Ragnarok: Colonization, intrigue and betrayal.

by Andrew Claymore

  Sushil handled the introductions for the new groups. “And this,” he concluded for the final time, “is the Lady Adelina of Earth, sister to our Lady Luna, and Adelina’s daughter, the Lady Gabriella.”

  Adelina looked a little unsure of being referred to with any kind of title but the daughter just seemed amused.

  “If there’s no objection, Chairman Kawle...” Gleb gestured to the middle of the platform. “I’ll bring up the data from our low-level scans?”

  At a nod from Sushil, Gleb voiced a command and a ten-foot-diameter holographic version of their new home appeared. The scanned areas showed in color, concentrated near the equator, while regions that hadn’t yet been covered were mostly closer to the poles.

  “No surprises yet,” Gleb said. “What we’re seeing down there mostly conforms to the old surveys. I’d say there are more than enough good sites for you to choose from. Have you settled on the architecture?”

  “We have,” Sushil confirmed. “By an overwhelming vote, we’ve chosen to live in a town centered in the geographical middle of our planting zones.”

  “Interesting,” Gleb pursed his lips. “And you’re sure you wouldn’t rather an arcology? A single building might afford greater comfort and security…”

  Sushil tilted his head. “There is no might about it. An arcology would be more comfortable but we’re all farmers. We long for a connection with our land. If anything, the vote nearly went for homes on individual farms rather than in a single community.”

  “This was our concession to security,” Frank added.

  “And that,” Sushil pointed out, “only won the vote because we wont be limited to ground transport to reach our fields.”

  “But you want a fortified town, yes?” Gleb sounded more like he was urging than asking. “It may not afford much protection against aerial assault but we should never ignore the possibility of a ground attack.”

  “Indeed,” Sushil agreed.

  “Yes!” Gabriella blurted. She looked mortified to suddenly have everyone in the room staring at her. Her mother slid a reassuring arm around her shoulders.

  “Sorry,” she said. “It’s just that I was picturing this exact kind of settlement the whole trip out here, so I was looking at a lot of reference images from Earth…” She trailed off, rubbing a hand on her elbow and looking for any direction that might not have a pair of eyes looking back at her.

  “You have some ideas for what it might look like?” Gleb asked her. “We have standard designs for walled towns that the nanite work-gangs can throw up in a matter of days.”

  Gabriella nodded resignedly.

  “But…” Gleb continued, “… I, for one, would rather have our first Human colony look like a Human colony, rather than just some outpost of the empire.”

  “As would most of us, I think,” Sushil added.

  “Really?” Gabriella beamed at her new uncle. “I’ve been looking at the standard files. Hack, one of the crew, helped me to create new template options that we can apply. I could show you…”

  “You have something ready to show us right now?” Luna looked impressed. “I don’t know about the rest of you but I’d like to see that. Couldn’t hurt to see what the town might look like.”

  The council was buzzing with interest as well. “Let’s start with a look at your ideas,” Sushil decided. “I have to admit, I don’t like the standard design very much myself.”

  Gabriella raised the planet to make room and opened a new command window. A town appeared on a generic landscape. It was an orderly looking place with a regular grid of streets but the walls looked like something out of medieval Europe.

  Frank liked it but he wondered what the others might think.

  “This looks better than the flat imperial design,” Sushil told her.

  “Well, this is option one,” Gabriella said. “I also tried to incorporate some elements from famous fortifications in India.” She changed a setting and the walls changed.

  The towers along the wall grew larger, losing their square profiles in favor of circular structures. They narrowed slightly toward the top where domes capped them off.

  Now the buzz was much louder and Sushil didn’t need to call a vote to know how they felt. “This is even better. It feels like home but with a new twist.” He looked at Frank. “How does this look to a westerner? It’s not really ‘back home’ for you, is it?”

  Frank shrugged. “None of these designs look like anything you’d find in California. Standing here, in orbit around Ragnarok, clear across the Galactic arm...” He waved at the holographic town. “This starts looking a lot more like home.”

  “Interesting how the differences between us seem to shrink,” Sushil said, “as we get farther from home.”

  “And as we meet people like Father Sulak,” Frank added.

  The oracle acknowledged this comment by waving his snack in an airy circle.

  “So this design, then,” Sushil told Gabriella.

  “Do you want a regular grid?” she asked. “The imperial template defaults to that but the crewman who helped me seemed to think that ‘wild’ humans like us might prefer something a little more organic.”

  She changed a setting and the straight pattern was replaced with two gently curving main roads that cut the town into four quarters. Streets wound out from each to create a more interesting network.

  “This gives you more of a sense of ‘journey’,” Gabriella explained. “Your destination is always more exciting when it’s around the next curve or corner. We all crave a little mystery in our lives, I think.”

  “I do like that better,” one of the councilors said.

  Frank didn’t know his name yet but he agreed with him and so did all the others. Even his brother weighed in at this point.

  “This is more defensible,” John said. “Older cities, like Barcelona’s old quarter, have streets like this that break up an attack’s momentum and get enemies lost in back alleys where citizens are dropping rocks or boiling water on their heads.”

  “You think it likely that we’ll end up throwing rocks at some invading alien force?” Sushil asked, bringing the low buzz of conversation to a halt in the group.

  “Certainly not,” Mal assured them to their evident relief. “You have the latest in weapons and armor at your disposal.”

  The relief abated somewhat.

  “We can’t let ourselves forget the risks,” Gleb reminded them. “I met with each of you before you committed to this venture and you knew exactly what you were signing up for. We’ll have ships in orbit but it takes a lot of ships to fully encircle a planet.

  “I can think of only a handful of times in the history of the empire where a planet was successfully blockaded. If there are raiders out here, or curious aliens, they might be able to slip past our ships and approach on the surface.”

  “That’s why you have us,” Mal added, “and why you have your own equipment. Remember to wear your suits when you go out to your fields. If an alien isn’t hiding in the bush, waiting to snipe at you, one of these…” He waved a hand to open a new interface. A large creature appeared. It had six limbs, the front two tipped with long claws. The body was covered with what looked like a cross between feathers and fur.

  “One of these,” he reiterated, “might be wondering if you’re tasty.”

  “What the hells is that?” Frank blurted, not even noticing he was using an imperial variant of the universal exclamation.

  “It’s one of these,” Mal said dryly, gesturing at the image. “There’s no sentient inhabitants on this world… yet, so there’s nobody to give it a name.”

  “But this is a wild animal, then?” Frank persisted. “It’s not something that flew to Ragnarok from some other planet and knows how to use a weapon?”

  Mal tilted his head slightly. “Councillor, does this look like it could build a spaceship to you?”

  “Hey, we’re new at this flying around the galaxy thing,” he glanced at Sushil. “How the hells do we know
what looks like a sentient species?”

  Mal nodded acknowledgment of that point and opened a table beside the beast. “It appears to live on its own, unless it has cubs, which it rarely has more than two of. They sleep, mostly, in trees during the daytime and hunt animals at night.

  “Average size for adults, from the data we’ve collected so far…” He pressed a command and the image lowered until its feet touched the decking and grew until its head was just below Frank’s shoulder.

  “It’s unlikely,” Mal added, deadpan, “that you’d see one of these pointing a gun at you.”

  “Not that it needs one,” Sushil said quietly. He crouched to get a closer look at the front claws, which were half the length of his forearm.

  “We’ll shoot any that we see while patrolling,” Mal told them, “but you can’t count on that, so wear your armor and carry weapons when you’re outside the walls.”

  “As I understand it,” Sushil said, standing up, “the council sets policy on Ragnarok, yes?”

  “That’s right,” Gleb confirmed. “In all civil matters.”

  “Then we might not want to start out by killing every creature that frightens us,” he replied, looking at Gleb. “They have a right to exist on their own world.”

  He looked at the other councilors. Most were nodding in agreement. Most but not all.

  “Do they have the right to turn you into their lunch?” Mal asked.

  “The divine exists in all beings,” the chairman replied, “but if one of these decides it wants me to exist in its belly, I would be inclined to shoot it. I won’t seek it out, though.”

  “That’s a reasonable approach, Mal,” Gleb said before the soldier could respond. “If these beasts suddenly show up as an organized group with assault vehicles, you can declare it a military matter and blast them to your heart’s content.”

  That won a chuckle or two and diffused the budding tension.

  “Let’s choose a site,” Kawle said, effectively closing the matter of wild beasts for the moment.

  He pulled the planet back down and applied an overlay he’d developed on the trip out. It had the requirement profiles for all the crops they’d be growing.

  The planet’s surface changed color in a gradient ranging from dark green to light brown. The closer it was to dark green, the more crops that could grow there. None of the areas were at the darkest end of the spectrum of course.

  “Not all crops are the same,” Kawle explained. “I would have been astonished to see any one area amenable to all of our plants.” He looked at Frank. “Mrs. McCadam’s coffee, for example, would prefer the highland regions.

  “The template was programmed to draw these red circles...” He indicated several of the regions on the holograph. “… Wherever there is a good region for the majority of our crops as well as secondary locations nearby for the more specialized plants.”

  “If a combat operator might venture an opinion?” Mal said, cocking an eyebrow at Sushil, who nodded his assent. “That red circle,” he continued, pointing, “where a valley spreads out between two mountain ranges would make my job easier regarding the larger predators.

  “We may not be shooting them on sight but we will end up displacing some of them from their natural habitat. A town nestled up at the back of this valley would be bordering between highlands and lowlands. Whichever environment these creatures prefer, they at least won’t be encroaching on us from all sides.”

  “That would give us convenient access to higher altitude plateaus,” Frank added, turning to his right. “Rohan?”

  The councilor, who had apples as a primary crop, nodded. “Given the latitude of this region, the heat in the valley might be an issue. If we can put our groves up in the hills, we’ll get a better yield. I like this site.”

  “If we’re farming that valley,” another councilor said, “what are the sunlight hours like?”

  Sushil changed the settings and a gradient appeared on the valley floor, ranging from dark gray at the foothills to near white in the center. “More than enough sunlight for twice our number to get two growing seasons, if we manage it right,” he confirmed.

  “Unless there’s a volcano hiding in the area, I’d say we have a pretty good candidate,” Frank said, though he had an absolute certainty they were looking at the right spot.

  He couldn’t explain why, but he just knew this was where they should be building their new town. Just excited to get on with it, he thought.

  “I’d strongly suggest the hills at the head of the valley for the town,” Mal said. He pulled a section from the planet and enlarged it as a three-dimensional map of the valley.

  “Where the river splits, up here at the head of the valley,” he said, enlarging the map so that it extended past all of the councilors, “we can use the water as an added deterrent for animals, as well as slowing down a ground attack. This hill at the split is perfect. The river flows around more than two thirds of its base and the added height doesn’t hurt.”

  “Especially if the river floods its banks at all,” Frank said.

  “That could be disastrous for our crops.” Sushil stepped closer to look down on the valley. “How could we…” he shuddered along with most of the other colonists.

  “That’s sure gonna take some getting used to,” Frank said. The knowledge of how to protect the crops was already in their brains.

  “We can apply your templates to the standard imperial flood-wall design, yes?” Sushil asked Gabriella.

  “Yes, it should be the same mechanism. I’ll find that crewman who helped me before and see to it.”

  “You mean Hack?” Luna asked. “Any reason you’re suddenly pretending he’s some random guy?”

  “Let’s not get this meeting off-track, shall we?” Gabriella said with a sweet smile. “Setting up our planet’s first extra-solar colony is kind of a big deal.”

  Frank was on the verge of laughing. Pretty sure her mother is also trying to keep a straight face. He looked at Sushil who seemed to be in the same predicament, but the chairman, at least, had a good distraction handy.

  “Let’s see if we can fit our town on this hill.” He cocked his head for a second, then nodded to himself and selected Gabriella’s town. He inserted a conversion window and then ran a line through it from the town model to the three-dimensional map of the valley.

  The town shrank to the size of a fingernail. Sushil frowned at it, then his eyes relaxed and he changed a setting in the conversion window. The town reverted to its original size and the valley expanded well past the edges of their meeting platform.

  “We have more than enough room,” he said.

  “So let’s expand the perimeter,” Mal suggested. “No sense having walls at the top of a hill if you give your opponents a nice flat spot to sit down and have a light lunch before carrying on with the assault.”

  “We could probably put some parks inside,” Gabriella said. “Some of those trees on the hilltop look amazing. It would have been a shame to cut them all down.”

  “Assuming they’re safe.” Mal dropped a hand to his sidearm. “I think we need to have a close look at this site before we start construction, Mr. Chairman.”

  Boots on the Ground

  Ragnarok, Town Site

  The shuttle banked, turning to approach the site from down-valley. Frank only noticed because he was leaning forward to look out the cockpit windows.

  On Earth, he’d have done that in a helicopter or small airplane in order to keep his inner ear from confusing his brain. This technology was different. He was getting no sense of motion but that was at odds with what he saw out the front window.

  He leaned back in his spot on the side bench and took a few deep breaths. John grinned at him from the far side.

  “Takes a lot of getting used to, doesn’t it?” the younger brother asked. “I find it helps to pretend the front windows are just showing a video. It lets my brain ignore what I’m seeing.”

  The hum of the engines deepened and then d
ied out amidst several deep whupping sounds. The walls behind the passengers on each side of the craft flowed out of the way, showing them they were on the ground.

  They all stood and the benches dissolved as well. Frank stepped to the edge, looking down at the ground. A planet, he reminded himself. A new world.

  The air had a sweet, fragrant scent to it.

  He hopped down, along with the other councilors. It was slightly less momentous as a gesture, seeing as Mal had already been down for an hour conducting a sweep with his team.

  What seemed to pass for grass here looked like a duster. A slender stalk supported hundreds of wispy filaments. They were mostly green but the bottom strands had a browner tint.

  The… trees, for lack of a better name, were mostly the same size as one would expect of a tree but the leaves were more like pods. Each was a semi-translucent container, roughly the size of a fist, and they were held to the branches by several stems so they didn’t rustle in the light breeze like an Earth tree would.

  “The trees are... humming!” Sushil exclaimed.

  “I kind of like it,” one of the other councilors said.

  “Might as well like it,” Frank told him. “I don’t think you’ve got much choice.”

  Mal trotted over to the group. “The area’s secure,” he announced. “Just don’t touch those trees with the spikey vesicles on the trunks. Tox-scan shows it won’t kill you but it will definitely put you down for a long nap.”

  “Animals?” Sushil asked. “Any dens or burrows in the ground?”

  “Just a few tunnels for what would compare pretty closely to your mice back home,” Mal told him. “Possibly a pest but no danger at all.”

  Frank wandered over to one of the trees. Its trunk was roughly five feet in diameter and it looked like it was covered in barnacles. Must be the one with all the nap-sap. He looked out across the valley, wondering how long it would take to clear farmland.