06

Reflections

----------------------------------------

The following morning

The beginning of the next day was almost uneventful for the core group among the survivors. There would be a meeting in the morning to decide the logistics of moving everyone from the moon onto spacecraft journeying to Tau Ceti, and then from those ships onto the surface of their selected garden planet. It didn't take a genius to arrive at the conclusion that one of the Tau Cetian garden world was going to be selected for the surviving Earth population, and it took no time at all for Stephen to reach that conclusion as he was carefully escorted out of his medical bed to the small meeting room adjacent to the infirmary that he was allocated for his own use.

Having broken ribs and a fractured thigh bone was the worst.

Surprisingly to Stephen, it took Janet even less time to conclude that they were going to be sent to a garden planet to recuperate, rebuild and recover. She was intelligent, she had proven that to him on numerous occasions, but she still surprised him with her insight. Clearly, long-term borderline malnutrition had not dulled her intelligence so much that she was simple-minded by anyone's stretch of the imagination.

Of course, to Stephen's embarrassment, she insisted on helping him with any lifting that needed, escorting him under her own weight to any place he needed to get, since he still had trouble walking very far, and she did it without complaint, despite the fact that Stephen could literally feel her shaking with the strain of supporting his weight, for while he was not a heavy person, he was much heavier than the emaciated population that had come from Earth.

"How do you do it?" Stephen was compelled to ask after Janet had, once again, walked him from the Infirmary to the meeting room, which was empty, as they were early.

"Do what?" Janet asked as she deposited him in a seat.

"Carry me around like that!" Stephen exclaimed. "I weigh about two ten, and I'm pretty sure you top out at about a hundred if that. You haven't had time to rebuild your muscle tissue with proper nutrients-"

"Stephen," Janet held up a hand. "Most of what you're saying right now is beyond me, but I carry you because you need the help, and I'm not going to be the one to sit around while others do it."

This puzzled Stephen. It wasn't like Janet was his personal care assistant, and they had known each other for days, not years. Budding friendship or not, Stephen was not comfortable with the idea of Janet acting as his personal caregiver. "You know, it's not like others aren't able to step in-"

"Stephen-" Janet spoke up, clearly flustered.

"No, wait a minute," he continue, ignoring her attempt to interrupt. "Most of the people from the surface are in bad shape. You've had to survive on scraps... For years. I've had all of my basic needs taken care of for most of my life. If anyone should be carrying anyone else here, I should be carrying you."

Janet took the seat next to his. She was clearly making an effort to rein in her hot-headed temperament. "I need to feel useful," she eventually told him.

In that moment, Stephen got it. As she had tried to explain to him a few days ago, she was a hardened leader in command of a colony of shelter survivors on a world where she had managed to organize everyone into a cohesive force in a world where survival meant scavenging and pillaging where possible, where resource scarcity was so large a concern, that civilization was all but impossible, and where survival meant either banding together in a fortified bunker with the willingness to kill to defend, or to be the one doing the pillaging. Her transition to a member of a surviving group of humans in a shelter that was capable of providing basic human needs, even if on a short-term basis, was something of a reality check for her. She was desperately trying to find a place where she could fit in that did not require her completely transforming who she was, and for now, it meant finding a way to feel useful until she could understand the new paradigm, and then work within it to better herself.

"I get it," Stephen said gently, admiring her spirit. "And we'll find a way for you to make something of yourself in this new world. With so few of us left, everyone needs to play a part, and I think you'll be a good leader."

Impulsively, Janet seized Stephen's hand, giving it a gentle squeeze. He basked in the feeling it caused to swell within him, as he smiled at her in response. All too soon, she let go, and let out a deep sigh. "We're going to have a problem with those guys out there," she said, then clarified. "The ones who walked off."

Stephen was all too aware. "I think you should talk to Davidson about that later," he told her. "I suspect he's going to want to teach you how to deal with the situation."

"Yeah," she huffed slightly. "I'm not looking forward to that."

Stephen was surprised. "No?"

Janet glanced at him, and then clarified hurriedly. "It's not that he's a bad guy, it's just that he's... Larger than anyone I'd ever met."

Stephen realized that was true. Davidson was almost as tall as he was, far broader, and carried exponentially more definition and mass. He was what his old society might have regarded as a Mr. Olympia competition winner, his body appearing sculpted. Even though Tau Cetians were far more physically developed than humans, Davidson was unique in that he was just as large, with as much definition as the vast majority of them. Janet would never have met anyone larger than Davidson.

"I guess it can be daunting, when you come from a world where physical prowess is often seen as critical to survival," Stephen ventured his opinion. "Try not to worry. He's a professional, and he doesn't use his size to get things done.. Well... Unless he needs to lift heavy objects, of course!"

* * *

A few minutes later, Janet was on her way to see Davidson. Hopefully, she could have a quick conversation with him before their meeting began. It would ease her mind to know that she was at least on her way to getting what she needed to adjust to their changed circumstances.

She saw him in the octagonal meeting space they all had met in earlier, surrounded by a small group of Tau Cetians, and some surviving Earth folk just milling around.

"Davidson!" She barked, and winced when she subsequently realized he might not like her barking orders at him.

Thankfully, his demeanour, while not overtly friendly, certainly carried no hint of hostility or confrontation. He turned to her slowly, handing a relatively thin contraption to the Tau Cetian man he was talking to.

"Fletcher, isn't it?" Davidson asked her in a neutral tone.

Janet nodded. "Is there a-any way we can talk for a-a minute?" She stammered, mentally kicking herself for doing so. It amazed her, that she was previously running a fallout shelter with thousands of people in it, in charge of all of them, with armed guards behind her back, where she had to project an aura of confidence, self-assuredness, and for the most part, a chiseled and hardened facade of authority. Now, she was stammering like a kid in a shooting class on her first day.

Davidson gestured with his big hand toward a side door in the facility, walking casually toward it. Janet immediately followed. In a few moments, they were both standing in a bare room with nothing in it, save for a few stacks of provisions boxes of the sort that Janet had not seen in decades. the door slowly closed behind her as she entered.

"What's on your mind?" Davidson asked politely.

Now that Janet was here, she didn't know how to phrase her request. Here she was, in a room with a man... A large one at that. Before being shunted to the moon, she had some degree of protection, either a knife, or her environment that she could scavenge something to fashion into a shiv, or her guards... Or even a weapon of some kind she could use to fight back. Now, she was in a room with someone who was clearly able to overpower her in a heartbeat, a man she knew very little about, and she had no backup, no weapons, and nothing close to hand that she could use to defend herself. Her heartbeat kicked up, adrenaline flooded her system, and she felt threatened. Her association with Stephen was something she had grown comfortable with for reasons she could not understand herself... But this man was an unknown quantity, and she had grown up on a world where things like consent meant almost nothing without the threat of death to back it up if it was ever breached.

It must have shown, because Davidson took a slow step backward, his expression carefully neutral, until he was up against the far wall. Janet was right by the door, an escape if she needed one.

The gesture was not lost on her, and she felt able to relax somewhat.

"I won't rush you," he told her gently. "Tell me what you need."

To Janet's surprise, he said nothing, betraying no impatience, even though it took her several more moments to speak. Bravado in this situation was not called for, and she knew it. This was a time to speak plainly. She just needed to work herself up to doing so, and decided to simply get on with it.

"I need a lot of things," she started. "But the first thing I need is a place where I belong. I need something I can put myself into."

Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more.

"You feel out of place here, in the group, in the shelter, and you need to find your place among the rest of us, as well as some way of improving yourself," Davidson replied almost immediately. "Am I right?" he asked carefully.

Janet nodded slowly. She still felt the flight-or-fight adrenaline screaming through her system, but she had mastered the impulse, and could think clearly. "Yeah," she finally admitted.

"Would it help to tell you that I once felt a little out of place among my peers?" Davidson asked, surprising Janet. She shrugged. "Two years ago, while we were just starting our mission in the Tau Ceti system, I was a very different person. I was... Not easy to get along with, and I think I might have been a little paranoid as well. One day, we were all in a meeting to discuss terms of trade between Earth and Tau Ceti... We didn't know what was going on back here at the time."

Janet acknowledged his remark with a nod. "I guess if you were so far away, you couldn't have known," she remarked in a neutral tone, wanting to move past that point. "So, you were in a meeting?"

"Yeah," Davidson sighed. "What you don't know about me is that I was trained as a soldier. I was trained to kill people, and later in my career, to find ways to break into machines and put them to my own use. By the time I got promoted to Lieutenant, I was a soldier, through and through. I wasn't really suited to a mission to explore foreign star systems and communicate with any life we found out there. I took on the job because my knowledge of breaking cryptographic systems was better than most service people, and I was top of my unit for combat skills. The military decided I would be an excellent candidate for defending a ship against boarding actions, the space agency decided I was an excellent candidate for carrying out code breaking, and I signed on because the pay was beyond anything else I had ever been offered. It set my family up for life."

None of the stuff that Davidson had just said about pay, or encryption, was something that Janet was able to understand. Currency was long dead by the time she was born, and systems hacking was something that only people like Edward were really knowledgable about. Soldiering... That was something she understood. She might not have had a comprehensive training regimen like Davidson had, nor did any of the people she grew up with... But she knew how to fight, to organize, and to defend herself. Rather than interrupt, she kept her thoughts to herself.

"Having to leave everyone behind that I had ever known was harder on me than I ever thought it would be. I never realized until a few years ago just how much that meant to me, to my sanity, or my well being. And knowing that everyone I had left behind was long dead by the time I woke up was tough to deal with, even without knowing how the world went to hell.

"All in all, it affected me in ways I didn't understand all too well at the time."

Janet felt uncomfortable in the pause that followed. "What happened?" she prompted.

"I attacked the Tau Cetian representing the group."

Janet's eyes went wide. "What?"

Davidson nodded. His face was passive, neither apologetic nor defiant. "It wasn't my finest moment," he continued. "I attacked the representative sent to meet us during our meeting. Then I took her hostage. If she wasn't so good at fighting back, and if Stephen wasn't prepared with a stun weapon, it could have ended in a really ugly shoot-out that would have left me dead, and my colleagues either in prison or facing execution."

Even in her rough-and-ready environment on Earth, Janet could never imaging committing an attack against someone who was meeting with them to trade goods. It was underhand, and even with the life she had led, she understood that point very well.

Edward made sure of it.

Davidson continued. "In the end, she tricked me into either working with her, or spending the rest of the mission into a cold-sleep capsule to be taken back to Earth and tried for attempted kidnapping."

"How?" Janet asked. Whoever this Tau Cetian woman was, she was someone Janet would like to know.

"She orchestrated a scene where it appeared I was being kidnapped myself, and then interrogated. I won't go into details, but in the end, my CO had everything monitored, and they both laid it all on the line for me."

"What happened next?" Janet asked, curious. This part of Davidson was new, and while she knew little about the man, his past was somewhat disconnected from the persona he projected now.

"Weekly meetings with the Tau Cetian woman I attacked were set up."

Janet was taken aback. "I imagine she didn't like that," Janet commented, incensed that the situation mandated an attack victim would be forced to interact with her attacker. Davidson's next comment set her assumptions completely out of touch.

"She insisted on it," he said, not bothering to hide his obvious surprise. Something else in his tone hinted at something else. Janet could not guess, and at the moment, she didn't want to. Davidson nonetheless continued. "She told us all that she wanted to build bridges between our two people, and the most direct way to do that would be to prove several of my assertions wrong."

Janet didn't quite understand what Davdison meant by "assertions", but kept quiet about her lack of understanding. She would ask Edward later, assuming he knew. Or maybe Stephen would know. "What were they?"

Davidson lifted a hand to his chest as he counted off on his fingers. "First, that Tau Ceti had the intention of sending an envoy to our planet under the guise of trade and diplomacy while covertly trying to ascertain our weaknesses."

Janet supposed that was possible, and definitely something that humans have been known to do. Why not other life in the galaxy?

"Second," Davidson continued. "That our mission to the Tau Ceti system was a prelude to an invitation to conquer our planet."

Janet was not a stranger to wild claims by any of the shelter's inhabitants when she was in charge. Edward's son, Jason, was one such individual. In his case, he was completely right in his claim of a possession back on Earth, and the thought of anything like that ever happening to them again frightened the life out of her. However, many of the others she had heard were nothing more than the delusional rantings of people who could not live in the reality of their situation.

"Davidson, that..." Janet sought to use words that would not anger the man, given his immense size and stature.

"Believe me when I say I get it. Delusional thinking at it's finest," he said, chuckling to himself. Janet was stunned that he was so accepting of the label she dared not to speak aloud. "Let's just say I was right on the edge of a severe mental break at the time, with the realization I would never be seeing anyone I had ever known again, and being stuck in a tin can for the next two years or so, it was more than I could handle. Captain Greenfield said it himself when he asked why I was allowed on the mission in the first place..." Davidson suddenly had a faraway look in his eyes that held a certain sadness.

Greenfield. That was the name of the Captain who had never come back from their fight in space. Janet was painfully aware of his absence, and while she had known the man only a few days, she could see the closeness that he had with the others that had come back. While Davidson may have been antagonistic toward the man two years ago, he certainly wasn't today.

"So," Janet asked, attempting to change the subject slightly. "Weekly meetings. How did they go?"

Davidson sighed as he let his arm fall back down to his side. "At first, I hated every single one of them. For the first few weeks, I kept telling myself that I was just gathering intelligence, that I was going to blow open the whole cover-up. For weeks, I was convincing myself that if I could just expose the face behind the facade of friendly trade negotiations, I would have vindicated myself and possibly saved humanity from an existential alien threat." Davidson paused, and Janet refrained from any kind of prompting. He looked like he needed to get his story out. "Facing one's own over-inflated sense of self-importance doesn't come easy to someone like me."

"What happened?" Janet asked after a moment of silence. "What changed?" she clarified.

"I can't say for sure when I realized I was kidding myself," Davidson replied ruefully. "I guess it was when she told me more about herself. I remember one of the stories she told me was when she first took command of a ship of the same class as the one we were all aboard a few days back. That first time," Davidson stopped to laugh a little, surprising Janet. "She told me that she had made a critical error when ordering entry into another system on a patrol run. There was a report of a squadron of ships opening fire on others passing through the region, and she was ordered to investigate. When she got there, she encountered five ships, all armed heavily, and all targeting her vessel. They sent a message, but it was in some language she knew little of at the time. She opened fire on their ships and destroyed them all, then headed back to report the incident."

Janet was confused by this story. It seemed like a skirmish with armed opponents that had targeted the vessel. What was the critical error here?

"Turns out that the vessels were the only available patrol ships from the system that had been besieged, and she had wiped out the last line of defense."

Janet would have been shocked, if similar stories hadn't abounded from other areas on Earth during her time on the surface. She supposed that this kind of lack of forward thinking was prevalent no matter where you were from. "And she's still in command of a ship?"

Davidson shrugged, as though sympathizing with her point. "Yeah, well her record before this time was spotless, and she immediately handed herself over for disciplinary action as soon as she had realized her error. For a few years, she had lost the command of her vessel, and was required to re-run all of her previous training again, to make the point that she jumped too soon to a conclusion... Just like I did. It was then, I realized, she was as flawed as I was, and she made no effort to pretend otherwise in all our prior meetings."

"What does she do now?" Janet asked.

Davidson gave a small, one-sided smile. "You should know... You met her."

Janet's eyes went wide in shock. This was completely out of nowhere. Miradima was the one that Davidson had attacked, then attended meetings with? And if what she had observed was any indication, they were on very friendly terms with each other! "The Commander of the ship that rescued us from the planet?"

Davidson nodded slowly. "Yeah, one thing led to another, and before we knew it, we were close friends. Now... We're more than that... Not that I care to go into it without speaking with her first."

Janet supposed not. Her decision to go public with her association with Stephen a few days ago was borne out of necessity, and she was far from comfortable discussing it with anyone else. If anyone understood Davidson's reticence in discussing those kinds of interpersonal relationships, she did. "I get it," she said quietly. "I do. I'm not..."

After a moment, Davidson replied to ease Janet's hesitation. "It's between the two of you. If you both wanted to tell anyone else the details, then you would have done so. It's your business," he assured her. "Point is, all of us have had to make adjustments to fit in to what we realized were our new lives. I may have lost everyone I ever knew back on Earth, but I'm sure as hell not the only one, and what I lost, I also gained. John and Stephen are friends of mine as well, although I doubt any of them will ever be truly at ease around me, and I have Mira. I also have a new purpose. Earth is going to need an army of its own, as well as a fleet navy in space, and we will need to make sure it's properly staffed. I'll have my hands full with that task... Probably for the rest of my life."

This of course brought them full circle. Janet initially came here to talk to Davidson about her lack of a place to fit in to their attempts to rebuild civilization. She sighed heavily. "I still have to find a place of my own."

"So think about these things," Davidson suggested. "Make a note of everything you have felt the most confident in yourself about. Note everything you feel less sure about in another column. Somewhere in all of these things will be the answer, and having someone else to look at it with you will mean someone who can give a fresh perspective... Maybe spot what you haven't yet seen for yourself."

Janet knew this would be good advice, and nodded.

And so, for the next few hours, they set about looking at what Janet could do well, and what she needed to work on. Davidson promised to look over all of this with her again at some point in the not too distant future, once they dealt with the next series of discussions with the other survivors.