Midway: Chapter 33

  “So you’re convinced that whoever is doing this is the same person who killed him?”

  “Convinced?  No of course not… but I do think it’s a solid theory if you don’t have any better ones, yes.” Uzodimma answered as they walked down the corridor.  Johannes had released him, and had accepted his offer to help them resolve the crisis.   Besides having a unique insight, he appreciated that Uzodimma felt a strong obligation to help resolve a situation which he’d helped to create.  In any case, he was convinced that Uzodimma was now telling the whole truth and was genuine in his wish to help.  The two were making their way to Dhika’s office which had become the unofficial command centre for the current crisis since she had equipment and connections at her work space that linked her into the entire ship.

  “What I don’t understand, is what the point of all of this is.” Uzodimma said.  “I mean, what is… whoever is doing this hoping to accomplish.  There’s nowhere to escape to, and there’s nothing on the bridge that you can’t get or… or get access to from somewhere else on the ship!”

  Johannes nodded, “I’ve been thinking the same thing…”

  “Wait…  Hey, do you feel that?” asked Uzodimma, as he put his hand against the wall to steady himself.

  “What do-” but Johannes cocked his head to the side and came to feel what Uzodimma was referring to.  There was a subtle but definite lateral acceleration away from the wall Uzodimma had put his hand against.  “What is that?”

  “The ship… it’s rotating along the yaw axis.  Oh, it’s stopped now.”  Uzodimma turned to Johannes and for the first time, appeared deeply concerned.  “I think we have a serious problem.”

  “We didn’t before?”

  “No…” Uzodimma stated hauntingly.  “No we didn’t.”

   

  “Johannes, finally.” Maharet said as the door opened and the two men entered Dhika’s outer office.   When Uzodimma followed in behind him, Alissa immediately rushed over and nimbly slammed him down onto the ground and pinned him there.  

  “What is he doing here?  How did he escape!?” Alissa asked in a very demanding tone.

  “Alissa!!” Johannes yelled as he moved to pull her off.  “Get off of him, it’s alright!  I let him out Alissa, he didn’t kill anybody.”  The powerful woman slowly and cautiously allowed herself to be removed from him.   “What… what do you mean, how do you know that?” she asked suspiciously.

  “Because he told me.  Poor Uzodimma here is just another victim in this whole mess,” Johannes explained as he helped him up off the ground.  

  “What do you mean ‘another’?” Alissa suspiciously asked.

  “It was never made public, but we were able to determine that the murder victim was a serial child rapist.”

  “What!?” the others responded in shock.

  “Yeah, that’s right.   We presume the murderer was one of his victims, and so was Uzo here.  He was so happy to see him dead that he covered for the real murderer out of gratitude to him, but he’s deeply regretful of that choice now.  We’ve discussed it, and he fully appreciates how wrong it was to mislead us, but to try to make up for it he’s now come clean and wants to help us in any way he can.”

  Johannes looked around, “If anyone has a problem with that, then have your problem with me, so… any takers?”  He looked over at Maharet, who gave him a nod, granting her provisional approval of Johannes’ judgment.  Her opinion was ultimately the only one that really mattered.  Alissa returned to her seat without a word, folder her arms, and glared at Uzodimma, still suspicious of him on instinct.

  “Alright then, now,” Johannes said, trying to refocus the group.  “We felt the ship turning, what’s happened?”

  “We’re changing course,” Dhika answered as she swiveled around in her chair to point to the readings on her monitor.  Johannes and Uzodimma’s faces filled with dread.  “I haven’t been able to calculate where to yet, but the ship’s course is being changed.  The ship’s been reoriented in two dimensions off of our previous heading, the fusion core was powered up to full output, and the ion engines were engaged.  You didn’t feel that though because they don’t accelerate the ship fast enough for us to feel.

  “I can’t tell you what our new heading’ll be yet,” she continued, “but I can tell you that after about four weeks of this, we won’t have enough fuel left to return to our original heading and still have enough fuel to slow down for our arrival when the time comes.  Of course… we might be able to buy another couple weeks using gravity breaking once we’re in the system but… well, it’s extremely dangerous and that’s why we have the extra fuel in the first place, specifically to avoid having to do something like that.”

  “Why is there so narrow a margin for the fuel?” Johannes asked.

  “Well,” Dhika answered, turning around to face them and leaning back in her chair, “because however far off course we get, we need three times as much fuel to return us to our original course, the same amount to stop our motion to the ‘left’” she made air quotes to indicate the direction was relative and only for the sake of her explanation, “then the same amount again to accelerate us to the ‘right’, and then again to cancel out that motion.  So, three times.  Four weeks times four burns equals twelve weeks of burn.  That’s a whole third of a year, like… a sixtieth of our deceleration burn time.  It may not sound like a lot but believe me it adds up to a significant fraction of our overall xenon supply.”

  “Dhika tells me,” Maharet added, “that there is nothing we can do about this from outside the bridge.  Apparently Old Man Tynes’s healthy dose of paranoia when they built this place led him to design the bridge to be able to function as a sort of ‘command life boat,’ where in the case of mutiny or emergency, all the ship’s functions could be made to be controlled exclusively by manual control on the bridge.”

  “Mutiny??”  The idea was beyond shocking for Johannes, it was so dramatically beyond everything this mission stood for.  It wasn’t about there being a difference of opinion on the ship, that of course was common, but the idea that an authority figure should be able to override the popular wishes of the crew was itself unconscionable to him.   

  “I know,” Maharet answered while shaking her head, “and now that paranoia has led us to this situation, locked out of every primary system.  I hope you all realize as well… that whoever is now in charge of the ship, if they wished to, could vent the entire ship’s atmosphere to space while sparing only the bridge.  I think we should keep that fact strictly to ourselves though.”  Everyone gravely nodded their agreement.

  “I suggest we attack, now,” Alissa declared.  “We still have weapons in the sim-bay lockers; we could cut through the door to the bridge with the plasma torch in about an hour and storm the place.”
 “And then what?” Dhika asked.  “Destroy the sims?  Risk them venting the ship’s atmosphere in retaliation or to prevent us from successfully cutting through?  The culprit still probably isn’t even on the bridge; he or she is probably still hiding in plain sight amongst the crew!”  She was right, and they all knew it.  There was silence amongst them as they all reviewed to themselves their apparent lack of options.

  “He…” Uzodimma offered a little distantly in correction, at which point they all remembered he was there.  

  “What?” Alissa asked with irritation.

  “He’s a he…” Uzodimma answered.  “Trust me; he spoke to me over the comms in my suite.”  Again there was stumped silence amongst the group.  

  “Johannes,” Maharet said, “I think it’s time we told them about the kill switch.”

  Johannes raised an eyebrow at Maharet, and then nodded his assent.  “I’d almost forgotten…” he muttered to himself with a touch of embarrassment over his absent mindedness.

  “There are certain things Dhika, which were only trusted to those of us in the highest positions, just the captain, matriarch, and patriarch.  One of those things… is relevant now.  We need a way to safely and effectively neutralize the sims, and we have one; there’s a sim kill switch on the bridge.  The good news, is that there’s no way that whoever is doing this could possibly know about it.”

  “What do you mean… ‘kill switch’?” Alissa asked.

  “There’s a hidden button under the captain’s chair that sends out a signal which makes any sims within a certain radius automatically power down and become inactive.  Apparently Old Man Tynes had a bad experience with a sim in his Trade Corps days and has had one of these switches installed on any ship he served on afterwards as a precaution.  I can only assume that it was the same paranoia which led to his ‘bridge life boat’ policy.”

  “What kind of bad experience?  I’ve never read about any problems that would require that kind of precaution,” Dhika remarked.

  “Well,” Johannes answered this time, “We don’t know the details, but apparently it was a situation similar to this; either one was reprogrammed to do somebody’s dirty work, or one was created based on a person who never should have been simulated in the first place.  From what I understand it was a point of contention among the founders.   The other three didn’t want such a mechanism on their ship, and Tynes didn’t want to be simulated at all let alone to have four state-of-the-art sims onboard his ship.

  “Apparently they compromised; the other three got their sims, Wiremu got his switch.  Lucky for us today though it does exists, and I can’t imagine any way that whoever is doing this could know about it since Mahr and I are supposed to be the only ones alive who do.  It isn’t even mentioned on any of the ship’s construction records or Legacy Recording.   It’s only passed down orally, and that gives us an advantage.  If we can get onto the bridge and to that switch, we should be able to end this crisis once and for all.”

   “I have a suggestion.” Uzodimma stated while admiring the old models of ocean going vessels on Dhika’s desk.  The others in the room looked over at him in unison again, apparently having again forgotten that he was still there.

  “Go on,” Johannes urged.

  “We should divide our efforts.  I think Dhika and Alissa should head for the bridge and attempt to override the door controls.  Failing that, they should begin cutting through the door.  Meanwhile, Johannes and I should resume his investigation for the real murderer, given the additional facts we now have.  I believe that if we find the murderer, we will find our hijacker as well.”

  The other four looked around at each other, seeking points of concern or objection to the plan.   Finally Maharet asked, “what about cutting through the door, wouldn’t that risk the hijacker killing the entire crew?”

  “Yes it would…” Uzodimma nodded his acknowledgement that this was indeed a risk.  “But I think if this person were willing to do that, he would have done so already.  Despite the extraordinary violence imparted on the rapist himself, nobody else has been harmed.  He even employed the sims to avoid introducing human risk into the plan.   Obviously it’s just a feeling, but I don’t think this person is willing to harm anyone they consider… ‘innocent.’”

  “Besides,” Johannes added, Plan A is to override the door controls.  I have faith in Dhika’s ability to pull that off.”

  “I’m glad one of us does…” Dhika gravely remarked.

  “Hence, Plan B,” Alissa added.  “With your permission,” she looked towards Johannes and Maharet, “I’d like to head for the armory before we head for the bridge, in case we do get in.  I know how risky it is to use weapons like that on a spaceship, but the bridge is deeply embedded in the habitat ring, and given the circumstances…”

  “As long as you truly understand the meaning of ‘last resort,’ Alissa,” Maharet dryly commented with a pointed finger, to which Alissa meekly nodded her understanding with a little hidden resentment at being addressed like a child.  “And while the rest of you are at work, I will prepare and deliver a statement to the rest of the crew.”  She raised her hand to mute Johannes’ rising protest, “don’t worry Joh, I will be discreet.”

  “Ok,” Johannes said, “we have a plan then.”