An Accidental Alliance by Jonathan Edward Feinstein

asked.
          “According to the manifest,” Iris informed him. “We ought to have one hundred small, but powerful solar-powered units for the job. Each has a range of twenty-five miles, line-of-sight to the next repeater, and it wouldn’t take much to hoist one up on a pole. There is also some more interesting broadcasting equipment in storage to use on other frequencies.”
          “Interesting in what way?” Arn asked.
          “It’s multiband and adjustable,” Iris told him. “And even more interesting are the three communications satellites. Placed in synchronous orbit, we can reach almost any part of the world.”
          “And how are we supposed to get them into orbit?” Park asked.
          “My guess is that’s what the rocket is for,” Iris told him with a broad smile.
          “We have a rocket?” Arn asked.
          “You didn’t know either?” Park sounded surprised.
          “It wasn’t in any of my briefings,” Arn admitted. “It must have been added after it we were put to sleep. Someone did a lot here after we stopped existing in the world. Very few will have noticed, but the base is nearly twice as large as it was.”
          “I would have thought that would be easy to see,” James Hardin commented. “How did we miss it?” Hardin was another former military man, having served as a major in the Marine Corps.
          “Most of us didn’t get the full tour, Jim,” Arn explained, “but the real reason is that all the expansions were on the storage levels. There’s a lot of stuff down there. I’m not sure what anyone expected us to do with it all, but they did seem to be planning for any eventuality.”
          “Weapons?” Jim asked interestedly.
          “Yes and a lot of ammo,” Arn nodded. “Most of it is hunting equipment though. If we can find something to hunt with it, we’ll be all set.”
          “Be vewy, vewy quiet,” Park commented in his best Elmer Fudd imitation. “We’re hunting wabbits.”
          “Try to find something with a bit more meat on it if you can, Park,” Arn advised. “It will take a heck of a lot of rabbits to feed five thousand people.”
          “Forty-eight hundred,” Iris corrected him instantly.
          “Right,” he nodded, “but still more than we can feed with rabbits. I’ll start waking up our farmers though and we can get the rest out of stasis once we have a reliable food supply. Park, do you have a team of scouts picked out?”
          “I do,” Park replied. “I’ve chosen ten men and women with recon experience and plan to have them out on the ATVs in the morning. Iris and I will take one of the boats and see where the river will take us.”
           “Iris?” Arn’s brow furrowed. “Do you have any scouting experience?”
          “Do Girl Scouts count?” Iris asked.
          “Iris is an accomplished boater,” Park told Arn. “On the river I imagine that will be more useful and I can teach her what she needs to know as we go along.”
          “I don’t like wasting a top-notch engineer on that sort of mission.” Arn told him.
          “We don’t have a lot of choice, Arn,” Park told him. “We’re all top-notch at what we do. We also need to wear a lot of different hats.”
          “Also you don’t need an engineer here at the moment,” Iris told him, “but Park does need someone who can handle the boat.”
          “I don’t like the idea of you sailing your way out of radio contact,” Arn told them.
          “We’ll be planting repeaters along the way,” Park replied, “and our land-bound scouts will be doing the same, so it may be a few days before we even have to. I don’t plan to rush downstream by any means. We’ll travel one day and then spend the next day conducting a survey of the area. Then go down stream another day and do the same thing for the next month or