New Days

When she woke, Cassie was surprised the shelter hadn't collapsed on top of them, because her body certainly felt like it had. She wiped the sand from her eyes, stretched, and clambered out of the shelter, leaving the two other occupants to sleep in. She drank some purified water, then trudged over to the nearby pond to slap some more in her face. He two people she'd crash-landed with looked a bit young and wimpy, but at least the guy calling himself Chef had a good head in his shoulders. She wasn't so sure about the other one though. The flower child. Hugging trees was nice, but it would get you nowhere if you were stranded on a strange planet. She really hoped the girl had some usable skills, because the situation was precarious enough already without one third of the group being dead weight.

Still, she'd helped to build the shelter without complaining overmuch. Not that she could, har har. She hadn't been as good at the job as Cassie and Chef had been, but at least she'd realized that everyone had to pitch in. She figured the two others could finish the shelter, leaving her to do what she was good at: firing a gun. She'd never killed a person, but she'd been trained more than enough, and the days on shore, hunting with her father, had taught her a great deal, all things which would be useful now. Because it wasn't just about how well you could draw a bead on something. You had to know where to look, how to approach, how animals moved and thought, when to sit and wait, and when to give chase.

And how not to get eaten by a god damn bear.

"We'll need to move all the gear and food into the shelter," a voice came from behind her.

"Yeah, sure. Shouldn't take long."

"It'll get ruined if we leave it out in the open."

"Or stolen. Yeah."

Chef sat down next to her, his hair standing in all directions. "Sleep well?"

"I slept as badly as you look."

He grinned. "Wish I'd slept the way you look."

It was a trite compliment, but it still managed to make her briefly smile. "Flower child still asleep?"

"She was waking up when I got out of, uh, 'bed'. Should be here soon."

"Cool. So hey, I'm going to grab my rifle and score us some meat. Or at least try to. Can I leave you two in charge of building? Shelter's almost finished, right? Should only take a few hours?"

He nodded, handing her an MRE packet and opening one himself. "Sure."

The morning air was chilly, the sky pale blue. He sat down and hugged his knees. "Should find a way to make us some more clothes. Build something more permanent. Secure a source of food and make a stockpile. All before winter comes, so we can ride it out." He sighed. "We're fucked, aren't we?"

Well that wasn't the right attitude at all. "Chef, the ape men in prehistory survived winters, otherwise we wouldn't exist. And they didn't have multi-tools or cutter-welders or any of that stuff. We'll be fine. As long as we stay busy and don't waste time faffing about, we can get through this."

"Yeah. Yeah, I guess you're right."

"Besides," she added, "If we just give up, we're definitely going to die. We might as well give it all we've got. I'm not just going to lie down and starve. If things go from bad to worse, I want to at least tell myself I did everything I could."

He smiled and got up. "You're absolutely right." He looked back at the shelter, tugging at the waistband of his pants. "God, I wish we had some coffee."

Did he have to remind her? "Yeah, tell me about it. I think we'll be able to make tea if we find some leaves that are suitable. But coffee, I think it'll take a long time before we'll have our next cup of joe." She slung the rifle over her shoulder, the inside of her mouth still icky from the gruesome nutritional paste. "And we will be here for a very long time. Anyway, I'm going to go look for some food. Maybe if you have a few moments to spare, flower child over there can help you find some edible fruits. Or roots. Or mushrooms. Or whatever."

"Flower child?" he said with a frown, cocking his head. "I hope you didn't mean that as an insult. It's just us three here, we need to make this work, remember?"

It hadn't really been an insult, just a throw-away comment. Mostly. "Nah, like I said, you guys are my crew now. I just hope she'll pull her weight."

He nodded. "All of us need to."

"Speaking of which, there she is." The dishevelled form of Larisa shuffled out of the shelter, like a zombie in a bad mood. "Not a graceful riser."

Cassie left them to finish the shelter and with the rifle over her shoulder, she set out to score some food. It didn't take long for her to come across tracks which looked bovine in nature. If there were actual bovine species on this planet, that would be amazing. Ruminants could usually be domesticated, and why shoot an animal if you could also keep it as cattle?

Before she could follow the tracks very far, however, she came across something else. A large chunk of machinery had recently crashed down between the trees, and now lay smashed flat inside a crater. She carefully came closer and realized what it was – another part of the ship they'd arrived in… or better, been ejected from, it would seem. She made a note of the location on the map she'd copied from Larisa. These things probably had useful components still inside, or at least the raw steel could serve for something. There were other things she noticed too, as she travelled. Big chunks of dark stone, what looked like slate, were visible on the surface, some were too big to haul, but those could be cut down to smaller bits, and brought back to the camp as well.

She crested a hill and came upon a sight that filled her both with joy and melancholy. Accompanied by a smell on the air she knew all too well, was the sight of the sea.

"Well, that's that."

It was, indeed. The shelter, a small cabin but hopefully the start of something far greater, had been completed. Next step would be to replace the leaf piles with actually decent cots, or even beds, but for now, all the stuff needed to be hauled inside, sheltered from the elements and critters. The mute girl stood looking at him, her hands in her sides. She'd tied her hair in two ponytails on the side of her head, with an irregular fringe falling over her forehead. "You wanna help me haul stuff?"

The girl shook her head and pointed at a patch of land a ways further, shaking the seed packet she held in her other hand.

Chef looked where she was pointing and wondered if she actually had any idea of what she was doing. "Uh, Larisa… You want to sow there?"

She gave him a face that asked him if he was mentally challenged.

"No, I'm just asking, because… well, we only have so many seeds, and that patch of land looks much more fertile." It did. Larisa intended to go to a stretch of land that only had grass, while another patch, just to the south, had wild flowers growing on it, in all colours. Surely she had to sow on the most fertile land?

She rolled her eyes, stuck the seed packet back in her pocket, and marched towards him, taking out her notepad. As Chef saw her face, knotted in irritation, he said, "Hey, I'm just trying to help here, we can't just waste our – "

He stopped talking when he saw the word written on the paper, in large, bold letters.

GARDENER

"Alright, fine," he said, "But I mean, the land over there has flowers, this one just has grass, and – "

She stopped him with a raised finger and scrawled on her notepad as fast as she could. Chef waited patiently, although he did have to tell himself to remain calm in the face of her impatience.

no flowers on fertile land

grass grows too well there

suffocates flowers

flowers only grow well on less fertile soil

less grass to compete with

flowers = not very good soil

grass = very good soil

clear? Y/N

He held up his hands. "Alright, alright, I didn't mean anything by it, I just thought – " she began scribbling again.

thought wrong

"Yeah, apparently," he bit at her. "No reason to act like I just pissed in your shoes, though. We're in this together, remember?"

Scribble, scribble.

sorry

not good with people

"So it seems," he sighed. He hoped the other girl was at least a bit more social. Seemed she was, thankfully. He didn't want to spend his remaining years on this rock with two women in a constant state of PMS. Many people would doubtless say it was a blessing, one man on a planet with two ladies, but the only thing that really mattered to him was that people didn't get at each other's throats. "Look, we all need to get used to this, and this is worrying for all of us, but we can't start getting angry at each other."

Her frown didn't disappear, but she nodded nonetheless. It was a start. She pointed her thumb over her shoulder and took out the seed packet.

"Sure, yeah, gotta think of the long term. The sooner we get a reliable food supply going, the better."

She nodded again and turned, walking off, leaving chef to sigh, his hands in his sides. He watched her go, but reminded himself he had to start hauling. He knew himself, once he was busy doing work, he gave it all he got, and loved what he did, but he also knew the whole getting-started thing was something he had a really regretful tendency to put off. And procrastinating had been just fine when he'd been freed and could spend his days taking care of his own little plot of land with no one to look out for, but right now, he needed his old self back again. Well, minus the back-whipping of course.

He pushed the thoughts to his former life away and trudged to the shed, snatching up the fallen pieces of equipment and provisions as he went, stacking them all neatly in the shelter. It wasn't a lot of work, after a half hour everything was sheltered from the elements and predators, but he knew that if he gave himself time for a break now, he'd just laze around, and that just wouldn't do. Cassie was out hunting – and probably looking very attractive as she did so – and Risa was sowing… whatever seeds she'd picked. Least he could do was make himself useful until the food came in.

The piles of leaves would be a good start. Cassie would, hopefully, return with some kind of prize, and with any luck, that prize could be skinned for what could eventually become a set of blankets for everyone. By that time, everyone's sleeping accommodations should be upgraded from 'leaf pile' to 'something resembling a bed'. Besides, pile of leaves or no, sleeping on the ground was unhealthy, painful and unpleasant.

He was going to make bed boxes. The welder-cutter made turning wood into planks or boards very easy, so he might as well use it to its fullest. Maybe if he worked fast, he could get something done to deal with the cadaver Cassie would, hopefully, bring back. Some kind of working surface for butchering. Just a simple table would do.

He went out, grabbed one of the logs still lying around, and began cutting it into long planks. It was easy, the welder-cutter going through the wood like butter, but its cutting beam, for some reason, stopping at flesh harmlessly. Several planks, a few pegs, and some nails later, the first bed box was built. It wasn't more than an oversized orange crate, but it worked. All they had to do was fill it up with something soft, make something that could serve as a pillow, and with a few furs on top, they'd have a comfortable bed.

It was good to work hard, but to work for himself. He was nowhere near a decent builder, but this was very simple stuff, and the survival manual was a great help, even if he did have to refer to it constantly, it slowed him down much less than it helped him forward. The two other bed boxes were already done when the sun began setting, and Larisa returned. He was eager to get some kind of acknowledgement for what he'd done, but she cast a quick glance at Chef's work and went back outside without saying anything. He hoped she really was just 'not good with people' and not a conceited shrew.

As if she'd heard him, she stuck her head back in and gave him a thumbs-up. Better than nothing.

He'd gathered a few 2x4's and was leafing through the survival manual when he looked up and saw Cassie walking towards him. "Hey Chef, wanna give me a hand with this?"

"I was actually…" but then he saw he animal carcass lying on the ground, a good sixty metres behind Cass. "Oh sure, yeah."

He walked towards her, and they both went to fetch the cadaver. Cassie was out of breath and sweat beaded on her skin. "Shit, how long have you been hauling that thing?"

"Uh," she gasped, "until I saw the shelter. So uh… one and a half klik?"

"Should have said something," he told her as they each grabbed the strange, woolly, cow-like creature by a hoof and started dragging. The thing weighed a tonne, and while he didn't doubt Cassie was a woman who could lift more than just a shopping bag, he was still amazed that she'd managed to drag the thing all the way back. "Any idea what this is?"

"Nope. Looks like a cow, only fluffier." It had a spade-like, almost triangular head, with a broad forehead and narrow chin. "Kinda has the physique of a bison, right? Or a buffalo?"

Chef thought more in the direction of a cow, but he said, "Yeah, sure, kinda."

"It's strangely woolly though, which I'm pretty sure is a plus. Fluffy." Her eyes lit up. "Let's call it a fluffalo!"

It was a nice idea, but he'd heard that name before. "Pretty sure fluffalos already exist. Although I heard they hatch from eggs, so maybe someone just made that up."

"Fine," she laughed. "'Muffalo', then! How's that?"

He laughed along with her. "Sure, fine, that'll work."

"I tried to approach this one, but it bolted," she took a breath, tired from the dragging. "So I had to shoot it instead."

He looked down at the cadaver, and indeed, she'd flawlessly plugged it in the torso, right where he supposed the heart would be. "Nice kill."

"Thanks. I try not to make things suffer, you know? Kinda the way I'd like to go as well."

"Everyone, I think."

"Mm."

"So hey," he said, changing the subject away from people's possible deaths. "When you so rudely interrupted me to do your hard labour, I was actually building a sort-of workbench to use for butchering."

"Aw," she said with a smile, "What a vote of confidence!"

"Isn't it? Anyway, I meant to say, I've been busy while you were away. Finished the shelter. Built us some things resembling beds."

"Cool," she said. "Can't wait to see them." She sounded like she meant it. "Better sleeping accommodations would be nice."

"Thought the same thing. Wanna help me quickly put this butchering table together?"

"Sure," she breathed, "but I'm sitting down a spell first. I'm beat."

Yeah, he figured the girl could use a breather. He wasn't sure about 'flower child', but this one clearly knew what working was. He had to admit to himself that hauling such a massive animal alone, for more than a kilometre might simply be too much for him. When she took off her jacket to cool herself off, he could see the muscles in her arms, not the bulky ones the male athletes in his village had had, but sleek, defined ones. It was strange to see a woman with such a build. Where he'd lived, the women had done house work.

They both sat down and passed the tin of boiled water between them. His stomach growled, but the thought of a nice grilled chunk of meat… 'muffalo' meat, it would seem, was enough to let his patience last a little longer. He decided not to think about the possibility that meat from creatures on strange planets might be poisonous.

"So," he asked, "Sailor, huh?"

She nodded. "Yup. Sailed the seas with an arr and a yo ho ho and all that. It was a good life."

"Why'd you leave?"

She opened her mouth to speak, then checked, and finally said, "Nasty business. I s'pose it won't matter if I tell you now, everyone involved is probably long dead now anyway, depending on how long we've travelled." She took a breath. "I wasn't… just a sailor. I mean, my job was a bit more complex."

He took a sip of water, enjoying the feeling of it running down his gullet. "How's that?"

"Eh, it's not very pretty. Rather not talk about it too much, but being a petty officer on a destroyer was only half of my purpose on the ship. I'd… picked up certain talents when I was a child, and I was expected to make use of them during my duty."

"Certain talents, huh?"

"Mm. Sort of secret agent stuff. Mostly keeping my eyes and ears open, doing some investigating here and there."

"Spy work?"

"Basically. Although it was neatly described as the more media-friendly National Security Covert Operations. Abbreviated for even less bad PR as 'NaSCO'. I was secret police, if you want me to put it shortly."

"Wow. Ever uh… killed anyone?"

She shook her head, thankfully. "No. Exchanged bullets once, with a foreign spy hiding on board the ship, but I nobody got killed." She chuckled. "I managed to shoot him in the buttock and get him arrested. And all that without revealing my identity."

Chef didn't know anything about shooting people, but he took her word for it if she said it was quite a feat. The only people he'd ever seen carrying guns had been his damn guards. And they'd been much more fond of using the butts of their rifles over the triggers. His position had been respectable – relatively – among the prisoners because of his cooking skills, but the ones doing the menial labour had gotten more than a few hard knocks from a gun stock or baton over the years. He'd managed to avoid punishment most of the time, simply by keeping his head down and doing as he was told. It wasn't the most courageous way to pass one's time in slavery, but it was by far the healthiest.

"You awake?"

"Mm? Sorry, thoughts went their own way for a bit." At times, his thoughts had been the only distraction he'd had, and he'd made use of them very, very often as he'd stood by the stove, making food by the buckets for hours on end.

"So with a nickname 'Chef', I assume you know the basics of butchering?"

He nodded. He wasn't a butcher, per se, but of course, he'd seen more than enough meat, and handled more than enough carcasses, to be able to disassemble an animal without too much difficulty. "Sure, I know how it's done. I mean, unless it's got some kind of weird alien uh…"

"Physiology, right. Well, I'll leave it to you if that's alright? Where's flower child?" She looked around and spotted the girl, bent over, scratching at the grassy soil. "Oh."

"Yeah," Chef said, "she's doing what she does best, apparently. Said she was a gardener. Well, wrote."

"Mm. I suppose it's not a big leap from gardener to farmer. And a sustainable food source is definitely important." She looked out at the meadows surrounding them. "Can't simply depend on hunting. Too unpredictable. Not enough vitamins either."

"Apparently the seeds are a kind of fast-growing variety. Said so on the packet."

"Let's hope so." Clouds drifted overhead, and as they blocked out the sun, the temperature became less pleasant. "Come on," she grunted, getting up. "Let's build us a table for the butcherin'."

They began, constructing a crude but solid wooden table with relative ease. They talked a little as they worked, getting to know each other a bit. They might as well since they were (hopefully) going to spend a lot of time together on this lovely-looking but terrifying rock. They'd been lucky enough to land in a deciduous area, and not a wind-swept, icy tundra or a sweltering, withered desert, but still, the prospect of being stuck here forever was daunting… and yet, Chef found some courage as he listened to Cassie and her optimistic plans for the coming days. She wasn't a quitter, that much was certain. The next day, she wanted to expand the shelter, by building a separate storage room, and find some way to preserve the meat. Spoilage would, after all, be extremely fast if the meat was left out in the warm open air, not to mention the vermin it would attract. And the day after, she determined to go look for more specimens of the animal she'd just shot, in hopes of domesticating them somehow. That would be a real challenge.

"Do you think it's even possible?" Chef asked, wiping the sweat from his forehead as he reinforced the butcher table's wooden surface with more planks. "I mean, you tried before, right?"

"I estimate a ten percent chance of success," she said with a grin. "However, I also estimate a ninety-eight percent chance that I'll have nothing better to do."

"You're right, and it would be great if it worked. This one has an udder, or uh, had an udder… so if the milk's drinkable…"

"Yup," she agreed. "Another sustainable food source."

Dreamily, he said, "I can only imagine the joy we'd have of some hot milk in the morning."

"Let's hope you won't have to imagine for much longer," Cassie said, using the welder-cutter to slice a shallow groove into the table's surface, to allow blood to drain during the butchering. Clever.

"Well," Chef said, not unproud of the completed butcher table, "I don't know about you, but I'm pretty sure this'll do just fine. There was a knife in our survival kit somewhere, right?"

With a smile, Cassie held it out to him. "Was smart enough to fetch it during my potty break just now."

"You lie," Chef said with a grin. "Girls don't go potty." He took the knife and hoisted the massive animal carcass onto the table, with Cassie's help. "Well, I'll be busy here for a while. How 'bout you take a second to relax?"

She thought for a moment, her hands in her sides. "I'll just walk the perimeter. You know, just because the first life-form we encountered wasn't hostile, doesn't mean that'll always be the case."

The girl was right. He hadn't thought about it yet, but predators were a very real possibility during the day too. It would be a massive bummer to spend all this time ensuring their survival, only to get gobbled up by some kind of native terror-monster. "Be careful, alright."

She nodded. "Absolutely."

He let her go and set to work on the carcass. He supposed stringing it up would have been more useful for gutting, but too late now. He'd just have to haul the guts out this way. He set the knife edge against the muffalo's sternum and pushed it down, sawing open the abdominal cavity. It was getting colder, and the butcher's table stood exposed, outside on the meadow, but no point in complaining.

After disposing of the beast's innards, he skinned it, cut off the most tasty-looking chunks of meat, and dismembered it, keeping some of the meat on the bones. The skin looked like it could be turned into suitable leather, and the wool, definitely, would be useful for someone who knew how to weave. But that wasn't the most pressing concern. Most important thing right now would be to preserve the meat. Smoking it might work, but by the time a smokehouse was done, the meat would have rotted away already. The only real option was to grill all of it, at least this way it'd keep for a day or two more.

As he gathered up the meat chunks and separated the useful bits from the waste, Larisa approached, and despite her disapproving face, she picked up a few low-quality bits of meat, then trotted off again. Chef had no idea what she was doing, but he didn't ask questions.

He dug a hole with a crude wooden trowel he'd cut for the occasion, and dumped the innards inside, burying them as deep as possible at a safe distance from the shelter. Then he gathered up some more wood and lit a fire. He might as well start the grilling. As the small fire slowly gathered its strength, he skewered the meat chunks onto pointed sticks and laid them out.

The skewers all ready, he sat down on a log and saw Larisa approaching, holding something in her arms. It looked like… "Larisa, is that… a cat?"

She smiled broadly, cradling a docile, gorgeous white cat in her arms. So that was what she'd needed the meat for.

"I'll be damned," Chef exclaimed. Somehow the sight of the cat made him feel so much less alone and nowhere near as defeated as he had before. Perhaps it was because there'd be extra company, perhaps it was because their colony had actually grown for the first time, or maybe it was simply the hope that if cats made their way to them, maybe actual people would too.

Cassie returned after a few minutes too, drawn to the fire and the now mouth-watering smell of grilled meat that filled the air. She, too, immediately accepted the cat into the fold, immediately identifying it as male and asking how it should be called, saying anything was fine except 'Morgana' if they wanted to use their evenings efficiently. After a few ridiculous suggestions, Chef simply shrugged and say, "I swear, with what you two are coming up with, it'd be more merciful if we just name him 'Bob'."

And so, Bob the cat spent the night with the three marooned space-farers, who all hoped he'd come to stay.