Castaway Resolution

by Eric Flint

  “Ammunition?”

  “Because these are for colonies, most of ’em work along the lines of your SurvivalShot there, but using larger power packs. So basically if you maintain your weapon well and keep your power pack charged, you should be good to go for a long time. The military weapons have a few cases of ammo each.”

  “Good to know,” Laura said. “I suppose we’ll have to teach everyone how to properly use them, then. It will make hunting easier, I’d think.”

  “Than using handmade, hand-powered weapons? Damn straight it will,” Campbell said with a grin. “Not to knock what you people have accomplished here, you’ve done wonders, but you won’t have to do so much of the Stone Age reborn tricks from now on.”

  “Speaking of which,” Xander said, reaching under the table, “we’ve got a present for all of you.” He pulled out a package and slid it down the table to Laura.

  Sakura grinned, because she could see it had been wrapped in packing polymer, like using discarded wrapping paper for a new present. Her mother quickly opened the improvised package, and suddenly looked up with a broad smile. “Oh, thank you, all of you!”

  “What is it, what is it, come on Mommy, let me see!” Hitomi said, bouncing in her seat.

  Laura reached in and began sliding hand-sized metallic objects to each one of them. Sakura caught hers and stared. “Oh my God. A TechTool! Whips, look!”

  “I know!” Whips said, brandishing his own. “Vents, this would have made so many things easier!”

  That was an understatement. The TechTools were larger, more sophisticated versions of the Shapetools several of the Kimeis had had when they were marooned. If one thought of a Shapetool as the modern equivalent of a Swiss Army Knife, a TechTool was a medium-sized toolbox that included not only an array of knives, screwdrivers, wrenches, levers, and so on but instrumentation to evaluate everything from voltage to vibration. They also could interface with most omnis to allow accurate work guidance and active shifting of the tool to whatever was needed at a given point in a task.

  “Well, we’re glad you like ’em. It was sure a pleasant surprise for us when we found a small crate of them in the survival supplies,” Campbell said. “So that’s the basic summary of what we’ve got, with a few odds and ends. We’ll finish uncrating everything in the next couple weeks and get a detailed list then. Next up is figuring out what we’ll be doing for the next, oh, year.”

  Sakura winced. It was wonderful to have all this new stuff to work with, but inside, part of her had been trying to pretend that this somehow meant they might be going home soon. “So there’s no way for us to get Emerald Maui to fly us home?” she asked.

  “There might be,” Xander Bird said, surprising her. “But there’s a lot of big ifs involved.”

  “Are you saying the Trapdoor Drive might still operate?” Akira’s voice held the same tension that gripped Sakura.

  “Oui,” Tavana said promptly. “The Drive, it is not perfect, but we are not pressured by time here as our crew was when we were marooned in space. If we take time and use all the resources we now have…I think we can make much better coils, and if we use much of the cargo space not for big machinery but for supplies, Emerald Maui can carry us a long ways indeed.”

  “But the wing and the drives on that side?”

  “That’s a problem,” admitted Xander. His eyes surveyed the group—skipping quickly past Whips. “but maybe not an impossible one. A lot of the basic systems are still intact. If we can manage to launch at all, I think we can figure out a way to fly her. The question is if we can fix her up to launch. But there’s another alternative.”

  Sakura saw Campbell’s nod, and the big man leaned forward. “What we might be able to do is combine the remains of the one wing, one of the drive systems, a bunch of superconducting power packs, and some self-designed Trapdoor coils to make an FTL distress probe. Send it up and have it fly straight to Orado, then broadcast a distress beacon once it gets in-system.”

  “Wouldn’t that really require a nuclear reactor to keep the coils running?” Akira looked puzzled.

  “Might not. See, the size of the Trapdoor field’s one of the main power determinants. Plus, a ship for people needs all kinds of power to keep the ship comfortable and livable for human passengers. Our probe can be very small and won’t need to maintain environmentals. So Xander and Tavana think it’s possible.”

  “Do you think we should focus efforts on these possibilities?” Laura asked.

  “Mom! Of course we do!” Melody said in a scandalized tone.

  “There is no of course about it, Melody,” Akira said. “And you will not use that tone of voice to your mother.”

  Melody opened her mouth, closed it, then looked down. “Sorry, Mom. But why isn’t it ‘of course’?”

  “It’s okay, sweetheart. Sakura, I see you looking at me. Can you explain?”

  Ugh. I’d rather argue that we should. But Mom’s right. “Um…because doing all that doesn’t help us right here, building our colony, making ourselves safer and more comfortable, and it might all turn out to be a waste of time. So we have to decide whether doing that work’s worth losing the other work and maybe ending up with having wasted all that time.”

  “Close enough,” Campbell said. “It’s not entirely an either/or choice. We could keep working on our escape or beacon plans off and on, but without a focused, dedicated effort that could take a long, long time. On the other hand, the people qualified to do the work at all are also several of the ones who’ll be best at building up our colony—Xander, Tavana, Whips, and me, of course, with maybe little Sakura to help out too. And any time you split attention and focus across multiple problems, you’ll end up wasting time and energy as your people change from one problem to the other.

  “Still, if you were to ask me…I’d say we want to at least get to the point where we can say for sure whether either of them can be done with the resources and people we have here. But that takes a back seat to getting our group some permanent digs, I think.”

  “I agree,” Laura said. “We need to think out where you’re going to live—another column like ours? A tree? Build something on the ground?—and then get it done. Once we’ve done that, and set up some of the basic improvements for both homes that we can do with the supplies you’ve brought, then I think we should look into these possibilities.”

  “Have to keep us all fed and such, too,” Pearce said. “Which means teaching all of us about your area—what we hunt, what we don’t, what’s dangerous, all that. You’ve been here a lot longer than us, and for my part I just woke up a few weeks ago.”

  “Tavana can come with me on the hunt tomorrow,” Sakura said. “If we do a buddy system, teaching and safety combined, all of us will get up to speed pretty fast, right?”

  Laura laughed, and she saw her exchange smiles with the sergeant. “Sounds like a reasonable plan to me, Saki. Maybe Whips and Mel can take Maddox fishing?”

  “I love fishing! Can I go, Xander? Please?”

  Even though the sergeant was clearly the leader of his group, it was just as clear to Sakura that Maddox looked to his big brother for a lot of things.

  Xander smiled at his little brother, then turned to look at Whips. Sakura could see him pale slightly, but his expression stayed controlled. Sakura suppressed the anger that always tried to rise in her; it wasn’t Xander’s fault that his near-death at the hands of the raylamps had given him a phobia of things that had body-plans something like Whips’. Her mother was working out a program of treatment, and Xander certainly didn’t blame Whips for his problem, but it was still hard to have someone looking at her best friend as though he were a monster about to spring.

  “Whips,” Xander said, “You’re okay with that? You’d have to watch both of them, since you’re the one safest in and near the water.”

  Whips did a rise-and-fall bow. “Mel knows the ropes pretty well. I’ll keep a special eye on Maddox to make sure he stays safe.”

  “Okay.” His e
yes immediately shifted back to his brother. “Then you can go, as long as you promise to listen to Whips and do what he says.”

  “I will! I promise!”

  “All right,” the sergeant said. “Sounds like we’ve got some short-term plans as well as the longer-term ones.” He looked down at Hitomi and Francisco, who were shifting in their chairs. “Let’s not draw this out, then. Adults—that includes you, Xander, as well as Caroline—let’s go have a powwow to hash out some details. Kids can have fun for a day before we get back to the grind.”

  “I agree,” Laura said. “Tavana, Sakura, I’ll expect you two to keep an eye on things for us, but if everyone stays in the clearing or Sherwood Tower it should be fine; we’ll talk over in the shelter. Plan on a dinner in a few hours, Saki.”

  “Yes, Mom. I can do that.”

  She looked over at Tavana. “Now the trick’s to convince the kids that we’re in charge.”

  “Vraiment,” he said with a grin. “That I leave to you!”

  Chapter 8

  “Hey, Tavana, can I ask you something?” Sakura had a note of hesitation in her voice.

  The two of them were at a crude shooting range that the sergeant had designed, located in the long, low scar that LS-5 had left when it crashed. The upcurved walls of the groove left by the careening shuttle provided good cover to minimize or eliminate the chance of wild shots hitting anything or anyone, and it was fairly broad and straight, allowing the sergeant to place targets (mostly made of leftover pieces of LS-5’s wrecked wings) at easily measured distances.

  Tavana glanced over at Xander, who was overseeing the practice, then back to Sakura. I wonder what she has to be nervous about. Me, I am nervous around her. “Of course you can ask.”

  “Ha, yeah, that always sounds stupid, doesn’t it? I mean, I just did ask you a question. Okay, it’s…I know that Xander and Maddox were going to join their parents at Tantalus, and Frankie’s—I mean, Francisco’s parents ended up in a different lifeboat, but I never got why you were alone.”

  Tavana found himself unable to respond at first; instead, he raised the hunting rifle and sighted on the 50-meter target. He concentrated on slowly squeezing the trigger instead of yanking on it. The weapon kicked his shoulder but it was no big deal; neither was his aim, unfortunately, as he saw a tiny drifting cloud of dust half a meter to the right and above the target. Ugh. I winced again instead of keeping my eyes open.

  But then, he hadn’t really been concentrating on the shot.

  Sakura was taking aim herself, but he knew she was still waiting for his answer. He waited until she fired (and also missed, though it looked like she was a lot closer) before speaking.

  “It is something like both of theirs,” Tavana said finally. “My mother, Mahina, was one of the first wave of colonists, and my…” He paused, swallowed, then went on. “…the rest of my family stayed on Earth. Maman is a construction engineer and oversight manager for colonial construction, and she really liked what she heard about Tantalus; that was why she volunteered for the first wave, if they’d guarantee passage for the rest of us when the colony was ready.”

  “Something happened to the rest of your family?” Sakura asked quietly.

  He looked down, set the rifle aside. “I…the outdoorsman, that isn’t what I am, you understand? I mean, here I have been learning how to do many things I did not do at home. I was not sure I wanted to be a colonist. But I did not make a big argument about it; everyone else was excited about it, and it was not like I had much choice.”

  She had laid her weapon down too and was just standing there, listening.

  “Anyway…it was half a year before departure, Papa and my brother and sister—Rainui and Aurélie—went on a fishing trip; I didn’t feel like going that day, so I stayed home. I was supposed to study but, well…I didn’t. Played instead. Then…” he took a deep breath. “Then the call came.” He couldn’t keep a tremor from his voice. “The fishing boat, it had disappeared. No one knew what happened for days.”

  “Days? My God, Tavana, that’s horrible. With all the automated safety systems and—”

  “Freak accident,” he said, interrupting her but forcing himself to finish. I didn’t even tell the others on Emerald Maui about this. “They never told us the details about how it happened, but one of the automated ocean sweeper ships, it mistook their boat for recyclable debris, and…”

  The horror on her face echoed his own memories. Tavana was startled to feel the cool streaks left by tears down his face. This is the first time I have let myself think about it in…more than a year.

  A faint crunching of gravel. Xander touched his shoulder. “Hey, Tav, what’s wrong? Sakura?”

  “Oh my God. That was you.” Her voice was an appalled whisper. “The story was all over the news a few months before we left, everyone wondering how a sweeper ship could ever do that…”

  Vaguely, Tavana was aware of Xander’s face going blank with shock, even as Sakura continued, “…but they didn’t use your real name and blurred out your face, so…I’m so sorry, Tav. I didn’t know!” Her own voice wavered on the edge of tears, causing his own eyes to sting again.

  “So that’s why…” Xander murmured.

  “Oui,” Tavana finally forced himself to speak. “Yes, I had my, what was it…the fifteen minutes of fame?…from the accident. At least the privacy laws, they kept my name and face from being everywhere, but still…”

  “How did this subject come up, Sakura?”

  Sakura glanced at Tavana, the pain on her face a pure apology. “I asked him about why he was alone on Emerald Maui.”

  “Oh.” Xander’s brow wrinkled. “But you didn’t seem that close to your aunt and uncle,” he said hesitantly. “How did you end up with them—if you don’t mind my asking now?”

  “Oui, that I was not. They were not bad people, but they were from France and I had only seen them once before…before the accident. So I was to go to join my mother on Tantalus, but they do not like fifteen-year-olds traveling alone to colonies. Aunt Heloise and Uncle Francois wanted to go to the colonies, none of my Tahitian relatives did, so I went with them.”

  He managed a smile. “And then you see how that worked out—I am on my own on a colony anyway, as my guardians were at the same place as Francisco’s when the alarm came.”

  “Lucky for us you came,” Xander said. “I know you had some rough patches early on, but I don’t know if we’d even have gotten here without you.”

  It was pretty obvious that Xander was trying to move the conversation away from the accident, to cheer Tavana up, but despite being obvious, Tavana found that it still worked; Xander really tried to be everyone’s big brother.

  “Well, maybe, maybe not, but the compliment, it is appreciated. And it is okay, Sakura; you aren’t the news crews or someone just looking to hear nasty details.”

  She smiled and wiped away the trace of tears of her own, reflecting his own motion as he scrubbed his face dry.

  “Okay,” Xander said, looking relieved. “Now,” he picked up one of the rifles, “Tav, I think you already know this, but you have to stop closing your eyes every time you go to shoot. Sakura, you’re a little better that way, but you keep jerking the trigger.”

  “What do you mean? I just pull it when I fire,” Sakura asked.

  “You’re pulling it like…um, like you’re yanking on a string or something. It shouldn’t be a sharp, sudden motion, even though the shot will be sudden. You have to pull the trigger smoothly. Imagine, instead of pulling a trigger, that you’re pushing a slide control back.”

  “Oh. Okay, I’ll try.”

  “And,” Tavana said, “I will try not to wince every time, but that habit, it is hard to break.”

  “It’ll get harder the longer you let it go, so now’s the time to fight it.” He glanced at the two of them, and a momentary smile flickered across his face. “Well, I’ll go back to watching. Keep practicing while you’re talking, though; the sergeant wants both of you to finish qu
alifying as soon as possible.”

  Once Xander was back in his observing position, Sakura reached out and touched his shoulder. “Tavana…thanks for telling me. That must’ve been pretty hard for you.”

  “It was,” he admitted, picking the rifle back up after wiping his eyes on his shirtsleeve. “And now…now it seems I may never see my mother again, either. For the first few months I was so upset…so angry, at them, then at myself.” Seeing her startled glance, he forced a sad grin. “The therapists, they say I had much ‘survivor’s guilt.’ Is a very stupid thing to feel, but they say it is not unusual. I pushed it to the back of my head, avoided talking about it.”

  She fired, and there was a loud whack! from the target, which vibrated noticeably. “Wow! I hit it!” She looked back at him. “So…how do you feel about having told me about this?”

  He raised his rifle, took aim, and fired. This shot, too, went wide, but it was a lot closer. “It…feels a little better, I guess. My grand-mère used to tell us that feelings sealed away can fester like wounds.”

  “I’ve heard Mom say things like that, too. I guess I really am lucky, though. You lost your family, Xander and Maddox got separated from theirs and then lost their uncle, Francisco’s parents were in another lifeboat…I’ve got my whole family, plus my best friend.”

  “I’m glad for that,” Tavana said, though he felt more than a twinge of angry envy that he beat savagely back. Concentrate on the good, not the bad. The bad is like a piece of rotting fruit in the middle of a bowl; it will ruin everything around it. “And I was not so unlucky; I have new brothers, yes? Xander is a big brother to me, Maddox and Francisco my annoying little brothers.” He grinned, and felt something genuine in that smile that eased his own anger. “And the sergeant, he is that scary-looking relative who suddenly comes over to take you to the park or something.”

  Sakura echoed his laugh. “Isn’t he exactly?”

  “And mon Dieu, am I glad he was with us when everything came apart. Maybe Xander is right that they needed me too, but the sergeant? He was the one who really kept us all alive.” Off to the right both times, so aim just a little to the left…