I didn't see the approaching missile, for the armoured shutters slid closed. The impact buckled the floor, flinging me from my feet, and fire sheathed the ceiling before air screaming out of a nearby breach sucked it away.
I didn't need the wasp-lights to tell me we had a problem.
3
So what are Brumallians? If I declare they are utterly alien to us, will that make us feel better about killing millions of them? It is their very alienness that made them less of a threat to us, for as a place to live our world is irrelevant to them, and its resources would be harder for them to obtain than those lying available in extra-planetary asteroids. But despite their strange appearance, they are not really that alien. They still have wives and mothers, fathers and children, bawling babies and sulky teenagers, millions of whom were crushed or suffocated under billions of tons of rock and earth. What did they do wrong to suffer that fate? They communicated with us, but those who ruled us at the time saw only a people that could be portrayed as a threat and used to open the coffers of our society; then they defended themselves when attacked and died fighting to protect their world. And in the end they were martyred by Fleet, and sacrificed to our illusions.
— Uskaron
McCrooger
The lights and the klaxon indicated a level-three emergency in my current location. Really, you don't say. I ran along the buckled floor, the breath issuing from my lungs in one continuous exhalation as the pressure dropped. As I rounded the corner, the bulkhead door in the corridor leading inward was just six inches from the floor. I stooped down to catch hold of its lower rim and heaved up. Something thumped behind a nearby wall, and when yellow oily fluid began flooding out of cracks between riveted panels, I realised I'd just burst the hydraulic ram closing the door. After ducking underneath, I then pushed the door all the way down to the floor, where the vacuum developing on its other side sucked it back against its seals. The next bulkhead door was also closing. I treated it in the same way and moved on further into the ship, fortunately approaching my cabin without having to wreck any more hydraulic rams.
"We have been struck by a missile fired from the surface of Brumal," the ship tannoy announced. "All crew to stations. Don survival suits. Bulkhead doors from Green Five to White Three closing."
On the other side of those bulkhead doors the emergency lights now indicated a level-two emergency, which suited me better. It occurred to me how convenient it would be to Fleet if an attack by the Brumallians resulted in my death. The missile had struck close to me, and I've no doubt the crew had at all times known my precise location within this ship, so I'd felt rather disinclined to use any of the escape-pods in that immediate area. I reached my cabin, took the survival suit provided for me from one of the lockers, inspected it for a moment, then tossed it back inside. Just as I closed the locker door, the ship lurched and sent me staggering backwards. Gravity fluxed, dropping then rising high before stabilising.
"Reactor breach! Engineering section report. Close and dump Silo Three. Level-three emergency, non-essential personnel only!"
The announcer was beginning to sound a little rattled, and I glanced up as three wasp lights lit. Experiencing a change of heart, I retrieved the suit and donned it. Maybe Fleet personnel had sabotaged it, but I wouldn't be any better off without it unless they had done something blatant like filling its air supply with poison gas. Another lurch, and then grav went off completely.
"Silo Three—"
Some sort of massive detonation slammed the ship sideways, cannoning me into the cabin wall. The door curtain blew in, smoking in now boiling air. I pulled myself along the wall, dragged open another locker and took out the gifts from Yishna and Duras. I was about to head off and find the pair of them when I saw a light flashing on my little palm screen. I keyed it on and Yishna's face gazed up at me.
"Are you in your cabin?" she immediately asked.
"I am."
"Get to an escape-pod at once. Duras and I are already aboard one. Maybe there is some plot behind this, but certainly the ship is in serious trouble. One of the conventional warheads detonated inside its silo, space-side. We're going down."
"Might Fleet be prepared even to lose a ship just to get rid of me?" I suggested.
"Yes, they might." Her image blinked out.
I threw their gifts into a draw-string bag and pushed myself off towards the door. A crewman was propelling himself along the corridor outside. I recognised the foamite suit worn by ship's cadets. He was young, fat-faced, with an oily queue of black hair and adolescent acne. He glanced at me, panic clear in his features, as I sped past him towards the door leading to an escape-pod. He quickly followed me in and, making no comment, pulled himself down onto one of the acceleration couches, where with shaking hands he strapped himself in. As I did the same, the hatch abruptly closed, and a roar of acceleration forced me down into my couch. Looking up I saw that the emergency lights were still only on level three. The puzzlement mingling with panic in my companion's expression confirmed for me that something was wrong. Only at level four should the hatch close and the pod be ejected.
"My friend," I told him, "I think you picked the wrong person to share an escape-pod with."
He just stared at me while shaking some pills from a tube he had produced and popping them into his mouth. This kind of dependence on drugs seemed quite common here.
After that initial acceleration there came a spell of quiet weightlessness, then began a steady droning which grew into a vibration. I recognised the signs—we were beginning to enter atmosphere. I wondered if someone had fixed for this pod to burn up during re-entry. However, as I began to unstrap myself, the engine started up, decelerating the pod. Evidently not the burn-up then, probably just a parachute failure.
"What did you mean?" asked my companion, after some delay.
I grimaced at him. "I rather suspect that my surviving to get inside an escape-pod has been factored in to their plans. Tell me, can a pod's internal systems be operated from elsewhere?"
Confusion for a moment, then dawning comprehension, followed by fear. "Yes, they can—if you possess the command codes."
I scanned around inside. The five couches were arranged radially, facing in, on a forty-five-degree tilt against the hull. The ceiling was slightly domed above us, and a central column carried various controls as well as storage compartments for food and water. I took the half pace towards the column, deceleration gravity at about two gees. "Tell me, is it possible to do a manual release of the parachute?"
He nodded, unstrapped himself and laboriously hauled himself up beside me. Keying a palm screen on the column, he called up a schematic of the pod. The pod itself was of pretty simple construction: a sphere with a nose cone on one end, HO motor at the opposite end and with combustion actuated in little more than a dish, and directional thrust from air jets around the pod's equator. The parachute sat underneath the cone, and should be released as explosive bolts blew away the cone itself. My companion appeared ready to cry when, after he input some instructions, the words 'Chute Access Unavailable' then 'Manual Override Unavailable' appeared on the screen, two red diagonal strikes blinking on and off over the nose cone.
"My basic interpretation of that is that we're fucked?" I suggested. He slumped back into his couch, miserable and staring at me accusingly. I turned my attention to the ceiling. Doubtless the chute resided behind that rectangular panel, itself secured in place with about fifty Y-head bolts. The guys who packed the chute probably used some sort of electric driver to screw those bolts home, but I doubted there would be one handy in here. I took out the knife Yishna had given me and inspected the blade. It was certainly sharp but might also be brittle, so to try using it to undo the bolts would be a mistake, and anyway I didn't have the time. Reaching up I pressed the blade flush against one side of a bolt head, then pressed, hard. The entire head sheared off and pinged around inside the pod. My companion looked up, his mouth falling open.