Aaron Carver finally gets loose.
He shoves Okwembu out of the way. She collides with one of the seats, almost falling on top of its occupant, a man with tangled black hair and an acne-speckled face. Okwembu ignores him. She lifts herself into a seat, grabbing the straps, concentrating on buckling herself in.
Carver hammers at the control pad, but the door doesn’t open. Of course it doesn’t. Okwembu made sure to twist the rotary to the Eject position. It shuts the pod down in preparation for launch, to ensure that the door has a good pressure seal. It can’t be opened again. Behind it, the inner airlock doors will be closing.
She hopes that Riley Hale has the good sense to get out while she still can.
Mikhail Yeremin is staring at her, and she doesn’t like the expression on his face. She turns away, ignoring him, busying herself with her straps. She’s still looking down at her buckle, and so isn’t prepared when Aaron Carver slams her back against the seat. His face is inches from hers.
“Open it up,” he says. When she doesn’t respond, he barks the words in her face. “Do you hear me? Open it up.”
“You should sit down, Mr Carver,” Okwembu says.
He rips her straps away, lifts her up, throws her out of her seat. She hits the floor, wincing in pain as her right hand takes the impact, bending at the wrist.
Carver grabs the back of her jacket, dragging her to the door. Mikhail is almost out of his seat, huge fingers fighting with the catch on his chest. The other Earthers watch without saying a word.
Okwembu attempts to spin away, trying to get her arms out of her jacket. Carver sees the move, stops her, pulling her up so her face is level with the lock. “Open the door,” he yells, right in her ear.
When she doesn’t move, he wrenches at the rotary switch alongside it, trying to get it back to Doors Manual. Okwembu wants to tell him not to bother. The most he’ll be able to do is tear the switch itself off the control panel.
“We need to launch now,” shouts the pilot from the front of the craft. “Everybody better strap in.”
“We’re not leaving,” Carver says. “Not until—”
Mikhail grabs him around the shoulders, shoving him backwards into his seat. Carver tries to get back up, but Mikhail won’t let him, holding him in place as he clicks the catch shut.
“You don’t strap in, you die,” he says.
Okwembu takes the gap. She staggers back to her seat, heart pounding, strapping herself in. She looks up to see that Carver has stopped fighting. He’s gripping his straps tight, his fingers bloodless. Mikhail is making his way back to his own seat, grabbing at the straps.
“She’d better make it,” Carver says, looking Okwembu right in the eyes. “Or I’m going to end you.”
In the moment before the pilot launches the pod, she wonders about Carver. She shouldn’t be surprised at his actions. He doesn’t have any sort of vision or understanding of the wider consequences of what’s happening here. What he has are mechanical skills, and Prakesh Kumar, sitting next to him, has agricultural ones. The moment she saw the make-up of this pod, she knew it was the one she needed to be in.
The people inside it–Carver, Kumar, the other Earthers–all have skills that can be used on the planet below. Hale doesn’t. She can run, and she can fight, and as far as Okwembu is concerned neither one is particularly useful.
It’s more than that, she thinks. You wanted to do it. You wanted to put her in her place.
Okwembu closes her eyes, and the pod explodes away from the ship.