Severance (17 page)

Helot smiled. “To keep you out of our hair, mainly. If we
gave you this, we hoped that you wouldn’t do any actual digging of your own.”
Helot smirked. “Seems to have worked.”

“Oh? So, you’ve got more important secrets to hide?”
Kinsella snapped. “What are you, fucking meat plants instead?”

Helot laughed. “Wow. No.” He looked over Kinsella’s shoulder
to Thorias, then down at the desk display. His head wavered back and forth as
he appeared to weigh a pair of alternatives. “It’s a long story…”

§

Stein had to hurry to keep pace with the three security
officers, moving rapidly south along Europe. She lost sight of them at 10
^th
when they ascended the escalators there, but by the time she reached the
escalator bank herself, something else had caught her eye.

Another block south of her, a crowd had gathered in front of
a massive wall that wasn’t supposed to be there. Stein cautiously approached
them, coughing, the air unusually dusty. She moved carefully through the crowd
until she could get a better look. It was a bulkhead door, having slid out from
concealed pockets on either side of the street to meet in the middle, sealing
the street off. “When did that happen?” she asked a young woman.

“Couple minutes ago. Just came out of the wall, all rumble
bumble rumble, you know?”

“It was more of a gnsssssssh gnsssssh gnssssssh sound,”
someone else offered.

“You’ve got too much shit in your ears,” the young woman
said.

A heated disagreement broke out amongst the people gathered
there about what noise the doors had made, which Stein escaped, confident she
had acquired the total of useful information available from the group. Retreating
back to the intersection at 9
^th
, she could see more people a block
east, also gaping at something to the south. She hurried over to see for
herself. There, a small crowd was watching a security officer, his pistol drawn
and aimed at the floor, guarding a maintenance worker, whom she recognized from
the skeleton shift. He didn’t see Stein, instead intent on something behind a
recently removed wall panel. A small cloud of dust emerged from the wall,
serving as the honor guard for another bulkhead door, which slid into the
street accompanied by an unpleasant grinding sound. Only a single door on this
smaller street, it slid across dirt encrusted tracks in the floor and embedded
itself into a thin gap on the far wall. The security man, the technician, and
everything else south of the door disappeared from Stein’s view.

She continued like this for a while, walking along 9
^th
,
following the gentle curve of the ship uphill as she did so, looking at closed
and closing bulkhead doors. Arriving at Asia Street, she found the same
situation, only with a larger, angrier crowd. One of the men gathered here, an
anarchy–dancer to judge from the facial hair and stench, accosted Stein.

“What the fuck, man?” the filthy man yelled, his hands
flailing in the air. “You can’t just kick us out of our homes like that, you
fucking fascists!”

Stein realized that, still in her orange uniform, she looked
like someone in charge of things like doors. “Sorry, buddy, I just got here,”
she said. “I haven’t done anything to anyone. Where’d they kick you out of?”

He explained, using language filthier than his appearance,
that he had been dragged out of his home — an illegal squat it sounded like —
by a half–dozen security officers and hauled to this side of the bulkhead
doors. More people gathered around, shouting similar tales of woe at Stein.
Offering brief and completely false promises to fix things, she managed to
extract herself from this group and continued down 9
^th
.

Stein didn’t know anything about bulkhead doors, having
never seen one closed in her entire life. Curious, she continued to the next
side street, and finding this one deserted, walked south towards the
obstruction. On one side of the street, she spotted a likely wall panel and
opened it. Sure enough, there were the bulkhead door controls. Examining it for
a few seconds, she found she could see the current status of the door and
environment. Atmospheric pressure on both sides. She hit the button marked “Open.”
Evidently, whoever was shutting these things had already thought of such a
countermove, and an error message flashed across the screen, reading “Access
Denied.” She saw a couple of potential ways to override that if she had had her
tools with her, but she had left those behind during her flight from the law.
She dropped the panel cover on the floor and returned back to 9
^th
Avenue.

Everywhere she looked on the first level, bulkhead doors
were shut between 9
^th
and 8
^th
Avenues. Curious, she
walked back up to the escalators on 10
^th
and ascended to the second
level. Stepping into the middle of the street, she looked south. The bulkhead
doors were closed here at the same latitude as below. Taking another escalator
up, she saw the pattern repeated. She stopped and tried to figure out what this
looked like. They were sealing the entire aft of the ship, kicking people out
from the other side. She immediately assumed that it was related to what she
and Bruce had uncovered, and although she didn’t know who precisely ‘they’
were, it was clearly not a small group. The entirety of the security department
at least. And, probably, her goddamned boss.

Whatever was going on, it seemed no one was paying much
attention to her. She turned on her terminal again, hoping to get in touch with
Bruce. As soon as she started it, a dozen different messages came in, which she
paged through. Most were work related, notes from her team asking why she had
stopped the diagnostic process so early. One message jumped out at her from an ‘Abdolo
Poland,’ a name she didn’t recognize. She opened it, realizing immediately that
it was from Bruce, who had somehow managed to doctor up a terminal to send from
a false identity.

“I’m OK. Playing Hide and Seek and kicking ass at it.
You?”

The message had been sent hours earlier. She sent him a
quick note indicating that she was fine, asking if he knew what was going on.
She set off exploring once again, this time picking her way back west. It was
more of the same everywhere she went. Closed doors and confused people coughing
in the dusty air. Children asking their parents what was going on. Parents
wishing they had someone to ask themselves.

At Europe, she found another crowd, this one in an angry
mood. Here, Stein could see that the bulkhead door hadn’t closed yet; in its
place was a massive group of security officers in riot gear, standing in a
line. Periodically, the line would part, and a civilian would be shoved across.
None of these evictees appeared terribly happy about the situation, but the
security men were being very liberal in the application of their clubs, and no
individual protest lasted very long.

Stein looked around. This was the biggest crowd she had seen
yet, composed of a slightly rougher representation of the Argos’ population.
Aft dwellers. Recently evicted ones. Word seemed to have spread that the doors
hadn’t shut on this street, and people were filtering in from the escalators
and side streets. Stein sensed an ugly mood in the air. Even without knowing exactly
what was going on, the mere presence of cops in riot gear was enough to
aggravate many people. Stein had seen situations like this before and moved
sideways through the throng, backing into a doorway.

There was no obvious signal, no leader shouting a call to
arms or firing a gun in the air. Suddenly, some sort of critical mass of anger
had been broached, and the crowd surged forward. They advanced on the line of
security guards, a storm of filthy language filling the air. Stein kept her
back pressed into the doorway, confident about what was going to happen next.

But before things could reach a head, a deep rumbling sound
announced the closing of the bulkhead doors. Stein could see over the heads in
the crowd as the doors slowly slid out of the walls, presumably just in front
of the battle lines the security officers had formed.

Her terminal buzzed, and she looked down to see another
message from Abdolo.

“I’ve got no idea. What do you think of the disconnect?”

Stein frowned. That was the word Bruce had squawked at her
just before they’d got cut off. To a maintenance worker, a disconnect was a switch
used to isolate a piece of equipment from its power source. Disconnects were
completely innocuous — there were literally thousands of them scattered around
the ship. And that’s what Stein had first thought Bruce was talking about.

She wasn’t thinking that any more, as she looked at the
picture Bruce had sent of a massive set of clamps hidden in a cavity of the
ship. She looked up at the just closed set of bulkhead doors as the cloud of
dust washed over her.

They were now dealing with an entirely different type of
disconnect.

§

“You’re going to do what?” Kinsella asked, his mouth
suddenly dry.

Helot had stopped smiling. The corners of his eyes sank, and
his throat clenched. “We’re going to split the ship in two,” he repeated.

Kinsella closed his eyes. He frantically shook his head,
rubbing his hands over his face, trying to hide from Helot’s words. “No way.
Not possible.”

“Very much possible,” Helot said. “The ship was designed to
do it. It’s a backup measure. Obviously. The ship was always intended to arrive
in one piece, just as you learned in school. But if you look at the complete
plans for the ship — and you couldn’t, because they’ve been very well hidden —
you’ll see the entire aft core of the ship can pop out like a cork. Engines,
fuel tanks, and a modest amount of living space. Life support, hydroponics,
water treatment. All inclusive. A smaller ship hidden within the larger one.”

Kinsella struggled to assemble a picture of the ship in his
mind. He knew that above the fourth level the aft portions of the ship were
substantially more spacecraft–like. But there was never anything to indicate
that the whole apparatus was designed to separate. “I don’t buy it. You’re
talking about a cork that’s a hundred meters wide. And I’ve never seen any
seams.”

“The seams are artfully hidden, most between decks. But they’re
there.”

“Let’s say for the sake of argument that you’re not insane…”

“For the sake of argument, I’ll allow it…”

Kinsella ignored the interruption. “And you take your cork–ship
to Tau Prius.”

“Right…”

Kinsella started to quake with rage. “Leaving the rest…”

Helot swallowed. “Leaving the rest to go past Tau Prius
without stopping.” He stared down at his shoes for a moment. “I’m sorry, Eric,”
Helot mumbled before looking Kinsella in the eye. “I really am. I’d have told
you sooner, but…well. You know. You’d just have gotten upset.”

Kinsella lashed out at Helot’s desk with his foot, knocking
it back against the captain. Behind him, Thorias threw his massive arms around
Kinsella, clutching and squeezing. Kinsella didn’t struggle, just screamed, “Upset?
You think I’d have gotten fucking upset? Upset that you’re about to murder us? Why
would that fucking upset me?”

“We’re not murdering you, Eric. Just letting you go on
without us.”

“To die alone in space!”

“We’ve been dying in space for centuries, Eric. It’s no big
deal. You’ll have a hundred years worth of energy to get your affairs in order.
More if you ration it carefully.”

“But we can’t fucking stop,” Kinsella screamed.

“There is that,” Helot allowed. “But this is the best chance
for at least some part of the ship to form a viable colony.” He blinked, his eyes
glistening.

Kinsella twisted in Thorias’ grip, which only caused it to
tighten further. “Why can’t we all stop?”

Helot breathed deeply, obviously fighting to control his
emotions. He shook his head, once, twice. Another swallow. He continued to
stare at the wall above Kinsella’s head, avoiding the mayor’s gaze. “It’s a
fuel thing.”

“What?”

“We don’t have enough fuel left to stop the whole ship. We
made a mistake, okay? We used some during the course correction. And we’ve had
annihilation efficiency problems. We don’t have enough fuel left to decelerate.
Not the whole ship.” Helot took another deep breath, growing more comfortable
while describing the nuts and bolts of his plan. “But if we detach the aft core
of the ship, we’ll only have a fraction of the mass to decelerate. Plenty of
fuel to spare.”

Kinsella stared at him. He started to laugh. “That’s insane.”

“It’s the truth,” Helot replied, his voice trembling.

“You’re going to murder thousands of people because we ran
out of gas?”

“I’m not murdering them,” Helot whispered, barely audible. “I
have to save at least some of the ship. I can’t save them all.” He looked away
from Kinsella, staring at the wall in front of him. “I’m not murdering them,”
he repeated.

Every muscle in Kinsella’s body tensed. He could feel
Thorias squeeze tighter, but he didn’t care, full of hate for the pathetic
figure in front of him. Through clenched teeth he said, “Chief, would you
please bring me close enough to the captain to pull his throat out with my
teeth?”

Helot snorted, blinking rapidly. He sneaked a quick look at
Kinsella. “Brave, Eric. But it’s over.”

“You fucking murderer!”

“I’m not murdering anyone. Security’s been closing bulkheads
for the last half hour, shepherding people to safety.” Helot looked at
something on his desk and nodded. “We’ve already quietly relocated a lot of
them over the past few years. It’s just a safety measure — the aft of the ship
has an excess of bulkhead doors, so with luck you’ll lose almost no space to
vacuum. But we’re evacuating a much larger area just to be safe. You’ll be
taken back to the other side of the doors in a few minutes’ time.”