Severance (54 page)

“How do you know?” he asked. “Are you sure?”

Even if she had the time, she would have been reluctant to
tell the story. Thankfully, she didn’t have the time. “I just know. And no, I’m
not sure.” She licked her lips. “But I think it’s
really
possible. Like it’s
the kind of thing we should look into.”

A moan from the corner as one of the naval engineers started
to wake up. Bruce shot him in the neck and turned back to Stein. “Look into. What
are you thinking?”

“Okay,” she said, then stopped, her brain moving faster than
her mouth. “Let’s say there is enough fuel to stop the whole ship. No one dies,
everyone goes to the planet. Like we’ve been taught our whole lives, happily
ever after, like a fucking fairy tale. What if we could find a way to do that?”

“I love happy endings.” He gave her an enormous wink, and
then just in case that wasn’t clear, made an obscene gesture. “So, how do we do
that?”

“I don’t know,” Stein said, not lying. “I mean Helot’s
obviously cutting the ship in half for
some
reason.”

“Maybe because he’s a dick?” Bruce suggested.

“Maybe. I don’t know. Regardless, he’s not going to stop being
a dick if we just ask.”

“So, we do what we’re doing anyways. We blow the fuel lines and
get Kinsella to blackmail him into stopping the whole ship in exchange for the
spare parts.”

“I guess.” She looked at the time on her terminal, trying to
remember how long it would be until the mayor sent his near–suicide bombers
into action. “But Kinsella’s kind of a dick too, hey?”

“He has many dick–shaped qualities,” Bruce allowed.

“Right. And he sure as fuck doesn’t seem too interested in
saving the whole ship, either. He wants to split it as much as Helot. Hell,
probably more. And I’m not sure he’d change his mind if we told him we didn’t
have to.”

Bruce nodded. “
Such a dick.
”

Stein began pacing back and forth. “We need to stop either
of them from splitting the ship. We need to stop
anyone
from splitting
it.”

“You’re thinking a lot of glue?”

She shook her head. “Too late for that. Too impermanent.”
She pounded the console in frustration.

Another moan from the corner as the other naval engineer
came to. Bruce knocked him out again. “Okay,” he said. “So, we don’t stop them
from separating. But can we make it so they don’t want to separate?”

Stein’s hands were shaking, sure she was close to the
answer. “What, like make them feel guilty about killing fifty thousand people? Because
no one but us seems to give a flying damn about that.”

Bruce shook his head. “No, you don’t get it. What does the
aft of the ship
need
?” he asked. “This has to be a separate spaceship,
right? So, what can’t it live without? Like, can we eat all their food or
something?”

“That’s it!” Stein hissed. “Wait! No, it isn’t! They have farms
all over the fifth and six decks. No.
Craaaaap!
” She kicked the edge of
the reactor, hard. “They’ve got plenty of food, and fuel, and air…” she trailed
off.

Bruce turned around and looked at the door on the far side
of the reactor room. “Oh, yeah. The scrubbers.”

“The scrubbers!” Stein yelled. “They’ll need those.”

“They’ll need
the fuck
out of those.”

She laughed. If the core detached, it would need its own
carbon dioxide scrubbers if it didn’t want to suffocate everyone within a few
hours. She nodded, working through the details. “If the core’s attached to the
rest of the ship, it doesn’t need its own scrubbers; it can stay hooked into
the main circ system for as long as it wants. One spaceship.”

“Blow the scrubbers?” Bruce said.

“Yeah.” She began pacing again, piecing together Plan B. “Fuck,
demolish the entire room. Everything in there. Something that would take years
to repair. Years they don’t have.”

“Gonna take a lot of boom.” Bruce patted himself down for
show. “Out of boom.”

Stein pulled off her own webbing and the explosives it contained.
“Take these. And take the ones you set here. All but one,” she said, running
around the reactor. She pointed at a single charge, on the pressure regulator.

“Why leave one?” Bruce asked, leaping into the cavity to
remove the other charges.

She looked at the door. “Plan A. In case I’m wrong.” She
looked around the room again, sizing it up for a different purpose.

“How will you know you’re right?”

Behind the reactor.
She would have a lot of cover
behind the reactor. She swallowed. “How do you feel about death threats?”

Bruce paused for a moment, thinking about that. He looked up
at her. “Pro.”

“Pro–death threat. Good to know.” She looked from the
reactor, to her unconscious boyfriend in the corner, to the door. “Well, while
you’re planting those charges, I’m going to be death–threatening.”

Bruce pulled himself out of the cavity again, laden with
explosive devices. He jerked his head at Sergei. “And it’s just a coincidence
that you’re asking me to leave you alone with your special hug buddy over
there?”

Stein sighed. “Probably not much chance of special hugs. I
don’t think he’s pro–death threat at all.”

§

Two ensigns exited the elevator just as Helot arrived, immediately
springing out of his way, backs pressed against the wall. Helot entered the
elevator and jabbed at the controls violently.
A bomb on an antimatter
reactor.
Laura Stein, the dupe he had tried to pin the failed detachment
on, had evidently taken his slander really,
really,
personally. Apparently,
just to spite him, she had actually become a terrorist. Or were his powers of
suggestion so great that claiming she was a terrorist actually made her one? As
the elevator rode up to the engineering deck, he wondered if a public
announcement declaring Ms. Stein was a perfectly sane pacifist would help.

The elevator stopped, and he lunged out, loping down the
hall as fast as he could, taking only a few seconds to reach the hallway
outside the main reactor. A squad of heavily armed security officers stretched
out down the hall in front of him, bracketing the door on both sides. Their chatter
stopped as Helot pulled to a halt in front of the officer in charge.

“She’s inside,” Lieutenant Jensson said. After Thorias’
death, it had taken a bit of sorting out within the security corps to figure
out who was in charge of what, a process which was immeasurably simplified when
Helot had pointed at Jensson and told him he was in charge of talking to him. “There’s
at least one other with her, we think,” Jensson continued. “They have three
hostages, including a security officer. Only stun weapons we think, but, also,
obviously a bomb on the reactor.”

“Are we sure she has a bomb?” Helot asked.

“We didn’t go in to find out. But in general, yeah, the
Othersiders have explosives. So, we didn’t want to take the chance. Don’t know what
it’d do to the reactor.”

Helot stared at his new deputy, forcing a blank look on his
face. “It would destroy a small part of the universe. A small, but to us, very important
part.” He looked at the door and licked his lips. “Okay. You have any plans how
to get them out of there?”

“This is the only way in. We could try a stun grenade with
an extremely short delay. But that’s still pretty risky.”

“Stupid risky,” Helot agreed. “Any demands? Aside from me?”

Jensson shook his head. “She just wanted to talk to you.
Didn’t say why.”

Helot could think of a few reasons. To beg for him not to
split the ship. Or to beg for a ride on his part of the ship. Or either of
those, with blackmailing swapped for begging.
Or maybe just to kill me.
“Okay,”
Helot said. “Everyone back up out of sight. When I open it, don’t say anything
or do anything. I’m going to see what she wants.”

“She might just want to kill you.”

Helot dug his fingers into his palms. “I had considered
that, thanks.” Good to look tough in front of the troops. But as he reached out
to the door control panel, he knew it was less bravery and more resignation. He
didn’t have a choice.

And maybe it was about time he risked his own life for
this scheme.

The door slid open. He stepped inside.

§

“Ms. Stein?” someone called out from the doorway. She had
never met him but recognized the voice immediately.

Stein swallowed.
Here we go.
On the far side of the
room, her back pressed to the bulk of the reactor, she turned, pistol pointed
in the direction of the door. “Captain,” she called out. “I’ve got a bomb.”

“Okay.” A pause. “Please don’t blow it up.” She heard an
inaudible discussion on the other side of the door. “I’m unarmed.”

She didn’t think he was lying but saw no reason to trust him,
either. “If you try anything…” she said, trailing off. “Boom.” She looked over
her shoulder to the corner of the room at Sergei, who was just starting to come
to.

“Ms. Stein, just keep yourself together for one second,
please. Okay?” Helot said. He was trying to sound annoyed, but there was a
distinct tremble in his voice. It seemed she was believable as a lunatic. The
sound of the door sliding shut. “I’m inside now,” Helot said. “Alone.”

Helot’s hands appeared on the far side of the reactor,
moving slowly, eventually revealed to be attached to his arms, which were in
turn, as expected, attached to the rest of Helot. The captain stepped out from
behind the reactor, moving across the room. He stopped and looked at the pile
of bodies in the corner. “Are they hurt?”

“I’m…urk,” Sergei said. He looked it.

Stein fired a shot into the floor in front of Sergei’s feet.
“Please just be quiet for a minute,” she said. “Please?”

“What?” Sergei asked. He blinked several times, seeming to
have a hard time focusing on Stein. “What the…urk…Laura?”

“Just be quiet, please.” She smiled as warmly as the
circumstances dictated.

“Ms. Stein, you need to calm down,” Helot said, moving
towards her. A shot at his feet stopped him in his tracks.

She waggled the gun at him. “I’m plenty calm. Now, sit down.
Back to the wall.”

Helot watched her carefully for a moment before backing up
to the wall and lowering himself to the ground. “All right, Ms. Stein. Or do
you prefer Laura?” Seeing her not immediately disagree, he continued by asking,
“Do you really think you can blow up the ship?”

She fished her terminal out of a pocket and set it down in
front of her, a big button marked
Boom
glowing on it. “There’s a charge
on the main antimatter fuel line. You tell me.”

Helot’s throat contracted. “That’d do it. Okay. Second
question. Do you really
want
to blow up the ship?”

Her hand hovered over the terminal. She tried putting a
cruel smile on but could only hold it for a couple seconds before it slipped. “No,”
she said, setting her hand down on the floor beside the trigger.

“Well, that’s a relief.” Helot turned his head, craning his
neck a bit to look at the missing floor panels. “So, what exactly are you doing
then?”

“Dunno.” Her shoulders sagged. She worried for a moment that
she was overplaying her role and looked down, not meeting Helot’s gaze.

“Want to give up, then?” Helot asked.

“Sure.”

A relieved sound from Sergei’s direction. “Hey!” she shouted.
“I’m serious,
pig.
Keep your mouth shut.” It might have been less
painful just to knock him out again. But she really needed him quiet for the
next bit. She pleaded at him with her eyes.

The message didn’t get through. Perhaps because he was stung
by the pig comment, or possibly because his vision still hadn’t cleared up,
Sergei instead shouted, “Or what!?”

“Or I’ll shoot you again,” she said, shooting him again. Her
shoulders sank. And that was probably that; the second shot would be
really
hard to explain. Her mouth felt dry.

After a moment, she looked up at Helot, at the relaxed
expression he was trying and failing to shape his face into. He was terrified.
It
was working.
“I’m not as crazy as I look,” she said. “But maybe that’s not
saying much.” She took a deep breath. “I don’t want to blow up the ship. And I
won’t. If you answer some questions for me, first.”

The captain swallowed, but slumped back against the wall,
seeming to relax. “All right.”

“First, I want to hear you say it. You’re trying to split
the ship in two.”

Helot looked her in the eyes. He looked sad. Deeply,
fundamentally, irreparably sad. “It’s true,” he said. “I’m trying to split the
ship.” She shivered, not having ever doubted it, but still a little frightened
to hear him actually say it. “Do you want to come with us?” he asked. “We could
make room for you.”

Stein snorted. It was essentially the same deal as Kinsella’s,
though perhaps from a source more capable of delivering. She mentally weighed
the offer and felt her resolve waver a moment when she realized
it weighed
pretty good
. But she set it aside and took a deep breath. “Why are you doing
it, Helot?”

Helot looked away, shaking his head. “Honestly? We don’t
have enough fuel to stop the whole ship. We messed up. Burned too much during
course corrections, during the acceleration. We messed up,” he repeated. He
looked back at her and shrugged.

“That thing right there,” Stein said, pointing over her
shoulder to the reactor console, “says we have 1.54 million tons of antimatter.
That’s not enough?”

A tremor from Helot’s hand. Was that a sign? Was he hiding
something?
Or was he just shit–scared of the crazy bomb lady?
“No, it’s
not enough,” he said.

“Because I have it on good authority we need only 1.38
million tons to stop this ship.” She watched his eyes widen. “The whole ship.” His
throat contracted.
He is definitely hiding something.