The Circadia Chronicles: Omnibus: The Complete Colonization Sci-Fi Series by Heather Heckadon (portable ebook reader .txt) 📕

held my head high. “I think we all can agree, this is too big of an issue for one man or even a few to decide. Let’s have a vote. Whoever has the majority, will decide the plan. It seems dark and grotesque to vote on people’s lives, but this is what it’s come to. Once the voting is done, everyone has to be all in. No negotiating. This man’s right,” I said, extending a hand out to him. “We should all be able to empathize with each other’s points of view at some level at this point. We’ve been through some shit, right? Now let’s vote. All in favor of executing Leslie, raise your hand.”

I watched as quite a few hands went in the air, while some teetered-on decisions.

“All in favor of executing Leslie and his crew, raise your hand.”

Quite a few more hands raised, some the same people.

“All in favor of executing everyone who landed on Circadia after us, raise your hand.”

Plenty of hands raised.

“What’s the count?” I asked Garrett.

“Leslie and his crew have to go,” He whispered back in my ear.

I nodded my head silently and took it all in. “Alright. You guys have voted, and Leslie and everyone in his crew have been sentenced to death, in all our eyes. Right?”

The crowd nodded their agreement, every nod sincere.

“I’ve gotta tell you guys, I’d do anything for any one of you. If I had to wage a war with anyone, it’d be you guys, hands down,” I said. They all laughed. “So, let’s get started on the planning. Let’s break up into four groups. Groups of around twenty people. That seems like a fair amount of people to carry out operations on small infantries of Leslie’s army. Once your group has a plan, bring it to me. Everything needs to be coordinated together. No one goes into anything alone." We discussed who would go with who until everyone was sorted. "Let’s do this!”  I clapped my hands and everyone sought out their groups using their expertise in the deciding factor for teams.

I naturally fit into a group that consisted of our nutritionist, Spencer—the livestock specialist, Sierra-the transportation engineer I met while detained, the entire chem team, the physician’s team, and Smith. Immediately, our thoughts seemed to coincide on a plan. We had no weapons. We had no man-power, at least not like Leslie’s army had. All we had was our intelligence and nature. So, we decided to use biological warfare. It sounded harsh, but it’s what we had to work with. Biology and nature, weaponized. Hard to fight off, easy to distribute, and little risk for us.

We intended on using every single person in the group as a resource to put our plan into action. Smith and the physician’s team were familiar with contagious and infectious diseases, Spencer knew what diseases would spare the animals and our transportation engineer could devise a way to deliver the concoction. The nutritionist, the chem team, and I created a plan to destroy the crops while keeping everyone in our group fed and safe.

Figuring out how to keep anyone other than Leslie and his crew living in the encampment, was going to be near impossible, so we would have to find a way to get them out if they chose. We knew some would want to stay and some would want to leave. We determined as a group that if any of them felt they wanted to stay with Leslie, they would suffer the same fate as him.

“Smallpox is our only option,” Spencer said. “It’s the only disease that won’t affect the livestock. It only chooses human hosts.”

“Where the hell are we supposed to get smallpox?” I asked. “Seriously. Wasn’t the last case in the seventies?”

Dr. Mayhew cut in, “Yes, the last case was in Somalia in 1977. Since then the WHO has deemed it eradicated globally, and has stopped vaccinating for smallpox. It would be very difficult to duplicate.”

“Well, that’s it then. If we can’t duplicate it or even have something to work from, it’s out,” Smith said. “I can’t create a virus out of thin air.”

“No one said you had to,” said Dr. Mayhew. “I just said it would be difficult to duplicate. I have the virus.”

“What?” Spencer asked. “What do you mean you have the virus?”

“Yeah...what?” I asked.

“The CDC got wind of our project, Grow. They were one of two organizations to house tiny amounts of the virus to study in case of another outbreak. They also housed the few vaccinations left in the world. It’s been a while since anyone has had smallpox, like Aella said, but they were worried with heightened tension between nations that they would be reduced to biological terrorism,” Dr. Mayhew said. “Obviously it went a lot farther than that pretty quickly since they nuked the entire world, but this was going to be a close second. The CDC shipped it up here with me, secretly, to keep anyone from getting their hands on it down there. They said the numbers here outweighed the loss they would experience there.”

We all sat in silence. Shocked. We looked back and forth at each other.

“I can work with that,” Smith said. “What kind of mortality rate are we looking at here?”

“I’m not sure which strain I have, honestly. They were supposed to send me with both variola major and minor, but I only have one labeled ‘variola.’ Variola major has a thirty percent mortality rate, whereas variola minor has a less than one percent mortality rate. Big differences when you’re trying to wipe out a small army,” Doctor Mayhew said. “But even if it just makes them sick for a while, maybe it will give the other teams a shot.”

“I don’t even know how the virus is transmitted,” Sierra said. “I know I’m supposed to deliver this thing to them, but how do I do that?”

“It’s spread via droplet, so we would almost need a solution to spray over them, or via contaminated clothing or blankets,”