Authors: Christopher Nuttall
Piece by piece, she went through the entire story. The armoured figures, the death of her charges ... and how she and the rest of her team had been spared. And how she’d led them up into the hills, reluctant to stay too close to the destroyed camp. No one had come to rescue them, or even to inspect the damage, until the shuttle had arrived. She didn't have the slightest idea who had carried out the attack or why.
“The local government was shattered,” a voice said. “They might well not have
known
that the camp had come under attack.”
“The camp would hardly have been their first priority in any case,” the XO added. “They placed the whole structure hundreds of miles from any real settlement.”
“Which still leaves us with the problem of identifying the attackers,” a female voice said. “I downloaded the sensor logs from the orbital platforms, the ones that were copied to the ground before they were destroyed. They confirmed my first reports, sir. The starships that carried out the attack were ex-TFN, sold to the Colonial Militia.”
There was a very masculine snort. “So what do we do with the information? Go back to Fairfax and demand answers?”
“Our duty is to deliver the remaining supplies,” a younger male voice said. “We shall complete that first, which will also give us time to parse the data
thoroughly
.”
The XO nudged Susan. “Ms Boon is not in a good state,” she said, out loud. “I believe that she should remain in sickbay, under observation.”
Susan wanted to protest, but no words came to her mind. Instead, she allowed the XO to help her to her feet and half-carry her towards the hatch. Behind her, she heard the voices fade into a babble that vanished entirely when the hatch closed behind her. The deck suddenly seemed to shift below her feet and she fell, plunging down into darkness ...
***
Sandy knew that most colonials would have sneered at the girl for fainting, particularly now that she was safe. It was even understandable. The colonies lacked the extensive protective networks of the Core Worlds, where a policeman could be called if someone ran into trouble and arrive within minutes.
They
had to handle problems for themselves, knowing that help was hundreds of miles away – if, indeed, it was truly that close. A girl who fainted would not have been suited for the colonial life,
But Sandy knew better. Most of those who lived on the colonies had either grown up there or emigrated knowing what they would face. They’d selected themselves for hardship or they’d never known any better. Susan hadn’t known anything of the sort; it had been hard enough for her to realise that the local government didn't care about the aliens, let alone watch helplessly as her charges were massacred. Somehow, she couldn't find it in her to mock the girl for finally collapsing.
Susan hadn't done too badly, Sandy had to admit. She’d had no survival training, no experience in living rough ... and yet she’d managed to keep all seven of them alive long enough for help to arrive. Admittedly, the medic had made it clear that it was unlikely they would have survived another week or two, but they’d survived. Given how badly some brats from the Federation had acted when they’d been given a tour of the last starship she'd served on, that was a minor miracle in itself.
Sandy picked up the girl and carried her into sickbay, where Doctor Foster was examining her files. The Doctor stood up as Sandy put Susan down on the nearest bed, then started to examine her, swiftly confirming that she was exhausted and worn. Sandy stepped back as the Doctor injected Susan with two different drugs, then left her lying on the bed to sleep it off.
“She’ll recover,” Jane assured Sandy. “But it may be some time before she’s fit for service.”
“I don’t think she’ll want to go to the next refugee camp,” Sandy agreed. There was no way to tell how Susan would react to her experience. Maybe she’d go out again, despite knowing the risks, or maybe she would go home and refuse to leave Earth again. “Take care of her.”
“I take care of all of my patients,” Jane said, tightly. She nodded towards her desk. “But I’m afraid I have bad news for the Captain.”
Sandy lifted an eyebrow. “And you want me to deliver it?”
“I can deliver bad news myself,” Jane said. She smiled, then sobered rapidly. “Most of the supplies are formulated for aliens, not humans. They’re missing certain vital components that humans need to survive. At best, we’re looking at slimming food.”
“Oh,” Sandy said. Slimming food did nothing, but satisfy the body’s urge to eat. It passed through the digestive system and came out the other end within the day. She honestly didn't understand why someone who worried about their weight didn't just have their body adjusted, but Earth was fond of strange fads. “Is there no way we can use this to make up the shortfall?”
“I doubt it,” Jane said. She tapped the scene meaningfully, but the medical terminology was beyond Sandy’s comprehension. “The best we can do is use it to satisfy the craving for food; it won’t actually give them anything they
need
. It would just make their hardship over the next few months greater than it would be without the alien foodstuffs.”
She scowled. “There are some alien foods that we can eat and vice versa, but none of the supplies we brought fit into that category. The short answer is that we cannot feed the humans with the alien supplies.”
“Understood,” Sandy said, tightly. The Captain would not be pleased, nor would anyone in the Fairfax Cluster. To have six fully-loaded freighters crammed with food for aliens ... it wouldn't be long before someone suggested that the Government had deliberately set out to ensure that the food was useless for human consumption. “I’ll inform the Captain myself.”
Leaving the Doctor behind to tend to her patients, Sandy walked back towards the Captain’s office, thinking hard. The remains of the local government were quite unable to handle the crisis of food distribution, particularly now that the local military – such as it was – had been shattered too. There would almost certainly be civil war. Unless, of course, something was done about it. But what?
She stepped into the Captain’s office and winced inwardly at his expression. “I received a note from the Governor,” he said, as the hatch hissed closed behind her. “She has expressly forbidden the use of her supplies to feed humans.”
“It’s immaterial,” Sandy said. She explained, quickly. “We can't use them to feed starving humans.”
“Brilliant,” the Captain said sarcastically, when she had finished. “There’ll be riots on the streets. I can't even blame them.”
He swung the terminal around so that Sandy could see the message. “Your father sends his regards, but also his regrets,” the Captain explained. “It may prove impossible to cut loose supplies from anywhere else for Tyson’s Rest.”
Sandy scowled, then hesitated as a thought struck her. “What about Bottleneck? Regulations used to insist that all bases kept a massive supply of MREs ...”
“Good thought,” the Captain said. “I’ll send an enquiry to the Admiral, but it would still take a week for supplies to arrive even if they were dispatched at once.”
He put his head in his hands, then looked up. “We’re going to have to go to our next destination,” he said, grimly. “There is no point in remaining here, not now. We can't do anything further to help and our presence will just inflame local tensions.”
“Yes, sir,” Sandy agreed. “What about the bodies?”
The Captain sighed. Sandy could understand his mixed feelings. If the bodies had been human, a war crimes unit would catalogue the dead before sealing up the bodies for burial or shipment back to their families. But there was no point in sending the alien bodies back to a homeworld they’d never seen, even if the transport was available.
“We’ll drop a KEW on the camp before we leave,” the Captain said, finally. “Or should we vaporise the bodies with plasma grenades?”
“Plasma grenades would probably be the best bet,” Sandy said. She doubted that the local authorities would be happy about fragments of alien DNA floating around, even though it wouldn't do any real harm. People were funny that way. “There would be less of an impact on the environment.”
The Captain nodded. “See to it,” he ordered. He looked back at his terminal, where the damning message from the Governor was still visible. “And then prepare the ship for departure. I want to be gone from here by 1700.”
Sandy’s implant told her that it was 1400. She would have to work fast. There were away teams to pull back to the ship, final scans to run and – above all else – convoy operations to be planned and shared with the freighters. And the bodies would have to be burned to ashes.
“Yes, sir,” she said. She would take as much as she could off the Captain’s shoulders. “I’ll see to it at once.”
It was rare for commercial spacers to look upon the interstellar gulfs between stars. Most of them brought their ships in and out of hyperspace as close as they could to their destinations, trying to cut down on the amount of time they spent in normal space. But for a military starship – or pirates – it was more common to lurk at the edge of a star system than any civilian would realise.
Jason
leaned back in his command chair as the squadron closed the hyperspace portals behind them and settled into formation. This far from the only inhabited world in the system, it was unlikely in the extreme that their arrival would have been detected. Earth and the Core Worlds might have been able to build massive orbital sensor networks, but few colonies could afford the colossal expense. Even so, he'd brought them out of hyperspace on the other side of the primary star, minimising their chances of detection as much as possible. Being detected too early would be disastrous.
“All transits completed,” Dana reported. “The squadron has engaged sensor masks, as per orders.”
“Good,” Jason said. Sensor masks were nowhere near as efficient as cloaking devices, but he preferred not to use cloaks unless they were close to any potential targets. They drained vast amounts of power – and besides, no cloak was ever completely effective. “Any encroachments?”
“Nothing within sensor range,” Dana said. “The only radio source I am picking up comes from a set of claimed asteroids.”
Jason smiled. The Putrajaya System had been heavily developed prior to the war, largely because the founding colonists had believed that heavy industry would allow them to jump several levels of development at once. They might have been right if the Dragons hadn't attacked, smashing much of the system’s industry and then carting off thousands of humans to serve as slaves. Now, the system was struggling to survive and rebuild – and investment was lacking. It would be years before the system was back up to where it had been before the war, let alone started to grow again.
“Keep a careful eye on them,” he ordered. He turned and looked towards the helm officer, who looked understandably nervous. His predecessor had been killed after expressing his doubts about the operation too loudly. “Take us towards the first waypoint.”
Havoc
quivered slightly as the drive came online, propelling her towards the inner star system. Jason settled back in his command chair and watched the display, noting just how much damage the Dragons had done to the system’s once-proud infrastructure. It posed a danger of detection – it was quite possible that salvage crews were trying to save what they could – but one that could be handled. If nothing else, it was unlikely that a salvage crew would report their presence to the system’s authorities. They would risk being arrested for trespassing if they revealed themselves too blatantly.
“There are no signs of enemy starships,” Dana reported. “I think we beat the feds to this spot.”
“Let’s hope so,” Jason grunted. They'd pushed the drives as hard as they dared, but he’d always known that it was going to be chancy. If the locals had a chance to distribute the supplies, it would be difficult to ensure that they got them all. “Keep watching for any sign of trouble.”
He grinned as the planet appeared in the main display. It was surrounded by a handful of orbital stations – and a great deal of debris. Between the Dragons and the Colonial Militia, everything in orbit had been destroyed. He was mildly surprised that they hadn't tipped the wreckage into the planet’s atmosphere or knocked it towards the primary star, unless they intended to use it as raw material. Judging from one of the orbital stations, that was precisely what they had in mind. No doubt they couldn't even afford more than a handful of asteroid miners.