The Last Hour of Gann (9 page)

“Go on then. I’m braced.”

“I’m not sure we can launch a beacon from this location—planet-side, I mean—but assuming that it is possible, we first have to get guidance repaired, online and talking to the beacon so that it can orient itself to Earth. After that…” He paused again, looking down at Nicci, who had drawn up her knees and was now resting her head atop them and lightly rocking. He looked back at Amber, his expression drawn and greyed with strain. “I haven’t talked around much yet, but I served my second shift before the incident, so I know it’s been at least two years, plus however long the ship was flying blind to get to this planet after it was hit. But even if we magically crashed the instant after I went back in Sleep, we’d still have been Tunneling for two years before that. We can’t be less than five hundred light-years from Earth,” Lamarc said softly, slowly. His eyes communicated far more than his careful words. “And that is way more than we have mapped out along our pre-arranged route. Even if we were only knocked a little bit off-course, which I’m guessing—” He looked pointedly around, taking in the whole planet at a glance. “—may be overly optimistic, our guidance system might not be able to find Earth.”

Nicci moaned and began to
sob again.

“Okay,” said Amber. “Now what’s the real problem?”

He shared her lackluster smile. “Believe it or not, there is a real problem.”

“Oh for God’s sake. Okay. What is it?”’

“The beacon doesn’t have tunnel-drive. It was never meant to travel at anything close to that speed, not even at light-speed. So even if we are only five hundred light-years away, and even if we can reach the beacon, repair it, program it, and launch it tomorrow through this planet’s atmosphere and onward straight to Earth, it will take more than six thousand years for the damned thing to get there.”

“So there’s no point
in looking for it,” said Amber. After a moment, she hammered the reality home with a nod. “All right. So we’re here.”

He frowned at Nicci, then at her.
“I didn’t say that and I wouldn’t, if I were you. For a while, that hope of rescue is all that is going to keep some of these people alive.”

“
So what are you planning?”

“We haven’t decided,” said
Scott.

Lamarc
glanced at him, still frowning. “We’re discussing our options.”

“What have you come up with so far?”

“I believe our best hope of survival lies with the ship,” said Lamarc, and did not react when Scott heaved a short, hard sigh at him. “It was built to be a ready-made city. It provides shelter and security against the elements here and, most importantly, familiarity. We have food, moisture evaporators and purifiers, medical facilities, and general supplies to last easily a hundred years. Comfort is going to be our most precious resource for the immediate future and it should not be underestimated.”

Amber looked at the ship and said nothing. She could hear the logic in his words, but she could also see the smoke funneling out of dozens, if not hundreds, of wounds. And where there was smoke…

At last, just to demonstrate that she wasn’t a complete bitch and he shouldn’t feel the need to be a complete bastard, Amber looked at Scott. “What do you think?”

Even if she was a civilian and
therefore an unnecessary component to this conversation, Scott seemed pleased to be asked. “I think the first thing we need to do is re-establish a chain of command. And maybe we shouldn’t be so quick to blindly adopt the ranks we held before. It’s clear that the disaster has taken a mental toll on certain members of the Fleet and I would be hesitant to put any of them in a position of authority. And we could even bring some civilians in,” he added, including Amber in a magnanimous sweep of his arm and completely overlooking the fact that, snappy uniform or no, the Manifest Destiny badge on the sleeve of his jacket did not put him on the same level as an officer in the Fleet, or in any other army, or even in the Cub Scouts. “Some of them, anyway. But the main thing is, if we’re going to establish any kind of a future here, we have to know who’s in charge.”

She had a feeling he had a name in mind. “Okay
. Let’s pretend it’s you. What’s your plan, Commander?”

Scott
threw Lamarc a fierce smile, the sort that could make even a handsome man like him look schoolyard-small and mean. “Like he said, we have enough supplies to last us for a long time, so nothing is more important than knowing what we’re up against. We need to organize units to scout out the terrain and establish a perimeter. We need to organize defenses. We need to arm ourselves.”

“And I told you, t
he munitions bay is gone,” said Lamarc flatly. He turned to Amber. “What about you? Do you have any suggestions?”

She scowled, her eye going back to the ship and the smoke pouring out of it. “Lieutenant
Lamarc—”

“Jonah,” he said quietly.

Scott frowned.

“Jonah, that ship is on fire. And there aren’t enough words in the world to fully express just how bad a feeling I have about hanging around a burning ship where the extent of the damage is completely unknown.”

He nodded once, acknowledging without comment, waiting.

“I agree with what you said about shelter and security, but I’m sorry, until those fires are out, I think we’d ought to make camp somewhere else.”

“Which means we need to start scouting now,” said Scott. “Before we lose the light.”

“I haven’t made a count yet,” said Jonah. “But at a guess, I believe I’m looking at close to two thousand badly frightened people, some of them
with missing loved ones, and all of them in shock. Present company most definitely included.” He rubbed at the side of his head again. “Moving that many people overland on an alien world away from the ship they rode in on would be disastrous to morale, not to mention devastating to the terrain itself. If it rains, which is damned likely looking at that sky, two thousand pairs of feet are only going to need a few seconds to turn this ground into quick-mud. Also, we might be able to carry enough food with us for a few days, but not water. We have evaporators and we have purifiers, but we have no actual water. And, I’m sorry, but where are we going to go to the bathroom? I can see you think that’s a pretty trivial point, but I guarantee it won’t seem as trivial when two thousand people have dysentery.”

“We’re going to have all those problems no matter where we are.”

“Yes, eventually. But here at the ship, we can postpone them. Amber, if we don’t give those people some kind of familiar routine, something safe to cling to, we’re going to lose them. People this lost, this desperate…don’t need a lot of help to die.”

“Okay,” interrupted
Scott as Amber gazed out at the sea of survivors, “I think these are all valid points, but you’ve brought us right back to the issue of who’s in charge. You can’t develop a routine without someone giving orders.”

Amber shook her head and looked back at Jonah.
“I admit it’s been a while since my last babysitting gig, but I’m pretty sure that making sure the babies don’t catch fire is higher up on the priority list than making sure they don’t have nightmares. Jonah, staying here is a bad idea!”

“
I know it looks bad, but each compartment of the ship is designed to seal itself specifically so that fires don’t spread.”

“Yeah, and the ship is designed to turn itself around and go back to Earth if it gets hit by an asteroid. And who knows what else has been damaged? Things can be leaking and melting and overheating as we speak! We can’t afford blind faith, Jonah! We can only trust what we can see and I can see the smoke!”

“Can you see the people?” he asked quietly. “Can you see their faces? Can you see yourself marching them away when the wind is blowing this hard and this cold and no one knows what night will bring? And what about the people we can’t see? What about the people who may still be trapped behind those sealed doors, just praying that someone up here at least
tries
to find them? Amber—” He took her hand between both of his; she looked down at her small wrist being swallowed by his giant grip and thought of him patting Nicci as he guided her to the ground. He was awfully good at the comforting stuff. “Amber, if we don’t give these people some time to come to grips with what has happened to them, some of them never will. You may be thinking of them as two thousand survivors and I know Crewman Scott sees them as two thousand colonists, but they are neither. Right now, as of this moment, they are two thousand
victims
and they need to be taken care of. Please.”

Scott
paced a few meters away and came back, looking profoundly annoyed with both of them.

“
I want to take them in out of the wind for just two or three weeks. Let them dig for that beacon and fix a few broken doors. God willing, let them save a life, just one, to remind them that life is precious and hope can be rewarded. Put them back in control and then talk to them about survival. What can it hurt to give them just two or three weeks to learn how to cope? I want your support on this,” said Jonah. “Please.”

Amber looked at the ship. She tried not to see the smoke. She tried to look through the emergency doors at the hold and imagine two thousand people sleeping there tonight. She threw in a snowstorm to help weigh down the vision and a couple generic howling
-monster sounds. She pictured Jonah with his jacket off the next day, arranging teams to work in shifts clearing the halls, repairing machinery, sorting supplies, and later, building gardens and houses and latrines. She saw him taking charge and it was an easy thing to see. She saw the ship turning into a colony after all, and maybe it would only be the shell of one at first, but as she pulled back the camera of her mind, she could see the ship in a better time, in the summer maybe, with crop-fields and canals in orbit around it, a thriving hub of life and hope and—

—
or it could all blow up in an hour, she thought, in a voice so clear it might as well be someone speaking directly in her ear. And she saw that pretty damned clearly too: the wind, just like it was now, whipping the giant fireball of its belching destruction into an orange tornado for maybe two or three seconds before blowing it all away. Nothing would be left but the crater where they landed, the twisted skeleton of the hull, and a Rorschach scorch-mark burned into the stone, maybe in the shape of a butterfly.

“I can’t stay here,” Amber heard herself say.

Nicci raised her head and looked at her.

“Not tonight,” she amended. “I think…I think maybe
Scott’s got a point about the perimeter thing. Maybe it would help these people start coping faster if we took some of the mystery out of where we are.”

Scott
looked surprised for a second and then smiled.

“So here’s what I think. I think we should make a camp…” She looked around and pointed. “On that ridge. Call it a lookout post. We’ll organize a team and take whatever supplies we need to set up, you know, some latrines and supply tents.
If nothing else, it’ll give people something to do who don’t know how to fix doors or program emergency beacons. And who knows? We might look down from that ridge and see…I don’t know, a lake or whatever they have for cows or someplace easier to live than this.”

Jonah shook his head, not in denial, but in mute helplessness. He looked out at the survivors and then down at her. “Can you give me
until morning to work with them? Please. We can take a head-count, get some kind of inventory for our supplies…If nothing else, give me that time to see if anyone is trapped in there.”

That wasn’t unreasonable, she thought, and said instead, unexpectedly, “No.
I’m sorry, but if anyone is trapped in there, they’re already dead. The ship is on fire. It is not a safe place. We have got to get away from it tonight.”

His gaze was troubled; his hands, warm. “They won’t be moved tonight.”

“Then move as many as you can. We…”
can’t save everybody
, trembled unspoken on her lips. She swallowed them, wondering where in the hell this was all coming from. She didn’t feel panicked, but maybe panicking was like being crazy or having a fever, where you couldn’t tell just by feeling at yourself. “We can’t stay,” she finished.

Jonah looked at the people again, watching them the way another man might watch the tides. His eyes went back and forth, tracking motion no one else saw.

“I think a lookout post is a great idea,” Scott announced. “I’ll start putting a team together.”

“I can’t leave them,” said Jonah quietly.

“I said I’d do it,” said Scott, frowning again. “I want to be in charge. Of the lookout team. You can be in charge of these people.”

“I wish you’d come with us,” Amber said. The words felt heavy, too much like a confession.

“Yeah, well…I wish you’d stay.” Jonah uttered an oddly thin laugh for such a big man. “When the lights go out, things are going to get a lot worse. I was really starting to hope you’d stick around because I’m going to need someone to roll around with if I’m going to get any sleep tonight.” He rubbed at his head, shook it, rubbed some more. “That was offensive. I’m sorry. I’m just…”

Scared. And fear does weird things to people.

“Jesus, man!” Scott was staring. “I can’t believe you just said that!”