Date Point: 14Y 3M 3W AV
Riverfront Park, Folctha, Cimbrean
Nofl
The energy of Humans never really ceased to amaze Nofl, even after living among them and getting to study, observe, and actually treat some of their more remarkable specimens. It almost seemed like that energetic approach to life was contagious, as well. When the opportunity to watch it in the context of leisure activity had presented itself, he’d decided he was going to check it out.
First, there were the inevitable tribal displays. One group of Human youngsters was bedecked out in yellow bright enough to make him thankful he’d thought to bring his (human-made) sunglasses along. The other wore a bright light-colored blue. The Gaoian cubs were covered in black. The crowd of proud parents and lookers-on shared the same color schemes, with colored paint on their faces and colored noise-makers in their hands.
Perhaps there is something instinctive about the need to display one’s affiliation in deathworld species he thought, then realized that his own people did much the same with their banners. Interesting. He filed the thought away for later cogitation.
There was something ritualistic about the food, too. A large cart sat off to one side, with the scent of something the Humans called “hot dogs” wafting across the crowd. A steady stream of Humans, and not a few Gaoians, made their way over and walked away with plates full of the things bearing outlandish toppings. It didn’t really appeal to him except in an academic sense; Corti were primarily mycovores and couldn’t eat most of the stuff being sold by the cart anyway, although he did get a drink the Humans called ‘root beer’ and tried it out only to find it initially terrible and subsequently delicious and addictive as anything his lab had ever created.
Being so much shorter than everyone did have its drawbacks, chiefly that he had to make sure he was sitting with an unobstructed view regardless of whether the Humans all around him were sitting, as they were now, or standing, which he thought was likely.
A Human male wearing a striped shirt and a Gaoian Female wearing a similar color scheme on her overalls came out to the middle of the triangular field and addressed the crowd.
“Good afternoon, everyone! Welcome to our first trial run of what we’re calling Shalosh Frisbee. The name was suggested by one of our Israeli friends; Shalosh in Hebrew simply means ‘three’,” the Human said. “This is a modification of the normal rules for ‘Ultimate Frisbee’, and we think it’ll liven things up a bit, because to play, you need two Human teams and one Gaoian team. The rules are in pamphlets at the end of each row, although they could change as we refine them a bit. Enjoy the game!”
The game, as near as Nofl could tell, was total pandemonium, at least at first. He retrieved one of the pamphlets and perused it, while splitting his attention between it & the game he was there to watch. It was a pretty impressive display; the Gaoians were able to carry a frisbee and run on fourpaw when they were in the Human zones, and in that mode they flat outran the Human kids, but the down side was that they got tired much faster, and so it quickly became a game of sudden blindingly-fast keepaway vs. natural endurance and thrown accuracy.
In very short order, the teams settled into some strategies that they’d obviously thought about—at one point the two Human teams ganged up on the Gaoian one, only to be befuddled by a quick counter-play at the blue team’s unguarded goal zone. The Gaoians used their ability to leap from fourpaw, catching Frisbees that the other teams had obviously thought they couldn’t reach. It made for entertaining watching.
By the end of the game, the young ones on the field were absolutely spent, and the referee adults nearly as much so. Everybody quaffed large amounts of water, and it was generally agreed that there definitely needed to be more of this. There was a number in the back of the pamphlet asking for support in putting a league together, with a list of already created team names sponsored by local businesses.
It was a very Human thing to be doing, he decided, and it was definitely fun…his team, if he decided to have one, would simply have to have the best sorts of sports equipment, and definitely no more of those hideous huge jersey shirts…no, this called for something much more refined…
Musing to himself after the game was over, he returned home devising uniforms in his head and trying to decide whether he wanted to sponsor a Gaoian team or a Human one.
Date Point: 14Y 3M 3W 1D AV
Folctha, Cimbrean
Sister Naydra
Getting Great Father Daar to take enough of a break to actually physically come to Cimbrean had required a great deal of subterfuge on Naydra’s part, aided in no small measure by the SOR Whitecrests over nearly a week and a half. A conversation with Mother Myun had led to a conversation with Brother Thurrsto, which had led to a conversation that had never happened with Father Regaari, and from there, a small Gaoian flier for two had been brought nearby, and from there, a private message had made its way to Daar.
And now he was here.
Naydra had been waiting for him on board. He came stalking up the ramp, closing it behind him, and had stopped suddenly to sniff at the elusive scent of the food she’d stashed on board in the stasis box.
“Sister Naydra. You asked to see me privately.” He sat on his haunches.
“I did. I wanted to show you in person where you’re sending us. May I?” For one priceless moment, the Great Father’s mask fell, and there was an actual person staring back at her, perplexed.
Then the mask came back up, grudgingly. “I can’t afford to be gone…”
She gave him a pant-grin. “Yes, you can. I already cleared it with your staff; they’ve cleared your schedule for the next few hours, and we won’t be out of contact.”
His control was herculanean, but it slipped, cracked. Just a bit. “…They who?”
She cocked an ear playfully at him and tilted her head. “Now why would I give up such a valuable asset as someone that can help me put one over on you?”
His voice was almost dangerous, and had more than a hint of frustration in it. “Sister….”
She leaned forward again, giving him a shushing finger. “Listen to me. For just a moment, please?” He looked to the side, and sighed.
“Daar. You are going to break if you can’t take off the mantle of the Great Father with someone. Let me be that someone for you, in private.” Her use of his name, the first to do so in months, the first he had allowed to, cut him. Deeply. She could see it.
Finally, he sighed again, and nodded an assent to the inevitable.
Outside, they were immediately high, over water, and moving at a good in-atmosphere speed. Daar watched the clouds below streak past for a long, long moment before speaking.
“I can’t, Sister. You don’t know what you’re asking of me. Please don’t,” he said heavily.
“You rescued me,” Naydra said. “And at my request, you butchered the monsters that tormented me, and my sisters. It was justice, but I bear some of the responsibility.”
The Great Father refused to meet her eyes, gazing out the window. “Some burdens can’t be shared, Sister.”
“I’ll tell you what. If you still feel by the end of the day that you can’t share with me, then we’ll leave it at that. If I’ve changed your mind about it, a little, then we can continue talking about it. How does that sound?”
He was still stiff, and unbending, and the scent of something that was almost fear rose for just a moment, then was gone beneath a layer of iron control. They sat, looking out the window at the clouds below and the occasional small spot of green amid the vast blue that went streaking by, for nearly an hour when there was a tone from the autopilot and they began to descend.
Naydra took the helm as it came in smoothly a few thousand feet above the newly-christened Tiritya Island, and slowed. Daar, unable to resist, came and sat next to her, the scent of irritation and mixed feelings giving way to honest curiosity. They came in above the high broken black cliffs of the northwestern side, coming down to a hover just off the precipice and surging waves below.
“I thought this would make a good site to build first,” she said. “The other side of the island is much warmer, as you’ll see—this side is both in a rain shadow, so it’s drier, and cooler, because of the prevailing polar current that intersects here.”
“It’s beautiful,” he said simply.
“It is. It’s also basalt. We intend to put much of the Grand Commune underground, and there’s no armor quite like rock.” He cocked his head at her.
“You’re building a fortress.”
“You are sending us here for safety. I wanted you to see how seriously we are taking it.” The ship rose several hundred feet and turned east, flying lazily. Presently, the high moor descended closer to sea level and became forested. Great trees with teal needles, reaching thirty, maybe forty meters into the sky, brushed wisps of clouds out of the air. A narrow river split a valley open, cascading down over rocks and the gnarled knees of tree roots below, until it hit the ocean below.
To the south, the jagged peaks of young volcanoes sprouted, in a steady east-west line of broken bones and twisted fingers reaching for the sky. They followed the coast around in silence, eventually turning south. Despite his obvious intention to say little, Daar exclaimed at the wide open plains that spread outwards in a fan of lush green fertility. Mile after mile of rolling hills and lowlands stretched out, garlanded by shorter trees, brush, tall grasses, and two winding, wide, flat slow-moving rivers.
“You could grow enough Naxas here to feed a dozen Communes,” he finally said. “An’ that farmland…”
“Yes.” Naydra said simply. She continued to fly low, and slow, and let him visually feast on everything. They circled over the lowlands, and she took them out over the sea, over reefs of broken rock and lush underwater gardens of fish, aquatic plants, and diving birds.
Finally, she flew back up over the mountains to the first spot they’d seen and hovered over, and landed, shutting the engines down in their low declining whine and getting up.
“I need to eat. And so do you. Come,” she said, taking a sizeable basket out of the stasis box that smelled heavenly. Daar apparently suddenly realized he was starving, going by the open mouth and salivating. She led him from the ship towards the edge of the cliffs, and spread a blanket out for them to sit on.
Even after nearly four months of having to maintain an iron control every waking moment, it was obvious he was having a hard time overcoming a literal lifetime of conditioning. She knew the likely objections, or had a pretty good idea, but she knew one thing about Stonebacks in general; she was a Female, he was a Male, so when she asked him to sit…he sat.
“Sister, I…” he started, and stopped again as she first shushed him again and then stuffed some kind of dumpling into his still-open mouth.
“No. We aren’t done with our exploration yet. We aren’t at the end of the day, as agreed on. We’ll talk about that when we’re done, and right now, we aren’t. Eat.” She gave him a Look, and he found himself unable to do anything about it.
“Wha’ ith thith?” he mumbled around a mouthful of whatever it was she’d given him.
“Humans call them pot stickers. Sister Shoo showed one of my Mothers how to make these, many years ago, and they’re always popular with the cubs. Good, aren’t they?”
He chewed and swallowed hugely. “…Kinda like peshorkies. Not as puffy.” That didn’t seem to be a critique as he immediately reached into the basket, stabbed another with a frankly terrifyingly huge claw, and popped it into his mouth.
“Yes, they’re a little …heavier…and the vinegar that Shoo always had them with is really interesting.” She dipped another and popped it into her mouth, savoring the crunch on one side.
Daar hadn’t tried that, and did. His ears played out a complex little dance as he chewed thoughtfully. “Tha’ ith intherethtin’.” He swallowed.
Her foresight in packing approximately five times as much food as she thought they’d need proved to be painfully accurate. She’d known Stonebacks were famous for their appetites of all kinds and him most of all, but even that fell short of the reality, in all too short a time. Reluctantly, they packed up the blanket and empty picnic basket and started the ship’s power cycle. Daar sat on the floor, obviously sated in at least one sense.
“I suppose we need to get you back to Folctha, don’t we?” she asked him.
“Yes,” he rumbled. “Strange that they haven’t contacted me at all. For anything.”
“Perhaps things have calmed enough that the world will continue to turn without you to ensure that it remains turning,” Naydra said, intending to be teasing. The cabin was flooded with the sudden scent of frustration, as he surged to his feet with a muttered oath, banging his head hard on the cabin roof, and cursing in Gaori, English, and some kind of field laborer cant that sounded both filthy and highly interesting.
“Sister, I know you mean well, but this is a thing that cannot be shared!” he said, rubbing his head with one massive paw. “Ow.”
“I am sorry, Da…Great Father,” she said, realizing that she’d taken this as far as it was going to go today. She sat for a while and watched the clouds below as they returned to Folctha. Daar…the Great Father…sat next to her in silence.
He had been legendary in his former life for his larger-than-life attitude and stubbornness, she thought. I can be stubborn too. We’ll just have to see.
Date Point: 14Y 3M 3W 6D AV
Refugee Camp Supply Storage Yard at Lavmuy Spaceport, Gao
Sister Yuuna
Knowing that Humans would change things was inevitable. Sister Yuuna and her fellow Sisters, and many of the males that they encountered, occasionally talked about such things—Yuuna herself was a brownie and had such an almost stereotypical attraction to Stonebacks that it had been something of a commune joke when she became an Associate. Perhaps nothing expressed Human-inspired change quite like standardized container shipping, though, and it was that more than anything else that had affected her personally. The first time she had seen the concept in action, it had been on a Human-run standard Dominion freighter nearly a decade earlier, and the collective forehead-slap and Why didn’t we think of that??? response from the labor clans had, almost overnight, revolutionized things.
The Human adage of Work smarter, not harder had been reimagined, however. For Gaoians working in shipping it was Work harder, by working smarter that was their guiding principle. In Sister Yuuna’s case, as an Associate with Stoneback, it came down to one simple fact.
With the boys all busy doing war-stuff, she got to drive the hover-forklift.
Today, it was the latest in stasis-stored foodstuffs from Earth. As she worked closer to it through the literal mountains of other stuff—Seriously, she thought, why do Humans always send clothes to us when we have fur?—she found herself thinking about the food just a container away. One last overstuffed, shrink-wrapped mountainous pallet of…something, and she was done. Time to move on.
Yeema’s nose was untrained, but had always nonetheless been one of the very best in her Commune. Breaking the seal and taking down the stasis field was the work of seconds, and with the doors swung open, she pulled the lift in for first pallet. The first one she encountered had some kind of note on it with that odd-looking human writing on it in big jagged black letters; she couldn’t read it, and stuffed it in a pocket telling herself she’d find out what it said later. She was behind schedule, and needed…needed to get…
Were those carrots she was smelling?
They were. And they were cold. She looked around to see if anyone was looking, and stuck a claw into the shrink-wrap. Nobody would notice if she just took…..and she was hungry. A girl needed to eat to keep up her strength, right? She reached in and yanked several out, inhaling the delicious scent of the crunchy snack, gobbling them down in seconds.
Best. Snack. Ever.
She shook her head. Back to work! This stuff wasn’t going to unload itself.
Date Point: 14Y 4M 3D AV
Refugee Camp Supply Storage Yard, Lavmuy Spaceport, Gao
Sister Yuuna
Yuuna was miserable.
She’d felt just kind of…off…for a day or two, but the real misery had started this morning when she had woken up barely able to breathe through her nose and having to almost pant. The sneezing was extra special, too; it seemed like she had suddenly become a fountain of snot.
“Yuuna, you coming?” came a light voice from outside, accompanied by a scritch scritch at the tent flap.
Yuuna sneezed again explosively. “Definitely not. Don’t come in here, Mala, you don’t want this whatever-it-is.”
The tent flap opened. “You sound terrible.” Mala was a slender, pretty silverfur with ears that looked like something out of the Longear line.
“I feel terrible. I can hardly breathe, I’m so congested, and my chest and nose hurt from coughing.”
“How about I get you over to the human medic station? Humans may not be as good as our own Openpaws, but they may be able to help, and anything is better than you sitting here in this tent by yourself.” Yuuna sneezed again, and yelped a little as her whole body was wracked with spasms.
With some support, she got up, coughing the whole way. Mala led her across the utterly transformed former spaceport to a building wing marked in white with a big red design on it between the word MEDIC in both Human and Gaori script on either side. They were met by an efficient looking female Human with short brown hair, wearing glasses and holding a tablet.
“Sister Yuuna is quite sick,” began Mala.
“I can see that,” the Human replied. “I’m Lieutenant Waggoner, the intake nurse on duty. Come on over here and sit down, you look like you’re feeling awful.” Yuuna sneezed again, covering her nose with a much-abused tissue.
“I’m sorry, Lieutenant, I can’t seem to help it,” Yuuna apologized when she could get the words out. Her cough had become almost a bark, and it hurt.
“Tell me about how you’ve been feeling this morning, and maybe the last day or two,” the Human said.
“I don’t know. I felt just…odd…the last couple of days, like I wasn’t quite myself, you know? I was able to work okay, though, it wasn’t really slowing me down. Woke up this morning, with all of this going on, and now I can’t…can’t…” she paused for another rapid-fire series of sneezes. “…can’t stop sneezing and coughing.”
“Is this a normal illness for a healthy Gaoian your age, doing the kind of work you do?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think so—I’ve never felt like this before, anyway, but, maybe?”
The Human nurse took some notes with a stylus. “Well, the good news is, we happen to have a brand-new bio-field scanner here that should fix this problem, but before we put you through that, I know Colonel Schul is going to want samples. We’re learning Gaoian physiology as we go here, and while Openpaw has been an enormous help, they were pretty badly hit in the attack.” She deftly pulled a clear tube out of a leg pocket and fished several cotton swabs out. A quick pass with each, and it was done, the samples capped in their own individual containment tubing.
“Okay. Let’s get you through the bio-field, and that should help a lot.” The Human and Mala helped Yuuna to her feet and positioned her in front of an arch with a barely-visible yellowish energy haze shimmering inside it. Yuuna stepped through, and several things happened at once.
For one thing, she felt immediately better. The urge to sneeze intensified as her body went to expel a suddenly-no-longer-necessary, massive glob of snot in her long nasal cavity, and she blew her nose long and hard. The ringing in her ears subsided, the chest heaviness went away, her throat no longer hurt, her joints no longer hurt…She was so occupied with suddenly not feeling like lukewarm Death, that it took her a moment to realize that there were other things going on too.
The Human nurse was gesticulating at her tablet and talking animatedly with an older Human male that had come in almost at a run, in densely-packed medical jargon. The bio-field arch she had walked through also had a blue-violet alarm light on the side that was lit up, and now that she could smell things again, she realized that Mala smelled terrified.
A few isolated words and phrases from the rapid-fire exchange going between the two Humans caught her attention. ”…cross species infection….potential for pandemic…unknown secondary infection potential…”
Suddenly, she wasn’t feeling nearly as good.
Date Point: 14Y 4M 3D AV
AEC Command center Camp Outfield, Lavmuy Spaceport, Gao
Colonel Martin Schul
An unfortunate reality of being a colonel, Colonel Schul thought to himself while waiting for everyone to arrive, was that it put one squarely in the role of being a bearer of bad news far too often. A colonel had just enough authority to directly relay very bad news to very important people, just enough authority to implement very bad news to the people below, and just enough authority to be blamed for anything that went truly and drastically wrong.
When a colonel that was also the chief Human medical officer on Gao called for an urgent general staff meeting, that also meant that all three of those realities were about to be proven true.
It took a while for people to arrive, even with Brigadier General Stewart’s injunction to, “Drop what you were planning to do, and attend this.” Great-Father Daar was attending via video link, as he was literally on the other side of the planet and couldn’t physically be there, as was Stewart himself who was actually on the USS San Diego at the moment.
Before too long, they were assembled, and Colonel Schul no longer had to resist the impulse to pace. With a flick from his tablet, he sent the data that Lieutenant Waggoner had taken that morning, with an analysis of the samples she had taken, to everyone assembled around the table.
“This morning, we had a Gaoian visitor to the medical station on-site,” he began without preamble. “She presented with symptoms that are unlike most known Gaoian illnesses. Lieutenant Waggoner, the nurse on duty, was quick enough to get several samples before putting her through a bio-field cleanse.”
He looked around the room. “There is no easy way to say this. What afflicted Sister Yuuna was a formerly-unclassified Picornaviridae rhinovirus from Earth, and it appears that Gaoians are susceptible to cross-species infection from this strain.”
The room was silent for a long moment while everyone absorbed that information. Colonel Schul forged on.
“We are treating Sister Yuuna as Patient 0, and I’ve already sent word back to the CDC on Earth for assistance. I can’t emphasize this enough, though—we don’t know what later-stage infection is like for this, whether a typical Gaoian immunoresponse is capable of fighting it off, or even more than speculation on the incubation cycle or infectious period.”
Again, the room was silent. Finally Great Father Daar growled a response from the other side of his monitor.
“Dark picture yer’ paintin’ there, Colonel.”
“At this point, Great Father, I literally have no better information. It remains to be seen if she spread it to others, which I think is likely to the point of certainty. She will have been infectious for a time period before the onset of the symptoms she was showing today, and there is no telling where she got it.”
“When the CDC response comes, hopefully we will have some expertise on the ground to guide the investigation—we are going to need to identify how this bug got past all of the layers of quarantine between here and Earth. At this point we have to assume worst-case.”
“Colonel, where did Sister Yuuna come in contact with something that might have allowed that infection? Do you have any additional thoughts?” asked Mother-Supreme Yulna.
“What I know at this point is what’s in that file, Mother-Supreme. Yuuna is a Stoneback Associate that works in the receiving end of the relief supply line, here at Lavmuy. It could literally be anywhe re in that supply chain.”
There was more silence. Daar spoke again, his deep voice rumbling with fatalism.
“Mother-Supreme…I’m gonna need you t’ get the Cimbrean capacity fer refugees expanded. We have to have a safe place to send people to, an’ the cubs and Females have top priority.” She duck-nodded wordlessly in acknowledgement.
“Colonel,” Daar went on. “I gotta have some idea what we’re dealing with, and I ain’t exactly an expert on medical stuff. You need anything, you contact me or run it up your chain a’ command.”
Colonel Schul nodded in acknowledgement. “As soon as I have better information, Great Father, you’ll have it. For now,” he said, looking around the room, “Because this is a virus from earth, we are going to have to assume that humans are also a vector, which means all troops are going to have to undergo immediate decontamination, regular followup decon, and as of now, we need a standing order to report any and all cold symptoms, no matter how minor, immediately to medical personnel.”
There were nods around the room, and several officers began tapping out messages to subordinates. Brigadier General Stewart stepped in to the silence.
“So ordered. Good work, Colonel. Keep us updated. If there’s nothing else,
dismissed.”
Date Point: 14Y 3M 3D AV
Center for Disease Control, Xenobiology Division, Atlanta, Georgia
Doctor Owen Marsh
The ping of a high-priority email coming from his phone interrupted Owen, just as he was getting to the punchline of a lengthy, but humorous anecdote from medical school. He pulled his phone out, belatedly realizing that everyone else from his unit was doing the same thing.
FM QUARTERBACK/[email protected] // TO CDC-XENOEPIDEMIOLOGY/[email protected] // INFO STAINLESS/[email protected] //
C O N F I D E N T I A L SAR-BROKEN-STATUE SUBJ (U) CRITICAL UPDATE—GAO //
Medical on site at CAMP OUTFIELD has identified a cross-species infection with a high probability of re-transmission in the Gaoian refugee population, of an unclassified Terran Picornaviridae rhinovirus. See attached micrograph and info. //
Current infection known is Patient 0, contained Patient 0 utilizing available quarantine measures. //
Immediate assistance is needed on Gao to determine rate of re-transmission, likely mortality rate, incubation period, possible vectors, and existing percentage of infection. High probability of pandemic is currently estimated, probable sysdemic interaction with indigenous disease at <75% likelihood at high confidence. //
A transport aircraft has been dispatched for you to Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, landing at 1730 local time, and a liason officer will be available; please respond immediately and have your team ready to deploy as quickly as possible via jump portal in New York. Extended forward deployment to Gao is likely, see attached rider.//
Attachments: pvd_rhv_micrograph.tif, sit_rep.pdf, rider.pdf//
The entire group finished reading their email at roughly the same time. A dozen pairs of eyes met each other all at once, and then they bolted for the door.
The news hit the CDC’s internal network like a thunderbolt. Against just this possibility, everyone on a reaction team that could possibly be deployed off-world had been given the Corti Frontline implant nearly a month before. Nobody had expected to actually use it, but the definition of their business was institutionalized paranoia. They had drills for this kind of thing. Everybody dreaded the real thing.
Phone calls home were made, goodbyes were said, and hasty preparations were made using well-planned out processes and pre-packed supplies. A summons to the Georgia State Patrol got them a police escort to the airport, and packed into vans with their essentials, they rode in apprehensive silence.
Date Point: 14Y 4M 3D AV
Israeli FOB, Gaoian Refugee Camp, Folctha, Cimbrean
Aluf Mishne (Colonel) Matusov
A forwarded email from Owen Powell of the SOR wasn’t such a common occurrence that it could be considered ‘normal’ under the best of circumstances. Generally it meant Something Bad, and when it was received in the middle of the night, far more so. It was never good news.
The emailed update from Gao was certainly in that category. Matusov sat up and re-read it, muttering imprecations in Hebrew absently. He swung his legs off the bed and his feet into waiting sandals, grabbing his robe with one hand and pulling it on.
“Corporal!” he said loudly to the enlisted watch officer just outside his door, who had the night duty.
“Sir!” the young soldier said, getting up.
“I need my entire command staff here for briefing in thirty minutes. Put on some coffee, son, we’re going to need it.”
“Yes, sir, I’m on it.”
”…And Corporal?”
“Sir?”
“Send a runner to the Clan of Females leadership. They’re going to need to be here too.”
“Yes, sir.”
Date Point: 14Y 4M 3D AV
Israeli FOB, Gaoian Refugee Camp, Folctha, Cimbrean
Sister Naydra
Human responses to crisis, whether they faced the impossible or not, tended to mirror their biology, Naydra thought idly as she half-listened to the briefing. She had read about human immunoresponse briefly a few times; they were such a curiosity, there were endless articles about them and their uniquely aggressive makeup.
Prod Humans the right way, and they came flooding in whatever direction the threat lay, overwhelming it, absorbing it, utterly destroying it, and then subsiding into some kind of watchful readiness for the next threat to appear. They were nice about it, but there was something relentless about the way that Humans just …sized you up… when they first met that was unsettling. They didn’t even know they were doing it, really, and it didn’t seem to matter whether whatever it was they were responding to was impossible to overcome.
This meeting was typical. A threat had been identified to something they were supposed to be protecting. The threat was analyzed, broken down into manageable steps, those steps were then delegated to various sub-groups to carry out, and before whatever the problem had had a chance to get worse, it had been handled.
Humans were scary.
”…Sister Naydra?” The Human commander’s voice was respectful, gentle, and yet had an iron backing to it that said he knew she had been lost in thought, wasn’t pleased about it, wouldn’t presume to lecture her about it, but made it clear that he wanted her full attention. Remarkable, really.
“I’m sorry. I was lost in thought. You were saying?”
“I was saying, AEC on Gao has sent us advance warning to prepare for a massive influx of refugees. We are running out of room to put people here, unless we start pitching tents on farmland, and that impacts the food supply.”
“Yes, that’s true,” she said. It was true. The refugee population already numbered nearly quadruple the population of Folctha as it was, and stretched far into the hills. Even tightly packed, the camps were kilometers across.
“May I ask, how is the search for a site coming along?” he asked.
“Quite well, really,” Naydra said. “Great Father Daar and I toured the site a week ago, and he was firmly in agreement with the tentative plans we’ve laid out. There is nothing there yet, though—no infrastructure, no jump portal, no power, no real food, nothing.”
“Assume, then, that the initial thrust of refugees is going to be the already-ill, moving them through a bio-field as they get into a jump gate, and cubs. We need to move enough of the population here to start setting up support for them when they arrive, and we’re going to need to begin it immediately.”
“That’s going to need a lot of support, Colonel,” said Mother Ginai, who had been sitting silent at the table absorbing the flood of information.
“It will,” he nodded. “I’ve already sent a requisition back to Tel Aviv for more troops, more generators to allow a higher cycling rate for the jump portal, and the materials for another portal.”
“You are planning to put the portal here, or on Tiritya Island?” Naydra asked sharply.
“With your permission, of course, I think setting up the initial link to the island would be best,” Colonel Matusov said. “Once there, we can receive supplies for more jump gates, personnel from Earth, material support from Earth, and any support the Great Father can send from Gao—perhaps from this ‘Dark Eye’ facility.”
The Females looked at one another. The Human made sense, of course, but none of them liked it that the decision was being made for them. The Grand Commune was theirs, even if they hadn’t finalized plans yet on how that was going to happen.
“Colonel, the south side of the island is probably the best place to set up,” Naydra said. “It is largely lower rolling hills, and there are two major rivers for immediate access to fresh water.” He nodded an acknowledgement.
“As soon as I have a response back from Tel Aviv, then, we’ll begin.” Matusov flipped through the pages of information on his tablet.
“Next up. Placement of bio-fields through the camp…”