by Jon Evans
Maybe, just maybe, this would be the first meeting of the Colonial Government and City Council that would not consist of interminable disputes that led to endless discussions with no sign of action.
If not, there was always the window.
3
“Give me an update, Barlow. What’s the status of the wormhole comms?” barked Atticus. The tech was rummaging around in the back of a server cabinet.
“We just got back up while you were in your meeting, Sir,” Barlow called out from behind the cabinet, “I’m trying to get the redundant system up and running as well, so we have a bit more resilience.”
“Have you got a response from the Puzzle Palace yet? We need to know when the fleet will arrive or if they’ve even sent anything,” Atticus said, walking past the control console so he could at least see Barlow’s face.
“Yes, Sir,” Barlow said as he continued to connect fibres and slot in new parts, “the good news is that HQ requested naval support based on the Governor's initial report and the Admiralty has sent their closest patrol group. The bad news is that it will take just over seven days more for them to arrive, and it’s not a full squadron.”
“What’s the makeup of the patrol group?”
“One Nelson class frigate, an Albion support ship and a Cook survey ship, Sir. Under the command of Vice Admiral Staines.”
“That’s better than expected. I’ll need a full briefing on their manpower, armaments and capabilities as soon as possible. Now, we need to find out about our enemy. Send the DNA profiles that Wilson extracted from the clones. Tell them we need to know everything they can tell us about that line of blanks. We need to know which of the Lost Arks these people came from.”
Barlow looked up and saw the expression on the Captain’s face, he put down the component and his screwdriver and moved quickly to the command console. He began to tap away at the keyboard, locating the data block that Wilson had prepared and constructing a message to HQ. “Maximum priority, Sir?” he asked, rhetorically he supposed, but in the RMSC he needed the order.
“Correct. I’m going to prepare a follow-up message for General Bonneville as well. I think we’re going to need some bigger ships.”
4
Warden and Milton walked over to the dropship landing pad, although that was a grandiose name for it. Until recently, it had been a collection of tennis courts but half an hour with a las-cutter to remove the fencing and nets had put paid to that. Now the area played host to the three captured dropships.
“I hope he’s got some good news for us,” Milton said.
“Such as?”
“He found a weapon system on the dropships or a cupboard with some more blanks in it.”
Warden chuckled, either of those would be a big help.
“That wouldn’t hurt. I don’t think we’re going to have that kind of luck today though, do you?”
“No, but a girl can dream, right?”
“Whatever you say, Sergeant,” Warden said as he swiped his card to open the ramp into the cloning bay.
They found Corporal Wilson, tinkering with the controls of the cloning pods and dictating notes to a tablet. He looked up as they approached.
“Do we have permission to proceed, Sir?” he asked Warden.
“Yes, we have the go-ahead. We are to redeploy our losses from A Troop first. The Governor is sending us some medics to help with orientation. After that, we’ll deploy B Troop and then with any remaining clones will go to C Troop. The Captain is recalling them from training now.”
“Right you are, Sir. We’ve got a few specialist clones types here, any particular assignments you want me to make?”
“We need to give these clone types designations so we can match them to equivalent specialities. What do we have so far?”
“Ok, well, the flyers are obviously snipers. They’ve got clever adaptations in their legs, hips and backs to allow them to lie prone without discomfort. All our snipers have the appropriate qualifications, and as we didn’t lose any from A Troop, I’ve assigned the snipers from Troops B and C to these blanks. Here’s the list I’ve made of the clones we have available. There are six flyers, six of the officer types like the one we put Captain Atticus in, then there are thirty of what seems to be the default trooper clone and six of the big bastards that look like ogres,” Barlow said.
“Ogres, eh? That’s a good name for them, seems fitting to me, Lieutenant,” said Milton.
“Fine, Ogres they are. Anyone got a good idea for the flyers?”
“Batmen?” suggested Barlow, but he couldn’t keep the nerdy smirk from his face.
“Doesn’t sound quite right,” said Warden, shaking his head, “What about valkyries? Vultures? Harpies?” Warden mused.
Barlow and Milton both confirmed, “Harpies.”
“And these standard ones?”
“That one’s easy, they’re lizardmen. Scales all over them.”
“All, over them?” Milton enquired, one eyebrow raised. Barlow coughed.
Warden joined in, “Very, umm, diligent of you Barlow, not sure why we needed to know that but, thank you, I suppose?”
Barlow sighed. “I don’t suppose there’s any chance I won’t be hearing about this in the mess later?”
Warden slapped him on the back, “Don’t worry, Barlow, Marine X is bound to do something that will get the attention off you. Now, what are we calling the ones that they use for pilots?”
“Ruperts,” Barlow responded with malicious glee.
“Well, we don’t have time to be dainty, I suppose, even if we do have time to inspect the contents of the clones’ underpants,” Warden responded.
“Now, now boys,” said Milton, suppressing a grin, “shall we decide who is going to get which body type and start the deployments? We do have an alien fleet bearing down on us, after all.” She took the data slate from Barlow and flicked through the list of Marines and clones.
“First up is the company command. Who wants to pick a body type for Colour Sergeant Jenkins, hmm?” she asked sweetly, pausing to see if Warden would speak up, “No? Very brave. Shall I pick one, then?”
Both men nodded enthusiastically and with obvious relief and Sergeant Milton sighed. Grown men and Royal Marines, both battle-hardened and experienced, and for some reason, Stephanie Jenkins, who couldn’t be nicer if she tried, terrified them. Milton honestly didn’t know why the Colour Sergeant invoked such visceral reactions in the troops she wasn't intimidated at all.
Tutting to herself, she flagged the profile for deployment to a clone labelled Ogre and noted alongside the order ‘As agreed by Lt. Warden’.
“Right,” she said, hiding her grin, “let’s work through this list.”
5
Atticus sat in the empty conference suite and skimmed the information in the comms update that Barlow had forwarded to him. The gist of it was that they were getting some support from HQ but too little and, in Atticus’s opinion, too late. Not good.
The Captain sat back, slate on the table, and considered his options. There really was only one, now that the wormhole comm system was working again. He picked up his slate and queued a call for General Bonneville, marking it ‘urgent’. The General was a busy man, so this might take a while, and Atticus settled back for a long wait.
Six seconds later the call was answered, and Atticus was surprised to see the General’s face appear on the screen.
“Atticus?” he said uncertainly, leaning forward to peer into the camera, “Is that you?”
“Yes, Sir, I’m wearing an enemy clone.”
The General did not look convinced even though Atticus had used his personal cypher, so they danced the identification two-step, an age-old protocol to verify personality integrity in an age when downloads were everyday and facial recognition was no longer sufficient. Eventually, the General was satisfied, and Atticus was able to discuss the situation on New Bristol.
“It’s bad, Sir, we’re hard-pressed and short of pretty much everything,” said A
tticus, slightly despondent, “about the only things we have in sufficient quantities are tea and gin.”
Bonneville frowned and Atticus could feel his disapproval across the lightyears.
“Keep it together, Edward, this whole business rests on your shoulders.”
“Yes, Sir, sorry. It’s been a long day.”
“Never mind that. The researchers are making progress and should have more information for you soon. They’re preparing a package of information and will send it once they complete their analysis. Preliminary results suggest that this was indeed a lost ark ship.”
“Any idea which one?”
“No, not yet, but it wasn’t one of ours, that we do know. We’ve asked around, but nobody has admitted ownership yet. It’s only a matter of time, though. How do things look at your end?”
“Sticky, if I’m honest. I wasn’t joking about the tea. We’re pressing every able-bodied person into service, but really our only hope is the fleet. If they arrive in time, we should avoid complete body death and stand a good chance of making it through with the backups intact. If not…” He didn’t finish the sentence; there was no need.
“Quite,” said Bonneville, his face grim, “keep me informed when you can, Captain Atticus, but otherwise just get on with the job, and I’ll let you know if anything changes at this end.”
“Will do, thank you, Sir. Goodbye.”
6
The cavern was, well, cavernous. Wilson took a moment to look around and marvel at the enormous space. He’d been told by a rather excited geologist that it was a solutional cave of unusual size and formation, whatever the hell that meant. All Corporal Wilson cared about was that this part of the cave system was so deep underground it would be hard to assault from orbit. That, and the fact that the composition of the rocks would render their base near-impossible to detect.
To the horror of the geologists, the decision had been made to bring in the heaviest equipment available and grind smooth the floor of several of the larger, more useful chambers. Wilson could see the quandary, the cave was both impressive and strangely beautiful, but as important as it was, beauty today was a secondary concern.
He turned to his colleagues, “Enough gawking folks, they took plenty of records of this place before we even got here so you can review those at your leisure when New Bristol is safe. Right now, it’s time for us to crack on and make sure that happens.” The other tech specialists of A troop nodded and started moving.
Wilson turned to Eileen Robinson, one of the colony’s top civil engineers. Her normal role was to design efficient terraforming solutions and deploy the equipment that would give New Bristol the atmosphere and environment it needed to support a much larger population. Today, her talents were being put to more urgent use, namely smoothing out the floor, filling in the cracks and creating enough space for the machinery of day-to-day life to be installed and setup.
“What do you think? Can we get it all done?” asked Wilson.
She smiled at him, but her lips were a little too tightly pressed and her frown a little too prominent for the expression to come across as particularly confident. She sniffed then said, more confidently than Wilson had expected, “Absolutely. I don’t see any reason why not.”
And their needs were great. As well as utilities - power, plumbing, sewerage - they needed communications stations, housing, canteens and several big flat spaces for cloning bays. And they needed it all done and ready to be used before the enemy fleet pounded Ashton back into the barren rocks from which it had grown. A challenge for even the best-equipped team.
Perhaps the biggest headache was working out what they had to do first in this mammoth project. Fortunately for Wilson, that wasn't his job. He and the other Marine tech specialists had added their work items to the list of outstanding jobs, but they weren’t being asked to organise the project. The colonists of New Bristol were heavily biased toward science, engineering, project management, hydroponics, manufacturing and similar skills. You had to be useful if you wanted to join a frontier colony, so everyone had multiple skillsets. Except for the children, of course, but there really wasn't much use for children out here.
“Great. I was a little worried we might not have time for a hot wet,” he said, laughing. Then he saw her face. “We do, right?” he asked, not a little worried.
“There’s always time for tea, Corporal Wilson. We don’t have to be barbaric just because the colony isn’t very old. I think tea was the second plant the hydroponics folks started cultivating in earnest.”
“Really? What was the first? I’m betting potatoes. Biologists love growing potatoes. I think it’s the challenge.”
“Juniper, or so I’m told.”
Wilson grinned and nodded appreciatively.
“Good call. Who needs cabbage and mash anyway?”
“Agreed. Shall we look at the locations we’ve suggested for your cloning bays?” she asked. Wilson nodded, and they walked around the cave, Robinson looking at her data tablet to confirm the areas that were marked for the new bays to be constructed.
Two hundred colonists had been assigned to the task of preparing the ground and the platforms for the new bays then extracting the necessary pods and equipment from the dropships. As soon as the current batch of clones had been deployed, the teams would pull the first dropship cloning bay apart and reconstruct it in the caves. They would run a battery of tests on the first of the stolen enemy bays to confirm it was operating correctly; then the techs would start growing new clones.
If the first bay worked, the teams would dismantle the bays in the other two ships and re-install them elsewhere in the caverns. If there were problems, the backup plan was to use the bays where they were but bury the dropships under improvised shelters covered in rock to protect them from discovery. That would mean losing the dropships’ flight capabilities, though, and Captain Atticus wasn’t keen on having to fall back to that plan, not keen at all. Wilson had learned a long time ago that when the Captain wasn’t keen on something, it was a really good idea to find a better solution.
“What about weapon production?” asked Wilson.
“We’re trying to gather all the facilities from the outlying sites and anything that hasn’t already been destroyed in the city. Look, here are the numbers we’ve identified, and the units we can confirm were already destroyed. These tables here,” she said flicking at her data slate and zooming out to show the whole picture, “show the production queue we have and the dependencies.”
Wilson whistled, the list was huge, and almost every item was depending on several other things. The number of lines connecting the various components was so great that it was difficult to see where the first piece of work sat within the whole.
“The timescale looks wrong,” Wilson said, peering at a copy of the chart on his own slate, “it says it’ll take six more days to get phase one done and that doesn’t leave us enough time for the things we need in phase two.”
“It does look bad at the moment,” conceded Robinson, “I’ve asked the Governor to provide more people to help with production but we’re running out of bodies. We need to find more creative ways to increase productivity or we’ll have problems.”
“We’re going to have to cut back on something then,” said Wilson glumly, “there must be something we can do without.”
“Be my guest. We should get all the senior people to check the list and see if there’s anything they can do without but I haven’t found much in the way of improvements, yet. We need more people to get things done, or we need to cut tasks from the list, or we need to increase our manufacturing capabilities. Or some kind of genius idea. I don’t see any option but to prioritise everything we need, pare back the quantities as far as possible and make do with what we can produce in the short term.”
Wilson flicked around the list and chart on his slate and sat down on a flattened stalactite. Or stalagmite. Had to be one or the other, he thought. He scrolled up and down the list, looking for items he thou
ght they could do without.
Guns would be a sticking point, he knew. They’d inventoried every weapon in the colony, including the captured alien gear, and they knew how many colonists needed guns. They were already only aiming to produce enough weapons for the colonists who were being conscripted for the defence of New Bristol. They could cut back further, but that would leave no room for losses or damage.
The surveillance drones were another issue. Captain Atticus and Lieutenant Warden were convinced they had to have a large number of drones to replace the satellite and sensor grid networks. They didn’t have time to re-build the sensor grid and launching satellites wasn’t going to go unnoticed, so drones were their only option for gathering the information required to organise an effective defence. The large military surveillance drones weren’t simple to produce, and they competed directly with weapons and munitions for manufacturing time.
If they cut the number of drones, they’d be able to produce more guns. Maybe he should ask Captain Atticus if he’d rather have fewer armed conscripts or a smaller area under surveillance by drone. Wilson sighed and slipped the slate back into his jacket pocket. Then a thought occurred to him.
“We need more drones, but they’re eating into our production time and stretching our timelines for other equipment. Do you know how many drones the colony has?”
“Yes, of course. Look, here. These are our monitoring, weather and delivery drones. There aren’t that many, I’m afraid, and their capabilities are a lot more specialised than yours. You can probably repurpose some of them, though, and link them into your network.”
“Yeah, but what about the civilian drones? There are no numbers here.”