Repercussions (17/55)
May. 10th, 2008 08:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
amberfocus
Banner by Megz33
Chapter Seventeen: Rescue and Rebuild
The Doctor throws his body over mine, the sonic screwdriver out in one hand, making a slit in the back wall of the tent. We are far enough away from the fire on the far side of the tent that we are not hurt. The Doctor helps me to my knees and I crawl out ahead of him.
The only casualties of the bombing are the partially converted. The medical team, with their personal force shields, make it out in one piece. There is nothing we can do, but listen to the screams of the dying as we wait for the fire response units to show up. The fire rages too hot to help. U.N.I.T. moves in to put a military perimeter around it and all future field hospitals.
I am afraid the hospital ship personnel will want to leave our ungrateful planet and am surprised that they take it in stride. I guess I would too if I had a personal force shield that protected me from crazy alien populations.
Again they set up a field hospital in front of us and bring in new equipment. Slowly, one by one, the process of deconverting the remainder of the human population begins. The Doctor and I do what we can to help, but eventually we are left standing to the side, watching the aliens work.
The next morning Benton asks us to help on the disposal crews. They are having a hard time getting the survivors of this war to come forward and pitch in. The Doctor is unsure, but I insist. So many times in the past we have not stayed around after disaster to help with the mop-up. But this is my world, my London, my home. And I want desperately to get my hands dirty, because I survive when so many do not.
He works in silence by my side with other volunteers as we head out in teams. In silence worries me a bit because my Doctor was never silent. He always chattered constantly. But I can see what effect this has on him, to not skate out after saving the day. For once his hands are dirty, too.
We spend the day loading dead cyber bodies onto flat bed trucks to be shipped out. Somewhere else the last remnants of their organic matter will be removed, buried, and the steel will be melted down, recycled for reuse in rebuilding the shattered buildings and homes of London.
Two days of working on this detail is ended abruptly by the need to remove the human remains from the rubble. They want to clear the cyber remains first because of the psychological damage seeing those bodies is doing. But stench and disease make them alter their plans quickly.
Instead of metal we now search through rubble for corpses, piling them with more reverence on the same flat bed trucks. Attempts are made at finding identification, but bodies still are interred quickly in mass graves. No one protests, though later in the recovery there may be an outcry. It doesn’t matter, though. No individual graves can come of this. The scale is too great, the destruction too close to total.
We work for days, long after the human and cyber remains have been cleared. We help clear rubble, watch as new building structures begin to take shape in the disaster prone areas, and pitch in on the loading of resources onto the hospital ship, my planet’s payment for the help we have received.
Payment is steep. One quarter of the planet’s saltwater supply, 12 billion tons of raw organic material, and one million tons of iron ore and they are on their way. The climate changes in response to the depletion. The ice caps begin to melt to replace the water supply in response to less organic material processing carbon dioxide.
The planet will recover. The Doctor made sure of that in his negotiations. But the temperature fluctuations are already affecting the wheat belts and bread baskets of many nations. Ration books are given out, food distribution taken over by U.N.I.T.
It is only the reduced population that allows for a successful ration system. Despite this, the homes of the dead or abandoned are raided for canned goods to supplement many families so used to plenty, now left while not quite in want, without what they are used to.
It bothers me that my people are not happy with what they have, that they must seek out more. Something in my race drives it towards selfishness. The Doctor in all of this has been silent, waiting for me to say when I am ready to leave. I think it will be soon. My father is nearing recovery and my mother has taken in three other recovering deconverted humans to care for. There is not much left that we can do.
I am afraid the hospital ship personnel will want to leave our ungrateful planet and am surprised that they take it in stride. I guess I would too if I had a personal force shield that protected me from crazy alien populations.
Again they set up a field hospital in front of us and bring in new equipment. Slowly, one by one, the process of deconverting the remainder of the human population begins. The Doctor and I do what we can to help, but eventually we are left standing to the side, watching the aliens work.
The next morning Benton asks us to help on the disposal crews. They are having a hard time getting the survivors of this war to come forward and pitch in. The Doctor is unsure, but I insist. So many times in the past we have not stayed around after disaster to help with the mop-up. But this is my world, my London, my home. And I want desperately to get my hands dirty, because I survive when so many do not.
He works in silence by my side with other volunteers as we head out in teams. In silence worries me a bit because my Doctor was never silent. He always chattered constantly. But I can see what effect this has on him, to not skate out after saving the day. For once his hands are dirty, too.
We spend the day loading dead cyber bodies onto flat bed trucks to be shipped out. Somewhere else the last remnants of their organic matter will be removed, buried, and the steel will be melted down, recycled for reuse in rebuilding the shattered buildings and homes of London.
Two days of working on this detail is ended abruptly by the need to remove the human remains from the rubble. They want to clear the cyber remains first because of the psychological damage seeing those bodies is doing. But stench and disease make them alter their plans quickly.
Instead of metal we now search through rubble for corpses, piling them with more reverence on the same flat bed trucks. Attempts are made at finding identification, but bodies still are interred quickly in mass graves. No one protests, though later in the recovery there may be an outcry. It doesn’t matter, though. No individual graves can come of this. The scale is too great, the destruction too close to total.
We work for days, long after the human and cyber remains have been cleared. We help clear rubble, watch as new building structures begin to take shape in the disaster prone areas, and pitch in on the loading of resources onto the hospital ship, my planet’s payment for the help we have received.
Payment is steep. One quarter of the planet’s saltwater supply, 12 billion tons of raw organic material, and one million tons of iron ore and they are on their way. The climate changes in response to the depletion. The ice caps begin to melt to replace the water supply in response to less organic material processing carbon dioxide.
The planet will recover. The Doctor made sure of that in his negotiations. But the temperature fluctuations are already affecting the wheat belts and bread baskets of many nations. Ration books are given out, food distribution taken over by U.N.I.T.
It is only the reduced population that allows for a successful ration system. Despite this, the homes of the dead or abandoned are raided for canned goods to supplement many families so used to plenty, now left while not quite in want, without what they are used to.
It bothers me that my people are not happy with what they have, that they must seek out more. Something in my race drives it towards selfishness. The Doctor in all of this has been silent, waiting for me to say when I am ready to leave. I think it will be soon. My father is nearing recovery and my mother has taken in three other recovering deconverted humans to care for. There is not much left that we can do.
