Project Columbus: Omnibus

by J. C. Rainier

  The drought of the previous year was not a repeat affair this time around. Brightly colored native fruits and leafy greens were sold alongside large ears of corn and sacks of flour, both products of Earth. Countless varieties of roots and tubers from both planets offered staple foods for every style of cooking. A half dozen refrigeration units and two freezers had been hauled from Michael’s hold, and the market square had been tied into the town’s power grid. Four of the refrigerators were installed at the grocer’s to prolong the shelf life of some of their goods.

  All of the remaining units, including the freezers, had been installed in the butcher’s shop, two doors down. Wild game from the trappers and hunters was available here, along with meats from the odd farm animal that was turned in. The butcher, Frank Devereaux, was as shrewd as he was skilled with his cleaver. He traded in favors just as often as he bartered, and cashed them in with both his suppliers and his customers, linking woodsman and townsfolk without either having to come to an accord. He was, in essence, the colony’s ultimate middle-man. And everyone loved him, too. Not just because he occasionally had bacon for sale—which was a rare treat—but because of his gift for putting people at ease. Darius figured that this probably played into his negotiating skills.

  Darius casually crossed the street and sat on a wooden bench just outside Kimura Clothiers. This allowed him a better view of the neighboring butcher shop, and he focused his attention on a transaction that the Marine-turned-butcher completed.

  First came the request from the customer. In this case, a whole gray pheasant, a native bird that was a little larger than a chicken, and less greasy when cooked. A whole bird was sure to be expensive, and Darius could only imagine the kinds of goods it would fetch in trade. Devereaux displayed the impressive fowl, but instead of starting off with price, he asked about the woman’s family. The exchange was short but friendly. He then made a comment about her husband’s work at the flour mill. She answered. He smiled and paid a compliment to her and her family. Then it was down to business. Darius tried to pay attention to the nuance of the situation, but he still couldn’t figure out how he managed to secure two sacks of flour for the bakery around the corner, a home cooked meal for himself, and a favor to be cashed in at a later time. He did, however, notice that Devereaux quickly jotted something down in a notebook before moving on to the next customer.

  So he has a way of tracking it all, Darius thought. Like money in a bank.

  The web that the butcher wove was complex, but it looked like it all boiled down to tracking where debts of favor sat, probably cross referenced with known demands. Hook up the favors of a supplier to a client. Sometimes Devereaux was the client, but usually not. Darius yearned to spend time in the butcher shop learning Devereaux’s secrets.

  Maybe someday. Not today.

  He let out a great yawn as he stretched stiff, tired joints. He suddenly realized how tired he was from a day spent touring Concordia from the irrigation channels to the River Islands, with what seemed like a thousand stops in between. A glance at his watch told him that it was rapidly approaching the bottom of the hour. It was about time for the sanitation squads to be making their rounds, though Darius couldn’t hear the telltale sound of their crawler’s diesel engine. He got up and was about to make the return trip to Michael when Devereaux called for his attention.

  “Governor?” he asked, his voice carrying over the crowd. “Power’s out.”

  Confused, Darius moved swiftly to the shop, craning his neck to see the refrigeration units in the back corner. “You sure?”

  “Yeah. I just heard them all click off a few seconds ago. Normally they don’t all go off at the same time.”

  “That’s odd,” he remarked.

  “Frank?” The grocer, Kim, had come to investigate as well. “Your fridges work?”

  “Nope. You’re out too?”

  Kim nodded. A mixture of irritation and concern crossed her face.

  Darius scratched the stubble on his chin. “Alright, I’ll look into it.”

  “Thanks, Governor.”

  Darius puzzled over the power issue as he made his way back to Michael, following the line of power transmission poles. With no buildings to shade him as he checked the poles, the hot afternoon sun soon had his brow dripping and his shirt stained with sweat.

  What the hell could it be?

  He had personally helped run the grid for the market square, and Novak had wired the buildings. Everything from the transmission poles to the refrigerators was less than a year old, and the main grid was two years old. He couldn’t fathom what the issue with the power was. He checked the grid interface on the side of the sleeper ship from a safe distance, but everything looked good. Darius continued around to the rear of the ship. He was so preoccupied with running every diagnostic scenario through his head that he nearly walked past the crawler at the end of the ramp.

  Darius halted in his tracks. The massive tank and pump in the bed of the crawler were unique to one function: the sanitation squad. It was not supposed to be parked at the end of the load ramp, but rather around the side, where the waste tank port was located. The crawler sat idle, and no one was in the cab. A split second later he heard chanting and shouting from inside the ship. Without another thought Darius charged up the cargo ramp and sprinted to the rear stairwell. He was out of breath by the time his foot hit the first stair, which he almost missed in the creeping darkness. But he pushed through the burning in his muscles that grew hotter with every hurried leap. He mounted the treads three at a time, nearly losing his balance as he shot to the top of the ascent. The only illumination came from two strips of emergency lighting in the floor.

  Shouts of anger and declarations of victory echoed from the support section. Darius pressed forward, though the poor lighting and the threat of tripping over attachment points in the floor kept him to a brisk walk. The voices were definitely moving toward him, and he could make out bits of the excited conversation.

  The pieces of the mystery all fell into place. The loss of power. The lack of regular lighting or humming machinery on the ship. Angry voices from the support section. Someone had seized control of Michael and shut down the reactor. There could be only one motive for doing something so drastic: to hold the colony’s energy supply hostage. Darius froze in horror.

  Shit, if they didn’t bring the reactor offline the right way…

  Civilians were prohibited from entering the reactor area for a number of reasons, not the least of which was the danger involved. Darius was shocked that this group would be so brazen as to violate that restriction. He cast caution aside and broke into a run. Darius reached the hatch to the support section and found it guarded by four men. The lack of light made it difficult to recognize them, but he figured that two were the errant sanitation squad. One was a wiry man who repaired machinery of all kinds. The fourth man was unfamiliar to Darius. Upon seeing him, they collected around the mouth of the airlock, barring his path.

  “Let me get through,” he demanded.

  “Not a chance, Governor,” the wiry man replied with a smug grin. “We control the power now.”

  “You won’t for long.”

  One of the sanitation workers laughed. “Like you could get past us.”

  Darius tried anyway, and was easily pushed back by their combined strength.

  “You don’t understand,” he said. His uneasiness came through in his voice. “You might have just shut down the reactor for good. Or worse, you could have started a core dump.”

  “So?”

  “So?” Darius parroted incredulously. “So the reactor will go critical, and then what do you think will happen?”

  “Nothing.” Tyler Quinn’s deep voice echoed through the darkness with his footfalls.

  Quinn? What the hell?

  The engineer emerged from the airlock. The other men parted to let him pass, quickly moving back to position once he was through.

  “The reactor’s been shut down properly,” he continued.


  Darius’s fear of a reactor meltdown faded away, only to be replaced with anger at Quinn’s actions. “You did this for them?”

  Quinn shook his head. “I did it for Concordia. I only found out about the planned strike an hour ago. I didn’t have enough time to warn you, so I came here to shut it down properly. I had Forrest shut down Gabriel’s reactor, too.” He paused for a second, seemingly waiting for a response from Darius. “You’re welcome, Governor. You can go home without being incinerated tonight.”

  Darius just sputtered and stammered. He was grateful that Quinn took action to prevent a catastrophe, but enraged by the men who would risk everyone’s life, or at least bring the colony to a grinding halt. Without power, neither the grain nor lumber mills could function. The foundry would idle, and the market’s refrigeration would be compromised. Nearly everyone in the colony would feel the effects of this action. Perhaps not immediately, but at some point, like ripples on a pond.

  “Turn it back on,” he ordered.

  “Not until our demands are met,” the wiry man shot back.

  “Demands? This is ridiculous! Do you have any idea how much damage you’re doing?”

  He was met with an impassive shrug. “That depends on you, Governor. I’m sure you’re pretty steamed about this, so we’ll wait until tomorrow morning before we present them.”

  Darius fumed, but decided against saying anything further. He knew that he was near the point of losing his temper, but that wouldn’t help the situation. He was outnumbered and outmuscled. The only thing he could be thankful for was Quinn’s intervention with the reactor, though even that still stung. He felt there was something more he should be doing to resolve the matter, but he couldn’t think of what. The picketers had already determined they wouldn’t yet present their demands. Hanging around for the townsfolk who still called the sleeper ship home was no wiser, as it was sure to draw unwanted attention to the strike. All Darius could do was retreat to the bridge to stew.

  As he rested his weary body in his chair, he tried to think of how it came to this. He wasn’t popular with the people, but his deputy assured him that no matter whether or not individuals agreed with his policies, they at least appreciated how difficult the decisions were. Now all of that was thrown out the window; there was at least one group in the populace that was openly defiant. He needed to know why. As Darius kicked his feet up on his desk and sank deeper into the chair, his heavy eyelids slowly losing their battle against fatigue, he decided that would be his first order of business in the morning.

  Silentio Martyrii

  Karen Daniels

  7 July, 2 yal, early morning

  Camp Eight

  Light flooded the hut as the storm curtain parted momentarily. Three times a day for over two months, the brief glimpse of the outside world heralded the prisoners’ meals. At first it took a half dozen trays to feed them. Then Jacob and the Morgan brothers were taken and executed, and only five trays showed up. As others died of their injuries or were executed, the number dwindled further. Now only one tray showed up, a tray large enough to feed both Karen and Erin. Not that the size of the tray mattered that much, as Erin barely ate at all. She spent most of her time curled up in the corner, staring into oblivion.

  Her husband died of the plague. Her only child was murdered. What more does she have to live for?

  The rhetoric was pointless. Erin had simply been surviving on instinct for the past month. Her body compelled her to eat even as her mind had shut out the world. No matter how much Karen tried to get through to her, she wouldn’t respond. Karen would have stopped trying altogether, but after Rick finally succumbed to an infected leg wound, she kept talking to Erin. It seemed ridiculous to her at first, but Karen soon learned that the silence was driving her mad. Talking to a catatonic woman was better than not talking at all.

  “Morning,” she muttered to Erin. “Chow time.”

  Erin slowly drew her body off the ground and shambled to the front of the hut. She knelt down and blindly grabbed a piece of fruit and flatbread, then retreated to her corner and slowly consumed the food. Karen knew this was an automatic response; Erin would retrieve her food even without being spoken to. But announcing mealtime was one of the few threads of normalcy Karen had left.

  Karen quickly finished her share of the breakfast, then slid the empty tray under the edge of the storm curtain. One of the guards on the other side pulled it through, as was routine. She returned to her roost, leaning up against the wall as she sat.

  “Another day of the waiting game,” she noted. “Will one of us kick it today?” Karen pondered silently. A slight, wicked grin crossed her lips. “Not likely. You haven’t figured out how to die yet, and they still don’t want to kill me.”

  Karen glanced over at her silent companion. Erin rested on her right side, and she seemed to be watching a particularly large beetle that was investigating some errant palm leaves on the floor.

  “Still don’t know why that is,” Karen continued, picking at a layer of grime under her fingernails that never seemed to go away. “You’d think I’d be the first one they would have executed. Well, maybe after Jacob, anyway.”

  The conversation, as usual, was going nowhere. Karen shrugged and tore a long leaf from her mattress cover, then began to fold it inch by inch into a tiny accordion. She tried to remember the last conversation she had with someone on the outside. Something banal and insignificant, but she couldn’t even remember who she was speaking with. Tran, the guard? Troy? She couldn’t recall, no matter what. She sighed and closed her eyes, searching deeper for something she could remember. It didn’t take her long, but it wasn’t pleasant, either.

  The stench of body odor cloyed the air, mixed with stale vomit. The Palm Palace never smelled the same after it was used as overflow for the clinic. The victims of murder and disease had long since been removed, but their presence remained, even if only perceptible to one sense. No cords bound her wrists, but Seth kept a watchful eye on her from the entrance as she approached Chief Vandemark.

  The inquiry, she recalled through the haze of memory. Two days after his execution.

  “You wanted to speak with me?” she asked, defiantly refusing to address him by title.

  Hard eyes glared back at her. He wasn’t an imposing man, so it was a little like being growled at by a Shih-Tzu. “It’s time to tell me everything.”

  “Everything’s a lot. And not very specific,” she shot back. “Would you like me to start with my sixteenth birthday, or would you be so kind as to actually ask me what you want to know.”

  His brow furrowed, which did nothing to inflict fear in her. “Let’s start with your lieutenant, Jacob. What exactly was he planning to do?”

  “Did you ask him that yourself before putting a bullet in his brain?”

  “Of course. Now I want to hear it from you.”

  She shrugged. “Then you should already know I had no idea that he was up to anything until the attack happened.”

  “Attack is a little soft of a word,” James growled. “Your man slit ten peoples’ throats in cold blood before he even left the clinic. Then he killed one of my scouts and started shooting in the middle of town square. What was he trying to accomplish?”

  “I think he just snapped. He was going after the ill.”

  “Just snapped?” His expression was a mixture of rage and disbelief. “Just snapped and went around killing helpless, sick villagers. Your people, our people. Then stepped outside to what, have a smoke and murder the rest of us?”

  She felt a flicker of anger rise within her. “You’re acting like there’s some sort of bigger plan here. Like he had some sort of scheme to overthrow you and take over your so-called paradise here. Like the fact that he was ranting like a lunatic afterwards was just an act.”

  “It makes a convenient cover for failure.”

  “And a convenient excuse to interrogate people. A little seed of conspiracy that you can tantalize your people with to make us the enemy, when we�
��re just as much the victims as you are,” she accused.

  “Victims?” he roared. “Don’t talk to me about victims. A hundred and fourteen people, dead. Thirty eight of them children, including my daughter. Those are the victims.”

  Karen took three steps toward him before Seth’s iron grip caught her arm and kept her at bay. “Thirty of the dead are my people. A dozen children. We share this tragedy with you, but you won’t lift a finger to help a single one of my people. I got the pleasure of watching one of my friend bleed to death on the floor of your little prison. You could have saved him.” She glowered at him, and her tone was laced with daggers. “And what happens to anyone from Lake Raphael who wasn’t rounded up by your son of a bitch jailer here?” She yanked her arm free of Seth’s grip. “I wonder, are you going to round them up too and put them in the pen with us, or are you just going to let the jaguars do your dirty work?”

  “That’s enough!” he bellowed.

  “Is it? How does it feel knowing there’s probably some kid out there who’s about to be something’s lunch?”

  “How does it feel to murder your own people?” James retorted with a snarl.

  “I’m not the murderer here,” she spat. “I’ve done everything you’ve asked since we got her. You’re looking for shadows where there aren’t any. There’s no plot. No scheme. Why can’t you understand that?”

  “The Morgan brothers, for one. They were caught fighting their way out of the town.”

  “Because they were scared and wounded. Trevor took a shot from one of your men.”

  James shook his head. “It’s been established that Kevin killed Jenkins, then took his weapon. Jenkins never shot his brother.”

  Karen glanced back at Seth. He didn’t make eye contact with her, instead standing at parade rest, looking straight ahead. You lying coward, she thought.