The crowd’s attention is entirely on Bartie now. How the frex did he break into the wi-com system? Only a few select members of the crew—me, Doc, the First Shipper—have the permissions needed to do all-calls. Bartie must have hacked into the system.
I slam my hand into my wi-com. “System override,” I order, then begin another all-call. “People of Godspeed,” I say in as loud a voice as I can. “Calm down. This is not the time for mutiny and dissent. This morning, I discovered we are much closer to Centauri-Earth than we ever thought. We will begin planet-landing—soon. Very soon. You only have to—”
“LIES!” Bartie roars, not through his wi-com, but from his perch at the Food Distro. His face is twisted, enraged, and the word expels from him like a rock thrown into the crowd.
“It’s not a lie,” I insist, my voice crackling over the wi-com. “Please, everyone, calm down. The mission—”
Beep, beep-beep.
“Frex the mission!” Bartie roars into the wi-com all-call system. “This is just one more way that Elder wants to manipulate you! Look around you, friends! This—this—is all we have! Godspeed is our home, there’s no point in trying to reach Centauri-Earth anymore! There is only this—and freedom!”
“I gave you freedom!” I shout, then remember to use my wi-com. Before I can, though, Bartie overrides me.
“He may say he’s given you freedom, but think about how much he still controls. He makes all the decisions. He controls who eats, and how much. He controls who gets what meds—and he is the one who let the poison Phydus back on this ship. That was his decision, his choice, and you paid for it. ”
I remember that day I found him in the Recorder Hall. Technical Instruction on Communication Systems. And a history of the French Revolution. He was probably the one who hacked into the floppy system—but I wonder, if I had handled things differently, would his rebellion have stopped there rather than escalating into a mob gathered around Fridrick’s dead body?
“What about the food?” someone calls from near the back.
Bartie pushes back the doors of the Food Distro. “Take what you can,” he shouts. “There’s little left. ”
And that does it.
The people stampede into the Food Distro. The windows in the front are smashed open and people start running through them. The mob swarms forward in a surge so fast that Bartie has to dive out of the way. People fight their way out of the building, rolling barrels or hefting heavy sacks of food on their backs. Others start fighting them, ripping open the sacks and brawling over the contents. In the rush, Fridrick’s body flops out of its tenuous hold on the banner, crashing into the ground. The mob swells back, then washes over where he landed, ignoring the body in the rush for food.
Fighting breaks out. It starts out as shoving as people wrestle their way to the front of the crowd, closer to the food stores. Shoves turn into punches, punches turn into brawls. Food is forgotten as two men turn on each other. The larger man punches the smaller one in the mouth, and an arc of blood sprays out over the crowd. The smaller man’s friends leap into the fight, and soon there are so many punching and kicking and shouting that I can’t even find the original two fighters amid the fists and blood, the sound of flesh hitting flesh.
I’ve seen the chaos of Sol-Earth from vids and pics on the floppy network. But this is different. I’m in it here.
A woman shouts, “Get out of the frexing way!” as a barrel of milk rolls down the street. She chases after it, screaming at anyone who gets too close to it.
“The Greenhouses!” a man roars, leading a group of twenty or so off the main road toward the produce section. Shite. They’re going to kill every crop we have.
I try to do another all-call. No one even notices.
A man shoves a woman out of his way; the woman crashes to the ground. Another man leaps to her defense, slamming his fist into the first man. Before I can even respond, two more men enter the fray. The woman scrambles out of the way as the fight grows. The bag of produce the man had been carrying crashes to the ground, spilling its contents—tomatoes and peppers—out onto the street. Some of the others pick up the smashed vegetables and start hurtling them at the fighters. The circle of fighting grows and grows.
And then one of them turns to me. I had lingered at the back of the crowd, away from the surging masses, when I should have run away.
“It’s Elder!” he roars. “Get him!”
They turn as one, a multi-headed monster ready to strike.
“Fire!” someone screams. A trail of smoke rises through the windows, snaking out around the Follow the leader sign.
In the distraction, I run for it. As I turn down a side street, I press my wi-com.
“Amy,” I say as soon as she answers. “Get to your room. Lock your door. ” I disconnect before she has a chance to respond.
I head straight to the grav tube. As I go, I see others running too, hiding, going for their homes or the fields, racing, like me, to some kind of shelter. A man pulls a woman behind him into the butcher’s block. He grabs a cleaver and stands in the doorway, daring anyone to attack. Another woman collapses on the steps leading to her home, clutching her stomach and screaming.
As the grav tube sucks me up, I see the chaos spread out before me. The Food Distro is truly in flames now, the smoke heavy and black, already making the painted sky above it gray.
My eyes adjust slowly on the Shipper Level. It seems dark compared to the brightness of the solar lamp on the Feeder Level. And quieter. While the Feeder Level was all boiling action, the tension here feels like a dense fog.
Shelby rushes to me; she’d clearly been waiting for my arrival.
“What do we do?” she asks.