Doomsday minus 491 Earth days.
One interval later, Townsend was still dealing with the fallout from ssalssit essendi. The Nandrian food and whiskey he’d consumed at the banquet had brought his incipient ulcer into full and painful blossom. He was now on a diet of Ajda’s non-dairy yogurt and a battery of medications, and would be for at least the next three intervals. The Doc had warned him to avoid stress, but that was difficult to do on a station where key crew members were simmering with anger and barely speaking to one another.
Teri Mintz had been furious at the condition in which her stage costumes had been returned to her, and had chosen to lay all the blame on the man who’d talked her into loaning them out in the first place: Gavin Holchuk. She’d banished him from her quarters and was only marginally civil to him when their paths crossed elsewhere on the station.
This caused Holchuk to regress to the prickly, resentful man that Drew had read about in Nayo Naguchi’s station reports from fourteen standard years earlier. Thankfully, the Chief Cargo Inspector was not given to physical violence; however, a dark mood now hovered over him like a tethered rain cloud, making him snipe at anyone who dared to be cheerful in his presence.
Lydia Garfield was still recovering in Med Services from an apparent allergic reaction to something she’d tasted at the banquet. She was letting it be known that she held O’Malley responsible for this, since he’d waited until she was toxed reckless before recommending she try the alien dish. Payback, she vowed, would be delivered as soon as she was back on her feet.
The rest of the Daisy Hub delegation had returned to their duties, but were operating at various sub-par levels until their bodies could rid themselves of the alien organics they’d ingested. Evidently, what was and wasn’t intoxicating was not the only difference between the biochemistries of the two races.
Meanwhile, Rodrigues had kept his distance, not even contacting the station via commburst, despite the many questions that were probably “making his brain itch”, as Ruby liked to say, and for that Townsend was grateful. As long as the Corvou ship was absent from the Hub’s landing deck, he couldn’t think of any safe way to answer them.
—— «» ——
Doomsday minus 442 Earth days.
On Earth, the High Council had kept its word. In the weeks following the finalization of its agreement with the strikers, notification of off-world posting had been delivered to selected families in each of the Industrial Zones, instructing them to report as a unit to one of the processing centers in the nearest urban district. That each of these families contained at least one member who had been previously identified as Eligible did not immediately register as important. Nor did anyone care that the ratio of Eligible to once-Ineligible families selected was twenty or more to one. All that mattered was that new opportunities were opening up, just as Angeli had promised.
The Stragori had kept their word too. On April 21st, 2401, the first wave of twenty transport vessels reported to Transfer Points Able, Baker, and Charlie. The second wave arrived fifteen days later. Under the terms of the Stragori offer, Humans boarding at Able and Baker would be going to one of Earth’s colonies. Those boarding at Charlie would be taken to Stragon.
By the time the third wave of Stragori ships had docked, a steady movement of emigrants had been established, through the processing centers in the urban districts to the local airfields where shuttles sat waiting, and from there to each shuttle’s designated transfer point. Excitement about the expanded colonization program had been growing. However, Earth’s government had known that as soon as they began bringing once-Ineligibles into the urban districts, their ability to maintain that pretense would weaken. Eventually, someone would question the speed with which colonists were being sent off-world, and despite all their efforts to keep a lid on the truth, it would leak out, either accidentally or by design. Their only hope to keep any sort of control was to make the announcement themselves, at a time of the High Council’s choosing.
On July 2nd, 2401, residents of New Chicago, including once-Ineligible families in the midst of being prepared to go off-world, received the following bulletin as part of their morning news feed:
In little more than a year’s time, planet Earth will be coming under attack from an insectoid race called the Corvou. This is not a hoax. The High Council made the announcement from their meeting chambers early this morning. They wish to assure all Humans that an orderly, peaceful evacuation program is in the process of being implemented, and they ask that everyone remain where they are and wait to be summoned to the nearest urban district. Alien assistance with the evacuation has been offered and accepted, and is already ongoing. In the meanwhile, Earth’s spacegoing Fleet of short range and long range vessels have been recalled to the Terran system, and the Relocation Authority has been preparing passenger manifests and destination lists in advance of their arrival. Any businesses or private citizens who own Gate-enabled craft are instructed to contact the Relocation Authority immediately, to make them available for the evacuation program.