by Anna Wu
Chapter 21: Setting up Camp
Jimmy's eyes shot open as his rocket began to shake and jump forward. He immediately put his headset back on and grabbed his rocket's steering wheel. He glanced in every direction while shutting his autopilot off. He was about to contact Libby for help when he realized that it was just some minor turbulence. He breathed a sigh of relief, realizing that he was too nervous.
Once Jimmy had calmed down, he let out a deep yawn. Time? He wondered while staring down at his watch. He realized that it was around quarter past nine, not that the time meant anything out here. He turned his gaze forward and rubbed the sleep out of his eyes. When he finally got a decent look at what lay in front of him, he flipped on his headset. "Wake up!" he shouted as loud as he could. Around him, everyone was startled awake as Jimmy's loud voice penetrated their deep slumber.
"What's wrong?" Cindy immediately asked while flipping off her auto pilot. She noticed Jimmy staring straight ahead and followed his gaze. "Oh," was all she could muster.
One by one, everyone stared straight ahead at the giant rock that lay several hundred kilometers in front of them. It was huge, almost as big as Retroville. Jimmy's lips curled into a smile as he realized that his plan was coming together. "Kids, meet Little Boy."
"Butch, help Betty and Brittany set up that tent over there!" Jimmy shouted while covering the microphone on his headset. Libby was on the other end, and she wouldn't appreciate the shouting. Now that they had all landed on Little Boy, there wasn't any need to use headsets with each other. They were all within shouting distance.
"As I was saying," Libby continued while taking a bite out of her bagel, "I've run a thorough search of the town. Three times. I'm not detecting any Yolkian life forms here on Earth. But I've got over a hundred kids here, and I only need a fifth of them to help with all of this control room stuff. The rest are still working on that fortress. Better safe than sorry, and it gives them something to do," she explained to Jimmy.
Jimmy nodded. "Libby, we should be in range for you to do a scan for our parents' DNA. Nick and Cindy are setting up the satellites that will carry the tracing signal from the lab. Do you understand how it works?"
Libby nodded on her end. "Control team instructs the computer to run a scan for our parents' DNA. We send the signal out into space, which is then amplified by your satellites. That should strengthen the signal enough so that I can get a rough reading on our parents. As you get closer, I can pinpoint the single to a more exact location. My end's ready to go, just give the word to send the signal," she told him.
Libby turned to her left and right. A kid sat on each side of her inside the control room. In the main part of the lab a dozen other kids were doing dozens of different tasks. They were studying Jimmy's tutorial program, checking the status of all the rockets, and plotting courses for Jimmy and his fleet. Libby was proud of the team she had assembled.
"Goddamn it, Butch, you have to hammer the pegs into the rock first or the tent will fall over!" Jimmy shouted while covering the microphone. He groaned as Butch continued doing it wrong. "Steve, go help him!"
"It's Bill," the kid said while walking past Jimmy.
"Sorry," Jimmy apologized while turning his attention back to Libby. "Libby, I'm going to have to get back to you. I have to take care of some stuff here. Neutron out." he told her while going over to the tent.
Cindy stopped working as she saw Jimmy help Betty set up her and Brittany's temporary shelter. Nick finished attaching one of the satellites onto the asteroid and noticed Cindy staring over at Neutron. "Jealous?" he asked with a smile.
Cindy stared over at Nick and chuckled. "Hardly," she told him while finishing screwing the satellite into the rock. "Hardly," she repeated.
"Whatever." He paused to wipe his hands on a rag and then tie it around his head like a bandanna. "Help me set up the firing range," he instructed her while unpacking the guns from all of the rockets.
Once the camp was complete, Jimmy sat down on a boulder and took a quick swig from his water bottle. He took a look everyone's new base. Forty tents for sleeping and shelter were strewn across a square kilometer. In the middle of the camp there were seven more tents. Three were filled to the brim with food. Two contained clothes, medicine, and other supplies. The last two supply tents contained all of their guns and ammunition. At the other end of the asteroid, barely visible from their camp, were everyone's rockets. They were securely fastened to the ground. Suddenly, their thrusters fired.
"Get that automated system working?" Jimmy asked into his headset.
"Thrusters are set to alter your course for collision with Yolkian planet. Once the exact location of our parents' DNA is found, the thrusters will rapidly alter your course so the collision will not harm them," Mike explained.
"Good job. Sounds like Control Team's got everything handled back home," Jimmy said while setting his water bottle back down on the ground. "Neutron out."
Jimmy flicked his headset off and walked towards Nick, who was tallying the supplies along with Brittany and Butch. Cindy and Betty were awkwardly arranging the medical supplies. Ashe strolled to the middle of their camp; he noticed that everyone else was sitting in their tents, playing board games, and otherwise just relaxing. That was fine with Jimmy; they had done more than enough work for today.
"Those two are working together?" Jimmy whispered while pointing his thumb over his shoulder to Betty and Cindy as he approached Nick. "How did that happen?"
Nick frowned as he set down several boxes of ammo. "I was hoping to see a catfight, but it's the one time that they are controlling their tempers. Looks like you were right. The odds are against us, huh?" he asked while elbowing Jimmy.
Jimmy wasn't amused. He'd be more than happy to watch Cindy and Betty go at it back on Earth, but there were more serious issues to deal with right now. "I need supply info. Everything. Now," he instructed Nick while taking out a notebook and clicking his pen.
"Perfect timing, good buddy. We all just finished tallying everything up." Nick motioned towards the tents. "We did pretty good considering we took off with less than half of the rockets." Nick led Jimmy to the three tents that held all of the food. He opened one of them and allowed Jimmy to look inside. Boxes of all different kinds of food were stacked to the tent's triangular ceiling. "Enough food for six weeks. Plenty for a trip to the Yolkian home world and back, and then some."
Jimmy nodded as he wrote this down. "People? Medicine? Guns?"
"We've got fifty bottles of aspirin and plenty of water to wash it down with. I got three dozen boxes of band aids and two hundred yards of that band aid that comes in a roll. You know, the stuff for serious injuries?" he tried to explain while struggling to recall the name.
"Good, what else?" Jimmy asked while scribbling some more notes down.
"Sheen and Carl had brought back some surgical tools when they got Libby her wheelchair and crutches. I'm hoping that you're not delusional enough to try to operate on anyone, but they're there if we need them," he said with a shrug. "We've got antibiotics, morphine, alcohol for sterilization, five bags of cotton balls, the stuff they use for stitches, and four dozen needles."
Jimmy looked up from his notebook. "Sewing or hypodermic?"
"What's hypodermic?" Nick asked.
"The kind they use for shots," Jimmy explained.
"Yeah, those. The, uh, hypodermic needles," he told Jimmy. "Oh, and about ten thousand of those disposable gloves."
Jimmy nodded his head. He would set up a medical tent later on so he could have a sterile environment if anyone got hurt. "Guns?"
Nick led Jimmy into the gun tent. "Lady Luck appears to have been on our side with this area," he told Jimmy with a smile. "Out of the original one hundred and fifty-one guns, we've got ninety-two."
Jimmy looked up from his pad and pen to stare at Nick. "You sure?" He hadn't dare hope that they had salvaged that many.
Nick smiled at Jimmy's shocked face. "Double-checked. Sixty pistols, twenty-six shotgu
ns, and six rifles. Unfortunately, none of the rifles are automatic," he told Jimmy. "Not that you even know what that means," he added under his breath.
Jimmy looked at the guns strewn across the tent. They were separated into the three different types and then laid out on the ground. Jimmy suddenly realized that something was missing. "Where's all of the ammo?"
"Next tent over," Nick explained while leading Jimmy to the ammunition tent. Butch was inside, more than happy to arrange the boxes of ammunition. "Once again, we did pretty well. We've got seventy-four boxes of 9mm pistol ammo. Each box contains twenty-five rounds, and a magazine can hold fifteen. I've got fourteen boxes of shotgun shells. Three boxes of BB shot, seven boxes of three buck, two boxes of one buck, and two boxes of triple-ought buck. The triple-ought buck is totally badass," Nick said with a smile. "As for rifles, there are eleven boxes of thirty rounds. I also had grabbed plenty of empty magazines from that Wal-Mart. I'll explain about those later. That's all we packed."
Jimmy stared at him for a moment before slowly nodding and returning to his notepad. Lots of ammo, was all that he wrote. He had barely understood a word of what Nick had just said.
Nick smiled at Jimmy's confusion. "You barely understood a word that I just said, didn't you?"
A shocked look appeared on Jimmy's face. "Of course I...well, no," he said with a frown.
Nick laughed. "That's okay; I'm going to teach everyone everything they need to know. Have everyone who's getting a gun assembled about, oh," he muttered while taking a compass out of his pocket and examining it, "three kilometers west."
Jimmy looked at his watch and set the alarm to go off in two hours. An hour should be enough to assemble everyone and walk them three kilometers out. "Three hours, got it."
Nick rubbed his hands and stared at the dozens of boxes of ammo behind him. "Good. The metaphorical school is in session."
