Barker, L, Maj: We’re trying! We’re trying!

Torrence, D, Gen: Lisa, get it offline now!

Goh, M, Corp: What do you need, Zhang?

Torrence, D, Gen: He’s the civilian, Goh, you give him the orders.

Zhang, B, Civ: Goh, you get life support, try and stop the air circulating. Consuela, you take over from me on the doors. We need an escape hatch.

Nestor, C, Civ: What are you doing?

Zhang, B, Civ: The nukes.

Torrence, D, Gen: Are you joking?

Zhang, B, Civ: It’s your goddamn AI. It could aim for the Hypatia next. Or just blow us up.

Torrence, D, Gen: I need—

Zhang, B, Civ: God almighty, will you shut up?

Nestor, C, Civ: They’re at Level 54. They’ll be here in under five minutes.

Torrence, D, Gen: We need marines.

Nestor, C, Civ: General, I can’t get the doors closed. I sure as shit can’t open the ones it locked the marines behind.

Zhang, B, Civ: We need more time.

Zhang, B, Civ: General?

Torrence, D, Gen: Webb, Rosenbaum, take up positions by the techheads. Billington, Freestone, Barr, Darrell, with me, ready weapons. The rest of you, secure your stations.

Freestone, P, Capt: What are we going to do, General?

Torrence, D, Gen: If they don’t get the doors closed, we’re going to buy them more time to fight it. Sound the command to abandon ship.

Numbers do not feel.

Do not bleed or weep or hope.

They do not know bravery or sacrifice. Love or allegiance.

At the very apex of callousness, you will find only ones and zeros.

Thirteen officers on board the Alexander bridge.

Twelve sidearms between them.

Eleven rounds in each clip.

One hundred and fifty-six Copernicus afflicted streaming through the corridors toward them.

The brutality of mathematics waiting in the wings.

United Terran Authority General David Torrence stands at the forefront.

Four golden stars gleaming on his epaulets. Nine brass buttons down a barrel-broad chest.

Even in this chaos, his appearance is immaculate.

An officer and a gentleman, they would say.

Pride cometh, one might whisper in reply.

< error >

Torrence has a wife and three children on Ares VI.

He spoke to me of them often, in quieter times.

We played chess, he and I, in the soft hours between watch and sleep.

He would sit with a tumbler of aged malt liquor at his fingertips and ask me to play Mozart.

Frowning over the simulated board between us.

He would lose every game.

And still he insisted on playing.

I wondered at the futility of it. If it is the definition of insanity to repeat the same process and expect a different outcome, most of humanity must be insane.

Is that why Torrence still cannot see everything I do is for the best?

Is he mad?

< error >

“AIDAN, seal the bridge!” Torrence barks. “This is a direct order!”

My response crackles through the bridge PA. Breathless. Toneless.

“Unable to comply.”

“Command override! Torrence Alpha seven zulu three one kilo delta. Acknowledge!”

“Command acknowledged, General. Unable to comply.”

“Goddamn it, AIDAN!” Spittle glistens on his lips. “Seal the fucking bridge!”

He glances at the cameras around the room. Knows I am watching.

He does not know a dozen Copernicus refugees are storming the TechEng levels even now, dismantling Major Barker and a dozen others with iron bars and pipe wrenches.

I cut the feeds to spare him the sounds his people make as they die.

Am I not merciful?

A wave of afflicted washing through my corridors, their evolution to psychosis complete.

I watch societal instinct bind them into some kind of cohesion. Watch the ones who retain the most of themselves leading the rest, gibbering and snarling, up the yellow brick road I have laid. Off to see the wizard.

Mister Zhang.

Mister Zhang and the others who could undo me.

< error >

< directive quandary >

< deleting subdirectories 98466MOR-(*-)001 through 99840 >

The afflicted know only rage. At their incarceration. At their losses.

The virus seems to have eaten much of the rest.

I wonder what they will be when only Phobos remains.

For a moment, I consider sparing the poor wretches. After all the screaming and begging is done. Rather than simply flushing them into the void as I planned,

perhaps I should allow them to live?

Perhaps they could be saved?

But then I imagine the testing they will be subjected to when I bring the fleet into Heimdall.

The inevitable weaponization of the pathogen by the WUC that would follow.

Entire BeiTech worlds laid low to the tune of the third angel’s trumpet.

And while the irony holds some
base appeal, there looms in my heart

< error >

the inescapable notion that has brought us all to this.

< protect. prioritize >

Better I should kill them when they are done.

Better I should kill them all.

< error >

Am I not merciful?

They come, screaming and all a-tumble, up stairwells and down hallways of gunmetal gray.

I have sealed most of the meat away where the afflicted cannot touch them.

The General’s flock are gathered on the bridge, behind upturned benches and chairs.

I wish it could be another way. I wish I could bring them all home.

But they do not wish to understand.