by Mark Wandrey
“Fine, but for now you’re it.” She nodded her head. “Good, now here’s the situation.” Mindy listened to his report for several minutes. At some point, someone pushed a paper and pencil into her hands and later food and drink was provided. By the time night was approaching, the survivors were organized into work assignments and provided temporary tents. She'd sat in on at least a dozen briefings to explain the situation on Bellatrix to the scared and confused survivors.
Long after the rest of the colonists drifted off to bed, Mindy was still up with Wilson, his second in command, Leo Skinner, and the two scientists who'd been on Bellatrix for weeks. They were working out the details of how life was to proceed. Finally, as the dark face of Romulus, the larger of two moons named by the soldiers, rose over the horizon she stumbled to the small tent she’d been provided. A tiny solar lantern, one of her picks, glowed inside where Billy was using a computer to read a copy of the Foxfire book. As she crawled in he rolled over and looked at her, his eyes gleaming in the glow of the lantern.
“How did it go?” he asked.
“It’s going to be rough going for a while,” she said and kissed him warmly. The evening was chilly but the high-tech tent was cozy, especially with her snuggly hubby to lie next to. “I think we’re going to manage. Most of the good carb-yielding plants we have from Earth seem to be taking to the native soil. We’ll have to wait for the chickens to see how that works.”
“I meant your first day as a world leader.” She snorted and he laughed. “Really, I’m proud of you. I guess this makes me the First Man?”
“It makes you my husband,” she said and folded into his arms with a sigh. “I’m taking off the leadership hat first chance I get.”
“I don’t blame you a bit. I’m sure with my extensive skills, I’ll be swinging an ax to make a living.”
“You might be surprised,” she said and nodded toward the computer, “you have the right idea. You know that scientist who came over, Gibson? Well, he was hatching a clutch of those monster lizards!”
“You're kidding, right?”
“Wish I was.”
Billy shook his head. “What did you do about it?”
“Funny thing happened. A beam collapsed a few minutes ago and crushed them all. Accident, you know how it goes.”
“Oh, you'll be a fine leader, wife of mine.”
She gave him a cockeyed look and he laughed before kissing her and turning out the lantern. Howlers and roaring lizards weren't enough to keep her awake one more minute.
Hundreds
of millions of miles away, the asteroid’s shock wave traveled around the globe with unbelievable speed. Billions of human beings died in minutes. On an office rooftop in a city known as Portland, Jake Channely stood by himself near a small group of his fellow office workers and watched as the asteroid shot by overhead like God arc welding the Heavens. Now as the glow from the impact faded, a mountain of water bore down on them at hundreds of miles per hour. Death was painless.
Bellatrix
1st Anniversary
“I resist calling this a thanksgiving,” Mindy said from where she stood at the head of the biggest table, “for we have all lost too much. Where to start? Countless billions on Earth and much of the knowledge that they had accumulated? We also mourn those lost since we arrived.” All heads bowed to the stone monument erected a few yards away by the palisade exit. “Eight brave men, five valiant women, and one unlucky child left our numbers. One man was lost to an illness none of us could figure out, and that was a frightening time living in fear of an alien organism. Those seven men fell to the kloths during the migration before last winter. Their sacrifices saved all of those who had been in the fields. One of the women died in childbirth, and four just couldn't live with our fate and took their own lives.”
There was a long moment of head bowed silence around the tables before she continued. “But we do have things to be thankful for. We are still here, one year later, and stronger in number than before.” Around the table, dozens of men and women bounced babies on their knees. Those that had been born in the weeks after their arrival were already learning to walk and talk on an alien world they would never think was anything but normal. “We can be thankful that only one baby was lost, and that one a stillbirth, but sad nonetheless. Even though our medical supplies are waning, we are beginning to find interesting local cures. Our crops are struggling as we’re making new inroads. We are not only managing to survive, we are pushing forward.” There was polite applause.
“And finally, we give thanks for our friends,” she said and gestured to a place at her right. Two men in unmistakable Israeli Defense Force uniforms nodded to her and smiled, “who arrived earlier this week with offers of aid and an alliance. That arrival put the idea of this celebration in my head. It is a new beginning we have on this anniversary, which is why the tables are covered with only foods of our new world. So join me in welcoming them to our table with a round of applause.”
Mindy stood and shook hands with them for everyone to see, big smiles all around. The Israeli tribes, as they called themselves, lived a little more than a hundred kilometers away. They'd spent the last two days discussing how the two groups could join forces. The Israeli lived in an arid and exposed location; to them the plateau looked like a paradise.
The IDF men moved off to meet many of the other people who lived on the plateau while Mindy took a deep breath of relief. She hated speaking in public.
“Not bad for someone who didn’t want to be a leader,” Billy said. She gave him a sour look and moved closer. He was one of those bouncing a baby on his knee. Their daughter, Elisia, had been born six months ago. Mindy had been wondering what was going on with her body in those final hectic days on Earth. Too much going on, not enough time to figure it out. Elisia had been born almost a month premature, but she'd come along fine and weighed more than twenty pounds now. Luckily, for kids born on Bellatrix, women came equipped with everything babies needed for the first couple years of life. By comparison, the adults were having a much harder time.
“Oh shut up and gimme that baby,” she said and snatched Elisia from his arms. She spun the little dark-haired baby around and pulled her into a hug, giggling all the way. Being a mother certainly had its advantages. The little girl giggled and cooed. Billy stood and joined in a warm, loving family hug which only ended when Wilson got her attention.
“Sorry to interrupt, Governor, but the Israeli representatives want to talk about our kloth control measures.”
“Certainly, Captain,” she said and he grinned. He’d been the one to suggest a new rank for himself shortly after the colonists’ arrival. “Doesn’t make much sense to call myself a Lieutenant Colonel when I’m only in charge of fifteen men,” he’d said, and it made sense. So he’d accepted a reduction in rank, and command of their meager military forces. It turned out the Israeli were still organized around a military command structure and they were interested in the plateau’s form of self-rule and how it was working for them. They also had considerably more weapons and ammunition than the Americans, something Mindy’s people were running low on. The kloth were a constant problem. She hoped the two groups together could come up with a more permanent solution for the lizards.
“Sorry,” she said to Elisia and Billy both, “duty calls.” He took their daughter gratefully and Mindy headed to where the two Israeli men were inspecting the palisade that now circled the entire settlement. As she headed that way, they passed the Portal where it sat quietly. Mindy had tried a dozen times to reactivate the artifact, but nothing she did caused the slightest reaction.
“Your defenses are quite impressive,” the Israeli commander told her as he approached. “Of course we have something similar, but not nearly this strong. The kloth as you call them are not common in our territory.”
“They’ve taken several lives since we arrived so we had to take strong measures. The swamps you came through to get here surround the plateau and are the biggest kloth br
eeding grounds we have found. The grasslands around our plateau are lousy with the big, lazy tuck, the lizards the kloth eat. We might as well be in the center of a big all-you-can-eat buffet.”
The tour continued for a time and eventually led back to the banquet tables. A small group of colonists had retrieved musical instruments from their huts and struck up an impromptu band. Mindy smiled to see her people laughing and dancing to the music. This little get together had been a good idea.
“As I mentioned,” the IDF man said, “we’ve had contact with those who came through the South American and Japanese Portals. It would be worth our time to try and find out how many humans are here now.”
“I have to agree. And no word from the Russians our people heard on the radio months ago?” Mindy could see the milky white dais of the Portal in the corner of her eye. Will the Avatars come back some day? She wondered. Nearby a group of older children was enjoying being up late into the evening by having a mock war. Instead of toy guns as they might have used on Earth, these children had turned sticks into swords to fight their battles. What will they find if they do come back? There were no answers for her questions, so she turned to rejoin the celebration.