Live Free or Die-ARC

by John Ringo

  Fiddly bits.

  The missile magazine was going to take a while. Not only was it planned with more cubic capacity than the initial living quarters, which meant a bigger plug to pull, it had to have systems to move the missiles into the tubes. Fast.

  More fiddly bits.

  Troy was eventually planned to have five magazines, each capable of holding two hundred thousand missiles, and forty-eight launch tubes running off of each.

  The missile complex was only a small portion of 'Zone One.' There were five planned zones. Each zone would be capable of independent operation. It would combine a purely military side, missile magazines, laser tracks, barracks, shuttle and eventually ship bays, repair areas, headquarters, supplies for thousands, support sections, air, water and, especially, a tremendously large fuel storage area.

  There would also be a smaller 'civilian' area. This would house the dependents of the military personnel as well as civilian support staff and a 'general support' area that was designed to grow organically just like a small town supporting a military base.

  Five was going to take a while. Like, a couple of hundred years. Of fiddly bits.

  For now they had one missile tube and one laser tube. But the SAPL had started small, too. It now had twenty-eight million square yards of VLA mirrors capable of generating seventy-one petawatts of power. Doing so, including BDA, VSA and VDA production, had used up about half the 'trash' portion of the Near Earth Asteroids. The SAPL division had been busy beavers and every year they just about doubled production while cutting costs. And to make matters better, the 'good' part of the asteroids paid for the production.

  "You're getting the new laser mirrors?" Tyler asked.

  "Yeah," Nathan commed. "Capable of handling an exawatt? An exawatt, Tyler? The whole VLA doesn't put out an exawatt."

  "I'm tired of never being able to concentrate enough power," Tyler said, running the waldo of the suit over the seal on a blast door. "And it will be capable of it eventually. Of course, we'll need several thousand VDAs by then."

  "What does UNG stand for?" Nathan asked.

  "What?" Tyler asked, continuing on.

  "What does UNG stand for?" Nathan said. "Very Scary Array, Very Dangerous Array. What does UNG stand for?"

  "Nothing," Tyler said. "The first time we activated it I got an actual button installed to fire it. And I went 'ung, ung, ung' just before I pushed the button. Everybody who had anything to do with it pretty much went 'ung' the first time they thought about it. I think the cover acronym is Unified Nuclear Grappler or something. But it really means just . . . ung."

  "Ung is right," Nathan said. "Cooling them is going to be a bitch."

  "That is the other reason you're getting great big helium tanks," Tyler said. "Speaking of which: When are you digging the air and water tanks?"

  "Next month we're starting on the water tank," Nathan said. "The main one, that is."

  "I think it's time for us to have a little accident," Tyler said.

  "I don't like accidents with stuff like that," Nathan pointed out. "People tend to, and I don't want to exaggerate this, vanish in a puff of volatiles."

  "Not that kind of accident," Tyler said. "Just a little bobble with a VDA when you're digging out the plug."

  "I understand you had a little bobble with digging out the water tank," Admiral DeGraff said. He had been in his position for three years and was just about to retire. But he wanted to stay around to see Troy activated.

  "When you're throwing around that much power," Tyler said. "Sometimes these things happen."

  "A very suspicious accident," Admiral DeGraff said. "A hollowed out point at the notional top of the water tank that looks, and I don't want to sound paranoid about this, suspiciously like a pool. A very big pool. With what looks like a bit of a water park with a little work. Melted out water runs on the walls?"

  "I'm not sure how it happened," Tyler said. "Just a bit of a bobble with a VDA. The rest I ascribe to chaos theory. In an infinite universe . . . On the other hand, a pool will be a real MWR benefit to the crew. People may just be born, raised, live and die on Troy, Admiral. Surely they deserve something other than endless walls of iron and steel?"

  "And do you expect us to pay for a pool, Mr. Vernon?"

  "Of course," Tyler said. "Part of the contract specifications was a water testing area with earth normal gravity, air and appropriate heating and cooling. You now have one."

  Admiral DeGraff consulted the appropriate files and grunted.

  "Hmph," the Admiral said. "The 'water testing area' is listed as sixty thousand dollars, Mr. Vernon. You're going to sell us a sixty acre water park for sixty thousand dollars? With 'earth normal air, gravity, heating and cooling'?"

  "There are various cost overruns so far, Admiral," Tyler said, smiling. "Most of which we've eaten. If for no other reason than we're getting nearly as much for the materials we're mining as we are for Troy. As long as we don't have to pay for all the fiddly bits, like the quarters and bays, I'm good. And I rather like the look of the pool, don't you? We call it Xanadu."

  "Xanadu?" the Admiral said, then nodded. "So you think of yourself as Kublai Khan?"

  "I understand he was below normal height as well," Tyler said, grinning and cutting the connection.

  "Sir," Argus said over Tyler's com. "The Gorku manager Zih Temar has arrived aboard the Galactic Miner. He requests a meeting."

  "Subject?" Tyler asked. Having an AI was better than any personal assistant. Among other things, you didn't have to turn down proposals of marriage. He'd switched to males after the first two female PAs and found that didn't help, either.

  It also meant he could stay aboard ship. He'd more or less permanently installed himself in the Monkey Business. Since the Business was inside the Troy most of the time, it was also a damned secure place to work.

  "It requests that the purpose remain proprietary."

  "Interesting," Tyler said. "Do we know anything about Zih Temar?"

  "It is listed as a special assistant to the assistant Vice President of Entertainment and Design Management. Effectively, it is in charge of planning corporate parties and choosing which art to put on which walls."

  "Could that be classed as sort of a corporate cultural affairs attaché?" Tyler asked.

  "Yes, sir."

  "Send a shuttle," Tyler said. "In fact, send the Starfield."

  Zih Temar was so plain a Glatun it could have been chosen for a picture: standard Glatun, one each. The harness was straight corporate drone. Skin tone was absolute middle. Ditto red on the eyes. Nose was a standard Glod short-nosed.

  Tyler had never met a more obvious spy.

  "The room is secure," Tyler said. "I have it swept weekly and there are, as I'm sure you noticed, large and bored 'miners' in the hallways that seem to have little to do."

  "Sir," Temar said, setting a data crystal on the table. "A personal message from Niazgol Gorku."

  Tyler set it in a player and a hologram of Gorku sprung up.

  "Hello friend," Gorku said. "With Horvath control of the E-Eridani system and the support they are receiving from the Rangora, hypercom communication may no longer be secure. Thus . . .

  "We're going to continue to buy materials but production is slowing. The People's Council has firmly rejected further 'military boondoggles' and also have rejected every draft bill. So even if we build more ships, we can't crew them. They also refuse to yield on reductions of basic social spending and taxes are already killing us. Thus affording more ships is questionable. The production going to ships has impacted entertainment goods and services. The Benefactors are deadlocked and the peace movement is gaining strength. Federal Intelligence has solid evidence that it is heavily backed by the Rangora but nobody wants to see it.

  "The bottomline is that war is coming and we will not be prepared. With luck we will prevail. I have seen little luck for my people of late. I am not optimistic.

  "I have prevailed upon certain people, I will not name them, to give cert
ain releases. This good Glatun carries a shipment of not only updates for Granadica of the newest Gorku military and civilian technologies but releases. This effectively gives Earth the rights to produce any system of Glatun design including military systems. There are also one hundred and seventeen blank AIs, the most I could sneak out. All of the rights and releases are authorized but it would be better for everyone involved if you could keep them somewhat secret. If . . . when war breaks out between ourselves and the Rangora that will be less important. In the meantime, please try to keep it quiet.

  "It will be some time before you can produce the material, much less assimilate it. But you have it now. All legal but . . . It would be better if no-one found out.

  "The last item is the most troubling for your system. Certain of my ships have been somewhat upgraded in the sensor department. Also something I would prefer you keep quiet. But the Galactic Miner is one. When it last passed through the E Eridani system, they detected traces of large warships passing through the system. Since they did not go to Sol, they must have gone to Horvath. The traces indicated older class Rangora Devastator dreadnoughts. The Rangora produced forty-two. At least thirty have been mothballed or were. I'm trying to get information on whether they are still in retirement and what the status on the other twelve are.

  "The Devastators have two hundred terawatt main lasers and thousand gravity shields. They will shrug off your petawatt lasers. I hope you have upgraded. They also may or may not have the Rangora capital missiles. It depends on what technology the Rangora have shared with the Horvath. If so, they are fast and stealthy and the Devastators each carry two hundred.

  "If they reach your system I hope you have something that can stop them. Troy, alone, will not be enough.

  "May peace be with us all. But I fear it will not. Good luck, my friend."

  "Anything additional?" Tyler asked, pulling out the crystal. He walked over to his desk, took out a small hammer and crushed the atacirc.

  "No, sir," Temar said. "By the time we returned through the system, the traces were gone. There is a Horvath battlecruiser on station but it didn't even hail us."

  "How long do you think we can keep getting shipments through?" Tyler asked.

  "The estimate is that the Horvath will not engage Glatun ships absent a declaration of war with the Rangora," Temar said. "But if we go to war with the Rangora, it can be assumed the Horvath will see us as an enemy."

  "Glatun could trash the entire Horvath system in a day," Tyler said.

  "But we would not do so," Temar said. "The Benefactors would never approve a simple annihilation raid."

  "The Horvath are a poor, weak, oppressed polity that need comfort and care to bring them to a civilized condition?" Tyler asked.

  "Yes, sir."

  "And Earth?"

  "Is a militaristic system bent on regional control," Temar said. "It's most notable personages are all atavistic barbarians. Probably it would be better under Horvath control."

  "Is that a consensus?" Tyler asked.

  "No," Temar said. "But the consensus of those who see the Horvath as poor and oppressed. Those factions would never have allowed this technology transfer. Fortunately . . . they do not control such things."

  "We'd better get the transfer finished, then," Tyler said. "I'll personally carry the data to the Wolf system. Granadica can probably use it better than anyone in Sol. And it will be more secure there. We'll hold the AIs on Troy. We needed one, anyway."

  "Yes, sir."

  Eleven

  "Faster," Tyler muttered.

  "Sir?" Byron asked, considering the progress of the mine with satisfaction.

  Both washers were in place, the lower held up by what, from the distance the Starfield maintained, seemed the thinnest of strands. Single-strand carbon nanotube was incredibly strong stuff but the strands weren't nearly as thin as they looked. Each was nearly a foot across, woven and rewoven about from individual strands thinner than a bacteria. Humans had finally cracked extruding continuous strands of carbon monomolecules. What defeated them, so far, was doing it as simply as the Glatun spinners which moved at a rate of nearly forty feet per minute.

  "I was just thinking," Tyler said. "This is going very well, Byron. How soon can we start installation of the separation equipment?"

  "We're not even ready to start weaving the pipes, sir," Byron said. "The lines can only hold so much weight at this point. We'll need to spin more lines before we can start doing the actual mine portion."

  "Think about ways to get around that," Tyler said. "We're running out of time."

  "Sir?" Audler said, frowning and taking his pipe out. "We're well ahead of schedule."

  "Byron," Tyler said, quietly. "In no more than two years, maybe less, the Rangora and Glatun are going to get into a war that will dwarf anything that this region has seen in a thousand years. How that war is going to go is a big question. But one thing that's certain is that the Horvath are going to take the opportunity to cut Earth off from Glatun support. We've got the construction help we needed. We can build ships on our own. We can mine asteroids. We can build some pretty fair lasers and we have the SAPL. We can build anything we need and we can defend the Sol system, pretty well, and keep the enemy out of Wolf. If we have fuel."

  "Oh," Byron said, putting his pipe back in and chewing on it. Tyler wasn't sure he ever actually smoked it.

  "Get your team together and brainstorm," Tyler said. "We've got permission to make as many spinners as we want. We can make anything that Gorku has on its database. Get with Granadica and see about priorities because it's about to get really busy."

  "Steren's not exactly happy being in the Wolf system," Tom Schneider said, looking out the crystal wall of the Starfield. "There's not much to do. And the medical facilities are . . ."

  "State of the art but rough and ready?" Tyler said.

  "I was about to say 'not designed around the pregnant daughter of the system owner screaming at the doctors.' But I'm far too polite."

  Tom was not the head of Apollo mining in the Wolf system. His title was 'Special Project Manager, Wolf 359 Division.' The fact that he was the son-in-law of the boss had nothing to do with the fact that when he asked for anything he got it. But there was a reason that Tyler had put him in the position.

  "She, and you, are safer in Wolf than in the Sol system," Tyler said. "And there's going to be more room to move around once some more habitats get made. The mine's going to have plenty of room to move around. I'll get you guys a little bungalow in the clouds."

  "It will be pretty," Tom said. "But what's the point of us looking at this asteroid?"

  "It's about the right size," Tyler said. "And the right composition. I want you to spin process it and get it down to iron and a bit of nickel. Then do a seal wrap like the washers. When you've got steel, make a shell about the size of Granadica."

  "Which will be for . . . ?" Tom said.

  "That is the next conversation," Tyler said.

  * * *

  "Granadica?" Tyler said.

  "You called?" the AI said, forming a hologram of a Glatun head in the Starfield.

  "How are the repairs going?" Tyler asked.

  "Just about done," Granadica said, happily. "I don't exactly feel young, but I feel younger than I've felt in a while. I even got the rust smell out of the air processors. That took some time to run down."

  Tyler was pretty sure it was just there to remind the users that the fabber was old. If it had really gotten the taste out of the air it was feeling young. Which might be good and might be bad.

  "You got the updates from Gorku?" Tyler asked. "Are they really the releases we need?"

  "They got the whole packet," Granadica said. "Terra, or rather the LFD Corporation, is now authorized to produce anything that Gorku had in its designs and patents database. Including military grade drives, weapons and inertics."

  "Which is great," Tyler said. "Except we don't have the production capacity to use the data. Which brings me to my next que
stion. You were using thirty percent of your capacity to do repairs. How much capacity would it take you to produce another ship fabber in, oh, about a year?"