By Dawn's Early Light

by Jason Fuesting

  “Where are they? I’ve only seen three people here,” Leah asked.

  “We have several other residences on the property. Most everyone is helping finish the construction of another currently, seeing as we’re somewhat cramped and I see that only getting worse.”

  “What kind of provisions have been made already?” Byron asked.

  “Well, we have just under a year’s worth of food left, provided we can’t grow more. Cerberus Station conducts supply drops randomly in good weather, but they’re nowhere near enough to sustain the population currently here. As far as tools go, we had a very primitive machine shop, but our machinist died a few months back before he could make it functional or teach anyone. I’m hoping Jeff can help with that.”

  “Cerberus Station?” Byron again.

  “Yes, the Protectorate’s orbital watchdog. The public face of it is, no doubt, that they help distribute provisions to those exiled below. The truth is, they’re here to make sure we stay under lock and key.”

  “How does that work, exactly?”

  “In concert with a constellation of defense satellites, they interdict any unauthorized traffic to this planet. They also conduct routine surveillance and, if necessary, direct action.” Byron’s inquisitive look prompted Turing on, “In short, any hint of advanced technology warrants either orbital or drone strikes. You may come across some evidence of those strikes in the future.”

  “Wait,” Eric interrupted, “I’ve got a tablet, is that going to get their attention?”

  “Unless it has a transmitter, it shouldn’t. Most tablet sized devices are terribly short range, so you wouldn’t have to worry unless one of the surveillance drones is directly overhead anyway. I am highly curious how you managed to keep it in the first place. Most prisoners are dropped here with only the barest essentials, but we can talk later. Next question?”

  Doc cleared his throat. “Medical supplies? Facilities? You said no advanced tech.”

  “Sadly, yes, no advanced tech, so no nano labs, robot controlled surgery, or the like. Everything is manual. We have a physician’s assistant who is in charge of our medical needs right now. We do our best to recover Cerberus’s drops to augment our existing supplies, but for details, you’d have to talk to Leroy. I may have the depth and knowledge equivalency to qualify as a medical doctor, but I never saw the need to sacrifice that much time.”

  “Wait? You’re not a doctor?” Doc asked, shocked.

  “Not a medical one, no. You know the residency rules, and all the other regulatory hoops. I could pass any test you want to give, but I had better things to do than satisfy self-important bureaucrats to get a signed sheet of paper.”

  “You’re practicing medicine without a license,” Doc began to fume. “Endangering a patient’s well-being, that’s unethical.”

  “Please, Doctor. You forget yourself. On this planet, I am the licensing authority and the ethics board. If Eric had a hemorrhage anywhere in his skull, there’s nothing any of us could have done to help him. If anything, I think getting drunk would be a preferable way to go out than the alternatives.”

  Doc grit his teeth.

  “What kind of doctor are you, then?” Leah asked.

  “I hold doctorates in both computer science and engineering; master’s degrees in physics, mathematics, and electrical engineering; bachelor’s degrees in biology, political science; and a minor in art history.”

  Eric snorted. Turing raised an eyebrow.

  “Art history? Really?” Eric said.

  “What?” Doc growled. “That’s not remotely possible. You don’t look a day over thirty.”

  “I am, but not by much. My family ensured I had the very best schooling available to me and unlike many of my generation, I took advantage of that.”

  “Let’s say this doesn’t work out, would we be free to go?” Byron asked.

  “If you so choose, yes. All I would ask is that anyone wanting to leave come see me so we can work out details. I’m not one to keep the unwilling here, but I do have the responsibility of trying to keep this place running as smoothly as possible for everyone else. Essentially, all I’d ask is that you finish any major projects before moving on.”

  “What sort of tasks?” Byron continued.

  “Yeah,” Jeff said. “You said you wanted me to work on some kind of machine shop?”

  “Well, firstly, I’ve put a few people in charge of managing the ongoing projects. Hadrian is in charge of the hunters and physical security here. Leroy is head of our medical staff at the moment. Denise is our civil engineer, she’s in charge of infrastructure. Right now, I’m expecting you to be working with her, Jeff, though not necessarily for her. Ideally, if you can get some sort of manufacturing setup created, you’ll be your own department. I’m currently looking for someone to head up our agricultural interests, and that looks like it will be you, Leah.”

  “Me?” Leah squeaked. “I was a lawyer! All I’ve done is some basic gardening!”

  “True. Be that as it may, your credentials on the topic are still better than the rest of ours. Most of us hold doctorates or master’s degrees in hard sciences, not agronomy. We’ve made a few ham-fisted attempts over the last few years to get something working, but yields have been less than stellar and all we’ve managed is to forestall the inevitable. As weak as it sounds, I’m hoping you’ll help us reach our goal of yield parity. Barring someone better coming along, it seems you might be our best hope. I know it’s a lot to ask, but you will have a lot of leeway and plenty of outside experience to lean on.”

  “I, I don’t know what to say,” Leah said, her face flushed noticeably.

  Turing nodded, “As for you, Doc, I’d like you to work with Leroy and double check his work. I’m not fond of shuffling leadership immediately, but if you prove up to the task, we’ll see.”

  Doc slowly nodded.

  “Byron, I’d like to stick you under Hadrian for the time being. He’s had a lot of positive things to say about you. I’d like to see if they’re all true. If they are, then you and I have no small amount of talking to do.”

  “What about me?” Eric asked.

  “That’s what has been bugging me most of the day, actually. My first impression, mind you, was that you had little potential for anything other than manual labor. Thankfully, I was wrong.” Turing glanced over to Hadrian. “Yes, I said it. Mark it on the calendar, Hadrian.”

  Grinning, Hadrian said, “Already done, sir.”

  “You do have a lot of potential, but right now, I’m not sure how best to tap that potential. Unfortunately, we have too many projects and not enough hands to work them, so it looks like the bulk of your time will be manual labor, potential or not. That said, I do intend on following up with you. I would like to see some sort of schooling done so you can be more than a set of useful hands. Until I figure out something more permanent, I’ll assign your tasks myself. Does anyone have any other questions?”

  Eric nodded. “Uh, one last one if you don’t mind? Does anyone ever get off this rock?”

  Turing sighed and shook his head. “Cerberus does send retrieval teams down infrequently. We never see those people again, so I would believe it safe to assume they’re pumped for information and disposed of. The effective answer to your question is no. Barring a surprise visit from above, we’ll all grow old and grey here. Possibly our children as well, if there are any. There haven’t been, yet.”

  “How do they find people? You said they sent retrieval teams,” Byron noted.

  “That’s one of Leroy’s projects. I have my suspicions it’s tagging of some sort, but without an actual lab, I can’t confirm. If it’s injectable, it would be terribly short range. There are other concerns, but nothing worth worrying about at this time. Anyone else?”

  Byron raised his hand.

  “Yes?” Turing asked.

  “What’s the local time scale compared to galactic standard time?”

  “Good thing you asked,” Turing replied. “Solitude’s grav
ity is ninety-five percent galactic standard. The Solitude day is a few minutes past twenty-four standard hours, and a year here is four-hundred and eighty standard days. Due to axial tilt and precession, seasons here are almost exactly four standard months long. Anything else?”

  Turing looked everyone in the eyes in turn.

  “Well, then before we wrap this up, Hadrian, I need you to select five people for a mission tomorrow. I’d like you to start off for the west cabin and retrieve a list of supplies.”

  Hadrian nodded. “I’ll have the list for you inside the hour.”

  “Good. Friends, welcome to Solitude.”

  Contours

  Day 2

  “Up and at ‘em, Eric.”

  The room was dark.

  Why is Byron in my room? Wait, where is my room? Where am I? What the hell happened?

  “Ugh,” Eric grumbled. “Good lord, my head feels like…”

  “You were hit by truck? Maybe a train carrying trucks? Perhaps a ship carrying trains filled with trucks?”

  “What?”

  “Never mind, you got to get up, son.”

  “Why?”

  Byron sighed. “Because you turn into a combative jackass when you’re drunk and someone tells you that you need to drink water to avoid a hangover. As much as you deserve the hangover, I’m thinking you’d be even less sociable.”

  “What time is it?”

  “About an hour before dawn.”

  “Ugh. Fuck me,” Eric grunted.

  “Nope, sorry, not my type. Facial hair is a major turn-off.”

  Eric stared at the shadow he assumed was Byron, nonplussed.

  “Do I have to go get a bucket of snow and dump it on you?” Bryon asked.

  “I’m getting up, dammit.”

  “Good. Hadrian wants us downstairs in a half an hour.”

  “Byron? Where’s the bathroom?”

  Byron sighed again. “Close your eyes, hit the lights here by the door. Basic clothes, toiletries, and the like are in the locker. Your case is in the bottom. Bathroom’s across the hall to the left. Oh, and be careful of the bucket by your head. By the smell, you puked in it sometime overnight.”

  Eric groaned and pushed himself in a sitting position as the door closed. Byron’s advice did little to prepare him for the light that stabbed him in the eyes as he rooted out clothes and stumbled across the hall.

  “Pay up,” Byron told Hadrian twenty-five minutes later when Eric came drifting down the stairs. Hadrian sighed and handed Byron something as Eric reached the bottom.

  “So, what am I awake for, again?” Eric asked as he adjusted the leather belt on his slightly-too-big jeans.

  “We’re going on a nature hike,” Hadrian said.

  “Nature hike? No thanks. Bears are scary,” Eric mumbled automatically. Byron chuckled.

  “Today’s your first day of land navigation,” Byron said with a smirk. He handed Eric a tiny metal box. “There’s your compass, Lieutenant.”

  Eric squinted at the compass in his hand as he rubbed an eye with the other.

  “Land navigation?” he asked.

  “Part of your training,” Hadrian told him. “Turing wants you useful and I needed bodies for the trip. Win/win for us.”

  “Shit,” Eric commented.

  Hadrian grinned and scratched at his beard. “We’ve got an hour or so before I plan on leaving. Byron, get him kitted up, take him outside, and see if you can’t give him some basics before then.”

  Byron nodded. “You heard the man, Eric. Follow me.”

  Byron pressed on a panel on the side of the staircase and the wall slid back.

  “The hell? Hidden staircase?” Eric asked.

  “Yeah, this place is full of surprises. Turns out Turing’s great-grand-whatever was a paranoid bastard. When the provost sent folks down here to confiscate any unapproved technology, they missed a fair amount of stuff. This storeroom level included,” Byron told him on the way down. The stairs ended in small landing with a door in one corner and a window with a large gap below it. A skinny, dark-skinned man sat on the other side of the window sipping coffee from a slate grey mug. The cubby the man sat in was barely large enough to qualify as a closet.

  “Eric, Rick. Rick, Eric. Rick’s their supply guy. Also the armorer and one of the hunters. Met him last night when most of the folks got back. Eric was passed out by the time you guys got back, Rick.”

  “Oh, this is the guy Turing tried to give alcohol poisoning to?”

  “Yeah, that’s me.”

  “Nice to meet you, Eric.” Rick said as he struggled to his feet and shook Eric’s hand through the gap under the window. He continued dryly, “What can supply do for you two this fine morning?”

  “There’s only twenty people here and they have a supply section?” Eric mused.

  Rick shrugged sheepishly.

  “I’d tell you that Turing is pretty exacting in his desire to keep track of things and ensure efficiency, but that’d only be part of the truth,” Rick told them. “Hunting accident tore my knee up right at the beginning of Fall. I’m not worth much for most of the jobs that need done, so this is the best I can do.”

  “No shame in that, Rick,” Byron said with a nod, “Accidents happen and you’re still contributing. We’re heading out to the west lodge. Six people total, the rest will be following along shortly. I can’t speak for the rest, but Eric and I have our own cold weather gear. Snow shoes would be nice. Food, backpacks, weapons, ammunition, a map. Not sure what the standard load is for you guys.”

  Rick nodded along as Byron went through the list. “Yeah, Hadrian dropped off a note earlier. Let me double-check what he’s cleared you guys for.” Rick rifled through a stack of paper on the tabletop between them. “Ah, yeah. One second, I’ll get stuff out for you.”

  “Byron?” Hadrian said from the top of the stairs. “Hey, something just came up. We’ll be here an extra hour, get Rick to issue you a small load and go see if Eric can shoot.”

  “Catch that?” Byron asked Rick, who nodded in reply. “What do you have?”

  “Well, we’ve got a wide assortment of projectiles in various sizes. What are you looking for? We have a few bolt actions and select fire weapons, but most of what I have are semi only.”

  Byron scratched his chin, deep in thought. “Way out to the west lodge, mostly open terrain?”

  “Not really. There’s a few spots like that, but it’s mostly forest or dense scrub.”

  “Semi-auto rifle and pistol then.”

  “We’ve got a variety of sizes. Less ammo on hand as you get bigger.”

  “Hadrian mentioned you guys can’t make new cartridges yet, so small or intermediate for the rifle, then. You’ve shot pistol, Eric?”

  “Yeah. Fair amount.”

  “Preference?”

  “I liked the ten mil better than the nine.”

  Rick smiled. As he disappeared back into the storeroom he called over his shoulder, “I’ve got something for you then. Really old design you don’t see around anymore. Most of the hunters prefer it to the ten millimeter.”

  When he returned, Rick dropped two brown backpacks on the counter followed by several boxes of supplies. Byron guided Eric through splitting the bulk of the smaller items into two identical groups and how to pack them. The older man was adamant that everything in the second pack be placed identically as the first in case one of them needed to get something out of the other’s pack in a hurry. While Eric finished up the second pack, Byron left and returned with their cold weather gear.

  “Done? Good, put these on. Going to be hot, but we have to adjust the straps to what we’re going to be wearing,” Bryon told Eric as he tossed a parka.

  Parka donned, Eric slung the pack over one shoulder and then the other. Pack’s a bit heavy. He clipped the pack’s integral belt together and cinched it tightly against the thick parka. Hm. That helped the weight a lot, but this is going to be like wearing a furnace if we don’t get outside soon.

 
Rick asked, “You guys ready for the guns?”

  Byron nodded. Eric’s jaw dropped as the supply specialist set a rifle and pistol on the desk.

  “What?” Byron asked.

  “Those are old Earth,” Eric stammered.

  “Not really. They’re reproductions from old schematics with minor design changes. Turing’s father had a more than a few designs updated because he liked their look and ergonomics better. From what I understand, Nathan went to great expense to recreate a more than few things from the past.”

  Eric hefted the rifle and looked it over, tilting it this way and that while looking it over. Empty, no magazine, on safe.

  “They’re not much different than what I’m used to,” Byron said and turned to say something to Eric. Byron’s words stumbled to a halt in his mouth as he watched Eric absentmindedly snake a magazine from the counter and insert it into the magazine well.

  “What?” Eric asked, keeping the weapon pointed at the floor as he racked the charging handle.

  “I,” Byron started and paused. “You’re obviously familiar with the weapon.”

  “Not really, no. I handled one just like it before, but the design isn’t far from what we used on the Fortune,” Eric said, checking the safety again. And almost identical to the one on the Gadsden. “Actually, I’m not sure how this particular sling works. We normally used three pointers.”

  “Oh, that? Easy,” Byron told him, stepping forward. As he explained, he pointed at various parts, “It’s a modified three point in single-point mode. This clip here can be attached here for a single point or there for three. Worry about it later, just stick it on your pack for now.”

  “My pack? How?”

  Byron mimicked putting the butt of the rifle into a stirrup at the pack’s waist belt. “Right, now the barrel comes up under your armpit. That black strip on your shoulder? Yeah, goes around the barrel and through that clip. If you need the rifle, grab the pistol grip with your left, pull the retaining strap with your right, and it’ll come right up.”

  “Oh, thanks.” Rifle secured, Eric retrieved the pistol.

  “Handled one like that before?”