The Human Division

  Suel and Dorb looked over to Wilson, as if to get his thought on the matter. Wilson glanced over to Abumwe, who was expressionless.

  “Well, I sure as hell don’t want to have to come back here again,” he said, to Suel and Dorb.

  Suel and Dorb stared at him for a moment, and then made a sound that Wilson’s BrainPal translated as [laughter].

  * * *

  Twenty minutes later, the Utche shuttle left the Clarke with Abumwe and her diplomatic team aboard. From the shuttle bay control room, Coloma, Wilson and Schmidt watched it depart.

  “Thank Christ that’s over,” Coloma said, as it cleared the bay. She pivoted to return to the bridge, without looking at Wilson or Schmidt.

  “The ship’s not really secure, is it,” Wilson said, to her back.

  “Of course it’s not,” she said, turning back. “The only true thing I said was that we had no deaths, although it’s probably more accurate to say that we don’t have any deaths yet. As for the rest of it, our life support and energy systems are hanging by a thread, most of the other systems are dead or failing, and it will be a miracle if the Clarke ever moves from this spot under her own power. And to top it all off, some idiot destroyed our shuttle.”

  “Sorry about that,” Wilson said.

  “Hmmm,” Coloma said. She started to turn again.

  “It was a very great thing, to risk your ship for the Utche,” Wilson said. “I didn’t ask you to do that. That came from you, Captain Coloma. It’s a victory, if you ask me. Ma’am.”

  Coloma paused for a second and then walked off, with no response.

  “I don’t think she likes me much,” Wilson said, to Schmidt.

  “Your charm is best described as idiosyncratic,” Schmidt said.

  “So why do you like me?” Wilson said.

  “I don’t think I’ve actually ever admitted to liking you,” Schmidt said.

  “Now that you mention it, I think you may be right,” Wilson said.

  “You’re not boring,” Schmidt said.

  “Which is what you like most about me,” Wilson said.

  “No, boring is good,” Schmidt said, and waved his hand around the shuttle bay. “This is the shit that’s going to kill me.”

  XI.

  Colonel Abel Rigney and Colonel Liz Egan sat in a hole-in-the-wall commissary at Phoenix Station, eating cheeseburgers.

  “These are fantastic cheeseburgers,” Rigney said.

  “They’re even better when you have a genetically-engineered body that never gets fat,” Egan said. She took another bite of her burger.

  “True,” Rigney said. “Maybe I’ll have another.”

  “Do,” Egan said. “Test your metabolism.”

  “So, you read the report,” Rigney said to Egan between his own bites.

  “All I do is read reports,” Egan said. “Read reports and scare midlevel bureaucrats. Which report are we talking about?”

  “The one on the final round of negotiations with the Utche,” Rigney said. “With the Clarke, and Ambassador Abumwe and Lieutenant Wilson.”

  “I did,” Egan said.

  “What’s the final disposition of the Clarke?” Rigney asked.

  “What did you find out about those missile fragments?” Egan asked.

  “I asked you first,” Rigney said.

  “And I’m not in the second grade, so that tactic doesn’t work with me,” Egan said, and took another bite.

  “We took a chunk of missile your dockworkers fished out of the Clarke and found a part number on it. The missile tracks back to a frigate called the Brainerd. This particular missile was reported launched and destroyed in a live-fire training exercise eighteen months ago. All the data I’ve seen confirms the official story,” Rigney said.

  “So we have ghost missiles being used by mystery ships to undermine secret diplomatic negotiations,” Egan said.

  “That’s about the size of it,” Rigney said. He set down his burger.

  “Secretary Galeano isn’t going to be very pleased that one of our own missiles was used to severely damage one of her department’s ships,” Egan said.

  “That’s all right,” Rigney said. “My bosses aren’t very pleased that a mole in the Department of State told whoever was using our own missiles against your ship where that ship was going to be and with whom it was negotiating.”

  “You have evidence of that?” Egan asked.

  “No,” Rigney said. “But we have pretty good evidence that the Utche sprung no leaks. The process of elimination applies from there.”

  “I’d like to see that evidence about the Utche,” Egan said.

  “I’d like to show it to you,” Rigney said. “But you have a mole problem.”

  Egan looked at Rigney narrowly. “You better smile when you say that, Abel,” she said.

  “To be clear,” Rigney said, “I would—and have, you’ll recall from our combat days—trust you with my life. It’s not you I’m worried about. It’s everyone else in your department. Someone with a high enough security clearance to know about the Utche talks is engaging in treason, Liz. Selling us out to our enemies. Which enemies, we don’t know. But our friends don’t blow up one of our ships and try to go after a second.”

  Egan said nothing to this, choosing to stab a fry into ketchup instead.

  “Which brings us back to the Clarke,” Rigney said. “How is the ship?”

  “We’re trying to decide which will cost less, a complete rehaul or scrapping it and building a new ship,” Egan said. “If we scrap it, at the very least we recoup the salvage value.”

  “That bad,” Rigney said.

  “The CDF makes excellent ship-to-ship missiles,” Egan said. “Why do you ask?”

  “For a B-team, Abumwe and her team were pretty impressive, don’t you think?” Rigney said.

  “They did all right,” Egan said.

  “Really,” Rigney said, and held up a hand to start ticking off points on his fingers. “Wilson and Schmidt develop a new protocol for locating powerless CDF black boxes and retrieve data revealing what happened to the Polk. Then Wilson takes multiple spacewalks clad only in a CDF combat unitard and discovers a plan to destroy the Utche diplomatic mission with our missiles. He destroys four of those missiles and then Captain Coloma sacrifices her own ship to make sure the last missile doesn’t hit the Utche. Coloma then flat-out lies to the Utche about the state of her ship to make sure Abumwe has a shot at the negotiations, and Abumwe basically strong-arms the Utche—the Utche—into completing their negotiations. Which they do, with only a day’s preparation.”

  “They did all right,” Egan said again.

  “What more would you like them to do?” Rigney asked. “Walk on water?”

  “Where is this going, Abel?” Egan asked.

  “You said the most notable negotiation these folks did before this was another situation where they were forced to think on their feet and improvise,” Rigney said. “Has it occurred to you that the reason Abumwe and her people are on your B-list is not because they’re not good at what they do, but because you’re not putting them in the right situations?”

  “We didn’t know these negotiations were going to be the ‘right’ situation,” Egan said.

  “No, but now you know what are the right situations for them,” Rigney said. “High-risk, high-reward situations where the path to success isn’t laid out but has to be cut by machetes through a jungle filled with poison toads.”

  “The poison toads are a nice touch,” Egan said, reaching for another french fry.

  “You see what I’m getting at,” Rigney said.

  “I do,” Egan said. “But I’m not entirely sure I’m going to be able to convince the secretary that a bunch of B-listers is who she wants for high-risk, high-reward missions.”

  “Not all of them,” Rigney said. “Just the ones where the usual diplomatic bullshit won’t work.”

  “Why do you care?” Egan said. “You seem awfully passionate about a bunch of people you had no
idea existed just a week ago.”

  “You say it yourself every time you scare your State Department middle managers,” Rigney said. “We’re running out of time. We don’t have the Earth anymore, and we need more friends than we’ve got if we’re going to survive. Part of that can be something like the Clarke crew already is—a fire team we parachute in when nothing else is working.”

  “And when they fail?” Egan said.

  “Then they fail in a situation where failure is an expected outcome,” Rigney said. “But if they succeed, then we’re much better off.”

  “If we appoint them to be this ‘fire team,’ as you say, then we’re already raising expectations for whatever they do,” Egan said.

  “There’s a simple solution for that,” Rigney said. “Don’t tell them they’re a fire team.”

  “How awfully cruel,” Egan said.

  Rigney shrugged. “Abumwe and her people are already aware that they’re not at the grown-ups’ table,” he said. “Why do you think she browbeat the Utche into negotiations? She knows an opportunity when she sees it. She wants those opportunities, and she and her team are going to beat their brains in to get them.”

  “And destroy their ships to get them, apparently,” Egan said. “This fire team idea of yours could get expensive, fast.”

  “What’s the plan for the Clarke’s crew?” Rigney asked.

  “It hasn’t been decided,” Egan said. “We might put Abumwe and her diplomatic team on a different ship. Coloma’s going to have to face an inquiry about intentionally putting her ship in the path of a missile. She’s going to get cleared, but it’s still a process. Wilson’s on loan from CDF Research and Development. Presumably at some point they’re going to want him back.”

  “Do you think you could put any decisions on the Clarke’s crew on hold for a few weeks?” Rigney asked.

  “You seem awfully excited about these people,” Egan said. “But even if I did put them in career limbo for your own amusement, there’s no guarantee the secretary would sign off on your ‘fire team’ concept.”

  “Would it help if the CDF had a list of fires it would prefer to be put out through diplomacy than gunfire?” Rigney asked.

  “Ah,” Egan said. “Now we’re getting to it. And I can already tell you how that idea’s going to go over. When I first joined the secretary’s team as CDF liaison, it took her six weeks to have a conversation with me longer than three words, all monosyllables. If I come to her with a list of requests from the CDF and a handpicked team, she’ll communicate to me with grunts.”

  “All the more reason to use this team,” Rigney said. “It’s full of nobodies. She’ll think she’s screwing us. Tell her about the request and then suggest these people. It’ll work brilliantly.”

  “Would you like me to ask her not to throw you in the briar patch while I’m at it?” Egan asked.

  “Just this one request for now,” Rigney said.

  Egan was quiet for a few moments as she picked at her fries. Rigney finished his burger and waited.

  “I’ll take her temperature on it,” Egan said, finally. “But if I were you, I wouldn’t get my hopes up.”

  “I never get my hopes up,” Rigney said. “It’s how I’ve lived this long.”

  “And in the meantime I’ll keep the Clarke crew from being reassigned elsewhere,” Egan said.

  “Thank you,” Rigney said.

  “You owe me,” Egan said.

  “Of course I do,” Rigney said.

  “Now I have to go,” Egan said, pushing up from the table. “More children to scare.”

  “You have fun with that,” Rigney said.

  “You know I do,” Egan said. She turned to go.

  “Hey, Liz,” Rigney said. “That estimate you give the kids, the one about humans having thirty years before we’re extinct. How much exaggeration is in that?”

  “Do you want the truth?” Egan asked.

  “Yes,” Rigney said.

  “Almost none at all,” Egan said. “If anything, it’s optimistic.”

  She left. Rigney stared at the remains of their meal.

  “Well, hell,” he said. “If we’re doomed, maybe I will have that second cheeseburger after all.”

  EPISODE TWO

  Walk the Plank

  [Transcript Begins]

  CHENZIRA EL-MASRI: —okay, I’m not really interested in who you have in the medical bay, Aurel. Right now I’m focused on finding those damn cargo containers. If we don’t track those down, it’s not going to be a very happy next few months around here.

  AUREL SPURLEA: If I didn’t think the two of them were related, I wouldn’t be bothering you, Chen. Are you recording this, Magda?

  MAGDA GANAS: Just started the recorder.

  SPURLEA: Chen, the guy in the sick bay isn’t from around here.

  EL-MASRI: What do you mean, “not from around here”? We’re a wildcat colony. It’s not like there’s anywhere else to be from around here.

  SPURLEA: He says he’s from the Erie Morningstar.

  EL-MASRI: That doesn’t make any sense. The Erie Morningstar isn’t supposed to be landing anyone. It’s supposed to be sending down the containers on autopilot. The whole point of doing it this way is to take humans out of it.

  GANAS: We know that, Chen. We were there when the cargo schedules were drawn up, too. That’s why you need to see this guy. No matter what else, he’s not one of us. He’s come from somewhere. And since the Erie Morningstar was supposed to deliver two days ago, and he’s here today, it’s not a bad guess that he’s telling the truth when he says he’s from there.

  EL-MASRI: So you think he came down on one of the containers.

  GANAS: It seems likely.

  EL-MASRI: That wouldn’t have been a fun ride.

  SPURLEA: Here we are. Chen, a couple of things real quick. One, he’s messed up physically and we have him on pain relievers.

  EL-MASRI: I thought I gave orders—

  SPURLEA: Before you bitch at me, we’ve watered them down as much as we can and still have them have any effect. But believe me, this guy needs something. Two, he’s got the Rot in his leg.

  EL-MASRI: How bad?

  SPURLEA: Real bad. I cleaned it out best I can, but it’s a pretty good chance it’s in the bloodstream by now, and you know what that means. But he’s not from around here and he doesn’t know what that means, and I don’t see much point in telling him at this point. My goal is to keep him coherent long enough for you to talk to him and then keep him from too much pain while we figure out what to do with him after that.

  EL-MASRI: Christ, Aurel. If he’s got the Rot, I think you know what to do with him.

  SPURLEA: I’m still waiting for the blood work to come back. If it’s not set in there, we can take the leg and save him.

  EL-MASRI: And then do what with him? Look around, Aurel. It’s not like we can support anyone else here, much less a recovering amputee who can’t do any work.

  GANAS: Maybe you should talk to him first before deciding to leave him out for the packs.

  EL-MASRI: I’m not unsympathetic to his situation, Magda. But my job is to think about the whole colony.

  GANAS: What the whole colony needs right now is for you to hear this guy’s story. Then you’ll have a better idea what to think.

  EL-MASRI: What’s this guy’s name?

  SPURLEA: Malik Damanis.

  EL-MASRI: Malik. Fine.

  [Door opens, stops.]

  EL-MASRI (quietly): Lovely.

  SPURLEA: There’s a reason we call it the Rot.

  EL-MASRI: Yeah.

  [Door opens all the way.]

  EL-MASRI: Malik … Hey, Malik.

  MALIK DAMANIS: Yes. Sorry, I was dozing.

  EL-MASRI: That’s fine.

  DAMANIS: Is Doctor Spurlea here? I think the pain is coming back.

  SPURLEA: I’m here. I’ll give you another shot, Malik, but it’s going to have to wait for a few minutes. I need you to be all here for your conversation with
our colony leader.

  DAMANIS: That’s you?

  EL-MASRI: That’s me. My name is Chenzira El-Masri.

  DAMANIS: Malik Damanis. Uh, I guess you knew that.

  EL-MASRI: I did. Malik, Aurel and Magda here tell me that you say you’re from the Erie Morningstar.

  DAMANIS: I am.

  EL-MASRI: What do you do there?

  DAMANIS: I’m an ordinary deckhand. I mostly work loading and unloading cargo.

  EL-MASRI: You look pretty young. This your first ship?

  DAMANIS: I’m nineteen standard, sir. No, I was on another ship before this, the Shining Star. I’ve been doing this since I turned twenty in Erie years, which is about sixteen years standard. This is my first tour on the Morningstar, though. Or was.

  EL-MASRI: Was, you say.

  DAMANIS: Yes, sir. She’s gone, sir.

  EL-MASRI: Gone as in left? She’s gone off to her next destination.

  DAMANIS: No. Gone as in gone, sir. She was taken. And I think everyone else who was on her might be dead now.

  EL-MASRI: Malik, I think you need to explain this to me a little better. Was the ship all right when you skipped into our system?

  DAMANIS: As far as I know. The ship stays on Erie time, and it was the middle of the night when we skipped. Captain Gahzini prefers to do it that way so that when we move cargo, we do it in the morning when we’re fresh. Or that’s what he tells us. Since the cargo we had for you was already packed when it came on board, it didn’t really matter. The captain does what the captain does. So we arrived in the middle of the night for us.

  EL-MASRI: Were you working then?

  DAMANIS: No, sir, I was asleep in the crew quarters, along with most of the rest of the crew. We had a night’s watch on at the time. The first thing I knew about anything going on was the captain sounding a general alert. It blasted on and everyone fell out of their bunks. We didn’t think anything of it at the time.

  EL-MASRI: You didn’t think anything of a general alert? Doesn’t that usually mean you’re in an emergency?

  DAMANIS: It does, but Captain Gahzini runs a lot of drills, sir. He says that just because we’re a merchant ship doesn’t mean we shouldn’t have discipline. So every three or four skips he’ll run a drill, and since the captain likes to skip in the middle of the night, that means we get woken up by a lot of general alerts.