The Last Hour of Gann

“Same,” said the third man. “Gu

“And medical supplies,” said the last of them. He was the older one, although it was tough to say just how much older. He was Asian and his face was creased but ageless. He had no accent, unless it was a trace of some southern state, but he bent his head to her instead of taking the hand she extended. “Yao. Lucas, I should say, circumstances being what they are, but I prefer Mr. Yao.”

“He’s a doctor,” Eric supplied, pointing at the little frills sewn onto Mr. Yao’s sleeve which apparently proved it.

“I am not a doctor of medicine.” The older man did not look around. “And I’d just as soon be Mr. Yao from now on. My service contract appears to have expired.”

There was a short, ugly silence while the five of them stood there, avoiding one another’s eyes.

“I’m Amber,” she said belatedly, just to get them talking again.

It worked.

“So you are the right girl,” said Eric, glancing once at Mr. Yao, who wandered off, righting crates and checking labels as he went. “Great. Lamarc said you were heading out with that other guy. Thought you might like a hand.”

“If we can ever get going. How’s he doing out there? Scott, I mean.”

“He’s bringing ‘em around, shockingly enough.” Dag shrugged, rolling his eyes as he did it. “He’s got all the enthusiasm of a bulldog with none of the brains—and those are some dumb dogs, lady—but give the man his credit, he can talk a great line.”

“Of bullshit,” snorted Crandall, checking the contents of the packed duffels. “Lady, you need to disperse some of this stuff. No normal person’s go

And after that, it was all unpacking and re-packing and shouting questions or advice at each other across the dark, cluttered bay. It kept Amber’s mind nicely occupied until they were done and emerged into the cold, smoky light to find that Scott was still talking, although he was at least winding down.

Amber sat down on a bundle of tents to watch as he marched himself importantly among the masses, trying to win them over with talk of setbacks and the necessity of moving forward in the footsteps of their pioneer forefathers, who had also suffered unspeakable tragedy in the fulfillment of their goals, also undertaken in the name of Manifest Destiny. And because it was manifest, because it was true, because it was a goal set in their hearts by that higher power that all men, regardless of creed, aspired to, it was still a goal worth seeking.

“At any cost!” Scott thundered in conclusion, smacking his fist into the palm of his hand. “But never think that makes us unmindful of the cost. The cost will be counted, just as we remember and honor those who perished in the crossing of the ocean, who were buried alongside the ruts carved by covered wagons, and whose wooden markers were paved under by the rising streets of San Francisco! The people we have lost today are our fallen heroes, but we are the heroes who go on!”

To Amber’s mild astonishment, that actually worked. Not on everyone, of course, but he got some applause for that flowery heap of horseshit even while Scott was still pumping it out.

“What’d I tell you?” said Eric beside her, shaking his head. “I guess it’s true what my grandma says. God gives even the biggest fool one real talent.”

“What’s yours?” asked Amber, watching people line up to shake Scott’s hand.

“Hoops.”

“You wish, whitebread,” said Dag, who was just as white as a man named Dag Gu

Scott shook hands, patted shoulders, began to put people in a group.

“I’m ambidextrous,” Crandall a

“Oh yeah?”

“Selectively. Eating, smoking and jerking off.” He started to mime, re-discovered Amber in their midst and stopped, looking flustered.

“I ain’t blushing,” she said dryly and wasn’t. She’d heard worse—seen worse—in the stairwell back home.

Scott finally headed their way, with Nicci walking close at his side although she was quick to do her huddling next to Amber once she got there.

“We’re ready,” he said, giving the Fleetmen a stiff, soldierly sort of nod. “I haven’t done an official head-count, but there must be a couple hundred of them.”

“Yeah…” said Eric, eyeing the crowd. He shook his head. “They might all be willing to come live in the tents once they’re up, but I bet we don’t even get half that when it comes to carrying this stuff up that hill tonight.”

“So let’s hurry and get them set up,” said Amber, slinging her duffel over one arm and snatching up a bundled tent in the other.

“Just relax for a bit, Miss Bierce,” said Scott, also frowning back at the crowd now. “Let me talk to them some more and—”

“Do what you got to do, Everly,” said Amber, walking. “You can meet me there.”

She didn’t mean it any way but exactly what she’d said—do all the talking he wanted, get more people on board, meet her on the ridge—but he took it for a challenge and an ugly one at that. She heard him clapping his hands and shouting people into order and within a few minutes he was shouldering his way roughly past her to take the lead.

She thought about saying something (ah hey i didn’t mean it like that be cool you’re still the commanding space scout here so grow the fuck up and quit shoving), but in the end it was enough that they were moving. Amber reached out to catch Nicci’s hand and give it a reassuring little squeeze. They were moving and as bad as things were, that made her feel just a little bit better.

* * *

Much later, in the waning light of the alien, cloud-covered sunset, Amber finally took that head count. She couldn’t do anything else at the moment, not after that hike, except sit on the ground with her aching, rubbery legs splayed out before her, trying to gasp her lungs into working again.

She’d been the last to come into camp, except that wasn’t right, was it? ‘Coming in last’ implied there had been a line and she’d been at the end of it. Well, there had been a line, and she’d come in about three and a half hours after it, breathing so hard she could barely see and dragging her duffel by its strap. Nicci had been carrying the tent by that time, and Nicci was setting it up with the help of Mr. Yao and thank God for that, because Amber had spent the last hour of the hike thinking she was going to faint and now that she was here, if she had to stand up and move again, she damn well knew she would.

So she counted people, just in case no one had done that yet, trying to fool herself into thinking that was contributing in some way. Altogether, herself and Nicci included, there were forty-eight of them, a sad fraction of the hundreds Scott thought he’d won over with his inspiring speeches (although, to give him his due, it had seemed like a lot more than that when they were passing her, one by one, all the fucking way across the burned scar of the ship’s final landing). Of that number, only eleven were women. There were no atheists in foxholes, it was said, and she guessed when it came to lugging crates uphill in the freezing wind on an alien planet, there were no feminists either. Maybe there’d be more tomorrow. Maybe spending the night in a burning ship would make more people feel better about coming out to the ridge.

Or maybe spending the night in a tent would make all of Scott’s people want to go back to the ship. And if that did happen, if they all left, would she go with them? Was it worse to do something she thought was stupid, like make herself at home in a burning ship, or something she already knew was stupid, like sit alone in the wilderness on an alien planet?

‘Wait for it,’ she told herself. ‘There are enough real problems here, little girl. Start making plans for those and stop worrying about what may not happen.’

“Amber?” That was Nicci, coming to fret over her. Probably wondering if she was having a heart attack or something. There’d been times on that hike that Amber had wondered herself. Even the Candyman’s humming little shots hadn’t made her feel like this. “Are you okay?”

“I’m getting there.” She smiled to show how much she meant it. Nicci flinched a little. Amber stopped smiling. “I’ll be stiff as hell tomorrow, but if they all go back to get more supplies and people and stuff, I’ll just stay here and…I don’t know. Guard the camp. From what, I don’t know, but…” Amber trailed off with a frown and looked around—at the ridge, at the scarred plains with the ship burning in the middle of it, at the sky. “Do we know yet if there’s any animals on this planet?”

“Mr. Yao was just talking about that,” said Nicci, sitting gingerly in the grass beside her. “And he says there’s plants, so we should expect there to be animals who eat them.”

Sensible. Although by that logic, if there were animals who ate plants here, there were probably animals who ate meat, too. Forty-eight unarmed humans made an awful lot of meat.

“But no one’s seen any?” Amber pressed, already thinking that even if there weren’t animals, that was a whole new kind of trouble, because those MREs wouldn’t last forever and she wasn’t exactly seeing fields of wild corn and apple trees out there in all that grassy nothing. “Not even bugs?”

“Well, yeah, bugs. The ground kind. And Mr. Yao says there’s a lake on the other side of the ridge.”

“So there might be fish?”

“I guess, but Mr. Yao says if there are animals, we might see their footprints and stuff down by the water.”

“Oh. Yeah, right. Makes sense.” Amber knew nothing about animals except the little she’d seen on television and in most of those programs, they wore clothes and talked. Times like this made a girl wish she’d paid attention in Biology to something besides Trevor Macavee in the second row.

Nicci drew up her knees and hugged them, shivering a little. They watched people mill around in the camp, opening packs, eating ration bars, lighting fires. Nobody seemed to be talking much, but no one was crying and no one was wearing that empty survivor’s stare. The outlook was just as bleak as it had ever been, but at least they had something to do.

That made her think of Jonah and so she turned listlessly that way, seeing nothing but the ship like a guttering torch in the growing dark. She wondered if he’d organized all the people Scott had only half-convinced into being his search and rescue team. She wondered if they’d found anyone alive to save. She wondered who he’d roll around with tonight to help him sleep.

She wondered if she was doing the right thing.

“Commander Scott wants to send you back,” said Nicci suddenly, softly.