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briefing "one hundred seventy-eight people between the ages of twenty-five and
thirty-five. That's plenty to set up perimeter guards."
Alex's fingers raced across the keypads in front of him, calling up data to
her screens. "Hmm. No really nasty native beasties. Area declared safe.
And, my. Fully armed, are we?" He glanced over at the column. "I had no idea
archeologists were such dangerous beings! They never told me that back in
secondary school!"
"Grrr," she responded. She flashed a close-up of the bared fangs of a dog on
one of the screens he wasn't using. In the past several weeks she and
Alex had spent a lot of time talking, getting to know each other. By virtue of
her seven years spent mobile, she was a great deal more like a softperson than
any of her classmates, and Alex was fun to be around. Neither of them
particularly minded the standard issue beiges of her interior; what he had
done, during the time spent in FTL, was to copy the minimalist style of his
sensei's home, taking a large brush and some pure black and red enamel, and
copying one or two Zen ideographs on the walls that seemed barest. She thought
they looked very handsome, and quietly elegant
Of course, his cabin was a mess, but she didn't have to look in there, and she
avoided doing so as much as possible.
In turn, he expressed delight over her 'sparkling personality'. No matter what
the counselors said, she had long ago decided that she had feelings and
emotions and had no guilt over showing them to those she trusted.
Alex had risen in estimation from 'partner' to 'trusted' in the past few
weeks; he had a lively sense of humor and enjoyed teasing her. She enjoyed
teasing right back.
"Pull in your fangs, wench," he said. "I realize that the only reason they get
those arms is because there are no sentients down there. So, what's on the
list of Things That Get Well-Armed Archeologists? I have the sinking feeling
there were a lot of things they didn't tell me about archeology back in
secondary school!"
"Seriously? It's a short list, but a nasty one." She sobered. "Lock yourself
in; I'm going to lift, and fast. Things are likely to rattle around."
With drives engaged, she pulled away from her launch cradle, acknowledged
Traffic Control and continued her conversation, all at once. "Artifact thieves
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are high on that list. If you've got a big dig, you can bet that there are
things being found that are going to be worth a lot to collectors. They'll
come in, blast the base, land, kill everyone left over that gets in their way,
grab the loot and lift, all within hours." Which was why the hidey was so far
from our dome, and why Mum and Dad told me to get in it and stay in it if
trouble came. "But normally they work an area, and normally they don't show up
anyplace where Central has a lot of patrols. There haven't been any thieves in
that area, and it is heavily patrolled."
"So, what's next on the list?" Alex asked, one screen dedicated to the stats
on the dig, his own hands busy with post-lift chores that some brawns would
have left to their brains. Double-checking to make sure all the servos had put
themselves away, for instance. Keeping an eye on the weight-and-balance in the
holds. Just another example, she thought happily, of what a good partner he
was.
She was clear of the cradle and about to clear local airspace. Nearing time to
accelerate 'like a scalded cat'. Now that's a phrase that's still useful.
"Next on the list is something we don't even have to consider, and that's a
native uprising."
"Hmm, so I see." His eyes went from the secondary screen where the data on the
dig was posted and back to the primary. "No living native sophonts on the
continent. But I can see how it could be the Zulu wars all over again."
He nodded, acknowledging her logic, and she was grateful to his self-education
in history.
"Precisely," she replied. "Throw enough warm bodies at the barricades, and any
defense will go down. In a native uprising, there are generally hordes of
fervent fanatics willing to die in the cause and go straight to Paradise.
Accelerating, Alex."
He gave her a thumbs-up, and she threw him into his seat. He merely raised an
eyebrow at her column and kept typing. "There must be several different
variations on that theme. Let's see, you could have your Desecration of Holy
Site Uprising, your Theft of Ancient Treasures Uprising, your Palace
Coup Uprising, your Local Peasant Revolution Uprising. Uh-huh. I can see it
And when you've overrun the base, it's time to line everyone up as examples of
alien exploitation. Five executioners, no waiting."
"They normally don't kill except by accident, actually, or in the heat
of the moment," she told him. "Most native sophonts are bright enough to
realize that two hundred of Central Systems' citizens, a whole herd of their
finest minds and their dependents, make a much better bargaining chip as
hostages than they do as casualties."
"Not much comfort to those killed in the heat of the moment," he countered.
"So, what's the next culprit on the list?"
"The third, last, and most common," she said, a bit grimly, and making no
effort to control her voice-output "Disease."
"Whoa, wait a minute. I thought that these sites were declared free of
hazard!" He stopped typing and paled a little, as well he might. Plague was
the bane of the Courier Service existence. More than half the time of every CS
ship was spent in ferrying vaccines across known space, and for every disease
that was eradicated, three more sprang up out of nowhere. Nor were the brawns
immune to the local plagues that just might choose to start at the moment they
planeted. "I thought all these sites were sprayed down to a fare-thee-well
before they let anyone move in!"
"Yes, but that's the one I'm seriously concerned about." And not just because
it was a bug that got me. "That, my dear Alex, is what they don't tell you
bright-eyed young students when you consider a career in archeology. The
number one killer of xeno-archeologists is disease."
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