Ark 7: The Sariel

Chapter 4: The Needs Of The Many

"It does not take much strength to do things, but it requires a great deal of strength to decide what to do."
― Elbert Hubbard

We should have thought further ahead, why didn't we bring more ships, or had The Sariel come along with us. We had been in the crisis center for an hour and a half, looking for an answer to our current dilemma we were wasting time and had little to no time to figure out what we were going to do.

"Look, there has to be another option! You're asking us to kill millions of people!" Las started raising his voice out of desperation.

"There is another way, outright genocide. Which is what's going to happen if you guys don't make up your minds, we either save as many as we can, or leave them all to die" the Captain of the Arcadian responded.

"We can't just make this decision for people! It's wrong!" Las was getting red.

"We have to, either that or you all came this way for nothing" Jõrge replied.

"ITS WRONG!" Las yelled at everyone in the room, he had tears starting to form in his eyes.

"We have to do something, or the whole Ark dies" the Captain answered.

"Uh...guys?" I squeezed into the group.

"Jax, please tell me you have a better idea" Las looked at me pleadingly.

"I....I have an option that could save more of the Arcadians inhabitants, we can call for help from other Arks, there are two others nearby" I replied nervously.

"Even if they get here we can't fit everyone aboard the shuttles, we would still have to be selective on who lives and who dies" the Captain replied with almost no emotion.

"I can't believe this! You guys are talking about playing at being a god! Man isn't supposed to choose who lives and who dies!" Las said in desperation.

"Jax, call for assistance we need to work fast or everyone's dead" the Captain said as he handed me a commlink. I went off to call in a request for backup, two Arks launched their shuttles to help evacuate.

"Shuttles inbound, we can only evacuate about 400,000 or so people" I said as I read the responses from the Arks.

"I can't do this......that's still around 3 million people are going to die...." Las looked defeated.

"I'm sorry man, we did our best" I looked at him with pity, I knew his thoughts were on his wife and the child she bore.

"Ok, well we need to begin selecting who leaves and who stays" the Captain looked at us.

"To start, all higher rank Security Core members, anyone who knows the ins and outs of the mechanical side of the Arks, and as many children as we can" Troy said.

"We need some other older men and women as well, those that can keep the culture preserved aboard this Ark" Jõrge said as he started looking through the list of people on the ship. Las looked like he was about to break down in tears.

"Las?" I looked over at him.

"What?" He looked back at me, his eyes red.

"Las, remember, we did what we could....I'm sorry we couldn't do more" I tried to help him.

"The needs of the many, will far outweigh those of the few. Remember that, it'll help you later on" Troy looked over at us.