The End of All Things (18 page)

“Which is part of their job,” Lause said.

“Yes, but not stupidly,” Oi replied. It turned to Ghalfin. “Your estimate for the
Odhiambo
’s power systems to fail, please.”

“In the next serti?” Ghalfin asked.

“Yes.”

“Given the damage we know about, I’d say sixty percent,” Ghalfin said. “Which means realistically the chance is greater, because the damage we know about is the bare minimum possible.”

“We’re asking our people to go to their deaths, almost certainly,” Oi said.

“Ms. Byrne,” Tarsem said. “I want to know your thoughts.”

Byrne took a moment to collect herself. “I can’t tell you I don’t want you to save my people,” she said. “I can’t even tell you that I will entirely understand if you didn’t. What I can say is that if you don’t, I’ll recommend to the governments of Earth that your refusal to act not be a factor in future discussions.”

Tarsem looked at me after the comment. I stared back, silently, knowing that after all this time he would almost certainly know what I thought of Byrne’s
realpolitik
answer.

“How long until we can have rescue crews on the way?” Tarsem asked Ghalfin.

“They’ve been prepping since the
Odhiambo
’s first distress call,” Ghalfin said. “They’re ready to go when you want them.”

“I want them,” Tarsem said. “Send them, please.”

Ghalfin nodded, and turned to a subordinate, who handed her a headset conforming to her species. Tarsem turned to Byrne. “We’ll get them out, Regan.”

“Thank you, General,” Byrne said. Her relief flowed off her like a waterfall.

“General, we have a complication,” Ghalfin said.

“What is it?”

“Hold on—” Ghalfin held up a hand while she listened to her headset. “A rescue attempt is already under way.”

“By whom and under what authority?” I asked.

“It’s being undertaken by the
Chandler,
” Ghalfin said, after a moment of listening to her headset. “It’s a human ship, from the Colonial Union. It skipped in right around the time we started this meeting.”

I looked over to Tarsem, who was smiling at me. I knew what that meant. It meant,
Now aren’t you glad I decided to meet with the Colonials despite your advice
.

“What do you want to do now?” Ghalfin asked Tarsem.

“I want you to tell the
Chandler
they have a serti to complete their rescue and after that we’re vaporizing the
Odhiambo
for the safety of our headquarters,” Tarsem said. “And I want you to tell them that we’re sending a crew to assist if they need it and to observe if they don’t.” Ghalfin nodded and spoke into her headset.

Then Tarsem turned to me.

“Don’t tell me, I already know,” I said. I got up.

“Where are you going?” Byrne asked, looking up at me.

“I’m going with our rescue team,” I said. “To observe.”

“You might blow up,” Oi said.

“Then the Earth knows I blew up helping to save their people.”
And knows the Conclave didn’t let the Colonial Union take on all the risk alone. Or sacrifice,
I thought, but chose not to say. I knew that was part of Tarsem’s math. I nodded to those in the room and made my way to the exit.

“Hafte,” Tarsem said, and I paused at the doorway. I looked back to him. “Come back alive, please.”

I smiled and left.

*   *   *

“All right, this pilot is just showing off,” Torm Aul, the rescue shuttle pilot, said to me, as we approached the
Odhiambo
and the
Chandler
. The rescue shuttle contained me, Aul, zis co-pilot Liam Hul, whose seat I was currently occupying while Hul loitered in the general cabin, and six fellow members of the Fflict species as the rescue team. The Fflict recognized five genders: male, female, zhial, yal, and neuter. Aul was zhial, and ze liked zis pronouns accurately stated. I would too, in zis position.

“Which pilot?” I asked.

“The pilot of the
Chandler,
” Aul said, pointing at the monitor that gave zim zis external view. “The
Odhiambo
is tumbling chaotically so the
Chandler
is matching its movements.”

“Why would it do that?” I asked.

“It’s safer for the people running the rescue,” Aul said. “Makes the two ships stable relative to each other. But it’s difficult to do because the
Chandler
pilot has to track the
Odhiambo
’s movements precisely.”

“Once the ship started tumbling it should continue to do so in the same manner,” I said. “I think that’s close to a thermodynamic law.”

“Yeah, but that assumes no additional input of momentum,” Aul said, and pointed to the
Odhiambo
in the monitor. “But the
Odhiambo
is damaged and venting all sorts of things. And we can’t tell when those venting events will happen. No, it’s a mess. So the
Chandler
pilot’s tracking all of that in as close to real time as it can.”

“Could you do it?”

“If I wanted to show off, sure,” Aul said. I smiled at this. “But I wouldn’t do it with anything larger than this shuttle. Whoever the
Chandler
’s pilot is, it’s doing it with an entire ship. If it messes up, you’re going to have two ships tumbling down on headquarters, not just one.”

“We need to tell them that,” I said.

“Trust me, Councilor, they’re way ahead of you,” Aul said.

“Hail the
Chandler,
please,” I said. “Tell them we’ve come to offer assistance if they wish it.”

Aul did as ze was told, muttering into a headset in zis own language while I watched the two human ships tumble in tandem.

“The captain of the
Chandler
is named Neva Balla, it sends its compliments and says that it requires no assistance at this point,” Aul said, after a moment. “It says that they are under some time pressure and incorporating us into their plans would just add to the pressure. It asks us to hold position at twenty klicks relative—that’s about twenty-five chu—and to monitor the
Odhiambo
for power surges or rapidly rising temperatures.”

“Can we do that?”

“Maintaining a twenty-five-chu relative distance is something we can do on autopilot. And this shuttle’s packed with a good amount of sensory apparatus. We’re good.”

I nodded up to the monitor. “Any way we can stabilize the image of the ships so they don’t look like they’re tumbling? I want to be able to see what’s happening without getting vertigo.”

“No problem.”

“If the captain of the
Odhiambo
is still on the ship, ask it to send us a real-time data feed, please,” I said.

“Will do.”

“Also, Captain Neva Balla is ‘she,’ not ‘it.’”

“You sure?”

“I’ve met her before,” I said. “Humans generally prefer to not be called ‘it’ whenever possible.”

“The things you learn about people while you’re on the job,” Aul said.

*   *   *

“Here we go,” Aul said, nodding to the monitor. On it a lone figure stood in an open airlock on the
Chandler,
directly across from the
Odhiambo
. The distance between the two ships was less than thirty plint—about fifty meters in human measurement. Aul was right: Whoever was piloting the
Chandler
had impressive control.

The figure in the airlock continued to stand, as if waiting for something.

“Not a good idea to run out the clock,” Aul said, under zis breath.

A stab of light shot from the
Chandler,
striking across and at a small angle from the figure in the airlock.

“They’re firing on the ship,” I said.

“Interesting,” Aul said.

“Why is it interesting?”

“They need to cut into the hull,” Aul said. Ze pointed at the beam. “Normally for a rescue we’d send a crew over with some particle beam cutters to get through the hull. We have a couple here on the shuttle, in fact. But it takes time. Time they don’t have. So instead they’re just burning a big damn hole in the hull with a beam.”

“It doesn’t look very safe,” I said, watching. A venting blast of air puffed out of the
Odhiambo,
crystalizing in the vacuum wherever the beam didn’t turn it into plasma.

“It’s definitely
not,
” Aul said. “If there’s someone in the cabin they’re cutting into, they probably just died of asphyxiation. That is, if they weren’t vaporized by the beam.”

“If they weren’t careful they could have blown up the ship.”

“The ship’s going to blow up anyway, Councilor,” Aul said. “No reason to try to be dainty.”

The beam shut off as abruptly as it began, leaving a three-plint hole in the
Odhiambo
’s hull. In the monitor, the figure in the
Chandler
airlock launched itself toward the hole, trailing a cable behind it.

“Okay, now I get it,” Aul said. “They’re running a cable from the
Chandler
to the
Odhiambo
. That’s how they’re going to get them off the ship.”

“Across a vacuum,” I said.

“Wait for it,” Aul said. The figure disappeared into the
Odhiambo
. After a moment, the cable, which had drifted slightly, tightened up. Then a large container started moving across the cable.

“I’m guessing vacuum suits, harnesses, and automatic pulleys in that,” Aul said. “Get them suited up, secure them in a harness, and let the pulleys do all the work.”

“You sound like you approve.”

“I do,” Aul said. “This is a pretty simple rescue plan with pretty simple tools. When you’re trying to save people, simpler is better. A lot fewer things to go wrong.”

“As long as the
Chandler
can keep in sync with the
Odhiambo
.”

“Yes,” Aul agreed. “There is that. This plan has all its complications in one place, at least.”

There were several moments of nothing obvious going on. I took the time to look at the co-pilot monitor set, on which we were tracking the
Odhiambo
’s power and heat signatures. No excitement there either, which was a good thing. “You might suggest to the
Odhiambo
’s captain that any remaining crew might want to disembark as soon as possible,” I said to Aul.

“With all due respect, Councilor,” Aul said. “I’m not going to suggest to a captain that it abandon its ship a single moment before it makes that decision on its own.”

“Fair enough.” I glanced back over to the monitor with the
Odhiambo
on it. “Look,” I said, pointing. The first of the diplomats was making its way across the line, swaddled in a highly reflective vacuum suit, chest in a harness, trailing behind a pulley.

“That’s one,” Aul said. “Nine more to go.”

The
Chandler
collected seven before the
Odhiambo
blew itself up.

There was almost no warning. I glanced over as the seventh diplomat disappeared into the
Chandler
’s airlock and saw the feeds on the co-pilot’s monitor spike into critical territory. I yelled to Aul to warn the
Chandler
just as the external monitor showed a wrenching jerk, severing the cable between the two ships. Aul zoomed out the picture in time to catch the eruption on the
Odhiambo,
midships.

Aul yelled in zis headset and suddenly the image in the monitor began spinning wildly—or appeared so, as the monitor had stopped tracking with the two ships’ movements and had reoriented itself to our perspective. The
Odhiambo
had begun tearing itself apart. The
Chandler
had begun moving away from its doomed compatriot.

“Come on, come on, come on,” Aul was yelling at the monitor. “Move it, you stupid shit-for-brains, you’re too close.” I had no doubt ze was yelling at the
Chandler
’s pilot.

And ze was right; the
Chandler
was too close. The
Odhiambo
had now split in two and the pieces were moving independently of each other, with the fore portion now careening dangerously close to the
Chandler
.

“They’re going to hit!” Aul yelled.

And yet they didn’t; the
Chandler
’s pilot yawed and skewed its ship, moving it across three axes in a mad ballet to avoid collision. The separation between the ships widened, too slow for my taste: fifty plint, eighty, a hundred fifty, three hundred, one chu, three chu, five chu, and then the
Chandler
stabilized its movement relative to Conclave headquarters and began to pull away at speed from the
Odhiambo
.

“You should be dead!” Aul yelled at the monitor. “You should be dead, your ship should be dead, you should all be dead! You magnificent shit-eater!”

I looked over to Aul. “Are you all right?”

“No,” ze said. “I’m pretty sure I’ve soiled myself.” Ze looked over and on zis head was an expression that I assumed was of sheer amazement. “That
should not
have happened. Everyone on the
Chandler
should be dead. The
Chandler
should be an expanding cloud of debris. That was the single most amazing thing I’ve ever seen in my life, Councilor. I’d be surprised if it weren’t the single most amazing thing you’ve ever seen, too.”

“It might be in the top few,” I allowed.

“I don’t know who that pilot is, but I am going to buy that shit-eater all the drinks it wants.”

I intended to respond but Aul held up a hand, listening into the headset. Then it looked up at the monitor. “You have got to be kidding me,” ze said.

“What is it?”

“Those three other diplomats and the
Chandler
crewman,” ze said. “They’re still alive.” Aul spoke into zis headset and zoomed in on the aft portion of the
Odhiambo,
where the
Chandler
had burned its hole through the hull.

And as we zoomed in, we saw it: a reflecting suit, launching out from the hole, tumbling into space, followed by a second, followed by a pair, holding on to each other—the final diplomat and the crewman from the
Chandler
. The
Odhiambo
spun away from them, slowly.