Status Quo: The Chronicle of Jane Doe

by Chris Kuhn

  He stepped aside, and walked over to the Captain's chair while I opened each missile's command window.

  “ENTER AUTHORIZATION CODE:”

  I entered my mother's birthday 3 times.

  “ACCESS DENIED. INITIATING FAILSAFE LOCKDOWN.”

  “I always wondered if I had what it takes to sit in the chair,” Byers began, looking at Wiley's body. I looked at him and shot him my best go-to-hell-look.

  “Yeah,” I replied while typing, “I'll bet you would have inspired a lot of loyalty.”

  “ENTER AUTHORIZATION CODE:”

  I entered my father's birthday 3 times.

  “ACCESS DENIED. INITIATING FAILSAFE LOCKDOWN.”

  Byers pushed Wiley's body out of the Captain's chair, and took a seat with a blank expression on his face. I shook my head and opened the final missile's controls.

  “I don't know what would have happened if Udo would have stayed behind,” Byers said coldly, as though he were a thousand miles away, “How things might have turned out if I went with Zxying the assassin. Everything would be different. Maybe I would have started the Free Trader's Legion. Maybe I'd have a family.”

  “ENTER AUTHORIZATION CODE:”

  I entered my brother's birthday 3 times.

  “ACCESS DENIED. INITIATING FAILSAFE LOCKDOWN.”

  “I guess you'll never know,” I quipped.

  Upon entering the wrong code to the third missile, the command windows closed, revealing a fourth missile that Byers had failed to mention. The timer was counting down, and just under 30 minutes remained.

  "What the fuck?!" I shouted, pointing the rifle at Byers.

  “You're right,” Byers stated again, “And nobody should know what happened here. Maybe the people of Earth shouldn't know the truth, that the worst thing out here isn't alien after all. It's us. You don't see the Brood fucking over their own species for a better bottom line.”

  I opened the command window for the final missile, and frantically tried to enter the wrong passcode. The missile refused any commands and continued counting down. I raised my rifle and walked in front of Byers as he sat in the Captain's chair, but he just stared at the front view screen with the image of the Pit-Fiend floating slowly away in the distance.

  “By my count,” he continued, “you have 28 minutes to get over to that cruiser, fire up the engines, and get as far away from here as possible. Shoot me if you want... honestly I'd rather you did... but if you're keen on getting out of here alive, you'd better hurry. I'd prefer going down with the ship over a lifetime rotting in a cell, but you're a survivor... If you run, maybe you can make it.” I scowled and starting moving toward the door of the bridge. “For what it's worth,” he said as I ran out the door, “I'm sorry.”

  Log 017: Exit Strategy

  I started running like hell. I kept the rifle in front of me, but I decided that it was almost pointless. There weren't any bad guys in the corridors anymore. If I managed to bump into the EVA twins, Bob, or Mia, I figured maybe I could just explain that we'd all be better served having a quiet and peaceful chat on board their ship.

  Right.

  In reality I was scared as fuck and I didn't care anymore, so I moved through critical parts of the ship as fast as I could, cutting through every open section or corridor to get back to the lifeboats in the least amount of time possible. A leisurely walk from fore to aft usually took almost 15 minutes, but I didn't have time to smell any roses. I ran toward the nearest lifeboat, as fast as my damaged body would move.

  You'd think I would have learned my lesson by now. A bolt of blue energy whizzed by me and barely missed head.

  Mia.

  Maybe it was the adrenaline, but it was almost like time slowed down. As the bolt left her rifle, moving past my head, I looked at Mia. At her bloody face. At the rifle. And somewhere in my mind, a connection got made.

  She's doing it wrong.

  Mia was not holding the rifle properly. Not the way I'd been trained.

  And I remembered Mia from the bay with the quill and splattering minions. I remembered the skintight white suit that did not blend in and had no room for accessories. I remembered what she'd said to me, the words she'd chosen. I put it together, even as the blue energy bolt impacted the wall behind me and I jumped into the nearest open door.

  Mia was violent, cruel and brutal, and Mia was a professional, but she wasn't a soldier.

  The shot passed within centimeters of my face. I smelled the acrid stench, the burnt hair. I felt myself fire back. I watched the beam hit her in the left thigh before she shot back again. I felt myself move, stepping backwards out of the door again, and “egressing from the target”.

  Holy shit, boot camp was coming back to me.

  I was going back the way I'd come, around the corner, out of the immediate line of fire. I watched Mia's rifle release another bolt of energy, another shot, but this one didn't come close. Her movement had disrupted her aim. And then I was around the bend in the corridor.

  I ran.

  I had only seconds before Mia would come around the bend. The corridor was too long. I knew I wouldn't make it.

  But I did.

  Mia was not behind me, not firing. I made it to the stairwell. I flew down the stairs, and above me I heard feet slamming into the metal. I left the stairwell onto the next deck. I raced down the corridor, toward the room at the end that could still save me, the place I had subconsciously known to go. The shuttlebay. If I couldn't make the lifeboats, I would have to suit up and go out there in the EVA suit. Looks like I'd get to give the Mumu another spin.

  Maybe. If there was time.

  I glanced back as I ran. Mia was there, somewhere, but not where I could see her. Injured. She wouldn't make it, I realized. She wasn't fast enough now that I had slowed her down with the shot to the leg. I'd get to the bay first and lock the door and she wouldn't get in. Then I'd be safe.

  Lasers screamed past me as I crossed the threshold into the shuttlebay.

  Two shots.

  The first one hit the shuttlebay's exterior door. That changed things.

  Had Mia's rifle been Navy issue, the weapon wouldn't have been powerful enough to punch through the metal. The Navy would have made sure of that. But the weapon wasn't Navy issue, and it burned a centimeter-wide hole in the door, leaving nothing between us and space.

  I heard the hiss of escaping air. Alarms went off. The pressure door slowly came down behind me, between myself and Mia. That might have saved me, had the door come down just a little faster.

  But it hadn't.

  The second shot flew across the bay and slammed into the Mumu. I watched - again in slow motion - as a shower of sparks erupted from the machine. I watched the fuel tank contort and explode, high-pressure gas shooting into the bay. I saw the melted control module and the hoses and wires hanging out like intestines.

  The Mumu was gone.

  Dead.

  Dead like so much else.

  I stared at it.

  Substandard fucking development.

  I stood there as the seconds ticked away, staring at what was left of the Mumu. I could still use the EVA suit with its conventional RCS, but that would take forever and guarantee my vaporization. The blast wave would be huge. I would die. A lot.

  I stared at the tiny hole in the bay door, listening to the air being sucked out of the bay that was now closed off from the rest of the ship. I wondered how long it would take. I wondered if I would suffocate before the ship exploded.

  I plopped on the deck, focusing on the structural beams far above me. Mia wasn't going to blow a hole through this door to get to me when she knew I'd be dead soon enough.

  I thought back to the missile bay; laying in that bay with the pistol, hiding behind the sled and preparing to shoot. I'd thought that I'd failed, that shooting that one missile would be the last thing I could do to stop Udo Adjani and his crazy ass plan before I was sent packing from existence.

  But I'd been wrong.

  I'd done better.
I was still going to die, but millions (maybe even billions) of other people weren't. Thanks to me. They would be safer. People on Earth could go about their lives, their wars, their opinions, all because of what happened here today. I know Byers wanted to erase it all, but at least I knew; I did something meaningful with my life.

  I supposed that I should make peace with this new outcome. I should find a way to be okay, to find meaning in it. I wasn't the Captain, but I could still go down with the ship. That would be good. Noble. Consistent with the best traditions of the Navy.

  Fuck that.

  I decided to wallow in my misfortune. I focused on feeling sorry for myself. I was a nice person, after all. Well, not really, but I didn't deserve to die, and I should probably be given a pony for my efforts.

  I'd never really wanted a pony, but I decided to change my mind. I decided to want one badly. I decided to file a complaint with whatever deities were running the universe... not that I believed in deities, but the universe had been unfair and I wanted to speak to a manager.

  Dear deities, I began, I don't mean to sound ungrateful, but it seems that you've royally fucked me, and that's not cool. I don't know what type of deities you are - maybe you don't give a shit. Still, you could have kept all this crazy shit from happening, and you left that shit up to ME, of all people. Where's my fuckin' pony? I mean, you had some many chances to kill me already, and you didn't. I could have been stabbed, or shot, or touched the third rail in the MAGLEV when I was pushing the RATU through the...

  Holy shit.

  I jumped up, my eyes desperately scanning the bay. There. Next to Felix the dead shuttle was Jimmy the RATU. Perfectly intact. The shuttle was dead but the RATU was alive, and once it was deployed it had alignment thrusters on both sides of it that were good enough to still be operational.

  Jimmy could still save me. You can do this.

  The biggest issue was interface. The RATU was designed to work by itself, not via a software link to a user, and certainly not with some chick riding on top of it like a witch's broom. The RATU's designers had failed to anticipate my current predicament.

  Assholes.

  As quickly as I could, I got back into the EVA suit. This was going to be interesting. I powered up the suit and waited for it to pressurize, and thankfully it did. I walked to the shuttlebay door. To the control panel next to the door. It was angry. Lights were flashing, and it told me that there'd been damage. Air was escaping. I knew that. I told it to shut up and open the door.

  The door began to open, revealing the great void beyond and Dakarta filling a chunk of sky. There, looking awfully small in the distance, was the Pit-Fiend. Time to work. I dragged the RATU over to the Felix and hooked it up. Then, praying the shuttle's computer was still functional, I climbed inside. The computer booted right up, and I felt a flicker of hope. After briefly getting lost in the menus and a lot of profanity I found the screen I needed to “test” the RATU's alignment thrusters.

  Next problem: how the fuck do I steer this thing? I was sure there was some fancy math. I had neither the background nor the time for it. The thought was to dive off and preserve enough of my velocity to get me close enough to the Pit-Fiend, and then use my EVA suit's own RCS thrusters for a long burn to slow myself down enough to not hit the Pit-Fiend like at bone-shattering speeds.

  I'm gonna die anyway, let's cowboy this shit.

  I told the computer to start the test in 30 seconds, and test-burn the thrusters on Jimmy, even if the connection was broken and the RATU wasn't attached to anything. I made sure it was facing the correct way so I didn't blow my wad in the wrong direction, and I took a deep breath.

  Then I pushed the button.

  I climbed out of the shuttle and sat on the RATU. No. Dumb. I lay down on the RATU, wrapping my legs around it. As I pushed myself and the now weightless RATU out of the open shuttlebay into space, the thruster extension arms emerged from their housings and began to expand to their full open configuration, some 10 meters across, with little old me hanging on for dear life.

  I couldn't reach the RATU's mounting brackets with my hands. I had to settle for the handles. I stared at the handles. They were only meant for carrying the RATU. They looked pretty solid, but I had no idea if they were up to this adventure. Fuck it. If it didn't work, then I'd be no worse off than I'd been before; obliterated is obliterated.

  “Dear deities,” I thought, “I apologize for my earlier bitching; it may have been excessive. Also, I've changed my mind. Instead of a pony, I would just like to survive this really stupid idea.”

  Love, me.

  I closed my eyes as me and Jimmy rotated in space to face Dakarta and the Pit-Fiend.

  The RATU's thrusters fired.

  Log 018: Descent

  Given that I weighed less than anything Jimmy was designed to carry, it had a little more kick than I had planned. My cheeks went numb. My hands. Everything. The bay was gone. I was in space, moving, racing away. Some angle, some vector. Which one? Hell if I knew. It didn't matter; I had no control. No control and I'd lost the feeling in my hands. With extreme effort, I moved my head to look at them. They were still there. Functional. I released my grip, and almost immediately the pressure began to subside. The RATU was still moving, still hurtling away from me towards the Pit-Fiend, which was getting bigger by the second. I could feel my face again, which was a good sign. Everything hurt, but I was still alive.

  Goodbye, Jimmy. Thank you.

  With a quick burst from my suits RCS, I spun to face the Pridemore.

  Holy shit.

  She was far away. The distance was hard to judge. I held up my palm. The ship was slightly longer than my gloved index finger when held an arm's length.

  Not a useful measurement.

  I used the RCS to turn myself back around, and the Pit-Fiend was now looking as big as the Pridemore behind me. I turned the EVA suit's RCS front thrusters to full, and kept the button down until I could visibly see that I was going far slower than just a few moments before. Guiding myself “up and over to left a bit”, soon the Pit-Fiend filled my entire field of vision. Less than a minute later, I touched down on her hull near the belly cargo bay doors.

  I knew a little about ships. OK, so maybe a lot. Moderate damage to ancillary systems. I thought of another way the freighter might save me. There was deformed trusswork floating everywhere, along with an assortment of debris that was attached, through various means, to the cruiser itself. Broken bits. Sharp metal. Caution advised.

  The airlock itself looked damaged - dented, warped. It might still seal, or come close enough. That didn't mean I could get in, though. I wasn't sure what type of the security system there'd be. I was stuck in an EVA suit, and I had no tools or weapons.

  I arrived at the airlock. The cruiser certainly wasn't the Pridemore. It was not military, not designed by people who thought in such ways. To the people who'd built the cruiser, I was certain, an airlock was only dangerous because it opened to space, or because it might leak, or because it was a structural weak point.

  It was not dangerous because of the bad people who would slip inside and kill you.

  I didn't know who'd designed the cruiser, but I thought it might be nice to spend time with them. They seemed so trusting; the airlock door opened with a simple handle. I moved into the airlock and shut the outer door. On the wall in front of me was a series of manual controls. They were unfamiliar, but clearly designed to be as intuitive as possible. Large handles and buttons, color coded and clearly labeled. There was an instruction plaque with giant bold letters. Built for convenience. Ease of use.

  Definitely not military.

  The outer door did not seal, at least not completely. I didn't need it to, though. I just needed to get enough pressure in the airlock that the inner door would open. I followed the instructions. As the air pressure increased, I heard a faint humming noise. My body began moving toward the deck. Yay, Gravity. When the pressure equalized, I opened the inner door and stepped clumsily inside the vess
el. I shut the door and turned around. I didn't know what I'd expected, but certainly not this.

  The vessel was utilitarian, but the space in front of me wasn't. It was a living area, a common room of some kind. There was a table in the center - an actual wooden table. It had a tablecloth. The walls were fake, some type of artificial paneling that covered whatever pipes or tubes or cables ran beneath them. They were covered in various paintings. Some of the paintings were artful and well-placed. Some of them were not.