by Eric Flint
Most of the driftseed slid into the bag, with just a little of it fluffing and flying away at the edges. “Oh! Oui, c’est facile,” Tav said; his voice had that same strange, tense edge. She was suddenly aware of the warmth of Tav’s arm, the hard-soft feel of muscle under skin.
She stepped back, letting go maybe a little faster than she’d originally planned. “So, um, you think you can do that yourself?”
“Yes, it is easy, yes? I said that.” He laughed suddenly. “So, Saki, can I ask you another question?”
Another question would be good, she thought. “Sure!”
He hesitated, and she suddenly wondered if she did want another question. Or if she really did want another question. “So,” he said again, and licked his lips nervously, then managed a smile. “The neighborhood, I did not see an immertainment complex or a performance hall or even restaurant around. So I was wondering, um, where would you go if you were dating?”
She couldn’t help herself; the release of tension sent her into a gale of laughter. Seeing his wince-and-cringe helped get it back under control. “No, it’s okay, Tav, jeez, I was trying to decide how I might ask you, and that was a pretty cute approach you tried, so the answer’s yes but I don’t know where!”
“Yes? Vraiment? Really?” He grinned, teeth flashing as bright as the driftseed. “Well, then we will think about the ‘where’ later!” The relief was as clear on his face as it had been in her gut, and then he went on, “Maybe the practice range? It is not so classically part of romance, but I had fun with our little contest before.”
“Ha! That’s not a terrible idea at all, but maybe we can come up with a better one. I’ll have to talk to Mom and Dad, of course.”
“Oui, and I with the sergeant. At least we have already met each other’s family here.”
She heard a giggle escape her. “Yeah, I guess we have. So, anyway, think you can help finish gathering the driftseed?”
“Now?” Tavana grinned again. “Now I could finish this whole clearing.”
Chapter 13
Campbell stretched, testing his body’s sensations. Mostly back to my old self, but still a little off. That damn disease really took it out of us.
Still, he’d gotten off pretty light. He looked at Francisco, who was sitting in bed, trying to paint a picture of the view out the window, and shook his head. The little boy still had to pause every ten minutes or so to rest; Maddox was a little better than that, but even now after three and a half weeks he was only up to a little light labor.
“Is he going to recover all the way, Doctor Kimei?” he asked, voice low.
Laura bit her lip. “I…hope so. This was a complex disease. It actually started adapting to some of the nanotreatments, and I don’t remember ever seeing anything like that in the literature before. If we had a full-scale hospital setup I’d be sure, but…”
He could see the dark doubts on her face. He put a hand on her shoulder. “What you’re really telling me, ma’am, is that if we hadn’t had the incredible fortune that you landed here, and that we were able to reach you, that little boy and the rest of us would be dead now. You reversed most of the systemic damage, including the neurological, and whatever happens, Franky’s going to still be himself, and that’s okay.”
Laura shook herself and then smiled at him. “Playing therapist now, Sergeant?”
“Hell, that’s the job of a noncom, isn’t it? Half of your job’s running out the recruits who really shouldn’t have signed on in the first place, and the other half’s helping build up the ones who belong there. And the way you looked? Ma’am, I’ve seen that expression before, more times than I care to remember. In my line of work, you see a hell of lot of medics and doctors losing patients, haunted by what-ifs and I should haves.” He frowned, remembering. “Sometimes the patient’s only one of the victims that needs treatment.”
Laura nodded. “They teach you that lesson in medical school,” she said with a rueful grin, “but it’s hard to keep in mind.” She looked back at Francisco. “But…yes, I think he will. The nanos are working on the repairs and I don’t think there’s anything irreparable. It was very close, though.”
“Too damn close. Your upgraded medical suite should keep that from happening again, right?”
“It should. I’m confident that it will. I had to do a complete wipe-and-reprogram on your nanos to enforce full compatibility and consistency, but that’s done, so I think our little colony has full coverage on medical safety now.”
She gestured upward. “And since you were saying how grateful you were for our presence, let me just add how grateful we are for yours. Those satellites are a godsend. Now we can talk to each other anywhere on the planet, and if there’s a medical or any other kind of emergency we’ll know about it right away, with all our omnis linked to the network.”
“Well, now, I guess it’s just that we’re both groups lucky. Together I think we can really make a go of it here, even if we’re never found.”
She was quiet for a moment, and the two of them moved out of the doorway of the shelter to let Hitomi through; the little girl ran over to Francisco and dropped a flower chain on his lap. Campbell grinned at that.
“So, Sergeant…do you think that’s where we are? That we’ll never be found?”
He shrugged, and started walking slowly away from the shelter, looking up at the immense trees surrounding them. “Well, I’ll tell you, ma’am; I was giving about one-in-ten odds a rescue ship would show up in the first six months—which time was actually spent while we were still trying to make our way here.
“Now? I wouldn’t give you one in a thousand. The only reason anyone would have to come here is if they either suspect there are castaways on Lincoln, or if they notice something funny about this planet. The star someone might notice, but then they’re not gonna be so concerned about the planets here, but on what it was that managed to hide a whole star this close to Earth. So they’ll go looking in space along that line-of-sight. Only likely thing to draw anyone to Lincoln otherwise is if someone maps it with wide-baseline telescopes, and then notices the map ain’t always consistent. But that’s a matter of years at that distance.”
Laura Kimei nodded; her thoughts clearly ran along the same channels. “So we’re here for good.”
“Unless one of those contraptions the kids are working on is built, and manages to make it to Orado. If that happens you can bet there’ll be a big mission here straightaway.”
A pair of arms slipped around his waist from behind and hugged. “And what do you think the chances are of that?” Pearce Haley asked, letting go and stepping up to join them. “Hi, Laura.”
“Hi, Pearce!” Laura gave Pearce a quick hug. “That’s a good question. I know Whips, Tavana, and Xander are spending a lot of time on those alternatives. What do you think?”
Campbell stole a quick kiss from Pearce before answering. “Well, first off, there’s no problem with them trying to figure these things out. Chances…really hard to say. Engineers are usually either complete optimists or total pessimists about how something they designed will work.”
“I like the idea of going home under our own power,” Laura said after a moment.
“So do I. You can’t beat ending a shipwreck story that way, with everyone hammering out a solution and beating the odds to get home on their own. Look at how many times they’ve dramatized the wreck of the Nebula Storm over the century and a half since it crashed on Europa.” He swatted at a buzzbug that was flying too close. “But they’ll have to do a hell of a job of convincing me that they can get that hulk skyworthy again before I greenlight that. Doing the separate probe might permanently ground Emerald Maui, but it won’t risk any of us, and honestly I like that a lot better.”
“I agree,” Pearce said. “But we’ll decide that when the designs are all done; have a family conference about it.”
“Sure thing.”
He took Pearce’s hand in his as they walked around the clearing, and noticed Laura’s exp
ression. “What are you grinning about, ma’am?”
“Oh, seeing the two of you and then remembering Hitomi running in with that flower chain.”
“Ha! Though I think the ones you need to keep an eye on are Tav and Sakura.”
“Oh, I am,” she said, “but Tavana seems like a very nice young man, and it’s not like Saki can’t take care of herself. Mostly the problem is keeping them from distracting each other now. Tavana especially.”
“I hear you on that,” he said with a chuckle. “Especially Tav; when he came to us to ask about what a guy might arrange to have a date, he was practically incoherent. But what about Xander and Caroline?”
“Honestly? I don’t know if there’s anything there or not. They’re clearly friendly, but I haven’t got a sense as to whether they’re interested in each other.”
“I hate to say it,” Pearce said, “but right now it’s Maddox who’s interested in Caroline.”
“What? He’s only, what, fourteen?”
Campbell heard his own laugh echo across the clearing. “And she’s eighteen, which is only four years apart. Looks like a big separation now, of course, but it doesn’t mean much to a young guy. Or gal, for that matter; can’t tell you the number of young ladies I know who got crushes on older teachers. Yeah, I’ve seen Maddox sneaking looks at Caroline myself. Tries to hide it. Kinda like Xander and Pearce.”
Pearce boggled at him. “What?”
He laughed again, reflecting on how good it was to laugh now, after all the prior months where good laughs were in short supply. “What, you never noticed him staring at you back on the ship? Or sometimes giving me the narrow side-eye when he thought I didn’t notice? Think he’s pretty over it now, but he had it pretty bad for a bit.”
As Pearce chewed on that minor revelation, Campbell looked to Laura. “Anyways, one question I gotta ask, have you got the critical issues on this covered? The emotional ones they’ll have to work out on their own, but…”
“Oh, I absolutely have that covered. None of us—not me, not Pearce, and not any of my girls—will be having children unless and until it is decided they will. Obviously, if it comes to that, Pearce, it’s completely your decision; you’re my patient but not my responsibility.”
The redhead gave a grin up to Campbell that jolted him and sent his heart racing as though he was a teenager again. “Oh, maybe it will come to that. But not just yet.”
“Uh, yeah,” Campbell said, noticing that his own conversation wasn’t as sparkling as it ought to be. “Hm. Not yet, that’s for sure. We’ll need to finish getting established and comfortable before we worry about that.”
There were, of course, other problems with the long-term viability of their colony, but for now the real problems were simple: make long-term homes, secure long-term food sources, keep improving their resources and capabilities…and be ready for anything Lincoln threw at them.
Because even now, with all of them together, Samuel Morgan Campbell could still feel it. Lincoln had more surprises in store for them.
And some of them could be lethal.
Chapter 14
“You’re sure this is a good choice?” Campbell directed the question to Sakura, even as he stared up at the column.
Having Campbell ask her sent a maybe-unreasonable thrill of pride through her. “We’re pretty sure, Sergeant. Dad’s been doing as much studying of the ecology here as he could, and it seems that some of these columns aren’t used as much. We already chose one that is, but this one’s actually got a floor on it. For some reason the continent’s sealed it off.”
“Really?” Campbell rubbed his chin, still studying the concretelike tower in front of him. “Why d’you suppose that is, Akira? I mean, sounds ideal for us, and your own tower’s working out well, but I’d hate to buy into something that turned out to have problems that even the continent rejected it for. Not like there’s a building code around here.”
“I don’t think it’s for anything to do with structural integrity; you know that I borrowed Xander and Maddox and went over this one in detail with some of your equipment last week. My best guess is that as the continent grows, the needed number and placement of vents changes, and ones not needed are simply walled off.”
“Hmm. And yours is active, but this one isn’t. Could it be unwalled off later?”
Sakura nodded. “We saw how the structure of your island responded to thinking you were a threat; probably the same kind of thing happens, more slowly, as the island adapts to change. So it could probably reopen this one.”
She saw Campbell’s gaze run up the column into the canopy and look around. He nodded thoughtfully. “Well, Saki, could you and Tavana start checking out the configuration on the 450? Looks like we’re gonna start cutting soon.”
“Me?” Sakura said with surprise. “But Xander and Maddox know a lot more than—”
“Exactly why you and Tav should do it,” Xander said, somewhat abruptly. He was also looking up, studying the column and the canopy. “Maddox, you can help out. We’ve got plenty of time, so this can be a lot of learning as well as working. Right, Sergeant, Dr. Kimei?”
Her mother had frowned when Xander interrupted, but her face cleared some when Xander directed the question to her. He may be their captain, but my mom is boss. “I suppose so. Yes, go on, Sakura. It can’t hurt for all of us to understand how to run all of our equipment.”
Sakura didn’t mind, to tell the truth. The JD-CAT 450 Universal Excavator, to give the machine its full name, was a really impressive and massive vehicle, with a fully-shapeable “blade” that could be anything from a bulldozer to a bucket loader and more.
As she and Tav, along with the smaller Bird brother Maddox, headed towards the big yellow-painted machine, she heard the sergeant say, “and Whips, maybe you could work with Mel to figure out how we could put in a floor at the bottom level that’ll support itself, just in case the island decides to pull the rug out on us?”
“Sure thing, sir!” Whips said cheerfully, and Mel followed him over to a large exposed rock which the Bemmie liked to sit on; it was smooth and comfortable for his belly-pad.
Sakura was glad they didn’t have to watch the younger kids; Caroline had stayed behind in Sherwood Tower with both Hitomi and Francisco.
She felt a faint, welcome tingle go up her arm as Tavana took her hand while they stood for a moment, looking at the 450. Maddox glanced at that and just grinned at them; Sakura smiled back. “So what do we have to do here?”
“Okay, well, we need to cut holes in that column, right? So that means the 450 needs a cutting array.”
“Oui, that is clear enough,” Tavana said. “But can it do that? Bulldozer blades and excavators, that is what we have used it for. The cutting, I did not know it could do this.”
“I’ll bet it can. JD-Cats are used for road work, and you have to cut up roadways sometimes, right?”
“You sure do,” Sakura said. She remembered seeing such a machine with what looked like a huge rotary sawblade slowly grinding its way through the pavement, back on Earth. “So is that just another mode we have to switch on?”
“It is not an option in the menu,” Tavana said after a moment of staring at the interface; Sakura brought up the same connection; there were a lot of configurations but not that one.
Tavana grinned. “But then, I do remember having a tool that lied about what menu options it could give me. Maddox, is this another handholding limit?”
Maddox laughed. “You don’t get fooled twice, huh? I’ll bet it is. Let’s start digging into this interface!”
Sakura tried to watch what Maddox was doing, along with Tav, but she wasn’t really an engineer or an interface jockey, so some of it was out of her league.
She glanced over at the others. Mel was waving her arms animatedly as Whips projected something in front of her; Pearce Haley was using what Sakura thought was an acoustic echo probe on the column, probably gauging its thickness at the bottom, while Mom and Dad looked up at the column
itself, talking. Xander was staring up into space, maybe looking at an omni projection, while Sergeant Campbell had stepped back about ten meters, taking a different perspective of the column.
That was why she was looking straight at him when, without warning, a tree kraken plummeted from the branches, heading straight for the sergeant.
Before she—or anyone else—could cry out or even break their shocked paralysis, Sergeant Campbell whipped around, the automatic rifle that had been slung over his back suddenly in his hands, and a chattering snarl ripped through the sunlit green air of the little clearing.
The details of armaments had changed over the centuries, but chemical propellants shoving carefully-designed pieces of metal down barrels was still one of the most devastatingly effective ways of stopping anything hostile. Sergeant Campbell fired in three-shot bursts, one set after another, and alien blood and flesh and bone spattered from the impacts.
The creature stumbled and crashed to a halt, giving a whining screech of pain, fury, and dawning fear. Even as it turned to flee, Campbell raised the rifle, aimed, and fired a final burst that took the thing through its tiny head, dropping the tree kraken like a load of cement.
No one moved as the echoes of the shots dwindled away into the distance; the forest of Lincoln was unnaturally silent, still, shocked into quiet by the violence of that unknown sound.
Akira Kimei was the first to speak, as the sergeant slowly lowered the weapon. “My God. Are you all right, Samuel?”
Campbell grinned as he re-slung the rifle. “Never got close. Been watching it stalking me for the last ten minutes, as you know.”
Sakura was relieved and puzzled. “But Sergeant, then why didn’t you tell us? We could have tried to discourage it, maybe run it off.”
“He did tell us,” her mother said. “Over the private circuits, which is why the rest of you were moved well away from the column. I would like an explanation for why you didn’t scare it off earlier, though, rather than letting it try to attack you. That scared the daylights out of me, even though I knew it was coming.”
