The Human Division (11 page)

“And in the meantime I’ll keep the
Clarke
crew from being reassigned elsewhere,” Egan said.

“Thank you,” Rigney said.

“You owe me,” Egan said.

“Of course I do,” Rigney said.

“Now I have to go,” Egan said, pushing up from the table. “More children to scare.”

“You have fun with that,” Rigney said.

“You know I do,” Egan said. She turned to go.

“Hey, Liz,” Rigney said. “That estimate you give the kids, the one about humans having thirty years before we’re extinct. How much exaggeration is in that?”

“Do you want the truth?” Egan asked.

“Yes,” Rigney said.

“Almost none at all,” Egan said. “If anything, it’s optimistic.”

She left. Rigney stared at the remains of their meal.

“Well, hell,” he said. “If we’re doomed, maybe I will have that second cheeseburger after all.”

EPISODE TWO

Walk the Plank

[Transcript Begins]

CHENZIRA EL-MASRI:
 —okay, I’m not really interested in who you have in the medical bay, Aurel. Right now I’m focused on finding those damn cargo containers. If we don’t track those down, it’s not going to be a very happy next few months around here.

AUREL SPURLEA:
If I didn’t think the two of them were related, I wouldn’t be bothering you, Chen. Are you recording this, Magda?

MAGDA GANAS:
Just started the recorder.

SPURLEA:
Chen, the guy in the sick bay isn’t from around here.

EL-MASRI:
What do you mean, “not from around here”? We’re a wildcat colony. It’s not like there’s anywhere else to be from around here.

SPURLEA:
He says he’s from the
Erie Morningstar
.

EL-MASRI:
That doesn’t make any sense. The
Erie Morningstar
isn’t supposed to be landing anyone. It’s supposed to be sending down the containers on autopilot. The whole point of doing it this way is to take humans out of it.

GANAS:
We know that, Chen. We were there when the cargo schedules were drawn up, too. That’s why you need to see this guy. No matter what else, he’s not one of us. He’s come from
somewhere
. And since the
Erie Morningstar
was supposed to deliver two days ago, and he’s here today, it’s not a bad guess that he’s telling the truth when he says he’s from there.

EL-MASRI:
So you think he came down on one of the containers.

GANAS:
It seems likely.

EL-MASRI:
That wouldn’t have been a fun ride.

SPURLEA:
Here we are. Chen, a couple of things real quick. One, he’s messed up physically and we have him on pain relievers.

EL-MASRI:
I thought I gave orders—

SPURLEA:
Before you bitch at me, we’ve watered them down as much as we can and still have them have any effect. But believe me, this guy needs
something
. Two, he’s got the Rot in his leg.

EL-MASRI:
How bad?

SPURLEA:
Real bad. I cleaned it out best I can, but it’s a pretty good chance it’s in the bloodstream by now, and you know what that means. But he’s not from around here and
he
doesn’t know what that means, and I don’t see much point in telling him at this point. My goal is to keep him coherent long enough for you to talk to him and then keep him from too much pain while we figure out what to do with him after that.

EL-MASRI:
Christ, Aurel. If he’s got the Rot, I think you know what to do with him.

SPURLEA:
I’m still waiting for the blood work to come back. If it’s not set in there, we can take the leg and save him.

EL-MASRI:
And then do what with him? Look around, Aurel. It’s not like we can support anyone
else
here, much less a recovering amputee who can’t do any work.

GANAS:
Maybe you should talk to him first before deciding to leave him out for the packs.

EL-MASRI:
I’m not unsympathetic to his situation, Magda. But my job is to think about the whole colony.

GANAS:
What the whole colony needs right now is for you to hear this guy’s story. Then you’ll have a better idea what to think.

EL-MASRI:
What’s this guy’s name?

SPURLEA:
Malik Damanis.

EL-MASRI:
Malik. Fine.

[Door opens, stops.]

EL-MASRI
(quietly): Lovely.

SPURLEA:
There’s a reason we call it the Rot.

EL-MASRI:
Yeah.

[Door opens all the way.]

EL-MASRI:
Malik … Hey, Malik.

MALIK DAMANIS:
Yes. Sorry, I was dozing.

EL-MASRI:
That’s fine.

DAMANIS:
Is Doctor Spurlea here? I think the pain is coming back.

SPURLEA:
I’m here. I’ll give you another shot, Malik, but it’s going to have to wait for a few minutes. I need you to be all here for your conversation with our colony leader.

DAMANIS:
That’s you?

EL-MASRI:
That’s me. My name is Chenzira El-Masri.

DAMANIS:
Malik Damanis. Uh, I guess you knew that.

EL-MASRI:
I did. Malik, Aurel and Magda here tell me that you say you’re from the
Erie Morningstar
.

DAMANIS:
I am.

EL-MASRI:
What do you do there?

DAMANIS:
I’m an ordinary deckhand. I mostly work loading and unloading cargo.

EL-MASRI:
You look pretty young. This your first ship?

DAMANIS:
I’m nineteen standard, sir. No, I was on another ship before this, the
Shining Star
. I’ve been doing this since I turned twenty in Erie years, which is about sixteen years standard. This is my first tour on the
Morningstar,
though. Or was.

EL-MASRI:
Was, you say.

DAMANIS:
Yes, sir. She’s gone, sir.

EL-MASRI:
Gone as in left? She’s gone off to her next destination.

DAMANIS:
No. Gone as in gone, sir. She was taken. And I think everyone else who was on her might be dead now.

EL-MASRI:
Malik, I think you need to explain this to me a little better. Was the ship all right when you skipped into our system?

DAMANIS:
As far as I know. The ship stays on Erie time, and it was the middle of the night when we skipped. Captain Gahzini prefers to do it that way so that when we move cargo, we do it in the morning when we’re fresh. Or that’s what he tells us. Since the cargo we had for you was already packed when it came on board, it didn’t really matter. The captain does what the captain does. So we arrived in the middle of the night for us.

EL-MASRI:
Were you working then?

DAMANIS:
No, sir, I was asleep in the crew quarters, along with most of the rest of the crew. We had a night’s watch on at the time. The first thing I knew about anything going on was the captain sounding a general alert. It blasted on and everyone fell out of their bunks. We didn’t think anything of it at the time.

EL-MASRI:
You didn’t think anything of a general alert? Doesn’t that usually mean you’re in an emergency?

DAMANIS:
It does, but Captain Gahzini runs a lot of drills, sir. He says that just because we’re a merchant ship doesn’t mean we shouldn’t have discipline. So every three or four skips he’ll run a drill, and since the captain likes to skip in the middle of the night, that means we get woken up by a lot of general alerts.

EL-MASRI:
All right.

DAMANIS:
So we fall out of bunks, get dressed and then wait for the announcement about what the drill is this time. Is it a micrometeor puncture, or is it a systems failure of some sort, or what is it. Then finally Chief Officer Khosa comes on the public address system and says, “We are being boarded.” And we all look at each other, because this is a new one; we haven’t ever practiced something like this. We have no idea what to do. Doctor, my leg is really hurting.

SPURLEA:
I know, Malik. I’ll give you something as soon as you’re done talking.

DAMANIS:
Can I get something in the meantime? Anything?

GANAS:
I can give him some ibuprofen.

SPURLEA:
We’re running low on that, Magda.

GANAS:
I’ll take it out of my own stash.

SPURLEA:
All right.

GANAS:
Malik, I’m going to go get you that ibuprofen. It will be just a minute.

DAMANIS:
Thank you, Doctor Ganas.

EL-MASRI:
You said you never drilled for being boarded. But there have always been pirates.

DAMANIS:
We’ve drilled for being pursued by pirates. For that, most of the crew locks down while defensive teams prep countermeasures and the cargo crew preps to jettison the cargo. We work in space. Pirates can’t swing over on ropes and take a ship. They run you down and threaten you to get you to hand over your cargo. Only then do they board the ship, take the cargo and go. That’s why the last resort is throwing out the cargo. If you don’t have it anymore, they have no reason to keep pursuing you.

EL-MASRI:
So these weren’t pirates.

DAMANIS:
We didn’t know what they were. At first we didn’t know that there
was
anyone. We still thought it was a drill. Chief Khosa tells us we’re being boarded and we have about two or three seconds to wonder what that means, and then he comes back on the PA and says, “This is not a drill.” That’s when we knew something was really up. But we didn’t know what to think. We weren’t drilled on this. We stood around looking at each other. Then Bosun Zarrani came into the quarters, told us we were being boarded and that we were to stay in quarters until they heard from him or the captain sounded an “all clear.” Then he picked seven of us to follow him. I was one of the ones he picked.

EL-MASRI:
Why did he pick you?

DAMANIS:
Me or all of us?

EL-MASRI:
Both.

DAMANIS:
He picked all of us to be a security detail. He picked me, I think, because I was where he could see me. I didn’t know he wanted me to be part of a security detail until he took us into his office, opened up a footlocker and started handing out shock sticks.

SPURLEA:
Shock sticks? Why didn’t you have firearms?

DAMANIS:
It’s a spaceship. Guns with bullets aren’t a good idea on any ship that works in vacuum. And the only reason to have weapons on the ship at all is to deal with someone who’s gotten into a fight or is drunk and out of control. And for that, a shock stick is what you want. You zap someone, they go down, you shove them in the brig until they sober up and calm down. So we have shock sticks. Zarrani handed them out to us. There were six of them and eight of us, so I and Tariq Murwani didn’t have any. Bosun Zarrani said that we got to be scouts and told us to turn our PDAs to a general channel so that everyone would know where the enemy was. That didn’t make much sense to me. I figured that we knew where they would come in.

EL-MASRI:
Through the airlocks.

DAMANIS:
Yes, sir. They’d open them up from the outside and then get through that way. I think Zarrani and Captain Gahzini were thinking the same thing because Zarrani took two of the crew with the shock sticks with him to the port maintenance airlock while the other three went to the starboard maintenance airlocks. But we were wrong.

EL-MASRI:
How did they get in?

DAMANIS:
They cut through the hull forward and aft and dropped in maybe a dozen soldiers in each spot. I saw the aft breach and the soldiers dropping in and yelled into my PDA about it and then ran, because the soldiers were carrying assault rifles.

SPURLEA:
I thought you didn’t want projectile weapons on a spaceship.

DAMANIS:
We don’t, sir. The soldiers did. Their job was to take over the ship. And maybe they thought that since they were cutting a couple of holes through the hull anyway, what’s a few bullet holes here and there, right?

GANAS:
Here we go. Three tablets.

DAMANIS:
Thank you.

GANAS:
Let me get you some water.

DAMANIS:
It’s too late. I already swallowed them. How long will it take for it to start working?

GANAS:
Those were extra-strength, so not long at all.

DAMANIS:
That’s good. My leg hurts a lot. I think it’s getting worse.

SPURLEA:
Let me look.

DAMANIS:
Ahhhhh—

SPURLEA:
Sorry about that.

DAMANIS:
It’s okay, Doctor. But it’s like I told you. It hurts a lot.

SPURLEA:
I’ll see what I can do about cleaning it out again after we’re done talking here.

DAMANIS:
I’ll definitely need some real painkillers for that. The last time you did it I thought I was going to hit the roof.

SPURLEA:
I’ll be as careful as I can.

DAMANIS:
I know you’re doing your best, Doctor Spurlea.

EL-MASRI:
You say these were soldiers. Were they Colonial Defense Forces?

DAMANIS:
I don’t think so. They weren’t wearing CDF uniforms. These were bulkier and black, and there were helmets covering their heads. We couldn’t see their faces or much of anything else. I suppose that makes sense, since they were coming in from space.

GANAS:
If they were cutting through the hull, wouldn’t bulkheads close off to contain the breach?