Migrant Thrive: Thrive Space Colony Adventures Box Set Books 7-9

by Ginger Booth

  Tikki Cook was handing out little disposable snack kits of freshly fried protein donuts with tomato sauce to fortify the hunters before they left the safety of the ship. The housekeeper labored for days stocking up meals for their current party of nearly 60. Snack wrappers began to flutter down from the catwalk. The next few kits fell with a splatter of tomato sauce, knocked off Tikki’s serving tray as hunter after hunter shoved the slender geisha. His partner Kaol, ostensibly security, entered a shouting match with one of the guilty.

  “Where is Zan?” Darren inquired uneasily. He repeated the question to the computer, who reported the ship’s first mate was in the shuttle awaiting takeoff.

  Cope opened a ship-wide channel. He played the nerve-wracking two-tone damage control alert at full blast to preface his remarks. “This is John Copeland, President of Thrive Spaceways. Everyone in the hold, rego sit down and shut up! Only ship’s crew should be moving at this time. Hadron, assign one person to clean up after all the idiots who tossed their trash into our nice clean hold. People, you are guests in this home! Quit acting like pigs!

  “Here’s how this’ll go, when the crew is ready. You will be called, to a specific airlock, to work on a specific team. Maybe four at a time. Temporary crew who behave like pigs stay behind indoors and pick up after their piggy brethren. So shut up and wait! Cope out.”

  Not surprisingly, the captain commed him immediately to ask why he felt the need.

  “Zoo,” he replied shortly. “We’re not ready to exit. What’s the process here? How do I ask for three strong backs to come do my bidding. Comm Hadron?” Normally, the first mate officiated as circus master. All an engineer had to do was confer with the housekeeper on which crew deserved to polish toilets today.

  Sass confessed, “I was just hashing that out with Hadron. Look, the first team out the door will be Hadron, Kassidy, and two hunters with the sonic boundary kit. Followed rapidly by another five warm bodies to plant the stakes.”

  “Cap, until we’ve got bio-lock and latrines out there, they’re stranded. Until we’ve got power out there, we can’t erect the force field.”

  “Understood, I know,” Sass placated him. “And why am I speaking to you instead of my chief engineer? Was it because you vented to the whole ship instead of calling me first?”

  “Point. Sorry. Patching Darren in now.”

  “So nine exit to claim the planet. Pure theater,” Sass resumed. “Once Hadron is out the door, I suggest Teke and Kaol take over crowd control. So you two can focus on your objectives. I’d do it myself, but.”

  Cope scrubbed his forehead, irked. “No, cap needs to stay above the fray.” Or at least that’s how Sass did it. His husband Ben was as likely to wade in and knock heads, and laugh out loud at the guilty. But the engineer never took discipline cases. The work was too finicky. “But cap, can we trust these guys? Cuz it matters.”

  “I will relay your concerns to Hadron,” the captain conceded. “How many can you use right now?”

  A few more conversations transpired, while further donuts and sauce dropped from on high. But Teke frog-marched a hunter the first few steps down the staircase to clean. Hadron’s honor troop stood orderly, and patient while Cope’s son checked their suits for pressure perfection. Darren staged the first crate of sonics in the door airlock for them, while Cope pulled his decontamination and water purification parts to the trap door lock.

  He turned around to face Floki’s emu beak. “Please, chief, I’d like to work the bio-lock team.”

  You like the boyfriend. Ben’s voice intoned the mantra in his head. Or the girlfriend. Or the duck. No one asked for your opinion, Cope. And he was right. Would Cope have listened if someone told him his first wife Delilah was bad news? In fact they had, and he hadn’t, and she’d nearly killed his firstborn one day in the phosphate mines. But Ben was right.

  Did Nico need to make that bird face so rego expressive? Floki gazed up at him, hopeful and diffident as one could hope from a model crewman. Crew bird. Robot.

  “Ah… There’s a lot of water involved.”

  “I’m waterproof! I need to fly camera drones. But I excel at multi-tasking. And I never forget instructions.”

  Cope sighed, and cast his eyes around the hold. Darren grinned at him. They’d compared kids last night over beer. Darren’s were older than Cope himself, his grandkids overlapping Cope’s brood. Based on his comments, the elder engineer aligned philosophically with Ben. Let your offspring screw up and be weird, no skin off your nose.

  “Darren, need a hand? Floki wants to go outside.”

  “Is that a good idea?” Darren returned affably. “I don’t think we have a way to scrub your innards, crewman. Sorry. I know it’s exciting. We’ll figure something out soon.”

  “Oh.” The emu head and bill drooped, despondent. “I wanted my film to include a hero.”

  Cope took pity on him. “Let’s draw some camera dots. Stick them on everyone’s helmet. Starting with Hadron.” He led the bird to one of the supply closets, and handed him two boxes of the things, four dozen dots. “And you could interview Tikka Gena, and the rest of the science team. I’m setting up shower and latrines. But Eli’s team is learning about the planet. Everybody wants to be a hero on a day like today.”

  Including an AI with a brain the size of a planet, stuck masquerading as junior crew bird.

  “And if I forget anything, I’ll be glad you’re on the inside to pass it out to me. Thank you, crewman.”

  Floki departed somewhat mollified, eager to tag his quarry before they escaped out the airlocks. Hadron and the hunters recoiled from him, but Kassidy smoothed things over.

  “Thanks for being decent to him, Dad.” Cope’s head whiplashed to see Nico behind him. “I know you’re not into AI’s.”

  “Is that right?” Back on Sanctuary, Cope recognized the AIs as people while Nico and the Sank Scholar Hugo still treated them as some dodgy bit of code to debug. But Nico was only 15 then. He certainly loved AIs more now. Hopefully in a platonic sense. “Enough. We got work.”

  Hadron’s team disembarked, while father and son finished stacking their supplies on a grav lifter. Then Cope opened the trap’s inner door, and sealed the lock chamber with a highly flammable liner. Then he lowered the grav lifter into the chamber. They all clambered on, Nico and the smallest hunter lying flat on top. Then Cope sealed them off from the ship, and opened the door to Sylvan.

  They were still 6 meters off the ground – 20 feet to his Denali team. Gravity here was 0.93 g, a welcome reprieve from the 1.1 g of Denali, but similar to the 1 g standard used throughout Thrive Spaceways. In any case, they descended into the center of a cruciform tunnel formed by the gaps between the container array.

  “Gang, when we touch down, we stay on the crates. Hadron hasn’t set the sonics yet.”

  “We’ll guard from the outside!” The mouthy one pointed along the short cross-corridor, only a couple meters to escape the boxes.

  “I said you’ll stay right here,” Cope countermanded him. “Remember we talked about this. Your job is to obey orders. The better you obey, the quicker you get latrines, food, and a prayer of sleep tonight. Now look straight up!”

  Cope hadn’t closed the outer lock door yet. “See that liner? We burn it to kill contaminants, a quick 300 degrees. Uh, 600 Fahrenheit or something. Then rinse with liquid oxygen. No living thing we know of can survive both. Neither do space suits or human bodies, so we can’t use the same tricks to get back in. Our defense is simply grav up. On my team, those blasters stay in their holsters. At all times. Got it?”

  The hunters grudgingly assented. Cope closed the trap lock and sterilized the chamber via his tablet. Then they peered out the short apertures to enjoy the view for a short while until Hadron announced the inner perimeter established.

  “Dad, let’s walk the perimeter first,” Nico suggested. “See what there is to see. Then we can focus.”

  “Good idea,” Cope conceded. They dropped the stuff by the door airlock. Then
Cope allowed the hunters to surround him and Nico while they paced the first-line defenses. This sonic line, only a 20 meter radius from the ship, would not remain. It just gave them a starter fence while Hadron’s team erected the next at a 100 meter radius.

  Which probably wasn’t a bad distance for the latrines. So the engineer asked them to keep an eye out for a likely spot. But the muddy squelch of their space boots wasn’t giving him confidence. No way did he and Darren dump this much water down here. And even if they did, he needed water to drain.

  “Hadron? Cope. Is it this wet everywhere?”

  “I’m afraid so. We’re hitting a rock shelf about four feet down, under the soil. That’s why the trees are shorter here.”

  The trees looked plenty tall to Copeland, towering 10 meters high, larger than any trees in his home town on Mahina. Granted, Schuyler’s trees were younger than he was.

  “My point, Hadron. Do you like this mud pit for your settlement? Cuz I don’t. Maybe ask Zan to scout you some higher ground.”

  Hadron argued. Sass argued. Tarana and Aurora on Sardine were called to referee. Hours passed as Hadron gradually conceded that farther from the river was an acceptable price for less mud. A new site was selected, then burned, and the fire put out, and the gear moved. The personnel rode the distance outside the ships, holding onto grab bars and webbing and carrying the gear along.

  Cope’s own mud expertise was gained solely on Denali. So why didn’t Hadron have a clue? And who chose the bog spot, anyway?

  5

  Sass rapped the dining table the next morning in the galley to call the briefing to order. Tikki rose to clear their breakfast things, but she waved him back to his seat. “I imagine the colonists are eager to get started this morning. But first, what have we learned so far?”

  Despite yesterday’s first beach-head running six hours overtime, her crew got a good night’s sleep. Sylvan featured a nearly 27-hour day, with 16 hours of daylight in late spring. The ones who worked hard outside slept til breakfast and skipped Sass’s workout regime. Today’s workout Sass convened on the overhead, because they still had 40 house guests paving every surface, dangling in hammocks, and queuing for the heads.

  Tikka Gena reported first. “The high oxygen is a problem, confirmed. Any exposed skin ages rapidly. The skin offers some protection. But the blood still gets hyper-oxygenated, and that carries to bone, muscle, brain, everything. Pressure suits will be mandatory at all times. Sank-style uniforms and face plates aren’t enough protection.”

  “And our guinea pig?” Sass asked.

  Tikka frowned in puzzlement. “The volunteer? She slept overnight in the auto-doc. Thanks to Floki and Nico for getting a pressure suit out to her. If she’d waited for the bio-lock, the damage might have been irreversible. This way, no real harm done.”

  “But she’s taken some lasting effect?” Sass pressed.

  Tikka shrugged. “Mild brain damage, maybe a year off her life span. Acceptable. Today I hope to focus on the organic components in the air. Mm, call it pollen and aromatics.”

  Sass wondered what the Denali physiologist would consider unacceptable damage.

  “You’ve found pollen?” Eli asked. “I’d like to see that!”

  “I don’t know its biology,” Tikka conceded. “I’ll send you the data.”

  Sass leaned back thoughtfully. “Do we want that on the ship? Or do you need a lab outside to study biologics?”

  “The latter, clearly,” Eli agreed. “Yeah, working from med bay…”

  Tikka nodded primly. “My samples remain sealed at all times. The outsides of the containers were thoroughly cleaned in Cope’s bio-lock.”

  Darren watched his air filters like a hawk, especially with life support straining under the overpopulation. “The bio-lock is working a treat, and the airlock sterilization measures as well. Deeply impressed, Cope.”

  Sass smiled and nodded respect to both of them. “The engineers are doing stellar work. But I talk to them plenty. Kassidy, Floki, how’s public relations and posterity?”

  Kassidy glowed with enthusiasm. “The Aloha system will adore it! I think I can get about an hour of the landing footage after editing. And Cope helped Floki.”

  Sass looked brightly to the emu in encouragement.

  “I have technically excellent footage,” the AI said. “But I’m unsure of the narrative nature of film. I underestimated Kassidy’s role as storyteller.”

  “Charisma is powerful,” Sass agreed sympathetically.

  “Edit me a five-minute sample,” Kassidy invited. “We’ll go over it.”

  Sass mouthed thank you to the star, and turned to Eli. “Summary?”

  “Zelda confirmed atmospheric conditions.” He exchanged a nod with the young woman. “Starting to calibrate our weather model. Please be advised, we cannot predict the weather yet. We imagine it’s dominated by the ice caps. But we have no experience with glaciers. Sass, Earth had frozen polar regions and Ice Ages, right?”

  “They’d melted by the time I left Earth,” Sass reminded him. “And I think their weather impact was sort of localized over the poles by prevailing winds. Something about a polar vortex? But that collapsed. And I don’t think Earth’s ice was ever as extensive as Sylvan’s. Sorry, Eli. I just lived there. Not a scientist.”

  “Understood. Anyway, you see the problem. Big ice, big effect, but we don’t know how to model it. A site farther from the ice might be more prudent.”

  “Not our colony to decide,” Sass reminded them all.

  “No,” Eli agreed. “Moving on. Porter and I are intrigued by yesterday’s samples. Today we stake out our section of dirt for outdoor lab work. We might move outside altogether.”

  The thought made Sass queasy. “Hold off on that. I’d like my crew to sleep aboard the ship. Teke, Kaol, how about security?”

  “We need them off the ship,” Kaol replied immediately. “They’re disrespectful.”

  The physicist’s brow furrowed. “I’m perplexed. Zan, is this the hunter culture you remember on Denali? They seem…ignorant, arrogant, abusive, pushy. Hadron is nothing like Gorey.”

  Gorey was the hunter Selectman the Thrive team worked with to dig out survivors from the volcanic ash that buried the capital of Denali Prime, two decades ago. These days he served as First Selectman over Waterfalls, the new foremost city, leading cosmos and farmers as well as hunters. The surviving academics stuck with Denali Prime.

  Zan shrugged. “Gorey is Denali’s foremost leader. Hadron is a platoon boss. But I left Denali the same year you did. Kaol? These hunters seem normal to you?”

  The young hunter’s expression hardened. “They didn’t do too good in the rings.”

  His partner Tikki elaborated. “They immigrated to the Pono rings first to learn skills.” He and Kaol were in the first batch, carried in cryo containers. “Pressure suits, different gravity, machines. Hadron emerged as spokesman among the hunters who didn’t like it there, couldn’t wait to get to Sylvan. Um, no offense, but hunters aren’t educated for this. They study physical skills, plants, animal behavior. Those skills don’t transfer well. The ones on Mahina did even worse.”

  Sass frowned. “Zan seemed to adjust fine.”

  The one-time Denali hunter pursed his lips. “No.”

  Teke waved a hand. “Zan was chosen to go with Thrive because he’s curious and flexible for a hunter. I just remember hunters differently, is all. But I was a kid.”

  Cope rose to peek out the wide-open galley door. “Cap, suggest we table this discussion.”

  “Yes. Point taken, Cope.” Sass guiltily reviewed what they’d just said about their Denali guests, and hoped it wasn’t overheard. Still, her Denali crew’s reservations gave her pause. She knew the expedition was drawn from among Denali immigrants with a year or more experience with Mahina and the rings. She’d assumed they were the most successful and eager for the Sylvan project. It hadn’t occurred to her that the most successful, and the most eager to leave, were two distinct camps.
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  Still, she respected Tarana and Aurora. The women who funded and launched this expedition performed nothing short of a miracle. They know what they’re doing. Not that any other world would choose this desperate path. But the leaders were capable and driven.

  Cope resumed his seat. “Cap, tell us a story. How does this compare to Mahina’s first colonists?”

  Sass considered the question, and concluded that comparisons were odious. “Thirty thousand traveled on the Manatee. No cryo sleep for them. They had three years in transit to plan what they’d do, develop relationships. The best and the brightest from any number of disciplines, selected from millions of volunteers to go. Kassidy’s forbears.” She smiled at the urb starlet.

  “Two orders of magnitude more people,” Kassidy noted. “And my ancestors kept the Manatee. If I remember correctly, it took five years before they brought the ship down to the surface to recycle. They focused on building skyships like this first, didn’t they? To throw ice from the rings at the moon for water.”

  “I got there thirty years later,” Sass reminded them. “Manatee left Earth before I was born. Now we take for granted that urbs look healthy and wealthy compared to the later settlers. MA is the most luxurious city on Mahina. But my first glimpse of the urbs was a horror show. They looked like hell. Half the colonists were already dead. The children huddled in a vault to protect them from the radiation. They’d mastered scrubber nanites to clear the toxins and started on how to repair the cancers. The Colony Corps nanite engineers on Vitality, Belker and his lot, gave them a huge leg up. And MA started to turn around. Of course, it helped that Vitality’s settlers took over the outdoor work.”