The Long Road to Gaia (7 page)

Instead of fifteen minutes, it was an hour
before we docked with the habitat. It was resting on the bottom of the Pacific
Ocean. Even down here, the water was moving fairly violently. It took three
goes to match the airlocks, and dock.

I followed Smith down to the others.

"Suit up people," he said.
"I don’t trust this place. If the water comes in, we should be prepared
for it, and be on suit air before our feet get wet. If we need to swim out, I
want it to be with plenty of reserve air."

"What's the drill boss?" asked
Murdock.

"We go in and ask these people nicely
to please evac immediately."

"If they don’t?" asked Peck.

"We make them. We don’t have an option
in this."

Silence greeted this remark. He looked
around their eyes and saw no-one was happy, but they would follow orders. They
trusted him.

"Let's go," said Smith, and he
walked to the airlock, and opened the inner doors.

He knew they had enough room to pack all
these people into the ship, but it wasn’t going to be a comfortable fit. And
that was assuming everyone was standing up.

With the team in the airlock, he overrode
the safeties, and opened the outer door as well. It wasn’t safe, but it would
save time.

He looked at Nigel Weaver.

"LT, you stay by the airlock. If need
be, you close it for safety, and start cycling people through."

Weaver nodded, and took up a position by
the outside airlock controls.

The rest of them followed Smith.

The habitat creaked loudly, and he stopped.
The team looked around wildly, as if expecting water to come crashing in on
them at any moment. Nothing appeared to be a threat, so they continued on.

The main offices were empty. They fanned
out to search for the people they knew were there.

Eventually they were found in the main
entertainment room. All of them. Having a meeting.

Smith walked in as if he was the main
speaker.

"Stop right there military," said
the man at the lectern.

"Colonel Smith."

"I don’t care who you are. We don’t
want you here."

"I've been ordered to evacuate this
habitat immediately."

"We don’t care. What part of that
don’t you understand?"

"Understanding isn’t a requirement. Obedience
is."

"You won't find it here. We don’t want
to leave. We aren’t leaving."

There was a lot of vocal support for not
leaving.

At which point the habitat gave out an
awful screeching sound.

"Talk to me Takai," said Smith
into his communicator.

"Sensors show the habitat on the wind
side shifted slightly," replied Takai. "I seriously doubt its water
tight there now sir."

Smith looked at the people sitting there,
as if nothing at all was untoward.

"If it was my choice," he said to
the man at the lectern, "I'd let you all die here."

"We are not going to die."

The habitat screeched again.

"Sure of that?" said Smith.
"I wouldn’t be."

"This habitat was designed to
withstand anything."

"Last chance. I'm not waiting around
while this thing comes apart on us."

"Go away."

Smith sighed. I could see the conflict on
his face. It didn’t matter that these people would surely die if they stayed
here, and die soon. They had the right to choose their own fate. But he had his
orders.

"So be it," he said, bringing up
his stun weapon.

The man at the lectern smiled at the words,
but the smile died with the gun pointing at him.

"Stun everyone," Smith said into
team coms, and pressed the trigger. The man at the lectern dropped, out cold.

The people panicked, and some of them made
it out into the halls. It took ten minutes to shoot down the last of them. And
another hour to collect them all on sleds and move them into the cargo bay,
barracks and every nook and cranny on the ship except the cockpit and the armoury,
which they made sure were bolted shut.

They were doing one last sweep to make sure
they hadn't missed anyone, when yet another of the screeches was heard,
followed by the sounds of water flowing.

"Immediate evac," said Smith, and
the team started running for the airlock of their ship.

Smith was the last one in, and water was
lapping his boots as he stepped through and swung the hatch closed.

The Dropship undocked, and pulled away,
regenerating shields when far enough away.

Takai kept the cockpit looking at the
habitat. He waited while Smith made it up to him, and locked the door behind
him.

The two of them sat there for another
minute.

The habitat imploded and a giant air bubble
headed for the surface.

Smith pointed upwards, and Takai started
the ascent.

"What do you mean by they're going to
be shipped all the way down the spine in a freighter?" asked an irate Bill
Smith. "They deserve a colony ship."

The habitat people were being held in
secure storage until their ship was ready to go. Some would have called it
being in prison. Bill called it bullshit. The Dropship had already been moved
to the decommissioning dock, the team was standing by for redeployment orders.

Smelling a rat, Smith had barged in on the
General who'd forced him into carrying out the mission.

"There's one last planet at the bottom
of the spine no-one else wants," said the General. "They're going
there. They get a freighter, and all the supplies it can hold. Nothing more.
They're a damn nuisance, and command wants them gone."

"Gone?"

It took a lot to startle Smith. It also
took a lot to get him angry. For the first time in a long time, he felt the
need to reign himself in.

"Fine. I'm out."

"What?"

"I'm done, and so is my team."

"You're done when I say your done
soldier."

"No sir. Our tours were up six months
ago. We only stayed on to help people because only we could. The jobs over.
We're done."

He saluted, for the last time, did a parade
ground about face, and marched out.

Thirty minutes later, the team were in the
retirement section of administration. They made out their final reports on the
mission, submitted them, and followed them with their resignations. Five
minutes each later, they were paid out, and honorably discharged.

They milled around in the office slapping
themselves on the back, until the clerk got bored waiting for them to leave,
and left himself.

Vogane went straight to the computer.

"Can you get in?" asked Smith.

"Watch me."

In quick order, the Dropship was declared a
write off, so badly damaged it could only be scrapped. It was placed on the
scrap auction site, where a minute later, one William Smith bought it for one
hundred credits. An order was generated for it to be delivered to the nearest
civilian dock, with its military markings painted over.

Shortly after, an old Destroyer on the
surplus list was also sold to one William Smith for one hundred credits. No-one
quite figured out why some significant zeros vanished from the price. The sale
was quite genuine though, and those who found the discrepancy, quietly buried
it to save their jobs.

A day later there was a break in at the
Colony outfitting dock. A complete colony startup kit went missing, along with a
year's top quality food packs for five hundred people. It was weeks before
anyone noticed the losses, since colony outfitting didn’t happen very often
anymore.

The colony freighter left two days later,
after the habitat people had again been stunned by the military and left
unconscious in the hold of the freighter, along with three months supplies of
low grade food, enough to get them to their new home, but not much beyond that.

The freighter had only one person on board
who wanted to be there, and he was the pilot, who'd been hired to fly the ship
there and back.

Two hours out from the Torus, a Destroyer
with a Corvette docked to the side, hailed the freighter and docked with it.
The pilot was put into an escape pod and jettisoned.

Takai plotted a course to the Wolf 359 jump
point, and the triple ship began its journey.

In the barracks area of the Destroyer, the
team were making the place livable.

"What's the plan now boss?" asked
Weaver.

The others stopped to hear the answer.

"We take these people to their new
home. It’s the last system down the spine, on the other side of Morocco. The
specs are in the computer. It's hospitable enough for a small colony, and the
full kit we obtained for them should kick start them. Once they're all set,
we'll become a Mercenary unit, unless anyone wants to outright retire."

He looked around the team and saw no such
interest.

"We'll work our way up the spine,
keeping away from Earth military. We collect our families as we go through, and
those of the team members we lost if they want to come. We keep going up spine
until we find somewhere we can put down roots again."

The others nodded.

"I'm done with Earth. We need to find
somewhere new. The Americans and Brits went up-spine. I think we should
to."

"Sounds like a plan," said
Weaver.

There were smiles all round.

Lieutenant Richard Forbes had a joke for
all occasions. But this time, his joke had become real.

He was still chuckling to himself when he
pushed open the door to his boss's office, and walked in, clip-folder in hand.

"What's up chuckles," asked
Senior Commander Renee Balfour.

She was used to her aide's sense of humour,
and did enjoy a good joke herself. It broke the monotony of her work.

"You know the world ended in
1984?"

"Yes, you told me. We're still waiting
for the paperwork to catch up."

It had been a good joke, one which had
lasted for three hundred years.

"Well this is it."

"What is what?"

"This."

He held up the clip folder.

"This is the last piece of paperwork.
I even printed it so it would be on paper."

"How so?"

"This is the report from Colonel William
Smith, of the relocation of the last group of people on the planet."

"So?"

"It's now official."

"What is?"

She was still looking for the punchline to
what she was sure was an oncoming joke.

"Sir, the world has officially
ended."

"Why do you say that?"

"Because this IS the last piece of
paperwork. The planet is now uninhabited, and officially uninhabitable."

She looked at him, still waiting for the
punchline.

He took the sheets of paper from the
clip-folder, and deposited them solemnly on the corner of her desk. The report
itself was already on her computer, in the yet to be viewed area.

She looked at the paper.

She looked at her aide.

He wasn’t laughing.

She pulled up the report on her computer,
speed read it, pressed the button to release it for distribution to her
superiors, and it vanished from her screen.

She looked at her aide again. He looked at
her. They sighed together.

And so, the world ended.

Major Corbin Hunter sat there doing his
check list. The mission was routine. Drop the survey party in the dirt, and
wait for them to finish. Nothing to it.

I stood there watching him, more than a
little worried. For the first time, the Hunter family only had one Hunter male,
and he hadn't yet had a son. His father had died unexpectedly, leaving the
Captaincy of Galactica to the traditional first officer role family, until
Corbin had proved himself ready to assume the command.

He was nearly ready. But as far as Hunter
men were concerned, so far his marriage had only produced two daughters. There
were contingency plans for this event, but it had always been hoped they
wouldn’t be needed. There were cousins of course, but they were also all
female.

Corbin was caught between two needs. The
need to ensure the Hunter male line continued, and the need to prove he was
ready for the command he was born for. The two, at least now, were not
compatible. The number of Hunter males lost over the years proved the second
need was unpredictably dangerous.

I tried looking along his time line, and
was surprised to see I could.

The scout ship launched, orbited the planet
a few times, and set down in a flat meadow. There was a stream nearby, and also
a forest.

The team tested the air, and found nothing
to worry about. The gravity was slightly high, the UV was slightly low, there
was a tad more oxygen in the air than expected, and everything else checked
out.

They went exploring, testing everything
they found.

Corbin pulled a deck chair out of the small
cargo bay, pulled out his reading pad, and lounged around waiting for them to
return. At lunch time, he pulled out a specially prepared meal from his wife,
and munched away while continuing to read his book. Partway through lunch, he
felt the skin on his neck tingle for a moment, and he dropped his pad and
swatted the spot. His fingers came away with a small amount of blood on them.
He felt fine, but had the ship's medical sensors check him anyway. It declared
him fine, except for what appeared to be an insect bite. His blood was fine,
everything else about him was fine. He went back to his chair and finished
lunch.

Nothing else occurred during the longer
than normal afternoon, and the team returned at dusk. All of them were sporting
small lumps, even though non-one had actually seen the insect which apparently
had bitten them.

The trip back to Galactica was routine.

On a whim, I kept going.

A week later, Corbin and the whole team
were admitted to medical, where they died within hours of each other.

Oops.

I returned to Corbin sitting there doing
his check list.

"Bug spray," I said to him.

He immediately checked if there was some in
the medical supplies, and found there was. On the planet, he didn’t need
reminding. Before the team went off, he spayed himself, and all but one of the
team, the hold out laughing at the rest of them. The day went almost the same
as I’d seen it before, with the exception that only one team member was bitten.

He died a week later, and a completely new
pathogen was discovered during the autopsy. The planet was flagged as not to be
settled until it was either made safe, or a cure could be found.

Weeks later, Corbin's wife found she was
pregnant again.

Before the year was out, the Hunter line
had a new male heir.