The Scythian Crisis, page 7
part #3 of Space Colony One Series
“Yes, Strongquist told us,” Cariad replied. “The aliens’ attack wasn’t entirely out of the blue.”
Faina continued, “We have found the trace left by the attacking starship’s engine as it departed. From that we know the ship’s heading and by extrapolating from that we have been able to predict its flight path, assuming that the vessel does not alter trajectory. That is a possibility. If it doesn’t the first system that the ship will encounter is one of those where we detected signs of sentient life. It seems reasonable to therefore conclude that the aliens inhabit this system.”
“So you’ve figured out where they came from?” asked Cariad.
“It’s a guess, but an informed one,” Strongquist said.
“Unfortunately we believe that the aliens may have undertaken a similar exercise to the one we completed,” said Faina, “and that was what drew them to Concordia.”
“You mean they followed the trace left by the Mistral’s engine?” Cariad asked.
“Either the Mistral’s or the Nova Fortuna’s,” Addleson chipped in. “Most likely the Mistral’s. The Nova Fortuna traveled so slowly in comparison, if the aliens had spotted it they would have been able to arrive here years ahead of us.”
“Great,” said Cariad. If it hadn’t been for the arrival of the Mistral, the aliens might not even have known of the colony’s existence. “So we know where they come from. So what? It isn’t like we were planning on paying them a visit.”
“There’s more,” said Strongquist.
Faina said, “We have many reasons to assume that the ship that attacked the colony was only a scout. Not least of which is the fact that the technology that the aliens possess in terms of the speed of their engines and their weaponry implies that their capabilities far exceed those required to build a single ship. We suspect that the scout ship followed in the wake of the Mistral with the intention of discovering who we are and what we are doing. We think that when the aliens found a small colony, an ancient, low technology generational ship, and only one other ship that had defense capabilities, they decided to try their luck at wiping us out immediately without bothering to wait for support.”
Cariad didn’t like the direction that Faina’s reasoning was heading.
The android went on, “Furthermore, the immediate and vicious hostility the aliens exhibited signals an extremely aggressive species. We expect they will return with a fleet to finish the task the scout ship began.”
This news wasn’t anything Cariad hadn’t guessed herself, though hearing Faina say it seemed to make it even more real.
But the Mistral’s captain had more to impart. “We have calculated the time it will take the scout ship to reach its destination, according to the scan data the Mistral gleaned during the battle. However, a battle fleet may set out before the scout arrives at its home system. The ship will undoubtedly be sending messages as it travels. Conversely, we can also make a reasonable guess that any larger ships the aliens send to finish off the task of annihilating the colony will travel at slower speeds than the scout.”
Cariad had heard enough pedantic, emotionless reasoning. She turned to Addleson. “Do you know the short version of all this?”
“They reckon we’ve got six months if we’re lucky,” he replied. “If we aren’t lucky, three. Tops.”
Chapter Ten
Ethan and Garwin were cleaning the second flitter the colonists had managed to unearth, while Cherry made preparations for another trip to the crash site. Garwin had suggested that they use two flitters when they returned to their task of cutting through the Nova Fortuna’s hull. If one of the machines failed, they could use the other one to rescue whoever went down with it.
Ethan, Garwin, and Cherry had arrived back at the settlement the previous night chilled to the bone from their night ride in wet clothes after failing to break into the colony ship. The hull that had been designed and manufactured to remain intact throughout nearly two hundred years of deep space travel was not to be breached easily. Yet because the ship presented a better prospect for salvage than the wreckage that floated around it or had been washed up on the shore, they’d resolved to get inside it.
Ethan and Garwin had only been working on the second flitter for a few minutes when Phy ran up.
“Hey,” she called out before she reached them. Then, when she had their attention, she rested a moment to catch her breath and walked the remaining distance. “Did you hear? The Guardians are back.”
“Huh?” Garwin looked at Ethan, his expression darkening.
“They just landed,” said Phy. “Five of them arrived on the latest shuttle.”
“You’re kidding, right?” Ethan asked.
“It isn’t a joke,” said Phy. “I saw them myself. They were taking rations boxes out of the ship’s hold.”
Garwin threw down his cloth and began to stride away.
An angry flame flickered to life in Ethan’s chest. Who had reactivated the Guardians? And with whose permission? And why? The colonists had been doing fine without their interference. Ethan put down the container of water he was holding.
“Does Cherry know?” he asked Phy.
“I think so,” Phy replied. “When I was running to tell you, she passed me in the other direction, heading toward the shuttle field. She didn’t look very happy. And she was carrying a gun.”
“I don’t know what good she thinks that’ll do,” said Ethan. “Weapons don’t have any effect on them.” He set off to follow Garwin, who had broken into a jog.
“What are you going to do?” Phy shouted after him.
“I don’t know yet,” he called back. “Prevent even more deaths, I hope.”
The shuttle field was ten minutes’ run from the flitter pile. Ethan caught up to Garwin after a couple of minutes and passed the older man, racing as fast as he could. He had to arrive at the field in time to prevent any bloodshed.
The crowd was visible from a distance. It had formed at the edge of the shuttle field where the parking lot had once stood. Ethan guessed that the Guardians must have only managed to walk a couple of hundred meters from their shuttle before the news of their arrival had spread. A throng of about three hundred and fifty people had gathered and more were arriving.
Ethan pushed his way through the crowd, pulling people aside in order to pass between them. They were tightly packed and jostling each other to see what was happening. The arrival of the Guardians was clearly providing an interesting diversion from the day-to-day struggle to survive.
The colonists at the front of the mob were crushed into an angry, muttering huddle. Ethan had to shout at them to make them let him through. His raised voice had the intended effect. A gap appeared as the colonists drew aside.
Ethan could finally see the Guardians. They had put down their boxes of rations and were standing close together. Two women and three men, if it was possible to call them that, all wearing neutral expressions. Cherry had her back to Ethan as she stood between the group of androids and the crowd. The butt of her weapon was against her shoulder as she aimed it at the Guardians.
She must have heard Ethan shouting at the mob to let him through because she glanced over her shoulder at him. She was pale with rage.
“Do you know whose idea this was?” she asked.
From her accusatory tone, Ethan understood the meaning behind her question. Cherry knew about his friendship with Cariad and that Cariad probably had a hand in the decision to reactivate the Guardians. Cherry was wondering if Ethan had known about it too but had kept quiet.
“I don’t,” he replied. “I didn’t know there were plans to do this.” He walked to Cherry’s side, wondering why the Guardians had halted. Cherry’s gun was no threat to them. They could have easily ignored her and continued on their way. Yet they’d chosen to respect the ill feeling that had greeted them.
“I’ve told them they have to go back to the Mistral,” said Cherry, “but they’re refusing.”
“We would like to help you,” said one of the male Guardians.
“I’ve told you, we don’t need your help,” Cherry spat back.
“We can build shelters, ensure the safety of your water supply,” said a female Guardian. Ethan recognized her. She had been one of the pair of androids who had tried to take a bloody rag from a boy—a piece of his father’s shirt—after the shuttle disaster.
“We’re doing fine by ourselves,” Cherry said. “This isn’t your place and we aren’t yours to control. Leave us alone. You aren’t welcome here. Go back where you belong. Go deactivate yourselves. We don’t want you.”
“But you don’t understand,” the female Guardian said. “We must help you.”
A woman stepped out from the crowd of colonists and turned to speak to them. “The Guardians are only bringing supplies. What harm can they do? We should leave them alone.”
“I agree,” said a man. “They say they’re here to help and I believe them.” Ethan didn’t recognize him or the woman who had spoken. The man was red-haired and covered in freckles and the woman was brunette. Clearly, they were Woken. It was no surprise they’d chosen to take the Guardians’ side.
Yet Ethan had to admit they were probably right. The Guardians were unarmed and they’d respected the crowd’s anger even if they hadn’t actually returned to the ship.
Ethan also spoke to the crowd. “The Guardians haven’t come here to tell us what to do. I believe that they’re here to help us as they say. We should let them through.”
“What?” Cherry exclaimed. “No! What are you doing? We have to make them return to the ship. Do you want things to go back to the way they were?”
“No, I don’t,” Ethan replied. “But things are different from how they were then. The Guardians haven’t brought their weapons—”
“As far as we can tell,” Cherry interrupted.
“And they’re listening to us,” Ethan continued. “Cherry, right now we’re just trying to survive each day that comes. We need all the help we can get.”
She gave a dismissive snort. “What good are five more pairs of hands going to do? The Guardians’ presence here is going to cause more problems than it solves. You’ll see. You might have forgotten everything they did but my memory is still pretty fresh, and I’m not the only one who feels like that.”
Ethan said to the androids, “Why don’t you take the rations to the storage area? Then we can talk about what else you can do.” The crowd had begun to break up. The Guardians picked up their boxes and walked through the departing colonists. But then one fell down, dropping her box. The ground wasn’t rough and the androids’ coordination was probably better than a human’s. She must have been tripped, Ethan guessed.
The red-haired Woken man had noticed the incident and stopped to help the female Guardian to her feet. After retrieving her load she continued on as if nothing had happened. Ethan expected that the androids might encounter more bullying while they were among the colonists. He wasn’t particularly concerned for the well-being of the androids, who were physically tough and apparently nearly emotionless, but a culture of nasty behavior that was condoned wouldn’t be good for the colony.
“Come on,” he said to Cherry. “Let’s go back. I need to find some jobs for these Guardians that will keep them out of people’s way.”
She shouldered her weapon. “How can you think this is okay, Ethan? What’s gotten into you?”
Garwin finally arrived, panting heavily. His long weeks of incarceration told on him. “What are the Guardians doing in the camp? Who let them in?”
“Ethan did,” Cherry replied.
“No way,” Garwin said. “Why? Having those robots down here is the last thing we need.”
“Is it?” Ethan asked. “It seems to me we have worse problems on our hands right now. What bothers me more is the fact that there was no consultation. Not even a warning. Someone up there made the decision without asking anyone else.”
“We’re back to the same story,” Cherry said bitterly. “Even now, after everything that’s happened, the Woken are still trying to control us.”
The crowd and the Guardians had drawn away from Ethan, Garwin, and Cherry. Ethan and Cherry were walking slowly so that Garwin could catch his breath. It was only when they were at the outskirts of the shelters that Ethan noticed another knot of people had formed. Raised voices carried through the air.
“Looks like more trouble,” said Garwin.
“See what I mean?” Cherry said.
Ethan ran across to the group. This time the colonists hadn’t had time to pack in closely. Ethan could see what was happening in the gaps between the bodies. The Guardians were standing back to back in the middle and a handful of colonists stood in front of them, facing the assembling throng.
“Let us get them,” one of the crowd shouted. “We’re only going to take them back to the shuttle. We won’t hurt them,”
“Ha!” another voice shouted. “Not much anyway.” The comment drew coarse laughs.
The two Woken who had spoken on the Guardians’ behalf before were among the handful facing the crowd. They began to verbally defend them again, telling the other colonists to go back to their business. Their fellow defenders were Woken too.
Cherry had been right. It was all starting again.
Ethan shouldered his way forward. Ignoring the angry colonists, he guided the Guardians away from them and over to the flitter pile. Anyone who approached him in anger about the androids was met with an even angrier response. He set the Guardians to work on cleaning the second retrieved flitter as well as digging out the rest of them. Eventually, the antagonistic men and women grew bored and left the androids alone.
Only then did Ethan feel it was safe to leave the Guardians for a while in order to make an important comm to the Mistral.
Chapter Eleven
The Mistral’s medical bay was much quieter and calmer than it had been in the days following the tsunami. Though most beds remained occupied, the Guardians who were working there rarely spoke and the patients were not emergency cases.
Now that the Guardians had taken over the place, Cariad was looking forward to setting up a simple clinic planetside with Kurtz and Alasdair. They would also be able to keep a close eye on the general health of the colonists. The conditions on the surface were survivable, but the chances of water-borne illnesses, sicknesses from exposure to the elements, and injuries due to accidents were higher.
She was in the medical bay gathering supplies to take down to the settlement when she received a comm. When she saw who it was she felt a rush of excitement and pleasure and stepped into the storage room to speak in private.
“Hi, Ethan.”
Had he gotten over his weird reaction to her suggestion? Were they over their falling out?
“Cariad, the Guardians arrived about an hour ago. What are they doing here? Whose decision was it to reactivate them?”
“What? I didn’t know they’d gone planetside already,” Cariad replied, wrong-footed by his questions. It wasn’t the conversation she’d expected to be having with him after what had happened between them.
“That isn’t what I asked you,” said Ethan, sounding like he was trying but failing to keep anger out of his voice. “Whose decision was it to reactivate the Guardians and why wasn’t anyone else consulted?”
“It was a group decision—”
“By Woken, right?”
“No,” Cariad replied. “Addleson was there too. He agreed—”
“With what? Whatever you all suggested?”
“It wasn’t like that. Ethan, we didn’t have time to have a big discussion about it and a colony-wide vote. We need the Guardians.”
“Dammit, Cariad,” Ethan said. “Do you have any idea what you’ve done? Can you even imagine what the reaction has been like down here? Good people have turned into an angry mob. I had to stop them from attacking the Guardians. And who jumped to the androids’ defense? Woken. So now we have a divided society again. After all we’ve been through and everything that we have threatening us, we’ve been driven apart again. As if things weren’t bad enough as it is. Everyone here is clinging on, and now the Guardians have arrived to remind them that even if by a miracle they do survive, they’re going to be living under the Woken’s regime.”
“That isn’t how it’ll be,” said Cariad.
“That doesn’t matter,” Ethan said. “It’s what people think. And that’s the last thing we need right now. How could you do this?”
“How could I do this?” Cariad had borne Ethan’s anger stoically up until then but his last comment tipped her over the edge. “How could I not do this? Do you think you have a monopoly on caring about the colony? We all care, Ethan. Everyone is trying to do their best. You’re talking to me like I don’t know how things are down there. Well, while you were lying around in your cabin waiting on your new leg I was there at the settlement burning sluglimpets and cleaning shit out of the water supply. I know what things are like. And when we made the decision to reactivate the Guardians it was to help everyone. I’m sorry we didn’t do better in preventing the problems it’s caused, but I still believe we did the right thing. So you’re just going to have to deal with it.”
She closed the comm.
Alasdair walked into the storage room at the same time. Seeing Cariad’s expression, he asked, “Is everything all right?”
“Yes,” Cariad replied. “Everything’s fine. Let’s take one of these sterilizers out to the shuttle bay.” She was seething but was trying her best to calm down. She told herself that, like everyone else, Ethan was under a lot of pressure. And it was understandable that he would be mad about the sudden appearance of the Guardians. Yet the stark contrast between what she’d been expecting to hear from him and what she did hear had been hurtful and shocking. So much for her hopes of a reconciliation.
After leaving Alasdair at the shuttle hold to secure the fragile equipment, Cariad returned to the medical center to collect more items. As she walked through the entrance her comm chirruped. She halted. Did Ethan want to apologize? But then she saw who it was.
