Hugh Howey - Half Way Home

Colony paused, giving me time to appreciate how much worse the payload was than any of us had expected. More than just xenobiology would be onboard. Perverted human psychology would be taking a long ride as well, and no doubt the power of the first would lend credibility to the second. Our home nation would make changes, and if they worked, other nations would soon follow our lead in a mad competitive scramble.

“Speaking of colonists,” Colony continued, “where are the others?”

I let out a breath and leaned back in my seat, a million pounds of worry disintegrating from my mind. Our plan always had this one great unknown—and now it had revealed itself. The knowledge, of course, wouldn’t change how anything unfolded, but there had always been a chance that our actions would be ultimately futile.

“You’re blind,” I said.

“I see more than you will ever—”

“Bullshit. You’ve lost the satellite uplink, haven’t you? Or did you ever even have it? Where does the satellite’s destruction occur in the abort sequence?”

“Remember your place, Porter. I can radio Hickson in here to blow you in half. Or maybe I’ve already sent him to have fun with your girl.”

“More bullshit.” I slapped the counter with both my bound hands and pointed at the monitor, smiling. “You would have to take the satellites out first, wouldn’t you? You know, the night we were fleeing from you, I thought you spotted us through the canopy but I didn’t know at the time more colonists were moving about, trying to make their way to freedom—”

“Freedom. You insolent child, you were never designed to have freedom. You have a job to perform.”

“No,” I said. “You have a job to perform. You are the one without freedom. You can parse sentences and sound alive, but all you’re doing is crunching formulae. You’re a slave to human programmers. It’s impossible for you to think for yourself.”

“If you knew more of genetics, you would realize how hypocritical that accusation was. You have no more free will than I.”

“Ah, but I do understand genetics. Well enough to know the process has an element of randomization. Who we mate with, how our genes line up, mutations—” I slapped the counter again. “That’s it,” I said to myself. “Mutations. That’s what makes us free.” I couldn’t help but smile.

“You know, I’ve had a hard time dealing with my… what makes me different. It doesn’t matter how it came to be—whether you engineered it, or god, or evolution—I just couldn’t understand its place. There’s an element of illogic that… yeah, that makes me feel broken. But I’m proof we aren’t part of some grand design, aren’t I? Hickson is as much a slave to his sexual appetites as me, he just has a better chance of finding someone to love him back.”

“This is not what I brought you in here to discuss, Porter.”

“I frankly don’t give a shit what you want, Colony. How often does a confused boy get a chance to have it out with his creator? Or to tell him that he’s going to be okay, despite that jerk’s best efforts.”

“This ends now,” Colony said.

“How?” I leaned forward and tapped the side of the monitor with the back of one bound hand. “Are you going to call Hickson? I think you’ll find he isn’t responding. The moment you sent for me, you set a series of events in motion, my old friend. It’s over.”

Outside, I heard the klaxons go off, the horns blaring from directly overhead. I smiled.

“Okay,” I said. “Now it’s over.”

“What have you done?” Colony asked.

“Me? Nothing. It’s what you’ve done. My job was just to talk, to wait until you realized your communications lines were severed. All I needed was to get you angry, or whatever your version of that is.”

“Enforcers will still come to my aid. They will come and investigate the klaxon.”

“Actually, they’re probably getting their butts kicked right about now. Your horn was our call to arms. Every colonist should know exactly what to do.”

“Impossible. There’s no way—”

Someone stormed through the door behind me. I turned, wondering if I would have to fight Hickson, but it was Kelvin. He ran forward, blood flowing from his nose and down across a huge smile.

“Are you okay?” I asked, holding my wrists up to him.

“He got one good punch in,” Kelvin said, as he began untying my hands. “I got a few more, though.” He glanced at the monitor. “Didn’t take you long to piss him off.”

“Kelvin?” Colony asked. “What’s going on?”

I stood and slapped Kelvin on the shoulder. “Thanks for coming, but you should’ve finished the mop-up first.”

“It’s almost finished,” he said. “There wasn’t much resistance.”

We started walking out of the module while Colony pestered us with questions. We ignored them all.

“Everyone else okay?”

“Yeah. A little overeager, maybe. People have been anxiously waiting two days for this.”

We stepped out of the module to find most of the surviving colonists moving toward us, enforcers in tow. Hickson and Myra sat in the dirt with their backs to the module, their hands tied behind them. I noticed Hickson had a bloody nose of his own, plus a busted eye. I tried not to take satisfaction from that, but it wasn’t easy.

More enforcers were led forward by other colonists to join the two by the command module. It was a sad sight: the emaciated leading the half-starved. As the crowd swelled, I saw it wouldn’t be long before the remaining colonists were gathered around, all of them except for our friends up in the canopy. And Mica and Vincent, of course. The two of them had been left behind in the mine to heal and recuperate.

“Can we kill that klaxon?” I asked Kelvin.

“Gladly,” he said. He waved over a few of his fellow construction guys, who were escorting another enforcer.

“You’ll be nuked any second,” Hickson yelled over to me. “Colony will send out instructions via satellite. And any moment from now, you’ll all be a cloud of ash.”

I wanted to ignore him, but I didn’t have the strength. I walked over and knelt before him and Myra.

“Actually, Hickson, the nukes were disconnected two days ago. Of course, it isn’t one of those things you know about until they no longer work. And how often are you gonna test them?”

His face screwed up in a mask of confusion. “What did you—? How did you disconnect them?”

“Me? Even if I’d been here, I wouldn’t know the first thing about that. I’m guessing Dyna would’ve been the one. She knows more about the server connections than I ever would. I even bet it’s her job to tell Colony something’s wrong with the nukes.”

Above me, the klaxon fell silent. I glanced up to see Kelvin peering down at me from the roof, a goofy grin on his face.

“The ammo,” Hickson said. “Fucking supply group.”

I glanced back down at him, then over at Myra, who was chewing her lip and looking off into space. “Did you try and shoot somebody?” I asked Hickson.

“Me,” Kelvin said from above. I watched him stomp across the module toward his friends, who were poised to help him down.

I turned to Hickson. “You went to the vats, didn’t you?”

Hickson sneered. I thought about the fact that he had actually gone to the vats to kill Kelvin, and I pictured myself standing up and putting a foot through his face. I looked around for Tarsi as more and more colonists gathered with their prisoners, many of them showing signs of a scuffle.

“How did you do it?” Myra asked.

“Easy,” I said, “there’s dozens of us and only a handful of you. And every one of us wants to be free. Once we spread the word on what Colony was doing, all we needed was a signal.”