Victus grunted and heaved along with a half-dozen other men as they wrestled another group of folding seats that had been liberated from the ship’s theater.  They navigated into the landing bay through milling groups of people, then stacked the seats against the hull of ship number four alongside the others they’d collected. He wiped sweat from his brow as he assessed their progress. Along with the three other work gangs, they’d gathered almost two hundred seats over the past two hours. That was only about a third of the number they’d need, but given the learning curve and their intense motivation, he felt that they were making good progress. He was preparing to go back to the theater for another row of seats when Bo appeared at his side.

“I know you’re busy, but I need your help.”

“Of course,” Victus answered. “Whatever you need.”  His team was heading out the door without a backwards glance, and he trusted that another pair of hands would replace his on the work line. There were certainly enough warm bodies around them waiting for something to do.

“You’re going to hate me for this,” Bo predicted, leading Victus away from the frantic activity, “but since you’re our resident theologian I’m going to throw this in your lap. You know we’re not going to have room for everyone. So how do we choose who gets to go and who has to stay behind?”

Victus deflated. “The last time I had to answer a question like that was in my twelfth-year ethics class, and if I recall correctly, it ended in a fistfight.”

“That’s what I was afraid of.”

“Shouldn’t this be the captain’s problem?” Victus asked, hopefully. “I’d rather have the survivors hating him and not us, especially if he’s not around for them to abuse.” He glanced around them. “Where’s Tolliver? He wanted to have more control, so let him control this.”

Bo grunted. “I admire your strategic thinking. Unfortunately, Tolliver told me to rot in hell for stealing his ships, and to handle it myself. But before he walked away he did tell me to pick people who can help us survive, and I can’t really disagree with him about that. It doesn’t make a lot of sense for us to go through all this effort to get people to the planet safely if they’re just going to keel over and die ten minutes after we land. They can do that just as easily by staying here.”

“It’s basically the ‘four men in a three-man lifeboat’ problem,” Victus said, then took a moment to think about the question. Philosophical debates like this had always vexed him as pointless mental dalliances, but attaching real-world consequences didn’t make them any more attractive. “The most simplistic answer is to throw yourself out of the boat,” he said, tentatively, “but what if the other three would die without you there? The next most obvious answer is to leave the decision up to your higher power by selecting randomly - but that almost always decreases the odds of your group’s survival.”

He looked pained. “The most rational answer is to select a mix of healthy, young men and women without children, who are emotionally stable and have no strong vices.”

“Why no children?” Bo queried.

“To make room for more adults,” Victus said.  “If you’re thinking as a pragmatist, it makes no sense whatsoever to save children when they drain resources, yet do nothing to help the colony survive.” He raised an eyebrow. “They can always make more.

“Of course I’m speaking theoretically here,” he hastened to add, lest Bo get the wrong idea about Kenzine compassion. “I’m not advocating that. I feel distinctly protective of the weak and helpless. Abandoning them when they need me most seems like more of a betrayal than I can stomach.”

“So what do we do?” Bo asked. “I think it’s pretty obvious that anyone who’s helping us get off this ship should get a seat. Other than that, somebody has to decide. And once we know who’s coming, we need to balance the biological load between the shuttles. You can handle that, right?”

Victus considered what he remembered from his chemistry and biology lessons and decided that he probably wouldn’t do any worse job than anyone else in the hanger. “I believe I can.”

Bo pulled out his comm and started tapping instructions on it. “I’ll transfer all the data I have to you.”

Victus expected that to be the start of a more detailed conversation about how he was supposed to do the job, but Bo thanked him, turned and walked away.  He was either confident that Victus could get it done or afraid the Kenzine would throw it back in his lap after realizing the magnitude of the task. The question was answered when Victus overheard one part of what must have been his distracted mental conversation with Dan as we walked away. “Don’t worry about it,” he heard Bo mutter aloud, “he’ll get it done.” And then, “But I don’t need to be nice...He’s varius. He gets it.”

Huh, Victus thought to himself, I suppose because I’m varius I should also be immune to being scared out of my wits? He sighed quietly, and repeated the calming mantra that had been part of his daily life since becoming a Kenzine. Fear is the true enemy. All else are worldly obstacles to be overcome with small spoons. Basically, it was a reminder to him that one can eat an entire elephant if it has been cut into small enough bites.

He pulled out his comm and looked at the file Bo had shared with him. If he was expecting clarification, he did not get it. It seemed that the only hard facts he had at his disposal were that each shuttle would be carrying sixty average-sized people, and everyone who worked to unload the ships could take a companion with them. From various biology courses he remembered that women used less oxygen than men, and varii used less than women. Children used least of all… He looked at the hubbub of activity surrounding him and didn’t see many children. He closed his eyes for a moment and suppressed a shudder at the thought of leaving children behind.  While It was indeed true that they would not be of much use to an embryonic colony, Victus couldn’t bring himself to be so cold as to leave them behind. Sometimes, he thought, the smart thing is not the right thing.  So, since he was making the decisions, any child would be welcome.

Other than those few assumptions he didn’t have a lot to work with. He didn’t even know how many shuttles he had to fill. He stopped his negativity before it could spiral out of control, and concentrated on identifying his elephants.

His end goal was to balance the biological demand between the shuttles, so his first task must be to acquire data. Going back into the office, he rooted around in the desk and on the shelves until he found an official-looking clipboard and a large box of nylon ties. Perfect, he thought, returning to the bay. He grabbed the first person he saw and strapped one of the ties around her wrist. “This will get you onto the shuttle when we leave,” he explained. “What’s your name, age and weight?”

“Judy,” she said, quietly, “Judy Kleghorn. Thirty-eight, and sixty kilos.”

Victus wrote down her answers, then also made columns for species and gender. After a moment he added a column heading for “Companion.” With a great deal of gravity, he held out a second nylon tie to the woman. “This is for a companion,” he explained. “Everyone who helps can bring one person with them.”

The woman stared in surprise at her improvised wristband. “We’re not going to have room for everyone?”

Victus quelled an irrational urge to snap at her for not paying attention to what Bo had been saying all along. She was scared, probably in shock, and deserved his compassion. “I’m afraid not,” he said, “but the harder we work to make space, the more people we can save. Are you here alone, or did you bring someone with you to help?”

“My husband,” she answered, pointing to the rear of the bay. ”He’s over there.”

“What’s his name?”

“Jack.” Without having to be asked, she added, “Forty-two, and ninety kilos.”

Victus took a stab at why she sounded so pensive. “Do you have children?”

“No,” she said, her gaze wandering from his. “I was just thinking about all the other people who aren’t going to make it.”

Victus nodded somberly, and handed her two more straps. “Okay. Give these to your husband - Jack - and be certain he puts one on. And tell him not to leave the cargo bay without letting one of us know. When it’s time, we’ll release you in small groups to go get your things.” He paused for a moment and looked at her carefully. “Will you remember that?”

She nodded absently, and started to walk away, but it didn’t look to Victus as if she had any particular destination in mind. “Judy!” he called after her, “I need someone to control access to the landing bay. Are you helping someone right now?” She shook her head, and walked back to him.

He handed her his clipboard and a handful of the plastic ties, and led her back to the main door. “If someone leaves without us knowing, they might get left behind,” he explained. “We need you to stand here, take down the name of anyone leaving, and make sure they’re wearing a wristband before they leave.”

Having a purpose returned some of the woman’s vigor, and holding the clipboard bolstered some of the authority that fear and uncertainty had stolen away. She straightened her back and pushed a stray lock of hair back into place , and Victus thought she was quite a handsome woman, now that she had her bearings. “Sure,” she said, “I can do that. But how will they find you?”

Victus smiled, and motioned to his bright red robes. “I’m pretty easy to spot. Just tell them to look for the monk.” He went back to the office to pick up another clipboard and more plastic ties, then continued on his way, feeling confident that Judy could do the job. Even in the face of danger, she seemed to spring back quickly when given a task. If he had to crash-land on an alien planet, he was thankful to be doing it with a group of mentally resilient people.

He decided it would be most efficient to start with ship number one and work his way down the line, catching any stray workers as he went. Later he would go back to make sure he hadn’t missed anyone, but for right now this was the best he could do. As the wolf moved from shuttle to shuttle recording his data, he noticed that he was tallying a higher number of varii than he had expected. Other than Lucas, Bo, and himself, Victus had only noticed a few other varii on board as paying passengers. Most of those he’d seen had been cruise line employees, and true to the captain’s word they were not part of the unloading process. But at least ten percent of the people in the landing bay were varius, so where had they come from?

He asked a few extra questions of the genetic recombinants he encountered, and soon he had his answer. The population of varii onboard wasn’t nearly as small as he’d thought. The ones helping them unload the shuttles had largely been contracted by the company that was setting up the off-world colony. Until they reached the planet they were to remain below decks, out of sight of the luxury passengers.

Once they had traversed the gate, the plan had been for the workers to travel down to the surface in the cargo shuttles, take six or seven months building the structures and getting the crops started, then rendezvous with the next cruise ship to come along for the return trip to Earth. Almost all of the varii who weren’t on the construction crew were contract laborers who had booked their own passage, and would not be expected to remain onboard the dying ship.

The ursine whom Victus had earlier seen pin Tolliver against the belly of a cargo ship was an interesting story. Although it had been drilled into his mind that assumption was a killer of worlds, it nevertheless surprised Victus to learn that Dante was a tailor, employed to repair the costumes worn by the onboard theater company. That a man so large as he, with three inch claws and handpaws the size of dinner plates could skillfully wield a needle and thread seemed quite miraculous.

A second pass through the ships caught the stragglers, and by the time lunch was being served Victus saw no one who was not wearing a nylon wristband. A quick scan of his and Judy’s handwritten paper lists loaded all the information into his comm, and in minutes he had generated a preliminary seating assignment. It took him almost an hour more to shuffle the layout so families could stay together, but after that he felt comfortable sorting everyone into groups and sending them back into the cruise liner for their belongings.

He gathered the passengers for the first shuttle, and once they had settled he held up a plastic poker chip he’d pilfered from the ship’s casino. In its middle, the chip bore a large number ‘1’ that corresponded with the number of their assigned ship.

Lucas had warned him to to drive home the fact that he was giving them instructions and not making suggestions, so Victus imbued his voice with the hard authority of a drill sergeant. He was not used to being so inflexible, but he knew his mate was right; this was not the time to be accommodating. “Listen carefully,” Victus warned as he handed out the plastic chips. “You are all going down on ship number one! Do not try to change your ship without asking me first!”

“You’ve got ten minutes to go to your rooms, and pick up your belongings,” he continued. “Your wristband,” he held his own arm in the air to demonstrate, “gets you back into the bay, and your chip,” he held up the poker chip, “is your ticket onto shuttle number one. Everyone who is helping us gets a seat.” He held up a twin to the plastic tie he’d fastened around their wrists. “You can bring along one person who is not helping us. Do not tell anyone else what’s going on or you will cause a riot, and that might get us all stuck here!” He paused for emphasis and looked around him.

When he saw understanding in all of their eyes he continued. “You may bring one and only one additional person with you!  That can be your parent or your child or a stranger you meet in the hallway.  When you get back here, they must check with me or Judy for their ship assignment.  Anyone who does not have a wristband and a poker chip will not be allowed to board a shuttle!

A young man in the middle of the group jumped in the moment Victus paused to take a breath. “What about-”

Victus cut him off ruthlessly. “Ask me once the rest of your group has gone.” Without waiting for his response, he continued. “We do not know what the weather will be like, it might be hot, it might be raining, it might be snowing, so choose your clothing accordingly! Bring your toothbrush!” He emphasized.

“You will not be allowed onboard with anything hard and heavy, so leave your suitcase behind! Your room should have a laundry bag in it. If not, use your pillowcase. Put your clothes in the bag, and bring them back here. Bring your pillow and the blanket from your bed to cushion your seat! Bring sturdy shoes, and if your comm needs a special charger, bring that as well. Do not forget to bring all of your medication with you!”

That’s about it, he thought, anything more would be fluff. “You have only ten minutes before you need to be back here, so-” His instructions were abruptly cut off when one of the forklift drivers took a corner too quickly and lost half of his load in a spray of reference books and entertainment videos. The driver cut the wheels in the other direction in an attempt to compensate but only succeeded in making the situation worse. With a shuddering groan the truck overbalanced, crashing into the metal flight deck a dozen meters from where they were standing. “You’ve got ten minutes,” Victus reminded the group. “Go!” He turned on his heel, and ran to the overturned forklift.

The lupine was the first person to reach the driver. Clambering over the protective cage, he held his hand down to the driver. “Are you hurt?

"I'm okay," the man told him, reaching up to take the handpaw Victus offered. With a grunt of exertion he pulled himself up, then through the cab and out, where he self-consciously slapped grime from his pants. "Don't worry - I'm a better pilot than I am a forklift driver."

The sparkle of a large diamond at the man’s wrist caught Victus’ eye, and when he made the connection he immediately released the man’s hand and took a respectful step backward. The bracelet was not for fashion, but insurance. It identified the wearer as a member of Jehovah’s Warriors, a particularly conservative religious sect which rose to prominence after the first alien attack on Earth and grew even more powerful after the second. The diamond ensured payment for his return trip to his home planet, no matter how far away he might roam. Victus remembered that they were particularly strict about that. That the man would leave Earth in the first place struck Victus as odd, given his religion’s horse-and-buggy world view.

The leader of the Jehovah’s Warriors thought it preposterous that aliens would have any involvement in the celestial bombardment suffered by the Earth, arguing that it made far more sense that the asteroids had been thrown at them by the hand of a God enraged by man’s descent into sin. Even the retrieval of alien corpses during the next attack failed to sway them. Ignoring all evidence of extraterrestrial origin, they explained the inhuman bodies away as demonic creatures.

Paradoxically, as the religion’s  rationality waned, their membership bloomed. The huddled masses were looking for simple answers, which the Jehovah’s Warriors were eager to provide. Their opinion of genetic manipulation was predictably dire, and their leaders actively campaigned for the eradication of varii by whatever methods necessary.

Victus reminded himself that not all of them were that radical. As in all religions, a few were true believers who toed the party line because they actually believed the insane rhetoric. Some flamboyantly wore the sackcloth and ashes to maintain their authority, but most probably checked one particular religious affiliation box or another out of ingrained habit. Still, Victus would treat this man with great care until he knew more about him. “I apologize,” he said, bowing slightly at the waist. “I did not mean to offend.”

“What?” the man looked puzzled for only a moment before his face cleared. “Oh, this,” he said, glancing at his wrist. “I’m reform.” The embarrassed expression on his face apologized to Victus for his religion’s bigotries. “Thanks, man. I’ve got no beef with you.” Again, he held out his hand to Victus. “My name’s Steve. Steve Donaldson.”

Victus repaid the gesture with a handshake and a warm smile. “Victus Entrades,” he said. “You’re bleeding,” he gestured to the laceration on the man’s scalp. Victus offered Steve a clean paper napkin pulled from an inner pocket of his robes. “I know this is permitted, at least.”

Steve pressed the napkin to his forehead, wincing at the pressure.

“Can I get you a MediPatch from the first aid kit as well?” Victus offered, hopefully.

Steve’s attempt at a smile came out looking more like a pained grimace. “Let’s not go overboard.” After a moment he pulled the napkin away. There wasn’t as much blood on it as he’d feared, but still there was more than he’d like. “You got any tape?” he asked.

A quick search didn’t turn up any tape, but Steve did not object when Victus brought him a simple adhesive bandage from the first aid kit. He watched quietly as the Kenzine pulled off the protective film to expose the adhesive, but winced away uncomfortably when Victus moved to apply it. “I got it,” he said, reaching for the bandage.

“You can’t see where you’re putting it,” Victus said, holding the bandage out of his reach. “You’ll get it stuck in your hair. Just let me put it where it needs to go, and then you can smooth it down.”

With a weary sigh that would have done justice to a disgruntled teenager, Steve dropped his arms in his lap and allowed the indignity. Victus couldn’t help but smile at the production. He gently positioned the bandage over the wound and gently touched it to the skin. As soon as the stretchy, engineered plastic made contact it conformed to the exposed skin to form a waterproof, germ-free shield. Victus lifted Steve’s hair out of the way. “Okay, you can push it down, now.”

Steve pushed at the edges of the sealed bandage. His rubbing didn’t do anything, but since there was no way he could see what was happening it made him feel better to think he’d been an active participant in his own treatment.

Victus wished that Steve would have allowed him to help more, but one of the first things he’d had to learn about helping people was when not to do it. There probably wasn't a lot he could have done at this moment anyway, so he made himself let it go. They had other things to worry about, like righting the overturned forklift.

Even in the reduced gravity it was heavy, and it took a half-dozen people to get it back on its wheels. Steve insisted on helping, but as the group dispersed the Kenzine thought that he might look a little unsteady. "Are you certain you're okay?" he asked.

"Yeah, sure," Steve replied, but his voice still had a tremor in it. "I'm fine." He got back in the forklift and motored back to the line of shuttles.

Lucas jogged up a moment later. “What’s up, Vic? What’s all the racket?”

“One of the lifts tipped over,” Victus said, pointing to the driver, “he was in it.”

“Steve?” Lucas asked, instantly worried. “Was he hurt?”

“Yes, but I don’t know how badly.”

“Better not be too bad,” Lucas mused, worriedly. “We need him for the trip down.”

“He doesn’t need to be working right now,” Victus told his partner. “He should be resting.”

“Yeah,” Lucas scoffed, “we’re riding this flaming ball of shit down to our certain, fiery doom, and you expect him not to be working his ass off? That’s not going to happen.”

Victus could hardly argue the point, but did make a mental note to keep an eye on the man. Members of the first group had already started returning with their belongings, and it was past time to send the second group out to retrieve theirs.

***

Admitting people back into the shuttle bay proved to be more of a challenge than Bo had anticipated. He agreed with Victus having assigned someone to check people in and out, but was less certain how much he agreed that people were intelligent enough to police themselves on the way back in. He’d been standing next to the door as one young man tried to bring a load of cutlery from the main kitchen with him in his clothing bag. After Bo explained to him that having ten pounds of razor sharp knives flying around in the same cabin as sixty soft chunks of meat, one of which was himself, the man stopped objecting. Bo found a safe place to stow the knives, and made a point of giving everyone’s clothing bag a careful squeeze as they came back inside.

Predictably, some of the passengers waited until most of the heavy lifting was over before they offered to help.  Seeing that Victus was more than busy with his own tasks, Bo elected to handle these late-comers himself.  If they had a damned good reason to be late to the party, or even had the decency to look ashamed of themselves for being tardy, he let them in without comment.  As long as they approached without attitude, Bo found some way to let them in.  He denied Dan’s accusation of compassion, claiming that sending people away might have spurred a nasty riot that would have doomed them all.

The captain’s timeline for restarting the engines had firmed up, and Bo knew they now had less than six hours before they needed to start their exodus to the surface. He positioned the ship’s doctor at the door, watching as the women monitored people coming in and out of the shuttle bay.  As each person returned, the physician looked through their medications and pulled out anything that had a tranquilizing effect.  Most of the people weren’t happy to have their medicines impounded, but her expression was so fierce that nobody put up much of a fight.

Bo remembered the woman from Dan’s interaction with her, and he wasted no time on pleasantries. “Gupta,’ he said, to get her attention. “Pull the antidiarrheals, too. Everyone needs some of that before we go.”

“Already on it,” she snapped, peevishly.  “These people aren’t going to shit for a week. And pull the tea and coffee kettles off the break tables two hours out,” she commanded. “Water only!”  She paused for a moment and stared at him expectantly. “Don’t you have something to do?  You’re making people nervous. Go!”

Bo held his hands up in submission.  “I’m out.”  

***

Victus was amazed that their efforts were going so smoothly.  Just five hours in, four shuttles were ready to go and three more needed only seatbelts.  Dante had recruited dozens of people to help pick apart webbing from cargo nets and, surprisingly, deck chairs.  As fast as they could rip out the seams and dismantle them, he was fashioning them into rudimentary seatbelts using a sewing machine pilfered from the ship’s costume shop.  

He was about to gather the next group of volunteers to retrieve their belongings when he saw Steve go to one knee after pushing a heavy crate onto the conveyer. Running to his side, Vic took him by the arm and led him away from the center of activity. He found an unoccupied couch and gently pushed him onto it. It wasn’t much of a struggle.

"In case you haven't noticed," the wolf growled at him, stooping down to be at eye level, "we've got twelve ships and only that many pilots." He looked quickly around them, making sure their conversation could not be overheard. "If you keel over dead you're going to take sixty other people with you, along with who knows what material is in your shuttle, so for the love of god, quit arguing, and rest!"

"Okay, okay," Steve said, sheepishly. "I get it. I was only trying to help."

"I know," Victus said, gently, "You've got the hardest job of all of us right now - sitting still and just watching while everyone else is working their asses off. But on the way down, you're going to be the one who's working while we're all just sitting there, right?"

"Yeah, I guess," the man said, still sounding dissatisfied. "I hear what you're saying, but I don't have to like it."

Victus nodded. "Tell you what - lay down, and rest now, and after we touch down, if you don't feel like you did your part, we'll find some extra work for you to do, okay?"

"Fine, fine" the exhausted pilot said, waving him away. "Go do something useful."

***

"So what do you think?" Bo asked the Captain. "We've got eight of the shuttles clear so far, and we’ll have room for a couple of hundred more passengers, if you want to choose them.”

The captain sighed quietly. "If we’re going to attempt a restart, we must do so within the next ninety minutes or so..” He asked, “Will you have another shuttle cleared out by then?"

Bo considered for a moment then shook his head. “Maybe, but we can’t guarantee it. The hardest part is installing seats for them, and I don’t want to clear out a shuttle if I can’t fill it back up with people.”

The captain silently mulled over what few options were available to him. If the varius was correct in his estimates, almost a thousand people would still be onboard after the shuttles deployed, and their chances of survival would be thin. His engineers were working as fast as they could to restart at least one of the engines, but the cost of failure was high. They told him that there were three possible outcomes, all with equal odds. If their plan worked, they could easily guide the ship into a natural orbit, and fix the rest of the lifeboats at their leisure. If it didn’t, the ship would either continue its plunge into the atmosphere and burn up in a matter of days, or its engines would explode, and they would burn up that much sooner. Although one in three odds weren’t great, even that chance was better than no chance at all. "I'll randomize a list of passengers." he said, finally.

Bo moved closer to the captain, and lowered his voice. “Much as I hate to say it, don’t make your selection too random. Our chances are better with strong, healthy people. And if there are people in your crew who will make us stronger, send them along, too.” Bo hated playing God like this, tossing virtual dice for who lived and who died. He wouldn’t have cared who the Captain selected had it been only his life on the line, but now that he had Dan to consider, he wasn’t about to do anything that would lessen their chances. “Coordinate with the Kenzine, Victus, for a final count, and have the passengers check in with him for their seat assignment as soon as they get there.”

ask him

Dan nudged, from afar.

Bo sighed, wishing he had time to argue but knowing that he had no choice. “We heard there are prisoners being transported below decks. Is that true?”

One of the captain’s eyebrows went up. “Yes. They’re all still secured on deck two.”

Bo’s ears folded against his head in annoyance. “Make sure they’re in the selection pool, too. They deserve a chance to live as much as we do.” God damn it, he thought to himself, keeping the thought strictly to himself, One of these days, Dan’s kind heart was going to get them killed.

The captain nodded his understanding. "We will be as selective as we can with them. The rest of us will stay aboard, and try to restart the engines. If we succeed, we'll send help to you. If we don't... " his voice trailed off, but Bo knew what he was saying. Both men understood that the survivors might have to make do on the planet below them for a very long time before anyone located them and sent help.

Bo held his hand out to the captain, who took it and gripped it strongly. "Good luck, Captain. We need to be out of here in less than an hour, so get your men moving."

***

Lucas snarled at the commpad as if that might coerce it into behaving properly. Under normal circumstances an intermittent auxiliary fuel pump would cause this ship to be left behind without a second thought. It would be fixed on Earth, and brought back on the next ship coming this way. But the ship wasn’t going to be returning to Earth anytime soon, and fifty lives were depending on this shuttle having a working fuel system. Tolliver had written off the ship as useless, and had commanded that all the cargo be pulled from its container and moved to the other shuttles. Lucas didn’t agree.

A quick glance at the pump in question had convinced Lucas that it probably wasn’t the pump at all. “Those are the same ones they use in military ships,” he’d explained to Bo, “and they don’t go bad. Ever. It’s gotta be a software issue.” He’d convinced Bo to let him try to fix it so they’d have one more shuttle full of supplies and people, but that fix was proving elusive. His latest attempt involved copying the firmware from one of the other shuttle’s fuel pumps using one of the commpads from their cabin as a bridge, but that hadn’t worked as well as expected, and now the shuttle’s entire avionics system was down. If he didn’t manage to get the systems up and running again, not only would they be a shuttle down, but he’d have wasted an hour’s worth of time impotently fucking around with a broken system when there was real work to be done.

The thought of being so useless in a time of crisis made his ears burn with shame.

In a last ditch effort, Lucas pulled the ship’s batteries, disconnected the backup batteries, then disconnected the backups to the backups and shorted out the capacitors hidden deep within the computer itself. Only after he was convinced that every single stupid computer had lost every erg of power did he reconnect the batteries, and plug in the commpad. For once, fortune smiled on him. His pirated code loaded into the computer as he’d intended, and one by one the ship’s systems came back online, including, to his immense relief, the errant auxiliary fuel pump.

“Tolliver!” he shouted, out the shuttle’s open door, “Put all that shit back where you go it! We’ve got a functioning ship, here!”

“Three down and nine to go,” he muttered, as he clambered out of the cockpit. He ran pre-flight checks on each of the other ships but found only minor faults. He corrected what he could, made notes on what he couldn’t fix, and did as much as possible to make the ships ready for their pilots.

***

Bo’s stomach growled fiercely.  He’d been no stranger to deprivation in the military, but since then he’d grown unused to eating only four times a day.  Once back in the shuttle bay he headed straight for the table operated by a gaggle of older women who, though eager to help, had not been able to carry cargo. He was a little disappointed to see that although they had set up stations for sandwiches, snacks and drinks, everything on the table was sized for sapiens. The smaller sandwiches wouldn’t fill his belly properly until he ate a dozen of them, and by that point he’d have consumed enough of the soft, bland bread to choke a horse. On the other handpaw, given the demographics of the space liner, he wasn’t really surprised that he found the food nondescript. He couldn’t really complain that these hard-working women had provided well for 99% of the shipboard population, and he simply didn’t fit that mold.

Well aware of his tendency to stomp, Bo slowed his pace as he approached so as not to terrify the little old ladies. Extending his claws just far enough to give him grip, he picked up a beef sandwich and popped it in his mouth, whole. Tiny or not it was still a roast beef sandwich, and the flavor was good. “Very nice,” he complimented his crew as he surveyed their offerings, “You’ve got a good variety here.”

As expected, conversation had stopped at his approach. Several of the women looked at him goggle-eyed, but one retained her wits. “Those aren’t for you!” she said, sternly.

The absurdity of the reprimand caught Bo off guard, and he almost apologized. His innate instinct to defer to his elders clashed loudly with his sense of moral justice. When these refused to reconcile, he felt his head start tilting to one side in confusion.

The woman who had spoken hitched up her pants and squatted down. “Harriet, can you help me, please?” Another woman bent down to assist, but she was corrected as well. “Lift with your legs, dear.” When her posture was satisfactory they reached under the table and pulled out a covered container. Grunting with effort, they lifted a white storage tub and placed it on a small table to their right. “This one is for you,” she said, taking off the lid. “I noticed you were a bit larger, and thought you’d appreciate something more substantial.”

Bo’s eyes went wide and his mouth instantly began to water. Inside the tub sat an enormous, untouched roast beef from the main buffet’s carving station, and his delight could not have been more complete. “Oh my god, thank you!” he gushed, all but clapping his hands together in joy. “Thank you for thinking about me!” So often in his life, strangers had been standoffish if not actively rude to him. For someone who’d never met him to do something so selfless and kind was an uncommon pleasure.

“Thank you for getting us off this boat,” another of the women said. “If you hadn’t stepped up and taken the reins, we’d be stuck up here!”

While they were talking, Harriet had taken it upon herself to grab a large carving knife and section the roast in a grid, ending up with sixty four smaller chunks that Bo could pop in his mouth in a single bite. “We know you’re busy,” she said, wiping her hands on her tidy apron, “You can take it with you.”

Bo took a moment to introduce himself to the women and learn their names, then walked away with the plastic tote and two serving forks tucked securely under one arm. As he ate, he looked for the other oversized varius working in the landing bay. He found the ursine hard at work manning his sewing machine. “Dante!” he called, holding a fork out. “Take a minute for lunch.”

Dante turned and did a double-take at the large container of meat Bo was carrying. “You guys keep going,” he told his work crew. “I’ll be back in a minute.”  He took the fork Bo offered and stabbed one of the more rare chunks. His eyes closed in pleasure at the first bite, and he talked carefully as he chewed. “I wasn’t looking forward to finding the meat in the middle of all that bread on the lunch line,” he said, cutting his eyes to the serving table. “Thanks.’

“I should be thanking you for smoothing things out with Tolliver earlier,” Bo replied.

“Gods, that man is an asshole,” Dante shook his head. “Not much of a team player.”

“Dan says he was picking a fight when you showed up.”

“Dan. Is that his name?” Dante said, spearing another hunk of meat. “I think he could probably have handled it without me,” he said, chewing thoughtfully, “I just hate seeing someone get picked on, and four to one didn’t really seem fair.”

Bo chuckled ruefully. “Bad odds wouldn’t have stopped that man from getting in a fight, I think, if he thought he was right.”

“You know him?” Dante asked. “Seems like a good guy.”

Bo noticed the way the ursine was eyeing the bucket, so he handed it over. “I’ve had my fill. Yeah, he’s-”

Bo cut himself off when Lucas rounded the corner, his hackles stiffened with anxiety. “Have you seen Clay or his parents running around?”

At Bo’s confused look, he held his hand about a hundred and twenty centimeters off the ground. “About this tall, brown hair, glasses, sort of nerdy little kid?“

Bo looked at Dante to see if the man had any idea what Lucas was talking about, then shook his head. “No, I...wait!” he clicked his nails, the varius equivalent of a sapiens snapping their fingers, “Was that the family of three you and Victus were talking to last night after dinner, when Dan and I were late?”

“Yeah!” Lucas looked relieved. “That’s it! You seen ‘em?”

Now, Bo shook his head definitively. “Nope. They’re not in here.”

Lucas looked crushed.

“Hold on.” Bo pulled out his comm and punched in Victus’ number. “Vic. You got Clay’s family on your sheet?”

Victus didn’t have to take time to look. “No,” he said, immediately. “I’m sorry, but I don’t. But that doesn’t mean they didn’t survive the accident,” he added. “Maybe they got trapped in their cabin? Or one of them could be hurt.”

Lucas knew his mate was being kind. If the family had survived, the parents should have been in here setting an example for Clay instead of cowering in their room. He swallowed his anger and pulled the spare nylon wrist band out of his pocket. “I might not be able to save everyone on this goddamned boat, but I can save one person. Call the captain and find out what room they’re in, will you?”

Bo did as he was asked. With so few children on board, a search would not take long. As the captain looked up the information, Bo quietly handed Lucas his spare wrist band. “Two of them,” he mouthed.

Dante shrugged, pulled the spare band from his own pocket and handed it to Lucas, a man he hardly knew. “Might as well get them all in here,” he said. “I don’t have a companion, so I’m happy to help.”

“Eight sixteen.” Bo called out. “Go get them.”

Lucas immediately turned and ran for the door, but stopped after a few steps and came back. He wrapped his arms as far as possible around the ursine varius and gave him a quick, tight hug. “Thank you!”

Dante was surprised, but pleased.  When he regained his wits he smiled and patted Lucas on the back. “You’re welcome. Now, go get your friends!”