Colonists - Leader, part 2
EXTRA-SOLAR SPACE
January 3, 2184 AD
Charon XLR Brevity, Hyper Point Actor
The lukewarm water in the hands of Ying Oum was doing nothing to assuage her headache. Being in cryogenic stasis for six years had taken a toll on her physical and mental state. Her focus was blurred, her thoughts foggy, and part of her higher functions could only acknowledge that she was barely above the category of “simply existing” for now.
Flight Captain Aegeus turned in his seat to look at her, “Advisor? Do you want to see the star?”
“Hm?” she grunted, blinking her eyes.
“We’re coming up on Nile’s star, Advisor. I thought you might like to see it as we rotate to bring her in line,” the Greek man said.
Slowly she came to standing upright to meander closer to the front of the cockpit module. The titanium shields had been withdrawn back from the glass & steel mixture of the front viewport. Far in the distance just off to her right was a faint white star pulsing away in the pitch emptiness of space.
She had to admit it was a sight to behold. She’d seen Earth from orbit once - that was far grander than this little pinprick of light. Yet there was something holy and glorious about seeing the star that would sustain the people of Nile for the foreseeable future. How unforeseeable is that future? Years? Decades? A century? … Eternity? She inwardly questioned. Now was no time for that.
As if to remind her of this fact the heavy dull thud of boots being pulled to the deck by the artificial gravity plate caused her to turn around. The ever-driven and persistent Major Scott Decatur stood in the hatch leading to the cramped bridge module. “Major,” she waved him over cordially, “The star of Nile is far forward of us, if you’d care to look.”
He nodded – a favorite simple gesture of his. Decatur walked over to politely and unobtrusively peek over her shoulder, for just a moment, then stood upright again, “Looks lovely, ma’am.”
Ying smiled at him; part of her mused that they shouldn’t be so formal with each other – they were founding a colony together, after all. Still she also thought they should be formal simply to keep their positions separate from each other. He was military, she was civilian. Ying did not want to give the impression that this man had any say in the administrative decision making of this colony. Equally, she did not fancy the idea of her leadership being perceived as one of a military dictator. The people of this new colony were a varied people with a greatly differing array of ideologies. Perhaps not so varied as the ones of a century or more ago on Earth, before the Final War; but that didn’t make her job easy.
To his credit, Major Decatur didn’t seem to have any plans on taking over her position. When his duties would allow it, before leaving Earth, he had been nothing short of helpful in the extreme. There was, understandably, some friction between the Major and Ilarion but nothing that prevented either of them from doing their jobs.
Speaking of… I wonder where my security advisor is… she pondered. Deciding to voice her question she sat again and turned to Decatur, “Any idea on the status of Mr. Chuvnik?”
“He’s suffering from an advanced case of cryo-sickness, ma’am. That’s why I came up – to give a status report on the primary crew revival process,” he said in a purely military-business tone.
“Please, sit,” she said and waived for him to sit beside her on the two-seat crash couch at the cockpit module’s starboard side.
He did so and began talking, “About one third of the primary infrastructure crew is suffering from advanced cryo-sickness. Doctor Krug suspects that they’ll need to stay under watch by the medics for 48 hours, at most. He says most will be up within the day.”
“Good. How about your people?”
“I’ve only woken the pilots at this time. But us infantry are used to cryo-sleep, so we bounce back in a few hours,” he explained.
She rubbed her head, “I wish I could say the same. I’ve been awake for twelve hours now and no amount of water has helped clear my head.”
“Coffee, ma’am – that’ll cure you right up.”
She made a small shake of her head, “Can’t stand that foul liquid.”
“That foulness,” Decatur said pointing over his shoulder at the passageway leading to the passenger module behind the cockpit, “will cure this foulness.” He moved his hand so that his index was now pointing at her forehead.
“Maybe you’re right. How long until we start bringing in the general populace out of cryo?” Ying asked.
“Another eight hours and we’ll have the second berth life support setup, the second wave will be after that. I’ll bring a dozen or so of my men out ahead of them to help the doctors and assist with their transition to from sleep to wake,” he stated.
“Good,” she stated. For the part of her that questioned his integrity, the Major - once again - was proving he wanted to do nothing but help. You shouldn’t be so cynical; the leaders wouldn’t have chosen an incompetent to assist in this grand undertaking.
The initial landing party for the new colony would be just over 300 people. Over the course of several weeks – as the colony habitats were setup and the needed infrastructure was put in place – the remaining 700 would be brought planet side. Ying was happy with this because it allowed her to acclimate to governing a larger body over a period of time instead of plopping down a thousand souls to immediately oversee.
Ying looked at him and noticed he was wearing full olive drab attire. Save his boots, which were polished black. His pants looked like the cargo variety and his shirt clung greedily to every muscle on his torso. She looked down at herself who was wearing the unflattering loose patient scrubs from when she was changed at the medical room. “I suppose I had better be more presentable for the people as they wake up,” she mused out loud.
Decatur nodded, “I would suggest so, ma’am.”
Marvin Brown’s cryo-capsule light slowly warmed to life to provide a soft mildly blue glow. It wasn’t blasting his eyes with harshness which was of small comfort. The AWDI soldier’s head banged around like a he’d been on a week long bender with tequila that had lasted a few nights too many. Marvin moved his head left and right to try and get a sense of his body’s movement. Sometimes coming out of cryo took longer than others, it was purely dependent on one’s body to compensate for being near death.
The capsule’s hatch popped from “above” his head. The table he was lying on slid smoothly out into the main passenger hold where Major Decatur and one of the medics was looking over him. His vision was a bit blurry yet he could identify the man who was his commanding officer.
“Private Brown?” the medic asked, “Can you respond to me?”
“Yea I’m good,” he whispered as razer blades attacked his throat. I always forget that sensation.
Decatur handed him a container of water. The medic began speaking again, “You’ve been asleep for nearly six years. You will be tired, you will be thirsty and dehydrated. Because of the extended sleep you won’t be recovering quite as quickly as you have in past operations.”
Marvin nodded emphatically as he kept downing the precious water. His eyesight was already starting to improve, which seemed about normal compared to the last two times he’d done cryo-sleep.
Major Decatur brought himself eye level with the private in the zero-G room, “When you’re comfortable moving get down to medical and do the once-over. Then get to berth two for gear up. We’ll be helping the civvies recover from cryo and get as comfortable as possible as we make approach to planet.”
“Yes, sir,” Marvin croaked out. With that Decatur patted his shoulder before pushing off the wall to float over to another medic who was attending someone else. Marvin slowly got his head together enough with the protests of a stiff body to get free-floating and bounce his way around to the minimal gravity passage that lead to the medical bay.
His physical went fine: no abnormalities. He did note that several other passengers weren’t quite so lucky in their recovery. One fellow in particular seemed especially ill. A series of tubes and medical equipment was keeping him monitored.
Eventually Marvin was cleared and he made his way down to berth two. Inside a dozen or so other Infantry were sitting on benches that had been bolted to the deck. They were in various stages of late recovery. Marvin found his pack on the ground beside Corporal Dario Ortega. Marvin made small talk with the man while he changed out of the cryo-sleep scrubs into his more comfortable military-issued skivvies.
Marvin looked at Ortega, “Hey when you came out of cryo was your… was your junk hard enough to break a cinderblock?” Marvin made a slight gesture towards his crotch.
Ortega busted out laughing, “Are you shittin’ me, private?” Marvin shrugged bashfully. Ortega just laughed harder. Marvin wasn’t sure if the corporal was laughing at the absurdity of his question or it was the man’s way of dealing with nervousness. Then the corporal spoke up a bit so everyone could hear, “Hey everyone, Marv here had a six-year morning wood.”
Raucous laughter ensued from the berth. Marvin ducked his head into his pack to get his jacket. As he did so a voice from his right, one of the infantry females, spoke up still recovering from her own laughter, “If it makes you feel better Marv, my nipples were hard enough to cut diamond when I woke up.” The speaker was Private Kristoff.
Marvin did smile at that thought. Not just because it was funny but because, he realized, he hadn’t seen a woman in more than half a decade. Even Private Kristoff, who was no winner of any beauty pageant but wasn’t unattractive either, caused a small stirring of lust in his mind.
“Hey, that’s the most action you’ve got since before cryo,” Ortega threw a verbal barb at her.
She caught the insult as she was putting on her shirt, and shot it back at him, “Don’t be mad that deep space turns me on more than your ugly ass does, Ortega.” She pointed her right hand like a pistol at Ortega, sticking her tongue out at him with her shirt still half off.
A chorus of “Oooooh” traveled around the room as the gathered Infantry laughed back at Ortega. Marvin smiled, glad to see that no matter where he was – even if these volunteers from the MI were almost complete strangers to him – he was with friends. The Mobile Infantry had been a family ever since it had been pulled together from the traditions of the histories of Earth’s armies. Except here they didn’t turn their weapons on each other, it was purely to protect and advance the will of God’s people as a whole. At least that was how Marvin felt.
As he reached down to strap his boots in place one of the pilots came into the berth in her flight suit took a seat at the bench across from Kristoff. In a typical operation you wouldn’t see Flight Officers, or any officers, mingle with enlisted personnel. With only 120 military, all of whom had some part of their families with them, they just mingled in a common group. And all of the soldiers here – pilot or infantry, officer or enlisted – had all seen combat. They all knew that when you were in the shit there was no such thing as ranks or ratings; only grunts getting a job done.
Flight Lieutenant Alisha Ledger, whose call sign was “Pharaoh,” pulled a smoke from her outer flight pocket. The term “smoke” was a bit of a misnomer because there was no smoke or vapor that actually emitted from the electronic cigarette. In fact the device didn’t have much in common with its 150-year old ancestor from the early 21st century’s e-cig craze. Modern tech, from some of the nicer colonies anyway, had managed to create a device that was usable for a number of reasons. Sometimes it only emitted a flavored inhalant, some were breath fresheners and others could be used for teeth whitening – or any combination of a dozen uses.
From Pharaoh’s pearly white teeth Marvin suspected she was using it as a teeth whitener. But given how his own mouth felt upon waking up she may have been adding some freshener to it as well because the faintest hint of peppermint wafted in after her.
“The Major says we’re a week out from this place,” she stated nonchalantly. “Supposed to be a real beauty.”
“If the briefing images were accurate this place is supposedly on-par with Eden,” Ortega commented.
“The star looks like Earth from way out here. As much as a white speck can look like Sol,” Pharaoh replied.
Marvin made a motion with his head towards her, “So Lieutenant, how much action have you seen? Where do you come from?”
“UNAP province of Oregon. What’s left of it anyway; the coastal regions are still irradiated. I've been pilot to two evac operations, and seventeen combat insertions in Kami space,” she stated with cool confidence. She paused for a moment, “I guess I pissed someone off at some point though, because I got relegated to transporting animals.” Pharaoh rolled the ecig in her left index and thumb. Marvin smirked catching her friendly jest.
One of the other privates in the room made a grunt of uncertainty. When she picked up on the private’s vapid stare she rolled her eyes, “That means I’m here now – ferrying you unevolved apes, Watkins.”
“Oh!” the meaty-handed soldier said. “’Unevolved,’ that’s funny.” Pharaoh shook her head as she took another toke off of her cig.
About that moment the Major came through the hatch, “Pharaoh: you’re up.” And he just as deftly moved back out to wherever Commanding Officers disappeared to.
“Alright then,” Pharaoh said putting away her smoke, “I’ve got to go taxi the engineers to inspect the hull. See you apes in a few hours. Hopefully some of the civvies are more entertaining than you.”
EXTRA-SOLAR SPACE
January 9, 2184 AD
Charon XLR Brevity, ETA 26 hours to Nile
The verdant green and azure world of Nile was visible far into the distance now but much closer than it had been before. The Brevity had deployed her solar shields to power their external engine systems on final approach to Nile. From a distance it looked like a silver pen was gliding to the planet on four giant golden square sails.
Ying inspected the weather reports with one of the meteorologists for the planet. Many years prior Earth Command had deployed a series of orbitals to monitor the atmosphere of the world to help the colonists find a suitable landing area. There was also a geologist in the small cabin that was just behind the command capsule, studying the tectonic readouts from the large world.
Ying pointed to a place in the northern hemisphere, “How about here? It looks like relatively flat land. And on a yearly basis there are only a few months of storms that seem to dissipate just a ways to the east of this region.” She pointed at a few locations on the holographic representations.
“I like it. But let’s come a little further west, so that we’re on higher ground. For all we know these regions may flood from the storms. I’d rather not see our colony go swimming out to sea,” Kyle Brady, the meteorologist stated.
The man was well educated and had experience studying atmospheric patterns on two worlds before volunteering for this mission. Ying had come to respect him as a consummate professional and wise expert on such matters.
“Looks solid to me,” the geologist, Sean Alford stated before noisily sipping more of his coffee. “Literally, that is. Solid rock straight through for at least a kilometer if the orbitals’ scans are accurate.”
In the same respect that Kyle Bradly was the professional businessman scientist, Sean Alford was more like the disheveled genius savant. Even now, having been released from the medical bay over 24 hours ago, the man was still wearing his cryo scrubs. He didn’t care in the least for social standards or expectations. That being said he was, quite possibly, humanity’s foremost expert on exo-geological matters. The man had attained doctorates in Geology, Geophysics and Geological Engineering. Doctor Sean Alford was exceptional in every sense so long as he was locked away in a lab, doing his work.
Kyle Bradly asked a question, “Are you sure? The southern hemisphere looks to have a great series of landing areas too; comparatively few storms and looks temperate.”
More loud slurping of the coffee, “Yes but the terrain is terrible; a lot of tectonics spikes in that area so I’m not convinced the ground beneath is properly settled. We might get down there and find a series of sinkholes. And, given how large the constant cliff drop-offs are,” Alford went on pointing at the southern hemisphere “we could be looking at a giant underground cavern. These swaths of land are all just recessed in by hundreds of meters in some areas. That kind of thing might cause earthquakes or the whole colony might be sitting on a plate that one day just collapses.”
Ying looked at Alford a moment longer then at the display. Indeed, there were some odd geological patterns at work here. Some were hectic and scattered while others looked oddly patterned. Both regions seemed to have good weather and a varied ecology. She didn’t want to roll the dice on a seismically unstable region, “Then we shall plant our feet down here on these northern plains.”
It was a relief to have finally said it. Ying had been arguing with the two men, or mediating their arguments, for the last couple of days. Even when Alford couldn’t stand from his cryo sickness he was still studying the geological reports in the medical bed. Bradly had visited to discuss the planet’s conditions at various stages. These visits were when the arguments had started. Ilarion had to escort Kyle out of the med bay since Alford was still immobile. Even though it had been Alford’s lack of social graces and empathy had had started the near-physical spat.
Hopefully that was behind them, however. There would be no opportunity for them to be separate from each other out here on the fringes of the known galaxy. Ying finished her meeting with the two individuals and decided to see Major Decatur. Ilarion was outside the small room. As was his typical custom he escorted her, be it walking in the artificial gravity sections or floating in those that were still zero-G.
The Major was in the passage just outside of berth two and was dismissing one of his pilots. “Major,” she said in greeting as she approached.
“Advisor Oum, Mr. Chuvnik,” he nodded in response.
“We have decided on a landing spot for our colony. I wanted to request your pilots inspect the location before we actually made planet fall,” she stated as she handed him a tablet with the relevant information.
Decatur inspected it briefly then nodded, “Very well. When we are three hours out I’ll have a dropship prepped and find a suitable escort for you.”
"Very go-" she started to turn then stopped. “Wait, for me? I wasn’t planning to be a part of any scouting mission.”
Decatur drummed his hands on the back of the tablet, “I would encourage you to reconsider. If we – that is the Infantry – go in first it will look like we’re the ones in charge. You, as the civilian leadership, should come along and show that you’re leading. This isn’t a military operation. The military contingent is here to support the people by protecting them and helping as needed.”
“You would be reckless in this,” Ilarion stated flatly, looking at Ying. “If there is some failure beyond your control then you could die. What happens then? There would be no leadership. The people would be doomed.”
Decatur fired back, “There’s already a lot outside of her control. If she had died in one of the cryo capsules we’d be in the same situation. Except she didn’t.”
Ilarion made a motion to interject but the Major pressed his point, “Furthermore she has to go down eventually. No one can stay on the ship, it doesn’t go back to Earth. It would be better to have her get a feel for what’s happening on the planet before we get there so that the general populace won’t put the Infantry on a pedestal.”
“This is unacceptable! The Advisor will be fully capable of making a report herself once your personnel report back,” Ilarion stated.
“Once I report back,” Decatur stated. “I’m going too. The Infantry borrowed a saying from our warrior forefathers: leaders are the first in and the last out.”
Ying put up her hand to gesture she’d heard quite enough from both of them, “The Major’s points are salient. I will come, if for no other reason than to show I am not afraid to tread where the people must go.”
Ilarion looked frustrated by the statement but made no attempt to argue, “Then I shall come to. I am your escort after all.”
Ying looked from the large Ukranian to Decatur, asking an unspoken question of permission. The military leader nodded with some hesitation and said, “If you feel it would be best, Advisor, then feel free to bring Mr. Chuvnik along.”
“Very good. What time do I need to be here?”
“Meet me at Pod One six hours before we hit orbit, I’ll have my pilots go over some basics of the dropship safety protocols with you,” Decatur said.
“Understood.” Ying walked over to the hatch for berth two and peered inside its open door. All kinds of people milled about talking, playing electronic games or using some other form of entertainment to pass the time.
“How are their spirits?” Ying asked Decatur since he’d been down here more than she had.
“Good considering the four we lost in transit,” he replied standing behind her but not close enough to illicit Ilarion’s scorn.
“That was unfortunate news, but it was accounted for within the plan limits. It wasn’t the half-percent expected by the operations guide lines,” Ying mused aloud.
“No it wasn’t. Let’s hope the rest of the wake ups go this smoothly.”
Ying agreed but noticed none of the Infantry or pilots were in the large storage-room-turned-living-space. “Where are your personnel?”
“Either helping with whatever they can or checking the hardware in the pods,” he replied.
“I see. They aren’t much for sitting still, I take it?”
“No ma’am. You let a bunch of combat grunts get complacent and it festers bad behavior. Keep them working so you get good little soldiers and get some real work done. That's better for everyone,” he explained.
“I look forward to seeing their progress tomorrow,” she turned and bowed slightly to Decatur, “Until tomorrow then.”
“Until tomorrow Advisor Oum,” he offered a slight bow back before nodding at Ilarion.