***
“There really was never much doubt,” Colonel Butterworth said with a smile. The video showed him sitting in the Exodus-1’s common room. “Barring significant new information coming up at this end, Vulcan makes much more sense. We will need time to establish our own food production, so a robust ecosystem will bridge that gap for us.” He nodded to the camera. “Thank you for confirming biocompatibility of the local ecosystem. It settles a lot of uncertainties.”
I smiled in acknowledgement. Colonel Butterworth had become much more relaxed now that his civilian population seemed to have a future.
He continued in a distracted voice, “We’ll hopefully be in a position to help out the Spits when they show up, until they have their food production set up.” He arched an eyebrow at me. “Farm-1 won’t be producing yet, right?”
“Not yet, Colonel. But since most of the colonists will stay in stasis until we’re ready for them, ships stores will be sufficient for the first month.”
Colonel Butterworth grunted. “Still tighter than I like.”
The Colonel stared, rapt, at the virtual bulletin board that Bert had provided. The board showed real-time status of all current, upcoming, and completed colony setup activities. Video windows showed a constant rotation of views.
Setup crews were awake and had begun shuttling printers down to Vulcan. On the surface, roamers were printing out modular residential units and assembling them. AMI-controlled bobcats and backhoes stayed just ahead of the construction, preparing the ground for the houses.
In two days, we would start waking the first wave of civilians and shuttling them down to their new homes. And the universe would have actual Vulcans.
Roddenberry would be proud.