Project Columbus: Omnibus

by J. C. Rainier

  Darius departed from the landing, noting how the construction crew on the north side had already graded a wide, gently sloping path up to the high bank above, making the climb on this side of the river much more pleasant and less treacherous. He paused again at the top of the ascent to look out over the river and watch the raft pivot just off shore so the tiller could steer properly on the return trip.

  The walk to the slumbering ship was uneventful. The camp was already awake and its inhabitants either gone to work or performing the chores necessary to keep daily life functioning smoothly. As he passed near to the camp kitchen he received an enthusiastic wave ‘hello’ from Alexis Decker, which he returned in kind. For a moment he stopped and considered asking her what Calvin intended to do with his nomination, but he knew that subject might be sensitive for her. He thought better of it before making the final turn to the rear cargo ramp of Michael.

  Now this guy, on the other hand, will not mind talking shop at all, Darius thought as he crowned the ramp and found Hunter Ceretti at work leaning over a pallet of crates and scribbling on a clipboard.

  “Good morning,” he greeted.

  Hunter looked at him and blinked for a moment, then smiled and extended his hand. “Darius, good to see you. You here to look at my lady’s fine racks?”

  “Only if you don’t tell my lady that I’m doing so,” he jested in return. “She might get jealous and cook a blade or null route something. And wouldn’t that just ruin my day?”

  “Temperamental girl. It’s a wonder she didn’t stop in orbit and refuse to land.”

  “Ah, I know how to get her to bend to my will. Hope your girl here is like her sister.”

  “Nope. She behaves herself.” Hunter sighed heavily, and sadness washed over his face. “Cam saw to that.”

  “I’m sorry. Sergeant Drisko was a huge loss,” Darius replied, placing his hand on the former lieutenant’s shoulder in sympathy.

  “Yeah, he was,” came the short reply as Hunter turned back to his work. “But he was doing his duty. Protecting Cal. Can’t complain about that.”

  Darius knew there was nothing more to say about Drisko, but he could almost feel the air chill as Ceretti concentrated once again on his clipboard. As Darius considered the approach to his quandary, he walked silently to the crates and inspected the labels, which revealed the contents to be conduit, circuit breakers, and other supplies for tapping a building into the power grid and wiring it for electricity.

  “I heard something about Calvin that got my attention,” Darius said, breaking the tension.

  “Oh? What’s that?” The reply was almost immediate, and was accompanied by an upward glance under a cocked eyebrow.

  “That he’s been handed a nomination for governor by the people.”

  “He was,” Hunter confirmed. “But that lasted all of five seconds before Cal shot them down. He doesn’t want the responsibility. Good on him, too. He’s not ready to take on anything like that, not by a long shot.”

  Darius nodded and put on a stone face, quashing any outward sign of the relief that he felt with this bit of news. “He’s got a good head on his shoulders, but I agree that’s not the path for him. Not yet, anyway.”

  “Well, some people out there are hell-bent on making sure we have three candidates. From what I’ve heard, they’ve picked a new darling to take on Dayton and Quinn.”

  “Who?” Darius asked, equally surprised and curious. “Abernathy? Hausner?”

  “You.”

  “M-me?” he stammered, barely able to get the words out as the shock left him almost breathless.

  “Yup.”

  “W-why?”

  Ceretti slipped his pencil under the board’s clip and set it down gently on the pile. His gaze swiveled to meet Darius head-on.

  “If there’s going to be a third candidate – which is frankly something I’d love to see – it needs to be someone who has integrity, honor, and morality. You have that in spades, Darius.”

  “But… but I was insubordinate,” he protested. “I disobeyed Eriksen at every turn when I found out what he was planning on doing to Reid and Doctor Kimura. You could make the argument that I was drummed out of the service if you wanted, though I see it a bit differently.”

  “You were insubordinate, yes. But no one here disputes that Colonel Eriksen’s orders were wrong. Of all the men and women in his crew, you were the one to stand up. The cost for you grew the more you stood your ground, but that didn’t stop you.”

  “I got people beaten up. I… got people killed.”

  Ceretti shook his head. “We know you saved Dr. Kimura’s life.”

  “He’s in prison. The worst kind of prison he could possibly be in,” Darius lamented. “If the reactor holds, he’ll wake up and find his grandchildren to be as old as him. If not, he’ll die in his sleep.”

  “Have faith. There are things that can be done.”

  “Like what?” he scoffed.

  “Governors can pardon criminals, can they not?”

  Those words silenced Darius. He hadn’t considered the power that the position wielded. For a moment the thought of freeing Dr. Kimura encompassed him, driving nearly every synaptic impulse. Somewhere in the deep recesses, his conscience reminded him that there would be more to the position than simply freeing one man, and the lives of four thousand people would be forever influenced by any decisions made by him as a governor.

  “It’s still so much. I mean, can you imagine the pressure?” he asked.

  “No,” Hunter replied bluntly. “I don’t want to. I’m actually glad we could resign from the service. I would have shit myself if I made captain. Never wanted that kind of responsibility; I’m happy where I am. But you’ve proven that you can take heat and come through it with your wits intact. That’s why I was one of the people to nominate you.”

  Darius simply blinked, unable to come up with a response.

  “You may not know it,” Hunter continued. “But you’ve got the right stuff in you. That much is clear.”

  “I… I should probably go look at the servers now,” Darius stuttered is a voice barely louder than a mouse’s squeak. He started down the long lower gallery.

  “Don’t dismiss it. Give it some serious thought, Darius,” Hunter called from the bright, gaping maw.

  I have to at least consider it. For the doctor’s sake.

  Calvin McLaughlin

  25 May, Year of Landing, 17:41

  River Islands

  A pair of sinister, glowing eyes pierced the dark, staring back at Cal from beyond the faint ring of illumination cast by the lantern, almost obscured by the tall grasses. He stopped at once, throwing his arm out in front of Alexis to keep her from taking another step, then dropped his free hand to the holster on his belt. The eyes blinked at him twice, then disappeared into the darkness, accompanied by a rapid chattering noise. Cal relaxed and let out his breath, not realizing until then that he had been holding it.

  “What was it?” Alexis whispered.

  “Might have been a brush dog,” he replied in an equally hushed tone. “Whatever it was, it took off in a hurry.”

  Classification of the native life had started almost the day the ships had landed. For the most part it took the form of calling animals by familiar Earth families and species. Something that confounded the scientists, on the other hand, was the people’s insistence on naming foods based on what they looked or tasted like, not on the familial characteristics established centuries earlier by the scientific community. The local fauna was often less tricky to classify. The brush dog was a species that looked somewhat like a cross between a greyhound and a wolf, and was mostly nocturnal; hence they had been designated as canines. Several aggressive and hostile species had been identified, though this was not one of them. It wanted little to do with humans except to scavenge from the camp’s waste.

  Cal took Alexis’s hand and pressed forward. After a minute the landscape cut off abruptly ahead of them, giving the illusion that their flashli
ght could penetrate not penetrate an invisible wall in the night. The rushing water of the rapids that tumbled between the River Islands could be clearly heard ahead of them, though not seen. Cal knew that they were only a few feet from the river’s banks, so he stopped. He shone the beam on the ground near them to select a suitable spot, then unrolled a sleeping bag from his pack and laid it on the long, flowing grass, which matted easily. He then guided Alexis to a seated position on the bag, and then took his place next to her, shrugging the pack off to the side.

  “You sure picked a beautiful night,” she remarked as she lay back to gaze at the heavens.

  “I just wanted to get away for a bit.”

  A brief pause was followed by a simple question from his girlfriend. “Do you want to talk about it?”

  Yes. No. I don’t know.

  Cal simply shrugged and then rummaged through the top compartment of the pack. He produced a few Demeter pears and a small bundled handkerchief. The piece of cloth was stowed immediately in the pocket of his jeans, and he handed two of the fruits to Alexis before switching off the lantern.

  In an instant they were plunged into near darkness, though some features of the islands could be seen as faint silhouettes, and the bright sphere of Persephone illuminated the nearby vegetation in a ghostly wash. The bright moon’s small, shadowlike companion followed behind by what looked like only a couple inches in the sky. Cal knew that Arion would overtake its orbital partner within the hour, and he had heard that the resulting darkness from the partial eclipse would let them see ribbons of stars that could not be seen in the otherwise crowded sea of pin-like lights.

  Moments later, a faint flash of blue streaked through the sky, followed by the shrill call of a raptor. The bird was known as a glow hawk, and Cal had first seen it during his short stint with the Expeditionary Forces. It instantly became Alexis’s favorite native animal when Cal pointed one out a few days after he returned. He had to admit, it was quite an intriguing creature. An able hunter in its own right by day, the glow hawk could also hunt small nocturnal creatures with alarming accuracy. Flaps along the side of its body could open for brief periods, casting light from bioluminescent strips of skin underneath. The resultant glow allowed their keen eyes to pick out prey, even in the dead of night.

  “Ooh, did you see the glow hawk?” she asked, her excitement clear in her voice.

  “Yep.”

  If tonight’s not the night, I don’t know when the right time would be.

  Cal sunk his teeth into his pear, feeling the flesh give way and sweet juices burst forth. Though it was vaguely reminiscent of a pear in both consistency and taste, the native fruit was a little smaller, had slightly thicker, papery skin, and at its core sat a single large pit. It also grew far quicker than its equivalent from Earth; only a few weeks into the growing season, small trees laden with this fruit were plentiful.

  “Ooh, these are good,” Alexis chirped.

  Cal nodded and slurped on a puddle of juice that was pooling between his thumb and the pear. It took him a few bites more than he expected to finish the dessert, which he flung over the river bank to discard of the pit. Though the food sated his hunger, it did nothing to quell the tingling in his nerves. The day had been a rough one for him, and Cal was hoping that his plans for the night would wash away the world. Yet, as he shoved his hands in his pockets and traced his fingers over the hard lump within the handkerchief, his excitement and his fears rose up anew.

  It took him a minute to figure out that Alexis had been talking, and he hadn’t heard a word that she had uttered.

  “Are you okay?” she asked again.

  “Sorry, Lexi. Just lost in thought.”

  “Was it about lunch today?”

  Cal bit his lip and fought the urge to crawl inside a silent wall. Lunchtime should not have been as big of an issue as today’s had been. He just wanted to grab a bite from the mess tent and inform Alexis that they would have the night off rotation. But then his supporters showed up in force.

  Somewhere along the way the stories of what Cal had said after the execution and ensuing slaughter had been embellished. His role in the unification negotiations had been given a status of near legend, putting him somewhere above Darius and Dayton, as far as his contribution to bringing the two halves of the colony together and making them whole. Cal got the feeling that volunteering to march behind Darius at the Unification ceremony did not help dispel this myth that people held of him.

  “I don’t get it,” he said, both upset and confused as he replayed the earlier incident in his mind. “I’ve told everyone I can think of that I don’t want to be governor. I’ve told Dayton. I’ve told Darius and Quinn. I’ve told every supporter that has ever come up to me. Why do those kids want me so badly that they’re almost willing to trample me and drag me around?”

  “It’s cause you’re so damn cute,” Alexis quipped. “I mean, all those teenage girls parading around, trying to convince their parents that you’re the one.”

  “Not funny,” Cal snapped back. “And their parents know I’m not the right guy for the job. At least most of them.”

  “Sorry…”

  Cal tried to push back the memory of one man in particular that made him shake with anger and fear, and his hands nearly tremble enough to drop his lunch on the ground. The wild look in the man’s eyes as he got in Cal’s face, passionately demanding that Cal at least meet with his three children to explain why he refused to look after their future, was not a memory easily shaken. Cal was almost certain that he was going to face the man’s fury as he tried to shy away and leave the situation. Alternating insults and pleas followed him from the camp kitchen all the way to Michael. Only Hunter Ceretti acted as his saving grace. His friend had sternly turned back the small but persistent mob, then given him shelter on the upper deck of the ship.

  “Look, it’ll all be over after tomorrow.” Her words were meant to comfort him, but they did little.

  “The election’s over a week away. I really don’t want to have to hide on the ship the whole time.”

  Her hand found his in the darkness, and her warm fingers curled into a gentle squeeze. Cal looked to his side and could barely make out her pale silhouette in the moonlight, yet he could still distinguish the upturned corners of her smiling mouth.

  “Trust me, it’ll be sooner than you think. When you don’t join the debate tomorrow it will change. When you don’t give a speech with the other candidates, your adoring flock will know it’s really over. They’ll leave you alone then.”

  “Are you sure?” he asked, hoping that her optimism would somehow rub off and light the path through his doubt.

  “I promise. Besides, if Mr. Pushy comes after you again, I’ll kick his ass for you.”

  An impish grin crossed his face. “If you must. I mean, who am I to stop you?”

  He knew that Alexis was joking about the last part, but the image did hold a certain amusing allure. And in that moment he felt that she would truly stand by him, no matter what. Though she had chastised him harshly when he continued to work for Dayton, she had bawled her eyes out when she had learned that Cameron had sacrificed his life for Cal. No rebuke had followed. None was necessary, either. Besides negotiation work and marching for the Unification ceremony, Cal had freed himself of the former colonel’s service.

  Cal turned around and lay on his back next to her, letting the crisp night’s air wash over him. The pungent smells of earth and flowering shrubs filled his nose. Spectral ribbons of white glittered with hundreds of tiny stars as they wove through the night sky, contrasting the surrounding inky void with fewer, though much brighter, points of light from distant supergiants.

  In this moment, he felt insignificant and foolish, and the token inside the handkerchief stuffed in his pants’ pocket seemed silly. He knew from movies and stories told by friends on Earth that breathtaking sights often accompanied the type of goal he intended to achieve, but he wasn’t sure if it seemed more cliché or minute. As he reache
d into his pocket his nerves rose and threatened to make him lose his dessert, or at the very least his voice.

  “L-Lexi?” he stammered after a couple minutes. “I, ah… I…”

  She turned on her side, masking her face in darkness as the moons were now behind her. “Something wrong?”

  Cal closed his eyes and took a deep breath to settle himself. He slipped the salvaged aluminum spacer ring out of the cloth, feeling along the circumference to make sure the braided leather cord was still attached.

  “You know that it bugs me how uncertain things are for me around here, right?” The question he posed was rhetorical, but he waited for her to affirm before he continued. “Through everything that’s happened since we landed, you’re the one thing that I can count on every day to keep me sane. When I went out on the expedition with Neil, Traci, and…” he paused for a second to fight back another bitter memory.

  “Shhh, it’s okay.”

  Cal’s chest heaved with another loud sigh. “Look, I’ve almost died a couple times. I’ve come close to losing my shit a couple times, too. Every time I go to the edge you bring me back again. Telling you that I love you just doesn’t do justice to what you mean to me.”

  “I… I love you too, Cal,” she replied.

  Now or never, numbnuts, a voice inside him eerily similar to his long-quiet doppelganger called out.

  He took her hand in a way that made her cup it upwards, exposed. With his other hand he slipped the necklace into her palm and gently closed her grip.

  “I know it’s not what a guy’s supposed to give a girl when he says this, but it’s all I’ve got.”

  “Says what?” she asked, clearly confused, with her voice hinting at slight apprehension.

  “I never want there to be a doubt about us being there for each other, ever. Alexis Hailey Decker, would you do me the honor of being my wife?”

  Cal heard a loud gasp and then silence. The seconds ground away without a response, and he had a moment of panic mixed with shame and rejection. Just as he was about to bite his lip and hang his head in shame, she threw her arms around his neck and tackled him into the grass, planting a long, sweet kiss on his lip.