The blond girl slowly lifted her head and dropped her gaze to the food in front of her. Her arm extended and grabbed the bag closest to her, which she placed next to her feet before resting her head on her knees again. Aidan did the same as his sister, reaching for the closest bag.
Gabi’s mom sighed. “Ok, Gabi. Your turn to pick.”
Gabi turned the packages so their labels faced her. She took a moment to read the writing on them, and though some of the words were ones she did not know, she recognized the word “pancakes”. With a grin, she snatched the open bag and looked inside to see several sealed pouches.
“Mama, can you open these for me?”
“Sure.”
Her mother opened the food pouches and handed Gabi a plastic fork. Gabi attacked the food with zeal. She soaked the pancakes in syrup from a small squeeze pouch, and her hands and face quickly became a sticky mess.
As she licked the sweet syrup from her fingers, Gabi noticed that Marya had not moved or touched her food. Aidan picked at it and ate a bite every now and then, but didn’t seem to want food. Gabi looked at her mother, who wore a slight frown on her face.
“Mama, what’s wrong?”
Her mom leaned over so close that Gabi could feel her breath on her neck. She whispered, “Their mom and dad died in the crash, Mija. They’re very very sad.”
Gabi glanced at the two children and then back at her mom. She lowered her voice to a loud whisper and replied, “I can give them a hug and make them feel better.”
“That’s a very nice thing to do, but you need to wait a while. You just met them, and they need some time and space.”
“Ok, Mama. Just tell me when and I will.”
“I will, Mija.” Her mom reached into the food bag and pulled out a wet nap package. “Let’s clean your hands and face there.”
Gabi giggled quietly as her mom cleaned her hands. She saw her father walk up from behind with a rifle slung over his shoulder.
“Hugs, Gabi,” he said with his arms open.
Gabi ran up and threw her arms around his waist. “Where are you going, Papa?”
“Out for a bit. Captain Kimura wants me to go take a look around the jungle.”
“No!” Gabi screamed and tightened her grip on her dad.
“I know, Gabi. I missed you,” he said as he tussled her hair. “But I need to do this. I’ll be back in a few hours.”
Gabi fell to the floor, shrieking and crying. “No! You can’t go out there. There are big kitties that will try to eat you.”
She felt her father’s hand on her back, slowly rubbing her. “It’s okay. Captain Kimura told me about the kitties and gave me this gun to keep me safe. I’m not going alone, either. One of my new friends is going with me, and he’ll also have a gun. We’re going to watch out for each other. You know what that means, right?”
Gabi sniffed hard and nodded.
“I’ll be back in time for dinner, I promise.” Gabi wailed when she heard her father’s words. His hand patted her on the back. “Shhh. It’s okay. Mama will be here with you the whole time.”
“I don’t want you to go, Papa.”
“Sorry, Gabi. I have to. I love you.”
“I love you too,” she choked through her tears.
Gabi felt the warm arms of her mother wrap around her, and felt a rocking motion. Her tears streamed for minutes as her mom whispered in her ear.
I don’t want Papa to work today. I miss him.
Capt Haruka Kimura
Planetfall +3 days, midday
Ex-Raphael sleeper pod eight
A stiff breeze flowed through the shattered canopy of the cockpit as Haruka fiddled with the radio controls in front of her. Her knees were drawn almost up to her chest, and her back was starting to ache from being cramped in the chair. She had no foot space to work with; it was occupied by the sprawled out body of James Vandemark. His head and shoulders were stuck inside the partially disassembled computer consoles. An occasional grunt or curse from the open cavity let Haruka know that James hadn’t managed to electrocute himself to any severe degree.
“How’s that?” James asked. His voice echoed slightly.
“No good. No power.”
“Alright, hang on a sec.”
Haruka glanced down at her work companion. His white t-shirt was soaked with sweat, and the pockets of his cargo shorts were stuffed with an array of screwdrivers and pliers that he had scrounged from storage. She could see his hand shoot from inside the computer back to a pocket, where he groped for a moment before retrieving a small precision screwdriver.
Sure looks like he knows what he is doing, though. That should help.
She was beginning to appreciate the skill diversity that the survivors had. After forcing the cockpit open and arranging for the dead crew to be buried, Haruka had checked the pod’s internal systems for functionality. The worst of the systems damage seemed to be focused on the cockpit; power was available in the body sections, and the rear hatch had opened easily through its main controls. All of the communication and navigation systems for the ESAARC pods were based in the cockpit, however, and Haruka knew that repairs would be needed in order to contact other survivors. When she assembled the survivors and asked if anyone had radio or electronics repair skills, James volunteered without hesitation.
Haruka felt fortunate to have James among the survivors. On Earth, the thirty eight year old man had been a computer repair tech, and worked with HAM radios in his spare time. Even his shorter statue and wiry frame helped in this situation, since there was precious little room to maneuver in the cramped compartment.
As if Haruka was not lucky enough to have James, his wife and three teenage children were already proving to be quite the assets. Their eldest, Will, had joined a scouting party and was out in the jungle nearby, while Jeanette and the daughters helped Emilia with the injured passengers, or ran errands for various other passengers. What seemed to amaze her most was how little the teenagers of the Vandemark family complained about being put to work. Haruka had to wonder if they were normally this helpful, or if their reaction was an acknowledgement of their dire circumstances.
Either way, I’ll take it.
Haruka’s attention snapped back to the repairs when she heard a metallic bang and a loud curse word.
“Well, that wire’s live. And it sure as hell was carrying more than twelve volts. Damn.”
“You okay in there, James?” she asked.
“Yeah. And quite awake, though if you ask me coffee is an easier way to perk up. Definitely less painful.” There was a slight pause. “Ah, crap, I hit my head. Can you toss me a rag from up there?”
Haruka passed the cleanest rag she could find through the opening. “Please tell me you’re not bleeding down there.”
Again there was a pause. “No?”
“Are you lying to me?”
“Yeah. Don’t worry about it, though. It’s just a scratch. Give it a try now.”
Haruka flicked the power switch for the radio, but its lights stayed dead and she didn’t hear any static in her headset. “No, still dead.”
“How can that be?” There was an edge to his voice, and Haruka could tell he was getting frustrated. “I know what I just plugged in is hot. I’ve got a good ground.” He growled, which through the opening sounded like a terrier with a can stuck on its head. “I think the power supply on this thing is shot. Fan’s not even spinning.”
“That’s not the radio’s power supply. I think you’ve plugged in the terminals. Let me check.” Haruka flipped a switch over her head and fired up the main computer. Lights flickered and an image showed on her screen, distorted by the large spider web crack across its fascia. “Yeah, that’s the main computer.”
“Son of a…” he cut himself off.
“Don’t beat yourself up. I needed that thing on sooner or later. Give me a second to pull the data that I need.”
Haruka tried to access the beacon data from before the crash. Her efforts were hampered by
the damage to the panel’s touch screen and the limited key controls. It took some doing, but she was able to pull up the records for the last five minutes before the pod hit the ground.
“Yes,” she said, doing a little fist pump in the air. “Jackpot.”
“What is it?” James asked as he scrambled to his feet. Dried blood caked his forehead from a gash near his hairline.
“Jesus, are you okay?”
He ran his hand along his forehead. Blood flaked off onto his fingers. “Yeah, I’m fine. I’ll go see Emilia when we’re done here.”
“Alright,” she said as she turned back to the station. “These are relative beacon positions of the sleeper pods. Now we know where our neighbors are.”
“That’s good, right?”
Haruka nodded as she jotted them down on a loose piece of paper. “The portable locator I had was almost out of battery by the time I got here. I had no idea it would eat that much juice.”
If we had made for Cormack’s landing site, its batteries would have died, she thought. We probably would have walked in circles to our deaths. Well, unless Evans killed us first.
“Alright,” James continued. “What do we do with that information?”
“At some point we’re going to need to link up with these people. It doesn’t make sense to make a dozen tiny villages when we can pool resources and make one large one.”
“You mean… move everyone?”
She sighed and stared at a white dot on the center of the screen that represented their pod. “I know it doesn’t sound ideal, but ideal went out the window when we had to do the emergency drop.” Her gaze leveled with his. “How much do the pod survivors know?”
“Not a whole lot. Pretty much all of them heard Major Emberley’s warning to stay put. We had a rough ride, and the pod rolled when we hit. You’re the first crew member we’ve seen. And we know that’s… well, that’s because…” his voice trailed off and he swept his arm toward the blood soaked cushioning of the other seat. “What happened up there, anyway?”
“I’m not too sure myself. We were approaching the planet just fine, then something blew and the reactor started to overheat. We knew we couldn’t land the whole ship so we evacuated to the pods and ejected. I stayed behind to direct the hull and reactor away from the planet. Me and two other crewmembers who stayed barely escaped. We didn’t fare much better than your pod on the way down. We crashed after running out of fuel for the thrusters.”
“Forgive me for asking, but what happened to the other two?”
Haruka bit her lip and avoided his stare. The memory of Evans burying her bayonet deep into Mancini’s back raced through her brain. It felt as if she cringed with each thrust as it played over and over in her head, almost as if it were her own flesh that the knife pierced. The memory passed as a warm hand gripped her shoulder softly.
“I’m sorry, Captain. I should have known better than to ask. It looks like your crew was pretty tight knit.” He paused. “I’m sorry for your loss.”
She nodded and adjusted the bandage on her shoulder. “Loss seems to be all we’ve had so far, but I can’t let it affect my duty. Let’s see if we can get the radio back up.”
“Alright.”
James contorted his body as his upper half disappeared back into the console. Haruka rummaged through the trash strewn about the cockpit and found what was left of a notepad, then repositioned her headset. She stowed her makeshift beacon map in the back fold of the notepad, then turned to a clean sheet of paper.
“The good news is that I know where I went wrong in this thing.” James’s tools rattled and clanked inside the hole, and the power to the main computer went dead. “All I have to do is move the wire over here, and we should be golden. Try it now.”
Haruka flicked the switch and the pod’s radio lit up. “That’s good, James. See if you can button it up so you don’t have to fix it again.”
“Sure thing.”
She made a cursory sweep through the standard frequencies used by the pods but heard nothing. James finished patching the console and took a standing position behind Haruka. As she made her second sweep, she stopped at each frequency for four minutes, giving a standard greeting twice during that time. No responses came through, only the faint crackle of static. She was about to give up the standard channels when a voice responded on the final channel.
“This is Sergeant Seth Leight of pod eleven. Please repeat your ident code, I don’t think I heard it right.”
Haruka sighed in relief. “This is Captain Haruka Kimura, acting CO of Raphael. I’m now at pod eight. What is your status, Sergeant?”
Silence greeted her for several seconds. “Did you say Captain Kimura?”
“Yes, Sergeant, I’m alive. Now what is your status?”
“To be honest, ma’am, we’re a little mixed up. I’ve accounted for all one hundred fifty six of my passengers and both crew, but I’ve also got forty seven souls from pod twelve that I have to deal with.”
“What happened to twelve?”
“Crashed into the surf maybe a few hundred feet from where we ended up. It was a mess, Captain. Don’t wanna ever see anything like that again.”
Haruka shuddered. Whatever the sergeant saw was likely too much for her to handle at this point, she decided. “Understood. How are you fixed for supplies? Any injuries?”
“A bit strained because of our recent additions. We’ll find a way to manage, though. At least we won’t have to worry too much about medical stuff. All we’ve got to deal with are bumps and bruises. From what I heard of the radio traffic on the way down I thought you were in the skiff. What happened?”
Must I relive this every time someone asks?
“Ran out of fuel and crashed trying to find a landing spot, but was able to make my way to pod eight. I’m the only crew member left. My computer’s damaged and I don’t know if I can pull up a manifest, but we’ve got just over a hundred survivors. We’ve got a couple broken bones here, but nothing major, and we’ve got a pretty good nurse.” She looked up at James and smiled. “Even if she is a bit of a tricky devil.”
“Do I want to know?” asked Leight.
“I’ll just say that if you look like you’ve been chewed up and spit out, don’t ask her for sedation. She’ll give you more than you want.”
She could hear a chuckle through the radio. “Isn’t it just like a doctor to come to some crazy notion that you’re overworked or too sick and you need to take it easy.”
“Yeah, well this one didn’t warn me. I wonder if she got some sort of weird kick out of the whole thing.”
“Well, I must have been blessed, because I’ve got a good doc and two nurses over here.”
“So what’s the lay of the land, Sergeant? Are your scouts giving you good info?”
“Probably would if I had any, Captain. Most of my people are sorting supplies, gathering wood, or making sure the pod twelve survivors are being cared for. The rest? Well, I have a bunch of sniveling slackers here. I’d go myself if I didn’t think that the pod would be on fire and looted by the time I came back. The only scouting party I have is Airman Jenkins and this kinda creepy guy from some tiny speck of a town in Arizona. They’ve got their hands full.”
“I’ve got a few parties out there,” Haruka said. “So far they’ve reported we’re in the middle of nothing. I mean, there’s a river nearby, which helps, but we’d have to hack a living out of the jungle here with basically no resources but trees.”
“Huh, I wonder if that’s the same river that empties into the bay here.”
Haruka pulled her beacon map out and unfurled it. “It wouldn’t surprise me. I haven’t seen any terrain around that would indicate another river. Not of this size, anyway. Hey, you said you were near surf. Do you have beachfront property?”
“Beachfront? No, we’re on the beach itself. Our pod crashed into the dunes right off shore, which I guess kept us from being pulverized on impact.” Leight paused for a moment. “It’s actually really bea
utiful here, especially as the sun’s going down.”
Marco’s beaches. She clutched at the tags in her pocket.
“Have you heard from any other pods?”
“A few. Lieutenant Cormack from pod seven has been doing some sort of coordination work. You can probably catch him on this frequency tomorrow, but he usually is only on once a day. Last I heard, he figured out what was left of the chain of command, and said that he’s in charge. I guess that will change tomorrow, since you’re here now. In any case, that guy’s a nut for conserving battery power. I bet his radio will work at least until the other ships come.”
“Do you know what kind of coordination?”
“Yeah, there’s a cluster of pods on the other side of that giant mountain there. It looks like he’s gathering everyone together at two different sites.”
“Alright, I’ll see what’s going on with him tomorrow.”
“Sounds like a plan. Hey Captain?”
“Yes, Sergeant?”
“Got a plan yet?”
“One step at a time, Sergeant. I don’t even know what I’m dealing with here yet.”
“I hear you. I’ve only got an inkling of what to do myself. I call it a good day if no one starves or gets themselves hurt.”
“That’s a good start. I’ll know more about where we stand tomorrow.”
“Well, I hope your work won’t keep you from enjoying the sunset tonight. The ones on this planet are just…” his voice trailed off.
She nodded, though in her time on Demeter she had not had the chance to see one. “A little stress relief? Alright, maybe I’ll take a look at one when I take a beach vacation some day.”
“Something tells me with my bunch here, there won’t be a shortage of hammocks,” Leight said in a mocking tone.
“Great. Save me a mai tai. Kimura out.” She killed the power to the radio and looked up at James, who was grinning from ear to ear. “What?”
“I want a beach vacation.”
Haruka frowned as she slipped from her seat and through the doorway, shoving the notepad and pen into his arms. “Trust me; it’s not going to be a vacation if we go there. Come on, there’s more work to be done.”
Project Columbus: Omnibus Page 35