That Which Devours

Alexander stood tall on a stump. He was the last of the ship command staff still alive in the colony, and one of the leaders. His dark hair and eyes peered around the gathering group, waiting for everyone's attention. “This afternoon, we celebrate a successful hunt, returning with meat and no injuries!” Cheers broke out from the community members. He held up a hand to quiet people down. I spotted Len and Sasha near the stump. They were the two other members of the Council. My father stood behind them in the shadows.

The differences between all three of them stood out, from Len’s armor, to Sashas dirt covered blue overalls, and Alexander’s dress jacket with metal buttons down the front.

“We also have our first crops from the farmers, and we are expecting a good harvest as time passes.” Another cheer broke out across the group. I kept my mouth shut, seeing the grim lines on Len’s and my father's faces.

“We are proving we can survive here. We are taming the wilds and building our colony, and on that note, we had word arrive…” He paused, glancing around. “From the scientific settlement. The first generation born on this world will be due in 3 months. They are hoping to add 5 more members to our colony.”

It took a moment for his words to sink in. The artificial wombs were up and running. Somehow. It was how our colony ship planned to colonize a new planet while only starting with 1,000 people. Otherwise, we didn’t have enough genetic diversity to not have problems. The scientists could create kids without people needing to give birth. It was the only reason the scientific settlement hadn’t joined the colony, or so they said. They couldn’t move the labs from their dropship. While they’d lost people, the section of their dropship with the lab equipment had come through intact, miraculously. And now, somehow, they’d gotten the advanced technology of the artificial wombs working.

Murmuring broke out across the crowd, but it didn’t sound as cheerful as Alexander seemed to expect. The overall tone was more confused than anything.

“We will look for volunteers to take on the role of parents. We’ll reach out to people who we believe will be suitable candidates as well, but feel free to speak up if you think you’d be a good choice.”

This part was expected. We all knew when we signed up that everyone would be expected to help raise the next generations. I just didn’t think they would keep that schedule, with how things had turned out. We were still trying to build solid housing, for one. And for another thing, we were all subject to unknown rules of an all-powerful system that none of us understood. And technology didn’t work, at least in the ways we were used to. All in all, it didn’t seem like a great idea to have a lot of kids running around just yet.

“With that, let's keep this celebration going!” Alexander smiled at the crowd as the music started back up again. He gracefully jumped from the stump and a few excited married couples approached him. It surprised me he didn’t mention Cass unlocking her class, nor the great teamwork of the hunting crew. Usually, even Alexander tried to give props to those doing well.

I saw Abby grab a stack of wooden bowls and took that as my signal to go find John. I placed my mug upside down near the stack to show I’d used it. Then, I headed away from the music and people. The afternoon sun was creeping toward the horizon, but we had a few hours before the valley would be shaded. At that point, it would cool down a bit. It still shocked me how quickly I’d gotten used to being hot and sticky all the time.

My memories of the crash and afterward were hazy from my head injury. I was also missing spots of memory from Earth. At least none of that seemed to matter, and it seemed like the important stuff, like who I was, was all still intact. I headed around the corner of the building toward the shuttle area.

The complete shuttle sat several yards away, with the rear ramp down. It was a small cargo shuttle that could seat five in the narrow front. The cargo area was larger than the front, almost double the amount of space if you included the area the ramp used. I peeked in the back, but John wasn’t inside. Wires stretched from two large crystals, one on either side of the small cargo area, toward the ramp of the shuttle and outside. The short stubby wings jutted out from each side, looking like they should be bigger. Small boosters hung from the bottom of each wing, along the sides of the ship itself.

The wires led me to the work-in-progress shuttle. It wasn’t complete and had panels missing, and it was surrounded by random piles of junk. Muttering came from inside. I carefully started up the ramp, making sure not to step on anything that looked important. John was in the pilot area, which only had one intact seat. He fiddled with a few wires poking out from under the dashboard.

“You know, if I could get some more of that wire, I might get this running. I’m hoping the miners are willing to let me check out their dropship. Alexander let me take whatever I needed from ours.” He paused in his ramble. “I’m so close to getting this thing going. Do you think you could maybe talk them into it?” he asked without looking over his shoulder.

“Me?” I asked, shocked.

John's head snapped toward me, like he wasn’t sure why I was there. “Alex! I thought you were dad. He was talking about joining me tonight.” The confused look stayed on his face. “Why are you here?”

“Dude, they’re serving the stew and I figured you’d want a bowl before it's all gone.” I glanced around the shuttle, which was way more complete than the last time I’d seen it, which had to be a week ago. He’d been busy. “This is looking better.” At least it had fewer missing parts. He’d taken plenty of them to get the first one airborne.

John let out a sigh. “We’ve made progress, but no one’s gotten the skills I need to really help me out.” He shook his head and stood up stretching. He towered over me by several inches. I was the smallest sibling, as well as the youngest, but I didn’t care. John had four years on me, I had time to catch up. “I’m needed to fly the shuttle and keep searching for the equipment and housing dropships.” He shook his head, making his pulled back hair go all over the place.

“Maybe someone else can learn to be a pilot,” I said.

He frowned. “I wish. We’ll need someone to learn how to fly the second shuttle, class or not, once I get it up and running. I love flying, don’t get me wrong, but I love engineering even more. Especially here.” He studied me for a moment, “You know I can teach you to fly without skills, right? You might even learn the class.”

“I thought the Council wasn’t focusing on you teaching anyone else,” I mumbled. We currently only had one working shuttle after all.

He rolled his eyes at me. “I don’t care what leadership wants. We need those supplies if we are going to get everyone into better housing.” He started marching down the ramp. “Can you imagine raising a kid in the tents?” He motioned to the waterproof tents under the trees. Some wooden shacks had been built, but permanent housing wasn’t high on the list. The folks who had mining skills were working on a section of the mountain as well, carving tunnels and caverns for solid housing. It was slow going, though, since there weren’t many of them.

“So you heard the announcement?” I asked, since he hadn’t been in the crowd.

“It got recommended to me to concentrate on finding the dropships and stop trying to fix the other shuttle.” He grunted. “Like it’s easy to see a crash site. It took me a month to find the mining one, and that’s only because they had cleared around half the crash site. The jungle grows thick and fast. It's hard to spot things from the air, especially at night.”

I patted him on the shoulder. “Everyone knows you’re working around the clock, and it doesn’t help that you need to be careful of the fliers.”

“Fucking fliers,” he growled. “If I could leave at a decent hour from here, it’d be easier. Instead, taking off at dusk… Sorry, you’ve heard this a thousand times already.” He snapped his lips shut.

“Don’t care, you're my brother. Complain all you want.” It was better listening to him complain than me complaining. Though, this was the second offer tonight to learn a job without having a class. Learning to fly could be amazing, and once we found those drop sites it would radically change the colony for the better. Better mechanical equipment, prefabbed housing, not to mention more medical supplies, and tools, could all exist on the other dropships. It would have a much bigger impact than hunting.

Maybe I could do both? Having a path forward put a little hop in my step, and it felt like an enormous weight was lifted off my shoulders. I wouldn’t be useless without a class in the colony. “So, are you leaving tonight?” I asked as we turned the corner around the community hall.

“Yeah, heading to the mining colony. It’ll take me a day to the first drop site, then a second up into the mountains. The scientists need another giant crystal or two for the ‘kids' project. I’m hoping to get my hands on some wire.”

“That’s a busy couple of days,” I said, wondering when I’d see him again.

“That’s only half of it. After that, I’m supposed to do a sweep of a new sector.”

“Maybe you’ll find another crash site fast…” I tried to sound enthusiastic.

He only shrugged. “I hope so. I don’t really expect so, though.”

After that we both headed back to the gathering, which had only grown larger in the time it took me to grab John. More people were dancing, and a group was near the fire passing out wooden bowls. I poked John’s shoulder and pointed in that direction. We both moved quietly through the crowd toward the food.

Abby caught sight of us and served up two big bowls, one to each of us, with a wink. We both hurried to the edge of the crowd where some fallen logs were placed for seating. The first spoonful was spicy and thick. It had the potatoes in it, plus carrots and lots of dino meat.

“I think this is the best thing I’ve eaten since landfall,” mumbled John between spoonfuls.

I agreed, but didn’t say anything since I was too busy stuffing my face. That ache of hunger that always seemed to be present receded a bit, which was a relief, though it didn’t go away entirely. It never did, though it didn’t take long for my bowl to be empty. “Big time. That was awesome.”

John nudged me and leaned over. “So glad you help with cooking, the perks are great.”

I noticed that the other bowls being handed out weren’t as full. While I had worked with Abby and the others to cut up some veggies, I figured my bigger bowl had more to do with the fact that I needed more food than others at level 10. Either way, I wasn’t going to complain, since having a full, or at least fuller, stomach made the night even better.

“Is Benny still dancing with Cass?” I asked.

“What? He finally asked her?” His eyes searched the crowd. “I told him to finally get over himself and do something about how he felt.”

“Why did he wait?”

“Something about the age difference.”

I rolled my eyes. Benny was only a year older than John, and both were huge science nerds in the best way possible. That made it five years between Cass and Benny. That was nothing. “If I remember correctly, didn’t Mom and Dad have ten years between them?” I asked. My mom was fuzzy in my mind, but I knew she hadn’t been on the dropship with us.

John nodded softly. “Yeah, they did.” His fingers pointed to the two still dancing. “I bet they haven’t even eaten yet.”

Both Benny and Cass had flushed faces as they danced with each other to the fast fiddle music. Then the song slowed to a stop and people started clapping.

Felix’s voice echoed out over the crowd. “It’s time to eat folks, I’m taking a break.” The dancing crowd broke up, all heading closer to the fire, creating a line near the stew pots.

“Hey, isn’t that dad?” I asked. I saw him talking to Len and Sasha, near the stump where I had last seen them. “We should probably return our bowls so others can eat.”

John grunted and stood up as I did. We both headed toward the dishwashing station, which was a tub of water and a guy with a scrub brush. He took both our bowls and shooed us away. Someday, everyone would have things like their own dishware, but at the moment it was all community owned. Most ate in shifts, and everyone helped when needed.

I headed toward the last place I’d seen my father. We needed to chat about the offers I had received, both from Mary and John. See if he had any input. Yet, John slowed down as we approached, like he didn’t want to interrupt. I didn’t care and kept moving through the crowd. As I got closer, I swore I heard my name and I paused with a few people between us to eavesdrop.

“Alex’s natural abilities with the spear are useful,” said Len. “Mary wants her to be on the hunting team, classes-be-damned.”

Sasha shook her head. “Alexander is big on dividing people up by class.”

“We don’t know what that even looks like long-term,” answered Len. “What if people’s classes change even more than we have seen?”

“This is something to be discussed elsewhere, not at a gathering,” interrupted my father, glaring at Len. He glanced around at the people around them, but didn’t spot us.

Len nodded and shut his mouth.

“He’s right,” said Sasha, holding up a hand. “Too much is happening.”

“I’m proud of how she is doing, even without a class,” added Len, and my father nodded a smile creeping over his face.