Arrival: Chapter 33

  “This is a problem.” Neil stated coldly.  He was somewhat numbed by seeing the poor woman lying there.  All of the terrible mourning he had been so far putting off was finally starting to catch up with him whether he liked it or not.  He was at the point of having to coldly shut down all of his emotions altogether in order to avoid being completely overwhelmed and utterly compromised.

  “You think?” Wiremu snapped with anger and frustrated irritation.  The stress was catching up with him too, but he’d learned in his years of experience that it could help to periodically release some negative energy like a safety blow off valve so that it didn’t over pressurize within him.

  In-Su knelt down and tenderly inspected her body.  “I don’t see any wounds from… from any kind of weapon,” he observed as he closed her still open eyes.  “It looks like she broke her neck after falling down the interior of the strut.”   Her head was indeed turned at an angle which didn’t seem possible for someone who might still be alive.  “Her leg too…” he soberly added.  Like her neck, her upper right leg appeared to have a bend where no joint was ever meant to be.

  “Either way…” Neil leadingly offered to Wiremu who sighed heavily in response.

  “Either way… this will only make getting through to Asari that much more impossible when the time comes.” The simulant leader concluded.  “I don’t know what happened… we made it in the six minutes I promised.”

  “Halley must have made it through the door before she could make it back up to the habitat ring after releasing our airlock,” Armina suggested.  “She may have been so panicked trying to get away from him that she just rushed and lost her hold on the ladder, and…” she looked up the long tube, “fell the rest of the way down.”

  “Without her we never would have made it onboard,” Neil acknowledged.  “She’s dead because she decided to help us.”

  “She knew what she was doing,” Armina stated with respect.  “I could see it in her eyes; she remembered.  She was paying her life debt to the mission.  She was… redeeming herself.”

  Wiremu took another look up the tube, trying to put together the information they had.   “So… Halley comes down this tube behind her, ignores her body, and then…” he pointed back and forth between the two directions available to them along the floor’s main central hallway.   “And then what?”  If the group was to travel in either direction available to them long enough, they would eventually circle all the way around the entire habitat ring and return back here to the same place.

  Armina knelt down with In-Su beside Aset’s body, and tenderly put her left hand on her cheek.  She then with her right hand removed Aset’s printed handgun from its holster which was strapped to her grey jumpsuit.  While continuing to look down at the dead woman she’d know very well, she said to the others: “I don’t think we should waste the time it would take to check on the people in the dining hall.  It should suffice to merely contact them over the comm line and make sure they’re okay.   We can just tell them to stay put there until they hear from us again.”

  “I agree,” Wiremu said.  “If I was right that it was only the ship to ship comms that were blocked we should be able to reach them now.”

  “See if Kim Bao is there,” Armina further suggested as she stood up with the sims.  “I guarantee you she’s neutral, and she’s respected enough that everyone there should listen to her and whatever instructions we relay through her.”

  “Yes, of course, my great granddaughter,” In-Su recalled, to which the other sims looked at him with what could only be described as bemusement.  “I met her in the arboretum soon after we woke up,” he explained. 

  Wiremu made a hand gesture towards In-Su which said: ‘well get on with it then…’

  In-Su pulled his wrist scroll out of a pocket and as he pulled it open he put through a communication request to the great granddaughter of the man of whom he was a simulation.  Before long the old woman’s face appeared on the screen.  She seemed concerned, but she didn’t appear to be anything which could be described as panicked or terrified.

  “In-Su!” she exclaimed.  “What’s going on?  Asari ordered us all into the dining hall without any explanation whatsoever and just told us to wait!  All he told us was that somebody was on their way to attack us.  It seemed preposterous, but he refused to answer any of our questions.”

  “It’s Halley… he’s on the ship, and… and well, he’s gunning for Asari.  It’s a mess Bao, Halley carelessly killed Nekheny, who’d been sent to spy on him, and then Asari sent a strike force down to attack Halley and his people in response… according to Sadhika they’re all dead now except for Halley and the two people he brought back with him.  All of you in that room are most of the crew we have left, and… and everyone else who’s left are all still trying to kill each other.”

  Bao didn’t say anything at all; she was stunned.  She clearly was totally unaware of any of this.   “What… what… what now?” she finally managed to ask.  “How can we help?”  In-Su had a sense that she immediately understood the broader consequences of so much having gone wrong already.  She seemed to understand that the mission in some fundamental sense had already failed.

  “Nothing.  We were going to come check on you to make sure you’re all okay and fill you in on what’s going on, but now we’d rather not waste the time if we don’t have to.   Things have gone from awful to worse so now we’re just checking in with you over the comms to save time before we press on.”

  “Nobody’s hurt or anything if that’s what you mean…” Bao offered.   We’ve just been very… confused, and scared.”

  “Good,” Wiremu said.  “Tell her to keep everybody together there and wait to hear from us that it’s all over.”

  “You catch that?” In-Su asked, presuming she could hear Wiremu’s voice.

  She nodded.  Somebody off screen said something, and Bao looked over at them and nodded.  She turned back to the screen and said: “In-Su there are several people here who really want to help.  There’s got to be more we can do than just wait here and hope!”

  “We appreciate that, but…” In-Su looked over at Wiremu, who only shook his head at him.  “We’ve got it covered Bao.  This… this isn’t the kind of fight we can win by just involving more people, I’m afraid.”

  “If we fail…” Neil stated with a haunting note in his voice.   He seemed quite distant as he said the words.  “If everything keeps going wrong… the two shuttles are still down there.  They could fit more than half of the people left into the shuttles… it won’t be safe on the ship here anymore…”  It was a grim prospect he was considering and his face showed it.

  “Bao, listen.  If it becomes necessary, fit as many people as you can into the two shuttles, and go down to meet Sadhika on the surface; the shuttle autopilots can bring you down on their own.  You should immediately start fueling the shuttles for an autopilot return to pick up the rest just in case it was still possible when they’re fueled.  Being marooned on the planet like that may be a grim prospect but, well… there’s no other alternative if things really do get that bad.  You also need to know that you’d have to launch Shuttle One first since Shuttle Two’s airlock is damaged and when it launches it’ll vent the whole section.   You’ll also need to repair the release mechanism for Shuttle Two but it won’t be difficult if you look up how to go about it on a scroll.”

  “Tell them to launch every last drone lander before they leave, too… they’ll need them if it comes to that.” Neil added with the same vacant look in his eyes.  He was lost in thought considering how as bad as things would be for everyone even if they succeeded in pacifying Asari and Halley, it would still be so much worse for the children and elderly left alone if they failed.

  “Neil also says that if it comes down to that you need to make sure you launch every drone lander you can before you leave.  They won’t be any good to anyone if they’re left in their launch tubes.”

  “I understand…  You’re sure we can’t help?” Bao asked, almost in a whisper.

  “You are helping Bao…  You have to lead them if we fail.  Understand?”  The old woman nodded her acknowledgement. 

  “Good luck,” In-Su offered.

  “To all of us…” Bao replied with a heavy heart before closing the channel.

  “Well… there’s only one place Halley is going,” Armina said, stating the obvious.  “Only one place we need to go.”

  “The bridge,” Wiremu replied.

  “The bridge,” she confirmed.  “I think Halley’s lost it… I think he only has one thing left on his mind now that everyone he cared about is dead.  All his hopes and plans are ruined now, he can only have one remaining sense of purpose now; the same goes for Asari too, especially when he finds out what’s happened to Aset.   There’s only one thing left blindly driving either of them forward now.”

  “Revenge.” Wiremu said.

  “Revenge.” Armina affirmed with a slow nod of her head.