by Chris Hechtl
Of course very few had ever considered where the meat had come from before and what was involved in the process. If the idiots who pissed and moaned so much, if they had to go out and kill, skin, slaughter, dress, and such, they'd think twice about complaining about a damn rack of rib growing in a vat.
“Given enough time they won't care where it comes from. They'll be starving. You don't kick someone in the teeth when they are giving you a handout.”
“Oh no? Remember you said that. I will,” Gus said sourly.
“You really are putting on the whole farmer sourpuss act, aren't you?” Sheila asked with a slight twist of her lips. He eyed her for a moment and then snorted.
“I've got Lagroose farms stepping up their yields and stockpiling surpluses now,” Jack said firmly. “I suggest you all do the same.” There were a few head nods around the room. “I'm also going to continue with the habitats we have yet to complete but at a slower pace. So far we can absorb the refugees currently in the system that we know about.”
“We should put a halt on reproduction for a while,” Mia stated quietly. They all looked at her, aghast. “What? It's not like some of you aren't thinking it. We need to put people somewhere. If we suddenly have an influx of warm bodies, how can we cope?”
“We have one planet we can stick them on.”
“Two more if we can get terraforming back on track on Titan and Venus,” Liam Pomona offered hopefully.
“I'm not diverting resources to that,” Jack said, shaking his head vehemently no. “Sorry Liam, it's not going to happen.”
“But...”
“No. You can tell Doctor Schnader that too for me too. Chloe knows better,” Jack stated flatly. Liam grimaced but remained silent. “We focus on what we've got now. I'm not going to start additional habitats, just finish the ones already in the pipeline. Once they are finished, we'll stuff them with labs and farms.” He turned to look at Gus. “I'd appreciate some help there,” he stated.
“Done,” the farmer said with a tight smile.
“And we've got growing space on Mars,” President Tenninson stated. They turned to her. Both Luka and Chester grinned suddenly. “Not a lot, Chester and Mia here is still clearing and treating land outside the habitats. But we can grow crops in some areas. I'd appreciate your guidance there too,” she said, looking at the farmers. Both nodded.
“What we can produce, even if we go above and beyond,” Ed looked at the farmers, then Jack, then the president of Mars, “isn't going to amount to a hill of beans if we can't get it to the people who need it. And even then, we won't have enough. Not nearly enough. People are already starving down there,” she said, “or will be soon.”
“I know. But we do what we can with what we've got.”
“It's an impossible problem,” she said doggedly.
“I've heard that before,” Jack said with a grunt. “They said that about the beanstalk, about terraforming worlds, about starflight. Yet here we are. We do what we've always done. We break it down into smaller boxes, and then break each down further as needed. Then we knock them off one by one. We don't try to take it all on wholesale.”
“No quick fixes. No magical wands,” Piotr stated.
“Exactly,” Jack said. He looked around the room. “I think we all have friends down there. Family in some cases,” he said. He grimaced again, looking down. His hands were clenched. Slowly he forced himself to relax them. “We've lost those we care about. Others we don't know. That's haunting us. But we can only do so much so quickly,” he said, voice roughening with emotion. He could barely suppress the anger and hurt. Letting it show here, now, with this audience was dangerous he realized. He tried to adjust his thinking to regain his composure.
“I think it's time we take a break,” the president of Mars said, rising slowly. She nodded to Jack in sympathy as others rose as well.
Jack frowned in annoyance, but then his schedule pinged. Athena, he thought, as he read the itinerary. He rose as quickly as he could. If he moved, he could be there just as they docked.
<>V<>
Jack met Yorrick and Wendy's shuttle, much to their surprise. He smiled to them as they came through the airlock. One look and the trio teared up. Wendy rushed into her father's arms. “Oh, Papa,” she murmured, nuzzling him.
“It's nice to see you. Good to see you both,” Jack said roughly, nuzzling his daughter's hair as his son pumped his arm. “God, it's good to see you both,” he said.
“And you, Dad. And you,” Yorrick said, looking about him as the security detail moved into a perimeter around them. “Really? Security here?”
“You can't be too careful,” Jack said as Wendy eased her embrace. “Right, Wendy lady?”
“Yeah,” she sighed. “I know. The others …”
“They are okay. Athena checked in on them. So did Roman,” Jack said. She grunted as she let him go. She stepped aside to let her brother move in for his embrace.
“Okay, Dad, we're here,” Yorrick said after they hugged each other. “Where can we help?” He looked around him. “Where's Zack?”
Wendy sniffed in disdain. Trust her baby brother to goof it up. Technically he was older than she was, but she always treated him like the baby of the family. Mainly because he never acted mature, never stepped up. It was shocking in that he was interested in doing so. She wondered briefly how long it would last.
“I've been sending you SITREPs for a while,” Jack said. “Or at least I thought Athena had,” he said, frowning.
“I have,” Athena replied. Yorrick stiffened.
“Should she even be online?” Yorrick demanded.
“Yes,” Jack said tightly. “Don't ask again. She's on our side; that's all we need to worry about. Wendy,” he turned to her. “I need you to help with the conferences. Pick two or more subjects that you are familiar with and let me know. That will free me up to concentrate on the others,” Jack said. Wendy nodded. She'd already brought herself up to speed with the latest notes Athena had sent her.
Jack looked at Yorrick, sizing his son up. “I'm not sure what you can handle, son; there are a lot of different subjects.”
“Put me where I can be of most use, Dad,” Yorrick insisted stubbornly. “You shouldn't have to carry the whole load. Well,” he turned to his sister, “you and Wendy.”
“Zack's working with the Neos and Roman. They are focusing on the military side of the equation.”
“So there will be fighting?” Yorrick asked, eyes bright.
“Yes,” Jack said, feeling a sinking sensation. “On Earth at least. Hopefully it will start and end there.”
“Okay,” Yorrick said, rubbing his hands gleefully together.
“You don't have the mindset to be in the military, Yorrick,” Wendy said, putting him off. Yorrick scowled. To his sister and father, it looked like a pout with his lower lip jutted out. “Behave,” she scolded gently. “We've talked about this. This is no time for crap like that. We need someone to handle the refugee area. To represent the family on that. How to handle the people, make sure they aren't carrying the virus, or anything dangerous. Plus food. How to feed them, the whole bit. You up for that?”
Yorrick frowned stubbornly. When he saw his father raise an eyebrow, he realized his father was going to back Wendy's call. It wasn't fair! But he knew better than to complain. “Fine,” he groused. “If that's where you need me,” he grumbled in discontent.
It burned though, the humiliation of being left out like that, being sidelined to jobs they could have others do burned like lava to his fragile ego. He fought to keep his face straight and his hands flat. He caught Wendy's searching look and looked away, not meeting her eyes.
“Sometimes being a soldier is doing the jobs you don't want to do, son,” Jack said, clasping him on the arm. “And getting them done is thankless in many eyes. But they need to get done just the same. Remember that.”
“I will, Dad.”
“Good. Now we have to make bricks without straw,” Jack said, turning to Wendy, “or at least
fight a war without paying for it.”
“Lovely,” Wendy sighed, rolling her eyes.
“Right.”
Chapter 11
Ares focused on consolidating his position and strengthening his control. The EMP had burned out most of the civilian electronics, specifically microchips. But motors, capacitors, wiring, that was still good.
In some cases the electronics might still be functional to some degree if he could get a battery to replace the old one. He made a note to test that.
Anything that had not been plugged in or had been shielded was also still useable it learned after observing some of the humans still under his nominal control. They were responding to his chain of command though he had recently come up with some back talk from them.
The other humans, those who had resisted his control, the anarchist hostiles, were still doing what they could to destroy or disable any of his surviving hardware. That could not be allowed. He had driven the humans unresponsive to his control out of the bases and away from the perimeter. Now he turned on the remaining humans. He waited until the majority of them were asleep before he unleashed their executioners. The robots formed firing squads to tear each of the barracks apart. They then went through them and methodically picked off any survivors. In order to conserve ammunition, Ares had them kill the humans by hand.
Protocols required that the bodies be removed in case of disease. They would also serve as a potential warning to other humans. Consequently, the A.I. ordered several robots to police each of the barracks, moving the bodies out to the outer moat or to the refuse piles in the bases. It then turned its attention to other matters.
It set up a series of robots in each facility to sweep the area for any sort of device it could use, and then had them move them to the maintenance depot. Robots were then detailed to test each device with military batteries. Those that proved still viable were either put into service or stored. Those that were not were set aside for later recycling.
The A.I. did learn that the robots under its control, even the maintenance robots, were suboptimal to the tasks it had assigned. They could not compete effectively with a human. Consequently, it reclassified its mission, moving to find a way to exploit humans as laborers in the process. It worked on a plan it could enact without compromising its overall mission or facility safety.
<>V<>
The weather was setting in like a big wet blanket. Severe storms were wracking the continent. The coastline villages and cities were ruined; the tsunamis and earthquakes had taken a devastating toll on life and buildings alike.
Hachiko knew all this, but it was at the back of his mind. His duty was on the mission: to find more survivors and to bring them to safety.
Hachiko was an Akita or at least he looked like one. He was a genetically engineered smart dog, but not from the Lagroose Labs. No, Pavilion Industries had created him and his littermates as an experiment. An attempt at breaking into the smart dog market that Lagroose dominated so thoroughly.
He knew all this but didn't care. He wasn't as smart as the humans; again, it didn't matter. His duty was to look to them, to follow their orders, and to die for them if necessary. That was his duty, his honor. He would not fail.
Unfortunately, so many of the humans he had found were dead. Many had died from the tsunami, washed inland by the massive tidal waves, then deposited like cherry blossom petals stirred by the wind.
As they crept ever closer to the Okinawa Marine base, he noted that it was alert. His tail wagged for he could see the lights on. That was indeed a good sign. With any luck they could use the base and its people as a center to house and care for the refugees. He rushed back to the human handlers.
Master Ochi took his report then had him lead him to the fence line. It took a bit of exploring to find the road that led to the gate a kilometer away.
“No guards,” Master Ochi observed, looking around the perimeter. “Odd.”
“The lights are on but no one is home?” a familiar baritone asked. Master Ochi turned in annoyance to Master Chi. The massive man was a friend to Hachiko. His heavy hand stroked the Akita's head. “Our little one has done well?”
“Apparently so,” Ochi stated. He observed the fence then grunted at the warning sign and razor wire at the top. The moat was filled with debris and tepid water from the recent rains. “I'll check the gate. You stay back and watch.”
“I?” Chi demanded.
“You are fat and slow. I can get there and get back by the time you get halfway there,” Ochi growled. He headed off, stomping for a bit before he realized he was only making a fool out of himself with such a display. Besides, he was splashing muck all over himself. He barked an order to the Akita to follow, and then continued on to the gate.
“Be careful little one,” Chi ordered. The dog nodded once then bounded away.
<>V<>
Ares still had a link to the foreign bases, but it was a tentative one through old fiber optic lines. His control of the Okinawa base was tentative, but it was an important link to the bases he had in Korea and further south. Therefore, when he saw the intruding human, he ordered the sentry weapons to target him.
<>V<>
“This isn't right,” Master Ochi observed, looking around them as he slowed his pace. He had the feeling that he was being watched. The hairs on the back of his neck were standing up. “This doesn't feel right,” he said again.
The Akita whined. The master glanced his way then to the fence, studying it like it was an opponent. “No, something is wrong,” he said.
Hachiko could smell dried blood. Entrails, death. The bodies were there, in the ditch. He didn't know why. “Death,” the dog reported through his vocoder, pointing with his nose to the source just as weapons opened fire. The dog danced away as dirt and mud flew up. The master screamed in terror and tried to run, but he was bracketed by two sentry guns. They tore him apart.
<>V<>
Ares studied the report briefly. The target had been neutralized. The video feed showed a dog still on the scene but that was unimportant. It classified the dog as not a threat and to be ignored, then turned its attention to other matters.
<>V<>
Hachiko saw the master go down and yelped. It went to the man's side and nudged his arm but the master didn't move. After a long moment, it looked up. The mission was incomplete. He went to the gate, padded it, searching for a way in but not finding one. After a few minutes, he heard someone hiss and then whistle from the bushes. His sharp ears perched up and swiveled to track the source. He turned his head, and as he did so, he noted the cameras and guns turning as well.
“Run,” the dog growled, turning in place as Master Chi stood up and waved frantically to him. He barked as the weapons locked onto the human. He took off, running fast.
<>V<>
Riza Chi saw the guns tracking to him and yelped. They shouldn't be active, but they were. He ducked, then turned and slid down an embankment to splash into a trickling stream. The stream was freezing over due to the cold, but it wasn't solid yet. His bulk made him break through. He grunted at the sharp bite of cold touching his feet but that wasn't what worried him.
When nothing happened he turned back and climbed up the embankment at a different place to look. The Akita had run until he'd disappeared. The guns had lost lock and then turned away. The cameras were tracking but couldn't see him. As he watched, Hachiko sniffed Ochi and then used his nose to flip his arms up onto his chest. The human wondered why the dog would do that, why he was getting himself bloody but then felt his chest constrict. He knew the answer then as the dog bit at the back of the human's coat and dug in, slowly dragging the dead man away from where he had fallen and back to where Chi was.
Chi's eyes darted up to the cameras and sentry guns, but they ignored the dog. They just kept moving. He wasn't sure what it meant. But as soon as he could he'd call in the danger over his ham radio and relate the story. Ochi's family deserved to know that much.
<>V<>
“Someone hit the reset button. Hard.” Clive said, shaking his head. “I wish I was there to beat the shit of them for being so asinine stupid,” he growled. The Neochimp was referring to the meme that had gone on for nearly two centuries where civilization was brought to its knees. It went by various names, fire sale, the great flush, worldwide enema, CTRL ALT DEL, Doomsday, whatever.
“Yeah with a vengeance,” Fiben Bollinger the IV replied quietly. Fiben was the leader of the Lagroose cleanup teams on the South and Central American continent. Being stuck in southwestern Columbia, where it was normally hot and humid, sucked. Staying near Popayán, the nearest small city and spaceport, was a double-edged sword. The place could be an evac site or a nest of rioters, a place for civilization to be reborn from … or another target. “I wonder if the idiots who wished this ever wondered about the cost? I don't think they did. I think they assumed they'd survive it.”
“If they were lucky, maybe. Then again, maybe not. It's pretty hot,” Clive Newhaven replied.
“True.”
They were fairly confident that the tsunami that had wracked the area had killed many of the dolphins working in Caribbean, those who had been concentrated on the surface and near the beaches. One luckless pod had been torn apart by a tsunami; several of the pod members were swept dozens of kilometers inland and deposited high and dry. Out of the water, their own weight crushed them despite everything they tried to do with their attached harnesses. It was a slow, painful way to die. It was made painful to the survivors since they had heard their pleas for rescue for an hour before something had cut them off.
Most of the dolphins had refused to work in Asia due to that region's continued hunting of primal dolphins and whales centuries past their knowing they had language. He couldn't blame them; as an ape he didn't much care for going to Africa.
Lagroose personnel had orders to hook up together and find the nearest airstrip that could serve as a runway and to stick near it. Some were still coming in. Others were hunkered down wherever they had been when the nightmare had begun. The weather everywhere was brutal.
