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

Doc said. “We are going to have to create a contaminated solution, and either infect the blankets or create a way to administer the droplets to everyone.”

He sat quiet, then looked to Smith. “He’s probably our best bet to deliver the virus. He can get close to these people where we can’t. When we started this, I figured Sierra could deliver it on some kind of drone apparatus, but it may be better to have someone inside delivering it.”

“No," I said, "he’ll get sick, too.”

“Aella, it’s okay. It’s the only way,” Smith said. “This is why I did it. I wanted to help.”

I shook my head and looked at the ground. I didn’t like it, but they were right. If we wanted to do this undetected, we would need him.

“I’ll start working on it in the camp, no one will know what I’m doing. We have the best facilities there,” Smith said. He was met with sideways glances from some people, so he said, “You can trust me. Even if you don’t trust me, I’m your only shot, so what do you have to lose?”

Everyone slowly nodded.

“Doc, I’m gonna need your help. I can do it, I just need some refreshers. Can you help me?” Smith asked.

“Absolutely.”

We worked the rest of the night on plans to feed our rebellion. Together with the nutritionist, we found ways to harvest native edibles and also figured out how to grow them closer to home. Early on we determined, we were starting at ground zero, but we planned on making up for it.

“This is awful,” I said. “We’ve already worked to grow Circadia. We grew the crops, we grew the livestock. We tested the plants. Now we’re left with nothing.”

“Not completely,” Spencer said.

“What do you mean?” the lead nutritionist asked.

Spencer looked at the both of us and smiled. “We still have pigs.”

“And how exactly are we supposed to steal a pig?” I scoffed. “I heard those things squealing when we first found them. It’s terribly loud! Everyone in camp and maybe even on the freakin’ moon will hear those damn things!”

He laughed. “Remember when we found the pod of pigs?” he asked.

“Yeah.”

“Well, they were pretty far from camp. Like really far from camp, and if you’ve never worked with pigs before, they’re extremely muscular and strong. Even the babies. We brought a lot of pigs with us, and someone was going to have to wrestle those things all the way into a holding pen one by one. It was going to be difficult,” he said. “So, I started thinking of other ways to go about it. On Earth, I would’ve just used a dart gun to inject a sedative. Once the sedative took effect, I would start moving them, but I didn’t have that with me here. I had just about given up on what I was going to do. Even thought about letting them be free-range! Though we didn’t have any guns, and I didn’t think we would ever be able to catch the damn things again, I didn’t feel like I had another choice! I sat my ass in the tall flower weed, and then it hit me! I needed a natural sedative, and there was plenty of it around. Maybe...”

“Wait, what was it?” the nutritionist asked.

“Flower weed! It’s so abundant here! And it looks just like Valerian from Earth! Valerian is a tall flower that has a ton of healing properties, but one of them is sedation. People extract Valerian root and use it as a sleep remedy,” he said.

“Please don’t tell me you just threw flower weed in with the pigs?” she said.

“Why?” Spencer asked.

“What if it had been poisonous? You could have completely demolished our meat supply in one go!” she yelled.

“Well...” he said, “I did it! I picked all the flower weed I could possibly find, root and all, and threw it down into the pod with the pigs. At first, I didn’t think it’d work. They gobbled it up, but nothing happened. About thirty minutes later though, they were out cold! Worked wonders! I went and gathered the guys up again, and we just hauled ‘em outta there by their back legs, no squealing or nothing. That’s why we removed all the flower weed from the pigs’ pen and overturned the Earth. Aella even set us up with wheat seeds to throw in to choke out the flower weed and give a little nutrition for them.”

“I had no idea! So, all we have to do is feed the pigs flower weed, and we have quiet and easy to carry meat that can reproduce right here?” I asked.

“Exactly,” Spencer said.

“Just have to get past Leslie,” the nutritionist remarked as she rolled her eyes.

“I’m sure we can get in and out quietly,” I said. “Leslie’s so worried about his army and their plans, he’s most likely forgetting about basic needs, like food.”

“If we know anything about Leslie, it’s that he doesn’t think about others or the future. If he’s got food in front of him, he’s not worrying,” Spencer said. “Probably why we’re in this situation in the first place.”

“We’ll send a ‘task force’ out to try and grab at least two pigs. We don’t know how long we’ll be out here on our own living off the land, but two pigs should be enough to hold us over long enough. We can eat one, save the other and grab a mate for it later,” I said. “Spencer, think you could lead that mission?”

“Oh, hell yeah,” he said.

“I think it’s a good idea to prepare for the darkness. It should be coming back around soon. We don’t know exactly when, but it should be soon,” the nutritionist said.

“How do we do that?” I asked.

“In the old days, they would cure meat using salt. We can also dry the meat. There’re many ways we can preserve already butchered meat for eating later. I think that’d be good thinking. Like you said, we don’t know how long we’re gonna be out