoid collision. The separation between the ships widened, too slow for my taste: fifty plint, eighty, a hundred fifty, three hundred, one chu, three chu, five chu, and then the Chandler stabilized its movement relative to Conclave headquarters and began to pull away at speed from the Odhiambo.

  “You should be dead!” Aul yelled at the monitor. “You should be dead, your ship should be dead, y
ou should all be dead! You magnificent shit-eater!”

  I looked over to Aul. “Are you all right?”

  “No,” ze said. “I’m pretty sure I’ve soiled myself.” Ze looked over and on zis head was an expression that I assumed was of sheer amazement. “That should not have happened. Everyone on the Chandler should be dead. The Chandler should be an expanding cloud of debris. That was the single most amazing thing I’ve ever seen in my life, Councilor. I’d be surprised if it weren’t the single most amazing thing you’ve ever seen, too.”

  “It might be in the top few,” I allowed.

  “I don’t know who that pilot is, but I am going to buy that shit-eater all the drinks it wants.”

  I intended to respond but Aul held up a hand, listening into the headset. Then it looked up at the monitor. “You have got to be kidding me,” ze said.

  “What is it?”

  “Those three other diplomats and the Chandler crewman,” ze said. “They’re still alive.” Aul spoke into zis headset and zoomed in on the aft portion of the Odhiambo, where the Chandler had burned its hole through the hull.

  And as we zoomed in, we saw it: a reflecting suit, launching out from the hole, tumbling into space, followed by a second, followed by a pair, holding on to each other – the final diplomat and the crewman from the Chandler. The Odhiambo spun away from them, slowly.

  “How much breathable air do you think they have?” I asked Aul.

  “Not a lot,” ze said.

  I glanced over to the co-pilot’s monitor, which still erroneously showed the Odhiambo as a single unit. The fore of the ship was rapidly cooling; all power had shut down and heat and power were venting into space.

  The aft of the ship, on the other hand, was warm and getting warmer as I watched.

  “I don’t think they have much time,” I said.

  Aul followed my gaze to the co-pilot’s monitor. “I think you’re right,” ze said, then looked up at me. “You didn’t bring a vacuum suit with you, by any chance, Councilor?”

  “I did not,” I said. “And the very fact of your question makes me begin to regret that fact very much.”

  “It’s fine,” Aul said. “It just means I have to do this without a co-pilot.” Ze pressed a button on his pilot monitor. “Attention, team,” ze said. “You have two ditu to get on your vacuum suits. In three ditu I’m pumping the air out of the hold and opening her up. Be ready to take on passengers at speed. Have emergency air and heat prepared. These people are going to be cold and near asphyxiated. If they die once you got them, I’m leaving you out here.”

  “Inspiring,” I said, after ze had finished.

  “It works,” Aul said. “I’ve only had to leave them out here once. Now, slide in a little more, Councilor. I have to seal up this compartment. Unless you want to try holding your breath for a while.”

  * * *

  “The four of them haven’t drifted too far from each other,” Aul said, as we were underway, two ditu later. Ze put an image on the main screen showing the positions of the diplomats. “And two of them are together so we really only have three targets.” A curving line swept through all three positions. “We open the gate, bring our speed down, and literally let them drift into the hold. Three targets, three ditu, we go home, we’re heroes for the sur.”

  “You’ll curse us if you put like that,” I said.

  “Don’t be superstitious,” Aul said.

  The aft portion of the Odhiambo erupted.

  “Oh, come on,” Aul yelled.

  “Give me tracking, please,” I said. Aul transferred the screen to the co-pilot monitor. The main portion of the Odhiambo’s aft was still spinning away from the diplomats, but a large chunk of debris was now launching itself in a different direction entirely. I watched as the shuttle’s computer plotted its trajectory.

  “This debris is going to hit these two,” I said, pointing to the paired diplomats.

  “How long?” Aul asked.

  “Three ditu,” I said.

  Aul seemed to think about it for a moment. “All right, fine,” ze said.

  “All right, fine, what?” I asked.

  “You might want to make your center of gravity as low as possible. The inertial and gravity systems in this thing are pretty reliable, but you never know.”

  I hunkered down. “What are you about to do, Aul?”

  “It’s probably best you wait until it happens. If it works, it will be really great.”

  “And if it doesn’t?”

  “Then it’ll be over quickly.”

  “I’m not sure I like where this is going.”

  “If it’s all the same, Councilor, don’t talk to me until it’s over. I need to concentrate.”

  I shut up. Aul pulled up the diplomats’ positions on zis pilot screen and overlaid the trajectory of the debris. Then ze started moving the shuttle forward. Aul stared at zis pilot screen, typed furiously into it, and never looked up.

  I on the other hand looked at the external view monitor and saw a distant rising mass of debris, and our shuttle moving inexorably closer to it. We appeared to be on a suicide mission straight to the heart of that debris. I glanced over to Aul but ze was in focus, all attention drawn to the screen.

  At almost the last possible instant I saw on the monitor a white starburst which I registered—too late!—as a vacuum suit we were going to hit head on, just as the debris rose like a leviathan below us. I sucked in a breath to shout, saw the images on the monitor streak, and then clenched for the violence of the debris smashing into our shuttle from below. As Aul promised, it would be over quickly.

  “Huh,” Aul said, and spoke into zis headset. “You get them? Yes. Yes. Right. Good.” Ze looked over to me. “Well, that worked,” ze said.

  “What worked?” I asked.

  “High-speed rotation around the target,” Aul said. “It takes a tiny bit of time for the shuttle’s inertial field generators to register a new entity and adjust its velocity. If I picked up our new passengers on a straight path at the speed I was going, they would have turned into jelly against the interior of the shuttle. So I rotated us very quickly, to give the field just enough time to register their presence and match them to us.”

  “Oh.”

  “That’s the short version,” Aul said. Ze was entering commands into zis pilot monitor, presumably to pick up the two remaining diplomats. “I also had to tell the shuttle what speed I wanted the targets to have relative to the interior of the shuttle, and burn off the momentum we suddenly had dumped into the system. And such. Point is, it worked.”

  “Where’s the debris?”

  “Behind and above us. It missed us with a couple plint to spare.”

  “You almost killed us.”

  “Almost,” Aul agreed.

  “Please don’t do that again.”

  “The good news is, now I don’t have to.”

  Picking up the other two human diplomats was the very definition of anticlimactic.

  As we headed back to the Conclave’s asteroid, Aul restored air to the cabin and opened up the pilot’s compartment. “One of the rescued diplomats would like to speak to you,” Aul said.

  “All right.” I ducked and found my way to the main cabin. As I did so a Fflict nudged past me, nodding; the co-pilot, anxious to get back on duty. I ducked again and entered the cabin.

  The rescue team were busily attending to the diplomats, all of whom were covered in self-heating blankets and sucking air through masks. All except one, who was covered only in what I now recognized was a Colonial Defense Forces combat unitard. The unitard’s owner was kneeling, speaking to one of the diplomats, a woman with dark, curled hair. She was holding his hand with a grip that I imagined would be uncomfortable for anyone else but a genetically engineered super soldier, which is what the unitard’s owner was. His green skin gave him away.

  The soldier saw me and motioned to the woman, who stood up, shakily. She removed her mask and shrugged off her blankets—a bad idea because she started s
hivering immediately—and walked over to me, hand extended. The soldier stood with her, slightly behind.

  “Councilor Sorvalh,” the diplomat said. “I’m Danielle Lowen, of the United States Department of State. Thank you so much for rescuing me and these other members of my team.”

  “Not at all, Ms. Lowen,” I said. “Welcome to the Conclave’s headquarters. I am only sorry your entrance was so … dramatic.”

  Lowen managed a shaky smile. “When you put it that way, so am I.” She began shivering violently. I glanced over at the soldier, who picked up the hint, stepped away, and returned with a blanket. Lowen accepted it gratefully and slumped slightly into the solider, who bore her weight easily.

  “Of course, we of the Conclave cannot take all the credit for your rescue,” I said, nodding at the soldier.

  “I regret to say that I was only seventy percent successful with my own rescue attempt,” the soldier said.

  “No, you were one hundred percent successful,” I said. “You got seven safely to the Chandler, and you knew that if you got the other three away from the ship, we would come find you.”

  “I didn’t know,” he said. “I did hope.”

  “How lovely,” I said. I turned to Lowen. “And you, Ms. Lowen? Did you hope as well?”

  “I trusted,” Lowen said, and looked at the soldier. “It’s not the first time this one’s tossed me out into space.”

  “I was with you the whole way the last time, too,” the soldier said.

  “You were,” Lowen said. “That doesn’t mean we have to keep doing it.”

  “I will keep that in mind,” the soldier said.

  “The two of you have an interesting history, clearly,” I said.

  “We do,” Lowen said, and then motioned to the soldier. “Councilor Sorvalh, if I may introduce you to—”

  “Lieutenant Harry Wilson,” I said, finishing her sentence.

  Lowen looked at the both of us. “You two have met before, also?”

  “We have,” I said.

  “I’m popular,” Wilson said, to Lowen.

  “That’s not the word I would have used,” she said, and smiled.

  “If memory serves, the last time we met there were also exploding starships,” I said, to Wilson.