“Yes, ma’am. We’re here to help.”

“Are you sure? Wouldn’t you rather stay here with, you know, the other engineers?”

He was already shaking his head. “Enlisted engineer,” he said, putting the stress on the first word. “That’s construction. Well, that’s the grunt work for the construction units, but I’m pretty sure I can help you throw together your forward operations outpost or whatever that idiot out there wants. This is Crandall.”

“Brian,” said the next guy, also shaking her hand. “Electronics tech. And before you ask, I’ve already given this tin bitch my professional attention and concluded that she’s fucked. So I figured I could at least carry shit around.”

“Same,” said the third man. “Gunnarson, Dagwood D. Call me Dag.” He nodded at the duffel bag she was filling. “I was the main supply clerk in Corporate Mod G, so I know where everything was. I know it all got tossed around pretty good, but if nothing else, I can read the codes on the labels.” He gave the haphazardly-opened crates around her a meaningful glance. “Maybe focus on finding stuff we really need, like tents.”

“And medical supplies,” said the last of them. He was the older one, although it was tough to say just how much older. He was Asian and his face was creased but ageless. He had no accent, unless it was a trace of some southern state, but he bent his head to her instead of taking the hand she extended. “Yao. Lucas, I should say, circumstances being what they are, but I prefer Mr. Yao.”

“He’s a doctor,” Eric supplied, pointing at the little frills sewn onto Mr. Yao’s sleeve which apparently proved it.

“I am not a doctor of medicine.” The older man did not look around. “And I’d just as soon be Mr. Yao from now on. My service contract appears to have expired.”

There was a short, ugly silence while the five of them stood there, avoiding one another’s eyes.

“I’m Amber,” she said belatedly, just to get them talking again.

It worked.

“So you are the right girl,” said Eric, glancing once at Mr. Yao, who wandered off, righting crates and checking labels as he went. “Great. Lamarc said you were heading out with that other guy. Thought you might like a hand.”

“If we can ever get going. How’s he doing out there? Scott, I mean.”

“He’s bringing ‘em around, shockingly enough.” Dag shrugged, rolling his eyes as he did it. “He’s got all the enthusiasm of a bulldog with none of the brains—and those are some dumb dogs, lady—but give the man his credit, he can talk a great line.”

“Of bullshit,” snorted Crandall, checking the contents of the packed duffels. “Lady, you need to disperse some of this stuff. No normal person’s gonna be able to carry a hundred pounds of MREs.”

And after that, it was all unpacking and re-packing and shouting questions or advice at each other across the dark, cluttered bay. It kept Amber’s mind nicely occupied until they were done and emerged into the cold, smoky light to find that Scott was still talking, although he was at least winding down.

Amber sat down on a bundle of tents to watch as he marched himself importantly among the masses, trying to win them over with talk of setbacks and the necessity of moving forward in the footsteps of their pioneer forefathers, who had also suffered unspeakable tragedy in the fulfillment of their goals, also undertaken in the name of Manifest Destiny. And because it was manifest, because it was true, because it was a goal set in their hearts by that higher power that all men, regardless of creed, aspired to, it was still a goal worth seeking.

“At any cost!” Scott thundered in conclusion, smacking his fist into the palm of his hand. “But never think that makes us unmindful of the cost. The cost will be counted, just as we remember and honor those who perished in the crossing of the ocean, who were buried alongside the ruts carved by covered wagons, and whose wooden markers were paved under by the rising streets of San Francisco! The people we have lost today are our fallen heroes, but we are the heroes who go on!”

To Amber’s mild astonishment, that actually worked. Not on everyone, of course, but he got some applause for that flowery heap of horseshit even while Scott was still pumping it out.

“What’d I tell you?” said Eric beside her, shaking his head. “I guess it’s true what my grandma says. God gives even the biggest fool one real talent.”

“What’s yours?” asked Amber, watching people line up to shake Scott’s hand.

“Hoops.”

“You wish, whitebread,” said Dag, who was just as white as a man named Dag Gunnarson ought to be.

Scott shook hands, patted shoulders, began to put people in a group.

“I’m ambidextrous,” Crandall announced suddenly.

“Oh yeah?”

“Selectively. Eating, smoking and jerking off.” He started to mime, re-discovered Amber in their midst and stopped, looking flustered.

“I ain’t blushing,” she said dryly and wasn’t. She’d heard worse—seen worse—in the stairwell back home.

Scott finally headed their way, with Nicci walking close at his side although she was quick to do her huddling next to Amber once she got there.

“We’re ready,” he said, giving the Fleetmen a stiff, soldierly sort of nod. “I haven’t done an official head-count, but there must be a couple hundred of them.”

“Yeah…” said Eric, eyeing the crowd. He shook his head. “They might all be willing to come live in the tents once they’re up, but I bet we don’t even get half that when it comes to carrying this stuff up that hill tonight.”

“So let’s hurry and get them set up,” said Amber, slinging her duffel over one arm and snatching up a bundled tent in the other.

“Just relax for a bit, Miss Bierce,” said Scott, also frowning back at the crowd now. “Let me talk to them some more and—”

“Do what you got to do, Everly,” said Amber, walking. “You can meet me there.”

She didn’t mean it any way but exactly what she’d said—do all the talking he wanted, get more people on board, meet her on the ridge—but he took it for a challenge and an ugly one at that. She heard him clapping his hands and shouting people into order and within a few minutes he was shouldering his way roughly past her to take the lead.

She thought about saying something (ah hey i didn’t mean it like that be cool you’re still the commanding space scout here so grow the fuck up and quit shoving), but in the end it was enough that they were moving. Amber reached out to catch Nicci’s hand and give it a reassuring little squeeze. They were moving and as bad as things were, that made her feel just a little bit better.

* * *

Much later, in the waning light of the alien, cloud-covered sunset, Amber finally took that head count. She couldn’t do anything else at the moment, not after that hike, except sit on the ground with her aching, rubbery legs splayed out before her, trying to gasp her lungs into working again.

She’d been the last to come into camp, except that wasn’t right, was it? ‘Coming in last’ implied there had been a line and she’d been at the end of it. Well, there had been a line, and she’d come in about three and a half hours after it, breathing so hard she could barely see and dragging her duffel by its strap. Nicci had been carrying the tent by that time, and Nicci was setting it up with the help of Mr. Yao and thank God for that, because Amber had spent the last hour of the hike thinking she was going to faint and now that she was here, if she had to stand up and move again, she damn well knew she would.

So she counted people, just in case no one had done that yet, trying to fool herself into thinking that was contributing in some way. Altogether, herself and Nicci included, there were forty-eight of them, a sad fraction of the hundreds Scott thought he’d won over with his inspiring speeches (although, to give him his due, it had seemed like a lot more than that when they were passing her, one by one, all the fucking way across the burned scar of the ship’s final landing). Of that number, only eleven were women. There were no atheists in foxholes, it was said, and she guessed when it came to lugging crates uphill in the freezing wind on an alien planet, there were no feminists either. Maybe there’d be more tomorrow. Maybe spending the night in a burning ship would make more people feel better about coming out to the ridge.