John Scalzi - The Last Colony

"Try me," Jane said.

"All right," Stross said. "For starters, do you know what the Conclave is?"

Jane looked like she'd been slapped.

"What? What is it? What is the Conclave?" I asked. I looked over to Zane, who opened his hands apologetically. He didn't know, either.

"They got it off the ground," Jane said, after a pause.

"Oh, yeah," Stross said.

"What is the Conclave?" I repeated.

"It's an organization of races," Jane said, still looking over at Stross. "The idea was to band together to control this part of space and to keep other races from colonizing." She turned to me. "The last I heard about it was just before you and I went to Huckleberry."

"You knew about this and you didn't tell me," I said.

"Orders," Jane said; it came out snappishly. "It was part of the deal I had. I got to leave the Special Forces on my terms, provided I forgot everything I'd ever heard about the Conclave. I couldn't have told you even if I had wanted to. And anyway, there was nothing to tell. Everything was still in the preliminary stages and from what I knew, it wasn't going anywhere. And I learned about it through Charles Boutin. He wasn't the most credible observer of interstellar politics."

Jane seemed genuinely angry; whether at me or the situation I

couldn't tell. I decided not to push it and turned toward Stross. "But now the Conclave thing is a growing concern."

"It is," Stross said. "For over two years now. The first thing it did was warn every species who wasn't part of the Conclave not to colonize anymore."

"Or what?" Zane asked.

"Or the Conclave would wipe out their new colonies," Stross said. "That's the reason for the switcharoo here. We led the Conclave to believe we were forming a colony and settling it on one world. But in fact we sent the colony to another world entirely. One that isn't in the records or on the charts or that anyone knows about, other than a few very highly placed people. And me, because I'm here to tell you this. And now you. The Conclave was all set to attack Roanoke colony before you could even get your people on the ground. Now they can't attack you because they can't find you. It makes the Conclave look foolish and weak. And that makes us look better. That's the thinking as I understand it."

Now it was my turn to get angry. "So the Colonial Union is playing hide-and-seek with this Conclave," I said. "That's just jolly."

"Jolly's a word," Stross said. "I don't think it'll be so jolly if they find you, though."

"And how long is that going to take?" I asked. "If this is as much of a blow to the Conclave as you say, they're going to come looking for us."

"You're right about that," Stross said. "And when they find you, they're going to wipe you out. So now it's our job to make you hard to find. And I think this is the part you're really not going to like."

"Point number one," I said, to the representatives of Roanoke colony. "No contact whatsoever between Roanoke colony and the rest of the Colonial Union."

The table erupted into chaos.

Jane and I sat on either ends, waiting for the fracas to calm. It took a few minutes.

"That's insane," said Marie Black.

"I agree entirely," I said. "But every time there's a contact between Roanoke and any other colony world, it leaves a trail back to us. Spaceships have crews that number in the hundreds. It's not realistic that none of those would talk to friends or spouses. And you all already know that people will be looking for us. Your former governments and your families and the press will all be looking for someone who can give them a clue to where we are. If anyone can point a finger back to us, this Conclave will find us."

"What about the Magellan?" asked Lee Chen. "It's going back."

"Actually, no, it's not," I said. This news received a low gasp. I remembered the absolute fury in Captain Zane's face when Stross told him this bit of information. Zane threatened to disobey the order; Stross reminded him be had no control over the ships engines, and that if he and the crew didn't head to the surface with the rest of the colonists, they'd discover they had no control over life support, either. It was a fairly ugly moment.

It got worse when Stross told Zane the plan was to get rid of the Magellan by driving it right into the sun.

"The crew of the Magellan have families back in the CU," said Hiram Yoder. "Spouses. Children."

"They do," I said. "That will give you an idea how serious this is."

"Can we afford them?" asked Manfred Trujillo. "I'm not saying we refuse them. But the colony stores were meant for twenty-five hundred colonists. Now we're adding, what, another two hundred?"

"Two hundred and six," said Jane. "It's not a problem. We shipped with half again as much food stores as are usual for a colony this size, and this world has plant and animal life we can eat. Hopefully."

"How long will this isolation continue?" asked Black.

"Indefinitely," I said. Another grumble. "Our survival depends on isolation. It's just that simple. But in some ways that makes things easier. Seed colonies have to prepare for the next wave of colonists two or three years down the line. We don't have to worry about that now. We can focus on what our needs are. That'll make a difference."

There was glum agreement to this. For the moment that was the best I could hope for.

"Point two," I said, and tensed up for the backlash. "No use of technology that can give away the existence of our colony from space."

This time they didn't calm down after a few minutes.

"That's utterly ridiculous," said Paulo Gutierrez, eventually. "Anything that has a wireless connection is potentially detectable. All you have to do is sweep with a broad-spectrum signal. It'll try to connect with anything and tell you what it finds."

"I understand that," I said.

"Our entire technology is wireless," Gutierrez said. He held up his PDA. "Look at this. Not a single goddamned wired input. You couldn't connect a wire to it if you tried. All our automated equipment in the cargo hold is wireless."

"Forget the equipment," said Lee Chen. "All of my colonists are carrying an implanted locator."

"So are mine," said Marta Piro. "And they don't have an off switch."

"You're going to have to dig them out, then," Jane said.

"That's a surgical procedure," Piro said.

"Where the hell did you put them?" Jane said.

"Our colonists' shoulders," Piro said. Chen nodded at this; his colonists had theirs in the shoulder as well. "It's not a major surgery, but it's still cutting into them."

"The alternative is exposing every other colonist to the risk of being found and killed," Jane said, clipping off her words. "I guess your people are just going to have to suffer." Piro started to open her mouth to respond, but then seemed to think better of it.

"Even if we dig out the locators, there's still every other piece of equipment we have," Gutierrez said, bringing the conversation back around to him. "It's all wireless. Farm equipment. Medical equipment. All of it. What you're telling us is that we can't use any of the equipment we need to survive."

"Not all the equipment in the cargo hold supports a wireless connection," Hiram Yoder said. "None of the equipment we brought with us does. It's all dumb equipment. It all needs a person behind the controls. We make it work just fine."

"You have the equipment," Gutierrez said. "We don't. The rest of us don't."

"We'll share everything we can," Yoder said.

"It's not a matter of sharing," Gutierrez spat. He took a second to calm himself. "I'm sure you would try to help us," he said to Hiram. "But you brought enough equipment for you. There's ten times as many of the rest of us."

"We have the equipment," Jane said. Everyone at the table looked down toward her. "I've sent you all a copy of the ship manifest. You'll see that in addition to all the modern equipment we have, we were also provided with a full complement of tools and implements that were, until today, obsolete. This tells us two things. It tells us that the Colonial Union fully intended for us to be on our own. It also tells us that they don't intend for us to die"