Lacuna: The Ashes of Humanity (6 page)

The first seemed half-full. It couldn't be emptied. It was too large to move far without a team, but a metal pole, a set of thick leather gloves, a box of matches and yellow jerrycan stood nearby. She had seen similar things in basic.

Yellow cans were for diesel fuel. Disposal of improvised latrines was best accomplished by burning, a horrible but necessary job usually employed as a punishment. But this one had not been burnt, and the reason was clear: no marines were nearby, and the civilians wouldn't know what to do.

So it was up to her. Liao folded her jacket and hung it over the cloth, pulled on the gloves, then—with a pained grunt and a strain of her arms—pulled the broken turret out from under the cloth. She flipped the cam lever release, lifted the can, and poured fluid in.

The smell of the latrine and the diesel hit her at the same time. It smelt like Satan cooking breakfast; a sulphurous, thick, synthetic smell mixed with the stench of fecal matter. It made her gag.

She kept at it, though. This was something practical she could do.

Liao poured in six or seven gallons then stopped. Her arms ached from the effort, and she moved away to give herself some fresh air.

She had a moment to rest, but it wasn't to last. Cheung, still wearing her suit and helmet, strode up to her. Liao recognised her from her rank markings.

"Captain," she said, "a word?"

"Certainly. Go ahead."

Cheung popped her helmet off with a hiss, shaking out her short hair. "Second wave of Broadswords should be done entering atmo' in three or four minutes. You can hear the sonic booms if you try."

"Good," said Liao. "I'm sure that comes as a huge relief to those still aboard the Pillars. They're cramped enough as it is."

"Well, that's true enough, but I wanted to talk to you about what to do when they get here." Cheung narrowed her eyes curiously. "What are you doing out here, Captain?"

"Burning a turret full of shit."

"That was what I'm here to do. Are you sure you don't want me to handle that?"

"I started it," said Liao, "might as well finish it."

"Not going to fight you on that one." Cheung turned to the
Beijing
, its superstructure rising above the woods. "But yes. We didn't exactly hand-pick these people. We don't know what skills they have, and even if we did, we have no system of law and order. No organisation. We're not a bunch of young, fit colonists with skills and dreams of a new life in a strange land—we're just tens of thousands of people, plucked literally off the street and taken to an alien world. And every ship landed in a different part of the world. We're going to have problems in the future if we don't sort out some ground rules right now, like what legal system we have or whose political system we're going to adopt. It's not enough to just toss them off the ship and expect everyone to get along. I expect our citizens will be happy with military government, obviously, but the Americans will want elected civilian leadership. That's something we can't give them right now."

"To be honest," Liao said, "I'm more concerned with how we're going to feed them all. Where they're going to defecate. Shelter. Qadan mentioned that storms can sometimes hit these islands, fast and powerful."

The memory of her Toralii friend, roasted to a crisp by the
Beijing
's missiles, stirred emotion in her, but she forced it away. She had no time to worry about the mistakes of the past when the mistakes of her present were so clearly staring her in the face.

So many doubts, all swept under the rug in the face of the destruction of Earth. She didn't have time to worry about that now. People needed her.

The memories were too much. She beckoned Cheung to follow her back to the latrine. She did so but wisely clipped on her helmet. Liao was envious.

"Food is going to be a problem," said Cheung, her voice thin and muffled, "but the
Beijing
's stores will last for now. I'd be more concerned about fresh water. It's going to take a lot of work to get things habitable here. We don't have much."

Liao struck a match, flicking it into the latrine. The diesel ignited, flames licking at the edge of the turret, and the smell intensified. "Things are going to be difficult. Some of these civilians have never done a day's hard labour in their lives, but for the moment, that's what we need. I think our short-term priorities should be water, shelter, tools, food. In that order." Liao reached for the metal pole and began stirring, keeping her head away from the smell. She could barely talk. "Thoughts?"

Cheung had her answer ready immediately. "The nearby river is our best bet for water. We chose this site for a reason, after all. Do our washing, urination and defecation downstream, drink from upstream. Limit water use to drinking, cooking and bathing, along with washing clothes. Hygiene is a problem. These latrines are only a temporary measure. If we have a disease outbreak here, it's going to be catastrophic. We can't afford to lose anyone, especially to something we can prevent."

"Agreed. Sounds like you have more to say, though."

"We have at least thirty-two bodies that require immediate burial, not including any we might discover in the ship's hull. Not everyone was physically capable of being trapped in the ship for hours, and plenty of civilians were injured in the evacuation. Some may not make it. Speaking of corpses, you know as well as I do that even the nights here are humid and hot, Captain. If those bodies remain above ground, they are going to be a huge vector for disease very soon. Fortunately, our morgue is empty, but... well, that's a small mercy. A standard grave is, say, two metres deep, two point five long and one and a half wide. In this soil, I reckon—ballpark figures—two strong, able-bodied people digging is going to take a good five hours. If we up that to four, we could probably get it done in three which, given the climate here, we're going to have to do."

"Okay," said Liao, stirring in the other direction as the flames consumed the fuel and a dark black cloud wafted out over the tree line. "Go on."

"We're going to need all the bodies buried within twenty-four hours, and digging a grave is hard work. I estimate that each team will only be able to dig two before requiring rest. That's six hours straight... no breaks. It's no picnic. So we're going to need sixteen teams of four people, which means I need sixty-four strong, committed people on grave detail for today."

The wind changed, and Liao stepped to a different side to avoid the cloud. Even so, her arms were stained black by the smoke. "I hate to sound morbid, but can't we burn the bodies?"

"Cremation is an alternative, but only mass-cremation. It's too much work otherwise. In any event, to fully burn a humanoid body takes one tonne of wood or similar material, which we just don't have on hand. We could harvest from the local woodlands, of course, but that's more labour, and it's delaying the cremation significantly. Further, the civilians might object. Keeping the remains separated will be an issue, which obviously is a measure of last resort. And I mean… that
smells
, Captain. Pretty awful."

"Worse than this?"

"Different, but probably the same."

"Great." Problem after problem. "Any other options?"

"Fortunately, yes. I was thinking we use the Broadsword to shuttle any and all corpses into the ocean and give them a burial at sea."

"Works for me. We can put up gravestone markers at a later date." Liao withdrew the pole, letting the fire burn, and stepped away. Cheung remained. "There's more, isn't there?"

"Yes. I'm afraid it gets worse, Captain."

"How do you know all this stuff?"

Cheung smiled. "I almost enlisted in logistics, but I found weapons more fun."

"Useful." Liao tried wiping some of the stains off her arms, to no avail. "Please, continue."

"Right. The bodies aren't our only sanitation problems. As my mother told me as a kid… everybody poops. We're going to need more latrines, and we don't have any more broken turrets. We should dig trenches downhill from the landing site and away from our water supplies. A standard latrine is one and a half metres deep and half a metre wide, assuming we can build up the sides with rocks, logs, and evacuated soil. We can lash some logs together, cut a hole in the middle for a cover, and use some of the detached bulkheads to make walls for odour control, disease minimisation and—heaven forbid—some privacy. Don't count on much of that, however.

"The whole process is crude but effective. Each one will have a lifespan of about a month before having to get filled in, unless we use some of the thermite stockpile to—ahem—eliminate the waste. Vapours will be a problem, but if we do them all together we can just declare it a no-go for a couple of hours. Terrible job, though."

Liao held up her blackened arms. "Yeah. I know."

"I hope you won't be doing all of them, Captain." Cheung's expression was unreadable under her helmet, but her tone softened. "You don't have to do this to yourself."

"I chose to do it." Liao grew uncomfortable with the topic. "So, how many latrines will we need?"

"We'll need one per fifteen females and one per twenty males, so make it a hundred to be safe. Fortunately, the ones on the ship are continuing to function, and the turrets are good for as long as we have a disposal method, but these pit lavatories will have to be done sooner rather than later. I'm sure everyone's running on adrenaline right now, but the civilians and crew are going to want to poop pretty soon. Although we can all control that urge for a bit to give us some breathing room, the ship's facilities just won't cope with the numbers we have.

"Let's just say within twelve hours, we're going to need at least half that number. Building a latrine as I described, which is basically the most basic thing I could come up with, is probably going to take a team of four about five hours. That's two people digging, two people scavenging and preparing the materials. That means in order to get the twenty-five latrines built, I'm going to need almost 2,000 man hours. Accordingly, I'm going to need a further 250 people on poop duty alone, pulling eight hour shifts. So even with the burial at sea option, which is going to take a Broadsword and, say, fifteen people, we now have 265 people working on sanitation alone for the next twenty-four hours.

"Now... remember we have our people working hard, physical labour in this heat. They're going to need at least double standard water rations. That means in order to prevent dehydration, we're going to need to draw 2,500 litres of water per day, every single day. We can handle that for now, but it'll be hard work. In the future, as our needs grow and more civilians arrive, we're going to need infrastructure. Pipes. Pumps. Aqueducts."

Liao had no idea how they would build any of these things. "Sounds like Rowe is going to have her hands full. The Engineering bays have plenty of raw resources to work with, yes?"

"Last I checked," said Cheung, "but I haven't quite finished yet." She gave an apologetic smile. "'It gets worse' seems to be my mantra for the day, Captain. I'm sorry, but... nightfall is pretty much on top of us. The air's pretty nice right now, but the insects—as I'm sure you're very aware—will be a problem. The Telvan had some kind of buzzer that kept them away, but without that, they'll be out in force. We can hide in the ship, though, at least for a night. Won't be comfortable, though."

"Okay," said Liao. "I'm all for roughing it in the ship for tonight. Can't we cool it down using the internal climate control?"

"Easily. The ship's designed to cool itself, and with an atmosphere around it, there should be no problems at all once power's diverted to life support from other systems like weapons and hull charge. Temperature's not the problem. It's mainly the space, sanitation, and personal space. The ship doesn't have enough lavatories and showers to handle that population, but for the short term, we're just going to have to manage. We'll be okay as long as too many bugs don't get in."

"Remind me to seal my quarters."

"I was thinking of sealing all the bulkheads, actually. Furthermore, we're also going to need food, but I'm going to be honest, that can wait. Our stored rations will hold out long enough, and most people not doing hard labour can go couple of days without food with no serious long-term effects. There's going to be a lot of complaining, and morale will drop something fearsome, but even reconstituted stuff is better than nothing. Still, sooner or later we're going to be living off the land. We'll need hunter-gatherer parties, and I'll be straight with you, I have absolutely no idea what we're going to find out here. As a rough guess, we'll need fifty people doing full-time hunter-gatherer work to feed this motley crew, day in and day out. They'll also need double water rations, of course. That number may be way too many or wildly insufficient. I don't know enough about this part of the planet's ecology to make anything other than wild guesses."

"Wild guesses are all we have, Lieutenant," said Liao, moving forward and giving the turret another stir, "so keep 'em coming."

Cheung nodded. "Well, following on from the above, we also don't know what kind of
predators
are here. I recommend at least some marines stay on security for the main camp, and armaments for anyone travelling outside. The marines can work as de facto law enforcement, too. There'll have to be night watches, at least for the first week or so, which will be hard to staff because of the number of people we'll have working labour during that time. They're going to sleep like the dead by the evening, and that means those who aren't have to pick up the slack. We'll need at least fifty people to cover the corners and edges of the landing site. Essentially, this is our whole marine complement."

"That sounds simple." Liao tried to remember as much of this as she could as the last of the diesel burned away. "You've got this written down, right?"

"Yes, Captain," said Cheung. "So. Food, water, shelter, safety, sanitation. Last thing. We have exactly 101 crewmembers who are reporting serious injuries, including eleven criticals, and we just don't have the medical staff to deal with that. I know everyone's pitching in, but we just came out of a battle, Captain. We're going to have more casualties in the future, because we don't have the supplies and the skills to treat half a shipload of injuries."