John Scalzi - The Last Colony

"Good luck with that," I said. The containers were more than two meters in width.

"We found one hole on the other side of the perimeter that was nearly a meter in length," Jane said. "Something's trying to get in at night. It can't jump over the containers, so it's trying to go under instead. And it's not just one. We've got lots of vegetation tramped down around here, and lots of different-sized paw prints on the containers. Whatever they are, they're in a pack."

"Are these the big animals folks have seen in the brush?" I asked

Jane shrugged. "No one's seen any of them close up, and nothing comes around here during the day. Normally, we'd post infrared cameras up at the top of the containers, but we can't here." Jane didn't have to explain why; the sentry cameras, like almost every other piece of technology we owned, communicated wirelessly, and wireless was a security risk. "And whatever they are, they're avoiding being seen by the night sentry. But the night sentry isn't using nightscopes, either."

"Whatever they are, you think they're dangerous," I said.

Jane nodded. "I don't see herbivores being this dedicated to getting inside. Whatever's out here sees us and smells us and wants to get in to see what we're like. We need to find out what they are and how many of them there are."

"If they're predators, their numbers are limited," I said. "Too many predators will deplete the stock of prey."

"Yes," Jane said. "But that still doesn't tell us how many there are or what sort of threat they are. All we know is that they're out here at night, and they're big enough to almost be able to jump the containers, and smart enough to try tunneling under. We can't let people begin to homestead until we know what sort of threat they represent."

"Our people are armed," I said. Among the supplies was a store of ancient, simple rifles and non-nanobotic ammunition.

"Our people have firearms," Jane said. "But most of them haven't the slightest idea how to use them. They're going to end up shooting themselves before they shoot anything else. And it's not only humans at risk. I'm more concerned about our livestock. We can't really afford to lose many of them to predators. Not this early."

I looked out toward the brush. Between me and the tree line, one of the Mennonite men was instructing a group of other colonists on the finer points of driving an old-fashioned tractor.

Farther out a couple of colonists were collecting soil so we could check its compatibility with our crops. "That's not going to be a very popular position," I said to Jane. "People are already complaining about being cooped up in town."

"It won't take that long to find them," Jane said. "Hickory and Dickory and I are going to take the watch tonight, up on top of the containers. Their eyesight drops down into the infrared range, so they might see them coming."

"And you?" I asked. Jane shrugged. After her revelation back on the Magellan about being reengineered, she'd kept mostly quiet about the full range of her abilities. But it wasn't a stretch to assume her visual range had expanded like the rest of her abilities. "What are you going to do when you spot them?" I asked.

"Tonight, nothing," Jane said. "I want to get an idea of what they are and how many there are. We can decide what we're going to do then. But until then we should make sure everyone is inside the perimeter an hour before sunset and that anyone outside the perimeter during the day has an armed guard." She nodded to her human deputies. "These two have weapons training, and there are several others in the Magellan crew who have as well. That's a start."

"And no homesteading until we get a grip on these things," I said.

"Right," Jane said.

"It'll make for a fun Council meeting," I said.

"I'll break it to them," Jane said.

"No," I said. "I should do it. You already have the reputation as the scary one. I don't want you always being the one who bears the bad news."

"It doesn't bother me," Jane said.

"I know," I said. "It doesn't mean you should always do it, though."

"Fine," Jane said. "Yon can tell them that I expect we'll knew quickly enough whether these things represent a threat. That should help."

"We can hope," I said.

"Don't we have any information on these creatures?" Manfred Trujillo asked. He and Captain Zane walked beside me now as I headed toward the village's information center.

"No," I said. "We don't even know what they look like yet. Jane's going to find out tonight. So far the only creatures we know anything about are those tat-things at the mess hall."

"The fuglies," Zane said.

"The what?" I asked.

"The fuglies," Zane said. "That's what the teenagers are calling them. Because they're fucking ugly."

"Nice name," I said. "Point is, I don't think we can claim to have a full understanding of our biosphere from the fuglies alone."

"I know you see value in being cautious," Trujillo said. "But people are getting restless. We've brought people to a place they know nothing about, told them they can't ever talk to their families and friends again, and then given them nothing to do for two entire weeks. We're in limbo. We need to get people going on the next phase of their lives, or they're going to keep dwelling on the fact that their lives as they knew them have been entirely taken away."

"I know," I said. "But you know as well as I do we've got nothing on this world. You two have seen the same files I have. Whoever did the so-called survey of this planet apparently didn't bother to spend more than ten minutes on it. We've got the basic biochemistry of the planet and that's pretty much it. We've got almost no information on flora and fauna, or even if it breaks down into flora and fauna. We don't know if the soil will grow our crops. We don't know what native life we can eat or use. All information the Department of Colonization usually provides a new colony, we don't have. We have to find all this stuff out for our own before we start, and unfortunately in that we've got a pretty big handicap."

We arrived at the information center, which was a grand name for the cargo container we'd modified for the purpose. "After you," I said, holding the first set of doors for Trujillo and Zane. Once we were all in, I sealed the door behind me, allowing the nanobotic mesh to completely envelop the outer door, turning it a featureless black, before opening the interior door. The nanobotic mesh had been programmed to absorb and cloak electromagnetic waves of all sorts. It covered the walls, floor and ceiling of the container. It was unsettling if you thought about it; it was like being in the exact center of nothing.

The man who had designed the mesh waited inside the center's interior door. "Administrator Perry," Jerry Bennett said. "Captain Zane. Mr. Trujillo. Nice to see you back in my little black box."

"How is the mesh holding up?" I asked.

"Good," Bennett said, and pointed at the ceiling. "No waves get in, no waves get out. Schrodinger would be jealous. I need more cells, though. The mesh sucks power like you wouldn't believe. Not to mention all the rest of this equipment." Bennett motioned to the rest of the technology in the center. Because of the mesh, it was the only place on Roanoke where there was technology that you wouldn't find past the middle of the twentieth century on Earth, save power technology that did not run on fossil fuels.

"I'll see what I can do," I said. "You're a miracle worker, Bennett."

"Nah," he said. "I'm just your average geek. I've got those soil reports you wanted." He handed over a PDA, and I fondled it for a moment before looking at the screen. "The good news is the soil samples I've seen so far look good for our crops in a general sense.

There's nothing in the soil that will kill them or stunt their growth, at least chemically. Each of the samples was crawling with little critters, too."