When the council convenes the next day, it’s actually in the same room where Astrid and her splinter group were plotting. Now Cleve is seated at the head of the table, with Tenoch and Roze on his right and the Ekes on his left with Chloe. Dr. Citali is at the other end of the table. She’s a welcome observer, but as the Stepdaughters of Chiron representative here, she gets no vote. Cleve’s got a vote, but only to break ties.
Each of the councilors has an aide with them. Takuto is taking notes for Roze on DataPad++, and next to him Arx is assisting Tenoch. Hopefully they’ll both be paying full attention to their assigned duties here. I don’t really know the other assistants in the room, though I recognize Astrid’s as one of the attendees of her expansionist meeting.
Cleve opens the discussion. “I’m kind of a neutral party here because I haven’t been here as long as everyone else,” he says, justifying why he’s conducting the meeting. He lays out the rules of order and passes out copies of the agenda. The most important thing to do here today is figure out what Data Haven can do about the Morgan Planetary Security Force and vote on a course of action. “We just need to get on the table what the capabilities of Data Haven are, what we want to do, and what is feasible for us to do. We don’t want to talk forever, but everyone gets a chance to speak. And we’re not going to talk all over each other. In summary, we have to deal with these issues as a group; we can’t have one hand not knowing what the other is doing. Even if we don’t all agree, we need to be united, our actions concerted.” I’ve been hovering behind Cleve’s chair, but at this point I move to the large whiteboard covering one of the walls, ready to record people’s ideas.
“What I want to talk about right now is the army, but we have other things on the agenda that we’ll need to talk about at some point,” Cleve continues. “The army is the most urgent thing, but I’m compiling a list. I’m sure you all are as well. Feel free to add to it on the agenda. We won’t get to all those matters today, but we need to document them. The council has a job: to deal with these issues.”
“Did you print this on the back of Morgan flyers?” Roze asks, incredulous. “That’s efficient!”
“Waste not, want not right?” Cleve replies. It’s good to see he found a use for all that litter we collected. “And actually, we should probably talk about the Stepdaughters of Chiron, as well,” he adds. Now that there’s a council, no one person can just declare that we’re allies. On the board, I jot down the main topics. 1) What to do about army? 2) Formalize relationship with Stepdaughters of Chiron. 3) Chore wheel (if there’s time).
“So, first order of business,” Cleve says. “The Morgan army is going to march through here on its way to the Stepdaughters of Chiron. What do we do about it? And what are the risks if we don’t do anything?”
“We should find a way to block Miasma Pass,” Tenoch says. “That will slow them down dramatically. Eventually they will be able to dig through it, but they’ll have to bring in their excavators, and that will take a lot more time. However, we don’t have the explosives to blow the pass or the construction equipment to build a barrier. And this action would also cut us off from the Morgan domes, meaning any new exiles will not be able to reach here.”
I note Tenoch’s ideas and objections on the board, but I also volunteer the information that it’s possible to cross that mountain range along the steep slopes above Miasma Pass. It’s more dangerous, and you couldn’t take vehicles that way, but individuals could still get across there. That route might survive whatever upheaval makes the pass itself unnegotiable.
“And we need a way to trigger this closure,” Tenoch continues. “Unless one of you can summon a siege worm and control it.”
“Those are two separate things,” I comment.
Tenoch blinks at me. “I suppose so.”
“Well, we do have a way to summon a siege worm,” I say. This admission causes an immediate stir in the council, with lots of shouts demanding to know what and how and so on.
“We found a Progenitor device,” Cleve says. Roze confirms this; they helped identify what it could do. “It summons siege worms, but we don’t know exactly what it tells them or what else it does.”
“It could certainly bear further examination—perhaps by you, Tenoch—to see if it could also repel them,” I add. No need to mention that I personally can attract siege worms too.
“But it’s a dangerous way to go about it, as we’ve seen first hand,” Cleve concludes, gesturing at me. Although the bones in my left arm are all back in their proper place, I’ve still got my arm in a sling while they finish mending. It’s tucked out of sight under my poncho, but everyone in this room has by now heard what happened to me.
“We’ve also seen how much it tears up the terrain,” I point out.
Chloe speaks up. “Could this be used to directly counter this army?”
The very idea of summoning a siege worm to actually fight people makes my stomach turn and my skin flush. “B-but summoning a siege worm near people?” I stutter out. “To attack them with it?”
“Or scare them off,” Chloe says calmly. I shake my head in disbelief at her words, and she asks, “Do you think this army is sufficiently equipped to fight a siege worm?”
“I don’t know if anybody is sufficiently equipped to do that,” Cleve says. “But let’s go over what they had.” The leaders of each group are from the University and equipped with laser guns. Conceivably, those could hurt a siege worm. There were also two robots for every three people, and robots won’t be scared off by a siege worm the way any person in their right mind would be. Plus, there’s the matter of how intelligent a siege worm is. The long tendrils allow it to strike from a distance, so it could stay out of the reach of robots, if it had the mind to. Ultimately, Cleve shrugs. “We can only summon it. After that, we don’t know what will happen or how accurate it will be. And it escalates the conflict between Morgan Industries and Data Haven.”
“If we collapse the pass before they get to it, then we’re not even necessarily to blame, as far as they know,” I point out. “It could just look like an avalanche.”
“Good point,” Chloe acknowledges.
“So if we want to still be open to other people who are exiled or ever have a chance at diplomacy with Morgan Industries, then that may be too much,” Cleve says. “It sounds to me like right now, everyone’s concern is that we stay hidden because we don’t have the forces to directly confront them. But it’s a real escalation when you start attacking citizenry.”
Shilp chimes in, “I’m certainly willing to support blocking Miasma Pass, but you just mentioned diplomacy. What if we reach out as officially neutral? That if they want, they can walk across our space, as long as they don’t hurt us?”
“So you’ll just consign us to be murdered?!” Marina cries, pounding the table.
I drift over to her and put a supportive hand on her shoulder. “How many of you know somebody that Dr. Citali has treated injuries for?” I ask. Two-thirds of the hands go up, and people nod to themselves. “So, have the Stepdaughters of Chiron been neutral to you?” Marina risked herself to track me down in the wilderness when she thought I was on death’s door. I don’t know if I qualify as a member of the Stepdaughters or not, but I feel passionate about defending them, and my eyes burn accordingly, glowing with the emotion.
From the murmurs at the table, it’s clear that no one here had quite realized all the work that Marina was doing. Her quiet professionalism renders her inoffensive, but it also hides some of her contributions since she is not loud and flashy about them. Dr. Citali might not have the best bedside manner, but she has been patching people up, treating lung conditions and allergies, and stretching the food supplies further.
Roze, perhaps the person here with the most sway, speaks up. “Look, we haven’t really done anything for the Stepdaughters of Chiron yet. Like, I wrote one computer program for them, that’s it. Dr. Citali has not asked anything from us, and now this is her time of need. I feel like the minimum we can do is give Morgan some hell. Who here actually likes Morgan dome?” No one speaks up.
“I haven’t met anybody who works for Morgan Industries who hasn’t immediately laid claim to whatever they were looking at,” Cleve says into the silence. “That includes mining, that includes repo squads. My concern is that if we talk to them, they’ll lay claim to us.”
“Yeah,” Roze says. “They’re going to find us. We can’t stay secret, and that’s been our only defense. That’s going to end. It is what it is—we knew this was going to happen one day. I suggest that we make a formal alliance with the Stepdaughters of Chiron. If we’re going to mount a defensive force, then this is the place and time to do it.”
These words get agreement from most of the table. Even Astrid supports the motion; taking sides against Morgan gives fuel to her aims at expansion. No one objects, but Chloe abstains. She would prefer neutrality but accepts that it is impossible. Cleve formally announces that we have a consensus to ally with the Stepdaughters of Chiron, at least for the time being. Of course, it needs to be taken to the Stepdaughters for them to ratify their side of it, but the details of that delegation—led by Cleve of course—can be worked out another time.
I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding. We’re going to back the Stepdaughters here. Now it’s just a matter of how.