Severance (47 page)

“This isn’t going over the feeds Helot, so I’d like to take
a moment to ask you to
eat my shit
. You started this, remember? Don’t
complain to me.” A long pause. Helot gritted his teeth.
Get to the point,
you asshole
. “Now then,” Kinsella said, ending the foreplay. “You are open
to negotiations. Correct?”

“What sort of negotiations?”

“Well, I’d suggest we start with a ceasefire. No further
hostilities.”

“Wasn’t that how we started today? How did this begin,
again?”

“Eat my shit,” Kinsella suggested again, apparently running
low on even token insults. “Along with the ceasefire, you will surrender,
unconditionally. All further efforts to damage or separate this ship will halt
immediately. In return, I promise that you, all naval and security personnel,
and every civilian currently located in the aft will be left unharmed.”

“That’s not really negotiating, is it?”

“It is what it is. Because if you don’t surrender, we will
run you down. We outnumber you twenty to one. It’s taking everything I have to
hold them back. They hate you, Helot. I’ve told them some awful things about
you. They’ll pull your throat out and drop it at my feet as a gift.”

Helot felt sad.
This was going to happen.
He hit the
mute button on the terminal. “Can he do that?” he asked the security guy who
seemed least afraid to speak. “Do they outnumber us twenty to one?” Seeing the
slow nod, Helot closed his eyes. “Dammit.” He took a deep breath and stood up
straighter. He unmuted the terminal. “Kinsella, I’m going to need some time to
think about this.”

A lengthy pause from the other end. “Well, then I suggest
you think quickly. You’ve got ten minutes.”

The terminal went dead. A sea of faces in the control room,
all watching their captain paint himself into a corner. He had become
everything Kinsella said he was.

“Blow the charge.”

§

Leroy shook himself, struggling to stay alert. For two hours
he had sat, watching the back of a guy who was watching another guy fifty
meters away watch him. Commander Hogg had told them to stop and watch, so that’s
what they were doing.

Leroy didn’t know why they had stopped shooting but wasn’t
happy. Having a gun had actually gotten kind of boring. He hadn’t even fired
his yet, not this time. He had been near the back when the attack started. By
the time he had gotten close enough to the front to see where bad guys might
be, everyone was telling him to stop. The bad guys were shooting too much. So,
he had stopped.

Moore ducked behind the counter again. Leroy could hear him
there, rummaging around in the mass of tattered and dusty plastic plants that
filled the florist’s shop they had taken cover in. Eventually, Moore reappeared
beside the counter, sitting on the floor. He extracted a meal bar from one of
his pockets — the third meal bar he had eaten since they had arrived. “We’re
not here to eat, genius,” Leroy said. Moore sneered at him but got back to his
feet, leaning on the counter, mouth working on the meal bar.

“Oph scphit,” he said, spraying food across the counter.

“What?” Leroy asked. Moore swallowed, and Leroy crawled over
beside him, peeking over the edge of the counter. There was no one across the
street anymore. “Where is he?”

“He disappeared,” Moore said. “Oh, well.”

Shithead.
Leroy scanned the neighboring windows,
looking for movement. Nothing. He raised his pistol and moved out from behind
the counter. Walking closer to the window, he peered down the street to the
south, just barely catching sight of a figure running around a corner. He
stepped out the front door and scanned up and down the street. There were a
couple of good guys in the front door of a massage parlor. But no bad guys.

Stepping back inside, he tapped his terminal. “Command, this
is Leroy at Slate and 6
^th
. I can’t see any more bad guys. They ran
away.”

“Okay. Sit tight.”

Leroy stared at the terminal for a moment, trying to decide
what the most soldiery way to sit tight was. He really wanted to shoot some
guys and go home. He took up a position by the doorway, practicing soldiery
ways to look down the street. Nothing to see, nothing to shoot. The only sound
was Moore grazing behind the counter.

A sudden rumbling to the south caused Leroy to leap back
inside, falling on his ass. He lay still for a while, until his embarrassment
coaxed him into action, eventually getting up and returning to the doorframe.
The bulkhead doors a block south were closing. Still no sign of the enemy. More
rumbling, closer by. He took a deep breath and broke cover, jogging to the
corner, where he could see down the street to the west. Another bulkhead door
closing. He ran back inside. “Command, Leroy again. I’ve got bulkhead doors
closing to my…” He was interrupted by an explosion to the south.

Again, he threw himself backwards into the store, landing
ass first, less embarrassed this time. He sat there for a moment, hearing no
other explosions or gunfire or really anything at all, until Moore started
eating again. Leroy clambered to his knees and returned to the door, looking
outside carefully.
There.
Down the street, the door of an apartment was
bulging out, just this side of the bulkhead door that had closed. Leroy held
his breath and listened. A strange noise could be heard coming from that
direction.

“Command, we just had an explosion down here. Still no sign
of bad guys. Orders?”

“Hold position for now, Leroy.”

For thirty seconds, then a minute, he stood in the doorway,
listening to the sound. It didn’t get louder, but he definitely wasn’t
imagining it. Beyond that, nothing seemed to be happening at all. It had
suddenly become, of all fucking things, boring again. He made a decision. “Hey,
foodbag. Cover me. I’m going to go have a look.”

Moore swallowed and nodded, moving over to the door himself.
Leroy set out walking as quietly as possible, swinging his pistol left and
right as he crossed the intersection, imagining how much like a soldier he
looked. Still no one to be seen on the streets. He slowed down as he approached
the broken door. It was bulging out from the center, like it had been punched
by an angry giant. One of the corners had come loose. The wall on one entire
side of the doorframe was run through with cracks, and he could see chunks of the
wall lying on the floor. The sound grew louder as he got closer, some kind of
whistling. He stopped, directly across the street from the door and tried to
decide what to do next.

He felt a breeze.

Light breezes and gusts could be felt in the garden well,
for reasons Leroy had never cared to learn, but they weren’t common in the
lower decks. There was something important about that, he decided.
I should
definitely tell someone about this.
Having made that decision, Leroy turned
away from the twisted door.

Before he could move more than a couple steps, the door
frame imploded, taking the door and half the wall with it. Leroy was yanked off
his feet, tumbling backwards towards the opening, twisting around as he fell,
barely catching a glimpse of the room beyond. The entire floor of the room was
gone, replaced with a huge gaping hole the size of the whole universe. Leroy
screamed, but the sound didn’t travel far. He was spared the indignity of being
the second involuntary astronaut in Argosian history when he cracked his head
on the edge of the hole, dying instantly. The void vacuumed up the mess without
complaint.

§

Hogg gaped helplessly as the bulkhead doors crept across the
street. They had heard the rumbling as well, the entire command center running into
the street. It was a wide street, and the door was taking its time, many of
them dashing across the threshold to the presumed safety of the north, others
dashing across the threshold to the presumed safety of the south.

Kinsella didn’t hesitate; he went north. “Not you,” he said,
stopping, pointing at Hogg. “You win me this war.”

“Sir, I think something really nasty is about to…”

“Hogg,” Kinsella said calmly. “I order you to win me this
war. You take your little soldiers, and you shoot Helot until he stops being
nasty.”

Hogg stared helplessly as both sides of the door rumbled
closer together. “Sir, this is bad. You can’t.”

“Hogg, I order you to win this war.”

“Ohhhhh kaaaaaay,” Hogg said, not really sure why. The doors
met in front of him with a thundering sound.

Linze had stuck with him and looked skeptically at him. “Now
what?” she asked.

Hogg wasn’t sure what the answer to that was or if he would
have much of a say in it. He returned to the command post to find one of the
communications officers waiting for him. “We’re getting reports from all over.
Bulkhead doors are closing on all sides. In the escalators, too. All visible
security troops have retreated.” Hogg tried to visualize this. Helot was boxing
them in. Containing them. That wasn’t so bad. They would get to sit this out
for a bit.

“He’s cutting off our ways of escape,” Linze said behind
him. Hogg hadn’t considered that interpretation. He didn’t like it as much as
his own.

“Okay, order everyone to hold positions for now,” Hogg said.
The communications officer nodded and ran back to the dining room.

Hogg’s peace didn’t last long. “Sir, there’s been an
explosion near 6
^th
and Slate!” the communications officer shouted a
moment later. “Still no signs of enemy movement.” Hogg crossed the room to lean
over the map. That was in the southeast corner of their perimeter. Far from
where the main bulk of the security troops were. “Who saw the explosion? Put it
on the speakers,” Hogg asked.

A panicked voice shrieked out over the desk speakers. “Holy
crap! He’s gone! Leroy is gone! He got sucked through the hole! He got fucking
sucked through the hole! Command? This is Moore! Leroy just got sucked through
the hole! Oh, shit.”

Hogg mashed his hand down on the transmit button. “What
hole? Soldier! What are you talking about?”

“The air is moving! The air is moving! It’s wind!” came the
confused response.

Hogg stared at the screen for a few seconds, the gears
spinning. His heart stopped.
Oh, no, they wouldn’t.
Oh, holy shit
.
He strained to think of something to say, an order to give, but he couldn’t. He
felt like he was choking.

“They trapped us in here and are sucking out all the air,”
the communications officer said slowly, vocalizing the problem Hogg couldn’t.

Hogg’s brain snapped back into motion. “Order all troops to
fall back to the 9
^th
and Africa blast doors. We’ve got to open them
now!” He ran outside to the bulkhead door, furiously pounding on the control
panel. Soldiers streamed into the street behind him, masses of them. They
stopped at the door, leaving space for him as he beat on the work–shy controls.
Where was Stein? She’d know how to open these things.
He gave up and turned
around, looking at the expectant faces staring back at him.

His heart sank as he realized what he had done.
They were
all going to be trapped out in the street.

Somewhere in the crowd, Linze’s voice, shouting orders. “They’re
sucking the air out of the streets! Everyone get inside! Take cover indoors
right now! Get inside! Now dammit!”

Mayhem. Not prone to good behavior at the best of times, the
Loyalist forces stampeded away from the doors, trampling over the ones too far
away to hear Linze’s advice. Linze fought her way to Hogg’s side, grabbed him
by the arm, and led him back into the command post. Hogg let himself get placed
in a chair, and watched as his second in command took over, doing what he
couldn’t.

§

The image on the screen shifted and moved. It was a face.
Yes. She could tell it was a face. But whose face? Whoever it belonged to, they
were saying something. But there was no sound. There was something wrong with
the terminal. Where had the sound gone?

Ellen had known something was up before almost everyone
else, having watched the security officers retreat from her vantage point. When
the bulkhead doors closed, she was already on her way out, taking the stairs of
the apartment two at a time, banging the heavy smart rifle against the walls as
she descended, finally dashing out into the street. She wasn’t the only one
with that idea, finding herself surrounded by panicked soldiers outside, making
their way to the Africa Street bulkhead door, too late. There they watched Hogg
and his saucer–eyes pound on it helplessly.

“Get inside.”
Ellen had been close enough to hear
Hogg’s lieutenant and managed to avoid being trampled in the resulting
stampede, though she did drop the smart rifle in the crush, not caring. She
returned to the apartment she had been shooting from, two soldiers on her heels,
thinking she looked like she knew what she was doing. Inside, she had sprinted
upstairs, bypassing the sitting room with its shattered windows, and slammed
face first into the bedroom door. It was locked. She pounded at the door
controls hopelessly. The door had locked automatically when the outside air
pressure dropped past a certain point. She was too late.

The other soldiers had fled, leaving her alone, sitting on
the floor. A short and awful terminal conversation with her husband had
followed. Panic in his voice, calmness in hers.

That’s who the face belonged to! It was Griese. She knew
him. He was her husband. He was shouting something at her, but she couldn’t
hear what. Something wrong with the sound. She closed her eyes and tried to
focus on her breathing. In through the nose. Hold. Hold. Hoooooooooold. Out
through the nose. Hold. Hold.

It was exhausting work, and she soon fell asleep from the
effort.