Conflicting Objectives XXXIII

Having found a way of passing the forest, John's group managed to get out from the woods and finally reached the open plain from where they could already see the sight of the First Haven.

Not being in this area for a long time, Marlow was amazed by how much the place changed since the day they landed on the New Gaia - still located within a spot encompassed from three sides, there was now a big wall stretching out outside, made of various materials available in the area, including stones and metal trees. Up in front of the new wall, a huge Ursus mecha was towering above everything around.

The moment they emerged from the woods, sarge Stan Szarak received communication request, which came from Svetlana, better known as Glitter, who had the mecha raise the main weapon for the time she was waiting for the authorization. After sarge sent the code and followed up with visual communication, Sveta lowered the weapons.

- Granting permission to pass - she communicated - Happy to have you back here, John - she added after reviewing a list of people onboard sent by Stan - Let's meet when you have a moment.

- Not sure how fast I can be done with my assignment, but will try - Marlow replied to her with complete honesty.

Following this short exchange, the group still required several minutres until reaching their destination. On the route, John was analyzing how the area around the settlement was changed and adjustments were really noticeable not only with walls being now present, but also ground outside of encampment leveled, allowing for better visibility when observing from within the wall - the change was most likely the biggest for Sveta as she had wider field of view from inside of Ursus. Based on the current position of the mecha, it was clear she could keep an eye not only for anything that could endanger the First Haven, Glitter could also easily make checks on the sites scientists were working on.

 - This place indeed started looking as a proper settlement - he commented to Stan, who was yet again sitting next to him, having given back the driver's seat - They have widened the safe zone greatly, which gives more space for settlers to use and can also monitor scientist's research outside the walls.

- I heard the flat area set outside the walls is being prepared for cultivation - sarge Szarak informed him - However, since it's not yet a secure spot, settlers cannot really use it until necessary systems are in place. Still, to set this systems up, they need resources, same as for creation of tools.

- Yeah, medical systems took priority so we used up most of the spare part already before, and building assembly lines requires not only resources, but also people and time - John admitted - Given the limitations we have in all these fields, we can't really complain about things going slow. On the other hand, some may say it's been only slightly above two months we spent on the planet so far. Though, if we had all the equipment we took with us on Future's board, we'd probably see lots of crops already.

- Speaking of Future, it's disturbing we didn't get any communication from them, major - Robert, who was currently driving, joined in the conversation - People seem to be intentionally avoiding the topic, yet I cannot help to think that we lost the ship. I simply cannot imagine no one would have tried to contact us for so long...

Marlow did not say anything immediately. In fact, he was thinking about it many times already and tried a number of ways to increase the range from which they could pick up signals coming both from within the planet's atmosphere and the space, and still, none of these allowed them to find people who stayed back on Future. If John was to be completely honest here, given the amount of damage the ship was subjected to, it was equally possible for its systems to be in no shape to focus on anything else that keeping it from crashing and for the actual crash landing to happen, which would render them unable to leave the planet anytime soon. Of course, due to the weight any such speculation carried, major was extremely careful when touching the topic to use the right wording.

- If you are looking for a straight answer explaining what happened to the ship, I cannot give you one - Marlow spoke to Stalsky - There are many possibilities as to why we weren't able to contact with anyone who stayed back onboard. Some of these are related to the shape of the ship and some are specific traits of the New Gaia, including its size and electromagnetic activity within its atmosphere. At this point, I cannot exclude any of the scenarios I could think of, so everything is possible, including something like engine failures and the ship drifting, which means it will take the crew probably several months to get there, or the ship being already on the orbit, but the signal being blocked by electromagnetism. Due to sheer number of factors I can think of, we need to work on limiting them, thus our current mission is important since it may allow us to understand the electromagnetism of this planet better, maybe even helping us in strengthening the signal we can use. Only then we can narrow down the options and reach a reasonable conclusion. Either way, whatever happened, and even if we don't have contact with the main ship, all we can do now is to work for establishing our bases and settlements, so we can survive.

- I apologize if this sounded out of place, sir - Robert said to John - I'm just worried about some of my friends, who I believe stayed back on ship, that's why I'm looking for any news that could be reassuring...

Major sighed.

- I would love to say something that could make you feel at ease, yet the truth is I simply cannot. As I already said, there are different possibilities, and - to be completely honest with you - I also cannot exclude the chance something bad happened to the ship. There's just too many unknowns there. That's why it's best to focus on what is in front of us now rather than to worry.

After Marlow said that, sarge Szarak considered switching Stalsky as he was concerned about the guy's condition after touching such a sensitive topic, but it turned out the soldier managed to keep his composure. Still, this showed John that situation they ended up in made various people react differently and even such a casual conversation could cause potential issues - overall, he felt even more motivated to proceed with resolving the current assignment and work towards completing their goal of reaching the megacity. Should this be done, he hoped they can find more of their crewmates as everyone was provided with the coordinates of the main rally point - in case of any issues, each person was supposed to aim for finding this location.

Major ended up being lost in thoughts long enough for his group to reach the settlements entrance on the side of the wall they approached from - it was a really basic, mechanical gate their vehicles were let through. Obviously, the settlers who were the main group that decided to stay in this area, preferred to save the energy for the more pressing use. However, even with this kind of limitation, one could easily notice many useful facilities being available within the settlement, including routes, sidewalks and artificial light system relying on the solar energy. Not only that, settlers also managed to built some decent buildings already.

- This place already looks like a classic village from modern history lessons - John actually meant to acknowledge the work of colonists by saying that, remembering the footage of old villages from late twentieth and early twenty-first century - I see several farms and it's not only crops that they started growing, it looks like animals seem to manage the planet's conditions well - he pointed that out, seeing some chickens running within enclosure.

- Quite fortunately, we found some cargo capsules carrying both grown animals and embryos - Stan explained - Our scouting teams spent quite a bit of time on screening as much area as possible and finding such resources ended up being a natural outcome. Not that retrieving the stock was always easy. In some cases, local animals already noticed potential food sources, and some cargo capsules simply picked their interest, even though there was only equipment inside.

- Meaning there was a lot of harm done before you got to some of the pods?

- Indeed. The biggest one was the cargo with 3D printers and assembly line components. Not sure what kind of beast could do that, definitely something as strong as Gaian Tiger, or maybe even bigger predator, but something literally chewed on metal parts.

Hearing such news, Marlow was visibly disappointed. At the same time, he remembered something they were taught on lectures while traveling through the space in Future.

- Well, some of herbivores on this planet apparently eat tree bark, which is pretty much raw metal as we understand it, so maybe processed parts as we have them are just a snack for them? 

Sarge Szarak sighed.

- Yes, with such an amount of food around, they had to go for our cargo pods... There were so many situations where we got our hopes up to just be disappointed in the end. Not that we are supposed to be stationed here long time, but we definitely need supply bases and it will be hard for colonists to operate properly without the means to construct tools and machinery.

While further talking about the scouting missions' results Stan was aware of, John's group reached the First Haven's command center, located in the safest zone of the settlement, original section the field hospital originally was - as it turned out, the hospital was reduced in size and moved closer to the natural cover of stone walls, and portion of transporter units was gathered and combined to create a bigger construction functioning in similar manner to a town hall.

Since the place had limited human resources, specifically from military group, significant portion of guard duties was covered by people from the colonist group, therefore - when Marlow got out of the brawler accompanied by sarge Szarak, they were met by two colonist guards wearing combat F-suits and armed.

- Please identify yourselves and state your business - one of the men spoke to John and Stan, who both exchanged surprised looks. After all, they were part of the group that would usually be the ones to perform such duties, so it was unusual feeling they were subjected to.

- I'm sergeant Stan Szarak, accompanying major John Marlow - sarge Szarak replied - We are here on the order from colonel Ryan McRae.

- Please transmit your personal ID signatures - second of the guards went front, turning on his PEC receiver.

It was yet another surprising thing for both Marlow and Szarak.

- Did something happen? - John asked - We have already provided the transmission to Svetlana when closing to the settlement, didn't you get this information?

- Apologies, we need to follow the procedure - the guard replied - We will explain once verification is done.

After ID signatures were passed and confirmed to be valid for both militarymen, guards explained these were special instructions they were following due to recent events - apparently, an incident happened recently that led to adjusting the original rules concerning personal checks on accessing elements of key infrastructure. However, guards did not disclose more details about what exactly took place, informing John and Stan that they will learn more in the command center.

With that, major Marlow and sarge Szarak entered the building through the main entrance - the hall had a round shape with multiple transporter units attached to it, making the shape of the whole construction to that of a gear.

In the middle of the hall, there was a round counter with several people sitting and checking numerous monitors - quite an archaic approach to visual display, but with the limitations they had, it was the easiest way to monitor settlement's status.

Majority of transporter units adjacent to the central part of the building were each assigned to handling key management functions of the First Haven, aside from the one on the far end from the main entrance, which was used by the local council made of representatives of each relevant group living in the area.

When John and Stan entered the room, there were three people inside, of whom two major knew from before - sarge Arkadiusz Wilkowski, Szarak's good friend, and Connor Cunningham, the very person Marlow wanted to take from here to research Industrial Caves. The third person was the representative of colonists and pretty much the person making the ultimate decisions due to her group being the highest in numbers - initially, there was total of thirty settlers willing to stay in the First Haven and total of twenty from other groups, but over the weeks more survivors managed to reach the settlements and the numbers exceeded one hundred now, having about eighty settlers who became vastly the biggest part of the current community.

Having exchanged pleasantries with Arek and Connor, John and Stan reached the representative of colonists, who was sitting by the desk all this time.

- I doubt we have a chance to meet before - Marlow spoke to her - My name is John Marlow.

- Jeanne Dubois - she introduced herself - So, you are that John Marlow? - she eyed him for a moment - What business do you have with us?