“You may need to talk to the consortium and sort out a revised payment plan,” he said, thoughtfully. “I don’t think they will want to lose the investment completely, which is what will happen if the colony collapses.”
“My superiors will not be happy,” the Deputy Governor said. “Their investments have already been placed at risk.”
So you’re the one working for them, John thought. It wasn't really a surprise. The British Government might insist on appointing the Governor, but the consortium in charge of founding the planet had a considerable amount of influence. But do you really want to lose your masters everything?
He sighed, inwardly. Only one human colony had failed outright - even Terra Nova had successfully established a major human population on the surface - and it had failed through mismanagement by bureaucrats back on Earth. Even then, when the settlement rights had been sold to someone else, the planet had eventually become a success. But it remained economically poor ...
“Send us your doctors, if you can, and manpower,” the Governor said, breaking into John’s thoughts. “We will use them as best as we can.”
“I will,” John said. Perhaps, if they made a determined effort to help, they could head off trouble before there was any need for violence. He could send a note home, requesting the Admiralty use its influence with the consortium. British security would be threatened if farmers were penalised for problems that weren't their fault. “And, once we are secure here, we will start looking for the missing ship.”
The Governor’s face darkened. “Good luck,” he said. His voice was very grim. “But we all know the odds.”
Poor bitches, John thought. But we have to try.
Chapter Eighteen
“What a mess,” Percy commented.
The landscape below him reminded him of flying over the Forth River in Scotland, except there were no human settlements on either side of the river. Indeed, the only sign of human life was a sailing ship that had glided up the river, probably hunting for freshwater fish. It was beautiful, in a way, and yet there was something about it that bothered him. Few humans had set foot on the ground so far from the colony.
“There’s the cause of the downfall, or I’m a moron,” the pilot said, calling their attention forward. “There must have been some extra rainfall and the lake just overflowed its bounds.”
Percy sucked in his breath as the shuttle circled the giant lake. The source of the mighty river was huge, larger than Loch Ness or any of the other lakes they’d used as training zones; indeed, it was easy to mistake it for an inland sea. But it was clear that the lake had overflowed six months ago, crumbling a natural dam and sending a tidal wave of water rushing down towards the sea, sweeping away anything in its path. Earth had suffered worse, Percy knew, but Earth had also had more resources to cope with the disaster. The colonists had very little.
“You could swim in this lake,” the pilot observed. “Or set up an entire boating industry.”
“I dare say someone will, once the colony is back on its feet,” Peerce muttered. “Are you planning to settle here?”
“No, Sergeant,” the pilot said. “But it might be nice to go for a holiday.”
Percy shrugged. Ex-military personnel, particularly personnel who had seen real action, were in great demand on the colonies. If he chose not to renew his contract, it wouldn't be hard to find a colony world willing to take him, even pay a considerable salary if he wanted to work as a policeman or colonial marshal. But he wasn't sure he would want to live on Cromwell indefinitely. He enjoyed walking in the wilderness, climbing mountains and dozens of other outdoor sports, but he also liked the finer things in life. Cromwell was so primitive, in many ways, that it was unlikely it would develop an industrial economy any time soon.
“Take us back to the settlement,” he ordered, pushing his thoughts aside. He had fifteen years to go, unless he managed to get himself discharged ahead of time. “We have work to do there.”
His heart sank as the shuttle turned and rocketed back towards the nearest settlement. It was almost completely destroyed, with only a handful of buildings still standing. Even they were too badly damaged to be considered habitable; most of the settlers, he knew, had headed downriver to Cromwell City. Only a handful had remained at the settlement, doing what they could to rebuild.
The shuttle touched down, gently. Percy checked his weapons and equipment, then opened the hatch and stepped out onto the damp soil. It felt soggy beneath his feet, even though the flood had abated weeks ago. Months of hard work preparing the soil for farmland had been wasted, he suspected, from what little he recalled of geography class in school. A dull crashing sound caught his attention and he looked up, sharply, just in time to see one of the buildings collapsing into a pile of rubble. Beyond it, a pair of men in leather overalls barely looked up from their work.
“You’ll need to ask them where to put the emergency supplies,” Peerce murmured in Percy’s ear. “If there’s anything we can do for the people here.”
Percy nodded, then walked towards the men as quickly as he could. Up close, he could see a handful of others, doing what they could to recover their possessions from the mud. Seven of them were men, he noted; only one of them was a woman, her face as tired and worn as her male counterparts. He’d known that most of the settlers were men, but it was still strange to look at it in reality. Most colonies tried to balance the sexes evenly.
They did try to balance the sexes evenly, he reminded himself, sternly. They just didn't have time to send out the women before the war began.
“Sir,” he said. “Where do you want us to put the supplies?”
The older man sighed. “Wherever you want to put them, son,” he said. “We don’t mind.”
Percy sighed too, inwardly. He’d seen people like it before, back during the floods and tidal waves on Earth. They were too stunned to care about the future, their minds unable to comprehend what had happened to them. The settlers had endured the flood only a few scant months ago, yet even they had problems coming to grips with it. Just how much, Percy asked himself, as he looked towards the pathetic piles of debris, half-buried in the mud, had they lost?
“We’re here to help,” Peerce said, quietly. “I would suggest moving activities to higher ground.”
“I'm sure you would suggest it,” the other man said, nastily. “Where were you the night the flood came?”
“We’re here now,” Peerce said, his voice hardening. “How may we be of assistance?”
“Help us dig up the remains of the infrastructure and move them up there,” the older man said. He nodded upland, towards a place that should be safe from the river breaking its banks. “And put any bodies you find over there.”
Percy followed his pointing finger and saw a handful of bodies, all young men, lying on the ground. They’d need to be buried, sooner rather than later, but no one seemed inclined to dig a pit for the bodies. Perhaps they should be burned instead, he thought - in disaster zones, there was no time to do anything more than cremate the bodies as quickly as possible - but it would depend on what the locals wanted to do. They’d all have the full set of immunisation shots, making it harder for them to get infected with anything.
“We will,” he said. “And we’ll put the emergency supplies upland too.”
The next few hours turned into a grim nightmare. There was no enemy to fight; the waters had already come and gone as the river burst its banks. All they could do was recover what they could from the mud, then carry it up towards the nearest safe zone. Percy had his doubts about half of the wooden planks they recovered, but he had to admit they would make great firewood once they dried, if nothing else. Another team arrived and started cutting more planks out of the nearby forest, then massing them together to use as construction material. It looked as though the colonists hadn't given up completely ...
... And yet, they looked beaten.
Percy had seen such looks before, on the faces of countless refugees on Earth. Inde
ed, if he hadn't been conscripted into relief missions, he might have wound up like the walking dead, the zombies who were unable to cope. But there was something about the colonists that was worse, almost. They hadn't just lost their homes; they’d lost their families and their hopes for the future. In a way, he would almost have preferred sullen anger. Anger was a dangerous emotion, he’d been taught, but it could galvanise a person into action. Apathy was far - far - worse.
“I think that’s everyone who was unaccounted for,” the older man, who had finally introduced himself as Greg, said. They stood together and looked at the fifteen bodies, lying on the ground. “There were a couple of others reported missing, but they turned up at the settlement down the river.”
“That’s lucky,” Percy said. He would have expected some bodies to be washed all the way out to sea. “How do you want to bury them?”
“We don’t have a priest,” Greg said. “Perhaps if we dig a grave just above the waterline, we can place them there to return to the soil. We can mark the spot and hold a formal ceremony later.”
Percy nodded, then issued orders to a couple of Marines. They hastily dug a pit, then carefully carried the bodies - one by one - up to the grave and lowered them into the ground, leaving them lying at the bottom of the pit. Percy couldn't help noticing that three of the dead bodies were younger than himself, while two others were the same age. Their lives had come to a sudden end, in the midst of the night. The others looked old enough to be their fathers.
He wanted to say something - anything - but he honestly didn't know what to say. All he could do was pick up a spade, then start shovelling earth back into the pit. The others joined in, burying the dead men below the soil. As soon as the earth had been patted down, a small stone marker was placed on top of the makeshift grave. The dead would remain there until they either rotted or they were dug up, then reburied in separate graves.
“They were good people,” Greg said. He took a bag from one of his fellows, then produced an unmarked bottle. “They deserved better than such an unpleasant death.”
Percy swallowed. Millions of people - perhaps billions - had died on Earth, after the bombardment. Britain had been lucky, in so many ways; other countries, more exposed than the United Kingdom, had been hit badly. To lose fifteen men from one tiny settlement seemed like nothing ... and yet, proportionally, the settlement had lost more of its population than Earth. It might well destroy the colony completely, if law and order came apart at the seams.
“To the dead,” Greg said. He opened the bottle, then took a long swig. “And to the living.”
He passed the bottle to Percy. Percy sniffed it suspiciously - it smelled worse than military moonshine, which he hadn’t believed possible - and then took a sip. It burned his throat as it went down and pooled in his stomach. He passed the bottle to Peerce as quickly as possible, fighting the urge to gag. Drinking had never been part of his life, not after his father had hit the roof after he’d been caught with a bottle of alcoholic juice at the age of thirteen. He still winced every time he remembered the lecture, and the hangover he’d suffered the morning after. He'd rarely touched alcohol since that day.
“Thank you for your help,” Greg said, once everyone had taken a swig. The dregs of the bottle were poured over the grave, then the bottle itself was returned to the bag. “But I don't think you can do much more here.”
“I know,” Percy said. He looked over at Peerce, who shrugged. “We’ll go down to the next settlement, but don’t hesitate to call if you need us.”
“We won’t,” Greg said. “And thank you.”
Percy nodded, then motioned the Marines back to the shuttle. They hadn't done much, he knew, for all the time they’d spent at the unnamed settlement. But then, the settlement would be abandoned, left to rot away into nothingness. He hoped the new settlement would do better, even if the land wasn’t quite as good for farming as the previous site. And yet ... he shook his head. He'd heard too many mutterings from some of the farmers about help only arriving when it was far too late to make a difference. Cromwell needed more than Warspite could provide, and soon.
“I’ll write up a report for the Lieutenant,” he said, once they were back on the shuttle. “Please would you review it, once I’m done, and see if there's anything I should add?”
“Of course, Corporal,” Peerce said. “But these people really need more settlers.”
“I know, Sergeant,” Percy said. He knew how to handle himself in a fight, either as a simple bootneck or local group leader. But he didn't know how to handle a natural disaster. “After this, how many new settlers will be coming from Earth?”
The sergeant shrugged, expressively. There was no way to know.
Percy had his doubts. Cromwell was quite some distance from Earth, even using the newly-discovered tramlines. It might be years before any new settlers arrived ... and the Cromwell Development Consortium might have to make very extensive promises before it managed to lure thousands of newcomers to Cromwell, rather than Britannia or Oz or even Nova Scotia.
“They might recruit from Terra Nova,” he said, thoughtfully. “How many people want to leave that shithole of a planet?”
“All of them,” Peerce said. “But they won’t get any government grants if they do try to recruit from Terra Nova. The government wants to get people off Earth, not Terra Nova.”
Percy swore. He was right.
The next settlement was almost completely identical to the first settlement, right down to the dead bodies and the handful of survivors struggling to pull the remains of their possessions from the mud. Once the Marines joined them, the remaining bodies were discovered and recorded, then buried in another grave. The settlers themselves were planning to join the first settlement or head down to the city, whichever one seemed the better idea at the time. Percy encouraged them to join up with the first settlers, although it didn't look as though the settlers were listening. They’d lost almost everything in the floods.
“They’re going to demand the government takes care of them,” Peerce said. “And, when the government fails to do anything of the sort, there’s going to be trouble. Make sure you put that in your report.”
Percy nodded. Cromwell had no police, save for a handful of colonial marshals, and no emergency assistance service. There was no fire brigade or ambulance service; local problems had to be handled on the spot, while anyone who suffered a serious injury had to be moved from their settlement to Cromwell City before the doctors could have a look at them. He’d expected the settlers to be self-reliant - indeed, their training had been almost as intensive as military training - but none of them had planned for such a colossal shock to the system. It was hard to blame some of the settlers for wanting to give up.
And they’re armed, he thought. Some of the local wildlife was dangerous - and had developed a taste for human flesh. They could cause real trouble if they decided to fight.
He frowned as the third settlement came into view. The sun was slowly sinking beyond the horizon, casting the planet into twilight, but he still couldn't see anyone within the settlement, or coming out into the open when they heard the approaching shuttle. He reached for his night-vision gear as the shuttle touched down, then stepped out, followed by four of his Marines. The settlement, as ruined as the first two, was as dark and silent as the grave.
“Remain with the shuttle,” he ordered the remaining Marines. Something was badly wrong; he could feel it. “If we run into trouble, be prepared to render assistance.”
The sensation that something was wrong grew stronger as they made their way into the settlement. Night was falling rapidly now - Cromwell had no moon to reflect light from the local star - and it was growing harder to see, but he couldn't retreat back to the shuttle. He switched on his UV lamp, knowing it would help him to see while leaving any potential enemies in the dark, and peered into the nearest building. It was a flooded wreck, and utterly deserted. Someone had stripped out everything from the building and then vanished into
the countryside.
“They could have gone to a new settlement,” Peerce suggested, as the Marines headed to the next building. “Only a fool would want to stay here after dark.”
“True,” Percy agreed. He peered into the next building ... and froze. A handful of bodies lay on the ground, utterly unmoving. His NVGs insisted they had no body heat at all. “They’re dead, Sergeant.”
Peerce leaned down, examining the bodies. “Poison, I think,” he said, as he switched on his flashlight. There were seven bodies lying there, some clearly having died in agony. “Note the discoloration of the lips. They took poison and died together ...”
“There,” Percy said. One of the bodies was holding a plastic bottle of liquid. A glance at the label told him it was poisonous, normally used for clearing away unwanted plant life. “They came here and killed themselves.”
“A suicide pact,” Peerce agreed. He looked up at Percy, his face grim. “There’s nothing more we can do for them here, Corporal. We’ll have to come back in daylight and bury them properly.”
[Ark Royal 04] - Warspite Page 19