The Collapsing Empire (The Interdependency #1)
John Scalzi
To Tom Doherty, specifically, and everyone at Tor generally.
Thanks for believing in me.
Here’s to the next decade.
(At least.)
PROLOGUE
The mutineers would have gotten away with it, too, if it weren’t for the collapse of the Flow.
There is, of course, a legal, standard way within the guilds for a crew to mutiny, a protocol that has lasted for centuries. A senior crew member, preferably the executive officer/first mate, but possibly the chief engineer, chief technician, chief physician or, in genuinely bizarre circumstances, the owner’s representative, would offer the ship’s imperial adjunct a formal Bill of Grievances Pursuant to a Mutiny, consistent with guild protocol. The imperial adjunct would confer with the ship’s chief chaplain, calling for witnesses and testimony if required, and the two would, in no later than a month, either offer up with a Finding for Mutiny, or issue a Denial of Mutiny.
In the case of the former, the chief of security would formally remove and sequester the captain of the ship, who would face a formal guild hearing at the ship’s next destination, with penalties ranging from loss of ship, rank, and spacing privileges, to actual civil and criminal charges leading to a stint in prison, or, in the most severe cases, a death sentence. In the case of the latter, it was the complaining crew member who was bundled up by the chief of security for the formal guild hearing, etc., etc.
Obviously no one was going to do any of that.
Then there is the way that mutinies actually happen, involving weapons, violence, sudden death, the officer ranks turning on each other like animals, the crew trying to figure out what the fuck is going on. Then, depending on the way things go, the captain being murdered and tossed out into the void, and then everything backdated after the fact to make it look all legal and pretty, or the mutinous officers and crew being shown the other side of an airlock and the captain filing a Notice of Extralegal Mutiny, which cancels the mutineers’ survivors benefits and pensions, meaning their spouses and children starve and are blackballed from guild roles for two generations, because apparently mutiny is in the DNA, like eye color or a tendency toward irritable bowels.
On the bridge of the Tell Me Another One, Captain Arullos Gineos was busy dealing with an actual mutiny, not a paper one, and if she was going to be really honest about it to herself, things didn’t look like they were going very well for her at the moment. More to the point, once her XO and his crew burned their way through that bulkhead with their hull welders, Gineos and her bridge crew were on their way to being the victims of an “accident” to be named later.
“Weapons locker is empty,” Third Officer Nevin Bernus said, after checking. Gineos nodded at that; of course it was. The weapons locker was coded to open for exactly five people: the captain, the officers of the watch, and Security Chief Bremman. One of the five had removed the weapons on a previous watch; logic pointed to Executive Officer Ollie Inverr, who was currently cutting his way through the wall with his friends.
Gineos wasn’t entirely unarmed. She had a low-velocity dart pusher that she kept in her boot, a habit she picked up when she was running with the Rapid Dogs gang in the warrens of Grussgott as a teenager. Its single dart was meant for close-contact use; from a distance farther than a meter, all it would do is just piss off whoever got hit with it. Gineos was not under the illusion her dart pusher was going to save her or her command.
“Status,” Gineos said to Lika Dunn, who had been busy contacting the other officers of the Tell Me.
“Nothing from Engineering since Chief Fanochi called in,” Dunn said. Eva Fanochi was the one who had first raised the alarm about her department being taken over by armed crew led by the XO, which had caused Gineos to lock down the bridge and put the ship on alert. “Chief Technician Vossni isn’t answering. Neither is Dr. Jutmen. Bremman has been sealed into his quarters.” That would be Piter Bremman, Tell Me’s security chief.
“What about Egerti?” Lup Egerti was the owner’s representative, useless as the proverbial tits on a boar in most circumstances, but who probably would not have been in on a mutiny, as mutinies were bad for business.
“Nothing. Nothing from Slavin or Preen, either,” the latter two being the imperial adjunct and the chaplain. “Second Officer Niin also hasn’t checked in.”
“They’re almost through,” Bernus said, pointing to the bulkhead.
Gineos grimaced to herself. She was never happy with her XO, who had been pushed on to her by the guild with the endorsement of the House of Tois, the Tell Me’s owner. The second mate, Niin, had been Gineos’s choice for her second in command. She should have pushed harder. Next time.
Not that there’s going to be a next time now, Gineos thought. She was dead, the officers loyal to her would be dead if they weren’t already, and because the Tell Me was in the Flow and would be for another month, there was no way for her to launch the ship’s black box to tell anyone what had really happened. By the time the Tell Me exited the Flow at End, the mess would be cleaned up, evidence rearranged and stories gotten straight. Tragic what happened to Gineos, they would say. An explosion. So many dead. And she courageously went back to try to save more of her crew.
Or something like that.
The bulkhead had been burned through and a minute later a slab of metal was on the deck, and three crew members armed with bolt throwers stepped in, swiveling to track the bridge crew. None of the bridge crew moved; what was the point. One of the armed crew gave a “clear,” and Executive Officer Ollie Inverr ducked through the hole of the bulkhead and onto the deck. He spied Gineos and came over to her. One of the armed crew trained his bolt thrower on her specifically.