The Human Division

“There’s a vacuum—,” Schmidt began.

  Kruger indeed yanked mightily, throwing the door open just enough that he might conceivably slide through, and was sucked through so quickly that when the door slammed shut on his hand, it left the tops of three of his fingers behind.

  For the first time since the crisis began, there was dead silence at gate seven.

  “What the fuck just happened?” bellowed Mothudi, breaking the silence.

  “There’s a vacuum on the other side of that door,” Schmidt said, and then saw the blank expression on Mothudi’s face. “There’s no air. If you try to go in there, you won’t be able to breathe. You’ll die before you get down the ramp to the escape pods.”

  “Kruger’s dead?” asked another of the soldiers, the one called Goosen.

  Unless he carries his own oxygen supply, you bet, Schmidt thought, but did not say. What he said was, “Yes, Kruger is dead.”

  “The hell with this,” said the third soldier, the one named Pandit. “I’m going to gate six.” He bolted toward the gate at the end of the section, where people had queued to make their way to the escape pods. Mothudi and Goosen joined him a second later, followed by a yelling mass of humanity from gate seven who finally got it through their heads that there might not be enough spaces on the escape pods for all of them. A riot had begun.

  Schmidt knew that for survival purposes he should be in the fray at gate six, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it. He decided he’d rather die as a fundamentally decent human being than live as the sort of asshole who’d tear out someone’s liver to get into an escape pod.

  The thought brought him inner peace, for about five seconds. Then the fact that he was going to die bubbled up again and scared him shitless. He leaned his head back against the bench Kruger had thrown him into and closed his eyes. Then he opened them again and looked forward. Into the back of the gate attendant’s lectern. Which among other things had a large first-aid box slotted into it.

  Schmidt looked over at Kruger’s fingertips for a second, snerked and reached over to the box. He pulled it out and opened it up.

  Inside, among many other things, were a foil blanket and a very small oxygen kit.

  Hey, look, your very own oxygen supply, Schmidt’s brain said to him.

  “Yeah, well, don’t get too excited,” he said, out loud, to his brain. “You still can’t get that door open without losing your hand.”

  Gate six exploded.

  In the immediate aftermath, Schmidt wasn’t sure if he’d been deafened by the pressure blast blowing out his eardrums or all the air in the section that contained gate six and gate seven being sucked out into space, along with Goosen, Pandit and Mothudi and everyone else who had been raging at gate six. Then he felt the air in his lungs seeping out through his lips and nose and decided it just didn’t matter. He grabbed at the first-aid box, wrapped the blanket over the top half of his body as tightly as he could with one hand and with the other covered his face and mouth with the mask of the oxygen kit.

  The mask immediately fogged. Schmidt gave himself a quick hit of oxygen and tried not to panic.

  In another minute, the section was completely silent and Schmidt felt himself start to freeze. He got up from the bench he’d crouched under and went to the gate seven door. It opened with only the slightest resistance.

  On the other side of the door was Kruger: cyanotic, fingerless, frozen and looking, in death, extraordinarily pissed. Schmidt sidestepped Kruger’s corpsicle and ran as quickly as he could down the ramp, blue fingers clutching the space blanket and the oxygen.

  The shuttle deck of gate seven had sprouted what looked like several doors leading to subterranean alcoves: the escape pods. Schmidt picked the closest one and with shivering hands cycled the portal shut. Sealed, the escape pod sensed the vacuum and freezing cold and blasted both oxygen and warmth into the pod. Schmidt cried and shook.

  “Pod launch in fifteen seconds,” a computerized voice said. “Secure yourself, please.”

  Schmidt, still shivering violently, reached up and pulled down the padded seat restraint as the escape pod counted off the seconds. He passed out before the voice got to three and missed his launch entirely.

  * * *

  Lowen cried with relief when the automated announcement about the escape pods fired up and then started going for one of them when their egress doors on the deck floor opened. Wilson reached out and held her back.

  “What are you doing?” she yelled at him, clawing at his hand.

  “We have a way off this station,” Wilson said to her. “Other people don’t.”

  Lowen pointed to the escape pods opening up around her. “I’d rather go this way,” she said. “I’d rather have something around me when I launch myself into space.”

  “Dani,” Wilson said, “it’s going to be okay. Trust me.”

  Lowen stopped going for the escape pods but didn’t look the least bit happy about it.

  “When they start launching these things, they’re probably going to cycle out the air,” Wilson said. “Let’s go ahead and cover up.” He attached his oxygen apparatus and then covered his head with his cowl.

  “How do you see?” Lowen asked, looking at the blankness of the cowl.

  “The suit nanobots are photosensitive and send a feed to my BrainPal, which allows me to see,” Wilson said. He reached over to help her with her oxygen and to seal her cowl.

  “Great,” Lowen said. “How am I going to see?”

  Wilson stopped. “Uh,” he said.

  “‘Uh’?” Lowen said. “Are you kidding me, Harry?”

  “Here,” Wilson said, and sent instructions from his BrainPal to Lowen’s suit. It sealed up everywhere but the eyes. “That should be fine until we go,” he said.

  “When is that?” Lowen asked.

  “I was going to do an emergency purge of the deck,” Wilson said. “But now I’ll wait for the pods to go before we do.”

  “And then I’ll be blind,” Lowen said.

  “Sorry,” Wilson said.

  “Just talk to me on the way down, all right?” Lowen said.

  “Uh,” Wilson said.

  “‘Uh,’ again?” Lowen said.

  “No, wait,” Wilson said. “You have your PDA, right?”

  “I put it in my underwear, since you insisted I take off my clothes,” Lowen said.

  “Put the audio up as loud as you can. Then I should be able to talk to you,” Wilson said.

  From above the shuttle deck, the two of them heard panicked yelling and screaming, and the thundering of people running down the ramp to the shuttle deck.

  “Oh my God, Harry,” Lowen said, pointing at the rush. “Look at that.”

  Harry turned in time to see a flash, a hole in the hull where the bottom of the ramp used to be, and people both thrown into the air and sucked out of the hole. Lowen screamed and turned, losing her footing and falling hard against the deck, momentarily stunning her. The suction of the hole sent her tumbling silently into space.

  Harry frantically sent a command to her suit to cover her eyes and then leaped into space after her.

  IX.

  Captain Coloma had been keeping tabs on Schmidt and Wilson, the Clarke’s lost sheep, via their PDA and BrainPal, respectively. Wilson had been moving about shuttle gate five but seemed fine; Schmidt was at gate seven, having just missed the shuttle, and was largely motionless until the announcement about the escape pods. Then the ships attacking Earth Station started putting missiles into the shuttle gates, intentionally targeting the decks where the people were funneling into escape pods.

  “You sons of bitches,” Coloma said.

  She was alone on the Clarke. The escape pods off the ship seemed not to attract attention. At the very least, no missiles were sent in their direction. Not every crew member was happy to go; she’d had to threaten Neva Balla with a charge of insubordination to get her into a pod. Coloma smiled grimly at this memory. Balla was going to make an excellent captain.

 
The ships targeted and hit the sections Wilson and Schmidt were in. Coloma zoomed in and saw the wreckage and the bodies vomiting out of the holes in the Earth Station hull. Remarkably, Coloma’s tracking data told her both Wilson and Schmidt were alive and moving. “Come on, guys,” Coloma said.

  Wilson’s data indicated he had been sucked out of gate five. Coloma grimaced at this but then watched his BrainPal data further. He was alive and just fine, aside from hyperventilating slightly. Coloma wondered how he was managing this trick until she remembered that he was scheduled to do a jump with a U.S. soldier later today. It looked as though he were doing it earlier than he expected. Coloma watched his data for a few seconds more to assure herself that he was good, then turned her attention to Schmidt.

  Her data on Schmidt was less exact because his PDA did not track his vital statistics, unlike a BrainPal. All Coloma could tell was that Schmidt was on the move. He had gotten himself down the ramp of gate seven, which the Clarke’s shuttle pilot had damaged, meaning it was filled with vacuum. Despite that, Schmidt had planted himself in an escape pod. Coloma was curious how he’d managed that and regretted that at this point it would be unlikely that she would ever find out.

  The escape pod launched, plunging down toward the atmosphere.

  The Erie Morningstar launched a missile directly toward it.

  Coloma smiled. She went to her display, tracked the missile and vaporized it with the final blast of her antiparticle beam. “No one shoots down my people, you asshole,” she said.

  And finally, Coloma and the Clarke had the attention of the interloping ships. The Erie Morningstar launched two missiles in her direction. Coloma waited until they were almost on top of her before deploying countermeasures. The missiles detonated beautifully, away from the Clarke, which was now swinging itself around as Coloma plugged in a course for the Erie Morningstar.

  The Erie Morningstar responded with two more missiles; Coloma once more waited until the last minute before countermeasures. This time she was not as lucky. The starboard missile tore into the skin of the Clarke, rupturing forward compartments. If anyone had been there, they would be dead. Coloma grinned fiercely.

  In the distance, three ships fired on the Clarke, two missiles each. Coloma looked at her display to gauge how long it would be until impact. She grimaced at the numbers and pushed the Clarke’s engines to full.

  The Erie Morningstar was now clearly aware of what the Clarke was up to and was attempting evasive maneuvers. Coloma compensated and recalculated and was pleased with her results. There was no way the Erie Morningstar wasn’t going to get kissed by the Clarke.

  The first of the new set of missiles plowed into the Clarke, followed by the second and then the third and fourth in rapid succession. The Clarke went dark. It didn’t matter; the Clarke had inertia on its side.

  The Clarke crumpled into the Erie Morningstar as the fifth and sixth missiles struck, shattering both ships.

  Coloma smiled. Her Colonial Defense Forces orders were, should she engage a hostile ship that attacked either her or Earth Station, to disable the ship if she could and destroy it only if necessary. They wanted whoever was in the ship, in order to find out who was behind everything the Colonial Union was coming up against.

  That ship is definitely disabled, Coloma thought. Is it destroyed? If it is, it had it coming. It went after my people.

  Sitting there in the dark, Coloma reached over and patted the Clarke fondly.

  “You’re a good ship,” she said. “I’m glad you were mine.”

  A seventh missile tore into the bridge.

  * * *

  Wilson couldn’t see Lowen but could track her. His BrainPal vision showed her as a tumbling sprite twenty klicks to the east. Well, fair enough. He was tumbling, too, because of his hasty exit from Earth Station; his BrainPal gave him an artificially stabilized view of things. Wilson was less concerned about her tumbling and more concerned about her utter silence. Even screaming would be better because it would mean she was conscious and alive. But there was nothing from her.

  Wilson pushed it from his mind as best he could. There was nothing he could do about it right now. Once they were in the atmosphere, he could maneuver himself over to her and see how she was doing. For now, all he needed to do was get her through the burning part of reentry.

  Instead of thinking about Lowen, Wilson had his BrainPal turn its visual attention to Earth Station, which floated darkly above him, save for the occasional flare as the missiles struck another area of the station. Wilson did a status check of the Colonial Union diplomatic ships at Earth Station. The Aberforth, the Zhou and the Schulz were all pulling away from Earth Station at speed, with or without their diplomatic contingents. Their captains were probably aware by now that one way or another, Earth Station was going up like a Roman candle.

  The Clarke was missing or not responding. That was not good at all. It it wasn’t there, then it wouldn’t matter whether the shuttle got everyone out or not; they would have met their fate on the ship. Wilson tried not to think about that.

  He especially tried not to think about Hart.

  There was a dazzling light from Earth Station. Wilson focused his attention on it once more.

  It was detonating. Not haphazardly, as in the attack; no, this was a planned and focused thing, a series of brilliant flashes designed to reduce an entire spaceship into chunks no larger than one’s own hand. Whatever the attacking ships started, the Colonial Union’s detonation protocols were finishing now.

  A thought flashed into Wilson’s head: Some of that debris is headed this direction and it’s going much faster than you are.

  A second thought flashed into Wilson’s head: Well, fuck.

  Wilson’s BrainPal alerted him that Lowen was beginning to drag on the Earth’s atmosphere. A second later, it told him he was beginning to do the same thing. Wilson ordered the release of the nanobots and immediately found himself encased in a matte black sphere. On the other side of that, he knew, would be several thousand degrees of reentry friction that the nanobots were shielding him from, taking some of the heat from the reentry to strengthen the shield as he fell.

  This would not be a good time for Dani to wake up, Wilson thought, thinking about the flat darkness surrounding him. Then he remembered that she would be in darkness anyway because she had no BrainPal.

  I’m definitely not a fun first date, Wilson thought.

  He fell and fell some more and tried not to think of Lowen, or Hart, or the Clarke, or the fact that screaming chunks of Earth Station were almost certainly whizzing past him at ultrasonic speeds and could turn him into kibble if they smacked into him.

  This did not leave a whole lot to think about.

  There was a sudden fluttering sound and the nanobots tore away. Wilson blinked in the noontime sun. He was amazed to remember that it was still barely after noon, Nairobi time; everything that had happened happened in just about an hour.

  Wilson did not think he could take many more hours like this.

  Lowen pinged on his consciousness. She was now less than five klicks away and a klick up, still tumbling but less so in the atmosphere. Wilson carefully negotiated his way over to her, stabilized her and, as much as he could, checked her vitals. At the very least, she was still breathing. It was something.

  Still, not having her conscious was not going to be a good thing when it came to landing.

  Wilson thought about it for a moment, but only for a moment, because the ground was going to become a problem in the very near future. Then he checked how many nanobots he had left, estimated how much weight they were going to hold and then wrapped himself around Lowen, face-to-face. They were going to go in tandem.

  That covered, Wilson finally looked around to see where he was. In the close distance the beanstalk still stood, feathering in the wind. Wilson had no idea what that was about, but it meant that he remained somewhere near Nairobi. He looked down, compared the terrain with what he had stored in his BrainPal and realized he
could make it to the football field he and Hirsch were originally planning to land at.

  Lowen woke up at around three thousand meters and began screaming and thrashing. Wilson spoke directly into her ear. “I’m here,” he said. “Don’t panic.”

  “Where are we?” Lowen asked.

  “Ten thousand feet above Kenya,” Wilson said.

  “Oh, God,” Lowen said.

  “I have you,” Wilson said. “We’re in tandem.”

  “How did you manage that?” Lowen asked, calming down.

  “It seemed a better idea than you falling alone while unconscious,” Wilson said.

  “Point,” Lowen said, after a second.

  “I’m about five seconds from deploying the chute,” Wilson said. “Are you ready?”

  Lowen tightened up around Wilson. “Let’s never do this again,” she said.

  “Promise,” he said. “Here we go.” He deployed ’bots from both of their packs so that both of them were tethered into the chute. There was a sharp jerk, and then the two of them were floating.

  “We’re close enough to the ground and going slow enough that you could use your eyes if you wanted,” Wilson said, after a few moments. Lowen nodded. Wilson had her cowl open up.

  Lowen looked down and then jerked her head back up, eyes closed. “Okay, that was a spectacularly bad idea,” she said.

  “We’ll be down in just a minute,” Wilson promised.

  “And this parachute for two won’t mess us up?” Lowen asked.

  “No,” Wilson said. “It’s smarter than a real parachute.”

  “Don’t say this is not a real parachute, please,” Lowen said.

  “It’s smarter than other parachutes,” Wilson corrected. “It’s been compensating for wind and other factors since we opened it up.”

  “Great,” Lowen said. “Just tell me when we’re down.”

  They were down a minute and a half later, the nanobots dissipating into the wind as their feet touched down. Lowen disengaged from Wilson, grabbed her head, turned to the side and threw up.

  “Sorry,” Wilson said.

  “It’s not you, I swear,” Lowen said, spitting to clear her mouth. “It’s everything.”