The Hot Gate: Troy Rising III-ARC

by John Ringo

  “So the training was that we’re not ready to do more work so Apollo can make another billion dollars?” Mendoza said.

  “Working the scrapyard pays off dividends to more than just Apollo,” Dana said. “For one thing, it’s one hell of a navigational hazard that will keep spreading out and making stuff like that end up all over the system. Two, it’s very useable scrap for the fabbers to make, oh, missiles and boats like this. Three, it’s damned good training and Apollo pays the Navy for our time. The fact that you’re not working the scrapyard is, seen one way, an insult, CN Mendoza, or, seen another, a rational appreciation of your space skills. The last, and honestly stupidest, way to see it is as ‘we’re glad we’re not making money for Apollo.’ As to your skills, CN Mendoza, I checked your flight records against other records and as far as I can tell, CN Mendoza, with the exception of your first week after arrival and this last week you have had only two hours in the simulator and less than nine in boats, period. So, technically, you’re unqualified as a coxswain.”

  “I see,” Mendoza said, tightly.

  “Which also explains why you didn’t fly the Wolf mission,” Dana said.

  “And not because you’re in a relationship with Tyler Vernon?” Mendoza asked.

  “And because, for various reasons, Tyler Vernon asked me to fly,” Dana said. “And I was given the choice of who among the junior coxswains was to take the other boat. I chose Benito because while I think he’s personally a pig, he’s a good driver.”

  “And I’m not,” Mendoza said.

  “How could you be?” Dana asked, exasperated. “There are three requirements for being a good driver of anything from a horse to a ship. Training, experience and talent. You had the basics of training but you lose that if you don’t practice it and keep current. This isn’t a horse or even a car. You have to do computations for three dimensional vectors on a constant basis. That takes not only knowing the physics, you have to be adept at doing them. You have to learn the tricks and practice them. You get all of that from, and this is an important point so please listen to me, experience, CN. Forget that you were playing Halo and going to parties when you were supposedly logged into the simulator, you should have been asking for more simulator time. And, frankly, you should have been out in boats every moment you weren’t on the simulator. That’s not your fault, it’s engineering’s and command’s. I don’t even know if you have talent. I haven’t seen you do anything that was actually hard flying and that is where the talent part comes in. After training and experience then you find out if you’re talented. If you’re not, you can still be a coxswain. You’re just not superb. Doesn’t matter. Navy doesn’t need superb coxswains. Navy needs trained and experienced ones.”

  “And what the Navy wants the Navy gets?” Mendoza asked.

  “What the Navy wants is what the solar system needs,” Dana said, sighing. “I’m not sure that’s getting through the cultural filters, though. But, I mean, you know you have to practice to be able to drive a car or ride a horse, right? These things are ten times tougher.”

  “I drive a car just fine, thank you,” Angelito said. “As to horses, I am not a great son.”

  “Translation issue,” Dana said. “Or do you mean you don’t ride horses because you aren’t a great son to your family?”

  “I mean I am not the son of a...” Angelito stopped and thought about it. “I would say it in Spanish as a great man. But that comes out simply as great man.”

  “Yeah,” Dana said. “You mean your dad’s not a big guy in your government?”

  “No,” Angelito said, shrugging. “He is a senior official with the Ecuadorian military. But we are not... We do not live in the great house with the thousands of adoring peasants bowing at our feet.”

  “You are...joking right?” Dana said.

  “Exaggerating a bit,” Angelito admitted. “But only a bit. Do you know why Palencia and Benito do not get along?”

  “Chilean and Argentinean?” Dana asked.

  “That is part of it,” Mendoza replied. “But the greater part is...cultural. And class. And Palencia is all about whether you are of the proper class. And to him that means a very small and distinct group. My father, for example, is not of that class and therefore nor am I. Beni’s great grandfather was a stevedore. Benito’s grandfather became rich through simple trade. Dockyard work as a matter of fact and he started as a stevedore as well.

  “He used his connections to ensure that one of his sons became an officer in the Navy and later an admiral. Oh, don’t get me wrong, Admiral Benito is a fine man and a good commander. But he, too, has had to struggle against the fact that his father was a merchant. You in America might call it ‘new rich’ but you really can’t quite grasp it. Palencia’s family came from the silver Argentina was named after. The family derives from Spanish nobility. They own a huge expanse of the pampas, still, and they are very much treated as nobility upon their lands. Many of the farmers, especially the older ones, do literally bow as they pass. That is what he means by class.”

  “That sort of makes sense,” Dana said. “And makes more sense of Palencia, that’s for sure. I’m related to the last king of Ireland on my mother’s side. Does that help?” she asked, chuckling.

  “If he was polite he would say ‘Of course,’ ” Mendoza said. “If he was being impolite he’d mention that he is, in fact, closely related to the current King of Spain and therefore half the children on his father’s lands are.”

  “He’s certainly shaping up lately,” Dana said, mulling that one.

  “Being told that all of our countries are about to be terminated from the Alliance for failure to meet standards might have something to do with that,” Mendoza said. “It has, you understand, put a bit of habanera in our willingness to comply.”

  “What?” Dana said. “You’re serious?”

  “I assumed you knew,” Mendoza said, uncomfortably. “I would appreciate you not spreading it around. Amazingly it has not been picked up by the news media. But with your relationship with Vernon I’d assumed...”

  “My relationship with Tyler Vernon is...not of that sort,” Dana said. “And be aware that the relationship is very much... I’m trying to think of the word.”

  “May-December?” Mendoza said.

  “That’s a phrase,” Dana snarled. “And the opposite of what it implies. Something about philosophical or something. We’re friends. Just friends.”

  “Platonic,” Angelito said.

  “Yeah,” Dana replied. “That!”

  “I appear to know your own language better than you,” Angelito said.

  “If that’s a comment on the American educational system,” Dana said, “no comment. I still can do your job better than you can and mine as well. I am woman, hear me roar.”

  “Women are a very major part of...” Angelito said then paused. “I’m getting a really large radar return...”

  “That’s because we’re here,” Dana said, slewing one of the cameras and putting it on the main screen.

  “That is...” Angelito said then considered his instruments. “I thought these mirrors were small!”

  Perspective is very difficult to determine in space. But when something is still five hundred kilometers away and perceptible with the naked eye—and the viewscreen was set to zero magnification—it means it is either very large or very bright.

  VLA Packet Twenty-six was both.

  “The first series was,” Dana said. “SAPL finally figured out what any woman knows: Bigger really is better. Up to a point. I think they finally took down the five hundred kilometer mirror...”

  “Five hundred kilometers!”

  “I did not misspeak,” Dana said. “We ran a team out here one time to help move it. The joke was ‘how do you tell the difference between a mirror and a light-sail?’ ”

  “Okay, how do you tell the difference between a mirror and a light-sail?” Angelito asked, still boggling over the VLA packet. Especially since the closer they got, the more mirro
rs he could pick out. They just went on and on.

  “The logical answer is if you have to apply noticeable thrust to correct for the solar wind effects,” Dana said. “In Mister Vernon’s case, the answer is ‘if a planet can be moved out of its orbit by the solar wind effects.’ ”

  Angelito laughed hard at that but there was a slightly hysterical edge to it.

  “There are...so many...” He paused and leaned forward then brought up the view on one of his screens and zoomed in. “Are those...?”

  “Paw tugs,” Dana said, nodding. The tiny dots were clustered to shadow-ward of the mirrors. “And that’s one of the Monkey mining control ships. I don’t think it’s the actual Monkey Business.” She pulled up the ship’s registry. “Nope. That’s the Monkey Bread. Rangoran built to Glatun specs. That ship came out of the same shipyard as one of the Aggressors we captured. And two that the Troy cut in half.”

  “Uh...” Angelito said, pulling up the same information. “How...where did you...?”

  “I happened to remember because I carried the Marine boarding party,” Dana said. “Second battle of Troy. And I was interested in the Aggressors. When I pulled up the information on the Aggressor I sort of found it amusing that one of the Apollo tugs was built in the same shipyards. The name sort of stuck in my head. Aruhop Ship Yards. No, I am not Hop. Are you? Wasn’t just those three. Aruhop is one of the big Rangora shipyards. Does military and commercial. About half the E Eridani fleet was built there. Besides, I like monkey bread.”

  “I don’t even know where to start,” Angelito said. “So I’m going to leave it.”

  “Leave what?” Dana said, distantly.

  “Leave off that while you didn’t know the word ‘Platonic’ you seem to be a walking encyclopedia of ship types and their construction.”

  “It’s called ‘a broad base of functional knowledge,’ ” Dana said. “One of the standing requirements to get promoted. And as part of that I’m wondering when Raptor is going to tell us to start...”

  “Formation, prepare for one hundred gravity decel burn,” Raptor commed. “Open formation. Rotate turn to decel on my mark...”

  “And that answers that question,” Dana said.

  TWENTY-TWO

  “This is...” Angelito said as they approached the target mirror.

  The job was to pick up four mirrors and move them inward “merely” twice the distance from the earth to the moon. The problem being that the mirrors were two kilometers wide and, they had been told repeatedly, somewhat “fragile.” The grapnels had been installed with special rubber pads. She was still wondering if this was really going to work.

  “Going to be interesting?” Dana said. “Think of it this way. If you break it, you and your family couldn’t pay for it in a couple of hundred years. Technically. The materials are worth a fortune. This one’s palladium backed for some reason. The actual manufacturing is cheap as dirt.”

  “Okay, Flight,” Dana commed. “We need the shuttles to approach to within half a meter of your mirror and hold. Then we engage the grapnels. Get everyone in position, first. Can I get a readback on that?”

  While Raptor took a group of four shuttles from another division to hook up to another set of mirrors, Dana had been left in charge of “her” division for the evolution.

  The mirrors were nothing more than thin discs of glass with a thin “shiny” backing. They looked more than “somewhat” fragile. Moving them was going to be...interesting. Docking to them was going to be interesting.

  She hoped none of the flight realized that if they accidentally-on-purpose broke a mirror—which would only require deviating about three percent from their targeted vector—it was not going to look good on her resume.

  “Twenty-One, approach to half meter and hold, aye.”

  She waited for the readback and considered the vectors one more time. The mirror was remarkably stable for its size and the local solar wind conditions. Of course, that was why it had stabilization paks. Which would need to be turned off as soon as they engaged power. She checked the positioning of all the shuttles then nodded.

  “Engineers, on my mark you will engage grapnels to hard points. Grapnels power will be set to two percent of earth’s gravity. Readback on that.”

  “Two percent earth gravity, aye,” Vila commed.

  She set her own grapnels then pulled up the readings on the other shuttles.

  “Sans,” she commed on a private circuit. “Two percent not one percent..”

  “Roger, EM,” Sans commed back.

  “Twenty-Two, restabilize,” Dana commed, rechecking positioning and settings of the grapnels. “You’re drifting.”

  “Roger, EM,” Tarrago replied, correcting.

  “And on my mark,” Dana commed. “Three...two...one...engage.”

  The mirrors weighed two hundred tons. A Myrmidon weighed sixty tons.

  It was more a matter of the Myrmidons moving to the mirrors than vice versa.

  “Perfect,” Dana said. “And power up grapnels for a solid hold... Looking good. Now comes the fun part. On my mark engage five percent power on vector one-six-nine-four mark two. Readback...”

  * * *

  “Just fly the caret,” Dana said, softly.

  She had the main screen split four ways, keeping tabs on all four of the shuttles. As normal when moving an object as a formation the coxswains were following a “caret” targeting reticule. Keeping at a precise drive all they had to do was “fly” to the caret.

  It looked much easier than the reality.

  “Tarro,” Dana said. “Watch that drift.”

  “Watch the drift, aye,” Tarrago replied. “This is not easy, EM.”

  “Been there, got the scars,” Dana said. “Just fly the caret. We call this ‘good training.’ ”

  “Good training for what?” Palencia commed. “Moving mirrors?”

  “Combat training?” Dana said. “I can’t imagine sneaking a shuttle into anywhere but if you did I’d expect it would be slow, tedious and on a very precise vector. Besides, good training isn’t for anything in particular. Good training is defined as anything unpleasant and hard, EM.”

  “So the primary purpose of the training is simply that it be hard?” Palencia asked. “That is crazy.”

  “The more you sweat the less you bleed, EM,” Dana said. “And your port lower grapnel is showing a fluctuation.”

  “I fixed that,” Palencia snarled.

  “I don’t think the grapnels are a Granadica fault,” Dana said. “I think there’s something inherently wrong with the design. It’s not a Glatun system. There were no Glatun systems that did exactly what we wanted out of a grapnel. It’s designed using Glatun tech but it was the Night Wolves that came up with it. I suspect there’s a subtle little theory fault in their gravitic equations.”

  “It’s still holding,” Palencia commed.

  “Sometimes I swear it’s something in the software,” Dana said. “Or gremlins.”

  “Gremlins?” Vila commed. “Like the movie?”

  “Remember the old guy at the beginning talking about them?” Dana said, still watching her screens. “It was the excuse that a lot of people used for non-functional equipment in World War Two. Mostly it was poor maintenance or manufacture. A lot of the stuff that was manufactured for World War Two was pretty crappy compared to, say, the Germans and Japanese. The US didn’t really figure out how to do things right until around the time of the space program. And while there’s some high precision stuff we do that equals or surpasses both countries, they’re still generally more precise than we are. Tarro, drift.”

  “Drift, aye, EM,” Tarrago said.

  “You’re over compensating for the previous drift,” Dana said. “Either that or your seventeen thruster isn’t giving you the spec response. Pal, run a diagnostic on that thruster.”

  “Diagnostic thruster seventeen, aye,” Palencia said. He commed back a moment later. “It’s...fluctuating.”

  “Link,” Dana said, pulling u
p yet another screen. She didn’t have enough eyes for this. “All teams, cut thrust. Readback.”

  “Cut thrust, aye...”

  “Release grapnels...”

  * * *

  Dana sighed as the four mirrors drifted free. Taro’s had developed a yaw that had it spinning ever so slightly in space. And they were going to have to hook back up to them. But letting the boats just continue on their merry way while she dealt with Twenty-Two’s issues was a non-starter.

  “Pal, pull the number sixty-three relay on Seventeen’s control,” Dana said. “Then lick the contacts and reengage.”

  “Lick them?” the EM commed.

  “Yes,” Dana said. “Lick the contacts. With your tongue. Then reengage and test.”

  “Stand by.”

  “Lick them?” Angelito said.

  “Saliva is a decent conductor,” Dana said. “When you get something like what was happening it’s usually a bad connection. Could be dirt or minor corrosion. The best way to make sure of the connection, when you don’t have time to thoroughly clean it, is to lick the connection. Of course, as soon as we stop it will have to be pulled again and detail cleaned.” She made a note.

  She leaned back in her seat and started bringing up the data on the mirror. None of them were being used, currently, as supply mirrors. Which was fortunate. At the moment it was pointing a bright bit of light into deep space. Generally in the direction of the Aquarius constellation. Of course, with its current spin it was soon going to be pointed completely away from the sun.

  When they got it to its new position the stabilization paks would orient it properly. She could try to use the stabopaks to stabilize it. They had the override codes for the mission. But there was more than one way to skin a coyote.

  “All boats, maintain position,” Dana said. “Angelito, we need to get the spin out of that thing. Engage two percent thrust and let’s catch that sucker.”

  “Uh...aye, EM,” Angelito said. “I don’t suppose you want to drive?”