“No, this is a ‘Holy shit, we’re all definitely going to die a horrible death in the cold endless dark of space’ kind of problem,” Basquez said.
“We’ll be right down,” Coloma said.
“Well, this is interesting,” Wilson said, looking at the pinprick-sized object at the end of his finger. He, Coloma, Balla and Basquez were in engineering, beside a chunk of conduit and a brace of instruments Basquez used to examine the conduit. Basquez had shooed away the rest of his crew, who were now hovering some distance away, trying to listen in.
“It’s a bomb, isn’t it,” Basquez said.
“Yeah, I think it is,” Wilson said.
“What sort of damage could a bomb that size do?” Coloma said. “I can barely even see it.”
“If there’s antimatter inside, it could do quite a lot,” Wilson said. “You don’t need a lot of that stuff to make a big mess.”
Coloma peered at the tiny thing again. “If it was antimatter, it would have annihilated itself already.”
“Not necessarily,” Wilson said, still gazing at the pinprick. “When I was working at CDF Research and Development, there was a team working on pellet shot-sized antimatter containment units. You generate a suspending energy field and wrap it in a compound that acts like a battery and powers the energy field inside. When the power runs out, the energy field collapses and the antimatter connects with the wrapping. Kablam.”
“They got it to work?” Basquez asked.
“When I was there? No,” Wilson said, glancing over to Basquez. “But they were some very clever kids. And we were decoding some of the latest technology we’d stolen from the Consu, who are at least a couple millennia ahead of us in these things. And I was there a couple of years ago.” His gaze went back to the pinprick. “So they could have had time to perfect this little baby, sure.”
“You couldn’t take down the whole ship with that,” Balla said. “Antimatter or not.”
Wilson opened his mouth, but Basquez got there first. “You wouldn’t need to,” he said. “All you have to do is rupture the conduit and the energy inside would take it from there. Hell, you wouldn’t even need to rupture it. If this tore up the inside of the conduit enough, the disruption of the energy flow would be all you need to make it burst apart.”
“And that has the added advantage of making it look like an explosion based on material failure rather than an actual bombing,” Wilson said.
“Yeah,” Basquez said. “If the black box survived, it would only show the rupture, not the bomb going off.”
“Time this thing so it goes off right before a skip, when you’re feeding energy to the skip drive,” Wilson said. “No one would be the wiser.”
“Rigney said we needed to keep to a schedule,” Basquez said, to Coloma.
“Wait, you don’t think we planted this bomb, do you?” Balla asked.
Coloma, Wilson and Basquez were silent.
“That doesn’t make any sense,” Balla said, forcefully. “It makes no sense at all for the Colonial Union to blow up its own ship.”
“It doesn’t make sense for the Colonial Union to put fake Earthlings on the ship, either,” Wilson pointed out. “And yet here they are.”
“Wait, what?” Basquez said. “Those diplomats aren’t from Earth? What the hell?”
“Later, Marcos,” Coloma said. Basquez lapsed into silence, glowering at this latest twist of events. Coloma turned to Wilson. “I am open to suggestions, Lieutenant.”
“I have no answers to give you,” Wilson said. “I don’t think any of us have any answers at this point. So I would suggest we try finding alternate means of acquiring answers.”
Coloma thought about this for a moment. Then she said, “I know how we can do that.”
“Everything’s ready,” Coloma said, to Wilson, via her PDA. Her words were being ported into his BrainPal so he’d be the only one to hear them. Wilson, on the floor of the shuttle bay with the fake Earthlings, glanced over to the shuttle bay control room and gave her a very brief nod. Then he turned his attention to the Earthlings.
“We’ve already seen the shuttle bay, you know, Harry,” Marlon Tiege said to Wilson. “Twice, now.”
“I’m about to show it to you in a whole new way, Marlon, I promise,” Wilson said.
“Sounds exciting,” Tiege said, smiling.
“Just you wait,” Wilson said. “But first, a question for you.”
“Shoot,” Tiege said.
“You know by now that I enjoy giving you shit about the Cubs,” Wilson said.
“They would kick you out of the Cards fan club if you didn’t,” Tiege said.
“Yes, they would,” Wilson said. “I’m wondering what you would ever do if the Cubbies actually ever took the Series.”
“You mean, before or after my heart attack?” Tiege said. “I would probably kiss every woman I saw. And most of the men, too.”
“The Cubs won the Series two years ago, Marlon,” Wilson said.
“What?” Tiege said.
“Swept the Yankees in four. Final game of the series, the Cubs hurler pitched a perfect game. Cubs won a hundred and one games on the way to the playoffs. The Cubbies are world champions, Marlon. Just thought you should know.”
Coloma watched Marlon Tiege’s face and noted that the man’s physiognomy was not well suited to showing two emotions at once: utter joy at the news about the Cubs and complete dismay that he’d been caught in a lie. She couldn’t say, however, that she was not enjoying the spectacle of the man’s face trying to contain both at the same time.
“Where are you from, Marlon?” Wilson asked.
“I’m from Chicago,” Tiege said, regaining his composure.
“Where are you from most recently?” Wilson asked.
“Harry, come on,” Tiege said. “This is crazy.”
Wilson ignored him and turned to one of the women, Kelle Laflin. “Last year a hurricane smacked straight into Charleston,” he said, and watched her go pale. “You must remember.”
She nodded mutely.
“Great,” Wilson said. “What was the name they gave the hurricane?”
Coloma noted that Laflin’s face was already primed for dismay.
Wilson turned back to Tiege. “Here’s the deal, Marlon.” He pointed over to the control room. Tiege followed the vector of the point to see Captain Coloma sitting there, behind a console. “When I give the captain the signal, she’s going to start pumping air out of this shuttle bay. It’ll take a minute for that cycle to happen. Now, don’t worry about me, I’m Colonial Defense Forces, which means that I can hold my breath for a good ten minutes if I have to, and I also have my combat uniform on under my clothes at the moment. So I’ll be fine. You and your friends, however, will likely die quite painfully as your lungs collapse and vomit blood into the vacuum.”
“You can’t do that,” Tiege said. “We’re a diplomatic mission.”
“Yes, but from whom?” Wilson said. “Because you’re not from Earth, Marlon.”
“Are you sure about that?” Tiege said. “Because if you’re wrong, think about what will happen when the Earth finds out you’ve killed us.”
“Yes, well,” Wilson said, and fished out a small plastic case that contained the pinprick bomb in it, resting on a ball of cotton. “You would have been dead anyway after this bomb went off, and we along with you. This way, the rest of us still get to live. Last chance, Marlon.”
“Harry, I can’t-,” Tiege began, and Wilson held up his hand.
“Have it your way,” he said, and nodded to Coloma. She started the purge cycle. The shuttle bay was filled with the sound of air being sucked into reservoirs.
“Wait!” Tiege said. Wilson motioned to Coloma with their agreed-upon signal and sent a “stop” message to her PDA via his BrainPal. Coloma aborted the purge cycle and waited.
Marlon Tiege stood there for a moment, sweating. Then he cracked a rueful smile and turned to Wilson.
“I’m from Chicago, and these days I live on Erie. I’m going to tell you everything I know about his mission and you have my word on that,” he said, to Wilson. “But you have to tell me one thing first, Harry.”