Tabby had spent enough time around mining operations that she was good help. We didn't need to talk a lot as I punched horizontal drill holes into the surface of the asteroid and set up for a single sluff. I wasn't quite as fond of horizontal clearing as it required more quilting to keep the ore from flying off. At exactly two hours thirty minutes, we'd loaded the explosive bags into the drill holes, stretched the quilting out and fired up the gravity retainers.
"Blow it when you're ready," I said.
"It should be your honor," Tabby answered.
Even so, she picked up the virtual plunger, twisted and compressed it. I could feel the vibration of the gas expanding rapidly in the explosive bags, in turn, fracturing the ore away from the asteroid.
"I'll pack up the equipment, get the grav-sled and drop the ore on the back side. We'll come back for it later," I said.
"Copy that," she said.
Technically, it had taken us three and a half hours to clear the shelf. But, I felt okay with it.
"Marny, we're clear on the first cannon emplacement," I said.
"Okay, Cap. We're almost there," she said.
Locate Sterra's Gift.
My AI outlined a position in space with a translucent reticle.
"Want a ride?" Tabby asked.
She'd finished dropping off the ore and was headed back to Hotspur's open cargo hold with the grav-sled. I jetted over and sat down on the sled's large bucket. I noticed that it wasn't just Sterra's Gift sailing in, rather, there was also a pod-jumper with one of the large cannons awkwardly strapped beneath it.
"Want to do another one? I bet we could get it cleared in less than three hours this time," I said.
"Why not," she said.
ULRAN AND MERLEY
By the time we cleared the second cannon emplacement asteroid, Marny and Nick had the first cannon up and running. The single gun was able to run in a standalone mode, but we'd linked it into the sensor strips of our three ships to effectively extend its range. There were a multitude of ways to defeat a single gun, but with the extended sensors we'd given it, you'd need to bring your A-game and we'd have a lot of warning. Colony 40 had been protected by a single cannon, not much bigger than one of our three. That said, we'd lived through the failure of that approach and weren't excited about repeating history.
"I haven't been this tired in a long time," I said.
We were seated at the galley of Hotspur drinking a pouch of electrolyte water and eating a meal bar.
"You and Tabby are fast with that mining gear," Ada said.
"That's all Liam," Tabby said. "I just try to stay out of his way."
"Not true, clearing that rubble and ore is a big deal. Mining is mostly moving material and you're killer on that grav-sled," I said. "If you stuck with it, you'd get better fast. The horizontal shafts are the hardest. It's a lot easier drilling into the face of an asteroid than trying to drill across. Speaking of making progress. Ada, did Selig think those cap-spans were going to work for him?"
"Yes. He was delighted to get them," she said.
"Bet that's not the only thing he was delighted with," Tabby said under her breath, but loudly enough for everyone to hear.
It was hard to see a blush on Ada with her dark skin, but I knew her well enough to see a slight reddening.
"You're naughty," Ada said.
"I was thinking of offering them a trade for labor," Nick said. "Do you think they'd be interested?"
"Selig did say they'd be interested in working out some sort of a trade. They won't have Tipperary credits any time soon. They're hoping to trade all of their minerals with Belirand for food, fuel and new gear. I think they spent everything they had to get out here and are working on a shoestring budget," Ada said.
"They're living the dream, though. Scratching out their livelihood on a new frontier. I think it's romantic," Marny said.
"From what I've seen, they're really getting after it. They've got quite a pile already, although it didn't look like they had a pre-sift, so it's going to be lower quality," I said.
"Pre-sift?" Ada asked.
"A lot of the ore you pick up is just uninteresting rock, no real concentration of mineral. The pre-sift machine grinds it up and tosses out the junk. Tailings," I said.
"You have one of these?"
"Roger that. We have three," I said. "We'll need one for our refinery. The other two we'll either rent or sell."
"How are you going to staff a co-op?" Ada asked.
"To start with, it will be an occasional thing," Nick said. "We probably won't run the refinery or forge for quite a while. The co-op will just be a place people can pile their ore for delivery to Belirand's Terminal Seven. Once we get enough for a delivery, we'll load it onto the barge and make a run."
"How are you going to figure out the cost for delivering ore?" Ada asked.
I took that one. "That will end up being your problem in the long run."
"Mine?"
"Sure. It's no different than any other load. Figure the cost of fuel, wear and tear on the ship, O2, paying the crew shares, etc.," I said.
"But how do I do that without knowing the value of anything?"
"I'll help," Nick said. "It's not as simple as Liam is making it sound, but we'll figure it out."
"So, tomorrow?" Marny asked.
"Finish installing the cannons and build a rig to mate the Adela Chen to the co-op rock. The sooner that thing is moved, the sooner we can start shaping it," Nick said.
"0600?" I asked. That would give us eight and a half hours of sleep.
"Geez, you really are your father's son," Tabby said.
I stood and pulled her up with me. "Let's get you into the shower, grumpy girl."
Reluctantly at first, Tabby followed me to the lift. Once in our room, I shucked my vac-suit and suit-liner and dropped the liner into the suit freshener. The vac-suit could probably use a cleaning, but that'd have to wait for another day. I turned the shower to a hot spray and let it knead the muscles I hadn't used in so many months.
Tabby slid in next to me. It was cramped quarters for two, but I wasn't about to complain. She massaged my shoulders from behind and for a moment I almost forgot that she was completely naked and pressed up against me. Almost. After our shower we fell asleep holding each other.
At 0530 the next morning I woke easily, my mind whirring with the tasks of the day. Tabby wasn't awake yet, so I snuck out of bed and pulled on a clean suit liner and my vac-suit. About halfway down the lift I smelled strong synth-coffee brewing. Marny was already at the mess table, drinking a cup and looking at her translucent reading pad.
"Whatcha looking at?" I asked.
"Morning, Cap. Sensor logs show we had a flyby from one of those light cruisers," she said.
I was surprised I hadn't gotten a warning. "How close and which one?"
"Not that close and they had their transponder disabled. They were just on the edge of our sensor range in an unclaimed area of the belt," she said.
"What do you think they were up to?"
"I imagine they were checking us out. They didn't get close enough to trigger a security perimeter warning, but I'm sure they saw the cannon. By design, it has a pretty significant sensor signature," she said.
"We knew it would happen sooner or later," I replied. "I'm just glad they didn't decided to push it. I was tired last night."
"I'm with you, Cap. There's something about physical labor that's different than exercising. It's a lot harder on the muscles," she said.
Nick walked out of their room, adjacent to the galley, his hair still wet from a shower.
"Any chance I could get you to draw up your plans for the control center?" I asked him. "I was thinking that Tabby and I could start drilling out a tunnel from the back side."
I knew he intended to place the control center for the co-op at the edge of the asteroid and the habitation, storage and docking bays would be stacked behind that.
"Already done," Nick said.
He pin
ched the plans off and flicked them at me. He'd drawn out thirty rooms of different sizes with a large oval-shaped atrium connecting them in the center. At one end was the control room and the other end joined up with five docking bays. The sheer number of cubic meters of material he was looking to remove was astounding.
"Never accuse you of dreaming small," I said. "That's probably three years of work for one person."
"Forty months, if you use the standard calculations. And that's just the main level. I figured it's best to have a plan. All I want is for you to clear a large enough space for the bots to reconstruct the warehouse we took from the pirate base and a hallway over to the control center," he said.
"How long will that take?" I asked.
"By yourself eight weeks, but I talked to Selig last night. He's interested in trading the twin's labor for parts and equipment rental. He said they've been mining since they were six."
"How long do you have them for?"
"They'll be helping us for the foreseeable future. Selig wants to rent a pre-sift, pod-jumper, four containers, and another laser drill."
I whistled. "That's a lot. What about school, though?"
"They're only available from 1200 to 1700. Annalise does school in the morning with them and they have chores at home."
"You're too chipper for this time of the morning," Ada said, stumbling into the mess and sitting down with her knees drawn up tight against her chest for warmth.
Nick poured a cup of hot water and slid it and a bag of tea across the table to her. We'd learned that while she would drink coffee, she preferred tea. She smiled brightly at Nick for his thoughtfulness.
I heard the lift drop and watched as Tabby slunk over to the table. When she arrived, she sat on my lap and grabbed my coffee.
"Ada, you up for delivering more equipment to the Licht's?" I asked.
"I can. What am I delivering?" she said.
"Nick has a list. What about Ulran and Merley?" I asked, looking at Nick. "How soon can they start?"
"Selig said they were available today," he said.
"I'd say, take a pod-jumper out to their claim and bring them back. They can load up the equipment and run it back," I said.
"They're all of twelve stans. Ulran and Merley have no business flying pod-jumpers around full of equipment," Marny said.
Nick and Tabby exchanged a look.
"What?" Marny asked.
"When you grow up on a mining colony, the first thing you learn to do is fly a pod-jumper," I said. "I was delivering ore to the refinery when I was ten. It's just something you do."
Marny looked to Ada for support with raised eyebrows.
"Maybe I could fly with them a few times. Selig did suggest supervision, right?" Ada asked.
"Sure." I shrugged. "It's probably best."
"How long until you get the second cannon installed?" I asked.
"Two hours," Nick said. "The first was the hardest. Now that we know what we're doing it should be easier."
Half an hour later, Nick, Marny and Ada disembarked and we sailed Hotspur to our last emplacement.
Very similar to the setup at the pirate outpost where we'd obtained the cannons, we'd laid them out in a close triangle. Each cannon's range overlapped the other two by fifty percent. The layout significantly reduced the range of our defensive perimeter. The tradeoff was that an attack on one of the guns forced the attacker into range of the other two. We'd seen firsthand the results of medium-sized ships caught in their lethal kill box.
My muscles complained as I moved the mining machinery around the rock. It was a good feeling and I was surprised to discover that I'd missed the serenity of working in the dead calm of space. We easily finished the job by 1000.
"Nick, we're off to the co-op rock," I said. "We'll start on the harness."
"Yup. We're just finishing up here," he said.
The big asteroid's current location was well outside of the reach of the cannons, although I didn't expect any trouble. We'd only had a single flyby from one of the three Oberrhein cruisers. And while I had a bad feeling about the long-term implications of their involvement, there wasn't much we could do about it now.
It was pure serendipity that Belirand had decided to leave the tug's harness, which we'd used to get through fold-space, on the barge. It would save us from manufacturing something else with the limited supplies available to us. Nick would detach the four connecting posts from the barge and then Ada would fly it over and lower it into holes Tabby and I were to drill out in preparation. We'd sink the heavy legs of their harness twenty meters into the surface of the asteroid. The great thing is that it was already perfectly fit to the Adela Chen. There was some risk that if Belirand ever wanted the harness back they'd feel bad about our alterations to it, but it was too convenient to ignore.
"Frak," I said. I'd been looking at my HUD and using the AI's calculations of where the legs of the harness were to be placed. When I overlaid the proposed plan, I discovered a good sized hill right where the nose of the Adela Chen would be resting.
"What?" Tabby asked.
I flicked the plan to her and she groaned in appreciation. The hill would take at least twenty hours of labor to remove.
"Not much to be done about it, but we're going to need more gravity generators. That's going to be a big pile. We'll put it in that swale." I circled my fingers around a low spot to highlight it on my HUD then flipped it over to Tabby so she could see what I was talking about.
"I can't imagine clearing the entire top of this thing. It'll take forever," Tabby said.
"Don't think of it like that. This is all good ore on here. Think of it as excellent mining," I said.
"You think there's any precious?" she asked.
"Hard to tell. We'd need a pre-sift machine and a hundred meters of ore to get a good idea about that," I said. "There's always a chance, but it looks like it's mostly iron."
We laid out our equipment and started drilling. The hill was big enough that I was able to get both Tabby and myself working on it at the same time. It was good practice for her as sluffing off the face of a hill required less accuracy than trying to make a flat, horizontal cut.
We were ten percent into the hill when Ada raised me on the comm.
"You need anything before I drop off the boys?" she asked.
"I didn't think they were coming until later," I said.
"It's 1300, Liam," she said. "We've already delivered the equipment to Licht's claim and are headed back with Ulran and Merley."
I looked at the time on my HUD – 1312. We'd been drilling on the hill for three hours.
"Right. Sorry. Lost track of time. We need some equipment. I'll send you a list," I said.
I hastily punched up a list of what I figured we'd need to finish the job and sent it to her. We already had a sizeable pile of ore from the hill and needed grav generators to hold it down, along with another drill and grav-sled. I wasn't ready to start processing the ore since my real goal was to knock down the hill and get the shafts for the harness legs drilled.
An hour later the shadow of an approaching ship caught my attention. I found it odd to work in the bright illumination of the Tipperary system's star. On Colony 40 it was always our sensors or lights of the approaching ships that caught our attention. I looked up and saw one of our pod-jumpers on approach carrying the harness from the barge.
"Liam, can you anchor one of the legs?" Ada asked.
She pushed the nano-steel structure down toward the asteroid. I grabbed an impact hammer, stakes, and a loop of cable and jetted over to where she would touch down. After a few minutes, Tabby and I had it secured. I jetted up beneath the pod-jumper and freed Ada from the harness.
"You're free, Ada," I said.
She gently lifted away and landed next to the hill where we'd been working. I'd always been impressed with her light touch on the controls. Puffs of atmo escaped and three shapes exited the spindly craft. I mentally corrected myself, as I noticed it was one of the boys who'd actu
ally been flying.
"That was a nice bit of flying, Merley," I said. My AI was generous in supplying the name of the boys on my HUD as they approached.
"Thank you, Mr. Hoffen," he said.
"What else are you good at?" I asked.
"Pod-ball," Merley said.
I laughed. "I bet, but I was wondering what mining equipment your Dad lets you use?"
"I can do the drill and the bags," Ulran said.
"You do not. Dad doesn't let anyone do the bags, except Selig," he said.
"Does too."
"Does not."
"Hold on boys," I said. "For now, you'll run the grav-sled and stretch out the blankets. If you do a good job with that, I'll check you out on the drill. Okay?"
They both agreed, but sounded disappointed. I understood. The grav-sled was the least interesting piece of equipment to run, but it was critical in removing the broken up material from the work area.
"I've got to go," Ada said. "Nick and Marny are waiting for me to come back for the Adela Chen."
"Merley, you want to run her back?" I asked.
"Yes sir," he said enthusiastically.
I showed Ulran where we were depositing the ore and started him on the grav-sled. As expected, he was quick about it and expertly started moving the loose material. He even re-arranged the gravity generators as the pile grew.
Tabby and I started drilling again and the three of us figured out a rhythm. It wasn't particularly difficult, drill holes, drop in the explosive bags, cover the face with a dampening quilt, blow the bags, pick up the rocks, rinse and repeat.
When Merley returned I called Ulran over and asked him to demonstrate his drilling skills.
"This is a nice drill," he said, lifting it into position on the ridge of the hill.
"We lost all of our equipment on Colony 40," I said. "It has less than ten hours on it."
"Merl, you're gonna love this thing," he said.
He completed the hole, moved over and drilled another. His movements were efficient and precise. No doubt he had plenty of hours with a drill.
"Merley, we'll switch every hour," I said.
It was impractical to have more than two drills running on the face of the hill, so I left Tabby and Ulran drilling and Merley cleaning up with the grav-cart. I started working on the shafts for the harness's legs. It was amazing how much faster we were able to work with the help of the boys. By 1700, when it was time for them to go home, we'd demolished the hill.
Buccaneers (Privateer Tales Book 8) Page 14
