The stream of people emerging from the shuttles slowed to a trickle as friends and family reconnected on the planet’s surface.  They clustered in small groups, waiting for someone - anyone - to tell them what to do next.  

Dan’s attention was drawn to a familiar voice ringing out over the murmuring crowds. “May I have your attention, please!” He was surprised that Victus could even speak right now, much less sound normal. In fact, the lupine’s voice sounded so normal that Dan began to doubt whether he’d been correct about Lucas’ fate. Careful not to inadvertently trespass across anyone’s personal boundaries, Dan opened his perception to the world at large. The instant he did, Victus’ anguish came through, as obvious as a chemical aftertaste on the back of his tongue.  Suspicions confirmed, he closed his mental shutters and went back to listening with his ears.

“I probably do not need to remind you that this is not your home planet,” the Kenzine warned, “and to be very careful about touching any of the native plants or animals until we can confirm that it is safe to do so.”  Out of the corner of his eye, he watched as several of the younger passengers…colonists, he corrected himself… began muttering among themselves.  Although they kept their voices low, he could tell that they were trying to demonstrate to others how little fear they had of their new surroundings.  

On a new world like this a puffed-up ego was the fastest way to get fit for a coffin, and Victus searched for an example that might drive home the need for caution. “I have visited most of the inhabited worlds, and I can assure you that they all have hidden dangers.” He scanned the faces and asked, “Is anyone here from Canopus Three?”  He pointed at one of the raised hands and said, “You know about the stinging butterflies, right?”  

“Kill you in ten minutes, they will.” the woman offered, nodding her head confidently.

‘And they look exactly like a harmless luna moth from Earth. This is not Earth,” he emphasized, “and some of you are going to die out here, billions of miles from home, because you didn’t know any better than to keep your fingers out of your mouths after you picked a pretty flower.” More than anything else, that seemed to catch the younger passengers’ attention.  As soon as he said it, several of them tucked their hands under their arms or in their pockets, as if to say, “Who, me? Touch everything I see without knowing whether or not it’s going to kill me? No!”

“We need everyone to gather under the trees up on the hill beside shuttle three so we can get a final count,” the varius continued. “Once we’re all in the system you can come back here if you wish, but for right now we need you to stay near the group.”

“What about our stuff?” someone shouted, from the middle of the crowd.

The corners of Victus’ mouth quirked up wryly.  It did not surprise him that the first question after being stranded on an alien planet was about stuff.  “You don’t have anywhere to unpack your bag so you might as well leave it where it is.”  He sighed and shook his head once, as if to clear it of the negative thoughts that threatened to crush him. “It will be here when you get back,” he assured them all.  “For now, let’s just...help us get through the next hour, okay?”

Few of the passengers seemed inclined to move, but Victus thought that they probably weren’t just being mulish. Most of them had been given a sizeable dose of tranquilizers, and some had yet to process the drugs out of their systems. “It’s a hot day,” he said. “And for those of you who are thirsty, we’re going to set up a drink station in the shade of those trees. You can all have a nice, refreshing drink,” he tempted them.

The idea caught their attention, and soon the mass of people, most of whom hadn’t been the slightest bit thirsty before Victus made the suggestion, began to drift over to the small copse of trees.

Victus leaned down to Dan. “Can you make that happen for me?” he asked, quietly. “I think I saw someone loading the coolers into shuttle four or five before we left.”

“Sure,” Dan said, now thoroughly confused.  Why wasn’t Victus a shattered wreck right now?  Dan knew the man must be in agony but he wasn’t showing any signs of it.”

he is coping in his own way

Bo’s thoughts said,

leave him be for now

Dan’s lips thinned, but he remained silent.  He trusted Bo’s opinion, but he couldn’t help thinking that if he’d been in Victus’ shoes, he’d be a blubbering mess right now.

that is why he’s not a blubbering mess

Bo supplied.

he cannot afford to be

whatever

Belatedly, Dan remembered that Bo had been quite fond of Lucas as well.  Bo hadn’t hadn’t yet mentioned the death of his friend, and Dan hadn’t brought it up.  He supposed he should probably offer some words of comfort to his partner, but try as he might, he could not think of a single thing to say that didn’t sound completely hollow.   Maybe it was shock, or perhaps the varius way of tackling adversity was beginning to rub off on him.  Dan thought he might be starting to understand Victus’ stoicism.

Belatedly, Dan remembered Clay.  He looked where the boy had been standing, but Clay was no longer there. Crap, Dan thought. He considered searching for him, but other matters took precedence in his mind. Clay was going to have to take care of himself for a few minutes while Dan found the water urns and dragged them up the hill.

***

Bo walked with care to the group nearest shuttle two, mindful to curb his tendency to stomp. “Where’s Tolliver?” he asked, overriding the excited chatter.  “Anyone seen him?”

The people closest to him looked dumbly at one another for a moment before a young woman with short-cropped hair spoke up from behind them.  “Did you check shuttle eleven?  He said there was more room with the medical stuff so he came down on eleven.”

The older woman standing next to her shook her head.  “No, honey, that was shuttle twelve.”

“It was eleven, ma,”

“I’m sure I heard him say twelve, dear, and he wasn’t even standing as far away from me as you are.”

*consternation*

!fuck!

“Thank you,” Bo said as he turned away. He had tried to sound courteous, but the wariness with which they watched him as he left told him exactly how far short of the mark he’d fallen.

dan

i need you

Bo was annoyed beyond his ability to express.  He'd done everything he could to protect the man, but the Swede had gone and fucked everything up by taking matters into his own hands and getting himself killed. Without an experienced professional to lead the way, how were they going to salvage what was left of the colony?  It wasn’t like these things came with an assembly manual.  

Bo’s raging emotions told Dan everything he needed to know by the time he caught up to his partner.  “So who’s in charge now?” he asked, quietly.

“Fuck only knows,” Bo said, grimly. “I sure don’t.”

“You’d better figure it out quick,” Dan said, his voice little more than a whisper, “‘cause here come your boys.”

Bo’s eyes jerked in the direction Dan’s were pointing and saw a group of workers walking toward them.

fuck

fuck

fuck

“Calm down,” Dan said, quietly.  “Nothing has changed.”

Two dozen work boots shuffled to a halt in a rough semicircle, with Bo at the center.  A thin, work-worn man whose nose looked too large for his face was the first to speak. “What’s first, boss?”  

“Why are you looking at me?” Bo shot back. “I’m not your boss.”

“Whatever.” The man shrugged and handed the varius a clipboard filled with manifests as if he hadn’t heard a word Bo had said. “You’ll need this.”

Bo took the clipboard, then cursed the impulse that made him take whatever someone handed to him.

!I do not want the fucking job!

he railed at Dan.

Dan blinked in surprise, momentarily stunned at the vehemence of his partner’s reaction.  “Hold on for a minute, guys,” he said, to the gathering group of men and women. He took Bo’s elbow and gently led him away to a patch of shade under the shuttle’s tailfins.

Without a word, he dug into his belt pouch and retrieved the last of the calorie-dense food bars he’d brought with them. Whenever he refilled his supply he rarely looked at the flavor. He didn’t really care because he wasn’t going to be the one eating them.  He had learned early on that Bo was a real bear when his blood sugar levels dropped, and feeding the battle-varius was far less trouble than fighting him.  With a well-hidden grimace he saw that the one he held in his hand was the liver-flavored variety.  The packaging promised that it was a favorite of canine varii across the quadrant, and Bo had yet to disagree.  To Dan they smelled like rat poop. “Here,” he said quietly, trying to hand the bar to Bo. “Eat.”

“I’m not hungry!” Bo snapped, petulantly.  He refused to look at what Dan was holding, preferring instead to cross his arms in front of his chest and look grumpy.  

Dan sighed. “Sorry. It was a bad idea.”  He surreptitiously tore off a corner of the wrapper and put it back in its hiding place, but didn’t seal his belt pouch shut.  He stood next to Bo, looked off into the distance and put his knuckle to his mouth, then quietly worked his tongue around his mouth in the barest suggestion that perhaps he’d just finished eating something which needed to be removed from his teeth.   

After a moment, Bo’s mouth began to water. “What flavor was it?” he asked.  “I don’t want it,” he added, “I’m just curious.”

Dan shrugged. “I don’t know.” He stared into his belt pouch as if he’d forgotten all about the snack. “Here,” he said, casually handing the bar to his partner. “See for yourself.”

Bo read the packaging and sighed. “Fine.” He unwrapped the bar and stuffed the whole thing into his mouth as if he were doing Dan a huge favor.  Bo drank down the liter of water that Dan handed him, then sighed resignedly.  “Fine,” he said again, after the bottle was empty,  “but I still don’t want anything to do with this.”

“The men need someone strong to lead them and they’ve picked you to do it.”  Dan took Bo’s hands in his own, squeezing them gently.  He knew that Bo felt the unwelcome yoke of responsibility settle onto his shoulders, and he sought to reassure him. “You can do it, Bo.  I know you better than anyone else, and I know you can.”

The big morph felt the power of Dan’s conviction through the link, but even so he wasn’t sure that Dan’s confidence wasn’t misplaced. “I know I can do it,” Bo argued,  “but I don’t want to.”

?and what if I fall on my face?

Dan shrugged. “If someone else better qualified comes along, we’ll just put him in charge and we’ll go back to being workers.”

Bo sighed tiredly, and quoted one of the few lines of scripture he remembered from his grandmother. “Oh, Lord, let this cup pass from me.”

Dan raised an eyebrow at the sentiment.  “If that didn’t work for the son of God, I’m afraid your chances won’t be much better."

For an instant, Bo looked resigned.  He wadded up the wrapper of the energy bar and tossed it into the weeds.   

“Stop that.” Dan bent, picked up the silvery wrapper and put it in his pocket.

“What?” Bo protested. “It’ll dissolve the next time it rains.”

“No, you’ll dissolve!” Grinning, Dan shoved two stiffened fingers under Bo’s arm and wiggled them back and forth until his partner squirmed

“Stop it!” Bo commanded, between chuffs of laughter. “That doesn’t even make any sense!”

“I know,” Dan said, feeling pleased that Bo was back on track.  “But it made you laugh.”

“Yeah, yeah…” Still tired but feeling better, Bo gave Dan an affectionate hug and did his best to shake off the doldrums that were attempting to overcome him.  He released his partner, clapped his hands together and threw himself into the role.  “Well, if you’re going to do it, do it right.  Where’s my clipboard?”

"Good man," Dan encouraged, handing Bo the brown plastic board jammed with wrinkled computer printouts. “Go get ‘em, Tiger!  You need any help?”

“Not right now.” Bo answered, as he turned to walk back to the construction crew. “Why don’t you go help Victus get a good count on people, and make sure they don’t wander off until I can tell them what’s going on?  Make sure he’s alright, while you’re at it.” The varius trudged back to where the crew - his crew - waited patiently for him.

Thirty minutes later Bo felt as if he had a grip on their situation, and it seemed like it might not be as bad as he’d feared.

Leaving the construction crew to hammer out a basic timeline, Bo walked back to the stand of trees shading the passengers.  Most of them had shaken off the effects of the tranquilizers by this point, and many were growing restless.  “You have your count yet?” he asked Victus.

“Almost,” the Kenzine answered. “Why don’t you go ahead and I’ll finish up while you talk.”

Bo nodded and looked around for some platform to speak from.  Nothing save for the water urns and a fragile table had been unloaded yet, and he didn’t think the dinky little card table would bear up under his weight. He spied the low-hanging branches of a healthy looking tree and decided that that might be good enough. He pulled himself up, yanked loose a few scraggly twigs that threatened to block his vision, and settled himself on the thigh-thick branch.  

He cupped his hands to his mouth and bellowed out in the voice which was used to overpowering the noise of a fifty-ton metal press. “Can I have your attention please?”  he asked, for the second time in as many days.  This time, people quieted down quickly and turned expectant faces towards him.  Damn, Bo thought, reading their expressions, This just might work.

“The construction crew seems to be optimistic about our chances of setting up the town, even though a lot of the building materials didn’t make it down.”

A silver haired man shouted out, not ten feet from Bo. “Why should we meddle with the colony?” he said, belligerently. “They’ll send a rescue shuttle for us as soon as we don’t show up at the next port.”

Bo shook his head slowly. “I’m afraid that’s not going to happen.” He had to wait for a few moments for the chatter to die down, but eventually it again grew quiet enough for him to explain. “We damaged the jump gate on the way out, and that’s not going to be easy or quick to fix. Keep in mind that it takes two or three years to build a gate, and that’s after pre-assembling it on Earth. It may well be months if not years before they can get to us.”

‘How do you know?” the same man demanded. “What makes you such an expert?”

“I spent six years of my life building the damned things,” Bo growled. “They’re extraordinarily complicated machines, and there are only a handful of people who really understand how they work.”

“Are you one of those people?” a woman asked, hopefully.

Bo didn’t sugar-coat it. “Nope. I know how to put them together, but I have no idea what makes them tick.”

She looked so sad that Bo almost wanted to give her a hug.  Almost.  From her, his eyes traveled to the crowd surrounding them, scanning faces one by one. “I’m sorry,” he said, trying his best to make eye contact with each of them, “But there are no crewmembers left.  No passengers survived the accident. Like it or not, we’re all colonists now, and we’ve got to work like nobody is coming to get us, because…” he shook his head sadly, “they might not. Or at the very least, it’s going to be a mighty long time before they get here.

He visibly brightened. “Guys!  This is not the end of the world, okay?  I know you weren’t expecting this to happen, but you’ve got the chance to make this an incredible adventure!  Fifty years from now, the schools on this world will tell stories in history class about what we accomplish over the next few years.”

As soon as it had come, the excitement left his face.  “Or, they could be telling the story about how the first round of colonists all died because they couldn’t pull it together and work as a team. “  He shrugged, indifferently. “It’s up to you.  But personally,” his grin returned, “I think it’s a lot more fun to help build something than it is to sit on your ass and wait for someone else to do it for you.  And frankly,” he looked around them at the rolling kilometers of unspoiled land, “it’s not like you’re going to be busy doing anything else, so why not?”

Bo stood on the tree branch and dusted off the back of his shorts.  “We’ll have work assignments ready tomorrow morning, so rest up as much as you can, and try to get a good night’s sleep tonight.  The faster we can get some basic things taken care of, the faster we can all be comfortable inside shelters.”

”How long will that take?” a woman cried out from the edge of the crowd. Others began muttering among themselves.

Bo turned and gave her his full attention, but spoke loudly enough that everyone could hear him. “First off, please don’t yell at me. I’m not a politician and this isn’t a press conference.  If you have something to ask or say, just raise your hand and be recognized so this doesn’t turn into a mob.”

Chastised, the woman raised her hand and repeated her question.

“Thank you!” Bo gave her a genuine smile and the nervous people around the woman stilled.  “We think we can have some sort of sun shade pulled over the common area surrounded by the ships by nightfall.  I think that’s about six or seven hours from now, so if you’re really light skinned, you’ll want to stay up here under the trees for a while.   After that, it might take a few days to start getting people indoors.”

He clapped his hands to get everyone’s attention. “That’s about it for now. If anyone has had any construction experience, even if it was only swinging a hammer, please join us in shuttle three.  There’s something for everyone to do, but the people who help us plan are going to have the pick of the work assignments.”

Perhaps not surprisingly, very few people seemed to be separating themselves from the crowd to volunteer, and most of those who did were varii.  “I’ll be back in an hour or so and let you know what’s going on.“

He ignored the raised hands of others who had questions or comments and strode purposefully towards shuttle number one.  Once inside the bay he addressed the assembled construction crew. “Anyone not here who should be?” he asked.

A burly man who would have looked quite at home in a backwoods cabin spoke first. “Seth ain’t here – he hit the head a few minutes ago.”  Bo did a quick head count and came up with twenty-four, the missing man making twenty-five.  

Bo nodded and waited until a red-haired man came in, buckling his belt.  “You must be Seth,” he commented.  “Bo Taylor”, he said, holding out his hand. Seth took Bo’s large handpaw in his own hand and shook it with vigor.  “What do you do best, Seth?”

“I set foundations and plumbing.”  

Bo made careful notations on his clipboard and moved to the next person. One by one, he introduced himself to the men he hadn’t already met during the evacuation.  Those he already knew he greeted warmly by name, and he was rewarded with smiles and nods in return.  So far, so good, he thought to himself. When he knew them all by name he eased himself onto the edge of a packing crate and began to talk.  “Thanks for coming, guys.  We need to hash some things out.  First off, you all heard what each other does.  How many disciplines are missing?  What skills are lost?”

The men were silent for a moment, then one spoke up uncertainly. "Grading and leveling?"  Ice broken, another said, "What about roofing?  Can anyone do roofing?"

A man Bo recognized from the evacuation named David spoke up. "It's not my primary, but I've done it before." They went on like that for ten minutes or so until they had hashed out their duties and areas of expertise to Bo's satisfaction.  If this group of twenty-five veteran construction workers didn't think they were missing any important skills, they would probably be okay.

"All right then," Bo took control of the discussion. "You’re going to be my supervisors. If there’s a dispute over who’s in charge of what, don’t waste time arguing. Come see me and we’ll figure it out.”

"We had to ditch a lot of machinery and some valuable tools probably got left behind in the rush, so we'll have to do some of the work by hand.  Fortunately,” he said, inclining his head toward the passengers, “we’ve got a pretty big work force out there to take up the slack. Feel free to recruit as many of them as you need and train them up.”

He relaxed a bit and casually rested his elbows on his knees. “But remember that most of them haven’t ever had to do any real work, so take it easy on them until they get their sea legs. They’re all the help we’re going to get, so don’t kill them on the first day, okay?”

Bo held up the clipboard containing the manifests, the written record of what each shuttle’s cargo pod had contained before they’d tossed so much of it out the door.  “We also had to dump a bunch of materials, and that’s going to make some of your jobs harder. Let’s just acknowledge that now and not waste time bitching about it when we come up short. Either find another way to get the job done, or figure out how to do without.  If you’re going to scavenge a part from another container to get a job done, let me know about it first. If someone uses all the toilets in the rec hall and there aren’t any left for the dorms, those people out there aren’t going to let us live it down.”

The men chuckled understandingly, and ever so slightly Bo felt the tight knot of tension in his chest loosen.

relax

Dan reminded him, in the back of his head.

you are not making any big decisions

you are just helping them get organized

Bo nodded. “Right….Okay, the first thing we need is a sun shelter big enough for five hundred people.  Suggestions?"

An olive-skinned woman of Mediterranean descent spoke first.  "The shuttle I came down in had a big blue canvas tarp in it."

"Which ship?" Bo asked, picking up the clipboard with the manifests on it.

"Four," she answered, and Bo began flipping pages.  He found the sheet he was looking for and traced his finger down to the description.

"Eighty meters by sixty.  Holy cow!  What on Earth would they use a tarp that big for?"

"It's temporary ground cover to prevent erosion while we're in construction, a tired voice said from the middle of the group.  Bo singled out the speaker, and saw that it was Benny, one of the colony’s general carpenters.  He had worked longer and harder than most when they were reconfiguring the shuttles, and Bo couldn't remember him taking a break any time in the past twenty-four hours.  Bo nodded, and Benny continued. "Then it was supposed to be broken up and used pretty much like we're going to use it - as a sun barrier for the outdoor pavilions.”

Bo began flipping through the manifests, then gave up and handed each of the closest workers a package showing the contents of one ship.  “It’s going to take forever if I try to do this by myself.  See if there’s anything like braided steel cable we can use to string the tarp between the ships.”

Quickly they found high tension cable in cargo bay four that would do the job nicely. “Can we attach it to the belaying hooks on the ships?” Bo asked. “I don’t want to attach anything to the shuttles permanently if we don’t absolutely have to.”

“Sure,” said Jerry, the structural engineer of the group. “Those hooks are good for around ten thousand kilos of pull strength each.  I don’t think we’ll have any problem.”

Nona, a heavy-set woman in charge of agricultural machinery, was curious.  “With a sheet that large, will the wind be a problem?”

Bo thought for a moment. “I have no idea.  Anyone?”

“As long as it’s kept fairly tight and level, it won’t catch too much air,” Benny offered. “But if it begins to sag it’ll end up acting like a sail and beat itself to death.  I think we can manage it.”

“Remember, guys,” Bo advised, “don’t cut any of this stuff up if you can help it.  We’ve still got to use it for its original purpose after we’re through with it.”

They talked about the best way to put up semi-permanent shelters with the materials they had, and everyone had something valuable to contribute.  When any member of the team seemed hesitant to join in, Bo nudged them by soliciting their input.  Even the least experienced of them had something to contribute, even if it was only a different perspective on a problem.

After an hour of problem solving they settled on an ambitious but realistic schedule and began to move towards the door, ready to go to work.  Watching them leave, Bo thought of one more thing. “And for the love of God, please be careful!” he called after them. “We can replace a tool or learn to do without, but we can’t do without you!”

His crew waved in casual acknowledgement and filed out the door.  Bo breathed a sigh of relief and took a moment to gather his thoughts before following them out to the waiting crowd.

“Well, that went better than expected,” Bo sighed as he sat down on a plastic crate and gratefully accepted the metal tray that Dan offered him. “Ooh, what have we here?“ he exclaimed, eagerly examining the contents of the tray as Dan sat down across from him, the same way they had eaten so many lunches on their work breaks back on Earth.  He looked substantially less eager after noting the total lack of animal protein on his plate.  “Shit on a shingle, minus the shingle.”  He looked up at Dan ruefully. “I guess they were all out of ribeyes, huh?”

Dan favored him with a withering glare, relenting when Bo refused to wither.  “Any guess as to where sixty percent of the emergency rations were stored?”

“Shuttle twelve,” Bo guessed, with a rueful shake of his head.  That seemed to be the recurring theme as they looked through the manifests. The final pieces to any puzzle were undoubtedly decorating the night sky along with the remains of shuttles eleven or twelve.

“So how much did we lose, really?” Dan asked, pushing his fork through the brown lump on his plate. “That seems to be what we’re running across, over and over again.  Why isn’t anything we need ever stored on one damned shuttle?”

“There’s usually an AI program behind the packing diagram.  It favors packing density over everything else, including the possible loss of a shuttle or two. If you think it’s bad now, wait until we start to assemble the machinery.  Eighty percent of a tractor won’t get a field plowed. We need all of the pieces to make it work.”

Dan thought he understood. “So the bottom line is that if we want to build a tractor, it might take parts from several different machines to do it.”

“Right,” Bo agreed.  “Instead of three tractors, we’re going to end up with one working tractor and a bunch of spare parts.” His ears lay back in frustration. “One of the big things we lost was one of the crates of bolts that holds together the framework of the main dorm.  What good does it do to have a bunch of pillars and rafters when we can’t bolt the damned thing together?”  

He shoved a large piece of dry, textured protein into his mouth and chewed determinedly.  “We don’t even know for certain what we have anymore.  One of the first things we need to do is get the cargo bays unloaded and spread out so we can know what we have to work with.”  He shot a glance at Dan. “You want to help with that?”

Dan demurred. “I will, as soon as we get the food situation figured out. I’ve been busy too, you know!” he said, looking proud of himself. “I’ve been working to figure out what food we have, how fast we’re burning through it and how long it has to last before the first crops come in.”

“How did you get involved in that?” Bo asked, surprised.

Dan shrugged. “I started getting people organized while you were in talking to the construction crews.  You didn’t think I’d sit on my butt and let you have all the fun, did you?”

Bo shoved a fork full of brown ration into his mouth and grimaced at the lack of taste.

“As delicious as that is, we’re obviously going to have to start rationing the portions,” Dan sighed. “I know it’s no gourmet dinner, but I’m not going to enjoy going to bed hungry every night.”

Bo looked alarmed. “I thought we had plenty of rations?”

“For the construction team, sure,” Dan said, “but we’ve got ten times that many mouths to feed now.”

The next time Bo looked down at his plate the food didn’t look any more appetizing, but he appreciated it more. “How are they taking it?”

“They don’t know yet,” Dan admitted. “I got the numbers right before we met.”

“What did the doc say?”

Dan sighed, unhappily.  “Shuttle twelve. She insisted on medicating everyone personally instead of riding down with the supplies, so now she’s dead too.”

“Oh, fuck,” Bo moaned.  “Was anyone important not on shuttle twelve? I didn’t particularly like the woman, but we needed her.”

“No shit. We’ve got a medic,” Dan said, “and a nutritionist made it down, but she hasn’t worked in thirty years.  Between her and the botanist, who’s really more of a technician, we’ll have to work around it.  

He showed Bo a paper that was covered in his messy scribbles. “We drew up a chart based on age, current weight, work detail, overall health, stuff like that. If someone doesn’t want to work they’ll still get enough food to keep them alive, but they’re going to get skinny after a while.  The good news is, the hardest workers won’t go hungry.”  He shrugged. “We can’t really do better than that, at least until the first crops start to come in.”

“How long is that going to be?” Bo asked, sounding worried at the thought that the supply chain supplying his nearly constant snacking might be threatened.

“The plant people are already poking through the crates, looking for the hydroponic equipment.  That’s the really neat part,” he said, sounding more enthusiastic than Bo expected. Dan was all-in where technology was concerned, but plants had never exactly thrilled him.  His animation piqued Bo’s interest.

“Our survival food stock is based on a mutated strain of duckweed,” he explained. “All they have to do is dump a few kilos of dormant plants into a big bucket of water and stick it in the sunlight. It grows so fast that in just a week or two, that single kilo of seed stock is going to be feeding all of us.”

Bo wasn’t nearly as excited. “Weeds?  That sounds delicious.”

Dan punched him on the shoulder. “It’s not going to be so bad.  After a few days they can start feeding some of the crop into a food processor and we can start saving our emergency rations.”

“It’s still not a steak,” Bo groused, “but I guess it’s better than nothing.  Your plan isn’t going to go over well with the softies out there.”

“Yeah,” Dan said, after a moment’s silence, “but it may also be the stick we need to get these people to take us seriously and stop treating this like a ruined vacation.”

“A carrot,” Bo corrected.  “Don’t even think of it as a stick, because it’s not punishment.  No amount of privilege is going to keep your belly from growling, but hard work will.” At this, he grinned. “Is it wrong that I’m actually looking forward to seeing some of them confront the new reality?”

“Yes,” Dan answered, but he had to admit that he shared Bo’s amusement.

“So when do I get my steak?”

“Damn, you’re persistent. I hope you don’t spend the next two or three years bitching and moaning about not having real meat, because that’s about how long it’s going to take. We need to make at least three generations before we can start eating them, but within six months we should have all the milk and cheese you want.”

“Great,” Bo said, obviously unimpressed. “That does me a lot of good.”  As much as he adored cheese of all types, his intolerance of lactose was legendary. “But back to the meat - why so long?  Half of the animals are going to be male, and we just need one of those to service an unlimited number of females.”

“That’s not the way it works,” Dan explained. “Surprise! Except for one or two emergency males in the first batch of each species, everything we’ll raise will be female for the first few generations.  Males take up more resources but they’re slower to mature and can’t be used for milk or eggs, so until we get three or four generations under our belt we’ll only raise females. And you don’t eat your milk cows,” he reminded his husband. “When we finally have enough to go around, they’ll start growing the male embryos and breed them the old fashioned way from then on.  And we’ll feed all of the farm animals with…” he paused dramatically, “duckweed!”

“It’s the circle of life!” Bo supplied. “Powered by duckweed!”  He tried to sound as enthusiastic as his husband, but the thought of all the red meat he wasn’t eating made his stomach growl in protest.  The sight of the unappetizing lumps of pseudo-food remaining on his plate made him vaguely nauseous.  Discouraged, he tossed his fork onto his tray and set it on the ground beside him. “I’m a carnivore, damn it,” he grumbled. “And this stuff is disgusting.”

Dan spoke quietly so nobody near them could hear. “You’re the functional leader of this colony right now, and it’s important that you act like you don’t mind eating reconstituted vegetable protein. If you complain, they’ll complain too.  Besides,” he continued, “If you don’t keep eating, you’ll get thin and weak.”

“Perish the thought,” Bo grumbled quietly, but he picked up his plate and mechanically began to shovel down the vile parody of food.

Hoisting himself to his feet, Dan leaned over to snuggle Bo’s furry ear, then whisper into it, “Thanks for eating that.   You’ll need your strength tonight.” Bo instantly stopped moving and gave Dan his full attention.  “Tonight I’m going to find somewhere secluded, and I’m gonna love on you ’til you howl at the moon,” he promised, and felt Bo’s ears swivel up at full attention.

“Speaking of which,” he continued, “how do you want to handle this?  Us, I mean?”

“What is there to handle?” Bo asked, “We’re married, you’re the man I love, and I’m not going to deny you.”

“You mean, if we don’t act like anything’s out of the ordinary, neither will they?”

“Well, yeah,” Bo said, “If a bunch of construction workers don’t mind a furry being their boss, surely there can’t be that many people who’ll object to our being partnered.  And what’s the worst that would happen?  They’ll fire me as project manager?” He chuckled ironically. “I don’t want the job anyway.”

“Don’t call yourself that,” Dan said, looking around for anyone who might have overheard.”

“What’s wrong with being a project manager?”

“A ‘furry,’” Dan hissed. “Sapiens don’t use that kind of language anymore, and you shouldn’t either.”  He tried to relax, rolling the tension out of his shoulders. “This is our big chance to start over on a lot of social issues, and it shouldn’t matter if you’re a varius, or a belter-”

“You mean a Non-G,” Bo interrupted him. “That’s what they prefer now.”

“I must have missed that memo,” Dan said, ruefully. “This may be the first time in human history that so many people from so many different walks of life and so many backgrounds have been thrown together with this much technology backing us up to start a new society.  We’re all on the same foot today, and nobody has the advantages of wealth or status to fall back on.  We’re all equal here, we’re all reasonably healthy and intelligent, so what can we do with that? How far can we run before we trip over our own dicks again?”

“My little Shakespeare!” Bo said, delightedly.  The comment earned him a solid punch on the arm. “Ow!” he complained, rubbing his shoulder as if Dan had done the slightest bit of damage. “Why you gotta be so punchy?”

Dan ignored his theatrics completely. “Think how good our new home will be if we build it on mutual respect instead of fear and greed.” Raised voices drew his attention to the ration station, where an oversized gentleman was arguing to get a second pouch of rations. “Maybe we can actually do a halfway decent job of it, this time.”