Kane stood in the Council chamber and watched Jaha’s face while the Chancellor laid out the math.
The primary recycler had failed.
The secondaries were cannibalizing themselves to compensate.
They had weeks, maybe a month, before the air went stale and then toxic and then nothing.
Now the law required three hundred and twenty of them to stop.
Marcus Kane had spent sixteen years enforcing the Ark’s laws without hesitation floated thieves, floated parents who’d hidden second children, floated a man who’d hoarded rations during a distribution failure.
The law was oxygen.
It kept four thousand people breathing in a tomb made of steel.
“We stretch what we have,” Jaha said.
His voice was steady.
Kane respected that.
“We ask for volunteers.
We honor their sacrifice.
And we buy the rest of the Ark time to reach the ground.”
Abby Griffin’s chair scraped back.
“We don’t know the ground is survivable,” she said.
“We’ve had vital readings from ninety-seven of the Hundred for six days.
Six days.
You want to kill three hundred and twenty people on six days of data?”
“I want four thousand people to live,” Jaha said.
“By executing three hundred and twenty.”
“By accepting three hundred and twenty volunteers who understand what their choice means.”
Abby’s laugh was sharp enough to cut.
“Volunteers.
You’re going to call it that.”
Kane spoke before Jaha could.
“We’ll ask.
Medical staff exempt, essential services exempt, children exempt.
We’ll ask the rest, and we’ll honor the ones who step forward.”
“And when we don’t get three hundred and twenty?”
“We’ll get them,” Kane said.
He met her eyes.
“People understand triage, Doctor Griffin.
They’ve been living it their whole lives.”
She looked at him like he’d just confessed to something obscene.
The vote carried.
Four to one.
Abby walked out before the tally finished.
Kane stayed.
Jaha’s hand was shaking when he signed the order.
“May we meet again,” the Chancellor said to the empty chamber.
Kane said nothing.
There was nothing left that wasn’t arithmetic.
─────
Abby found Raven Reyes in the machine shop at 0200, elbow-deep in a panel that should have been sealed decades ago.
“Tell me it works,” Abby said.
Raven didn’t look up.
“It works.”
“Tell me it’ll survive re-entry.”
“It survived a hundred years in a hangar nobody checks.
It’ll survive twenty minutes of fire.” She yanked a coupling free, swore, reconnected it.
“Probably.”
“Raven.”
“I said it works.” She sat back.
Her hands were black with grease, and something in her face had gone tight and bright the look Abby had learned meant she was two seconds from crying or punching something. Read this novel at novelping(.)com for the best experience.
“I can get it to the ground.
I can’t promise it lands soft.”
Abby stepped closer.
Looked at the pod.
It was old.
Older than old a museum piece, a relic from before the Ark had been twelve stations welded into one burning lifeboat.
The hull was patched.
The retros were scavenged.
The flight computer was running on bypass code Raven had written by hand.
“When,” Abby said.
“Forty-eight hours.
Maybe less if I skip the landing gear and just plan to crash.”
“Don’t skip the landing gear.”
Raven’s mouth twitched.
Not quite a smile.
“Finn’s down there.
I’m going to find him, and I’m going to prove the ground is real, and then maybe the Council stops floating people to buy another month of breathing recycled air.”
She didn’t know yet.
Abby hadn’t told her wouldn’t, not until the volunteer lists went up and three hundred and twenty people learned their deaths had been voted a necessity.
“Raven,” Abby said.
Stopped.
Started again.
“If you’re going”
“I’m going.”
“then go fast.”
Raven looked at her.
Read something in her face and went very still.
“How bad,” she said.
“Forty-eight hours,” Abby said.
“You have forty-eight hours.”
Raven turned back to the panel and started pulling lines twice as fast.
─────
The names went up at 0800.
Three hundred and twenty slots.
Volunteers first and they came, because people always did when you framed death as a gift.
The old.
The sick.
The ones who’d lost children to the ground and didn’t want to outlive them.
A man who’d been waiting for execution anyway and decided this was cleaner.
A woman who’d been rationing her oxygen supply to her grandson for two years and was simply tired.
By 1400, they had two hundred and six.
By 1800, they had two seventy-three.
The rest were assigned.
Medical said who.
Kane signed the orders.
Jaha made the announcement.
“Your sacrifice will be remembered,” he said over the shipwide channel, and Kane stood beside him and wondered what memory was worth in a tomb.
The first airlock cycled at 2100.
Kane watched.
It was his signature on the order.
The least he could do was stand witness.
They went in groups of ten.
They wore their best clothes.
Some of them held hands.
Her voice cut off mid-verse when the outer door opened.
The inner door sealed.
The corridor was silent.
Then the next group stepped forward.
“May we meet again,” someone said.
The rest repeated it.
A murmur.
A prayer.
A lie they all agreed to believe because the truth was a vacuum and forty seconds of choking.
By 0300, it was done.
Three hundred and twenty souls given to the black, and the Ark’s air budget stretched just far enough to reach a ground they had no promise of touching.
Kane went back to his quarters.
Sat on his bunk.
Stared at his hands.
They’d done the math.
They’d done it cleanly.
They’d called it mercy and honored the dead and bought the living time.
It was the right thing.
He didn’t sleep.
─────
At 0400, Raven Reyes sealed the escape pod’s hatch, ran the ignition checklist twice, and shoved the retro throttle forward.
The pod lurched.
Shuddered.
Dropped.
She flew backward into her seat as the clamps released and the Ark’s hangar door opened beneath her and the retros screamed.
Fire.
Gravity.
The stomach-flipping lurch of a descent she couldn’t stop or steer, only ride.
The pod’s computer spat warnings in three colors.
Hull temp rising.
Angle off optimal.
Retros at a hundred and eight percent and climbing.
Raven’s hands moved.
Flipped the coolant bypass.
Dumped the reserve fuel into the burn.
Watched the numbers and trusted the math she’d done on paper because there hadn’t been time to simulate.
The ground resolved beneath her.
Green.
Impossible, beautiful green, and a river, and trees, and smoke rising from a clearing that meant people the Hundred, Finn, a place she could land or crash or burn and it wouldn’t matter because she’d made it.
The retros cut.
The pod dropped.
Raven held on, and fell toward the only world that mattered, and didn’t let herself think about the three hundred and twenty people who’d bought her the air to make it this far.
The last thing she saw before the impact was the canopy rushing up, and the first thing she thought was I’m sorry.
Then the world went white, and loud, and she didn’t think anything at all.
─────
On the Ark, Marcus Kane stood at the observation port and watched a streak of light peel away from the station’s orbit.
It fell.
He didn’t pray.
He didn’t hope.
He just watched it go, and wondered if the ground would be worth what they’d paid to reach it.
Behind him, the recyclers hummed.
The air tasted clean.
It was the worst thing he’d ever done, and it had worked exactly as planned.