The Long Road to Gaia by Timothy Ellis Read Free Book Online Page B

winds grew worse, and
covered more of the planet, trees vanished completely. As the winds continued
to gather strength, the green coverage of the planet became lower and lower,
until nothing bigger than short grass remained. The atmosphere became more and
more toxic, finally unbreathable by any oxygen requiring species, and the
surface became unlivable. Everything died.
    I'd checked in from time to time, smiling
to myself, as humanity fled its own stupidity. I made sure the cats went with
them, and all other animals and plants.
    But not all people had chosen to leave.
Some of them tried to stay.
    Three times this team had been sent in to
evacuate those who'd found their way of surviving the planet wouldn’t work.
Three times I’d gone with them.
    Now I was back for the fourth, and last
mission.
    There was only one group left. And they
didn’t want to leave.
    Bill Smith had fought the orders to remove
them by force. He'd lost. He'd refused to carry out his orders. They threatened
him with everything up to and including court martial for treason, even though
no-one could actually define how treason fit the situation. He'd told them to
get on with it. They did. They charged his entire team with him. He gave in.
His team had no idea any of this had happened. He felt he owed it to them to
keep it from them.
    Orders were orders. He'd always known this.
He'd always obeyed. Beaten down this time, he obeyed once again. Listening to
his thoughts, 'once again' sounded like 'one last time'.
    I watched him as the Dropship passed
through the upper atmosphere. He was not a happy man. One might even call him
haunted.
    He couldn’t fault his superior's logic. The
planet no longer supported life. In fact, nothing much actually lived there
anymore. Only those who had been living there had any idea what still did, and
before leaving, they'd reported little else than cockroaches on the land, and
strange fish-like creatures at the darkest places of the deep ocean trenches,
where the hurricanes couldn’t reach.
    One by one, the last hold-outs had all been
evacuated.
    Except this last group. His superiors had
argued they were about to die, and they needed rescuing. He'd argued they had a
right to decide their own fate. We're right, you're wrong, do your job; had
won. The argument hadn't, the dirty tricks had.
    But the look on his face said this was all
wrong.
    I agreed with him. I'd even taken it to the
twelve.
    He lost.
    I lost.
    Here we were.
     

Two
     
    We dropped into the eye of a hurricane,
more or less dead center of the northern half of the Pacific Ocean. To the
east, one side of the hurricane buffeted the Rocky Mountains. To the west, the
same hurricane tore at the stones of what remained of China's Great Wall.
    The only safe way down, was through the
eye. Safe was a relative term though. In the past year, nine other teams had
perished, all of them on the way down. None of the pilots was quite like Takai
though. None of the ships had been like this one either.
    I moved down to the main troop drop area.
The team were strapped into seats, completely immobilized. The ride was rough,
and moving about was suicidal. For them. I stood easily.
    "I thought we were done with these evac's,"
said Walter Peck.
    "Yeah," agreed Nathan Vogane.
"Why us? Again?"
    "Two reasons," answered Sergeant
Susan Murdock, the only woman on the team. "One, because we are the only
ones good enough to pull it off."
    There was a pause.
    "And?" suggested Jason Merritt.
    "And two," went on Murdock
reluctantly, "because we're the only team left."
    "There's that," admitted John
Baracas.
    Nigel Weaver nodded to himself. He was the
Lieutenant, but he was leaving the talking to his sergeant. A man of few words,
who ran his team without many of them. If it needed to be said, he left it to
the Colonel to say. He caught Alan Henquist's glance and nodded to him.
    They were a nine person team now, having
lost eleven people over the last three years. No-one had volunteered to