I would like to thank Sable Cold for taking on the impressive job of being the Beta Reader for this book. As always reviews are welcome. If you find this is easier to read and follow. Thank Sable Cold and all of his hard work
I do not own Battlestar Galactica or have any connection with them, other than I have seen the shows. And it was a long time ago. I also do not own or have input into the game of Rifts. I don't even play the game. But I do own copies of some of the books, and I have used them for this story.
Chapter 29: A Few New Dots
Earth still Mid March 2019
Drake White was working on his laptop and reviewing some of the handwritten notes he had made during the day. He had spent all day walking around all of the inhabited buildings on the island that he could easily find. He was a biologist by trade, with a focus on animals but he could do and was comfortable doing a lot of other tasks in the field. Those were two of the reasons that he was on this island.
Currently he was trying to figure out about the different animals he had heard about. He was surprised that the Colonials had been able to save any of them in their Exodus. Or what they might have found in their years of traveling through space before they found Earth. So far, he had found them raising some chickens and they had at least a few canines around. At least, according to the rumors that he had been hearing from the people he talked to. After talking to a few more people he found out that they were mostly still in the fleet and on New Kobol along with the goats and sheep.
He had warned everyone he had talked to to keep all of the Colonial bloodlines separated from the local animals at all costs. He had been told that the locals who had lived on these islands before the Colonials showed up had let out, or allowed to escape, several animals over the years they had lived here. The Colonials were finding many types of animals, and they had taken in many of the less wild ones over the past year. He wanted to let them know that crossbreeding might cause some bad genetics to be passed onto their indigenous animals. He told them that the damage could happen faster then they might think was possible.
Drake White was not your normal Ph D, and he had not taken the usual path to get those honored letters hung after his name. He had been born and raised outside of a very rural small town near the Arkansas and Missouri state lines. He had been one of the smartest kids all the way through High School, and he had suffered the hard knocks for being known for being so smart. He had gotten the last laugh when he was able to win a Tyson food scholarship to the University of Arkansas. Even with the scholarship though, his school debts had climbed to ever higher and higher levels.
He was well on his way to a finished Master's degree in higher animal biology when the money ran out and his student loan debts closed in to the level of, "you have got to be kidding me." He did what most kids from his part of the world did when they wanted to get out and off the farm or needed money. He joined the military on a break between classes and the odd jobs he had been doing. Those parts of the United States had a lower population density but somehow still supplied more warm bodies than the bigger cities. They also won a higher percentage of combat awards than their big city brethren from around the country.
He did a total of six years in US Army uniform. The four years of his first contract were so that the Army would pay off his backlog of school loans for him. The next, and shorter two-year contract was to put as much money as he could away in the bank. That was going to pay the everyday bills and make sure he was able to use the GI Bill to the fullest extent that he could for as many classes as he could.
In his time in the military he had been very busy. He had done one tour in the kitty litter box, two tours in the rock pile, as well as some classes in-between. His time in the service had let him see different areas of the world not only for free but also while getting a paycheck. It had also showed him that he could pick up local languages very quickly. He had also learned a few other tricks about living away from the normal First and Second world nation. After his second contract was up, he knew what he wanted to do with the rest of his life.
He returned to college and finished the rest of his required load at the top of his class. He changed his focus to look more on the genetic drift of isolated animal populations from around the world. He did his internship in Greece, taking samples of some species of animals, then go around comparing those samples to like animals on a hundred different islands. Then he did the same thing to another hundred different locations, this time on the mainland of what most people called the old country.
After completing his internship, he went around the world a few dozen more times, just in a different uniform. His latest job had been in Northern Arkansas at a large cat refuge for the last year, working for the San Diego Zoo. He was trying to track DNA issues that might come up in the breeding of large cats for pets. The people paying the bills wanted to know what they might be passing along to normal zoo animals who might not have the staff to catch something like that early enough. If there were issues in the zoo, it would not take long to jump to different and a growing number of Zoos.
This refuge was one of the largest of its kind in the nation. It was specialized in taking in those types of animals off the hands of those too dumb to know that having a Mountain lion or Siberian Tiger as a pet, well, that might not be such a great idea after all. It was amazing what happens when someone realizes that a three hundred pound cat is wanting more than a can of tuna for dinner and he might be on the menu.
When the San Diego Zoo found out about the Colonials starting to open themselves up to academics, they looked at who might be the best to send from the full roster of the organization's entire employee database. It was not a short list, and the bios on each person were tens of pages long or more. A few were thirty pages long and were as hollow as a church bell. Drake's boss had him flying back to California so fast that his two undergrad assistants had to send his work back to the Zoo themselves, and that was still days later. As for what happened to all of that data, it would sit in the main data library unfinished for almost two full years.
Drake was not picked for this job because he was the best in the world in his field of work. He was only considered number nine in the US for his job set and degrees. His world ranking was quite a bit lower than that number. Why was he chosen and rushed back to the zoo's main campus? It was because he was well known for two things which might be very useful in this new opportunity. It was not like the zoo had a perfect playbook for something like this, but they did have a good idea on where to start.
One of the skills that he was known for was that he could get locals to like him and support him without spending a boatload of money. The second skill he was known for was that he had the smallest support footprint that the Zoo had ever needed to send out into the field for someone in the last thirty years. It did not matter if the site was subarctic, or in the lowest and hottest desert. He could pack in everything that he needed for a week of field work all on his own back. The kicker and the last reason of why he was picked was because he spoke Greek, Italian, and had a strong base of Latin already. All three languages would be very useful according to all the reports that the leadership of the zoo could find on short notice.
Drake had been rushed the whole way to meet a condensed timeline. When he landed back in San Diego, he was given only few days to get ready before he would be gone again for an extended period of time. He barely had time to think or do anything else. When he boarded the Spearhead class ship in Tahiti, he was carrying everything he thought he might need. He only had three bags in total, and they would not have been called light by anyone in the TSA or the USPS. Even with all of the rushing, he had missed the first batch of academics to go to the island.
That did not mean that he did not have a huge smile on his face as he made his way up the gangplank. He had an old army duffel bag on his back, a large Alice pack with metal frame across his chest, and an overloaded medium sized hiking pack thrown over one arm. His only free hand held his favorite ironwood walking stick, given to him a long time ago by an old army buddy. In all, he was packing a little over one hundred and thirty pounds of stuff, spread over his normal two hundred and five pound body frame. He could carry this load for only a few miles a day. After that, it would get more uncomfortable every quarter mile or so he had to hump those overloaded bags. He was not as young as he used to be, but he had been to this dance before. It was not that long ago since he last had to do this type of humping.
The duffel bag held everything he would need to set up his base camp and a few other odds and ends to make life worth living. He had looked up what he could on the internet while he was traveling, and then asked a few people he had time to see or call on the phone who had been to these islands for vacations. He used all of these information sources to help plan out his equipment for the long list of items his boss wanted him to check out. There was no way that he could complete all of the listed data points on that list, not if he had a month to do the work. If he had a full team with transportation and power generation, that was another matter but for now, it was a solid no.
The duffel had a medium weight military sleeping bag system that had waterproof and windproof outer layers as standard. It also held his air pillow and two of the old standby OD green wool blankets. The blankets were for two reasons. One, if he was near the equator when the sun went down, it could get very cool late at night after a hot day of beating sun and humidity. The other use was that they could act as a pair of thin but opaque walls.
On top of that fabric was his puncture resistant air mattress. This would lift him almost four inches off the dirt once he had filled the four airbladders using the lightweight handpump he had bought with it. On top of that mattress was a waterproof canvas collapsible bucket. This served to carry water and also had a showerhead affixed to its bottom. On top of the bucket were two complete changes of clothes. In the very top of the cylindrical bag and filling out wherever he could shove and wedge them in were six days of ration packs, not unlike the MRE's he had eaten during his army days. It was a lot to fit into that large canvas carry all. Then again, he had years of practice knowing what would fit and where to be able to best use its limited space.
The Alice pack had his quick popup tent, bug netting, and two twenty lumen solar lights. They were not unlike what could be obtained at a lawn care box store. Drake liked them because they were cheap, sturdy, and gave great light for almost eight solid hours. On top of that, extra sets of batteries were easy to come by in most parts of the world. He also had a small handheld and hand powered emergency LED flashlight along with two more days of MRE type meals. The rest of the pack was filled with any other equipment he thought he would need in the field.
There were things like wet wipes, waterproof resealeable bags, personal hygiene items, and a few sets of underclothes all in small waterproof bags. Along the sides of the tough fabric, against the pack's metal frame, was his sat phone, an extra charged battery for the phone and an extra battery for his laptop. Hanging off to one side of his old Alice pack was one of his most notable and identifiable items, an old and trusty folding e-tool attached to a side mount with metal clips. This was the signpost for those who were in the know that this person had been in the dirt before.
The hiking pack had his liquid camel pack, his work laptop in a watertight and airtight bag and a few items for trade. It also held his seven inch long multi tool, the holster for his beloved .45 ACP M1911, and the powerful weapon's three extra magazines, all loaded. The small hiking bag also had both of his machetes, and the super sharp High-Carbon Stainless Steel Bowie knife. It also held the most important item of all... soft bathroom paper.
The three bags all had hard metal locks and they were specially reinforced to keep cutters from opening them without having to go through the problem of dealing with the locks. That last modification to his bags he had made personally after a trip through a Costa Rican port. Then, someone had walked up behind him and cut an opening in the bottom of his hiking bag. That had given them access to the valuables inside, bypassing the locked top or sides. He had not even found out until he got back to the hotel. That was an experience he did not want to repeat, and so had made the changes as soon as he could.
Drake was the first of the academics to show up at his ride to the Colonial controlled island by a good margin of time. The crewmembers of the small cargo ship were still loading and tying down the cargo which was the primary reason for the run out of the harbor today. He had even beat the BBC news team's arrival by over a few hours. There was a very important reason for his early arrival, and one that he had run into many times in his travels around the world.
The only item that caused him any issues at customs inspections anywhere was the firearm. Tahiti had very strict weapons control laws. Fortunately the San Diego Zoo had already let the locals know what Drake was bringing and where he was going to be spending most of his time. This was not the first time Drake had taken his small sidearm with him on a Zoo job. It was agreed that since the person carrying the weapon was only going to be on their island for a day or two tops, they would look the other way. At least, until he had left their island. When he came back, it would be locked in a special shipping case and mailed back home.
No one knew how the Colonials would react to the weapon being carried by a noncitizen. The cargo ship's captain and purser did not have any issues with the weapon Drake was carrying. They had seen too much and heard more to make the threat of a single 100-year-old design such as the .45 ACP on their ship seem little more than small potatoes. He was just told to show and tell the Colonial inspectors about the weapon as soon as he could and before leaving the loading pier. The Captain of the M/V Spearhead had offered to lock the weapon away in the captain's safe if the Colonials did not allow him to keep it. He could pick it up at the shipping company's office when he passed by Tahiti on his return trip home.
When the armed Colonials landed on the twin hulled ship Drake pulled out his weapon, unloaded it and handed it over to the black clad inspectors. The two inspectors he had tracked down had no issues with it or any of the bladed implements he had. He made a mental note to see what an M58 was when he got the chance. The inspector thought that his 1911 looked a lot like that Colonial designed weapon. He was still wondering about the chuckling the two black clad inspectors had given his weapon. That was the limit of his issues with the weapon. The ease of being cleared to carry a firearm in a strange country had surprised him. The state he lived in would have given him a harder time than these aliens had.
Drake put the weapon back into his pack and then made his way to the exit ramp he had been told would be used. He could feel his heart starting to beat faster as he neared the gangplank stored on the side of the ship. He only needed to look out one of the nearby windows in the ship's sides to see the island he was about to work on get closer and closer. By the time that the ship had finished docking, and the offloading ramp opened, he was almost jumping up and down in excitement like a six-year-old on Christmas morning to start his work.
Drake had been able to carry all his stuff off the ship in one load. Just like he had carried it all onto the ship in the first place eleven hours before. He had been helping some other Ph D's, so he was not outside when the Press group left the small dock. After helping until his back started to hurt from the junk he was carrying off the vessel, he noticed that they still had a lot more stuff. Finally he decided he had helped enough and took his stuff off the dock near the ship and put them at the end of the pier. By then he was also quickly getting tired of dealing with his fellow academics, as they complained louder and louder about having to carry their own stuff.
Only two other researchers were ready to go when the convoy of large golf carts had pulled away from the pier to drop them off at their assigned home down the road. Drake and the other pair of researchers had enjoyed the slow drive through the green tunnel of a road on the nearly silent transport. They were just as surprised that they also were given a large house for their use as base camp. Drake was impressed with the field camp to be. It was a lot better living condition than he had planned on having access to.
The three people had started unpacking and setting up their sleeping areas in the large and empty house. It was only about a half mile to the pier, so he talked the others into walking back to the pier and helping unload again to help their future roommate. Each of the three had made two round trips between pier and home before deciding that the fools could carry the rest of their own items themselves. The now five in number academics who had all of their equipment moved from the dock into the camp spent the evening lying on the floor, passing jokes and ideas about how they were going to do whatever type of data collecting they needed to do.
By the time dark fully fell on the island, all of this group of academics were in the home that was to be the base camp for their mission to study the alien humans. It was not a pleasant experience for Drake when the number of people in the house doubled. At around midnight, Drake finally had enough of the drama building up in the house like a hot water heater with the safeties disabled. He moved his tent to the very nice front porch of the home. He did not even bother to tell anyone that he had moved.
It took him some time to tie up his bug netting in the open area of the deck. Soon it was fixed so that it covered one end of the large outside deck from ceiling to porch rails, down to the wood decking under his feet. He had inspected the decking during the daylight while on a break to catch his breath. Even then he had figured the twelve-room building would eventually prove too small for its assigned inhabitants. The deck's wooden boards were tight enough to keep bugs from going through the seams. That meant that he only put a single layer of bug netting down on the wooden deck to cover that avenue of threat from the small attackers.
He had his two-man sized two-second popup tent out and fully set up with literally a single hand flip. The solar water distiller was tied to the wooden rails so that the sun would hit it most of the next day. It took him longer to make the two trips back into the house's interior to get the rest of his things he had unpacked after sundown than it did to set up his new living area in the first place. He was relaxing with his yardlight making notes for the next day within a half hour after deciding to move out into the night air.
The first item on his list was to find a more rustic campsite as far away from the drama queens inside this house as he could get. He had a feeling that the people in the house were going to make good on the noise about complaining to the locals regarding their treatment to date. He hoped that if he was far enough away he would not be in the line of fire. He had seen it happen before and he would do whatever it would take not to be caught like that again.
Drake popped the battery out of the solar yard light, and it turned so dark that it took a while for his eyes to adjust enough to find his sleeping bag zipper. Just before he drifted off to sleep, he had a sad smile on his face.
Well D, you had always wanted to work with some of the most respected people in their fields. Next time be careful what you wish for. You might be unlucky enough to get it. He was asleep as soon as the thought flew through his mind.
A side benefit of Drake's new location was that as soon as the sun rose, he knew about it. The sunbeams drove daggers into his eyes, and he was awakened by God's own alarm clock. He knew that he was the first one out and about because the house was still quiet as a mouse inside. He did his morning hygiene and locked up some lose items around his sleeping area. He did not enter the building, and he did not need to. After a little food from his duffel bag under the bug net, he was ready to start his first full day on the island.
He had his hiking bag over one shoulder and was heading down the wide steps before the first person was moving around inside the house. He started walking back down the road that the golf carts had driven through the day before. Even with a smile on his face this early in the morning, it did not take him long to figure out that he was being followed. The tail or shadow was not trying to be subtle about what was going on. When Drake turned and made eye contact with the person following him, the tail waved a hand and smiled back at him. He almost looked bored at having to follow the visitor.
Drake had had shadows assigned to him before in many countries, and not all of them were considered third world locations. So Drake waved back and went about his work like it was just another day on the job. He scouted around the area and quickly found about four different places that might be good for him to come back to and set camp at in the future. His favorite spot was on the beach near the old restaurant.
He thought the restaurant might be open to him, but he did not check on that before he decided where to set up his camp. He also made stops around the different homes where he could hear animal sounds coming from. He would write out notes to pass to whoever was at the home. They were to ask to see the animals that they might have, and more importantly why he would like to see them. All of them, to his surprise, let him see the animals he had heard from a distance.
He was even able to get three unique blood samples from animals that he was told had come from offplanet. He did all of this by the time he was feeling the need to eat again. He could have eaten one of his field food packages that he was carrying around in his backpack. Instead he wanted to see how the items he had brought to trade would do with this new set of inhabitants. The sooner he knew that, the sooner that he would be able to work out the best way to use them. He found a nice shade tree with an incredible view to take a little break in from all the walking and working.
Drake's shadow came forward when he signaled to join him under a shade tree on the side of black topped road. Drake was looking up at the man that was fit and in some kind of uniform that Drake could not tell the history of. He almost dropped his note pad when the shadow spoke.
"Yes, Mister White? Is there a problem?" The words were in very good English, even it had an odd accent. He even had a slight smile on his face when he saw the shocked look on the older man's face.
Drake blinked a few times and fought to get his mental feet under him. He had no idea how long he was looking up at his shadow before he spoke. "Ahhhh. It is getting close to lunch time for me. Is there any place a guy like me can get a hot meal?" Drake tried to keep his tone as light as he could while he recovered from the shock.
Drake had no idea that the man he was talking to had been born on the same planet as he but in a different universe and a few hundred years in the future. He had spoken clearly and if not slowly, it was in a steady meter. The odd accent was caused by what the people who study those types of things called language drift. Simply put, over the centuries that separated this Earth from Rifts Earth, the speech of the latter's people had changed and evolved. More changes occurred over the years spent with the Colonials.
Bobbie looked down at who he had been told was a field academic that liked to study various animals. He had been told already that he had a low powered sidearm. He had already made a few mental notes to update this man's file. This academic moved like a fully trained woodlands scout, not some schoolteacher. This was a person to keep an eye on just in case things went sideways. Bobbie was also wondering if this stranger might be a threat.
With a smile on his face, Bobbie gave a reply to the visibly stunned man. "Yes, you passed what we just call The Restaurant back about a mile or so. It's open from dawn until they feel like shutting down for the night. A few times it has stayed opened all night, when a good party was going."
The two went to the place in question at what most people would have called a fast walk. It was the restaurant over by marina that Drake had seen before. The two men did not talk that much as they walked the rest of the way. No matter how much Drake tried, his shadow was not going to be chatty. It did not take Drake long before he could smell the food cooking somewhere nearby. He had no idea what it might be, but it smelled good to him.
When he walked into the semi-lit building, Drake could tell it was going to be a lot different from any other place he had been in while on the job. It looked like any other bar and restaurant combination you would see in the States. Only there were very fewer lights and there were no TV's playing the news or sports. It was a cross of modern and something from the Old West, or maybe a movie set. The one word that popped into his mind was different.
Drake looked around after his eyes adjusted from being in the bright sun of the outdoors. Drake's shadow walked beside him and took a seat at a table that would let him have a line of sight across the whole room. Drake decided that he would take a page from those old Westerns. He threw back his shoulders and walked up to the bar and took a seat like he owned the place. Not long after taking a seat at a very normal looking but well-worn stool, he waved a hand at a man at the other end of the bar.
He unpacked some of the items from his shoulder bag and put them on the bar for the proprietor to look at. Between the two, he was able to get across that he wanted to trade items for a hot meal. He also gave out a sample of some dried spices, though that did not go over as well as had hoped. The habanero chili sauce on one hand, that was a big hit with the bartender. The black pepper, not so much. The one item that went over the best with the local was what he normally used to bribe kids.
Drake always brought with him a dozen or so bars of Cadbury's high heat chocolate bars. The chocolate was not the best tasting in his opinion but it did have an advantage. One was that it did not need to be kept cool, staying solid even in the high heat areas he had worked in before. When he was in the military he had learned from some of the older NCO's that if you had candy, the local kids would keep you out of trouble or away from some of the more dangerous areas you might have to patrol. The local kids were smart, and they knew when things were going to go sideways.
The six-ounce foil wrapped candybar got him a free lunch with ice cold water, and even an ice-cold beer of all things. He was quite pleased with himself and the deal he had made with the restaurant/bar manager. When he was planning this trip he had not expected to find a perfectly cooked twelve ounce top cut steak with corn and green beans along with two drinks. If he had wanted wild pig he could have gotten an even larger meal. It sure beat the time he had to eat campfire cooked sloth for three days in a row. Besides, he was able to start moving away from using his note pad and using his tongue to communicate with. It was an odd mix of Greek, Latin and English with loanwords from something totally different. He always liked speaking as the locals did, so he kept pushing them to use what was natural for them.
After a nice lunch and a few refreshing cold drinks, Drake went about looking for more items to add to his small data catalog. Drake and his shadow left the bar and went back out into the bright and hot day. He made sure to list the local animals and put the ones the Colonials had brought on a separate list. He was so into the zone that it was only when he had problems seeing to take a blood sample from an unwilling chicken that he realized how late it was.
Drake spent almost an hour walking back to the large house that had been set aside for the researchers' use. It was full dark by the time he made it back. The day had gotten totally away from him. He was in a very good mood as he walked in the dark. He was doing work that he loved, and the locals were both very friendly and helpful at the same time. That was something that he had only run across a few times in his career, at least on the first day of expedition. Normally it took a few weeks to get even close to this kind of relationship built up with the locals.
He was on the front steps of the large home and he could already hear the drama playing out inside the house. Drake stopped moving and listened to what was going on inside the house before he opened the door. This turned out to be a very good thing for him to have done. From what he could understand from the bits and pieces of the voices coming through the thin door, the drama was centered around how badly the group inside were being treated by the locals. There was a pointed remark about being forced to carry their items and gear and having to walk around the whole island to get the data they wanted. Why should they have to walk? The Colonials had electric cars on the island so why couldn't they use a few? The voices then went on about how rudely they had been treated when they brought their justifiable complaints to the local leadership.
When the academics had started to complain about not having power and water, Drake noticed that the inside of the house was lit while it was very dark outside. Drake knew a few of those voices. One belonged to the group of four researchers that had been on the island three days longer than this new group had been. One of the other talkers was not a well-liked person, on both the island and the mainland, by most normal people. Drake thought that he was a backstabbing little shit even before he had to spend eleven hours on the same small ship.
Drake felt his temper rise as he ducked down a little so that he would not be seen through the glass covered windows. He went to the area he had set up as his living area the night before. It did not take him long to see the tear in the bug netting. He did a quick inventory and found both of his solar lights were missing, as were his two blankets and the air mattress. He did not want to turn on his flashlight to take a better look. He had a very good idea of what had happened, and why. This was not the first time someone had ransacked his camp, and he knew that it would not be the last time. That did not mean that he was going to let it slide.
Drake could not stand a thief. He did not notice but his right hand went to his hip and his fingers were tapping the butt of his pistol that had been riding there all day. When the fingernail started clicking on the metal. He looked down at the hand and the weapon it was resting on. It did not take long for him to understand what his subconscious wanted to do. The bad part was that he was not sure it was just his subconscious.
"If only it could be that simple," he thought to himself. He could feel the cold weapon's butt on his fingers.
Drake packed up his remaining items quickly and just as quickly packed them away in the available open areas in his three bags. He was not going to stay somewhere where he could not trust that someone else would not try to take his things while he was out working. He was working as fast, but also as carefully, as he could. Even If this had been the jungles, he would have moved his camp after an event like this. When you were stolen from, you had just become prey and prey had a tendency to die in the jungle. It did not matter if you were in the wilds of Africa or on the streets of New York City. Prey was prey, and predators were predators. It did not matter whether they had two legs or four. They all followed that Darwinian instinct that had been ingrained into their DNA through half a billion years of evolution.
Drake moved his bags down the short stairs before he entered the building. He would not leave his missing items here if he could help it. As soon as the door opened into the living room of the large home, he was greeted with what he had expected to see. The room was filled with light from both of his solar yard lights. He spent a few seconds scanning the room, letting his dark-adapted eyes adjust to the brightness in the room. He could feel the blood pumping in his arms and thumping in his ears. His body was priming itself for a confrontation and a battle.
He always kept one of the yard lights charged in case of emergency, so he very rarely used both of them at the same time. Now if he needed to work late, he would have to use a handheld light that he would have to keep recharging by spinning a short handle every five to seven minutes. That was going to take both extra energy and time added on top of what was needed to do his work. This was just another example of people not planning.
Ron Ekers Victor looked up from the half circle of Ph D's. He was acting like a head priest presiding over his coven of devout followers. Ron had to fight to keep the sneer off his face when his eyes were drawn to the opening door. He failed, badly. Ron did not like Drake. He considered him to be just another overpaid Veterinarian. After all, the rest of the people in the room were Ivy League graduates. Not one of them had come from some down south diploma mill.
"Ahh Drake, there you are. Where were you? We could have used your help moving the rest of the equipment off the pier to this shack." The tone that Ron used on Drake was not unlike what one normally used on a dog who had just crapped on the carpets.
Drake looked at the fat little jackwagon. He was sitting on his air mattress. The Ph D in astrophysics had folded the mattress in half so that he could sit on one part while the other half of the mattress was between his back and the wall like a no legged overstuffed air-filled recliner. Drake could hear the tone in the voice and he could see the expression of contempt from the former head of the IUA. Drake had a list of things he wanted to say but tried to defuse the situation a little. He forced himself to keep his hand away from his side arm. One part of his brain was telling him that even though it might feel good, blood would be hard to get out of the air mattress.
"I did help move some of your things up from the dock last night, if you recall. It's not my fault that you did not plan better. The posted notice I reviewed said that visitors are supposed to be self-supporting. Besides, the San Diego Zoo is paying me to do their work. Not to work for you or even help you do anything. So why should I help you? And speaking of your stuff? Why are you using my things without even taking the time to be asking me first?" Drake's southern accent got a lot heavier than it normally was with each passing word. It was a sure sign that he was about to lose his temper.
Ron was surprised by the outburst, and the tone of the question that had been shot back at him. No one talked to him like that. His blood pressure started to rise, and he felt his own anger start to build deep inside. The last time someone had done that to him was when he was leading in the debate to downgrade the American named planet Pluto to something he thought was more fitting in this modern world. He had not liked it then, and he did not like it any better today. He quickly decided he would put this vet in his place.
"You had extra, and you were not around. We took them so that they could be put it to better use. You know, for the betterment of everyone." He waves one hand around the room to show who he thought that betterment was for.
Drake made three very quick steps towards Ron. Each step sounded like sharp cracks of thunder. Then he reached down and grabbed a hand full of white shirt, and he pulled up the shorter but fatter and less fit man to his feet. The fat little man did not stay on his feet but for a split second. It was just long enough for Drake to get a better grip, and then he was off the ground and nose to nose with the larger, stronger, and way fitter man. Drake was letting his inner NCO come out all over the academic.
"By better use, you mean that it was for your use. Don't you, Ron? Tell me Ron, do you know what the Colonials do to thieves? It was posted on their web site for some time now. I bet that you did not even read it before you had your assistant pack your bags for you."
Drake was a large man, and he had not skipped the gym, at least not when he was in the field which was its own kind of gym entirely. Holding the man three inches in the air still was not easy, but he could do it for long enough to make his point to his target and the rest of the room. One of the best ways to get in the good graces of the locals was to help them do manual labor. He had helped do a few odd jobs today, and his muscles were still warmed up.
Ron was taken back and started sputtering, and it took him several tries to get his mouth to work properly. "Get your hand off me you overpaid vet! You have no right to touch me! I'm tenured! I will have your shit mucking job for this!"
Ron looked into the taller man's eyes and got the feeling that he had missed something, but he was having a hard time getting his all-powerful mind to work right, to figure out what he had missed. So he did what he had always done, run his mouth some more. That might not have been the best move on his part. It might have worked with people like him but Drake was not like him. At least, not in that regard.
"What do I care about these people's laws? I'm an English subject! You big oaf! Now put me down this instant, you overpaid vet!" His voice was rising in volume with each word. It was just too bad that it started to break after about the sixth word. Adding volume had worked for Ron before when he had pushed arguments.
Drake gave the fat man, whom he now had to use both hands to hold in the air, a bit of space. He let him down a little, but still only just enough so the toes of his shoes were just touching the wood floors. He slowly turned the man ninety degrees, so that Ron was away from Drake's air bed. The silvered haired man did a kind of tip toe and skip dance as he was forcibly moved against his will.
When Ron was where Drake wanted him he pulled him up close until he was nose to nose with the older man once more. He pitched his voice to carry to every corner of the room full of other academics.
"You're not home right now, you fat little toad of a man. You have to obey their laws. Now I want my things back! Now! I have a printed inventory, so if something is missing? I will know, and I will go talk to the locals! If they will bomb the FSB for messing with their computers, what do you think on their islands does a thief get?" Drake did not even notice that with every other word he said he tended shake the other man a little.
Drake took the risk and glanced around the room before he finished. "I will tell you. Its ten years hard labor. Did you all even read the story about the one scientist that made it out with them? His name was like Baltar or something. He was considered to be the smartest man among thirteen billion people. More to the point, he was like Hawking is to us. And they put him in a composting machine for the crimes he was convicted of. You all might want to keep that in mind if you want to start playing games with them. Or anyone else on this pair of islands, for that matter. Now where is my stuff!?"
The last part was a not a shout, more of a hiss that passed his lips when he said the word stuff. It was said a lot softer than the rest of what he said, but he did need and want the rest of the room to overhear it. The frightened look on Ron face was enough to reinforce the soft words and the stolen items appeared at Drake's feet like magic. Drake looked down at the grouping of items, and then let his fingers loosen just enough. Ron fell to the wood floor with a wet thud.
Now, with both of his hands free, Drake went to one knee to collect the items off of the floor. He was reaching to pick up one last thing when he saw movement out of the corner of his eye. With the slight movement, Drake's old training kicked in. He moved out of the way of the kicking foot only a second before it would have struck his ribs with bone breaking force. That is, if he had not moved just enough. He countered the power kick with an upper cut of his own. It started at the floor and ended at the kicker's nose, square on. Drake had no idea of who his attacker was. He was only reacting with muscle memory from a few too many combat zones.
Ron had not been expecting to get hit, much less in the face with such force. In all of the movies he had seen, if you kicked someone that was bent over they just stayed on the ground. Instead he went flying backwards when the large fist came out of nowhere to strike him. He did not land on the floor after the massive punch but he did put an impressive hole into both sides of the drywall partition. It was the exact size of his head and neck with just a bit of shoulder on one side of the thin wall that opened into a different room. He also did not slide down the wall. He just stayed stuck in the wall, with blood flowing down his rat face and soaking into the drywall around his profile. No one in the room went to go see if their would be leader was alive or not. They were just stunned. It had been decades since anyone had laid hands on any one of them.
Drake gave his hands a shake to get the blood back into his fingers and to see if he broke a knuckle from the strike. People would be surprised at how much damage could happen to the fist of the person who swung it and connected with another person's bone. He made sure he had all of his missing items one more time, then he left the stunned group of academics in the now very dark house. They were not his problem. He was thinking that it was just too bad that the local bugs did not carry anything really that bad. Maybe if they had a good case of Valley Fever, it would get their attention.
Drake used his hand cranked small light to repack the last items into his three bags as quickly as he could. He was just one man. Even if he was big, if they all decided to gang up on him they could overwhelm him very easily. He did not think that they would really do that. He just wanted to get away from a situation that should not have come up in the first place. He had had a feeling that something was going to happen that first night. He was kicking himself. He knew that he should have moved camp first thing in the morning and not gone out into the field. He was just so excited to be on the island where people had access to the stars.
He had just put the duffel bag on his back when he heard the first raised voice coming from the dark building. Drake looked toward the sound but did not slow his movement as he walked into the dark. He knew that it was a little over a mile's hike to the only place he knew was open and had lights. More importantly, it was also a place that he knew he could get a drink at. The drink he was wanting right about then, well let's just say that it was not water. And it did not matter how much ice it had in it this time. He would be drinking as if had spent the day in the Sahara.
What Drake did not know was that in the concealing dark of night, a pair of Colonials had been in the woodline watching the house. They had been there even before Drake had made it back to the house. They had made a report to the command center about the fight, and about Drake leaving the house. They also had reported on a few other odds and ends that they had observed after the last report, also in the dark.
After the reports had been sent up, money changed hands between the pair of watchers. They had seen the theft of the one working academic's items. A few side bets had been put on what would happen when the big guy found out. Drake had also won a few points in a lot of mental books just for standing up for himself. When word got out about the single punch and who he had punched halfway through a wall, well some of the drinks he would be having over the next few days were going to be paid for by others in secret.
Drake was walking down the dark hard top road with his small light in his off hand. It was not just to light the path, but also to let anyone driving down the road know he was there. After about ten minutes of walking, he thought he lucked out. He did not hear the electric motor, but one of the large golf carts did show up driving down the road towards him. He had seen the blue white LED head lamps first through the trees and large bushes. Before he knew it, the two-lane road he was walking down was fully illuminated. He was by then already on the side of the road, out of the traffic lane.
He had no idea that it, and the driver, had been sent just for him. So far, he was the most liked of the new group of visitors. He was rated right up there with some of the Aussies who had been at the cookout. The driver was one of the few young Rift Earthers who was thinking about making this version of Earth his long-term home. So he spoke very understandable English and as luck would have it he had been on duty tonight. Thus, he did not have to be dragged out of bed.
The large golf cart came to a stop and the young man called out. "Hey Prof! Where're you going? Are you looking for night animals now?" The tone was light but had an odd accent for someone speaking English.
Drake had no idea who the driver was, and he did not care. He was tired, and the long day of walking he had already put in did not help. The adrenaline had already worn off, and he did not want to think about that right now. He also did not want to talk about what happened back in the house he was supposed to be using as base camp.
"I was going over to have a hot dinner. Just don't feel like having a cold packaged meal tonight." Drake could hear the tiredness in his own voice.
The young man and had an odd little smile on his face, one that was hard for the other man to see in the dark and shadows cast by the three lights. "Me too! Do you want a ride? I'm going that way, and I have room."
Drake only needed half a second to decide. He took about half a minute to put his heavy load into the back seats of the electric cart. By the end of that short amount of time, his butt was in contact with the cart's white seat cushion and it was starting to move down the road again.
It was a short drive to the large building that had been made to cater to the tourists and marina crowds years before. Now it was supporting the Colonials and any visitors that might stop by. It was quickly turning into the center of most social activities that took place on the two islands. Drake dropped his bags right inside the main door and his driver went to a random table in the room. The room was over half full and the voices were like a pleasant hum in the background. The only thing that was missing was a piano being played or an old western on TV.
The woman working the bar for the final shift of the day was the night owl of her small little family group. She had heard about the sweet treat one of the new strangers had traded a meal for earlier in the day. Her husband had given her a small bite of the dark brown block, and it was magical. Her husband had described the man, so when the man entered the restaurant she knew it was him as soon as she saw him. The odd-looking weapon on his hip was what let her know that he was the person she was hoping to see again. When the man put two of the large bags on the floor and looked up, she patted the area in front of one barstool and put a glass of ice water in front of that spot when he started moving towards it. She kept her face still, not wanting to let this stranger know how glad she was to see him. Not only was she the night owl, she also was the mind behind the business.
When Drake looked around, he saw a woman standing behind the bar. It looked like she was looking something up on a notebook computer lying flat on the bar top. Overall there were about fifteen or twenty other people spread around the restaurant, but the bar was empty of people. Drake was a little let down that it was not the middle-aged man from lunch.
All of that changed when she made eye contact with him and pointed to an open seat. He had to smile a little when she put a glass of ice water near the seat. He still had a slight smile on his face as he brought his small bag over and took the offered seat. With a bigger smile on his face he unzipped one of the side pockets of his backpack. When he looked back up. The bartender was looking at him with a patient look on her face. It was not unlike the look his mother gave him whenever he was presenting his latest test result to her.
Drake started to speak slowly in the mixed language he had been quickly picking up. "I was here for lunch, and I was able to trade for a meal. Can we do that for another meal?" He had been to places that offered a stranger food even when they were short. Still, it was best not to abuse or assume anything with a new and strange culture.
The woman gave a lazy smile, and responded in halting but pretty clear English. "You have something to trade, like you did before?"
Drake gave his own smile and the two started to work out a deal. In the end, she let him have all he could eat and drink for another two of the chocolate bars. Drake had made certain that she was sure about the trade, making clear that he intended to have a few drinks tonight before he closed the deal. She just simply held out her hand for the pair of candy bars. With a smile on his face, he pulled the candy bars out of his pack. With the deal done, he went to a well worn round table near the bar. It was just far enough from the next occupied table that he could work without being interrupted too often.
Drake finished almost an exact repeat of his lunchtime meal. Except this time after his beer, something a lot different was brought out for him to drink. Something in the more leaded department than the beer had ever been. The operator had brought him a water glass filled about three fingers deep with the Colonial equivalent of moonshine. He gave the glass an odd look as it was brought out, but returned to his work thinking that it was going somewhere else.
Drake looked up from his work and gave the older woman a look when the glass was sat down near his forearm. She only waved to the glass and waited for the fun to begin with a mischievous grin on her face. Drake took a light sniff of the clear liquid, and his eyebrows shot up at its possible proof. Drake had drunk moonshine more than a few times before. He was from one of the southern states after all. If every second uncle did not have a still of some kind working in the summer, then they would know who had one and would buy some of the product coming from them in a backwood alley.
It just was their way of dodging the taxman more than anything. The funny part was that they would often end up paying more per pint than if they had bought an equal amount from a taxed liquor store. That did not matter to the people who bought the stuff. It was the thought of breaking the law that mattered more to them than the price they were paying in greenbacks.
Drake had done what he had always done when offered some of the local moonshine in a new area. He put a crapload of crushed black pepper in the glass after the first small sip of the liquid fire. He had to admit it was not that bad tasting by itself. It even had a flavor of some kind, though not necessarily a good flavor. That is, before the flavor was covered up by the burning that was starting in his stomach and working its way around his body. The fire was still spreading in Drake's body when he put the pepper in the glass.
This addition to his drink was noticed by others in the bar for one reason. He was the only Earthborn local in the place. When Drake took a second drink and did not gag that much then he knew that the pepper trick was not going to help this batch. Now he was kicking himself for saying he wanted a strong drink. He should have stayed with the Hop Hug instead. It was a case of being careful what you asked for. He still finished the glass. It was just slow work.
When his second glass was brought over to him, he broke down and dug deep into his goodies bag after the woman had left. He pulled out one of the six sticks of three-inch-long light brown cinnamon hidden deep in there and put it in the glass, letting it sit and soak for a while. While that was soaking, he went back to work. That was how Ruth and her crew found him when they stopped by the restaurant.
Ruth and her group were back in the home that was going to be their working and sleeping space. The day had gone a lot better than she had hoped, but it had not gone as well as she had wanted it to. After the interview with the Colonial base commander, they had tried to get some of the locals to talk to them. As she had feared, most did not want to talk to them, much less talk to them while being recorded. That did not mean that the rest of the day and evening was a total waste of time.
They had made it back to house or base camp just as the sun was starting to set. They had spent the next hour and a half working on both the recording and data files they had made all day. It had not taken Ruth long to decide that they all needed a break and relax a little. One of the things they had found out early on in the day was that there was a place where someone could relax, buy a meal and get some cold drinks. She had thought that maybe it was time to have a little teambuilding exercise, and have her people relax some in a more social setting. This had happened to her before a time or six.
Not everyone had wanted to go, and they were free to do whatever they wanted with their free time. This seemed to focus on playing some kind of computer game or reading a book of some kind packed in a carry-on bag. In short, different people liked to decompress in different ways. Ruth gathered together those who wanted to go, and left the house for a brisk walk in the night air.
The group entered the restaurant, and it was like a wave of noise breaking on to a sea cliff face. Ruth took care of her people, but she saw a face that she remembered from the ride out to these islands. She had thought that he was a member of the ship's crew, but now she knew better. That ship had left port before nightfall.
Mell had noticed the same thing and with a chin point to Ruth, walked over. It was said by both friends and enemies that Mell could smell a story at fifty paces, farther if they were in an enclosed space. She ordered a meal and was surprised to find out that a salad was not on the day's menu in this establishment. She had to order a steak and make sure to add some gym time to her calendar when she got home.
Mell walked over to the tall man working on a thin laptop with a pair of notebooks spread out over an abused wooden tabletop. "Sorry to interrupt, but you must be one of the researchers who were on the ship with us. So, how has your first full day on the island gone?" She had a feeling that all had not gone well for this man. She was thinking that there might be a story or two here. That is, if her instincts were right.
Mell was able to dig out what was bothering the tall, strong, dark haired man. That was just what good reporters did, and it was just second nature for the really good ones. Mell just happened to be one of the best in the world at her job. When her food was brought out, she excused herself from Drake's table. While she was eating, she brought Ruth up to speed on what she had learned.
Ruth made a note to talk with this Drake White after he returned stateside. She thought that he might be a useful addition to her already impressive list of contacts. She also took note of how the locals were treating him while her team devoured their meals with zeal if not good manners. Both Mell and she had quickly worked out one item already. That this Drake was going to be their way in. He would be able to get the locals over being camera shy with them.
Ruth was going to attach her second camera crew to him and see how that worked out. They would cover what he was doing, and they might even use some of that collected footage afterwards. While he did his work, the small news crews were to use the time interviewing the nearest Colonials.
When Ruth pitched the core idea, Drake said that he was game, although he made it clear to them that it would be well into the afternoon before he was ready to start up again. He still had to come up with a place to stay, because he was not going back to that house. Ruth offered to let Drake camp out in or near their lodging. It did have a nice if uncut yard. He was also welcome inside with the rest of her team if he so chose.
Both Mell and Drake were surprised by that offer, but he turned her down. Drake did not want to stay with people he did not know. Not again. Besides, from what he had gathered in their conversation, they were rather tight on space. At best he would be sleeping with someone's feet in his face. At worst he was going to have to sleep outside any way. He would prefer, if he was going to be sleeping outside, that it be in a space where he was not going to have to hear anyone snoring.
Mell and Ruth had to leave not long after agreeing to meet Drake back in the restaurant tomorrow. They had to walk a distance that they were not used to having to cover. At least not without hailing a taxi of some kind to help them to cover it. The rest of the group of reporters and support crew left with the two women on the long and dark walk back. More than a few of them already had to have someone standing to either side. They were to act as bumpers to keep them on a more or less straight line. Some people could not handle pure grain alcohol at such high proof. Still, all of them were in high spirts as they left the restaurant.
Drake was the last person who was not a local in the seating area of the restaurant. He was just starting to get tired when he pulled himself out of the chair he had been using. He had drunk enough to get to the point that the day's aches and pains were just an echo in the back of his mind. He took the cinnamon stick out of his third glass of moonshine, which was down to its last sip. He dried it off in a handy napkin, before returning it to sit beside the others in their little private package. Before he left the table, he took the last good-sized sip to empty the glass. He waved a wordless goodbye to the lady behind the bar as he headed towards the building's exit.
Drake grabbed his three bags and walked out into the night air without tripping over his own feet. That did not mean that he was that graceful, only that he did not trip over his own two feet. When the thick wooden door closed behind him, and his eye adjusted to the dark, about the only thing he could see was the small parking area that held not one car. It ran about three car lengths to the sea wall. At least, from what he could tell under the bright moonlight. To his left was the small boat marina, and to the right was a small open area that ended in a wooden fence that had seen better days. Even with very little light spilling out of the local buildings, he could see pretty well without any technology to help him.
Drake had the age old question to answer, and he did not have anyone to help him. Was it going to be some place you knew? Or will it be some place you didn't know? For whatever reason, he took the right side option and walked into the small grass covered lot. He had to stop not long after he started to walk crosscountry and pulled out his handheld light. That was because the half-moon that had been providing the light to walk by had now gone below the tree and building covered horizon while he had been walking. The buzz the drinks had given him had kept him from noticing the high-level clouds over his head.
With the handheld light powered up, he soon was casting a usable blue-white beam out to fifteen feet in front of him. He now could again make out the fence. It was just a weed covered line in the dark. The fence seemed to run from the sea wall into the darkness of land off to his right. Drake was able to push down a section of the cheap wooden wall and cross into the darker woods beyond with ease. After getting over the lower and almost flattened section of the wooden wall, he stopped again.
Now he could better make out a group of trees silhouetted in the star light. The image matched his mental image of the place he had seen before. The seawall looked to turn inland a little nearer the trees, but he did not know how far. Drake cast this blue-white beam left, right, up, and down a few times. After few casts of the light, he decided to follow the seawall for a while. After all, what was the worst that could happen?
The seawall did make a turn and it led to a group of about a dozen different sized trees that were growing in a small clump not long after it made that sharp turn. The area looked good enough, so Drake set up one of his lawn lights so that he could better see the local area. He worked quickly and put up his campsite by the light of the one solar device. There was no way that he could set up the whole camp to his usual specifications. It was too late, too dark, and he was just too tired. Both mentally and physically. The three triple shots might have had something to do with it.
He did not intend to sleep in the tent tonight. Sleeping on sandy ground without preparing it just opened one up to the biting sand fleas that loved the damp sand around the world. That was an experience Drake did not want to repeat. Not after seeing the results in the recent past. He had learned that and a few other things from seeing other people's mistakes. He just draped his bug netting between two trees using four convenient branches that were just thick enough to do the job. Then he used a mix of blankets and the netting to make an effective bug net covered sleeping hammock. This was not the first time he had to do something like this.
The quick open tent was holding his three bags after he replaced a few displaced items. He debated shutting off the solar yard light but in the end, he decided to leave one of them on. He tied it to one of handier overhead limbs near his suspended sleeping area. Now it could light the general area around him in slowly diming light. He was asleep almost as soon as his head hit the air pillow. He was just starting to be thankful that he had not deflated it while repacking. The thought died half formed and would remain forgotten for some time.
Behind the group of trees that Drake had selected to be his sleeping area was a well hidden dirt road that led directly to the island's main road. Drake was already fast asleep when an electric off-road golf cart rolled up the wet and well rutted dirt road. It and its single occupant come to a stop where it could see the clump of trees near the lagoon without being seen back from that location. The glow of the blue-white LED solar yard light had unwittingly allowed the driver to pick a good spot. All without having to use anything other than head lights and the good old mark one eyeballs. The driver flipped on his hat mounted IR Glasses, and he could see the orange glow of man's body heat suspended between two trees. He could even see that he was swaying slowly in the sea breeze.
The guard in the electric car stayed there until relieved at dawn. Drake just slept away, unaware that he was being watched not three hundred meters away. It was a very dull time watching him sleep, and the guards would change only every four hours. Any strange visitor needed to be watched. If one was armed then they needed to be watched just a little closer. This one might be better liked than the others, but that did not mean that he was no threat.
Drake slept for about seven hours without moving even an arm. After waking up, he went from not moving to getting moving within only a couple of minutes. He had to do his morning routine before he started clearing the tree clump or any of the other things. There were things that he needed to get done before the sun was much higher over his head. Before he could do anything else, before he could brush his teeth, and before he could get a little something into his stomach even.
He had to use his satphone to contact his boss back in California. He wanted to get his side of the story out before Ron beat him to the punch. After the hour-long phone call back with his boss, he was comfortable in knowing one key fact: That his job was secure no matter what Ron might say behind his back. Having been able to report that he had half a dozen different blood samples already, at least in safekeeping for now, was probably the key. To say that this news went over very well, that was the understatement of the year.
With the dreaded very long-distance phone call done, Drake felt very invigorated as he put the bulky device away. He spent the few remaining morning hours using his machete and items he had found around the clump of trees and the water's edge to make himself a very comfortable living area. He would stop and check his handywork before swinging the heavy blade a few more times. When he got tired of swinging the oversized knife, he walked around the water's edge and checked if he could find anything useful. All the while his solar batteries recharged in the bright tropical sun.
He still had some things he wanted to do to make his camp site a little homier, but he ran out of time to make his meeting with the news crew over at the restaurant. While he was gone, his camp site would get an uninvited visitor of the two-legged kind. It was one of the more experienced wilderness scouts who happened to be on a tour of duty on the island. He stared from one end of the camp site and thoroughly worked his way to the other side checking every square inch of it. Then he walked around the whole site in a slowly growing spiral.
He was quite impressed with the sleeping platform that Drake had built this morning without using any powered tools. The platform held the tent and almost all of the man's other items. It also was about three feet off the damp ground and its sand flea inhabitants. He also noticed that Drake already had the solar still up and working away. It looked to have about three gallons of sea water slowly being turned into drinkable water. It was a nice site and a very well set up one, and that was not counting that Drake only had the morning to work on it.
It was impressive enough that the scout took about forty images of the site. Just in case some of their people might need to use some of the ideas this man seemed to have developed. If the scout had not been told, he would have bet that the man had been working for at least two full days to have been able to set up a camp this nice and well thought out. It was again proof that this Drake White had some field skills. The scout was going to have to spend some time writing up his report, and even more time keeping an eye on this man.
Drake had no idea of what was going on behind him. He was heading for a meeting that he hoped would make getting his next grant or even maybe some major donation money come to his Zoo that much easier. He knew that the Brooklyn Zoo had racked in the money every time they made the news in a good way. That did not even count what that little TV show on cable had done for them over the last few years.
The news crew was sitting on the outside deck of the restaurant when he cleared the half collapsed wooden fence. They took a few minutes to set up some ground rules before starting out for the rest of the day's work. The last thing they did before leaving the empty parking lot was a fifteen-minute leg, back, and arm muscle stretching session led by Drake. All this as he was having a flashback to his army days. These city boys and girls were going on a field trip today, and Drake was expecting them to keep up. At least, they already had a fresh coat of sunscreen on before he joined their group.
The whole island was a beehive of activity that day. Drake and the news crews were able to see and note the work on some of the homes. The Colonials seemed to be focused on the ones that looked like they were not yet occupied by any of the other Colonials. It was not easy going between stops. They had to get off the road every time that they saw a steady stream of what had to be a small handful of brand new Balqon XE20 trucks on the narrow road. They were moving shipping containers from the loading and off-loading dock holding area, and they were noted to be heading towards the airport.
This was the first time that anyone had seen anything like them on the island, or off of them for that matter. If they had asked, they would have found out that those oddly shaped cabs over lithium-ion battery packs had only been on the island for a few days. They had been fitted in whenever one of the cargo ships needed to put a large mass to balance out the cloth their ships carryed. There also were very few of those cargo moving half sized trucks in operation anywhere around the world for now.
One of the times that they were waiting for the whole line of quiet trucks to make their way up and down the road, the BBC news crew was able to interview an odd couple who had been working at the water's edge not far off of the blacktop. They were using a small selection of basic hand tools to repair a wooden hulled boat not that far above the high tide mark. It had been left on the beach when the Colonials bought the islands.
As Ruth had hoped, Drake became the icebreaker for the news crew. Drake had been able to get a dozen eggs, some of which he thought might be fertilized, from the couple for some helping in moving the boat they were working on about twenty feet higher up the beach. All of this exchange was caught on tape. What he told the news crew was that he did not plan on cooking any of those eggs. He had eaten more than his share of eggs that were a little on the pink side in his day. These eggs could be a lot more valuable than to just use for dinner. He had not told them that part. He could only hope that they were valuable, and worldwide news might not be that helpful.
By the end of the afternoon, Drake was pretty tired from all of the working, walking, and the late night he had before. He decided to stop when it started to get cooler. He also wanted to get himself the first hot meal of the day. He was not joined by the trailing news crew at the restaurant. They had broken off from Drake when they passed the building they were using as a base camp. Drake was fine with them leaving him alone. At least now he could walk at a pace and cadence that was more normal for him. He had not said anything, but the news crew had cut his pace almost in half. He could have walked faster by himself through wilderness terrain than he had on the roadside with the reporters following.
Drake made it to the restaurant with a smile on his face and a skip in his steps. When he entered the main seating area, he was a little surprised that both the man and the woman were working at the same time behind the bar top. He was not surprised when it was the woman who pointed over to a chair for him to take. As he had learned last night, her command of English was quite good after only a few hours of practicing with him and the BBC news crew. Drake just smiled and took the indicated seat. It was now time to use another part of his brain to see what he could get at the lowest cost to him.
First Drake made the same deal for the hot meal and drinks he had been looking forward to except with beer rather than moonshine. He ended up using another one of his dwindling supply of candy bars for a meal. He was even given the use of one of the restaurant's operational refrigerators. It was going to hold his dozen eggs and anything else he might need it for. He made a mental note to make sure that he did not go overboard with this privilege. The use of the device was given on the promise of turning over what was going to be left in his six ounce black pepper shaker and any of the other spices he might have left in his other bags. Ones that the woman was sure would have remained in his bags when he left for home again in a few more days. Drake thought he got the better end of the deal. Drake knew that he was getting a good bit of information on the Colonials beside the animals. Finding out the sociology of the Colonials was also important.
He was sitting and enjoying his second cold beer of the night. That was when the news crew that had been following him around all day showed up. They came in with most of the whole BBC crew in tow. It was one massive wave of loud and smiling humanity. They hit the business outer doors like a wave of noise, and every eye in the place turned to see who was disturbing the peace. Drake noticed that the news group was not looked at with favor by the locals. It looked to Drake that everyone was dreading the next few hours. He marked it down as the locals not liking any changes to their environment.
Ruth and Mell were not with them, but the rest of the bunch of newsies were very excited. It would seem that while Drake and his followers were working the leadership of the news group was filming the interview with the commander of the alien fleet. The man who was now thought to be the second in command of all of the Colonials. It seemed that that was not what excited them about the interview though, nor was it the fresh information that came out out during said interview. They were babbling about a nice sized list of items and it was not hard for Drake and most of the locals to pick up most of what the news group were saying.
It seemed that the other academics were able to gatecrash the event and make a huge scene. And it was all caught on high definition tape and hard drives by the news crew. The more that they talked about the events, the more Drake wished he had been there to see it firsthand or at least as a fly on the wall. It would seem that this Admiral Adama had made them look like a huge pack of fools. Enough so that Ruth and the tech team's support unit were making edits still. They would need all the time they could get so that the ship in harbor could take it back to Tahiti. That ship was scheduled to leave in a few hours. By all accounts it was a truly impressive example of foot in mouth disease. Ruth wanted to get the story back to her bosses as soon as she could.
From what Drake had picked up from the loose lipped news crew, Ruth had already let her bosses know about the incident. So they were going to have someone they trusted on the pier when the cargo ship made port again in Tahiti. From there, it was going to be flown out to the main Honolulu office for broadcast to the whole world as fast as humanly possible.
By now Drake had walked over and joined in. When he thought that he had most of the story, he thanked the talkative news team and then went outside of the bar for some fresh air. He took another slug of his beer bottle then pulled out his satellite phone. He looked at the number pad for a few long minutes, and even took another pull of his very good beer and looked at his watch. It was not a scheduled time to contact anyone back home. He quickly worked out what the time was in the area he was about to contact.
Drake made a face that looked like he had bitten into a lemon. "Well, the hell with it," he spoke out loud, but in a low voice. He started to press a long list of numbers in the right order. He was not going to make friends with this call. It was not just because of the time that it was on the receiving end. He was going to be the bearer of bad news again
Drake held the brick sized device with a hot dog antenna to his ear and listened to the ringing tone coming out of the small speaker. It was on its sixth or seventh ring when he had to change ears. It was another set of rings before the person picked up the phone on the other end. Drake had called another Zoo supplied cell phone, and that one did not have voice mail. If no one had picked up then he would have just sent a short text message for his boss to contact him and that it was very important. Drake was just about to disconnect the line when it stopped ringing mid tone.
A tired and angry voice replaced the digital sounding tone. "What! And do you know what time it is?" The satphone did not give anything like a normal number for the caller ID function to work as it was designed to. As far as the person on the other end of the line knew this was someone calling to do a political poll, or an offer to help fix his computer.
Drake was still a little embarrassed about the call. He also was trying not to laugh on the phone about his boss's interrupted sleep. He only stopped when he remembered two things. One, that the person on the other end was his boss. And two, this same person had a lively sense of humor, and he was not afraid to use it to pay someone back. Escalation was a well-used word in his massive vocabulary.
"Yeah, Doctor Owen. Sorry about that. Something came up out here on the islands again. And I think you might want to know about it."
The head of his department at the San Diego Zoo was now fully awake. "Drake? Is everything okay?" Doctor Owen now was concerned despite still being angry for having been woken up after only a handful of hours of sleep.
Drake now had a grin on his face. "Well, I don't know. I just found out that my favorite person led a party crash into the interview with the Colonial military commander. It would seem that they showed their asses a lot. The news team I was just talking to, they seemed to be very happy to have caught it all on tape."
The head of the zoo now was no longer angry about be woken up at oh dark thirty. "Drake tell me everything you know, and what you think you know. Try not to leave anything out."
When Drake gave him a rundown of what he had heard about Ron and his lackeys' shenanigans, his boss was still not happy but he was in a slightly better mood. He was worried that if that bunch of rocks with lips got all the visitors thrown off the island, the Zoo was going to be out a large chunk of money with nothing but a few blood samples the Drake had already collected to show for it. It the blow up was bad enough no one knows how long outsiders might be frozen out of an area by an upset warlord. It had happened a number of times in the recent past, like in certain parts of Africa and Asia. Those were the ones that had popped into Owen's forebrain.
That was when Drake dropped the bombshell about the even dozen eggs he had just collected from seven different breeding groups. Drake's boss dropped the phone, and the boom that transmitted through to Drake hurt his ears. After a few minutes his boss was finally coming back down to earth from the high of the news. Doctor Owen's shriek had even awakened his wife who rolled over and gave him a 'what the hell are you doing' look.
"Okay Drake tell me exactly what you think you have, and how you are storing them?" This statement got his wife's attention also. He gave her little nod and she was getting out of the bed and coming over to his side. After a few seconds, she picked up her own cellphone and started making a few calls to wake people up. The lucky ones were in the same state she was in. Others were more than a few hours off her clock.
Drake explained in as much detail as he could about the eggs and how he was keeping them viable. He quickly covered how he was thinking about getting them off the island. He had to tell his boss three times that he was ninety-five percent sure that the breeding groups the eggs had come from were not contaminated by local animals. This would be the first set of testable DNA from an animal that was or might have been born not only off the planet but out of this solar system. If it turned out that they did hatch the zoo would have one of the rarest, if very common looking, animals on the whole planet. That was the dream of any zoo around the world.
Drake's boss wanted them off the island right then. Not when Drake came back to his part of the world, Dr. Owen wanted them now! ASAP did not come close to how fast he wanted them. Drake also told his boss that he seemed to be making positive progress on making some local friends. He thought that this might protect him from being thrown off the island. That is, if the worst happened to the other academics. This was not a five or even ten minute talk. They ended up being on the phone for over an hour, and they were not done yet. This was going to be an expensive call at just under 2 dollars a minute. Drake was just thankful that he was not going to be the one getting the bill at the end of the month.
Doctor Owen took a deep breath and put his pen down. He had been holding it on a notepad that his wife had passed to him. "Drake, are you sure about that? Some of the locals might like you but if this military commander orders everyone off the island, you know that your little pistol is only going to get you killed." Owen had said commander, but he had thought warlord. "What makes you think that you will not end up with a combat boot up your ass, or upside your head?"
Drake stopped talking and looked around and waited for a small group of locals to finish walking by where he had been standing. They waved and smiled at him before they disappeared into the restaurant. One part of his mind noted that it was looking to be a busy night at the local watering hole. "I don't know. Call it a hunch. It's a lot like that one trip down to the Amazon."
That comment had stopped Drake's boss in mid-thought, and even his wife looked back wide eyed at him. Doctor Owen looked at the cell phone like he was waiting for the golden goose to come flying out of it.
"Okay. I'm not going to secondguess your call. What can I do on this end to help you? Remember Drake, we are on a budget. We cannot start using your stuff and information to get any more funds out of the general fund. At least not on such short notice."
Drake smiled and remembered that his first line superiors had not been in the field in a long time. "Sir, if you can get with Debbi in my old office, ask her to get a Type 2 and a Type 3 care package out to me as fast as you can. That would go a long way in helping me make friends in the right places, without getting me thrown into jail." Drake's mind had been flying and a plan or at least a pair of ideas were coming together.
Owen was surprised at what he had just been asked to do for the man halfway around the world from his bedroom. He had been expecting Drake to give him a number that would be the amount of money to be sent to his bank account. Not sent a couple of preplanned care packages in the mail. He recovered very quickly. "Okay, David. I will take care of that. I need you to get all of your samples safely out of there and keep me in the loop, so that I can make sure they get where they need to go. The last thing I want to happen is for them to get stuck in customs somewhere."
The call ended, and Doctor Owen called his boss, who had not liked getting an early morning call any more than Dr. Owen had. Dr. Owen brought him up to speed and his boss vetoed Owen's current plan for the operation. The boss said that he would have the packages on the way first thing. He would make sure they were going out via express shipping, or he would have someone's head.
After the phone call was done, Drake did not so much run as walk fast back to his campsite hidden in the clump of trees not that far away. He did a quick check of the area around his camp, and quickly found a note hung on his outer tent entry flap. It was a computer printout, and it was in proper English. It told him that he must use the ocean or use the restaurant facilities, for his human waste needs, not the hole he had dug into the sand unless it was an emergency. Drake folded the note and put it away and went about expanding his check of the local area. Drake kind of felt like someone could enter his bedroom without knocking.
He quickly found three hip height wooden signs posted around the area. They had letters that were in a form of Greek, and they were stating that the area was duly claimed as a residence. He was chuckling to himself, as he found the box that he was looking for in his sleeping area. It was just a flat cardboard box with a few odds and ends still inside. He did some quick measurements with his off hand on it and determined it was just about the size he needed perfectly. He put the few loose items in an extra Ziploc bag and put it away. He then pulled out two chemical cold packs from his duffel bag and activated them. Those went into the cardboard box and the lid went back on. His shipping container was now ready.
Drake did another quick walk in the dark, back the way he had come. He then walked back to the restaurant's back and picked up his eggs. With a borrowed pen, he wrote the name and number of the head of the Tahiti wildlife protection service on the top, and the four other sides of the box. He used part of his limited supply of what was called 5-50 cord on the box next. He was getting a few odd looks from the locals, but nothing was said. At least nothing was said to him.
Next on Drake's list was a fast jog to the pier, leaving the parking lot with his package in one hand and a light in the other. He was thinking that he needed to see about working a trade with the cargo ship. He was wondering what a roll of duct tape or the like might set him back with the traders. He was working up a sweat, and it was looking like his night was not over just yet.
He had to stop at the entry point to the concrete covered dock. A small convoy of four fifteen meter plus long multi axle military looking trucks had the right of way. Even with Drake's military background, he had no idea what the very odd-looking military trucks were. He did notice the very faded Ukrainian flag painted on the driver side doors though. By the time the third truck was about to pass him by, he took a couple of images of what he was now thinking were some kind of command and control vehicles. As soon as the had dust cleared enough to see that there was not another truck working on exiting the pier in the near future, he was waved into the pier by a guard.
The M/V Choctaw County was still at the pier, but even Drake could tell that the ship was going to be leaving very soon. He had been hoping that he had a least an hour. He was able to make it onto the ship without being stopped by any more of the handful of guards walking around the area. He even made it up one of the ship's gang planks, before being stopped. The delay had been pretty short as he talked his way onto the ship to see her master.
Now, talking the ship's captain into taking the package, that was a different matter entirely. He had two problems that he had to deal with all at once. First, he was not going to be able to pay up front to have the package dropped off at another island. The second major issue was that not only was his package listed as a biological hazard, given it contained the blood samples, it also had the chicken eggs. That meant that there were also ecological issues that would have to be dealt with. Either one of those issues were enough to stop most merchant commanders in their tracks about picking up cargo.
It had been just sheer chance that Drake had his satellite phone in his hiking bag when he made the trip down to the pier along with the cardboard box. He pulled it out and called one of the listed numbers printed on the side of box that he had gotten from his boss before flying out. The phone only rang three times before someone on the other end picked up. Drake had to explain to the person on the other end what he was sending over and that the Zoo would be sending someone to pick it up. The captain of the high-speed merchant ship was eavesdropping, thanks to Drake putting the phone on speaker. It was not fast, but it seemed like after about fifteen minutes of talking the person on the other end decided to be very helpful in this endeavor.
That was all it took and the world was looking a little brighter to Drake. That was because unknown to Drake, the Zoo had called while he was taking to the head of the Wildlife Protection units of Tahiti. Even as the head was on the phone, his assistant was passing him a note from the person in charge of all of San Diego Zoo's research departments. The head of the Tahitian agency asked if he could call Drake back.
Drake let him know that he needed to know if the small package was cleared within the hour and that the reason for the short notice was that the ship would be heading his way not soon after that deadline. If there was no one to pick up the package, then the ship's captain was not going to carry it for Drake.
The government appointed head of the Wildlife Protection Unit contacted the attached number on the yellow square. He knew that it was going back to the west coast of the United States. The head of the Wildlife Protection Department was not a simple man. He had a very good idea of the importance of the package, which might be on its way to him soon. He might not know all of the uses that the package might be good for, but it was useful for power. Power. Now that was something the bureaucrat knew about very well.
He had no idea who the man who picked up the phone on the first ring was. Only that he was with the San Diego Zoo, one of the most well-known zoos in the world, working with the USDA and some other agencies in a few different countries. All to get all the paperwork done to get a few bio-samples back to them.
The Zoos and USDA leadership thought that they had a week to get these things done when this mission to send Drake to the Colonial islands was first approved. Now it turns out they had to get it done now, and that would cost something extra and/or special. The cost might be in money, but it would also cost favors of some kind being exchanged. Favors are how the powerful bureaucrats around the world worked, and they paid for things. It had been this way for thousands of years of human civilization. No matter how much the news and press lately wanted to berate it in certain countries that was just how the world works. They might not like it, but it is what it is.
The head of the little island office made sure he brought up to the head of the Zoo that this should have been worked out before now. It was his way of saying that he was willing to work with them, but it was going to cost them. After all, they were now dealing with a shorter deadline than even the American on the other end of the phone had known about. The person on the other end was only at the medium level of management, having been awaken by this boss a little over half an hour ago. To say that he was not at the top of his game was an understatement but that did not mean he was unprepared.
Now the zoo bureaucrat wanted to know the requested compensation. He needed to know what it was going to cost the Zoo. The head of the wildlife protection units was ready for this, and with a sly smile on his face laid out his terms. He did not want to waste this opportunity, but he did not want to overplay his longterm hand for a shortterm gain. At least not again. He asked for a couple of grants to cover the cost to study whales and a few of the local island land animals.
The Zoo could have afforded that, but a counteroffer was made instead, and it was accepted. You never went for the first offer that was put on the table in negotiations. The Zoo bureaucratic had found a middle ground with a six months grant for marine biology given to the wildlife protection unit. After that, it would be up to the local government to fund the grant, which would employ local people to do almost all of the work of the study.
The local bureaucrat now had his chit. He would be able to leverage that new chit to help someone's kid or cause and those people who used or wanted this new chit, now they would owe him. The second part of the chit was that he would be able to connect one of his projects to the San Diego Zoo. He would be able to use that connection as leverage for other projects that he had going on around the island on a shoestring budget.
He was very pleased with himself for his hard day's work. He looked back at the phone and made a slightly sour face. He now thought that he could have pushed for two grants, but that could have backfired on him. It was a bird in hand, versus two birds in the bush. Besides, who knows if something might come out of the grant that he had been given? The Zoo just might pick up the grant for the rest of the year or even for another year if it was a very productive half year. That is, if he did not shear the sheep too closely today. He mentally marked up that the Colonials being in the local area had helped his people again.
The Tahitian bureaucrat redialed the number to the American who had first called him. It was to let him know that he could ship the box of items, and it would be officially in the clear. Drake had to pass the satellite phone to the captain of the ship so that he would be covered from any legal action. He just had to be sure Drake was not playing some kind of game. The merchant captain would not take the word of a stranger. Not on something that by law he could go to jail for. Or more importantly, something that might blow his cover working for the CIA.
After informing the captain that everything was good to go, the government official asked when the ship was planning to tie up at his island. When the call was ended, he went back to sleep in his overstuffed office chair very quickly, happy that he had completed a needed task. He would also be able to use what he had managed to advance his career. He was dreaming of how he was going to advance even further down the road minutes later. President of French Polynesia sounded very good, or maybe even the Ambassador to the UN for this area. It just depended on how many chits he could acquire in a reasonable amount of time.
Drake was walking off the ship as Ruth was speedwalking down the pier to the slightly delayed cargo ship. He waved to the out of breath and sweating woman as she passed by under the pools of light given off by the oddly spaced out streetlamps lining one side of the dock. Drake stopped walking and watched Ruth as she made her way to the cargo ship. He had the fleeting idea to wait for her to return to the dock. Maybe he would be able to get a firsthand account of what had happened between Ron and the Colonials. This lasted for only about half a minute before he decided to call it a night. When he had stopped walking, only for that length of time, the day's stress had caught up with him. It was like being hit by a train of tired.
As Drake walked through the night, and not long after making it to the hardball, he realized that he was happy with himself. His time sensitive specimens were as good as on their way off island. No matter what might happen in the coming days, he would be getting another positive mark on the personnel file that the zoo maintained on him. Even if he was wrong about being safe from the blowback against visiting academics, he had done everything that his boss had asked for, and even a few things that he had not.
Now the zoo would be able to use those same specimens to get more funding, and it would generate a lot of papers that would be published with the zoo's name in the byline. This would also help add to the reputation of the zoo as being the place to be if you were working in cutting edge science in a very long list of fields of study. That information also would be used by other departments all around the zoo. It was a massive feedback loop that he had just primed for its next cycle.
The only person or group not making out on the deal was the cargo ship and her commander. That was not totally true either, and it looked that way only from those people who could see it only from the outside. The CIA always liked to keep tabs on people who might be useful later, or ones that might be bribable in the future. They had additions in both of those columns today, proved by the delivery of a small cardboard package.
The third advantage was that the delay the ship had experienced thanks to the news crew and Drake. This allowed the intelligence collection staff to go over all of those images that they had been able to get of those six MAZ 543 8x8's. The crew knew that they were being outfitted with a mix of long haul sleeper cabs, field kitchens, and even a single command post version thrown into the mix. They had no idea why the Colonials might want them in the first place. They were not going to miss the opportunity to get as much firsthand information on those strange vehicles as they could. That was just as long as they could keep up their cover story. The BBC newswoman asked that the ship be delayed for an hour or two while her people finished up something. That gave the ship's crew long enough to track where those massive and oddly shaped 8 x 8's went to.
The rest of the evening was very quiet on the island. Ruth and her team, as well as Drake, stayed close to their respective sleeping areas for some much needed rest after a day and a very hectic late afternoon and early evening. Drake even went to the length of collecting some dry driftwood and deadfall to make a little campfire close to his sleeping area. It was not much of a fire, but it made him relax, and he was soon asleep. It was just to mesmerizing to watch the flames in his small sand walled fire pit from the sleeping platform that he had built. The sound of waves rushing onto the nearby beach and the flicker of red orange flames were the perfect lullaby for him tonight.
