CHAPTER 46
December 10, 2099 (Earth timeline)
Proxima b, aka Fintidier
“Air quality is clean.” Master Chief Petty Officer Havier Jones looked at the air-quality device and pointed out the all-green indicators. “All greens. No CBRN, nothing. Little less nitrogen than Earth but not much. Trace gasses about the same. There are some pollen spores and other biologicals, but they seem to be inert according to the instruments.”
“Great, Chief. So, we can remove MOPP-E?” Commander Mike Rogers asked.
“Yep.”
“Alright.” Mike used some eye movements to click on the open comm channel. “Away team, Master Chief Jones has cleared us to breathe the air. MOPP-E can be removed. Standard combat-ready uniforms, and civilian away team is authorized from here on. Anything else, Chief?”
“Nope. If we’re good here, Mike, I’m going to start setting up the hospital.”
“Good idea.” Mike switched channels. “Visser, anything to report on the perimeter?”
“No, Mike. Drones should be sending you feeds now. Zeke and I have it covered by patrolling on the ATVs, but this complex is pretty big. We need to put up some fences or get some more guys,” PO3 Daniel Visser replied.
“Copy that. Keep the drones on it. We’ll start pulling the feeds here at the TOC.” Mike turned to Lieutenant Commander Geni Holland, who was on her back underneath a table they’d moved into place and was routing cables between instrument panels. “Geni, as soon as you get that done, pull up the drones.”
“Sure thing, Mike. Hey, could you hand me that wire stripper on the end of the table . . . no, the one on the right side,” she replied.
“Here.” Mike dropped it down to her and then slipped off his MOPP-E headgear. “I might have to break out a jacket. What do you think it is, ten or twelve degrees C?”
“My AI says it’s eleven point five.” Geni crawled out from underneath the table. Her muscular frame moved fluidly. She pulled the MOPP-E headgear and dropped it beside her, running a fingerless gloved hand through her three-centimeter-long bleached blond hair. “Don’t be such a wuss. It isn’t that cold.”
“Let’s run the list.” Mike sat down in a metal chair the Fintidierians had provided. “Perimeter, check. Hospital, check. All buildings have been cleared and sniffed, check. Tactical Operations Center is almost up and running, check. I think we’re good here.”
“You asking or telling, Mike? Hard to tell.” Geni dragged a heavy metal chair across the concrete floor next to him. The chair screeched with a high enough pitch that Mike’s skin crawled.
“Neither. Both.” Mike hesitated for second. “How much longer do you need here?”
“About . . . ” Geni tapped at several virtual icons and then depressed a couple of keys on a keyboard on the table. “ . . . that long. TOC command systems are operational.”
“Good. Have Martin, Henry, and Maksutov got the high-gain antenna in place yet?” he asked.
“Let’s see.” Geni turned and activated one of the new monitor screens she’d just put into place. The screen came online quickly. After a moment or so of her moving icons about, Mike could see a spectrum analyzer screen with a waterfall chart beginning. “There’s the Samaritan’s beacon from the low-gain antenna, and . . . yep . . . feed is good. High gain is up and running.”
“Great. Open a channel.”
“Done.”
“Samaritan, this is Proxima One, do you copy?” Mike could see his transmission on the spectrum waterfall jump up and down as he spoke.
“Copy you loud and clear, Commander,” the XO’s voice replied.
“We’re good to go down here. You can start bringing down the crew at your leisure.”
“Great news! We’ve got a bunch of space-sick eggheads up here wanting some solid ground under their feet.”
“Copy that. Proxima One out.” Mike leaned back in the chair and relaxed a bit. “Damn, I’m out of breath.”
“All of us are. We’re at about one point one Earth gravities here and we’ve been on the ship at a little less than a gee for years. We’ll have to get back in shape, Mike,” Geni agreed with him. “I wonder if the Proximans, uh, Fintidierians have barbells and such.”
“We’ll make do if not.” Mike looked around the concrete-block building they’d chosen for the command center. “It looks like they have plenty of concrete on this planet. We can always make forms in the sand and pour some plates.”
“Speaking of sand, Mike, we’re only about five kilometers from the beach here. We should check out the ocean. I mean, are there alien shark monsters, or can we go swimming and fishing?” Geni laughed. “We need to figure out more about what is safe on this planet and what isn’t.”
“We need a guide. As soon as we get situated and through our two-week quarantine, I’m sure the Fintidierians will provide us with one.”
“Right.” She looked as if something had alerted her and then started swatting at icons only she could see. “Drones just connected. We’ve got eyes in the sky now.”
“Good. What about the sats?”
“Still handshaking. Give it another minute or two; there might not be one directly overhead. The constellations give us a ten-second refresh,” Geni said.
“Use the Samaritan as the channel. It should always have line of sight with several of the birds,” Mike said.
“Are you bucking for my job, Commander?” Geni smiled at him but from the tapping away she was doing, Mike was certain she was implementing his suggestion. “There. Satellite constellation feed is online. We have a full-up operational TOC command center here.”
“Well, we’ll want to get more permanent perimeter cams and motion trackers out, but I’m going to take a breather right now.”
“Looks like the other OSAM just dropped from the ship. We’ll have people here soon.” Geni pulled up a view of the air traffic system. “Look here, there are, I guess, aircraft flying about on the other main continents. They’re slow.”
“Remember, these people are like early 1900s to maybe 1950s. Fossil-fuel, propeller-type vehicles. How’d we ever manage that?” Mike reached out in front of him and opened up a window from the drones’ lidar maps and had it overlay the complex map given to them from the Fintidierians. “Hobbs?”
“Yes, Mike?” his AI responded.
“Pull up the personnel roster for the Samaritan and let’s start finding them living quarters based on this map.”
“Right away, Mike.”