Getting Down To Business
This is a short story in all that description means. Nothing really happens, it's just a little time filler about what might have been going on with the minor characters after the group reached the cargo pod in the pilot episode of Earth 2, and the main characters were interacting and moving the story forward. If you've read the novelization of the pilot, you'll probably want to skip over this story although I've been told, with a little imagination, one can squeeze this story into the events of the book just after the "lynch mob" scene. I wrote it because a friend at the forum, who hasn't read any of the novels, wondered about the subject.
Die-hard fans, stretch your imagination here, just a bit. :)
GETTING DOWN TO BUSINESS
Robert Salway
"Okay, people, let's get to work! We'll need sentries forming a perimeter and a team to get the other pod door open. Get moving!"
Having issued his orders, Commander O'Neill nodded once and spun around on his heel and marched away in the general direction of the cargo pod.
Devon Adair watched him for a second, then turned back to look at the crowd standing in front of her. They were watching him, too, but all but two of them turned to one another, not to her, some rolling their eyes, others shaking their heads, but most looking past her to seek out the man named Danziger at the rear of the assemblage.
Seeing this, the tall man with the unruly hair who was leaning against a small tree, uncrossed his arms and stood up straight.
"Apparently, the brass just issues the orders," he said, "after we do the thinking."
Another man, Walman, Devon thought, laughed. "Since when is that different, Danz?"
A ripple of laughter went through the group.
Danziger extended his hand to one of the women in the crowd. "My name is Danziger," he said.
"Denner," the woman replied and shook his hand. "Diane Denner. I was a colonist with Advance." She was one of the two who had initially sought to let Devon decide what to do next.
Danziger nodded and introduced himself to a man standing behind her and to her left, the other person to first look to Devon before following the lead of the others and looking past her.
The man smiled and shook his hand. "Tim Cameron," he said. "I was Advance, too."
"Welcome to the ops crew," Danziger told them both, and began to gesture to the others in the group as he spoke their names. "This is Jake Baines, Lauren Magus, and Chris Mazatl, in case you haven't already introduced yourselves. Why don't two of you, uh, Chris and Magus, take watch first, okay? Grab anything that will make a weapon and keep in touch with each other. Baines, just keep that gun ready and help them on lookout. This is Eben Sinh. E, you and Denner and True go through what we brought with us from the escape pod, and start to set up a camp. We won't be going anywhere for a while. The three of you monitor the sentries and decide when they need to be relieved. True, you're going to be sure E and Diane know where you are at all times, right?"
"Sure, Dad."
Eben Sinh extended her hand to True. "Come on, kiddo. Meet Diane."
"Hi, Diane. I'm True Danziger."
"Hi, True. I saw you around the ship helping your father many times."
"You're one of the colonists, aren't you?" the little girl asked as the three of them walked away.
"Cameron, this is Matt Walman. Guess what we get to do?" he asked rhetorically as the three of them walked off toward the cargo pod.
Devon stayed where she was for a moment, watching everyone split up and go to their tasks. The ops crew chief seemed to have everything well in hand, even if O'Neill didn't. Where one had the well being of the group in mind, the other was, at the moment, more interested in discovering what had taken the equipment from the open cargo bay, and then, in getting it all back.
She looked around for the commander and saw him staring down at the ground and walking slow circles in front of the open bay. He was getting farther away from the pod with each circle. She looked away and went off in search of her son, Ulysses, instead of O'Neill.
A small copse of thin trees near the open cargo bay was the current home of Julia Heller's frontier hospital. Uly was in the shade of the trees, sitting on someone's jacket and propped upright in a sitting position against a backpack.
The pilot, Alonzo Solace, was nearby in a similar position, but still on the litter the men had fashioned to carry him.
The doctor was hovering over both of them, trying to position a sheet of parachute nylon above them to offer shade and a break from the brisk wind.
"Need a hand?" Devon offered.
"Yes," Julia answered. "Who knew wind could be so irritating? Nothing stays in place. Air movement on the stations to simulate a breeze was nothing like this."
"The shade moves, too," Uly said from the ground. "When Mr. Danziger put me down I was in the shade, but not anymore. The shade all moved over to Mr. Solace."
Hearing his name, the pilot looked over and managed a small smile. "Sorry, kid, give it back if I could," was all he said before lapsing back into silence.
Devon smiled down at her son. "We'll take care of that, Uly. We'll give you both as much shade as you need, okay?"
"What do you think they'll find in there?" Julia asked Devon, looking over at the three men doing their best to break into the one intact section of the cargo pod.
"There's no way to know for sure. Only the warrant officer knew the exact contents of the pods, but she's not here. What I hope we'll find are at least one vehicle, clothing, perhaps, tents, food, any kind of survival gear. The rations from the escape pod won't last more than a few more days."
"Hey," a voice interrupted. It was Sinh, the younger of the three other women in the group. She was dragging several long metal bars in her hands and had a coil of cord on one shoulder. "I brought you some support for the parachute material. This metal is from the broken pod doors. Danziger said it should be strong enough to hold the material in place, just be sure you set them deep enough into the ground, and face the opening towards the trees." She dropped the poles and the coil of cord close to them and massaged her hands.
"Blisters?" Julia asked.
Eben smiled and held her hands up , palms out, to reveal several areas of redness on both. "Not yet, but close," she answered as she turned to leave.
Walking a few steps, Eben Sinh raised her eyes to the distant cliffs and stopped dead in her tracks as a rush of vertigo made her head spin. Closing her eyes she counted to ten slowly and when the sense of dizziness passed, she walked on, looking at her feet as she did. It was taking a while to get used to size and distance. Every now and then her brain tried to tell her something wasn't quite right. The area around her was too big, but she told no one about it. She was from the lunar colony after all. She had walked the surface of that small world many times, and she wasn't going to admit the sheer size of this world was in any way frightening.
Sinh went back to the shady side of a rock pile and watched as True showed Denner how to use a small electronic pad the girl had brought with her from the ship. The small device, pocket sized, was the info pad True used to keep a record of the small chores her father gave her to do aboard the ship. She was showing Denner how to make a list of the supplies with which they had to work.
Denner, who had trained as a zoologist and a marine biologist for the Eden Project, kept looking in O'Neill's direction, but made no move to join him in studying the tracks. She was uneasy around the man and though she knew she should be offering her services to find out what the animals were that left the tracks, she didn't want to work closely with the commander for any reason. He had gone from being a co-leader of the group to making himself the only leader - all within the brief time they'd been on the planet.
As she watched, Devon Adair approached the man and began to speak with him.
There would be time to study the tracks later, Denner told herself. Besides, the shock of the crash was still very much with her and working with the little girl was helpful. True made things seem normal and Diane needed normal right now, and maybe that was why the ops chief had put them together. He couldn't have missed the way her hand was shaking when they introduced themselves.
"There," True was saying. "That's all there is to it. My dad put a huge memory pack in it and Walman added the log program so we can write a lot of stuff in here - especially if the other cargo bay is loaded. I took out all the stuff I wrote in it."
"Are you sure you want to give this to us, True?" Diane asked her.
The girl nodded. "I don't have chores to do anymore." She reached into her pocket and drew out a tangle of wire which she placed on top of the unit. "This is the download cable for if we ever get a bigger computer unit to download the information you put in it. This one is the stylus."
"Thank you, True. We can really use this right now."
True smiled and shrugged. "What do we do now?"
Eben felt pride in the child, whom she had known since she was a toddler. She motioned to her. "You and I will tell Denner what we have and she'll make a list."
Carrying a piece of metal from the broken pod door and feeling as ill equipped for meeting an unknown adversary as he probably looked, Chris Mazatl circled the others at a slow pace, torn between keeping his eyes on the emptiness around the group and keeping an eye on what was happening with the cargo pod.
This wide open, empty area was making him dizzy. There was nothing to tell him size and distance except the people he was supposed to be protecting, and without perspective the distant mountains and cliffs were just optical illusions. Coming through the trees and rock outcroppings as they marched behind O'Neill in search of the cargo pod had been strange and exciting but the landscape also felt safe. Things were close by, touchable, like station walls and dome barriers.
But this place - it was worse than working in pressure suits on the station hulls. He couldn't tie himself to the ground. He had to trust the planet to keep him in contact with it. And, the sky was still hard to look at for more than a second or two.
He looked back at the camp and spotted Baines and Magus, both of whom were ex-military and no doubt had been to Earth for survival training. They didn't seem to be having as much trouble getting their ground legs - and minds - as he was. They both seemed to be having a great time, in fact, signaling to each other and admiring the sights as if they'd walked the surface of planets once a week.
Magus waved to him with a cheery smile in her face, and Mazatl waved back half-heartedly.
Well, he was going to have to tough it out. No way he was going to let her or anyone know this place was spooking him. Raising the metal bar to his shoulder, he took a deep breath and kept walking.
Between the two of them, Devon and Julia had managed to erect a functional three sided shelter to protect Uly and Alonzo from the elements. Disregarding the advice of the ops chief, they faced the opening toward the cargo pod, deeming it a way to let the two invalids watch what was going on around them and hold off boredom, if possible.
By early afternoon, Julia realized their decision had been ill conceived, and young Ulysses Adair's comment about the shade moving should have been taken seriously. The sun had moved low enough in the sky to shine directly into the tent and onto Solace and Uly. She ended up having to move both of her patients out of the shelter and into whatever shade was still available.
By then the men had gotten the pod bay door open and the area around it had turned into a bustling work space as the contents were brought out and looked over and carefully catalogued. The sentries had been called in to help sort out the goods, and Alonzo was propped up on a hammock close to the three vehicles pulled from the cargo pod. He was alternately drifting into sleep and helping Julia go over the medical equipment found among the other crates and boxes.
The parachute tent, the inside flooded with sunlight, flapped uselessly in the wind.
THE END
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