Viridian Sands

"Catla'ten'qui and her flock are responsible for maintaining the camp's utilities," the Polar explained apologetically, pausing to swipe a card over a reader on the door frame. "The Rask territory is a harsh environment, and we have to be careful about how much water we use. One person exceeds their allocation, and the next finds that their toilet no longer flushes."

"I see," Ramos replied as he stepped into the prefab. It was about the size of a small apartment, the space divided up into a living area, a bathroom, and a bedroom. Over on the far side of the room was a counter with kitchen appliances and a sink, and there was a small table with a couple of metal chairs. Everything was human-sized, and he wondered if they just printed the furniture to order based on the species of the occupant.

"You should have everything that you need," Orzi said as she made her way past him, her helmeted head brushing the ceiling. "If anything is missing, you can file a requisition form. The control panel is over here. This manages environmental conditions and lighting, and it tracks your utilities usage. Here - allow me to engage the AG plate."

Ramos' stomach lurched as he felt all of the extra weight suddenly lift off him, and he had to reach for a nearby wall to steady himself, his inner ear insisting that he was about to float right off the floor like a balloon. As his surprise subsided, he exhaled a sigh of relief, feeling cool air from a nearby vent start to wash over him.

"Better?" Orzi chuckled. "Just be sure to deactivate these systems before you leave for work lest you draw Catla's ire. She is not above tearing the plate right out of the floor."

Ramos set down his pack on a nearby couch, but he didn't have long to enjoy the cool air and low gravity before Orzi was ushering him along again.

"Come - we must get you oriented," she said as she shut off the power and directed him to the door. As soon as the field was deactivated, all of that extra weight piled onto Ramos' shoulders again, like someone had draped a lead apron over him.

He followed her out onto the dusty road, and they proceeded to another structure further down the street. This one was larger - made from multiple modular prefabs that had been joined together to create a two-story building.

Inside was a reception area, and Orzi led him to an adjoining prefab that had been set up as an office. As he had suspected, the furniture here was a mix of various sizes and styles to accommodate different physiologies. The Polar headed for a suitably tall desk, sitting down on a reinforced chair with a hole for her tail. She gestured for him to take a seat opposite her, Ramos finding that the table rose to his chest, making him feel like a toddler sitting with the adults.

Orzi disconnected her helmet and set it down on the desk, shaking out a bob of fluffy hair the color of dirty snow, a pair of round ears that were situated high on her head twitching.

"That is better," she said with a relieved sigh, hitting a touch panel embedded in the table. A holographic display flared to life to hover above its surface, and she began to manipulate it with gesture controls. "Let me see...Jorge Ramos...ecological engineering..."

He waited patiently, glancing around the room. It wasn't too different from his own residence, but they had installed dividers to separate the office cubicles, and there were potted ferns scattered around for decoration. The air was cooler, but the gravity was still punishing. That would probably be the case for any shared spaces.

"Ah!" Orzi said, getting his attention. "I believe that I have found a suitable assignment for you. Do you have any experience teaching?"

"Teaching?" he repeated, his brow furrowing. "Not in a classroom or anything like that. I suppose I've taught farmers how to operate their equipment and how to improve their ecological footprint. I was actually working in the Brazilian Amazon before I was reassigned. We were creating agroforestry farms and restoring biodiversity."

"Perfect," the Polar chimed as she began to type at a virtual keyboard. Between her gloves and her claws, maybe it was an easier prospect than using a physical one. "I am assigning you to a pack. They will be your students, and your goal will be to teach them everything they need to know to perform their duties in your eventual absence."

"A pack?" Ramos pressed.

"You have been briefed about interacting with Borealans, I presume?" Orzi asked as she glanced back at him through the wavering hologram. "They would not have let you come here otherwise."

"I got a briefing from an Elysian officer on the carrier," he explained. "He told me about how pack hierarchies work and how to avoid pissing off the locals. Don't maintain eye contact for too long, don't try to resolve disputes by being confrontational - that kind of thing."

"The Rask are a little different from the Elysians," Orzi began.

"Yeah, my shuttle pilot told me the same thing."

"Equatorial packs - the group that includes Elysians and Rask, among others - have a very strict social hierarchy. There is an Alpha who leads the pack, and their subordinates form a pecking order, if you will. The Alpha commands absolute obedience and deference. This hierarchy is usually determined via bouts, which are brief, usually violent fights in which the strongest prevail. There are many more nuances, but that is all you really need to know right now. Matriarch Korbaz has given her people orders to respect the Coalition chain of command. Even if you are smaller and weaker than a Rask, they will obey you if instructed to do so by someone of higher social standing. We call these parallel social structures. The Alpha is not really obeying you - rather, they are carrying out the orders of their betters."

"So, am I going to have any problems?" Ramos asked warily.

"I would advise being assertive," the Polar replied. "Do not be aggressive and do not challenge the Rask directly, but they are more comfortable and easier to work with when the chain of command is readily apparent. They may become agitated if they are unsure of who has seniority."

"I'm not hearing a no..."

"You will learn," she added with a smile. "Remember - we are here to help these people. Their territory has suffered many hardships that contributed to their culture of piracy and raiding. It took a rebellion and a coup to install Matriarch Korbaz, and for the first time, the Rask have a leader who puts the welfare of her subjects first. We must make the most of this opportunity if we wish for the Rask to walk alongside us into a peaceful future."

"Alright," Ramos replied, swayed by her words. "When do I get started?"

"Right away, if you are ready," she said as she rose from her seat. "We shall take a buggy to the work site and get you acquainted with your pack."

***

Ramos gripped the tubular frame of the buggy as it bounced along, jostling him in his seat, the harness that secured him to the faded leather digging into his shoulder. Orzi's generous frame was crammed into the driver's seat beside him, her chest wobbling through the clinging suit as the suspension rocked her. The vehicle was some kind of homebrew Rask creation. If he had to guess, they had probably taken a civilian SUV and rebuilt the chassis to accommodate their larger stature and heavier build, leaving the engine and drive train intact. There were no doors, so Orzi had given him a pair of sunglasses and a bandanna to protect him from airborne sand.

They had driven out of the camp and into the open desert, heading away from the city, leaving the bright beacons of the palace spires behind them. It wasn't sandstorm season, so the air was rather clear, a cloudless sky of deep azure hanging over their heads.

Conversation was made difficult by the roar of the engine, so he watched the landscape pass them by instead. There were no paved roads, and the shifting sands quickly swept away any paths or tracks, leaving nothing but an expanse of small dunes. The interior of the territory wasn't totally devoid of life, however. There were patches of scruffy bushes and palm-like plants with thick, low trunks, their sharp fronds jutting out in every direction. There were even a few alien succulents with blooming flowers that added a splash of color to the otherwise uniform terrain. They weren't exactly thriving in the nutrient-poor, sandy soil, but there was life clinging to existence here. It was hard to believe that the deserts beyond the bounds of the jungle band were even harsher than this.

They passed a few small settlements, the clusters of low buildings matching the style of those that he had observed during his flight over the capital. The Rask favored self-supporting domes and arches, and there were few windows, helping to keep out the heat and sand. Up close, he remarked that they were decorated with some impressive stonework in places. Where the buildings weren't covered in clay-like mortar, he caught glimpses of intricate carvings and reliefs, the archways and pillars adorned with decorative flair. Their inhabitants had cultivated various desert plants nearby, adding a little greenery and shade to break up the monotony of the desert. He noted that the settlements were usually built on rocky outcrops that elevated them above the shifting sand, and he saw a couple that were clustered around permanent oases, creating their own miniature territories complete with bands of plant life that flourished beside the water. If what Ramos had read was accurate, recent surveys had put a lot of the Rask territory's water volume in underground aquifers rather than in the lake itself, which was another valuable resource they would need help exploiting.

There were more recent additions to the landscape, too. The buggy passed a few farms that were formed from prefabs and greenhouses, skirting around large, disk-shaped fields that were being tended by fleets of agricultural drones. The importation of potentially invasive crops was carefully controlled, so these must be native plants. As they drove by one of the farms, he spotted a group of Rask clad in shawls who were helping Jarilan Workers load produce onto a truck.

Eventually, a wall of green began to rise up on the horizon, growing taller and taller as they approached. This was the jungle band - a stretch of rainforest kilometers deep filled with strange, uncatalogued flora and fauna that would be the wet dream of any exobiologist. Ramos had to admit that he was itching to get a closer look.

They weren't heading directly for the band, though. Instead, they drifted right, heading for one of the breaches. The jungle faded away as it was consumed by the sands, creating a wide expanse that was bereft of any plant life. Far in the distance to his right, he could see the opposite side of the breach, where the jungle once again sprouted from the dunes. The gap was a few kilometers wide in its own right.

"The East Gate!" Orzi shouted over the sound of the rushing wind and rumbling engine. "This is one of the larger breaches and also the location of the largest battle of the rebellion."

"Why is it called a gate!?" he yelled back to her.

"There are four major gates that roughly correspond to cardinal directions. They allowed Rask sandships and raiding fleets direct access to the Dune Sea from the interior of the territory. While these breaches were a source of ecological damage, they also allowed the Rask to project their naval power all across the region!"

A large structure soon appeared on the horizon, Ramos leaning out of the cab to get a better look. It appeared to be some manner of huge building painted in desert camouflage, but as they drew closer, he realized that it was a gigantic vehicle sitting on a set of four caterpillar tracks. The monster had to be nearly eighty meters long and maybe fifteen high, the tracks alone large enough to dwarf any of the prefabs that he had seen in the camp. It had a flat deck that was loaded with cargo containers, and towards its rear was a blocky structure that rose above them, a radar dish mounted on top of what looked almost like a conning tower.

Ramos had seen these before at spaceports - they were crawlers. Their job was to transport massive loads and even idle spacecraft between launch pads, and they were sometimes used to move raw materials on mining colonies. What on Earth was it doing here?

"That is the Wildfire," Orzi explained. "The Rask retrofitted mining crawlers as land battleships and carriers during the rebellion. What you are looking at is Matriarch Korbaz's old flagship, now stripped of its armaments and restored to its original function - carrying heavy cargo. There are still a couple of them left in operational condition, and they have been very helpful for moving equipment around the territory. Their fission plants make for excellent portable generators, too!"

As they passed by the towering crawler, he saw that it was surrounded by smaller trucks and utility vehicles that were unloading cargo, personnel of several different species milling about as they supervised the work.

Yet another unexpected sight rose up ahead of the buggy, soon coming into focus. A giant wall of sheet metal some twenty meters high had been erected, each segment pocked with holes like a cheese grater, its blue color making it blend into the sky. It was held up by a framework of sturdy support pillars that shone in the harsh sunlight. On the left, it extended all the way to the jungle several hundred meters away, and more sections were being erected to the right. Pallets filled with huge perforated sheets were being unloaded by teams of Jarilan Workers, and they were already in the process of lifting a new section into place using a pulley system that was attached to the bed of a truck.

Orzi pulled up nearby, and Ramos leapt out to get a closer look before the buggy had even come to a full stop. Through his tinted sunglasses, he watched two dozen of the little insects lift a section of fence between them, carrying it from its pallet to the growing structure, then hooking a winch cable through one of the holes near its top. There was a flock of five Valbarans standing nearby, the reptiles clustered around a portable hologram projector that was displaying a blueprint, one of their number directing the Jarilans with waves of her arm.

"It's a windbreak!" Ramos marveled as Orzi made her way over to his side. "The wind and sand coming in from the desert cause erosion and prevent trees from growing, so you're erecting a fence along the entire length of the breach?"

"That is the plan," the Polar replied, her visor reflecting the sun as she glanced up at the structure. "Our belief is that, with this barrier in place, you should have the opportunity to restore the jungle band and plug this breach. Once the forest has regrown, the barrier can be torn down, and the trees should be able to take over."

"You want me to fix this?" Ramos asked with a gesture to the desert.

"Were you not doing similar work in your Amazon?" Orzi replied, glancing down at him. "All of the tools and resources that you require should already be present. The crawler transported a load of new equipment - autonomous planters, fertilizer from Elysia, drilling rigs for wells. If you need anything more, you can file a requisition form at my office. I want you to teach the Rask how to fix this so that they can continue the work in your absence."

"Can I meet my team?" he asked.

"I am sure they are growing impatient of waiting," she replied. "Come."

They headed in the direction of the crawler that was parked some two hundred meters away, Ramos' boots sinking into the loose sand. He noted that in spite of her considerable mass, Orzi suffered no such difficulties, her wide paws spreading out her weight to make the going easier. Could they be evolved to give her purchase in snow?

In the shadow beneath the crawler, a sort of makeshift camp had been established. Rows of parked industrial vehicles and stacks of crates were being sheltered from the blazing heat of the suns, and a few temporary tents in a military style had been erected for the workers. As Ramos followed Orzi beneath the titanic vehicle, it formed a metal ceiling above his head, snaking cables trailing down in places where its power systems were being tapped.

Ramos turned to admire some of the parked vehicles as he passed them by, seeing some that he recognized. Washington Dynamics tractors from Franklin equipped with intimidating tank treads for use in sand, innumerable attachments like plows and planters, and autonomous earth movers made by Krupp-Marion. There was a whole fleet of brand new gear fresh off the jump freighter - probably millions of creds worth of equipment.

One of the tractors was still being assembled, presumably having only recently been unpacked from its shipping crate, a flock of Valbarans equipped with various power tools swarming its hull.

Orzi led him to one of the tents, and when he followed her through the flap, he found himself standing in a makeshift galley. The tent was high enough that the Polar could stand comfortably, and the sandy ground had been strewn with collapsible tables and chairs. There were several human workers who glanced up to peer at the newcomers, along with three Rask who were sitting around a large table with drinks in hand.

The Rask were like the Polars in many respects. They were feline in appearance, they averaged eight feet, and they had digitigrade legs and long tails. Unlike their cousins from the frozen pole, they were only partially furred, their sandy coats limited to the extremities of their limbs and tails. Where Polars had insulating fat, Rask were lean and muscular, the high gravity endowing them with impressive physiques that would put most human bodybuilders to shame. They had dusky skin and sun-bleached hair, the trio peering back at him with fierce, yellow eyes.

They had no need for environment suits - this was their native land. Instead, they wore tough leather in shades of black and brown, adorned with decorative golden studs and pressed patterns. It made them look like bikers to Ramos, and he had a hard time imagining that the heavy jackets and clinging pants did much to keep them cool. Perhaps that wasn't the point.

"Orzi, you are late," the largest of the three began as she took a long draw from whatever was in her oversized tankard. Like the Polar, they spoke English, but with a rolling accent that almost sounded Russian to his ears. "We have been sitting idle."

"You do not look too inconvenienced," the Polar replied, noting the mostly empty bottle of pink liquid on their table. "Rashka, Kozi, Zhura, this is Jorge Ramos. He has been assigned to oversee your training in the use of these new machines."

The three women looked him up and down skeptically, their round, fuzzy ears swiveling to track him. The largest one - probably the Alpha, if he had to guess - had a prominent scar down one cheek and dirty-blonde hair that was cropped short. She fixed him with a steely gaze, and he did his best to maintain it, though not for too long. Orzi had said that he needed to assert himself.

The one sitting to her left spoke up first - a slightly smaller specimen with olive skin and messy, platinum-blonde hair that came down to the high collar of her jacket.

"He is so small," she chimed, giving him a smirk.

"Kozi, the Matriarch has decreed that all of her subjects are to obey their instructors," the Polar chided. "You will be attentive, and you will do as he says unless you wish to deal with me instead."

It was no idle threat. As strong as the Rask must be, Orzi had two or three hundred pounds over her.