Stephen Baxter - Ark

“It’s OK,” Holle said. “We’ll deal with this. Helen, go round up some volunteer paramedics. You know who to ask.” As Helen pushed away, Holle spoke quietly to Grace. “We need to set up some kind of triage system. Three priorities,” she said, thinking aloud. “First, those who will recover but need immediate treatment. The burns, the bends victims. Second, those who will recover in time with minimal attention. People with swellings, this temporary sight loss you talked about.”

Grace looked away. “And third-”

“Those who won’t survive. The ripped lungs. We’ll put them somewhere. Hell, we’ll put them in the shuttle, away from the rest.”

“What do we tell them?”

“Lies. We’ll have Helen or one of her volunteers round up lovers, parents, whatever.”

“I can’t operate like that.”

“That’s OK. You don’t have to. I’ll stay with you. You just indicate to me which category each patient is in. I’ll do the rest.” She listened to the words coming out of her own mouth. Could she really do these things? Well, she must, so she could.

“Holle, there’s one more thing. Steel Antoniadi. She survived. She’s still in the cupola. Everybody knows she led the rebel attack. I thought it was best if she stayed out of sight.”

“Good thinking. I’ll talk to Venus about that, about keeping her safe somewhere-”

There was a tap on her shoulder. “Holle.”

She turned.

The punch in the mouth was hard enough to send her sailing through the air. Somebody fielded her, and she grabbed a handhold and shook her head to clear it.

It was Magda Murphy. Her arms and hands were swollen; that punch must have hurt her own fist like hell. Magda came up against an equipment rack on the wall, spun in the air, and used her booted feet to kick off and throw herself at Holle again. Somehow Grace Gray got in the way. She grabbed Magda around the waist, and the two of them, deflected by Grace’s momentum, drifted away.

Magda pointed at Holle and screamed, “You left my baby to die! You left her to die! All you had to do was reach out-” She struggled, but Grace held on tightly. The strength went out of Magda, and she broke down into wretched sobbing. “I’ll never forgive you for saving me rather than her, Groundwater. Never.”

Three days after the blowout, with the situation in the hull moderately stabilized, Holle led Grace and Venus to the cabin Wilson had been assigned, on the fireman’s pole at around Deck Eight. He had been confined here the whole time since he had emerged from the airlock in his pressure suit, having abandoned shuttle A and Terese Baker to their encounter with the warp bubble wall.

Holle pushed her way in without ceremony. The others followed. Holle lodged herself into a corner of the cabin, and let her eyes adjust to the dark.

Wilson just stared as the women came in. He wore a grimy, much-used T-shirt and shorts. He was floating in the cluttered cabin, surrounded in the air by an unrolled sleeping bag, a sponge backside-wiper, a food packet. His muscular legs were drawn up against his chest, and he was holding on to his bare feet with his big hands. The T-shirt bore some kind of logo, a slogan impossibly faded, a relic of Earth, even of the days before the flood. Oddly Holle found herself wishing she could read it, read about some long-ago sports event or rock band’s tour.

There was no sign that Wilson had been doing anything in here, no handheld, no books. There wasn’t even a lamp glowing; the only light seeped in from the big hull arcs through seams in the walls. His skin looked oily, and he smelled of stale sweat. She wondered how long ago he’d washed, in one of the microgravity showers that she had finally got up and running again. But he looked healthy. He was the only survivor aside from Venus who had not had to live through the decompression.

Wilson and Venus were Holle’s colleagues from their long-gone days as Candidates. Now they were all nearly fifty, their bodies heavy, their expressions hard, their hair graying, their skin lined, their souls dulled by the tedious horror of half their lives spent aboard this Ark. She never would have imagined they would end up this way. But Wilson looked the most composed, confident. He even grinned at Holle.

Grace Gray looked intensely uncomfortable to be here.

Holle said, “Let’s just start. We can’t be overheard, we aren’t being recorded. What we say today passes between the four of us, and nobody else.”

Wilson snapped, “And what’s so special about ‘the four of us’?”

“We’re the people with power on the ship. Venus with her planet-finding and GN amp;C. Grace the doctor-”

Wilson jumped in again. “And you, Holle? You’re the plumbing queen, right? And me? What power have I got, in this new world of yours?”

“You’re the only specialist in the hull’s external systems we have. You’re also the only Earth-trained shuttle pilot left aboard. So you’ve got value, Wilson.”

“And that’s the reason I haven’t been thrown out the hatch, is it?”

Venus murmured, “We never discussed sanctions against you, Wilson, not yet-”

Holle overrode her. “Yes. That’s all that’s kept you alive, Wilson.”

Wilson glanced at a smoldering Venus, an increasingly withdrawn Grace. Then he focused on Holle, perceiving she was the instigator here. “I was competent,” he said coldly. “I ran this damn hulk for twenty years.”

“But you shut yourself off from the crew. You didn’t see Steel’s rebellion coming, and you had no countermeasures in place when it broke. What kind of competence is that?”

“So if this isn’t some kind of trial, what is it?”

“I think it’s a coup d’etat, ” said Venus, watching Holle.

They were all silent, waiting for Holle to speak. So the moment had come. Holle took a breath, her heart beating hard. She hoped that none of them could see her deep uncertainty and self-doubt. But they surely knew her too well for that.

She knew what she was letting herself in for, by stepping forward like this. She’d seen how Don Meisel had hardened when he was banished out of the Academy and sent to the front line. She remembered what she herself had seen the day she had got separated from her father when they evacuated the Academy, as Denver drowned. She remembered the nightmares that used to wake Mel in the night. She had grown up with the flood, but she had always been protected from the worst of it-the harshness of its human consequences, the cruelty, the arbitrariness of life and death. Now all the protective layers had been stripped away from her, even Wilson’s brutal control. And it was her turn.

But she reminded herself why she was doing this. Magda’s baby. Those long minutes in the crowded shuttle. Never again, no matter what it cost her personally.

The others were waiting for her to speak.

“I’m taking over,” she said. “Simple as that. I don’t care what you call it. No elections, no process, no show of hands.” She looked around. “Who else is there to do it? You, Wilson? The crew would destroy you the way they ripped Dan Xavi apart. You, Venus? Wilson faced you down once before; you couldn’t control him now.”

Venus was looking at her as if at a stranger. “And if I did stand against you, would you turn off my air?”

“That’s the question, Holle,” Wilson said, probing. “So you have control of the air and water. The only way you can use that power is to withhold those basic essentials from the crew. Are you really going to do that? It violates the most basic principles of the Ship’s Law we evolved under Kelly, and the Bill of Rights I signed back in ’49.”

“Yes, it does. But all that matters now, Wilson, is survival. We have to last out thirteen more years to Earth III. Thirteen! We can’t afford another rebellion like Steel’s. And we can’t afford another self-indulgent autocrat like you, sucking up the resources and corrupting the kids.”