Quarantine

The numbers weren't wrong. They were short a person. Out of the four thousand odd refugees that had so far made it to Eldorado, they were missing one. With the high level of traffic through the Space Port and Landing Docks these days, keeping track of that many people (not counting the pilots and other crew who were grounded during their own quarantines), being one shy might not seem like a particular problem.

But for Major Ricardo Gates of the Knights of Gaul, it was a problem. A rather large problem.

He rubbed his forehead, pinching his nose between thumb and forefinger. "And the reason you were not tracking them every day, as you were requested to, Sergeant Tillman, is because...."

Tillman, to his credit, remained at attention, his response firm. "Because we did not have the men, sir, until the new troops arrived yesterday. With the Colonel's orders to keep a minimum number of men on the cordon, I had no one to spare for head counting, sir."

"Well, it looks like you didn't do a good job of choosing men for guard duty either, since we're missing someone, Sergeant," Gates replied levelly, doing his best to keep the anger from his voice, but letting the annoyance show with the sharpness of his tone. "How long since the last accounting?"

"Four days sir."

"Four days," Gates repeated heavily. They had been adding to the tally list, over a thousand people since then, but no one had counted them otherwise. Four days. Perhaps the missing name had only been gone for a few hours. Please, by all that was Merciful, make it hours.

"Assign someone to roll call, immediately," he paused before adding, "with two assistants. And you will take their place in the cordon rotation if the two duties conflict. Dismissed."

Gates turned away briskly, more interested now in fixing this colossal screw up than he was in the saluting Sergeant at his back.

His eyes slipped over the idle crowd as he moved through the refugee encampment. He nodded deeply to a man whose white cowl marked him as a Father-Captain of the Universal Church. The older gentleman smiled benignly at him before turning to a child who tugged at his cassock. Gates couldn't help a tight smile. The people here were generally calm, readily following directions. There had been no serious issues among the refugees in the last two weeks, and for that he was grateful.

They were a strange lot. Smarter people than he had so far been unable to discover their origins. They spoke a familiar, if oddly lilted version of the middle tongue, used by traders and for interstellar news, but it didn't all sound the same to his ear. He wasn't a linguist, but traveling with the Imperial Army was enough. They weren't all from the same planet, he'd bet money on it. And not one of them could remember anything before a month ago. Not to mention the rumors circulating about the ships they had originally been found in- Gates wasn't a tech-junkie, but even he wanted to get a peek at them. So where had they come from? Any planet with the ability to produce ships with technology years beyond what was available in the Empire ought to have been well known. But the ships matched none currently in production. The style of their dress, unfamiliar vocabulary, every thing pegged them for refugees from a long isolated colony. But where? Gates conceded that there was always a chance one of the lost colony ships from the past age could have made it somewhere beyond the current reach of the empire- but a half dozen of them? It would take at least that many to account for the variety of speech patterns at the very least.

He nodded absently to people as he passed through the tent city that had sprung up within the confines of the eastern Landing Docks. The government had arranged for the location and the troops to manage the operation, but it was the Universal Church that had sent the food, clothing, tents and personnel to see to the needs of the Refugees. And thousands of them, coming from apparently no where over the span of just a few weeks, was no trifling matter. Each side did their part to make everything here run as smoothly as possible, but Gates suspected that the Church ministers had less organizational problems than he had right now.

If he had stayed in the Technocracy's armed forces, instead of returning to his home-world's defense force, this wouldn't be a problem. If he had remained with the Imperial Army, chances were good that he would have a higher rank now than the Colonel who was mucking everything up here. He would be able to properly organize this mess in to something resembling efficiency. But after he had served his contract in the Imperial Army, he'd gone home. It had been a good decision five years ago, but now he wondered. Though he was a Major in the Order of the Knights of Gaul, he was still a First Lieutenant on the rare occasions he was called back in to service of the Empire. Dealing with the refugees on Gaul was only the second time in five years that the call had gone out. His contract required three calls after his discharge, and then he would no longer be obligated to come. He could focus all of his time and loyalty to home soil, the Technocracy be damned. And yet....

Gaul was quiet. Being neither part of the core nor one of the frontier planets, Gaul was safe from either political and religious upheaval or outside threats to the human empire. It was off of the major trade routes, but it produced all of its own goods and energy, making it completely independent of government energy subsidies that so many other worlds required. It had self-governed successfully since its settlement, and though the people were pious, they weren't zealots. The Church  had little work to do beyond administering to the needs of the spirit. The people of Gaul took care of their own, and the social programs that the Church oversaw across the rest of the Empire were hardly needed. Not that there wasn't crime or poverty, but the people were generous and the planetary government saw to their needs, despite the Church's over reaching charity. Gates considered Gaul to be the greatest of the settled worlds for all of those reasons and more, though he recognized his own bias in that. Gaul was beautiful, and that idyllic landscape was etched upon his soul. He was never completely whole when he was away from it.

Yes, Gaul was quiet. But there was growing unrest across the empire. Just because they were largely insulated from it, didn't mean that it wouldn't effect them. Gaul was self-sufficient. The process of energy accounting that the government used to determine need within the Empire always considered Gaul to be efficient, but creating little excess. They received nothing from anyone else, but were also not required to redirect too much in to allotments for other planets. But that could change, and not because of anything that Gaul did.

Eldorado was not the first boom planet to sink in to poverty, Gates mused. And then there were places like the Belphagors, producing very little of their own raw materials or energy, but still home to billions, with trillions of ergs of energy allotment being redirected to keep the luxury industries in business there. Gates shook his head. When planets like Eldorado failed an energy audit, they were set adrift, functioning only on what private investors would part with. But when planets like Belphagor Major failed an energy audit, more raw materials were poured in. Official reasoning claimed that places like Belphagor offered necessary luxuries and technological progress, whereas Eldorado, once stripped of its useful ore, had little long term return to the empire. Unofficially, too many rich people lived on Belphagor, and only poor lived on Eldorado.

How long until more of the burden came to places like Gaul? And how much could they shoulder before the strain became too much?

Gates knew just how lucky he was to have been born on Gaul. And the pride of that was tempered only slightly in the awareness of how difficult life was elsewhere. He could be proud, but he didn't have to be blind. Originally, he had gone to serve with the Imperial Army for training to bring back with him, new technology and techniques that he could then use to help improve his own home-world's defense force. He had done that, and never regretted it. But could he keep protecting Gaul only from his home soil? Or did he need to be out here, with all of this ugly mess, so that he could see the problems coming from farther away? He honestly didn't know. Gaul was so very insulated, and he wasn't certain if it would be enough anymore.

Returning to the problem at hand, he cursed quietly to himself.  For now, all he could do was try to track down this missing refugee and pray.

Pray that the quarantine was simply precaution. Pray that this Kiral, as he was noted on the list, hadn't gotten outside of the Landing Docks and in to the general population of Eldorado. Gates didn't want to contemplate the back lash if that had happened. Pray that he was found swiftly. And without any new delays-

Gates turned the corner, only to be greeted with what had the potential to be exactly that. A young woman was standing at the check point, gesturing emphatically in to the quarantine area. The soldier on duty was doing his best, but it was clear that she wasn't taking no for an answer.

"I'm sorry Miss, but you can't come in here," he said as he reached the check point, nodding to the younger man. The other soldier looked relieved as he stepped back, letting Gates take over.

He settled comfortably, feet shoulder width apart and his hands at the small of his back. The expression on his face was friendly, but not familiar, hoping that this would be quick. This wasn't the first curiosity seeker to come their way.

"No, I'm sorry, but you don't understand," she said earnestly. "I'm here to help. I'm-"

Even worse. A budding philanthropist.