April 8: It's Always Something

by Mackey Chandler

  * * *

  "The French bought a tunnel boring machine from us," Heather informed Mo.

  "We have two under construction," Mo reminded her. "A two meter and a three meter chassis. Do you know which they want and do we have some kind of a delivery date targeted?"

  "We compared notes and they've been sinking an elevator shaft for almost the last year. It's past three kilometers deep and has stub tunnels started on several levels. It has the lift capacity and volume to take either size machine down. I want you to start tearing the existing two meter machine down to ship to them via their shuttle tomorrow. We know they can lift a pair of Russian rovers on their shuttle, so it's going to be more a matter of reducing length than mass. You can check with them for the dimensions."

  Mo looked shocked, then alarmed. But Heather had to hand it to him, he visibly calmed himself and got his face back under control without blurting out something stupid.

  "You have to be aware, that tosses our own schedule straight out the window," Mo said. "I assume there is some urgency or a compensating advantage to make this worth doing?"

  "We don't have windows," Heather pointed out reasonably. "You really have to drop these Earth expressions or the kids will snicker behind your back."

  "They are welcome to snicker," Mo said. "But that isn't an answer."

  "They made me an offer I couldn't refuse," Heather admitted.

  "I hope that also isn't the Earth expression I'm used to," Mo said. At Heather's bewildered look he explained – "On Earth it means the offer is backed by deadly threats. You can accept it or die. There's even a famous scene in an old 2D movie that immortalized the expression."

  "Oh, no," Heather said. "It's far too good to pass up. No sinister hidden meaning."

  Mo looked relieved. "May a lowly mining engineer ask what you got for it? Magic beans?"

  "Now that story I recognize," Heather said, but she was smiling. "Indeed I'd take beans if they had the right kind of magic. You remember in that fairy tale they did end up having some special qualities?"

  "Yes, although they were troublesome," Mo agreed.

  "Well remind me later to tell you about hyacinth beans, they look like they will displace a lot of our soy production, but that's way off topic. The French are giving us two interesting new technologies in exchange for the boring machine. They are behind us in sintering large structures like the boring machine uses, and feel extremely pressed to become food independent. They need a lot more tunnel cubic quickly."

  Mo lifted an eyebrow, which was enough to make Heather hesitate if he wanted to ask a question.

  "Why pressed? Do they see a sudden increase in demand? Or another cut off of supply from Earth? That sort of a statement alarms me. It has to have some basis."

  "I will get to that soon," Heather promised. "I might not be telling this in the optimum order. But you can see how it all fits together once you have heard it all. The things they had to tell me to explain their necessity and why the deal was being offered were as valuable as the tech. They are ahead of us in human intel. Indeed they chided me a bit for not knowing what is going on in Armstrong. The fellow I spoke with said that's his full time job, and a basic part of governance. I'm afraid he characterized neglecting it as running a 'hobby' government. He said us being oblivious to what was happening was destabilizing, and he shouldn't have to be supplying our intel. It wasn't easy to hear it put so rudely, but he's right, we need an actual intelligence department, even if it's just one person at this point. I know I don't have the proper mentality for the job, and I need to delegate a lot of things anyway, but we just don't have enough people to do everything," she sighed.

  "If I may make an observation," Mo said, gently. "Burdening your subjects with two or even three jobs, is still likely to get better performance than you can do trying to carry a dozen all by yourself."

  Heather looked stricken. "That's terribly reasonable."

  Mo just nodded rather than beat the idea to death until she hated it.

  "The French revealed the USNA has been bringing in replacement people marginally qualified to maintain systems. They may know IT or environmental, but they are all of a military background and age," Heather said, her face saying this was significant. "They have different enough skills that they don't just plug into the equivalent civilian job. They aren't used to the same way of reporting and getting orders or requesting supply. Things haven't gone smoothly, and where there was friction the old management structure was retired and sent home without any negotiation or effort to blend cultures. This sort of thing is easy to pick up with human intel, because people complain about it."

  "Oh crap...they are militarizing Armstrong," Mo said.

  "Indeed, and if they have little use for civilian managers who don't adapt to military practices, they have zero need for the research and scientific workers who even the civilians find scattered and difficult to work with. They see them as a drag on resources and a luxury they can't afford right now. They seem to have no idea that some of the tech Home used to force independence and keep it originated on the moon. Which is all to the good. We are getting Armstrong people who developed energy storage systems Earth still doesn't have, and who worked with Jeff Singh's mother before she fled.

  "The inventors of that tech are exactly the people who came over here rather than go back to Earth. Some of them might have gone to Home, but it is our good fortune it was too difficult to go to Home or to the French base, a fact of which he was aware and very bitterly lamented. We have an actual road to Armstrong and an English speaking culture. There is so little Armstrong commerce with New Marseille and these people had no idea how readily they would be granted entry or asylum. They may have imagined a language barrier."

  "They have a long tradition of generous asylum, but I doubt most of these academics are aware of the political history," Mo said. "They may also believe North American propaganda."

  "I had one person suggest we would be better off imprisoning some of these people before allowing them to return to Earth. Especially to North America," Heather revealed.

  "I'd be very careful of that person in the future," Mo said, not even bothering to ask who it was, to gauge how safe it was to contradict them. He held up a finger and tilted it sharply. "I think their moral compass is more than a few degrees off true north." Using an Earthism again.

  Heather nodded agreement. That he had the strength of his convictions wasn't lost on her. "The French were the source of several other pieces of tech Jeff and I traded for some time ago. They supplied armor we used when April went to Earth and electronic systems we used for signal interception and processing. Both hardware and the software to run it. Until now they didn't offer the tech to fabricate the chipsets, but the tunnel machine buys that for us. They still haven't offered up the tech to fabricate the armor, but I intend to weasel that out of them.

  "They want to buy a new three meter machine in the near future, after the one we're building for ourselves. So I have some leverage to get the armor process from them when they come back for that. I'm also trying to broker a deal for Dr. Holbrook to work with the fellow who was the primary source of the chipsets. We're getting tech from that source for extracting trace elements from regolith or milled rock that aren't feasible to separate any other way. I expect we'll do other, more mundane trade too."

  "That certainly sounds like a good trade," Mo allowed. "I have some regolith from shadowed sites I'd like to try processing through such a machine. It's not like we will run up against critical lack of cubic for several weeks without the tunnel borer. We can switch all our resources to finishing the new two meter machine, and have it in service a little earlier. Are you talking about actually sending Dr. Holbrook to New Marseille, or having him work by com?"

  "Physically sending him. I'm going to gift him with land as April suggested to me. If it doesn't anchor him here at least it should leave him kindly disposed towards us. I know you are using him for survey work, but he's really too valuable to waste on
that if we can get him back in a lab where he has at least some equipment and his full time spent on research. I'm asking Jeff to work with them, which will be by com, and require a terrific high bandwidth to be encrypted to the level we desire. I'm urging him to get his mom involved too, but she is very independent, if not downright paranoid. Not without cause," Heather added.

  Mo was nodding, looking thoughtful.

  "OK, I know that abstracted staring off into space look," Heather said after a long silent pause. "What are you thinking? You look nearly as off in another universe as Jeff gets."

  "Just looking ahead a little. We're going to end up fighting Armstrong again aren't we?" Mo asked.

  Heather smiled, but didn't tell Mo how happy that easy we made her.

  "Yes, I doubt there is any way to avoid it. Not all of Armstrong, most of them there have no interest in damaging us. But this faction being assembled, whose only purpose I can see is to attack us, yeah."

  "You figure they are bringing weapons in again?" Mo asked.

  "Do dogs have fleas?" Heather asked. "I've already taken...measures. I'm working on strategies to ambush any force that tries to project along the road, without destroying it. I'm very concerned with providing emergency shelter for the few people we have in surface facilities. It's a rather classic opening to bombard an enemy to soften them up before an attack. Is that what you are thinking?"

  "Oh no, no. That's all fine and good. I expected all that. But what about after?" Mo asked.

  "What about after?" Heather echoed.

  "Well, say you have thwarted this invasion, and destroyed their forces not just effectively, but in detail I should hope. That's the only way to definitely end it. The road lays open the other way..."

  "Invade them?" Heather asked, surprised he'd consider it.

  "Perhaps not in the same way they intended, but Dr. Holbrook and some of the others who've come to you are lacking their customary equipment. It seems like you should discuss with them exactly where it is, and what it looks like, and what sort of transport is needed to move it safely. Then send a raid in to grab it all. Well, as much as can be practically taken, and restore it to them. Not a general invasion."

  "I like it," Heather agreed. "Actually I had in mind doing a sweep for heavy weapons if we gained control all the way back down the road to Armstrong. Trying to be as gentle with the civilian population as possible. But I doubt we'd be well received demanding access and doing inspections by force. I'd rather not turn the rest of them against us if possible. But it's the only way we'd know they don't have the means to try it again soon," Heather reasoned. "We might as well take what we need and they aren't using. It's not like we're stealing their air plant or something."

  "The spoils of war," Mo said with a shrug. "That's how it works. Make a note. Sometime when you can, look up 'Operation Paper Clip'. That's the name for the action in which the Americans, the old USA, grabbed all the German tech they could at the end of the First Atomic War. They got jet engines and rockets for satellites and all sorts of things. Anything they could grab before the competing Russians snatched it first."

  "You'll need to be very careful to maintain operational security about this," Heather reminded him. For the first time she really regretted he wasn't her sworn man."I'm impressed how practical you are for a technically oriented person."

  Mo's eyebrows shot up in surprise. "Hey, I'm not one of these scientists! I'm an engineer."

  Chapter 7

  Jeff's phone gave a priority chirp and he checked it without pausing the movie he and April were watching. It wasn't really holding his interest. It was made in the 2050s. Some of the assumptions and tech were so dated as to be silly, but mostly it was so different culturally it might as well have been an alien planet they were viewing. If he missed something by answering his phone no great loss. The family around which the story revolved were at a vacation home on Puget Sound. There were long stretches of shore and the hills behind covered with trees and no homes or big buildings. The chalet style cabin was ridiculous, hard to maintain and insecure. It looked nothing like the area did now. You'd think from the camera work that there was still hardly anybody living there but the Indians. The young boys ran around the beach in swimming suits with no top that would get them arrested now. In fact the movie download was restricted in North America to academic use now, because it would be regarded as soft porn and anti-social. The social issues the three generations were trying to resolve in the story were as antiquated as the cabin. Jeff didn't mind the interruption. He was about ready to give up on the movie anyway, but April hadn't said anything that way yet.

  "It's always something," Jeff complained, frowning at his phone. "One of our primary weapons failed to respond to an inquiry. Its anticipated position was hit with a laser when there was a safe area of Indian Ocean behind it and it should have made a status report on its internal diagnostics. Chen says an optical double check shows no object the right size anywhere near where it should be."

  "Backtracking traffic scans is there any indication somebody matched orbit with it? April asked.

  "That's what Chen's guys are checking now. We'll have a company in Pakistan who'll run the numbers for us. They have a lot of data to process to see who was looking at it in the last ten days and buy the best coverage to check. We never have a hundred percent coverage, so there's no guarantee we'll see a rendezvous, or the flash of a meteor strike for that matter, though one big enough to knock it out of orbit without a flash and debris would be unlikely."

  "If it got impacted by a natural object would it make it fail-safe and self destruct?" April asked.

  "It might," Jeff decided. "It would be more likely to destruct from a small strike than a big one. Because the acceleration profile would match a rail gun projectile more than a massive object. If it fail-safed we'd have heard about it. The self destruct mode isn't as powerful as the weapon setting. But still enough that everybody with satellite sensors would freak out at the detonation."

  "Oh, I just assumed it would go to the full yield automatically," April said.

  "No, first of all, no need. The purpose is to keep it from being captured and reverse engineered. You don't need a couple hundred megatons to do that. Secondly you can initiate a smaller burn in the device faster than a full one. Which means you stand to accomplish the destruct before an impact can disassemble the device and scatter components from which people could get clues."

  "So how big a boom?" April asked.

  "I'm not sure," Jeff admitted. "I've never had opportunity to test one in that mode, obviously. I'm pretty sure it will yield at least a megaton. I wouldn't want to try to model it way off near the end of the graph line, down to a few kilotons and have it totally fail on me. On the other hand I have no idea if it will still get some secondary fusion reactions like surprised us with the first one. If it goes past the primary reactions into secondary or even a few ternary reactions it could get as much as twenty megatons."

  "That's a pretty wide range," April said.

  "Not really," Jeff said. "The destructive power only goes up as the cube of the yield. So most of it, once you get past the first couple megatons, is all flash and boom but the area it actually damages isn't proportionally that much bigger."

  "Why bother to make it so big then?" April asked.

  "Because a lot of people, well, the sort of non-technical people that still are a lot of Earth's population, can't visualize the result of exponential functions. Hearing huge numbers scares the snot out of them. Even administrative people. That's the primary purpose, to make sure they are seriously worried you might use one. It doesn't cost hardly anything to make them seem scarier."

  "What are you going to do?" April asked. "What if somebody took it?"

  "Stole it you mean. Well, Chen should tell me if they can pinpoint an intercept within the hour. If we know who stole it I'll have a word privately with them. If we can't find evidence it was removed by human agency I'll still assume that's what happened, and make a public
announcement. I have a very high confidence nobody is going to crack it open and study it without killing themselves. I shouldn't have to, but I'll warn them."

  "It may kill a few innocent people too," April worried.

  "That's not my choice or problem," Jeff said. "Should we not have a bank because somebody might rob it? Criminals are responsible for the casualties from their crimes. It's Earth Think to blame the victims. I won't go there."

  April smiled. "Pretty hard to rob it when we don't have a lobby to walk into."

  "Well yeah, great safety feature," Jeff agreed.

  "They will blame you if somebody cracks it open," April warned him. "I know it's crazy, but living down a gravity well seems to rob people of all moral sense."

  "I'm kind of getting used to it," Jeff said with a shrug.

  * * *

  Kurt eased off the shuttle onto the Home dock and heaved a sigh of relief. It was so unexpected he embarrassed himself, but none of the other passenger queuing up to enter seemed to notice. He enjoyed just touching the check-in pad and giving his name. In North America it was a lot more trouble to go from Mobile to New Orleans for a weekend trip. Here, nobody asked for papers or his purpose in entering.

  He handled his heavy bag with the care of long experience in zero G. Three quarters of his mass allowance was taken up with high end bourbon. It was in square plastic bottles, not glass, but a beam dog never yanked anything around unthinking in zero G. He enjoyed a drink now and then himself, and it had been unattainable at any price the last few months he'd worked on Home. He could sell it for a princely sum if he needed to. The rest was taken up by six sets of long sleeved t-shirts and casual pants. He had two one liter squeeze bottles of body wash and a couple tooth brushes and reusable floss. He wasn't sure what would be provided on the moon, and hadn't wanted to sound like a difficult person by asking too many details. Anything he brought along now would be cheaper than buying it later.

  Once he was through the bearing, he tried his phone, and was delighted they hadn't cancelled his com code yet. He'd called Jeff Singh from near ISSII as soon as they undocked and he was certain he'd be on Home soon, but that was still through his Earth phone company's service. He just didn't care if anybody tracked it now that he was beyond their reach. The man hadn't really said if he was on Home or the moon. He just told Kurt to call him for the interview after his medical. It assured him that Singh didn't condition it on him passing and being certified for suit work. Apparently he meant his offer to help Kurt find other work if he couldn't use him himself.