Severance (53 page)

Secure in her new climbing position, Stein looked up. The massive
cylinder of the engine exhaust protruded from the ship’s core, almost a hundred
meters above her head. Essentially an inverted tumbler glass, extending almost
fifty meters from the rear surface. Playing her headlamp across the surface of it,
she could just make out some white lettering emblazoned on the side, upside
down.

“We’re on the wrong side,” Bruce said.

“Yeah.” There were two airlocks on the aft surface of the
ship, one of them a massive hangar bay from which the ship’s mothballed landing
craft would one day dispatch from. The other airlock was beside that, human–sized,
a twin of the one they had departed from. But both of those were on the
opposite side of the engine from where they were.

“Go over it?” Bruce asked eagerly.

“I think around,” Stein said. “Looks much, much easier.”

“You just don’t want to crawl on the ship’s anus.”

“Wow. I hadn’t considered that, but yeah, I really don’t
want to now.”

They began their ascent. Within a few meters, they had run
out of rock and were now firing the pitons into the metal structure of the ship
itself. The pitons could grab the metallic surface easily enough, but Stein
wondered what kind of noise it was making on the inside.
CLANG, CLANG, CLANG,
she presumed, like a pair of attacking gong–pirates.

The climb got easier as they rose, although their curving
route around the engine core and the ship’s yawing motion complicated their
wayfinding. No longer a simple vertical ascent, it slowly transitioned to a
horizontal traverse and then a short descent as they rounded the corner of the
engine exhaust.

They had checked beforehand that the airlocks could be
cycled from the outside — “That would be hilarious,” Bruce had observed when
Stein brought the issue up. Opening an airlock from the outside would probably
be detectable in the ship’s control center, but they were hopeful that no one
inside was monitoring that particular blinking light. Given the amount of abuse
the ship had taken recently, there were probably a lot of flashing warning
lights right now. Stein maneuvered her way to the entrance of the airlock and
found the cavity that contained the control panel. Reaching inside, she smacked
the only control there, a big, red button. Despite probably not having been
used in a couple hundred years, after a few seconds the outer doors slowly slid
out of the way, revealing the brightest room Stein had ever seen. After a few
seconds of blinking, she realized it was probably very dimly lit, and it was
just her brain dazzled by the sight of any lit, confined space. She grabbed the
handle on the perimeter of the door and swung herself inside, Bruce doing the
same on the other side. The pair disconnected their pitons and reeled the
cables inside the airlock. Finally, Stein smacked the big red button on the
inside and watched the doors slide shut.

Stein propelled herself across the airlock and hit another
big red button, this one labeled with a pictogram that was apparently supposed
to mean ‘Air.’ A faint hissing sound as atmosphere was slowly readmitted to the
room. The treated air heated the room noticeably, as well, Stein feeling uncomfortably
warm for a moment before her suit could compensate. A few seconds later, the
inner door slid open. Bruce lunged through into the airlock control room, Stein
floating behind him a little more languidly. She closed the airlock door and
watched it seal before taking her helmet off.

A huge deep, gasping, beautiful breath. “Oh, wow.” Bruce had
already removed his helmet and was moving around the room, kissing the floor
and every other surface he could see. She allowed herself to come to rest on
the floor, the odd gravity slowly dragging her into a corner of the room.

“I can’t believe that worked,” Bruce said, sitting down
beside her.

“Only two–thirds worked.”

“Oh,” Bruce said. “Yeah.” She rested her head on his
shoulder. They sat in the corner of the room for quite some time.

Eventually, Stein got up and examined their surroundings. A
big bay window dominated one wall of the room, displaying the cavernous vehicle
airlock below. A dozen oddly shaped objects were visible on the floor of the
airlock covered in plastic sheeting, the landing craft presumably. Beside her,
Bruce stood up and stripped his enviro–suit off, revealing a matted and sticky–looking
maintenance jumpsuit underneath, along with some webbing that contained a
variety of hand tools, firearms, and explosives. Stein did the same, finding
her jumpsuit and equipment in a similar state, albeit a bit less smelly.

“What do you think Griese would do if he were here now?”
Bruce asked.

“Go kill a dude?”

“Yeah,” Bruce agreed. He made a show of looking around. “He
doesn’t seem to be here, though. Wanna do it for him?”

Stein rubbed her tongue over the back of her teeth,
thinking. “I didn’t think we’d get this far, to be honest.”

“Me neither.”

Stein watched her discarded suit slide back into the corner
of the room. “I’m not really feeling in the killing mood.”

“Me neither,” Bruce said. “So…back to Plan…A? I guess?
Nuclear blackmail?”

Stein took a deep breath before nodding. “I guess so. Though
I’m having a hard time remembering how we decided that putting bombs on an
antimatter reactor was our
best
plan.”

Bruce shrugged. “They’re little bombs.”

§

They bounced down the hall to the nearest elevator, finding
them all deserted. All hands on deck, just not this one, apparently. Stein
guessed most of the security and naval personnel were busy tidying up various
messes downstairs.

They reached the elevator. Bruce leaned against a wall,
looking very deliberately casual. Lips pursed, he blew and sputtered, flecks of
split flying down the hall.

“What was that?” she asked.

“Whistling.”

“You don’t know how to whistle?”

“It’s harder in this gravity.” He tried again, this time
producing a wobbly sour note and a still not–inconsiderable measure of spit.

“You’re actually making us look more suspicious, you know
that, right?”

“Suspicious people don’t whistle, Stein. Fact.”

With a chime, the elevator arrived, the doors sliding open.
Inside was an elderly naval engineer, one Stein recognized.

“You!” Max rasped.

“Hi, Max,” Stein said.

“You!” Max said again, apparently struggling with the very
idea of them.

“What are
we
doing here?” Bruce said, finishing his
thought. Max’s jaw flapped around uselessly, now at least two steps behind in
the conversation. “You know this guy?” Bruce asked Stein, his pistol leveled at
the elderly engineer.

“Yeah. He used to run the reactor in the bow.”

“Uh–huh. And would you be upset if I shot him?”

“What?” Max shrieked.

“Oh,” Stein said. “I guess not.”

“What?” Max shrieked again, a little harder and a little
shorter, his wailing cut short by a shot to the chest. He fell awkwardly to the
floor.

Stein bent down to look at him. “Did you see the way he
fell? I hope you didn’t break his neck.”

Bruce prodded the engineer’s body with his foot. “He’ll be
fine.”

“You can tell that with your foot, can you?”

They entered the elevator and took it up to the engineering
level. There, they stepped outside, leaving Max on the floor of the car, and
continued run–floating their way to the reactor. The halls were less deserted
up here, their passage alarming a few naval officers despite Bruce’s whistling.
Stein had never felt more conspicuous; security would certainly be after them
within minutes.

But they reached the reactor without any confrontations, ducking
inside to find two naval engineers who had barely had a chance to protest
before Bruce forcefully introduced himself. Making cowboy noises, Bruce proceeded
to hogtie the pair with plastic straps before dragging them into the corner.

The room was laid out quite similarly to the bow’s auxiliary
reactor room, just on a larger scale. Long and narrow, with the much larger
reactor partially buried in the floor in the center of the room. Another door
on the far side of the room, across from where they entered, that led to the
aft’s life support section. Assuming their maps of the aft were accurate, that
would be a dead–end with no other entrances or exits.

“So, what now?” Bruce asked.

Stein pointed at the floor panels where the fuel supply
lines would be running, connecting the engines to the fuel pods. “Start there,”
she said, crossing the room to the reactor control desk. Now somewhat
experienced at moving around the reactor’s controls, she confirmed the location
of the pressure regulators and the fuel lines, then found the lockouts that
would isolate them. That was the only part of the plan that was the slightest
bit sane, emptying the fuel lines before destroying them. While an explosion on
an empty fuel line would be good fun, the same explosion on a line full of
antimatter would be considerably less memorable for anyone nearby.

She crossed back across the room to watch the door as Bruce
leapt down into the cavity to set the charges. “Are we the bad guys now, do you
think?” Bruce asked.

“Depends on the perspective, probably. Do you feel bad?”

“A little,” Bruce said, slapping a charge into place. “And I
don’t want to be a bad guy. I don’t know if I’ve told you, but I have a very
high opinion of myself.”

“I think I heard someone saying that about you.” Stein
helped pry up another panel to make more room for him. “And I don’t want to be
a bad guy either, buddy.”

“You’re not that bad,” Bruce said, shaking his head. They had
uncovered the pressure regulator, which was, as Stein suspected, an exact twin
of the one in the bow. “You’re not planting the bombs. Hell, you haven’t even
shot anyone yet.”

Stein’s jaw dropped. “I must have.” She frowned. “Haven’t I?
In the van I shot…”

“Nope.”

“Well, I’ve shot…
at
people, certainly.”

“You haven’t shot anyone. Your hands are clean, ma’am. That’s
why you keep me around, I think. To keep a clear conscience.”

“I’ll shoot someone if I have to,” she said. She pulled the
pistol out of her webbing and pointed it at the wall, squinting down the
barrel. “You just keep shooting them first! I think that’s the real issue here.
My badness is simply being overwhelmed by yours.”

“Uh–huh.” Bruce finished mining the pressure regulator and
stood up. She turned to look at his work. It looked good. Or bad, she supposed.

Behind her, the sound of the door opening. Bruce’s
expression changed, hands fumbling for a pistol he had set down too far away.
Stein turned, saw the gun and the security uniform behind it. She kept turning,
rolling, falling to the ground, firing.

“Laura!” Sergei hissed, the shot thumping the air from his
chest. His eyes went up as the rest of him went down, face first onto the floor.
The door slid shut behind him.

“Ahahhahahahhahhahha!” Bruce laughed. He leapt out of the cavity.
Three quick strides and he was over Sergei, quickly rolling him onto his back. “You
got him. Ahhahahhahahhahhahaha.”

“Fuck you, Bruce. I really liked him.”

“Yeah?
I wonder how he feels about you!
” Bruce rolled
Sergei onto his side and retrieved his binders, sliding them around his wrists.
“Seriously though, this will make a funny story to tell your kids one day.”

“Fuck you, Bruce.” She covered her eyes with her hand.

Done restraining her now–probably–ex–lover, Bruce dragged
him into the corner with the naval engineers, cackling the entire time. “Better
move quick now,” he said, returning to the floor cavity.

“Yeah.” Stein returned to the reactor console, careful to
keep her pistol handy again, lest she need to protect Bruce from any more
lovers. Splitting her attention between the controls and the door, she
maneuvered through the menus again until she found the controls for the fuel
supply. “You ready yet?” she called over the reactor. “Come on, man.”

“What are you gonna do? Shoot me?” Bruce yelled back. “‘Cause
you’re so bad?” She whipped a shot into the ceiling above him. “Ahahahahhahhahha.”

Frustrated, she turned back to the console, double–checking
the steps she would have to take to isolate the fuel lines. Then something
caught her eye. She blinked and double–checked the figure, not completely sure
of what she was seeing. “Hey, Bruce, is 1.54 bigger than 1.38?”

“Depends on the font, I guess,” Bruce called back over the
reactor. “Why?”

On the edge of the console, the current status of each fuel
pod in a neat column. All operational, all about half full. At the bottom, a
summary.
1.54 MT Anti–Deuterium remaining.

“What is it?” Bruce asked.

She grabbed her terminal, completely forgetting about the
pistol or covering the door. She frantically tapped through to the files Dr.
Berg had sent her, the data gene. Quickly, she zeroed in on the transcript she
had read before, the two–hundred–year–old conversation between the captain and
his officers.
“If we need 1.38 million tons of AM to stop this bastard, that’s
a number only the captain can know about.”

“Oh, shit,” she said. “That fucker. Oh, shit. He’s…”

“What?”

“He’s a fucking monster.”

“What are you talking about?” Bruce asked. He hopped out of
the cavity and rounded the reactor to see what Stein was looking at.

“Why do we think Helot is splitting the ship in two?”

Bruce frowned. “You very recently were mocking me for
speaking in riddles.”

She rolled her eyes. “Because there’s not enough fuel to
stop the whole ship.”

“Okay, sure.”

“What if there is enough fuel?” She pointed at the reactor
console, at the figure he couldn’t possibly understand.