"Seriously? It's a short list, but a nasty one." She sobered. "Lock yourself in; I'm going to lift, and fast. Things are likely to rattle around." With drives engaged, she pulled away from her launch cradle, acknowledged Traffic Control and continued her conversation, all at once. "Artifact thieves are high on that list. If you've got a big dig, you can bet that there are things being found that are going to be worth a lot to collectors. They'll come in, blast the base, land, kill everyone left over that gets in their way, grab the loot and lift, all within hours." Which was why the hidey was so far from our dome, and why Mum and Dad told me to get in it and stay in it if trouble came. "But normally they work an area, and normally they don't show up anyplace where Central has a lot of patrols. There haven't been any thieves in that area, and it is heavily patrolled."
"So, what's next on the list?" Alex asked, one screen dedicated to the stats on the dig, his own hands busy with post-lift chores that some brawns would have left to their brains. Double-checking to make sure all the servos had put themselves away, for instance. Keeping an eye on the weight-and-balance in the holds. Just another example, she thought happily, of what a good partner he was.
She was clear of the cradle and about to clear local airspace. Nearing time to accelerate 'like a scalded cat'. Now that's a phrase that's still useful. "Next on the list is something we don't even have to consider, and that's a native uprising."
"Hmm, so I see." His eyes went from the secondary screen where the data on the dig was posted and back to the primary. "No living native sophonts on the continent. But I can see how it could be the Zulu wars all over again."
He nodded, acknowledging her logic, and she was grateful to his self-education in history.
"Precisely," she replied. "Throw enough warm bodies at the barricades, and any defense will go down. In a native uprising, there are generally hordes of fervent fanatics willing to die in the cause and go straight to Paradise. Accelerating, Alex."
He gave her a thumbs-up, and she threw him into his seat. He merely raised an eyebrow at her column and kept typing. "There must be several different variations on that theme. Let's see, you could have your Desecration of Holy Site Uprising, your Theft of Ancient Treasures Uprising, your Palace Coup Uprising, your Local Peasant Revolution Uprising. Uh-huh. I can see it. And when you've overrun the base, it's time to line everyone up as examples of alien exploitation. Five executioners, no waiting."
"They normally don't kill except by accident, actually, or in the heat of the moment," she told him. "Most native sophonts are bright enough to realize that two hundred of Central Systems' citizens, a whole herd of their finest minds and their dependents, make a much better bargaining chip as hostages than they do as casualties."
"Not much comfort to those killed in the heat of the moment," he countered. "So, what's the next culprit on the list?"
"The third, last, and most common," she said, a bit grimly, and making no effort to control her voice-output "Disease."
"Whoa, wait a minute. I thought that these sites were declared free of hazard!" He stopped typing and paled a little, as well he might. Plague was the bane of the Courier Service existence. More than half the time of every CS ship was spent in ferrying vaccines across known space, and for every disease that was eradicated, three more sprang up out of nowhere. Nor were the brawns immune to the local plagues that just might choose to start at the moment they planeted. "I thought all these sites were sprayed down to a fare-thee-well before they let anyone move in!"
"Yes, but that's the one I'm seriously concerned about." And not just because it was a bug that got me. "That, my dear Alex, is what they don't tell you bright-eyed young students when you consider a career in archeology. The number one killer of xeno-archeologists is disease."
"Viruses and proto-viruses are sneaky sons-of-singularities; they can hibernate in tombs for centuries, millennia, even in airless conditions." She flashed up some Institute statistics; the kind they didn't show the general public. There was a thirty percent chance that a xeno-archeologist would be permanently disabled by disease during his career; a twenty percent chance that he would die. And a one hundred percent chance that he would be seriously ill, requiring hospitalization, from something caught on a dig, at some point in his life.
"So the bug hibernates. Then when the intrepid explorer pops the top off," Alex looked as grim as she felt. "Right Gotcha." She laughed, but it had a very flat sound. "Well, sometimes it's been known to be fortuitous. The Cades actually met when they were recovering from Henderson's Chorea, ah, or so their biographies in Who's Who say. There could be worse things than having the Institute cover your tropic vacation."
"But mostly it isn't" His voice was as flat as her laugh had been.
"Ye-es. One of my close friends is Doctor Kennet on the Pride of Albion. He's gotten to be a specialist in diseases that get archeologists. He's seen a lot of nasty variations over the years, including some really odd opportunistic bugs that are not only short-lived after exposure to air, but require a developing nervous system in order to set up housekeeping."
"Developing? Oh, I got it. A kid, or a fetus, provided it could cross the placental barrier." He shivered, and his expression was very troubled. "Brr, that's a really nasty one."
"Verily, White Knight." She decided not to elaborate on it. Maybe later. To let him know I'm not only out for fortune and glory. "I just wanted you to be prepared when we got there, which we will in, four days, sixteen hours, and thirty-five minutes. Not bad, for an old-fashioned FTL drive, I'd say." She'd eliminated the precise measurements that some of the other shell-persons used with their brawns in the first week, except when she was speaking to another shell-person, of course. Alex didn't need that kind of precision, most of the time; when he did, he asked her for it. She had worried at first that she might be getting sloppy.
No, I'm just accommodating myself to his world. I don't mind. And when he needs precision, he lets me know in advance.
"Well, let me see if I can think of some non-lethal reasons for the dig losing communications." He grinned. "How about, 'the dinosaur ate my transmitter'?"
"Cute." Now that their acceleration had smoothed and they were out of the atmosphere, she sent servos snooping into his cabin, as was her habit whenever a week or so went by, and he was at his station, giving her non-invasive access. "Alex, don't you ever pick up your clothes?"
"Sometimes. Not when I'm sent hauling my behind up the stairs with my tail on fire and a directive from CS ordering me to report back to my ship immediately." He shrugged, completely unrepentant. "I wouldn't even have changed my clothes if that officious b- "
"Alex," she warned. "I'm recording, I have to. Regulations." Ever since the debacle involving the Nyota Five, all central cabin functions were recorded, whenever there was a softperson, even if only a brawn, present. That was regulation even on AI drones. The regs had been written for AI drones, in fact; and CS administration had decided that there was no reason to rewrite them for brainships, and every reason why they shouldn't. This way no one could claim 'discrimination', or worse, 'entrapment'.