by J G Clements
And that’s when it dawned on me that I’d never glanced at his file. I didn’t even know his name. So another inspiration hit me. Using my ‘the rules don’t apply to me’ rule I made him an offer. “Listen. You’re about to start a new life, ok? If you want, you can have a new name. Pick one and let me know. I’ll have the Crekie formalize it and you can forget all about any of your past problems. Deal?”
“Thomas Sun. That’ll be my new name then.”
I started to say great, then realized there was probably a story there and I should at least pretend to be interested. And oddly, I was interested. “Thomas Sun? I don’t recognize that. Anything you want to explain?”
“Thomas for Thomas Aquinas and Sun for Sun Tzu.” I got the reference to Thomas Aquinas…he was a theologian but I had no idea who Sun Tzu was. Thomas must have seen my look cause he filled it in for me. “Sun Tzu was a Chinese military general. He wrote the ‘Art of War’. Ever read it?”
I had not. But I was more astonished by the fact that he had. I had misjudged this man, and that was a lesson I needed to teach myself. Instead, I shook hands and asked him if he had any belongings he wanted to bring?
I opened the door to the shed, and motioned Helen over to me. “Helen…this is Thomas Sun. I’d like him to work for me. We need to get him settled. How do we go about it?”
Helen was charming. Shaking his hand and thanking him for his willingness to help protect the Recruiter, she simultaneously motioned for a couple of the guides to come over. “Please help this man get his belongings onto the Troy immediately. I’ll see to the recording of his name on the emigration list myself.”
As he was about to leave with the two guides, I called after him. “Bring your fishing gear. I promise you I’ll find a place to fish.” He didn’t smile at that comment, but I saw his body language change. Just like that, he was relaxed. I guess finding a new home could do that for you. Or maybe, just being able to leave a lot of stuff behind. If spaceships had rear-view mirrors, you could see your problems vanishing in the distance.
Helen mindlinked, ‘and well?’ I knew Helen was expecting me to figure something else out. I didn’t let her mindlink give me a hint. Instead, I stood absolutely still for a few seconds when it hit me. “You aren’t going to register his name, are you?”
“I knew his real name before I picked him for you. When you introduced him with a new name, I knew what you had done for him. A brilliant idea, by the way. But now it’s my turn to do something smart.” She turned to look at me, and as if she was afraid her words might be overheard, she spoke only in my mind. ‘Your protector will be a ghost. There is no record of him existing anywhere. That might come in handy someday’. Then out loud…”As soon as Thomas is ready, we’re off to Scotland”
Chapter 28. Mini-jumps.
Ceres Report: Metal
I’ve had some time to start trying to figure out how to separate the various metals. There is a lot of alloy information, but it was all based on alloys that form under Earth Gravity. Instead, I discovered that I can melt them, but let them cool slow enough for various metals to separate. It’s a bit tricky, but I can get pretty pure alloys now.
I think I can make pewter, providing I can keep the lead out. But best of all, I have enough silver to make a cup and a plate. Something I think it would be cool to do. Haven’t found any appreciable amounts of gold yet, but you can never tell.
There had been a lot of debate on whether the Sisk should return to base and explain the new jump method, or just phone it in and start using it. To a last man, the crew wanted to start using it. Mindful of how the Crekie liked to treat everyone, Jake made the announcement that the Sisk would now be an offensive ship, and he’d waive the thirty-day notice of anyone on the crew who wanted a transfer. To no one’s surprise, no one wanted off.
Not used to blurting out new tactics and methods, he struck a compromise on reporting the new jump method. Beaming very detailed information to a Crekie receiver, it allowed him to respect his own training. It went against his grain to not to keep such a thing a secret, but the Crekie were very clear on matters like this: Secrets only destroyed freedoms. The Swarm did not have spies, so there was no reason to keep a large portion of the human race, or for that matter, the other races from knowing things. If there was one behavior that would have him relieved of his duties, it was exactly that. Still…he sent it to the Crekie. They could announce it.
After the was report transmitted, he was ready to start being a hunter by doing a series of mini-jumps around the outer orbits. He was aware that his ship’s presence had already been compromised, and if the Swarm was out there, they knew where he was. Normally this wasn’t a problem. The ship maintained total combat control of everything within a thirty light-second sphere around him. Nothing in this sphere could move without the Sisk’s permission. To make it harder to be hit by a beam fired from outside this zone, the Sisk was always jinking in different directions, changing trajectories slightly every few seconds: If a beam weapon did fire, especially from outside the 30-second surveillance window, the ship’s random movements would spoil the weapon’s aim. And of course, an incoming beam would give away what direction the Swarm was shooting from.
Jim had become very good at strategies and tactics, first by his natural thought processes, then by reading some classic military manuals. And all in a couple days. Jake found himself discussing his tactics with him, and his second-in-command, Sue. He had several private dinners with them and all three of them found tactical discussions very interesting. Sue surprised the two men, however, by getting a few of the McKinsie fleet personnel to help her create a simple tactics game. As Jim and Jake assembled more elaborate strategies, Sue changed the rules of the game. No one was sure how useful it was, but it kept everyone speaking the same language and sharing the same assumptions.
So it was agreed the ship’s position was compromised right now: Any Swarm in this system would know it was here, and was probably keeping out of sight. Too big for a Hauler or other ship to take out with a single beam shot, they did not try to engage the Sisk. On the other hand, since this was an occupied solar system, with one capital world and lots of raftcities, it was possible the Swarm wasn’t even here. That was OK with Jake. He’d just as soon do practice runs, to see if the tactics he was envisioning would work.
Jim was adamant, however, that the Sisk must be clean, isotope-wise and cold enough not to be notice. “Look…if you mini-jump but then advertise your new location because of your temperature or isotope signature, you’ve just given away you new advantage. When you mini-jump, the Swarm needs to think you’ve left the entire system, not just jumped a million miles or so.” Jake understood that implicitly…the mini-jump was doubly useful if the Swarm didn’t know they could do it.
The Bridge was usually dimly lit, allowing the various screens to show whatever data was needed without having to overpower room lights. It also tended to bring a hushed feeling to the room, where very little was said in a normal voice. Jake got a kick out of that, after spending years trying to operate his submarine as quietly as possible. To a submariner, sound traveled through water and betrayed your presence. This wasn’t true in space, where only radiant emissions…heat, radio, radiation, isotope decay…sent signals out from the ship. Sound was one emission that he didn’t need to worry about. The quiet atmosphere, however, seemed to maintain a level of alertness that Jake felt was needed to be effective.
“Helm, set direction to downstream”. Slang, it meant they would move in the same general direction as nearby orbiting bodies. Moving neither toward or away from the star, they would try to be just one more asteroid out here. Unlike what Jim had done a few weeks ago, they wanted to move in the same orbits with everything out here, not in an opposite direction. Hunters don’t call attention to themselves.
As the Helm signaled ready, Jake took a last scan of his Bridge crew, including Jim. “Pull the Plug.” Waiting for just a second for that command to be carried out, then “Mini-Jum
p”. Allowing a moment to pass, he announced, “All telltales, report”.
If everything had gone well, they had jumped about a half million miles, the minimum distance that the Jump personnel could manage. Typical with all jumps, there were over a hundred crew members who first job was to scan the sky looking for Swarm sign. Yes, passive sensors also watched for them, but the crew added additional sets of eyes. With too many observations being sent to the Bridge for anyone to listen to directly, they were displayed on a separate screen, each observer being represented by a single light.
Over a hundred crewmen officially were looking in all directions for any sign of movement or a flicker of light. On a different display, there was a list of emission anomalies…any hint of a radiation that didn’t belong out there… would trigger it’s own alarm. Heat from an operating engine, a change in reflection off an orbiting body, a change in direction of velocity, anything that was not thought to be natural would quickly get advanced to the top of the board.
Strong emissions would be picked up right away. The problem was faint emissions, say like a fusion drive but so far away where only an occasional photon would enter a detector. That would take some time to detect. And of course, the longer it took the Sisk to detect something, the longer it was at a disadvantage. Jake had summed up submarine warfare very simply one night over dinner. “Whoever sees the other guy first, lives.”
Jim pointed out to Jake that he enjoyed one more tactical advantage, at least for the time being. Until the Swarm knew that the Sisk could do mini-jumps, they would most likely assume that when the Sisk jumped, it jumped out of the system entirely. They wouldn’t expect it to re-materialize only a few light seconds away. And until they did, he could cruise the outer orbits unobserved. And Jake was counting on this.
The telltale boards and the observer board all showed green. Nothing detected. Jake was ready to jump again, but saw there was still some organizing going on with the Sensor officer and Observer Board Chief. Patiently, he waited till they had it figured out how to coordinate efforts. Jake would only intercede if it looked like they couldn’t agree or if one was steamrolling the other. As long as they both agreed to a procedure, Jake was fine.
They both were nodding, then almost as an after-thought decided to tell the Captain that they were ready for a second jump. Merely nodding to the Helmsman, it was he who announced, “Pull the Plug”, waited for about three seconds, then “Mini-Jump.” And as before, upon returning to normal space both the observers and the sensor arrays all worked well.
Not to say there weren’t shortcomings. He would love to have overlapping sensors, but that meant less resolution on the sky. A ship, even a large ship, a million or so miles away was far less than a single pixel in even the most dense sensor grid. Overlapping meant the same number of pixels watching more space. Wasn’t going to work. While he thought about that, the Observer Chief asked if he could use some of the smaller camera-like sensors, the ones that more or less acted as zoom lenses. He wanted to turn them over to the control of individual observers, so if they did see something, or even thought they saw something, they could zoom to that spot. Very similar to a hunter using a pair of binoculars to closely examine something that caught his eye.
Jake was immediately in favor of it…this whole effort was to develop a method to make the ship better at hunting Swarm. But as usual, Jim brought up something Jake had overlooked. “Normally, an Observer sends a yellow signal if he thinks he sees something, then a red when it’s confirmed. Do you think a fourth color would be useful? Let us know immediately that he is using the zoom? If he is, it wouldn’t be a bad assumption that he might be on to something? ”
The Chief thought about that for a second. “We’ll rig it so if the zoom is used at all, it’ll register as orange. Good enough?” He said this to the Captain, who nodded agreement. The Chief was back on his board, presumably adjusting the methods to take this into account.
Over the next several hours, the ship made almost twenty jumps. Learning as they went, the Captain didn’t even wait for the Observer Board to turn green. When about half of them lit, he jumped again. The intent was to disorient the crew and see what failed. The only real problem discovered was in the telltales. During the jump, the sensors that were left on seemed to think they had a problem and sent diagnostic codes. The sensors had to be powered off before a jump, so they were put onto the same circuits as everything else that was being unplugged.
That bothered Jake. He didn’t want to wait for the sensors to warm up after a jump. Even a few seconds while they initialized was too much time. He was about to ask for an engineering meeting, when the Chief said he could solve it if they had a ten second notice of an impending jump. That would be enough time to leave them on, but in a ready-state that didn’t trigger a fault code. Jake asked how that worked and the Chief explained that the sensors were left on, but the computer would tell them it wasn’t listening to them right now, so they couldn’t generate a fault. Accepting that, Jake gave a look at Jim, but Jim remained deadpan.
Without signaling what he was about to do, Jake punched the intercom and announced they were standing down from today’s drill. Furthermore, there would be a party tomorrow night, after they made the first jump for home. Then, looking over at the Traffic Board it was clear there were no skiffs away presently. With no preamble or warning, “Helmsman. Lay in a course and jump home.”
“Aye sir. First jump laid in, expected two day gravity lock for second jump with maximum steaming.”
“Jump”. It wasn’t lost on anyone that he didn’t ask to unplug first.
Chapter 29. Scotland.
Ceres Report: A Hammer
There was a lot of stuff I would have loved to bring from Earth, but a hammer seemed to be a bit overboard. So I decided to make one.
I can’t work steel yet, so I’m taking the highest melting metals I can work: I poured them into a sand mold I made and it came out pretty well. The second time. The first time I forgot to insert the handle so I re-melted it and tried again. And it worked great.
Its too soft, so its going to wear down eventually. Its also too small: On Earth it would have been fine, but here I should have made it larger. I always wanted to be called ‘Thor’.
Paris had gone exactly the way I wanted it to. We now had a purchase agreement on a huge farm that we could convert into a Spaceport. Our definition of a Spaceport, not the French. As an example, the director of the port had total say over building codes and layout. We had hired one of the McKinsie fleet pilots. He was reluctant until we convinced him he was the boss, and that no laws of France applied. My final pitch to him was that it was good to be king.
Even better, we didn’t plan to wait for any improvements: I asked Helen to get a couple ships parked there asap to more or less get the point across. We were serious, and in a real hurry. I realized that a spaceport really is nothing more than a large fenced in area, a couple of spaceships, and, unfortunately, guards to keep by-standers from getting crushed.
I had repeatedly explained this to the Prime Minister, and that it was critical to the protection of Earth that we be able to get volunteers to man the picket ships. I played that card over and over again. Every time some bureaucrat made an effort to convince me that things were complicated and would take time, I made it clear we didn’t have that time. My push back was always the same: A ship lands, people get on, and the ship leaves. It wasn’t more complicated than that. In all probability, I have no friends in France, but Jennifer mentioned that Jean-Marc would be happy to come work for us, perhaps at the Spaceport. Done, and done.
The Base at the Virgin Islands had made me a bit happier. It was already operational despite its being too far from large densities of people. Nothing worse than to build a spaceport where nobody visited. Scotland was a different matter for me, however. With Helen allowing anyone to bring a cargo container…the small ones being eight feet by eight feet by twenty feet long, and the big ones being over twice that length, it was impo
rtant that we find a good location. One where we can load the containers onto ships quickly and get them off planet. Helen made it clear that once they were in orbit, it wasn’t my problem how they got delivered. She did sort of give me a clue by saying that long-haul truck drivers were going to love space, so I let it drop.
Now, a big container ship…the ones that sail the oceans… can hold around 20,000 of the shorter storage units…and if no one is having a hissy-fit that day, can be unloaded in something like 12 to 24 hours. If we get two of our atmospheric ships loaded a day, that’ll be 40,000 containers a day, or about a million a month. The challenge was to find a deep water port, or several, that can handle this many containers. The other problem, of course, was to not get held hostage to all the players that wanted a bigger piece of the action.
I had to hand it to Jennifer. She knew who to speak to in Scotland and instead of a ground-based circus, she wanted us to take a small party of about a dozen representatives for a couple of orbits. All we needed was permission to land somewhere. But, bureaucracy started to rear its ugly head and we weren’t being given any landing clearances. They were reluctant to let us land near the airport, so I suggested we could land on one of the Greens at St. Andrews. Fortunately, they had a sense of humor but also knew I was dead serious. They found an open field for us almost immediately.
We gave them a chance to be there before we landed, just to let them get their own circus going. I guess politicians like that….being at the center of a circus. We weren’t on the ground though more than twenty minutes before I had come up with another border-line crazy demand. As the cabinet ministers were coming aboard, I explained that one of our crew members wanted to dis-embark and fish while we were in orbit. Could they arrange that? I was perfectly willing for them to think we were crazy, as long as they understood that we controlled the gate into outer space.
