Chapter 7: Low Battery Warning

I went to work. One of the most difficult parts of command is letting your people know about you, while trying to be tough, but fair. You don’t talk down to them, you can never be condescending ... but you aren’t their friend either.

You can’t baffle them with bullshit unless you are very careful and are a thousand percent sure of your ground. Of course, unless you know your ground, some of them will think it hilariously funny if you are baffled by their bullshit. It’s a tightrope until you get a handle on it. Staff officers, generally, never do. I was an exception.

“My name is Thomas Cross. Two weeks ago, I was an officer courier, fat, dumb, and happy. Oh, and a major in the Army. Today, I’m still a fatty, but I’ve been promoted to colonel. Oh, and obviously, I’m here.

“I meant what I said a few minutes ago. If you so much as think about refusing to work, you will go home with the next shipment. I probably know a hundred people myself who would give anything to be here now, even if it was cleaning the latrines. A chance to explore the truly unknown — you wouldn’t want to get in their way volunteering.

“Who is senior? Who does the schedule?” I was sure I knew which one she was. People whose job it is to send people into danger — and avoid the danger themselves — all have a haunted look in their eyes. And this was a woman.

“Sheila McRae,” she said. “I told them this was dumb — but what else could we do? None of the scientists have ever paid any attention to our orders. Now we have two dead and another injured. Injured? Ha! Partly eaten!”

“And as I said before, that will never happen again, because no scientist has been offered a trip here and refused — it would be easy to replace anyone who disobeys an order again. I’ll be speaking to them next.

“Is it Miss or Mrs. McRae?”

“It’s Sheila. If anyone forgets who’s boss, I have a kung fu black belt. I hurt them.”

“We will have to get together in a bit. We have two ultra-light pilots who need to be familiarized with the local geography, the flora, and fauna. The ultras have a range of one hundred and fifty miles with a pilot flying solo and half that if he has a passenger. I need to know the odds of someone walking back a hundred, hundred and fifty miles if the bird should go down.”

Sheila McRae sniffed. “Functional zero. On foot, we use twenty-five miles as a daily yardstick. But we’ve only gone twenty-five miles in any direction. The reason is about two-thirds or three-quarters of the local predators hunt at night. I don’t know how you got them to allow a dependent here, but she has to be very careful. Most of the predators are about the size of collies, for the most part, but they blend in with the local foliage.

“Only the fact that we wear full combat armor has prevented more casualties. They are difficult to see in the daytime and impossible in the dark. They hunt by ambush, not stalking like most Earthly predators. Never go through a clump of bushes, stay well away, and have an automatic weapon in your hands at all times and full body armor.

“At this time, the average predator has zero experience with people. They are fearless, unconcerned about the relative size difference. The local herbivores have necks — which is what they go for. The sound of a weapon firing startles them at first, but if you miss, they recover quickly.”

“Christ!” I exclaimed. Someone was pretty good, or there would be a lot of bodies to ship home.

“You haven’t been here at night yet, Colonel Cross. There is a fair amount of starlight — they have a better Milky Way than we do. However, it gives off no heat — we think the animals here — all of them — can see deeper into the infra-red than we can.”

“Who figured this all out?”

“Alistair. He has a collection of predator heads for the edification of the newcomers. So far, those edified are a mixture of biologists, geologists, and the scouts. He gives a very impressive briefing about the habits of each of the critters.

“We think of him as a scout emeritus.”

“Think about how we can go about extending our surveys — safely, very safely. Now, it’s the other folks’ turn,” I asked.

The “other” folks vastly outnumbered the scouts and were far more unruly. There was a lot of sound as everyone was trying to talk over everyone else. I pulled out my grandfather’s .45 and fired a round into the ceiling. The dumbfounded looks on nearly a hundred faces stared at me in consternation.

I said into the shocked silence that followed, “I called the meeting for 1300. It is now ten after the hour. I tried to be polite, but you people seem to have your own ideas of what is polite.

“I have a question for the lot of you. Do you really think we won’t replace every last one of you if you don’t get with the program?”

There was a hubbub of sound, and I simply drew my weapon again and pointed it upwards. There was abrupt silence in the room.

“Yep. The whole lot of you gotta go. You are, for sure, brain-dead stupid, every last one of you.

“Do you know that if your scouts wanted to, they could kill the lot of you? Simply let you go where you want. Piece of cake.”

A voice from the middle of the crowd piped up, “No one has gotten hurt until the other day.”

“You, sir, will be on the first trip back if your specialty is biology, and the second if anything else. Dumb as stumps! We could do better choosing randomly from the phone book!”

I paused and grinned, “Oops, my bad! No one uses phone books these days.”

“The question is, how badly do you want to be here? General Mendoza has proposed a wholesale replacement of all scientific personnel. I’m thinking you are clueless, progressive academics who have made careers out of ignoring reality. New Earth is as real as it gets, and the government wants to know what is more than a day’s walk from here.”

In fact, I saw General Mendoza walk in, just as I said my last sentence.

Her face turned as choleric red as the ace of hearts. “Is that correct, Colonel — exploration has gone no further than an easy day’s march from where we stand?”

The hubbub returned, and I drew my pistol again.

General Mendoza gave a nasty laugh. “And I wondered where the pistol shot I heard originated from.”

“General, I learned that the scouts have been low-balling the risks on New Earth. They go into the field in full armor, in front. Or there would be no scientists left to study anything.”

The loudmouth in the room spoke up and repeated his previous comment. “That’s not fair, except for the other day, no one has been injured in the science party.”

I faced General Mendoza. “Can I fire people? Bench someone?”

I could see it in her eyes. The answer had been “No” with perhaps an exclamation mark after the word. But if she said anything other than “Yes,” she would cut me off at the knees, and everyone would know it.

“Of course, Colonel Cross.”

I pointed at the speaker. “How well do the predators see on a dark night?”

“It’s never dark; it’s basically twilight.”

Someone was tugging on his sleeve, and he shook the helpful person off. I saw the expression on the man who wanted to help. Disgust.

“General, he’s for the next tube home. Predators mostly hunt at night — they all have night vision, infrared. They hunt from ambush. The scouts survive by being very wary — and wearing full ballistic armor and carrying a weapon in their hands ... and not going out at night.”

“The newcomers all face Alistair Simms and his collection of predator heads. I gather it is quite a sight. Up to now, the predators we’ve learned about hunt by themselves. The scouts ran up against a predator that hunts in packs. We need to make a priority never to face them without massive firepower.

“And this fellow — what’s your name, by the way?” I asked.

“Eric Landisfarne.”

“He goes. Too ignorant to function safely in the field.”