Fleet Scout

As he kept reading, Finn began to see the trap that the Utopianists had fallen into . The titanic forests that surrounded this clearing, also covered the rest of the planet's single massive continent. Restricted to a single clearing in the middle of the largest continent, the Utopians could only expand so far. Crowded together, the population was far more susceptible to any diseases that struck and they would be an easy target if the Swarm, or any of the other Dominion races found the place. This had been their "final solution" for the Utopian movement, one that all of its members had happily embraced. Taken as an academic exercise, you could almost admire the ruthlessness of the plan.

When Finn arrived, Owen was sitting on the porch of his office, talking to a group of children. Whatever he'd been saying was lost in the stir of the kids noticing Finn. Mostly they stared at him but a few waved. He waved back before realizing that Owen had stopped talking and was watching him.

"Looks like you're already busy," he said to Owen.

"We were just finishing up," Owen said. "Everyone, this is Captain Finn. He's one of the Scouts that Colonial Fleet sent to help us."

Finn smiled at the expected chorus of "Hi, Captain Finn."

"I was just telling them this was a bad time to ride bikes on the runway," Owen explained.

Finn nodded. "There are still some ships coming in and they're moving too fast to avoid anyone, or even see them maybe. As soon as everyone is here, I'll have someone will come and tell you it's safe to play out there again. In fact, I bet the kids aboard the Pioneer ships will be glad to meet you."

"There's kids on spaceships?" a small voice asked.

"Sure, that's where their families are," Finn said.

"The Captain and I have some things to talk about," Owen said quickly, ignoring the sudden eruption of raised hands. "You can all have the afternoon off, but don't forget to finish your homework for tomorrow."

There was a chorus of goodbyes and thank-yous as the kids got up and headed for the habitats.

"I'm their science and history teacher three days a week," Owen said as he got up.

"I'm impressed. You're a man of many talents."

"Yes, I am and teaching is not one of them. Come on out of that sun."

Finn gratefully got into the shade and sat in one of the chairs. Owen reached into a insulated bag and pulled out a bottle of cold water. Condensation was already forming on the bottle as Finn took a long drink. The water was so cold it made his teeth ache.

"That's really good, thank you."

"You're welcome. Before we start, I asked the Pioneers to send a representative up as well."

Finn laughed. "That'll be interesting. Have you ever dealt with the Ta'avi before?"

"The who?"

"Uh, the Ta'avi? They lost their planet like us, except without any warning. There's not too many of them left. Most of the Pioneers are Ta'avi family groups. They invented the whole idea actually."

"No kidding. They spoke pretty good English."

Finn sighed. Of course they hadn't told these poor bastards about any of humanity's sister races. "That's because there was a big refugee group on Earth for years. A whole generation of the Folk were born in New Mexico. I was amused because the relationships between clans, individual families, and everything else is incredibly complicated."

"You know a lot about them?"

"Yeah, I was adopted into one of the clans back on Ear...uhm, back before the evacuations. They might be figuring out who's actually senior for a few days."

"Maybe quicker than that," Owen said, pointing.

Finn looked behind him and saw a familiar figure. He laughed and shook his head.

"Did everyone with any sense succumb to sunstroke?" he called.

Tyohac's laugh boomed back. "They'd still be going through the clan rolls if I hadn't brought a very large hammer to the council!"

Owen suddenly looked worried but Finn shook his head slightly. "That's just his sense of humor," he muttered. "Ty is a good man."

Tyohac climbed onto the porch and slapped Finn's back and then stuck out his hand and shook with Owen. "I'm Tyohac and we don't have the time for my full last name. I'm not the leader, but I've got permission to be the spokesman."

"Owen Lykos, welcome to Erewhon and thank you for coming. Obviously you two are already acquainted." Owen handed the burly Pioneer another bottle of water.

"My tiny cousin here? I used to let him hang around my airfield. ," Tyohac said and took a long drink. "Oh, that's good stuff. I'm a little surprised to see they trusted him with his own ship."

To his credit, Owen barely blinked. He raised his eyebrows and looked at Finn, who rolled his eyes.

"We flew together in the Defense. He wasn't quite so fat back then, but it still took a crowbar and a tube of grease to get him into the cockpit."

Tyohac laughed. "I want to know which race of midgets those things were built for. I'm yanking your chain, Owen. Finn here was my squadron leader and wasn't too terrible at it."

"What did you fly?" Owen asked Finn.

"An AF-1. I'd prefer that not get around though."

"The Redtail? I'm impressed," Owen said. "Why don't you want people to know?"

Finn wasn't sure how to answer that. He started to explain but Tyohac interrupted him; "Finn is a very reluctant hero. You see, he's nowhere near charming or pretty enough. So, he gets testy around those of us who are better looking and have larger penises."

Finn had to give Owen credit, the Administrator didn't even blink. "That's too bad. Welcome to Erewhon, all of you."

Tyohac nodded his thanks and settled to the floor. "So, you're really a bunch of real live Utopians. How the hell did you get this place?"

"What's wrong with it?" Owen demanded.

"Nothing, that's why I'm confused!" Tyohac shot back.

Finn didn't share his own thoughts about the colony. "That's a good question, the way the Utopians and the Hub leadership bump heads, how did you get the Resettlement Directorate to put you on a planet this nice?"

"That was Liz, my wife. She was on the council and when RD announced their colonial plan, she somehow got us listed as a colonial corporate entity. There's not much usable room here, so they put the smallest of the corps in the drawing and we happened to win."

"That's it?" Tyohac asked doubtfully.

Owen laughed. "Hell no, their arbiter found that we didn't quite meet the requirements for diversity or something. After the third or fourth injunction, Liz managed an appeal to the Commonwealth. It was a Hail Mary but they actually got involved. It was decided we had won under the Resettlement Directorate's own rules. A couple of days later, someone from Fleet showed and started the familiarization briefings about Erewhon."

"Where's the name Erewhon come from?" Finn asked.

Owen smiled sadly. "Liz read a lot. Erewhon is the name of the first novel written about a utopia. It's also the word 'nowhere' spelled backwards, more or less. It seemed to fit the place."

"Well, you're lucky," Tyohac said. "Rain and all, this is one of the nicer places we've worked."

Owen was surprised. "Really? I thought Eden was supposed to be paradise."

Finn and Tyohac glanced at each other, confused and Owen noticed the look.

"That's where Fleet is based, right?"

"Where did you hear that?" Finn asked. "Eden is a no-go to any outsiders, other than terraform engineers, last I heard."

Owen looked between them, half smiling. "Come on, admit it. Eden belongs to Fleet. Everyone knows that's why no one ever sees Fleet people on Hub."

"Except no one told Fleet, I guess," Tyohac rumbled. "You been holding out on me, Finn?"

"Never been there," Finn said. "Before this, we were doing assay on a proposed outpost that didn't pan out. Before that, it was Celestial Reverie."

"They just made it up to colony status," Tyohac said. "I give this one a lot of shit, Owen, but only because he needs it. Scouts and Main Fleet take their job seriously. You don't see ship's crew on Hub because they're only there long enough to refit before they're back to chasing planets. The Ops staff on Hub got shoved out to the old Light Bringer and it's a long walk to the city. Anyway, none of them will keep a uniform on, so even when you see Fleet, you wouldn't really know it."

Owen stroked his chin. "Hmm, they might want to get that information out to people. It's pretty common knowledge that the only Fleet on Hub is the security force. Everyone else is on the orbitals or sitting on Eden."

"That's not good," Tyohac rumbled.

"I'll get a message out on the next Pony," Finn said. "I'm sure they'll be surprised that they're actually living in paradise."

The Light Bringer had been the first real colony ship to arrive on Hub. It had been made as large as possible and was a single use transport, hauling everything from Earth to get the first phases of the Hub colony built. Personnel hadn't been part of the equation, so it had mostly been an immense boxcar. The most advanced thing about it had been the grav engines and the AI that ran them. When Light Bringer had made planetfall, the gravity engines had been crushed beneath it. The AI had been scavenged and had become the City's first support system. The mammoth hull was visible from the city, even though it was several kilometers distant.

Owen chuckled. "Why does reality always fall so short of expectations?"

"I think it's called the human condition," Finn said. "To completely change the subject, I read the sitreps on the trip here but I don't know if I had them all. What was the origin of the staph?"

Owen sighed, smile disappearing. "An infection in the filters of three different enviro units. It wasn't us, it had to have come from Hub because the seals were intact on all our gear. I saw the cargo boxes myself. Anyway, two units were attached to the residential habitats, the third supplied two different technical workshops. It got all of our techs within the first couple of days. It also spread, mostly to people that caught it from the first of the infected. Thankfully, it stopped there but we landed with two-hundred and fifty-four brothers and sisters. When the sickness finally burned itself out, there were ninety-one souls left alive. Twenty-six of those are orphaned children. There are a few lucky ones who only lost a single parent but most are the colony's children now. There were two additional suicides, but things have been more or less stable for the last season. If you can call it that."

"You've been dealing with all this?" Tyohac asked. "You have my respect. I can't even imagine..."

Owen shrugged. "It was just something we had to deal with. The thing that has been making me insane is the Resettlement Directorate. They've constantly been up my nose about holding up the next wave of settlers. The rest of our colony is on a freighter somewhere, waiting for us to get it together. But we can barely keep the lights on here, let alone prepare for another eight-hundred people."

"But you're under quarantine," Finn said. "No one is supposed to even plan a flight here unless they've got special clearance."

"You're kidding? That just means no one can leave. We're supposed to be exporting sugar, it's our tax crop, and they're starting to get ugly about that as well. Nothing about the equipment that was promised, but never arrived, no recognition that there was a fuck up on their end that left us with an drug-resistant staph outbreak. No, it's all 'Service To Humanity' and their fucking schedules..." His mouth snapped shut and Owen cleared his throat, looking embarrassed.

"Wow, just a single F-bomb," Tyohac said. "Don't you worry, Owen. We'll be here for the next eighteen months, we'll have things ready for them. Are they doing the lightspeed time-jump thing?"

Owen was still embarrassed but looked interested. "I heard it was something like that. The ship's relative time goes more slowly?"

"That's how they do it," Finn said. "A twenty-to-one compression velocity is pretty standard. For every twenty minutes here, a single minute passes on the ship."

"Is that how it works? I'm a complete noob at this stuff."

"Personally, I'm glad you're a noob," Tyohac said. "I don't have to make you unlearn a bunch of bad habits. What do you need from us first?"

Owen thought for a few seconds. "Habitats," he finally said. "I wanted to be sure to wipe out any possible trace of the strep, so we destroyed the infected habs. It was a stupid move, now there's barely enough for the people I've got left."

Tyohac shrugged. "Not so stupid. Trying to completely sterilize one of those things would be a pain and even if you did it perfectly, no one in their right mind is going to want the space. Did you save the metal ribs at least?"

Owen nodded. "And there's five cargo boxes full of replacements. I don't have anyone left from the original building crew and the specs leave important things out, like how to raise the main ring of the dome."

"Yeah, I've been complaining about that since the start," Tyohac said. "You need to have a crane, or at least a mech to pick it up. You've got working mechs?"

"Two mechs, but I'm not sure about the working part."

"Oh, they're gonna work," Tyohac said. "Now that you've got the best Pioneer clan planetside. We'll get you all fat and sassy again."

Tyohac and Owen began discussing the other problems the outpost was experiencing while Finn listened. He noticed a beefy young man with a much older woman marching next to him. In spite of the heat, both of them wore black clothes with long sleeves. The woman had an ankle length black dress and the man's long pants were tucked into work boots. He wore a wide brimmed black hat and his companion had an old-fashioned black bonnet covering her head.

"Are those Neo-Puritans?" Finn asked.

Tyohac and Owen looked up. Owen stood up as the odd looking pair arrived at the porch steps.

"Good morning, Brother Gavin and Sister Caroline."

The pair stopped at the stairs, obviously not willing to come any closer.

"Allow me to present Sister Caroline and Brother Gavin," Owen said. "This is Captain Finn Morgan and Pioneer Chief Tyohac sent from Fleet."

Neither of them lost the stony expression on their face, just nodded as they were introduced.

"Administrator Lykos, Sister Caroline asked me to speak on behalf of our community..." the large man began but he was quickly interrupted by his companion

"Our observances to the Lord were interrupted, Administrator," the woman interrupted. "Our religious freedoms are being attacked. Your Compact assured us that our beliefs would be respected."

"What happened this time?" Owen asked evenly.

"That unholy racket at dawn. It interrupted our morning prayers and..."

"Excuse me," Tyohac said. "Can you describe this 'unholy racket?'"

Sister Caroline turned a baleful look on him. "You're one of them, you know very well what you were doing."

"What you saw is the Ta'avi Sun Greeting," Finn said quickly, seeing the look on Tyohac's face. "It's part of our belief system."

"Now they're corrupting the true children of the Lord?" Sister Caroline said, scorn dripping from her words. "You are a sinner and a heretic, you already know that there is only one true God and Savior. Everything else are the wiles of the Dark One. And his servants."

"Sister Caroline," Owen said. "The Compact protects everyone's right to worship or not as they..."

"No!" she spat. "I didn't agree to that. Perhaps it was accepted by the others, but not the Faithful. Any more of your heathenish shouting will be dealt with. Harshly."

Tyohac slowly stood up and Brother Gavin began to look uncomfortable as he realized how big the Ta'avi actually was. Finn braced himself, ready for some high-volume debate but Tyohac's voice was calm, mellow even.

"And what does harshly mean, exactly?"

Her lip curled. "I couldn't say. But you should not be surprised when the Faithful take up cudgels to defend our religious freedoms."

"That sounds like a threat," Owen said.

"Of course not," Gavin said quickly. "These are simply a group of peaceful farmers trying to make their way in a confusing time. It was just a misunderstanding, this time. Come, Sister Caroline, the Lord does not wish strife among his flock."

She sniffed but the two of them turned and left without saying a word.

"Drabs? Seriously?" Tyohac asked, sitting back down.

"The NeoPuritans are here because of another screw up on Hub," Owen said, stressing the official designation for the religious movement. "They were headed to an outpost called New Plymouth but Fleet attached their pods ended to the wrong ship. They were all the way out here by the time anyone noticed the mix-up. There was plenty of space so Ryan and Liz made a deal with them to stay. They preferred to have their own space and we're lucky to have them. The bug didn't spread that far, they were able to keep us going with fresh food."

Finn looked at Tyohac. "Did you hear about this?"

"Not a word."

"We get updates from other Fleet operations all the time," Finn explained to Owen. "That big of a mistake would have been the subject of some high priority messages to all of us."

"And it'd be a big stick for Resettlement to beat Fleet with," Tyohac said. "Look, there's no way that at least some of our folk won't greet the sun every morning. Probably not as many as this morning, new suns are special events. I'll have a talk with the other Connies and get some of the calmer types to keep an eye out for trouble."

"I appreciate that," Owen said. "They don't pay a lot of attention to me, being a gay Utopianist and all."

"You said you had something to talk to me about yesterday?" Finn asked Owen.

"I was going to ask since you were the first one here, but I'll leave it up to you. Liz was working to get our 10k scale maps completed. She sent out a team of four the day before the staph infections were discovered. Obviously there's more important things to worry about than maps but that team never came back. I wanted to try to recover anything..."

"Yes," Finn said interrupted.

Owen was surprised but Tyohac was nodding in agreement.

"I didn't realize body recovery was something Scouts normally did."

"It isn't," Finn said. "But I was military before I came to Echo. No one left behind. Do you know which way they went?"

The Administrator nodded. "We know where they entered the forest. One of my people went out and checked to make sure it was still there. He said he see trail markers deeper into the forest."

"Tomorrow soon enough?" Finn asked.

Owen nodded, still surprised. "I thought I'd have to talk one of you into it."

"We'll send a team if Finn can't go," Tyohac said. "Remembrance must be honored for the lost."

After working out the details of the mapping party as well as the promise of a ride out to the forest, Finn headed down to the geodesic that served as the outpost's control tower. There weren't any colonists around, but a team of Ta'avi engineers had the place opened up. He recognized the work boss instantly, it was one of Tyohac's extensive collection of cousins from Echo. Yves and Finn caught up briefly and then he got permission to search for anything unusual.

The dome was divided into to large rooms. AI systems he'd seen on Earth had taken up an entire server rack, but he didn't see anything like that. Still, he pulled covers off every piece of equipment he found, making sure it hadn't been secreted inside of something else. After two hours of searching, he still had nothing. Finn went back out into the blazing heat and climbed the antennae tower, but nothing looked out of place. He started to take a closer look at the wiring harness as thunder rumbled in the distance.