Colony One (22 page)

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John craned his neck back and looked skyward. He suspected that they must have devised some other way of determining that there were still survivors. A satellite, perhaps. He thought their cover was sufficient, but one of the Runner missions must have been spotted.

He refocused his attention on Patrick as the last of the bandages were being wrapped around his forearm. As they lugged the copilot back to the container used to punish disobedience, he observed the look of betrayal and bewilderment on the man’s face. He resolved to get the truth one way or another.

Until then, he had other things to deal with. He called out – “Savi?”

A woman with mocha skin, eyes to match and short, choppy raven hair stepped into the stone circle, “Yes sir?”

“Bring me the members of raiding party. I want a full brief on what happened.”

Savi nodded once, turned and took up a light jog towards the medical container where she knew many of the men were recovering.

John rubbed his forehead. He had given the order to capture the arriving ship hastily, worried that it – a huge resource and potential escape method – would be lost to the auto-launch sequence. They did not have time to do necessary recon, and so he blamed himself for the failure. The only saving grace was that the ship appeared to remain, giving them more time to plan another attack.

22

Day 14 on Colony Alpha

Alexa stood on the top edge of the cargo bay ramp and squinted into the dying light of day – the red color of which she was still getting used to. Dozens of men and women cast long shadows across the rocky terrain as they practiced various drills led by Marcus. In less than two weeks, an impromptu military group had been formed – comprised of volunteers and recruits hand selected and persuaded by Marcus himself. They practiced hand-to-hand combat, and worked with parts of the ship were wrenched away from their places as normal every-day-objects and fashioned into weapons – mostly clubs or spears.

She watched with a measure of wonder at how quickly a civilized group of people could revert to the ways of their ancestors. She supposed they had never been that civilized – replace spears with guns and they were still carrying out long-standing traditions back on Earth.

Alexa had not won the vote, but neither had Marcus. Ndale, of all people, had been elected to lead the five-thousand survivors of Colony One. Alexa couldn’t even be mad about it. One of his first actions as a leader was to set Marcus to the task of organizing defenses. He had given Alexa the task to head up research efforts – things like getting power back to the ship and vetting out survival plans were now her responsibilities. Javier and his group were given control over ship resources.

Ndale’s levelheadedness shocked everyone. Even Javier seemed to soften after the first couple days when things failed to devolve into a spiraling-out-of-control mess.

Alexa found out in the following weeks that Ndale had spent much of the preceding evening buying votes and seeding the idea of picking a leader. The man was far more multi-faceted than Alexa had pegged him, but she couldn’t shake the feeling of apprehension. She didn’t think Ndale did anything unless it benefited him directly, and two weeks in, she still couldn’t figure out his end game.

The woman pulled her attention away from Marcus’ ranks and paced back to the container that she had been sifting through before she got distracted. Jia needed tin, lead or copper to continue her work repairing the cockpit electronics. There were a line of containers against the cargo bay wall that were being used for recyclables and so far they had only had limited success in finding what they needed. Almost nothing had been made with lead since a hundred years ago, but Jia had explained that lead would be the best material to use if they wanted the job done quickly.

Alexa stuffed a few empty cans and other metals into a canvas bag that had been used for rice – all the rice bags were empty these days. She tied the bag closed and slung it over her shoulder to make the long walk back to the cockpit.

They had set up a cleaning station in the cockpit to sanitize any of the materials Jia deemed as good enough, as well as a caldron-like apparatus to melt them down. The cockpit was still a mess, despite Jia spending almost all of her waking time working on restoring it. Alexa had told her to focus on the ships computers first – things like communication, navigation, and sensors were more important than ship-wide power in her mind. They were surviving without it, but finding a better place to settle – or better yet, a way to communicate with Earth – were paramount goals.

Halfway to her destination, Ndale stepped into her path from an adjoining corridor. He regarded her with the wide smile of a politician, “Ms. Dilyn, how are you?”

“Kind of busy,” she responded but resisted the urge to step around him and continue on her way.

“Sure,” he turned and gestured for her to continue, “I’ll walk with you.”

She hesitated for only a moment, her look dubious at his cordialness. She had the pleasure of being in the same section as Ndale during their voyage to Colony Alpha and if she had learned anything, it was that he was not a cordial kind of person. She began to walk, and he kept pace beside her.

“As I’m sure you’re aware of, our supplies are low,” Ndale began. “The sooner we can find a good place to plant crops, the better.”

“I am aware of that,” Alexa answered – she, after all, felt the rumbling in her stomach just as much as the next passenger. Without the Runners, the ship’s computers were the only hope of finding a better plot of land. Sending out survey teams would be a last resort and with a whole host of people untrained in the ways of survival, she considered the idea asking for trouble.

“You’ve been in the service,” he continued. “I’m sure you know what happens when people get a little too hungry.” He spoke in a neutral tone, but Alexa could read the subtext.

“And they’ll blame me and not you, I’m sure.” Alexa said plainly.

He shrugged helplessly, “It is your responsibility now.”

Alexa stopped abruptly and turned to the man, “Why don’t you start rationing out your little store of goodies if you’re so concerned?”

He laughed, “I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Yea, I’m not surprised.” She snipped. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m actually making an effort to save our asses.” She added and pivoted to continue to the cockpit at faster pace. He let her go – he’d made his meaning clear enough anyhow.

“I just don’t understand how one tiny person was able to do this much damage,” Luca was saying as Alexa climbed into the cockpit.

“She knew the ship inside and out,” Jia guessed. “Though I can’t tell by what she ripped out what she was trying to do.”

Alexa nodded at Luca who waved at her when she entered. “I have all the faith in the world that you’ll be able to piece it together,” she told Jia.

Jia laughed humorlessly, “I don’t know why. I’m a scientist, not an engineer.”

“You’re still our best hope.”

Jia looked up from the part she was inspecting with a dry expression.

“More stuff!” Luca said, either oblivious or trying to lighten the mood. He grabbed the bag from Alexa and started sorting through it.

“I had a little visit from Ndale on the way here,” Alexa admitted as she shifted to sit on the floor near the back wall of the cockpit – out of the way. “He felt it necessary to remind me how important eating is,” she recounted with a sardonic expression.

“I’m not worried,” Luca said and both Jia and Alexa snapped their attention to him. They wore similar looks of incredulity. “What?” He shrugged. “I’m no scientist, but I figure, the air is breathable here – that means oxygen, plants make oxygen, therefore there have to be plants around here somewhere.”

The pair stared at him for an extra beat.

“That actually makes some kind of sense,” Alexa conceded.

“If we assume that plants are the sole source of oxygen in the universe, which they are not.”Jia informed.

Luca blinked at her for several moments. “Well, now I’m a little more worried,” he said blankly.

Jia shrugged, blew off the tiny circuit board that was in her hands and slid it into an open slot near the center console.

As soon as it clicked into place, the cockpit’s display screens began to blink into life.

Alexa was on her feet in seconds. “What did you do?” She wanted to know.

“I was finally able to restore the cockpit computers’ graphics card. It will work on auxiliary power.”

They were all standing around the center console, waiting for the image to load.

The words ‘WEIGHT THRESHOLD SATISFIED, AUTOMATED LAUNCH SEQUENCE INITATED’ scrolled across the screen, followed by the coordinates to Earth.

Alexa felt panic grip her chest, “What’s it doing?” The words spilled out of her mouth.

“Don’t worry,” Jia assured. “Without main power, it can’t initiate anything. This is just the last message before the Captain pulled the plug.” The three stared at the message as it looped.

Luca was the first to say what they were all thinking, “The ship was going to strand us here.” The words came out in a stunned whisper. “The Captain stopped it.”

Jia’s worst fears were finally, at long last, confirmed. All that time ago, she had found the code that was written for this very task. She had put her life on the line to try and expose it and had failed miserably. This was her punishment. She stared at the screen unblinking, unthinking.

“This… this could be a good thing.” Alexa said as if she was emerging from a dream.

“How could this possibly be a good thing?” Luca wanted to know

“The ship can fly itself back to Earth, we just have to get power restored. This implies there is a fuel reserve we didn’t know about.”

Luca pointed at the console, “It says we have to be under a certain weight threshold for that.”

“Then we find a way to override it,” Alexa countered.

“There’s probably only enough fuel to support a certain weight ratio,” Jia said numbly. The ‘probably’ in her statement was an embellishment. She knew it for a fact. 

“Then we’ll strip all non-essentials off the ship until we meet the threshold,” Alexa said. “Don’t you see? We could go home!” She said, feeling the first ping of optimism in a long time.

“They don’t want us,” Luca said the words and Alexa felt a crushing weight land on her chest at the way he said it. Luca’s spirit was broken with the revelation of the scrolling message. Of all people, Alexa expected Luca to break last.

“Our food reserves would never last the journey.” Jia said with a kind of clinical tone. She was coping by forcing herself into the role of objective scientist.

Alexa shook her head, rubbed her face and paced backward a few steps in an attempt to gather her thoughts. “What about sensors? Do we have those?”

“Yes, but without main power we won’t be able to read anything further than 50 meters away.” Jia answered and turned to face Alexa, “I am going to have to disable the auto-launch sequence.”

“Why?”

“If we do get main power back, and enough people are off the ship, it will re-initiate.”

“But we can still use the program if we need to?” Alexa asked, clinging to the idea. Jia nodded but did not say what she was thinking. “Okay,” she nodded. “Do it.”

Jia turned and began to tap the center console. The message stopped its scroll and the main operating system flashed back to normal.

“Is there anything we can do to help you work on main power?” Alexa asked.

Jia shook her head.

“Who is going to tell the others?” Luca wanted to know.

That was something Alexa didn’t want to think about. This kind of news was approximately the last thing people needed. After a moment, the perfect solution presented itself; “I’ll tell Ndale and he can figure it out.”

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Patrick scratched at the beard that was beginning to fill in along his jaw line. He might have demanded a razor if he thought his captors could offer one. From the few times he had been allowed to see their camp, it was obvious how primitive it was. He had gathered through overhearing snippets of conversation and the little bit of information he could tease out from his visits from John that the Colony Three survivors had been stranded for about two months.

He still wasn’t able to completely reconcile that thought – that Colony Three even existed. He supposed that it wasn’t all that shocking if one prescribed to the other bit of self-evident truth – that this was not a colonization mission, rather a population-culling measure.

The thought made his skin itch with a combination of unease and anger. Almost reflexively, Patrick’s hand brushed his forearm where bandages were still tightly wrapped. His bio-stamp was gone, being quickly replaced with scar tissue.

John visited from time to time – in hopes Patrick would finally be broken enough to admit his ties to the government and World Corp. Instead, Patrick riddled the man with questions. Chief among them was if the Colony One ship had stranded her passengers.

The answer was surprisingly, no. It was one of the reasons John was so suspicious of Patrick and the other Colony One passengers. They still had all the protection and resources the ship afforded.

Patrick had challenged John’s assumptions – why would they have so many people on a mission to eradicate any survivors of other missions? It didn’t make sense. John met his questions with paranoid theories about population control and explained how many of Colony One’s passengers had already been killed and a mass grave installed nearby the ship. The news was disturbing to Patrick – his entire experience on Colony Alpha could fall under that category.

The door to the container opened, a harsh column of light flooding in. Patrick shielded his eyes until someone stepped into the gap. “Meal time,” someone said and threw a supplement packet at Patrick.

Ready for the treatment, Patrick caught the pack easily.

“Hey,” Patrick said as the man turned to leave. The figure paused, but didn’t speak. “I want to talk to John,” Patrick explained.

“Hmph,” the man made a noncommittal noise and slammed the door without further words.

Patrick frowned and slid his fingers over the edges of the supplement pack. When he found the plastic edges that peeled apart, he pulled the two halves away and extracted the syringe. Most days his only sustenance was the supplements – occasionally he would be given something that resembled in texture and taste to paste. He ate it, hoping it would help him to survive, and assuming that his captors lived off the same.