Chapter 10

One of the bolder women asked, “What happened to us?”

Dusty smiled at her and the others. “Well, we heard you had a bit of problem with your King so we relieved him of his duties. Whitney said a lot of you are sick and you all need a damn good feed. We have some medicine that should help and I think if you fill a plate it will help with the hunger pains.”

She didn’t have to tell them twice and they quickly lined up. The teams were soon doing a brisk trade. Some of the kids even ran back to the cube to get the others moving. Since Chris and Beanie were not cooking or serving, they went to get a second pavilion and started setting it up.

The men even found a set of sinks with two tanks, one for fresh and one for wastewater. They soon had them set up with some collection baskets and a table for the washing of dishes. Several of the pregnant women took over clean-up duties so the crockery and cutlery could be recycled faster.

Those who had eaten were encouraged to move to the second pavilion, which was set up less formally. Whitney turned back up and confiscated one of the tables in that pavilion and she got the people who had eaten to line up and get their shot.

Que came to join her as one of the women had moved her on from her serving job. The rest of the team soon found that they were being ousted as the women and some of the men who got the first shots took over feeding their fellow survivors.

The men went and shifted the sterilisation booth, the boxes of clean clothes and three yellow cubes to the freighter. They placed the other two yellow cubes and one each of the other cubes on the sides of the road so they were on one corner of an intersection with the pavilions and the other cubes.

They shifted the prisoners to the cells on the Striker. They had found that the prisoners were still affected by the drugs so they didn’t give them much trouble when they moved them to the cells. The prisoners all went back to sleep once they were sat on the new cots. Dusty immunised them while they slept; she would organise food later.

Dusty sent Que to go with James, Aaron and Chris and they took off to get their first load of passengers from the Farestar with the freighter. Dusty and Tale took Que’s place at immunising the colonists and were soon doing a brisk trade at their table, with Whitney.

They reassured the people that they were here to look after them and they could stay in this lovely place if they wished and that they were definitely now free citizens again. Beanie and Pat went to feed the prisoners and check on the replicator make sure that it had what it needed to keep working.

The replicator being in the Striker was why they had decided to use the freighter to get the people from the ship. They were going to need more cots and tents and Beanie wanted some frames and plumbing items so they could set up some shower blocks outside for those who would end up in the tents.

Even after half an hour of being immunised, it was quite obvious to the colonists that whatever was in that shot was good shit, as they all started feeling brighter and a whole lot better. Having a full stomach didn’t hurt either.

The healthy ones were soon making sure that everyone got their shot and a belly full of food. Hearing the kids running around, exploring and playing was also a balm to the people. Quite a few had spread out and they were busy exploring the new compound.

They could all see that it had been cleared and it was ready to be either built upon or planted. Some pointed out that some of the trees had been left to provide nice shady areas and those that any that had fruit on them had also not been culled.

One of the men came up to Dusty. “Excuse me, Miss,” he said politely.

Since business had slowed, Dusty turned and gave him her full attention. “The names Dusty, who are you?” she asked.

“I’m Will Anderson. I was on the Jolly Rodger. We got captured about ten months back. I was an engineer on that ship. They kept me to fix their ships and help with the stripping of the other ships they captured. I wasn’t happy about it but as long as I co-operated, they left my wife and me alone.”

“I was hoping to settle on Terra. My wife, she, well she died six months back. Did you know they have poisonous mushrooms here? No! Well, they are easy to spot because they had reddish tops.

“She started acting very strange after eating one of them. She got very paranoid and aggressive. I told her to stop but she cooked up a whole batch of them and I later found out she fed them to the men, even Rupert. It was after that he and many of the men changed. She ate too many and her throat swelled and she died. You have gotta watch out for them.”

“We shall, thank you, Will. We are actually on a continent in the southern region of this planet so they may not be here,” Dusty told him.

“I sure hope not,” he replied. He shuffled his feet a bit and then squinted up at Dusty since she was a good twenty-five centimetres taller than he was. He was short and stocky with a dark olive complexion and Mediterranean looks. It was easy to see he had suffered as much as the others had. His muscles were wasted and he looked at least ten years older than the thirty-years-of age that he was.

“Anyway, I was just noticing what you have done here. I’m grateful for the food and all but what do you plan on doing with this place and us?” he asked. He was apprehensive of these people even though they wore UNSEC MP Uniforms, but something drew him to this lady. He had always trusted his instincts and he was sure she wasn’t planning on hurting them.

“Well, that’s something we will have to get together and work out. We have a settlement ship in the system and they have some very sick people on board. They will get the same shot as you people but they need a week or so to recover before they can keep going. They may be able to take some of you, but not many.”

“The pregnant women can’t leave until they have their babies so I was hoping I could convince some of the rest of you to stay a bit longer and help Dr White look after them. As it is, it will probably take at least four or five weeks for us to get a ship back here to collect those who wish to go home or on to Terra.”

Will thoughtfully considered the setup of the compound. “What if we want to stay right here? This is a lovely spot. I checked out the river and it even has fish in it. We are only a klick from the sea and it has lots of shellfish that we can eat too. This soil is good enough to grow food in and I’m sure you picked a spot that will let us have a good growing season too, didn’t you?”

Dusty grinned at him and the people that had stopped to listen to their conversation. “We did put a little thought into were to set up so the ladies would be safe. The only problem is that Rupert had put in a claim to Earth that this was his planet. Since we have deposed the King, we need someone to counter his claim.”

Will frowned after hearing her statement. “So claim the place. We know you have him prisoner. You and your people can’t be as bad as his lot were. At least you’re feeding us and taking care of our sick. What’s the problem?”

“Well, we have two major ones. We are a Special Forces team hired by UNSEC to look into the pirate problem. The Nations on Earth may not agree to our ownership by right of conquest as UNSEC can’t claim the planet themselves without them all agreeing and we would be seen as being hired by UNSEC.”

“The other problem is that Empress Lee has made us all Mages and they may take the view that she is interfering and trying to claim the planet for herself. We do plan to make this compound an UNSEC base as they wish to have ships stationed in this system to make sure the Pirates stay away. And they wish to put in ship repair facility.”

A man called Bobby, said, “So what if we claim the planet since we were effectively shipwrecked here. We are more than happy to join UNSEC and support an UNSEC base here, as it means we can get ships to stop and sell us goods.”

“If Dr White is staying then we could set up a clinic. Ships often have issues with sick people. They could drop them here and they can be picked up later when the next ship passes. A ship like that troop carrier Rupert had could even run between Terra and us to do this.”

“That’s a great idea. I bet a lot of ships would be more than happy to stop here for a rest after a month in space. We got people who could crew the troop carrier too,” one of the pregnant women supplied excitedly and hugged the man beside her.

Will added, “If we can get some farms going we can offer fresh produce, those ships always seem to run out of fresh food, fast. We really need to get some sort of milking animal too, as fresh milk is always a problem. I wonder if the Farestar can sell us some.”

There were lots of nods and happy grins, all-around Dusty. She was rather surprised. Considering the ordeal most of these people had recently been through, she had expected to be dealing with a lot of traumatised people who were clamouring to get off this planet, not the happy babble that now surrounded her, as they all made plans of what to do if they stayed.

Will saw her confusion at the way everyone was acting. “Dusty, we have been through a lot. The thing is that the drugs they were giving us dulled our senses to the degree that most of the memories since then are just hazy at best.”

“We know we were treated badly but we don’t remember and I think you will find most of us are just as happy not to reminisce. Bringing us here before you cured us was a good idea. This is just the sort of place most were looking to find on Terra and it holds no memories of the other camp. We woke up in our Utopia. Even the lighter gravity doesn’t worry us.”

One of the other women said, “Hi, I’m Lucy. I have to agree with Will. I think you will find nearly all of us will be happy to stay right here if we can. We might need some supplies but outside this compound is unclaimed land. We are here so it’s ours.”

“As far as I recall from what I read before we left Earth, if we make a flag to represent our new nation and claim this content as belonging to a group of multi-nationals with a similar interest, then it is ours. I’ve seen the survey that Rupert did of this planet and I believe this is the large southern continent isn’t it?”

At Dusty’s nod the woman continued, “Well, this isn’t the continent that Rupert claimed. He is welcome to his swamp. Empress Lee’s stipulation on claiming land on Terra was that no one person or Nation could claim a whole planet and Earth agreed. So precedence has been set as far as claiming a planet goes.”