Sequence Six: It'll Be Great – Believe Me!

"How's it going?" Angu asked, his image splotchy on the damaged scrim-screen.

"We've taken engineering," Boss replied.

"Casualties?"

"Well," Boss answered slowly, "we encountered resistance. Only the chief engineer is still alive, and that's pretty much because everyone knew that we needed him in order to boost the ship to full speed."

A frown like a storm cloud came over Angu's features. "Resistance? From a bunch of engineers? Just how much killing did your boys do for fun?"

Boss leaned toward the scrim-screen with a faint smile. "Look, you tell my boys we need the chief engineer, they can understand that. You tell them to handle the rest of these elitist assholes with kid gloves, I'm afraid they are like to go deaf on you."

Angu looked like he wanted to curse, but instead he said, ""Don't you do anything -- anything -- until I get down there."

"Can't promise much unless you get here quick," Boss said.

"Not likely," Angu began. "You want to talk resistance? We're mixing it up pretty hard with security on decks two through - "

Boss cut the feed and the scrim-screen went dark. He turned to have a look at the engine room.

Behind his burly frame three of his guys were holding down the chief engineer. Chairs and Winthrop had him kneeling on the deck, and Scudder had the engineer's arm wrenched behind his back. It looked like it wouldn't take much more to either break the arm or wrench it out of its socket. The engineer was breathing hard and trying not to cry out, but the guys were jostling him and eliciting sharp yelps from him. Boss grinned.

Sikes, another of Boss' guys entered from a narrow side corridor, marching a young kid in uniform before him. "Got us another one," he said. "Some sorta ensign or something."

"Is that so?" Boss looked the kid up and down. "Looks pretty wimpy to me. Same big brained pansy as the rest of these faggots. Think our good Earth stock needs to be watered down with this?"

"At least he's not a muddie," Sikes said.

"Ha!" Boss chortled. His boys had taken care of the muddies before they went after the bridge crew and the rest of the command staff. Then, while Angu's unit and several other groups took on security and those among the colonists' numbers who joined in the effort to stymie the mutiny, Boss and his boys had hit the navigation, communications, and engine control areas.

Boss looked over at the chief engineer, who was still grunting with pain but stealing glances at the kid. "So who's the little fella here?" Boss asked him.

"Ensign Angford," the chief engineer responded.

"Sounds Nordic," Boss said. He looked at the kid, who stared back at him in terror. Sikes had him literally by the scruff of the neck. He looked like a kitten in the big mutineer's clenching hand. "You Nordic?"

"Our family is Swedish," the kid replied, his voice sounding hopeful.

"Good for you, kid," Boss said. "Because we don't much like muddies on this ship. Do we boys?" he called out, sparking a round of laughter and raucous cheers.

"So," Boss continued, turning back to the chief engineer. "This kid, would he be able to run things in your absence?"

"What do you mean?" the chief engineer gasped, as the guys holding him applied more pressure as an incentive to get him to speak up.

"I mean, could he operate critical systems?"

"No..." The chief engineer cried out as his arm was torqued once more. The guys holding him didn't like that word, and they didn't care about the context. They much preferred hearing Yes to everything. That made them idiots, in Boss' eyes, but at least they were useful idiots, unlike the school-fool pansies who ran the ship.

"You mean he doesn't have the knowledge?" Boss asked. "Or he doesn't have the access?" He signaled his men to ease up on the chief engineer.

"Neither," the chief engineer said. "He's still learning the systems. But only myself and Hao, the first engineering mate, have access to the critical systems."

"So, the kid here couldn't adjust the plasma flow to the drive system?"

"No," the chief engineer said. "I'm the only one left alive who can do that, since you killed Hao."

"Didn't have much choice, did we?" Boss asked. "Beiges and muddies, wasters and chinganos... all of them muddies. You understand that, right? Mud people? How they been taking over from us for centuries now?"

"You call that a reason for mass slaughter?" the chief engineer cried out, and Boss was impressed that his voice carried even more pain than when he was getting his arm wrenched damn near out of joint. These liberals. They really had no clue. And they were far too attached to the lesser strains of humanity - that made them dangerous, because if lesser people ever took over -

Well they nearly had, several times in history. And aboard the ship they sure ran things, or thought they did. But Boss had spent a lot of shipboard time building his case, holding meetings, nudging men to reclaim their rightful place. Boss and Angu. It was Angu who planned it all out, Angu who thought he alone should give the orders... but it was Boss who had the power of persuasion, the sheer muscular charisma they needed to carry out the plan. And Boss wasn't as stupid as people like to think. He was doing okay here in the engineering room. Angu wasn't here, and Boss was getting the objective taken care of. It was a good day's work and getting better all the time.

Boss didn't mind a little ideological education for the chief engineer's edification. "What I call it is purification, not slaughter," Boss said, crouching down in front of the chief engineer. He looked up at Sikes, the mutineer who was holding on to the Nordic ensign. "Kill the kid," he said.

The chief engineer screamed a protest, but even before his scream died down the kid's limp body hit the deck, his neck broken. The scream segued into wracking sobs. Boss stared at the chief engineer, disgusted.

"What, was he your lover or something?"

The chief engineer shook his head, still sobbing.

"What a fucking waste of skin," Boss muttered, and then gestured to his men to pull the chief engineer up onto his feet. They did so, leveraging him up by his pinned arm, and he screamed again. Boss looked more closely at him and saw that his shoulder was now misshapen; so he'd been right about the chief engineer's arm being about ready to pop out of its shoulder socket.

'Hey buddy," Boss grinned maliciously, giving the chief engineer a hard, friendly slap on the dislocated shoulder. The chief barked with pain and gasped. "Don't take it so hard," Boss added. "You believe in God, right? So don't you think the kid is okay? Ain't he in Heaven? It's got to be even better than where we're going - Proxima B, land of fresh opportunities. Cold and dry and after a century of terraforming the air is still only barely breathable, but hey! At least it won't kill you any more. And they even have an ozone layer now, so we don't have to worry that we'll get cancer two months after we land. Yeah, Proxima B - a real paradise. Or, it will be," Boss said. "When we get there first and take over the garrison."

"It's not a garrison," the chief engineer managed through his gasps.

"No, no, of course not. Why would it be? There's not native life on Proxima B. No forests, no farmlands, no indignants. Oh, sorry, I mean indigents. Or is that indiggidus? Whatever. Nobody but us. But it is a labor camp."

"It's a colo - " Chairs hit the chief engineer then, hit him in the stomach, hard. The chief slumped to the deck soundless, unable to breathe. Boss watched him twist and flop.

"A colony?" Boss asked as the chief engineer finally managed to take in a panicked lungful of breath. "You think? I don't think so. I think it's a prison. It's a fucking garbage heap, that's what it is - where they send people like me and my brother and my whole family, because the Owners don't need us around on Earth any more!"

The chief engineer was trying to say something but he hadn't caught his breath yet and wasn't managing to form coherent words.

Boss aimed the toe of his boot at the chief engineer's midsection and let fly with a brutal kick. "And you! You fucking fairies in your prissy little uniforms - laughing at us. Book-smart assholes. Well, we're not stupid you know!" Boss underscored his point with another kick, this time to the chief engineer's side because the man was sprawled on his belly. He felt a few ribs go under his boot's blunt toe.

Boss took a step back and blinked to clear the red haze of rage out of his vision. He had a problem with anger - that's what the judge had told him, sitting high up on his bench, looking down and chiding him. A problem with anger. Divorce was hardly ever legal any more, but that bitch Cyd had painted him to be a monster and the court had severed their sacred bond of marriage. She would burn for it, Boss thought bitterly - but in the meantime she'd made a nobody out of him, a reject and a fool. He was the last of his brothers to remain on Earth and he thought he'd escaped the colonial draft, but once she divorced him he was done. He was never going to get another job on Earth again, that was for sure. Divorced men were never allowed to marry again; unmarried adults were not allowed to live in the city limits; and everyone knew an address beyond 1,114th street was a guarantee of perpetual unemployment.

God, it aggravated him no end. And Cyd? She got money from some kind of fund, some charity for "victims" or something. Her record would be expunged. Her employability status was unaffected. But men like Boss - white men in particular - they could just go and fuck themselves for all the Faith State cared. And the worst part of it? He'd gotten an encrypt from Joey that Cyd had married again - a uniform this time, some guy in the Energy Anteil.

"Goddamned uniforms," Boss breathed, staring down at the chief engineer and trying not to lose his mind to rage all over again.

Chairs and the others hoisted the chief engineer up. He gave something between a sigh and a groan, and pink foam appeared on his lips. Boss realized that the broken ribs must have punctured a lung. The chief engineer was gonna die no matter what, but first he had a job to do.

"Listen," Boss said, almost caressing the chief engineer. "I'm sorry I lost my shit. But you have no idea how important this is, that we secure the colony before the other ships get there. My brothers went to the Eridani colony and then it was radio silence. Think we don't know what goes on at Eridani? The death labor? The executions? The Proxima colony won't be any different."

"You didn't hear anything," the chief engineer gasped, "because it takes so long..."

"Yeah, yeah, except that it doesn't. Entanglement transmissions are instant."

"Yes," the chief engineer sputtered, "but very difficult - and very expensive - emergency only - if you didn't hear back from Eridani that's good news, means all is well..."

"See?" Boss said, his voice darkening to a growl. "That's the thing, man. You privileged guys, you skilled labor - you just think you're better than the rest of us and we don't know when you're lying. But we know. You're lying to me, you son of a bitch - you're lying!"

The chief engineer lifted his head and locked eyes with Boss. He managed to speak clearly. "You don't know the first thing about anything. Physics. Communications. Protocols. Money. You think this is all simple stuff. It's not. There's a reason we - "

Chairs made to hit the chief engineer again, but Boss stopped him with a look. He didn't mind on principle - hell, the chief engineer deserved another shellacking - but he was afraid of killing the guy before they had what they needed from him.

The engineer looked from Boss to Chairs and back to Boss. Then he said, "There's a reason it takes us so many years to finish school. You need to know what you're doing to get anything done. Otherwise all you end up accomplishing is tearing everything down."

"So tear it down," laughed Boss. "And we'll build it up in our own image. It'll be fine, it'll be great. Believe me! It will be perfect because you snobs won't have fucked it up!"

The chief engineer simply let his head fall, slowly, back toward his chest. Boss wondered if he was about to pass out.

"Hey," Boss said, stepping forward and grabbing the chief engineer by the jaw. "Hey. Stay with me. I need you to do something."

The chief engineer was far from passing out, Boss saw; he looked at Boss with eyes that were bright and fully aware. "What's that?" he asked, and his breath caught and rattled in a way that suggested his injured lung was doing worse.

"I need to you ramp up ship's speed to full."

"You want what, now?"

"You need to ramp up the ship's speed. We need to get there sooner. We need to beat the other ships, get things set up, be ready. See, Proxima isn't going to be another white man's graveyard. It's going to be a safe place - a haven for our culture, for our race. The White race. The only true human race."

"You... you want to increase the speed over and above the pre-planned acceleration curve?" The chief engineer almost looked like he was about to laugh, bur pain chased the smile from his blood-foamed lips. "Don't you know how space travel works? It's not like driving your car from one city to another on Earth. The stars and planets are moving. We speed up and the planet won't be there yet when we arrive."

"Yeah? So we'll just make a hard right turn and go and meet it."

"No, it's not just that the planet won't be at the right point in its orbit... the whole solar system won't be there."

"Okay," Boss said, dropping all pretense at patience. "I've had enough of this bullshit. You do what I tell you."

"Or what?" The chief engineer actually did manage a laugh at that - a faint, vanishing laugh that almost became a cough. Then he grimaced. Breathing and coughing were apparently pretty painful. Still, the chief engineer managed a few more words: "Or you'll kill me?" He didn't laugh again, but he did offer an insolent smile that made boss want to tear his head right off his shoulders.

Boss was afraid to touch him, afraid he's lose control and tear him into pieces with his bare hands. "Look, asshole," he breathed, channeling his hot, rank breath right into the man's face, leaning in close. "You pump the ship up to maximum, and you point the nose at wherever it needs to point to get us where we're going. Can you do that?"

The chief engineer shrugged. "You risk burning up too much fuel with a sustained overacceletation," he said.

"So what? We're not going home anyway."

The chief engineer looked at him with a strange expression - kind of friendly, in a way, boss thought. Maybe it was admiration?

"Yeah," he said. "You're right."

"You're goddman right I'm right," Boss said. "And it's about goddamn time you said so."

***

It took the chief engineer four hours to make the changes to the engine regulators and then re-set the navigational system. Boss doubted he would have lived that long if they hadn't given him a few minutes in the auto-med unit. His breathing was still kind of raspy but at least he wasn't foaming at the mouth any more.

Finally, the engineer slumped into a seat by an unmanned duty station. The woman who'd run the station was in the next room getting special treatment from Chairs and Sikes - very special treatment, as befitted a member of her muddy race. "I'm not an astrogator," the engineer warned Boss, his face pale and his voice shaking. "I can't promise you'll arrive square on with the planet. You might miss by a few million miles."

"We'll just course correct." Boss said. "And if we do run our of fuel, they'll come and get us, right? The skeleton crew on the planet will have some intrasystem flight capabilities by now."

The chief engineer just shrugged with his eyebrows. Then he leaned forward, accessed the duty station, and examined some readouts. His fingers glided over the carbon crystal control interface, dialing up some settings and dialing others down. His concentration was absolute. Once he'd agreed to meet Boss' demands, he'd become like a man possessed - he was full of determination that belied his slight frame. Boss actually appreciated the man's strength and found himself wishing his own men were a little more like him - smart and driven.

"That's about it," the chief said after a while, making the final adjustments.

"We're going faster?"

"The ship is at peak acceleration," the engineer said.

"I don't feel anything different. Are you sure we're going faster?"

"We've been going faster and faster ever since we left Mars orbit," the engineer said. "But now we're going faster... faster."

"Huh?" Boss frowned at him and a dangerous glint came back into his eye. Was this asshole fucking with him?

"We're accelerating faster," the engineer said. "You won't feel a difference. But you can check any of the gauges."

"How long until we get there?" Boss asked.

"You'll be there four years ahead of schedule," the chief engineer said.

"Plenty of time to get things ready before all the other ships arrive," Boss smiled. Then he gave the chief engineer the honor of personally killing him.

Angu finally arrived two hours after that, one of the security officers' fancy rifles cradled in his arms. "I lost two thirds of my men," he announced grimly, "but the ship is ours." He went silent then, seeing the chief engineer's sprawled body. He looked at Boss, the storm cloud back in his face.

"Didn't need him any more," Boss said. "He fixed up the engine and re-oriented the navigation system. We'll be there years ahead of the others."

But Angu didn't praise him. Instead his face erupted into a look of fury and contempt. "You... mother fucking... idiot!" he screamed.

Boss was about to fire off a retort when Angu leveled his rifle and blasted him with it. It was a bolt of high intensity optical energy that vaporized flesh and charred bone in less than a second. Boss lost the feeling in his legs and went down hard.

Staring up at Angu, Boss realized that he, like the chief engineer, had lost the use of one lung. He labored to draw breath with the other. He didn't feel any pain - not yet - but shock was already setting in. He was feeling cold - freezing cold.

Angu pointed the rifle at his forehead. He was still screaming. Boss struggled to parse his words.

"Moron!" he was screaming. "The chief engineer is the only one who can authorize the braking cycle!"

"Wha... wha..." Boss couldn't manage more than that.

Angu was actually sobbing now - sobbing like the chief engineer had when Sikes killed that kid, Angstrom or whatever his name was. Sobbing like a bleeding heart democratist. Through his shock, Boss felt disgust creep over him. Then he heard what Angu was saying and his disgust changed into panic.

"We can't engage the braking cycle without him! Do you understand, you fucking moron? We can't stop! We can never stop! The ship will fly right past Proxima and keep on going - forever! Forever! Forever!"

The tip of the rifle was dancing around in agitation. Angu was screaming. Around the engineering room, men were starting to shout, to argue and bray. Boss closed his eyes and waited for the blast that would bring silence, blackness, death.

The deck beneath his body felt warm. Angu's screams grew distant. Together, the ship and Boss arrowed into the infinite night.