by Peter Grant
“They sound ideal for that sort of task,” Stone acknowledged.
“They are, ma’am: and what’s more, they solve the moral problem, too. If only you have the right to collect your own robotic prospectors and the asteroids they identify, anyone else doing so is clearly up to no good. There’s no-one else in the Mycenae system with any right to do that. Therefore, if one of your mines takes out their ship, I don’t have an issue with that; and there won’t be any surrenders before the fact to worry about.”
“But what if there are survivors?”
He sighed. “Ms. Stone, a space mine uses a thermonuclear bomb to activate a cone of laser rods. They’ll go through a ship from one side to the other without even noticing it. Its internal atmosphere will instantly vent to vacuum. Unless the crew are already in spacesuits – and they’re not very practical for working in atmosphere, so that’s almost never the case – they’ll die very quickly. If any are in spacesuits, or can get to a lifeboat, and by some miracle they aren’t maimed or killed by a laser beam or flying wreckage or an explosion, they’ll be left drifting in space. There are no habitable planets in the Mycenae system where they can shelter. If they’re not rescued quickly, they’ll die too.”
She shivered. “I see. How many mines will you need?”
“We’ll assign one mine to cover each prospector robot, or one of the asteroids it identifies for collection. We’ll need enough to cover them all. How many bots are out there?”
“We deployed eighty,” Marwick replied.
“Then I think a hundred mines will do, sir. We can have some of them spread out to cover multiple robotic prospectors. High-value asteroids will be more tempting targets, so we’ll make sure each one your bots flag has its own protective mine. Anyone trying to steal them will trigger it.”
“But they won’t shoot down our own people when they go in to recover the asteroids?”
“No, sir. We’ll program them with an identification code. If your mining boats broadcast it, they won’t be targeted. You’ll have to warn us in advance, though, so we don’t assume your boats are thieves and target them with our missiles.”
“What does a mine like that cost?” Stone asked.
“The sort we’ll need start at about ten million kronor apiece, ma’am. They can go as high as double that for the most sophisticated versions.”
Marwick’s face twisted in disgust. “That’s out of the question.”
“With respect, sir; if a single high-value asteroid might be worth, say, a billion kronor, that justifies spending a certain amount to protect it – and you’re protecting a lot more than one of them. If you want such thefts to be ‘permanently discouraged’, you’re going to have to buy space mines. You also need to withdraw your sensors from the prospecting field, so they can’t observe anything that happens there. We don’t want any inconvenient records to surface later, as evidence in court.”
“But if we buy space mines, there’ll be a record of that,” Stone objected.
“Not if I buy and deploy them for you, ma’am. It’ll simply be an extension of our security contract. You can pay the necessary funds to Eufala Corporation for some innocent-sounding purpose, perhaps ‘to buy fast freighters for resupplying the security mission in Mycenae’, or something like that. I’ll arrange for purchase documentation for such ships, and for a few visits to be logged there, to ‘prove’ that the money was used for that purpose. The freighters won’t be armed, so we won’t have to register them on Rousay in terms of our armed vessel license – not that they’ll call here, in the normal course of events. I’ll use our existing ships for that purpose.”
“How much money are we talking about?” Marwick demanded.
“Let’s work on a cost per mine of twelve million kronor apiece, sir, including an under-the-counter premium to prevent the sale being registered anywhere. A hundred mines would come to one-point-two billion kronor, or about three hundred fifty million francs.”
Marissa looked thoughtful. “Compared to the value of the asteroids they’ll protect, that doesn’t sound too far-fetched,” she said musingly.
His face twisted sourly. “That’s as much as we’ve already spent on Captain Cochrane and his security proposals. The Board’s going to find that hard to swallow.”
“There may be a cheaper way, sir,” Cochrane suggested artlessly. “What tax rate do you pay to Rousay on your asteroid mining in this system?”
“Thirty-three percent.”
“If you could skim off gold to the value of what I need from your refinery ship, and transfer it to my courier vessel without it being recorded officially, that would save you the tax on that amount, sir. It would have to be properly refined, of course, to four nines fine purity, and cast in one-kilogram bars, with a valid mint code. I know there are inspectors and rules and regulations to get around, but if you control the ship, there are ways.” Marwick nodded, unsmiling. “I can use gold to negotiate a better discount on the price, because it’s very attractive to black market arms dealers, being almost impossible to trace. That would probably mean five to ten percent less per mine, so I’ll need only about three hundred million francs. That saving would be on top of the tax benefit, of course; and you wouldn’t have to account for transferring the funds to Eufala. There’d be no record of them at all, so future investigators will have nothing to go on.”
“Hmm… you make a compelling case, Captain. We’ll discuss this informally and off the record with the rest of the Board over the next day or so. If we give you the go-ahead, how soon can you get those mines in place?”
“I’d say within two to three months after receiving the money from you, sir. It’ll take that long to order and collect them, ship them to Mycenae, and sow them in the asteroid belt. You’ll also have to tell me where your sensors are, of course. I’ll want to remove them before I deploy a single mine. We don’t want them recording this, in case anything goes wrong in future.”
“Very well. I’ll let you know within forty-eight hours whether we’ll proceed.”
That evening, Caitlin Ross stared at him across her desk. “Please, sir, send someone else! That creep at Marano tried every greasy, slimy trick he could think of to get into my pants. I almost had to stamp on his feet to get him out of the doorway to my hotel room, so I could slam it in his face. If I never see him again, it’ll be too soon for me!”
“I’m sorry you had to go through that. Very well, I’ll send someone else. I may have to go myself, because we’re all so frantically busy right now. You’ve got more than enough on your plate, setting up our intelligence and security departments.”
“Yes, sir, I have. So, with this new order, you’ll have a hundred and fifty space mines?”
“With the fifty you’ve already bought, yes.”
“What are you planning to do with them?”
“I’ve got a few things in mind,” he said offhandedly.
Why not tell her? he wondered; then mentally shook his head. No, I mustn’t. I said right from the start that we’d compartmentalize everything. That was the right decision then, and it still is now. Should I tell her about Frank? No, I think not. Frank’s too useful to us to put him at risk through loose talk. We’ll almost certainly need to use him again in future; so, the fewer who know about him, the better. The same goes for the patrol craft, and the Dragon Tong, and many other things. Keep it ‘need to know’. It’s safer that way.
Caitlin asked, “What about the other two robotic prospector fields? Are you going to plant mines around them, too?”
“I’m not planning to. NOE doesn’t appear to know about them – at least, they didn’t say anything to me about them. I’ll report to NOE at some point that we’ve ‘discovered’ them, along with the information that their high-value asteroids are also missing, and suggest that it must have been one of their owners who cleaned out everyone else’s asteroids along with their own. That should cover our tracks, and give NOE something else to worry about.”
“I wish you’d tol
d me about them earlier. I’d have liked to have gone along, to see what I could learn from the prospector robots.”
“You were busy at Marano, remember?”
“Oh, yes, of course. Well, it can’t be helped now. What if NOE tells you to put mines in those fields as well?”
“Then they’ll have to buy me more mines.”
She laughed. “You’re going to milk them for all you can, aren’t you?”
“Why shouldn’t I? Listen, Caitlin, they’re as much criminals as anybody else. When Rousay put in its claim to colonize the Mycenae system, the United Planets legally halted exploitation there. Until the claim is decided, anyone can prospect there, but no-one’s allowed to mine anything. NOE’s jumping the gun on Mycenae Primus Four. Its ‘exploration’ robots are already digging out mineral ores and stockpiling them on the surface, ready to ship them to a refinery as soon as that becomes legal. Our ship got photographic evidence of that from orbit on its first visit. If the piles of ore are big enough to show up from orbit, they’ve got to be huge! NOE also cheated by beaconing, and planning to collect, high-value asteroids. So did whoever sowed the other two prospector robot fields. All three are in violation of the law, for what it’s worth. We simply beat their ‘owners’ to it by collecting their ill-gotten gains before they could. I have no qualms of conscience at all about making criminals pay for our anti-crime program in the Mycenae system. I’ve even got a contract that says I’m legally allowed to do it, although the United Planets might quibble.”
She smiled. “There’s a certain irony in that, isn’t there?”
“I think so.”
“D’you think NOE will accept your proposal?”
“They can’t afford not to. If they let others steal their high-value asteroids, they’re not going to have enough money to move quickly once the Mycenae system is officially Rousay’s. If they can’t show fast results, the investors they need will stay away. They’ve got to do something to increase their income and discourage competitors.”
“What if someone gets killed, and you have to carry the can for it?”
“I’ve taken precautions against that.”
“Yes, but what precautions? How will they stand up in court?”
“Let me worry about that.”
NOE’s internal security isn’t very good, he thought as he came to his feet. I have recordings of every meeting I’ve ever had with them, and more besides, including copies of some of their own records they don’t know I’ve got. All transfers from their bank to ours are documented, and if they give me the money for the mines in gold, I’ll record the transfer on audio and video, and keep a bar for mineralogical analysis to prove it came from them. If they try to hang me out to dry, they’ll be hanging right beside me – and, if necessary, I’ll make sure they know that.
8
First Blood
MYCENAE SYSTEM
“Ready to proceed, sir.”
“Very well. Remember, take it slowly! Pretend you’re a hundred and forty years old, with arthritis in every joint, so it hurts you to move!”
The bridge crew, listening to the conversation over the speaker on Commander Cousins’ command console, laughed aloud as the Executive Officer replied, “I’ll do just that, sir.”
Cousins watched through his command console displays as Lieutenant-Commander Moffatt, seated at the cargo handling console in Hold Seven, gently used tractor and pressor beams to lift Payara out of her cradles. The nine-thousand-ton patrol craft seemed to hover over them for an endless moment, then began drifting slowly to starboard as pressor beams pushed her, with glacial slowness, through the open hold doors and into the boundless blackness of space.
It took almost an hour for the smaller vessel to reach a safe distance from the freighter. At last the voice of her skipper came over the tight-beam circuit. “Payara to Amelia. Ready to proceed. Over.”
Cousins activated his microphone. “Amelia to Payara. Take up station as instructed. Remember, tight-beam communications only, no active sensor emissions, and do not use more than ten percent drive power. Acknowledge. Over.”
“Payara to Amelia, understand tight-beam only, no sensor emissions, ten percent max drive power. Over.”
“Amelia to Payara, carry on. Out.” He adjusted a control on his console. “Well done, Exec. You can go ahead with Trairao now.”
“Roger that, sir. On my way.”
The bridge crew watched the internal security vid feed as the Executive Officer closed Hold Seven’s outer doors, went through the airlock into the main passageway, and crossed it to enter Hold Eight. There, he opened the outer doors and prepared to undock the second patrol craft.
“Permission to ask a question, please, sir?” The speaker was a young Petty Officer Second Class, one of the operators at the Plot console.
“Go ahead, PO.”
“Sir, what do the names of the patrol craft mean?”
“Captain Cochrane named them after predatory fish species in the Amazon River on Earth. Most of them are extinct in the wild, of course, what with centuries of pollution in the Amazon Basin. The Captain reckoned that, as predators, they were suitable names for our first warships.”
“With respect, sir, they ain’t real powerful warships.” A chuckle ran around the bridge.
“No, they’re not, but they’re what we’ve got to work with right now, so we’ll make do with them until we can afford something better. The Captain’s working on that. Give us time, and you’ll see this company grow into something pretty impressive.”
“I ’ope so, sir. That’s why I joined up.” There was a rumble of approval and agreement from most of the bridge crew.
“I’m betting they will, PO. That’s why I’m here, too,” Cousins acknowledged as he watched Trairao begin to rise out of the cradles that had held her securely in place during the voyage to the Mycenae system. He couldn’t help wondering silently, Will they be ready in time? Have we rushed them into service too soon? Have their crews learned all they need to know to go into combat, if necessary?
He cast his mind back over the past few months. The first two patrol craft had been rushed through the refurbishment process at breakneck speed. That had caused problems, because the shipyard staff hadn’t been familiar with them, which had resulted in costly mistakes. More of their older, crankier systems than expected had had to be replaced – at greater expense than they’d bargained for – by commercial equivalents, because it would have taken too long to repair and modernize the military-grade originals. Still, they hadn’t had any choice. Eufala had to be operational by the time the new satellites were deployed around Mycenae Primus Four. There was no other option. The shipyard would take more time and care over refurbishing the remaining patrol craft, after which the first two could be sent back there to rectify their haste-induced shortcomings.
Cousins smiled to himself as he thought about the patrol craft. New Westray had said nothing at all about their loss except to announce, in very low-key fashion, that they’d been ‘expended as targets’ by their System Patrol Service. They must have decided to save face, rather than look like fools, he mused. At least that meant Eufala didn’t have to worry about an interplanetary hue and cry being raised over the missing ships. Master Chief Wallace, the prime enabler of their acquisition, would retire at the end of the month, and join his wife on New Sanday to enjoy his pension – and his newly acquired tourist bar – in peace. He’ll never know how much we owe him. His million-kronor bribe was cheap at the price. It made all this possible.
A little over an hour later, Trairao had joined her consort in formation, trailing the much larger freighter as it cruised toward Mycenae at one-tenth of light speed. Amelia had emerged from her final hyper-jump one light-day from the system, accelerated to cruising speed, then shut down her gravitic drive and every other active sensor. The three ships were now closing on their objective. They’d brake at low power as they drew nearer, and would arrive within a million kilometers of Mycenae Primus Four three days b
efore the satellites were due to get there. After that, they’d keep station on the planet, imitating holes in space, watching the satellites being deployed, waiting for someone else to arrive and do something about them once the delivery ship had departed.
Cousins waited until the Executive Officer had joined them on the bridge, then keyed his microphone once more. “Amelia to Payara and Trairao. You have twenty-four hours to settle down and test every system you can, except for active emissions, of course. At noon tomorrow, we’ll commence formation and battle exercises. Stay sharp, stay alert, and don’t make mistakes. We haven’t had enough time to shake down properly. This is the last chance we’ll get. Let’s make the most of it!”
“Do you think they’ll be ready, sir?” his second-in-command asked as he replaced the microphone.
“They’ll have to be, won’t they? We hand-picked their crews as best we could, just as we did Amelia’s complement. If all our ships’ systems and weapons work, we should be able to cope with what we’re expecting. If something more powerful comes to the dance, we’ll just have to speed up our tempo from the waltz to the samba.”
Lieutenant-Commander Moffatt chuckled. “As a ballroom dancing fan, I appreciate the idiom, sir.”
“I thought you’d like it.” They grinned at each other.
“The samba’s a damned difficult dance to do well, though. I wish I was out there on one of those patrol craft. Despite their age and all their problems, they’re the spear in our hands for the time being. It’d be nice to command one again.”
Cousins lowered his voice. “If I didn’t need you so badly, you would be out there; but I need your patrol craft experience to advise me as I figure out ways for our three ships to do what’s needed.”
