The sun had been up for about an hour and Kat was looking forward to getting some sleep. For a week, she had been keeping watch all night, every night. Bruce had the watch during the day.
Looking over the ruins that surrounded them, it saddened her in ways she found hard to describe. There was no place she knew of on the grid that would allow their buildings to decay, or for their atmosphere to get that polluted. It felt...wrong.
She was honestly surprised that they hadn't been caught. The longer she thought about the locals, the more she began to realize that she never was going to really understand them.
Kat stopped humming, which helped her stay awake, and turned and walked down the stairs; her watch was over. She stepped over bits of trash and debris along the way.
They looked up as she entered.
Bruce asked, "No news?"
Like every night, she had tried for several hours to pick up messages from the Erikson.
She shook her head and said, "No. Maybe tomorrow."
She passed Bruce the rifle, and clasped hands with him before he went upstairs for his watch.
"How goes the translator?" she asked the two sitting on the ground.
Jacklyn replied, "Making progress, but with just one wristcomp, it's slow."
Kat crouched down so she was level with both of them, then put her hands on their shoulders. She said, "I know its tedious, but please keep at it."
She squeezed their shoulders as they said, "We will."
---
She walked up out of the basement to the first floor on her way for her twelfth night on watch.
Bruce was standing by one of the windows, keeping an eye out.
When she was close, he asked, "How are they?"
Kat sighed. and said, "I think they're doing better now. They have each other, at least."
He gruffly said, "We're running low on food and water. We need to go shopping."
"The market?"
"Yes."
"You're sure it's real?"
He had a thoughtful look when he said, "I hope so. You see anyone growing food? You think anyone could grow food here? Everyone looks to be going the same direction, and we should be able to follow them."
Kat said, "I'll go tomorrow."
Bruce paused, he looked like he wanted to say something. Kat quickly added, "I'm the most qualified and you know it, you're needed here to keep an eye on them." She motioned to Jacklyn and Isaac.
Went unspoken was that whoever went had to be able to kill.
---
Roger made sure to keep his feet pointing down.
For more than thirty meters in every direction, there was nothing but tanks with green algae and grow lights.
"In a couple weeks, we'll be at full production. Enough to feed more than ten thousand people a day."
"You certainly wasted no time. Although I can't say I would rather have had steaks than god-only-knows how many tons of algae."
Roger saw more than a dozen people doing tests on the tanks while machines were sifting through them.
"Can't say I disagree, but you won't find a more nutritious or efficient to grow meal than algae with fat and micronutrients infused into it.
"This is mostly for the locals anyway. For ourselves, we plan to make enough to get us back if we had to, but after that, the raw materials will be saved for printing or grow whatever normal food we want. That takes time though, so the locals get the twelve-hour special."
It felt awe-inspiring, to see the outcome of what he had argued for in the council chamber made a reality. They had to feed the locals; their leadership had cut off their food supply.
"I doubt the locals will complain, current intel says their leader uses food as leverage. The ones on the station are lucky to have two weeks of food at a time."
"We should easily meet the quota. No locals will starve, sir."
It was getting to the point where food was no longer going to be a bottleneck; refueling and repairing were. Progress was slow on both, and they were still months away from being able to leave.
Roger realized that his attention had drifted off. He concentrated on paying attention to his guide.
They pushed themselves to the deck and started mag-walking when a worker walked up with a stick of something green in his gloved hand.
"You want a sample? It's part of the first shipment."
Roger took it, it looked like a green stick of butter, but not sticky. He bit into it, it had little taste and a bit of slimy texture.
"Good job, although, I would almost think you were setting yourselves up to sell spices to the locals."
The worker who had handed him the sample laughed.
Roger could only spend about half his time on board the Erikson. The rest of the time he was piloting one of the boats. They were very short of pilots and could not afford to drop him from the rotation.
Next, he went to the Erikson's largest machine shop, which was building the robots to fix the plate.
Roger was going through Doctor Smoke's records on the prisoner's again. He had watched the interviews more times than he could count. He thought that if he just understood them more, he might be able to end everything without anyone else getting hurt, or maybe find a way to get Kat back.
He was nearly at the end of the first segment again when Adrian came in.
Smoke was asking, "Last question for the day. Why are you helping us so freely?"
"Why wouldn't I?"
"You have no desire to protect your people?"
"What?"
The doctor shook his head, then changed tracks, "Aren't you afraid that your people would punish you for what you're telling us?"
"If I returned to my people, it would only be after you had conquered them. I would make a good emissary. I have no doubt you will succeed, and I will be there when you do. They would hardly be in a position to punish me then."
Roger turned the screen off and gestured for Adrian to sit. With a click, the trays were on Roger's desk.
"My old CO is probably rolling over in his grave, but I never took the time to watch that all the way through. I just read the summaries."
"I keep hoping to find a peaceful way out of this mess, but no luck so far," Roger said.
Changing the subject, Adrian said, "You heard the latest?"
Knowing it could not possibly be good news, Roger groaned and said, "No."
"That fortress they call 'Palace' has launched at least a dozen asteroids our way," Adrian said.
Seeing the alarm in Roger's eyes, Adrian quickly said, "Don't worry, it'll be a week at least." He gave Roger the burger he had brought him.
Well, what looked like a burger. It was not like there was any real meat left. It looked like one of Kyle's recipes. He had taken to cooking at all hours. Roger was not sure if he was trying to keep himself busy to not think of Kat, or if he felt the need to help in any way he could. Knowing Kyle, it might be both.
Roger looked closely at Adrian and noticed a few new grays hairs and a few new wrinkles, "They must have seen at least some of what we did to the stations. We can certainly shoot a few rocks apart."
Adrian gave Roger a thoughtful look and said, "They know damn well we can; you don't have to win the battle to win the war."
After a few seconds, Roger said, "They're trying to bleed us, and make us use the boats for this instead of getting ready to leave. How many will it tie up?"
"Two, maybe three. We will have to be cautious; those rocks might be hard to track if they are small enough." Adrian said as he took a large bite. "It might work too—, we get to decide whether to let the rocks hit us or use half our boats to defend against them. Don't forget, we can't assume they are just going to be rocks. If it was were me, I would try to hide a missile or two inside some of them. Maybe even a drive just large enough make tracking a problem.
"In case you're wondering, I just came from engineering, and using the nav lasers wouldn't be good enough. We would have to wait until they were practically on top of us. Even they don't have the power to impart that much delta-V in that short a distance."
They were silent while they ate. When they were almost done eating, Adrian gestured to the large screen Roger had set up by his desk and said, "They all assume we are here to conquer them?"
"No," Roger said, "one of them assumed we were here to rob them blind, and kill them all. Just in case they ever became a threat."
In what looked like extreme frustration, Adrian said, "Hell, if we were to conquer them, we wouldn't have half these problems."
Roger practically banged his head when he stood up and said, "Why don't we?"
---
It was far from the first council meeting Roger had been to, but it was the first one he had called. He was not as nervous as he thought he would be, he had not slept in a few days. Adrian had not slept any more than Roger, but he somehow looked fresh.
Once the rest of the council had entered and voted to close the meeting, Adrian stepped forward and spoke. "With the launch of what has come to be called the nuance attacks, things have changed for the worse.
"The rocks they are sending are, by themselves, not a threat. We can easily push them off course. The problem is that it will take two boats, three if we want to be safe, to do it. As I told Councilor Powell, you don't have to win the battle to win the war.
"Quite frankly, we don't have the people or boats to sustain operations at present. Roger had an idea that I think could bring things back on track. The two of us and my think tank have spent the last two days refining it."
Roger stepped up and said, "With only one exception, our prisoners all think we are here to conquer them. I think we should."
For the first time, he saw the captain stand slack-jawed in shock. The other council members looked the same. It took a good thirty seconds before anyone spoke.
Myra said, "You're serious? You think we should start a campaign of military conquest? Even aside from the obvious moral objections how would that solve anything?"
"Because if you're a conqueror you don't have to keep an eye on everyone, just on the leaders. Right now, we have almost all the marines on Gas Giant Station Four keeping an eye on the locals who are working with us to refill our tanks," Roger replied.
"We're already feeding the other three gas giant stations. All I'm saying is that we tell them we're here to stay and that they work for us now. No worse than they had under the local leader. Food and everything else they can't make for the raw materials we need.
"We wouldn't have to watch over all of their shoulders. We just need to frame it so they see us the same way they see any local leader. We could leave even faster if we offer the same deal to the asteroid mines. That would even help cut off the local leader from metals."
Lucas asked the colonel, "And if they rebelled? Could we take a station back once we got it operational?"
"If they were smart enough to be able to counter the fog again? No, we would have to cripple it and pull our people out.
"But I agree with Councilor Powell's view. It is the best chance we have, and we need to deal with these people on their terms, not ours," Adrian said.
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