Chapter Thirty-Two

Several days of analysis followed, with the various technologically savvy members of the refugees wrestling the tacticians for time on the limited consols. The data stored on Shido’s chip had been amazingly detailed and complete, which had proven to be an embarrassment of riches when one group of concerned mission planners had insisted Alexander scan the wounded man to make sure the chip wasn’t just bait for a trap.

Fortunately, Shido responded to medication in a positive way, and so hadn’t minded the albino, under the eye of his own Siren friends, taking several hours to dig around in his mind concerning the chip and Diana project itself. Alexander, already reasonably certain of the InSec ex-patriots’ sincerity, had happily vouched for him afterwards, putting that last kernel of concern to rest.

With those assurances, work had progressed rapidly. Saki trained all the adults willing to fight in the coming, hopefully brief, conflict in the use of small arms. She never hesitated to work with any of her new and frequently older than her, students though Rei was quickly declared a lost cause when it came to marksmanship.

Alexander and Kay spent hours around Natalia’s hospital bed as they debated targets and potential tactics to employ in the most daring theft in human history. They also found themselves debating ‘what if’s’.

Rei, who had been sitting in on the last such conversation they were holding before meeting with the other leaders of the Deep community, was the one who finally asked the question they’d been trying to avoid. “What do we do if Luna doesn’t accept us?”

Alexander and Natalia winced, while the more optimistic Kay had simply frowned. “We aren’t sure.” Alexander admitted

“The problem is, we don’t have a lot of options, or anyplace else to go.” Natalia continued. “Diana can’t go very far, so even if Mars was friendly to outsiders… which it’s not… we couldn’t hope to reach it before supplies ran dry.”

Kay asked “What about here? On Earth I mean.”

“North America is a nuclear hell, as is Europe and most of Asia.” Natalia replied. “Africa and South America both are a bio-toxin soaked deserts, where exploratory teams can’t seem to decide if the mutants or the chem storms kill the most of their men. The outback is, obviously, crawling with expeditionary and reclamation teams which would locate us in about an hour if we tried landing out there.”

“Isn’t there anywhere that isn’t a pest hole?” Rei demanded. “I know our ancestors tried wiping life out completely, but were they really so good at it?”

“Nearly, yes.” Natalia sighed. “There are a few islands out there that managed to escape more or less unscathed, but they’re surrounded by oceans that didn’t. For the most part they’re also very small, and lack any resource other than being a landmass that isn’t toxic.”

Rei grimaced. “What if we didn’t ask the moon people for permanent sanctuary?”

“What do you mean?” Kay asked.

“Well… I know Diana is designed to drop a long-term base as well as troops, right?” Rei asked, watching the others nod. “Complete with some manufacturing capacity?”

“And gardens for food, yes.” Alexander agreed. “But it’s not enough to set up a truly permanent base. At best the facility could support us for a year before we’d need a resupply on many essential things. Resupply I doubt Luna would want to give us, if we set up in their back yard without permission.”

Rei waved that off. “The Moon traded food for the water and materials to build habitats for expansion, habitats we will have ready to set up wherever they like. In exchange, we could ask them to let us use those facilities for the short term, and help us build a ship to go further, and leave them for them when we do. Make it more like a buddy crashing on your couch for a few days, and less like letting him move in and eat all your cereal.”

“It’s a start, but building a long excursion vessel would take years. They’d want more.” Natalia pointed out.

“So we use the Diana to come back here, and get them. Water is easily filtered out of waste, since we’ve been doing it for as long as anyone can remember, and it can’t be that hard to track down rare earths on these crappie continents you mentioned. Especially since no one exactly lives there to object.”

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

Kay and Alexander looked at each other, rolling the idea around in their heads. Alexander spoke first. “It is feasible. I know Australasia has library data concerning deposits of what the Moon would need, as does Luna. I suppose the only reason they don’t do that themselves is a lack of trans-atmospheric shuttles capable of landing in rough country, and Kitsune who can handle the environments.”

“The landing teams would be taking quite a risk but… it might be our only choice.” Kay conceded. “I’ll get our scientifically minded folk working on that, and on where to go.”

“Then all that is left is the final selection of targets.” Alexander said, leaning back in his folding chair to look at Natalia, perched next to Rei on her bed. “The Diana is the only obvious target, but I’m willing to listen to why you think we should liberate the crèches, much less why you think it would work.”

“Why we should is two fold.” Natalia stated. “First off, considering what started all of this I don’t feel comfortable leaving those children in InSec and the Governments hands.”

“I sympathize with the sentiment, but we can’t base our decision off of a purely emotional or moralistic motivation.” Alexander commented coolly.

“This brings us to reason two.” Natalia barely managed not to growl. “The community here is small, only about one thousand people total. That’s not big enough to sustain itself genetically.”

“She’s right there.” Kay admitted. “The only reason we weren’t going to have that problem in the Deep is we brought the occasional new person down.”

“The crèches currently have something like three thousand plus children, and a hundred adult caretakers, who haven’t entered true military training out on New Guinea. Considering the children are also… stolen from parents all over the Australasian sphere they’ve got to be a very genetically diverse group. That’s counting the small human orphan crèche.”

“A valid argument.” Alexander admitted. “But how to we convince them to come?”

“Sirens.” Natalia stated. “You can’t lie to each other, not effectively anyhow, so the Siren caretakers will trust what another of you tells them. The Kitsune caregivers will most likely go along with their psychic counterparts. The only humans in the crèche system are administrators, not caregivers, so they’ll be easy to deal with.”

“I’ll support Kay in trying to convince the council to make the crèche a target for liberation.” Alexander assured her. “It’ll help that we were already thinking of penetrating the Diana’s building slip from that sub-district anyhow, since they built them right next door to each other.”

“Are we dumping the nutrient paste factory job?” Rei asked, receiving a nod from Alexander.

“The data we have says the food tanks on Diana are sufficient for three months of comfortable rations.” Kay said. “That’s assuming ten thousand plus adult soldiers. We’ll have half that number at most, so that’ll stretch them out to six months, more if we’re careful. That’ll give us plenty of time to set up the habitats, if everything works out.”

“So those are our only two targets?” Alexander asked.

Kay spoke. “No. I’d like to suggest one more target.”

“What’s that?” He asked.

Kay lifted her personal computer pad, and called up an encyclopedia entry. She handed it to the albino, a picture of a large black cylinder dominating the screen. “This is an Ark project genetics library. They have over a dozen of them on Osaka.”

“I’ve read about those.” Natalia commented. “They contain viable genetics for every pre-war specie known, don’t they?”

“Not all of them. Our ancestors weren’t that smart, or thorough.” Kay corrected her gently. “They do however have a very comprehensive database just the same. The information and samples are supposedly even good enough to clone animals and plants from the catalogue.”

“I see why you want to steal one. It would be useful when starting our own colony.” Alexander admitted while reading the entry. “But can they be safely moved?”

“Oh yes.” She nodded. “We sent one to Luna, actually, my last year of graduate school. I was doing an internship in the facility when it happened.”

“They were meant as a genetic sample source in case we ever decided to try our hand at building an extra-solar colony generation ship.” Natalia added. “In the documentary I remember seeing on them, they were the only project in that series that ever got past the design stage.”

“How big and hard to move are they?”

“I only saw one once, but I do remember three men managed to shift it onto the transportation lorry.”

Alexander nodded. “That’s definitely a worthy secondary target, but how do we get them to the Diana? If we steal this in advance they’ll figure out what we’re planning to do.”

“I know the archive building she’s talking about. It’s not to far from the military archives.” Natalia jumped in. “They’re right off the landing strips, so if you send Saki or Shido with the strike team, they could steal a TAT-C, and meet the Diana in orbit.”

“Actually, I’d make Shido the mission leader on that one.” Rei spoke up. “He’s good at hacking security, and from what he mentioned to me he’s generally been tactical operations support. He’s also the only special forces officer we have to spare since both you and Talia are running the primary op.” He stated, gesturing to Alexander.

Alexander nodded. “A good suggestion.” The albino conceded.

“Sounds like we have a plan.” Kay commented.

“Not yet.” The Siren corrected. “It’s more a proposal at this point. But in a week’s time, it will be.”

“I’d prefer two.” Natalia admitted

“In two weeks they’ll have begun loading troops.” Rei said grimly. “We’ve only got one.”