Download the Book - Islam and Science Fiction

of his plan had misfired. Then a nasty grin spread across his face as
he formulated a solution. He punched up engineering on a video
console, and set the intercom to full duplex. He verified that the girl
was alone, and saw that she was distraught.
"Listen, you little whore, you take your orders from me now,"
Shahid growled. "You will re-enable the c-prime systems
immediately. If you do not, you will be killing your friends. You will
kill one of them every ten minutes until you do. Every one that dies
will be because of you."
The angry and accusing edge to his voice told the crew he
actually believed the last statement.
The commander spoke up. "Don't be hasty."
"Shut up."
"I just wanted you to know that handle she's toying with can blow
the ship to bits, that's all. Once you kill all of us, she'll have no choice
but to use it." It wasn't true, but the terrorists didn't have to know that.
Annette was, however, removing the locks on the trigger used to blow
the fuel control assembly, which could strand the ship for months, at
the very least. Raj hoped Annette had noticed the hang-tight order
and would hold off a while, since wrecking the engines might be
about as suicidal as destroying the ship.
"Shut up."
"If she doesn't panic and do it anyway."
"You have some particular desire to be first, cabin boy?" Shahid
signaled Cyrus to make the commander the center of his attention. It
was not out of the question that the commander might attempt to
signal all of the hostages to rush them simultaneously, and they
probably would not be able to kill more than half before being
overwhelmed. Shahid wanted the commander to know he was the
first target.
Raj shrugged and was quiet. A shadow of doubt drifted over
Shahid's face, as he considered his options. Shahid had never known
hostages to be particularly brave or inclined to suicidal
counterattacks, and doubted this lot was any different, but he had to
be sure. Few methods for quelling such feelings were as effective as
executing a few of their friends.
Shahid had been taught that hostages never really believe you
will execute someone until they see you do it. Thus, the first is just an
example. The second execution, however, they understand
completely. He would have liked to have killed the commander, but
the commander would be one of the people with the command codes
needed to run the main engines. The first can be anyone, but for the
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