Severance (33 page)

Bruce didn’t look up from his work. “Lube–planer.”

She nodded sleepily, watching him twist the robot’s
manipulator around violently. “Okay.”

“Would you like to know what that is?”

“Thank you, I know…”

“It files down a surface and then applies a thin coat of…”

“I know what a planer does.”

“It makes stuff smooth.” He looked up. “You only had to ask.”

Stein rolled over and closed her eyes, sincerely intending
to go back to sleep. This sincere intent lasted about twenty seconds before it
was interrupted by Bruce. “You’re not going to be able to get back to sleep.”

“And why is that?”

“You won’t be able to sleep without knowing what I’m doing.
It will eat you up.”

She rolled back over to face him. He’d seemed to have gotten
the planer attached to the robot, and was now poking something into his
terminal. “What I’d really like to know is where you got a lube–planer,” she
asked.

“Outside,” Bruce said with a half shrug. “There’s a
workbench on the other side of the plenum.”

She sat up, wordlessly conceding the point that she would
not likely fall asleep again. “And you decided to risk being seen for…?”

“To do something awesome.”

“I am filled with immediate dread.” She watched him fuss
away on his terminal, deep in concentration, the tip of his tongue poking out
of the corner of his mouth, silent but for the occasional cackle. She wondered
how many times he had done this before.

“There.” Bruce picked up the robot and popped a filter out
of place, stepping through. Stein watched curiously as he opened the outer
hatch and set the robot down on the floor of the fan room. With a flourish, he
made a final tap on his terminal and stepped back. The robot aimed its new tool
down at the floor and waited as the tool glowed faintly. A couple of seconds
later the tool shut off, and the robot retreated a short distance. Bruce walked
over to the spot on the floor and rubbed it with his finger. “Slippery!” he
said, looking back at Stein triumphantly. He tapped one final command into his
terminal and watched as the robot pivoted and trundled off, crossing the room
and entering the maintenance crawlspace where they had emerged.

“What’s it going to do, Bruce?” Stein asked again as Bruce
closed the hatch and climbed back into the plenum.

“I told you. Something awesome.” Seeing her bemused
expression, he expanded his thought. “It will move around to a random spot at
street level and make it ultra–slippery smooth. Repeat.”

“To what end?”

Bruce stared back at her, mock shock on his face. “For
people to slip on and fall over.”

Stein sighed. “And you think that your lifelong commitment
to physical comedy was worth lugging that thing with you all this way?”

“I do.”

She shook her head and lay back down on the floor, feigning
sleep again. This farce lasted about a minute before she gave up and rolled
onto her back. “What are we going to do, Bruce?”

She heard Bruce tapping on his terminal. “Well, Sleeping
Beauty, you’ll be happy to know that Sweating Beauty has been putting some
thought into just that question,” he said. “And I’ve come up with a couple
options.”

“Sweaty options, I hope.”

“Invariably. The first option: Escape to Freedom. This is a
tricky one, seeing as we’ve moved several blocks away from where we wanted to
go, namely, Freedom.” Stein snorted, and rolled over to face him. “We could
maybe make a run for it, or try going back the way we came and then making a
run for it. I think we can get within about four blocks of one of the bulkhead
doors before having to go outside. Might be able to cover that distance unseen.”

“Lot of cops around those doors now, I bet.”

“No bet, here,” Bruce agreed. “According to the news, they’ve
dug in quite a bit since my little distraction riot.” He cocked his head to the
side and tapped again on his terminal. “So, that’s if we want to escape. Or…”
he began, letting that hang in the air.

“Oh, shit,” she said, shaking her head. “I hate it when you
say
or
.”

“
Orrrrrrrrrrr
,” he said louder, drawing it out, his
voice growing shriller. “Or we could try doing something else.”

“That sounds promisingly vague.”

Bruce looked back down at his terminal. “Remember how I
punched that guy in the face and broke his shit?”

“That’s happened a few times in my presence, but I’ll assume
you’re talking about the most recent occasion with the guy and the fuse torch.”

“Well, they can’t have too many of those fuse torches, can
they?”

She frowned. They would have had to fabricate the fuse
torches from scratch. There was no telling how easy that was, but there was no
reason they would have made a lot of them. “Maybe,” she allowed.

“No maybe. Definitely. And his terminal had a map of all the
disconnects. Including which ones were jammed and needed to be cut open. If I
read it correctly — and I must reiterate, I was doing this while sweating extremely
heavily — they only had three or four fuse torches.”

“So, what?”

“Well, we broke one of them. That’s got to slow them down. Delay
them from doing Split Plot again.”

“I never agreed to calling it that.”

He ignored her objection and held up his terminal. “And we
know where they’re going. So option two: Escape to Destruction. We intercept
the last cutting teams. And break their shit.” He watched her carefully for a
moment before shrugging. “Or we don’t. We run. Or nap. You look like you want another
nap.”

Stein sighed, seeing what he was getting at. “I don’t want
to run.”

Bruce directed a long, thoughtful gaze at her. “Are you
sure? Because you didn’t seem so sure before.”

“Before,” she echoed. “Before I got shot in the face. Before
I got kicked in the face for resisting arrest.” She rubbed one of her still
fading bruises. “After? Yeah, maybe I’ve got my fur up a bit.”

She crawled across the floor of the plenum to Bruce, taking
the terminal from his hands and examining the map. She groaned. “There’s like a
hundred of them.”

“You’re not reading it right, sleepy.” Bruce poked at the
map, toggling another layer, showing more information on the various
disconnects. “Some of them are flagged, see? These ones are functional. These
ones jammed but have already been cut. And these ones still need to be cut
through.”

“That still leaves like thirty. You want to check all of
them?”

“Of course not.” He toggled another layer on the map. “They’ve
got one team cutting this set in the upper–decks here. That’s only twelve. And honestly?
We’re bound to get caught and killed long before we check all of those,” he
said with a grin. “Really, checking them all is the worst case scenario.”

§

Kinsella stepped out to meet the public, this time
thankfully to the sound of applause. He crossed the stage to the grinning idiot
and warmly shook her hand before sitting down on the couch. He crossed his legs
and looked important. “Thanks for coming, Mayor,” the idiot said.

Kinsella wondered if she had any idea of the amount that
Kinsella had paid to be there. “I can always make time for you…here…,” Kinsella
said, his voice trailing off as he tried to dredge up the idiot’s name.

“Great, great.” A big empty smile. “So, what’s going on
lately Mister Mayor? What’s all this coup business we’re hearing about?”

“Well, Captain Helot has staged a coup and stolen control of
the ship.”

“Now, hold on…” The idiot held up a finger and looked up at
the lights, straining her brain mightily. “I thought it was you who was couping
Helot?”

Kinsella laughed lightly. “It’s a common misunderstanding.
You see a coup is when the army takes over the government. And I certainly don’t
have an army.” He held up his hands innocently, showing his lack of armies. “That’s
clearly what Helot is doing, not me.” A massive round of applause burst out
from the gathered audience. Kinsella had paid more for that, but even without
seeing the post–interview polls, he could tell it was worth it.

“And that would explain why they’re doing such bad things?”
the idiot asked. “Those awful shootings outside the anti–terrorism zone. And
those attacks on the businesses along Europe–2?”

“That’s right. It was awful, wasn’t it?” Kinsella shook his
head compassionately.

One of the screens on the side of the studio began replaying
footage of the incident. A half–dozen security officers, kicking in the stalls
of a pornography vendor. That particular stretch of Europe–2 did a healthy
trade catering to the kind of pervert who got a thrill from being seen in
public being a pervert. “Why would they beat up a simple, honest freak like
that, I wonder?” the idiot said, probably legitimately wondering.

On the screen, the security officers continued to demolish
storefronts and rough up passersby. “This is a coup!” one of them shouted. “Give
us all your belongings!”

“You’ll have to ask Helot, I’m afraid,” Kinsella replied. “Maybe
his thugs need that material to boost morale? Maybe they need pornography to
fuel their fevered dreams of a totalitarian, porno–centric state? It’s all
possible.”

“I wonder,” the idiot said, still doing just that. “Isn’t
that your bodyguard there?” She pointed at the screen. Kinsella’s toes
clenched.

“I don’t think so.”

“No, it is. Can we get a zoom on that?” the idiot asked.
Quickly — too quickly Kinsella realized — the footage paused, rewound and
zoomed in on one of the security officers in the feed. The frame settled on a
close up of Angry Gus, one of Kinsella’s large men, who had not earned his name
because of his great intelligence.

The feed quickly switched to Angry Gus looking confused and
angry backstage. The idiot looked at Kinsella and smiled. A flicker in the
corner of her mouth — Helot had bought her first. “Let’s get a side by side,”
she said, the feed doing that a fraction of a second later. They had probably
rehearsed it.

“Mayor, did you dress up your goons in security outfits and
send them to tear up the skin–rag–district? Why? Is this part of your coup
business?”

Kinsella swallowed. “The captain has clearly been sending
security spies to pose as my bodyguards. This is a terrible violation of…the
identity theft laws. We can add it to the list of the crimes he’s carried out.”

“Really? Because that man has worked for you for quite some
time.” The feed displayed a series of dated photos of Kinsella at various public
events over the past decade, all of them featuring Angry Gus in the background,
looking angry.

“This is appalling. The worst case of identity theft I’ve
ever seen,” Kinsella said, shaking his head. “I ask you…
as the host of this
show,
have you ever seen such a violation of one man’s rights?” Kinsella
swallowed.
They don’t have to believe you for the right reasons. Believing you
for the wrong ones works just fine, too.

“Hmmm,” the idiot said. “Hmmmmmmmmm,” she added. Kinsella nodded
at her encouragingly. Their trap was slipping. They had rehearsed everything up
to this point, but they hadn’t rehearsed him barreling through it so brazenly.

“I’m really impressed,” Kinsella said, seeing the out, “at
the level of journalism and…commitment to public truthbringingness that this
show has displayed — and always displayed — in exposing the captain’s plot like
this. Identity theft is a very serious crime, and your ability to bring this to
light is just…really, really good.” Kinsella sat back in his chair and took a
breath. “Nice work.”

“Thank you!” the idiot said, beaming. She blinked, looking
up at the floor director’s frantic signals. “Thank you so much, Mayor Kinsella!”

“My pleasure.” Kinsella smiled broadly, right at the floor
director, whose face was buried in his hands. “If I could add one thing,” he
continued, “I’d say that if people are tired of all of these coups we seem to
be having, and the identity theft, and even this case of security officers
beating up innocent pornography users…” He paused for effect, enjoying the
moment. He hadn’t felt this excited about lying
in years.
“Then they
should come on down to the public arena. We’re getting a big old group of like–minded
people together, and we’re going to have a hell of a fun time kicking old Helot
out on his ear.” He stood up, wanting for all the world to dance back and forth
from foot to foot like a prize fighter. “I cannot tell you people
how much
fun
this is going to be. There’s going to be guns, and justice, and
guaranteed good times! And guns. Guns for all!” Big smile now, the biggest he
had. “So, come on down folks. You won’t regret it.” He pointed his finger at
the camera sensor in the shape of a gun. Then fired.

§

Hogg wrestled another manikin into place on a rolling chair.
This was deeply, fundamentally, unhappy work, and repetition had not made it any
more bearable. They had needed something to serve for target practice as part
of Kinsella’s scheme to turn an army of bakers into something that resembled a
fighting force. This close to the arena, the epicenter of the ship’s athletics
district, there had been one obvious source for targets, however distasteful
they might be. But as soon as Kinsella had heard the idea, he had flipped out,
and now Hogg was tasked with moving a pile of training manikins from the ship’s
competitive lovemaking league up and into wheeled chairs.

From the far side of the stack of manikins, another beast
with two backs approached, stumbling towards a chair. Hogg watched it separate,
the half that looked like Linze dropping the half that looked like a manikin clumsily
into the chair, where it slid off to the ground, coming to rest in what Hogg
recognized as a dismount with a very high degree of difficulty. “Fuck this,”
Linze said.

With Kinsella’s wary approval, Hogg had engaged some of his
former unit to help with the training. Croutl and Linze had been the only
takers, having deduced more or less the same thing about their former employer
that Hogg had. Also, Hogg hadn’t asked any of the others in his squad. Only the
best of Team Reject for him.