April 8: It's Always Something

by Mackey Chandler

  "Our Chief is at your base with two hands," Havilland informed him. "If you will drop your hook he'll ride up and help you secure the cases to unload."

  They watched as the officer casually stuck a toe in the relatively small hook and grabbed the cable one handed. A wave to those above saw him reeled in. It wasn't anything anyone on the bridge would have volunteered to do. The seas were very mild today, but lifting off the deck on the end of a twenty meter cable he had to be a pendulum from the motion. Not to mention the breeze.

  "May he have the joy of it," Li said, watching. "It's been a few years since I rode a bosun's chair up the mast. Nothing I've missed," he assured them.

  The crates came down, slowly and carefully. Captain Havilland used the bridge binoculars to see the operation in greater detail. He couldn't find fault with it, or they would have quickly heard.

  * * *

  The tables furthest from the serving area had already been moved and a slight riser of nesting cartons installed as a sort of stage for the Assembly. It simply had a sheet of decking overlay on top such as Housing used to temporarily cover work in the corridor. There was room for three chairs without crowding, and space for Mr. Muños to set a small computer with a com link.

  The big flat screen on the wall behind was commandeered to show the video link of anyone speaking to the Assembly via com, should they want to share their face. A few didn't. April had no idea why, perhaps they thought their appearance would prejudice people. She had to admit there were lingering pockets of Earth Think, particularly among the new people still getting integrated.

  There was a custom with seating, not a law, nor any published rule, but the prominent business owners and leaders in associations such as the militia sat to each side of the podium. A few of them always arrived early and took possession of these tables. On only a few occasions had April seen new people unaware of the custom get told a table was being held for friends.

  April and Jeff had sat at different tables for different Assemblies. The custom didn't have that rigid a structure. But it was always against the same wall as the platform occupied by Muños, their Registrar of Voters, Jon Davis, head of security and the militia, and April's father who was resident manager for Mitsubishi. There were those who had a prominent part in the revolution who would sit there uncontested, but not everyone took the privilege. 'Easy' Dixon who piloted the shuttle that initiated the hostilities of the revolution would have been welcome, but preferred to attend from his home.

  The cafeteria lacked the grandeur of an Earthly legislature with a dedicated capitol. There was no physical way to have one that could seat everybody when the Assembly was the whole body of citizens. It was as impossible as the desire one fellow had for a vast park on the habitat. He'd worn down people's patience with him by proposing it over and over each Assembly. Now if he stood to speak most people signaled on com they had heard enough in ten or fifteen seconds. It was just a time waster.

  April felt bad for him, because it was to the point now that he'd be cut off before every getting an opportunity to speak if he might have a different proposal or question. But he had brought it upon himself. Last Assembly she had encouraged him to go speak to Heather Anderson, the sovereign of Central, because such a park was much more practical on the moon.

  Today, when they walked in Irwin Hall who ran the Private Bank of Home was sitting alone at the second table to the right of the stage. He gave them very subtle come here tilt of his head toward the empty seats. Irwin was low key and very conservative. He even wore a jacket.

  Jeff walked April to the table but didn't sit down. "I'm getting coffee, do you want one Irwin?"

  Irwin made a passing motion with his hand. "I'm jittery enough," he said, declining.

  Jeff didn't ask April. He knew she'd take it and to bring it black. What he did wonder about was why Irwin was nervous? Well...more nervous than usual. By the time he walked back with two mugs April had him deeply engaged in conversation, and having missed the start, he stayed silent. April could get the facts out of him better than Jeff could anyway. He had a tendency to ask too many questions and interrupt someone unburdening themselves. April was a snoop, and long experience had taught her an occasional nod and 'uh huh' often produced more information than direct questioning. Of course it took longer, the flood of speech often seeming more random than demanding just those points one wanted to hear. But it all came out eventually. Jeff just didn't have the patience.

  Jeff checked his phone, one ear sort of listening to Irwin ramble on. That was enough to make Irwin stop talking and ask if he had something going on? April briefly looked irritated as she understood just checking his phone was enough to derail Irwin.

  "We dropped our first shuttle to the ship we have set up as a landing platform," Jeff informed him.

  "It went OK? It's down safely and unloading?" Irwin inquired.

  "It is," Jeff assured him. "I really didn't expect any particular problems. The mechanical systems are simple and way over engineered. It landed and the landing platform grappled the landing gear just like it was designed to do. It's a calm clear day with very little in the way of waves. If it had been stormy with high seas we'd have delayed. Now that we've seen it work, we will try it out under worse conditions, but it seemed prudent to not stress the systems by making the very first arrest difficult."

  Irwin nodded in approval, his conservative side appreciating that approach. "It will break somewhere, in a storm or such. No help for that."

  "What I am more interested in than just the demonstration of the first landing is the cargo. Our platform has been at sea several days, and I'm concerned we might have opposition from others who will not welcome our intrusion into Earth affairs, even if it is off in international waters."

  "You think somebody might try to sink it?" Irwin said bluntly.

  "That's always a possibility. We are still at war with North America according to their recent denial of the previous surrender and treaty. They could sink it and have every legal justification in the eyes of many people. We aren't very popular in a lot of places. Tonga and Japan would object. France might. Australia I have no confidence at all. They seem to be sending me mixed signals."

  "Well, since we bombed the UN off the map there is the matter of a forum. There's no one place to get everybody together and discuss it. I don't mean that critically," Irwin hastened to say. "But I think I interrupted you. How does this cargo relate to your vessel's security? Are you arming it with things like anti-aircraft missiles?"

  "That's not a bad idea," Jeff allowed, "eventually. When we get to the point of having defenses in depth. However we can see and defend from above fairly well from orbit. What worries me more is an attack from below. I had to warn off a submarine from our ally down there before. It was a bit of a bluff considering my limited capacity. I want to make sure I'm not bluffing at all next time, so I sent down a couple submersibles."

  "Manned?" Irwin asked, clearly surprised.

  "No, no not at all. Submersibles as in drones, not submarines. We have neither the design expertise nor funds to build something so grand. I wouldn't have any idea where to recruit crew or how I'd pay them. I think you have to be nuts to climb in one anyway," Jeff said.

  "Yeah, well a lot of people feel the same about strapping yourself in a shuttle," Irwin countered.

  "Indeed. To the good if it keeps down the immigrants with which we are flooded," Jeff said.

  "So...these drones. I assume they are armed?"

  "The the second one we designed is. The first is a weapon itself. It would have to sacrifice itself to stop someone, but we already had a lot of the parts contracted and some assembly done when a couple of Dave's boys started asking me why I didn't do this and that after seeing the plans. We ended up making another one with a sort of torpedo. More like a missile since that is the tech we know, but it does the same thing."

  "But not as fast, underwater and all," Irwin said.

  "Not as slow as you might think," Jeff countered.
"We have two separate propulsion technologies each drone will test. If the drone with the launchable weapons is a bust so will the torpedoes be a waste. We're using the same tech on both."

  "There's Muños," Irwin said. He did that eye flick inside his spex everybody knew was a time check. They still had ten minutes. "Gotta check something," Irwin said, excusing himself, and tilted his head back so his spex had the relatively blank background of the overhead as a background.

  "What was Irwin nervous about?" Jeff asked April. They had a bit of privacy here, and he didn't care if Irwin heard, so he just leaned over and asked quietly.

  "He heard somebody is going to ask why we don't get our own currency, like Earth nations do, and is concerned to stop it early and completely. Yeah, I know," April said at his disgusted look. "We got away from Earth, and now every idiot who comes up because it is different, wants to make it the same."

  * * *

  The one sleek shape, removed from the foam nest in which it lay, was complete. It was not a pointed shape but a tube, the opening large for its diameter of about a meter. It was almost all of circular symmetry except two bumps to hold machinery on the tapered rear, blended very smoothly and gradually into the shape. At the very front it had a rim around the opening that had numerous short thick fins. Certainly too small and stubby to propel it. They looked more like a saw than a propeller.

  "What the devil do those do?" Havilland asked pointing. "Grind a hole in the target?"

  "We hope that creates cavitation," the tech from Dave's told him. It does what a propeller does when driven too fast, but deliberately. The cavities should persist at speed back past the widest part of the drone, to reduce drag, if we've calculated right."

  "And the other?" Havilland asked, pointing with his chin.

  "It's supposed to go fast in a sheath of cavitation too," Billy Costa explained. "But instead of mechanical cavitation it uses ultrasonic panels to create them. It didn't used to be practical, because it needs a lot of power, but with a fusion generator that's not a problem. It doesn't run them all the time, just when it sprints."

  Havilland looked at the ships machinist Billy had assisting him. He was fastening what looked like a huge spike on the nose of the second drone. "Are you sure that isn't too technical for my man?" he worried. "If we screw it up Singh will have us swimming back to Australia."

  "No problem. It's a straight up bolt on job. Simple as anything and the glass steel bolts can't be over torqued by a normal human."

  "Looks like a bloody swordfish," Havilland said. "Is that the ultrasonic thingy out on the end? Or is that a weapon to ram into a ship?" There was a slight enlargement at the tip, perhaps as big as a standard beer bottle.

  "No the panels are on the body. That is actually to get a sensor group out ahead of where the cavitation would mask the sonar in it. It has separate weapons it releases, unlike the first design. The long point is like those long spikes you see on some aircraft, and for the same reason. They are to reach outside the disturbance envelope the plane itself creates. In theory...it will be able to track a target while moving at speed. If we can find frequencies that the cavitation isn't particularly efficient at generating. It's going to be loud," Billy assured him. "We didn't think of this early enough to make it on the first drone. And that system promises to be a lot louder over a wider range of frequencies. The ultrasonic one can be tuned, within limits."

  "How fast are you hoping to push these...things?" Havilland asked.

  "Now that is an interesting question. There have been previous super-cavitating weapons, and at least one very small manned vessel of which several copies may have been made. The third Russian Republic had a torpedo that was supposed to do a hundred and fifty knots or so. But all of those used basically a rocket motor, not only for motivation, but to generate the gas envelope. We'll be using vacuum, actual water cavitation without gas, and much easier to turn on and off. And it can run for a much longer time. But if everything goes right I would be disappointed in anything less than two hundred knots," Billy told him.

  Havilland looked like he wasn't sure it wasn't a joke. He decided not to ask any more. "We'll have them safely in the water tonight," he promised.

  * * *

  Muños called the assembly to order in the usual manner. He took a little more time to explain things because there were so many new people. Not only new citizens, but new arrivals observing their first Assembly and deciding whether they wanted to just be a resident or assume the obligation of citizenship. He mentioned the archive of previous Assemblies and encouraged people to examine them.

  Robert Lewis had to explain the changes in corporate ownership that Mitsubishi had forced. It got fairly involved and ran near an hour before everybody was satisfied. That led to the fact North America considered itself at war with Home still.

  Eduardo Muños cut that discussion short by pointing out nothing had really changed since the last special Assembly, and there was no point in reopening the discussion unless somebody could show there was a significant new point to ponder. Twenty seconds of silence established that there wasn't, and he insisted they move on. People were already weary over the long discussion of corporate ownership.

  The proposal about a national currency finally came to the floor, authored by a young man named Patrick. The fellow proposing it seemed to think their own currency was necessary to a public identity. What horrified Jeff was that the fellow proposed to make Solars the official currency. What sort of idiot would bring such a thing to the floor of the assembly without speaking to the man who designed and made those Solars? Irwin spoke against it briefly but dispassionately, calling it unnecessary, and pointing out countries that got along just fine using other countries' currencies as their own.

  Jeff let another fellow speak because he didn't want the two bankers speaking back to back. He was an older fellow, Macedonian by origin, and actually helped, recounting how he'd several times been the victim of sudden shifts in currency exchange rates under several different governments, and he wanted the freedom to hold whatever money he wanted.

  Meanwhile Jeff leaned over and asked April quietly to find out who this Patrick fellow was bringing the motion. He didn't recognize him.

  Jeff stood and was gratified Muños called on him because he had several others.

  "Mr. Singh of the Solar Trade Bank," Muños said by way of explanation, to spare the feeling of any who might wonder why he was favored to speak.

  "Mr. Muños," Jeff said, giving a respectful nod. "I agree with the previous speakers and would elaborate. We are getting along without a government that dictates every detail of our lives. That's why so many are coming from Earth, and even a few from the other habs. We have exactly five people employed by our taxes, eight if you count the clinic we partially employ. Contrast this with slightly more than half the population in North America being government workers. Closer to sixty percent if you count the contractors they dropped from their statistics recently.

  "Once you start down this road it is never turned back. Eventually somebody will decide that since it is the official currency our taxes must be paid in Solars, there goes the freedom that Mr. Bojan said he wanted. He'll have to deal with exchange rates and availability to pay his taxes. Then we'll find the instability so inconvenient we have to have an official rate. The only way to make it stable is to regulate it, so we need a bureaucracy. I assure you any such official controls will quickly be a central bank, setting artificial interest rates and manipulating the markets. Such an organization will quickly be bigger than our entire current body of public servants. They will quickly be deciding budget matters instead of the line by line vote you have now," Jeff predicted.

  "Perhaps you are lazy..." Jeff said, and gave a shaming look around at the crowd in the cafeteria. "This is not a little thing. It's a step back towards being slaves like all the Earthies. There's not a country there that has our freedoms, and if we lose them...where will you go?"

  "The moon!" somebody called out from the a
udience.

  "Perhaps," Jeff agreed. "Though you know it can't absorb us all in a short time. But I object. Why should we have to flee because we were too stupid to stop the usual incremental progression that seems to be the natural evolution of governments towards tyranny?

  "All this leaves out my last reason. The design and the production of Solars, the idea, belongs to the Solar Trade Bank. If anyone tries to make it official in any political sense, we will stop making them. We do not have the services of a patent system. But I will challenge anyone who appropriates them. They are private and our firm have done the work to make them trusted. If you want a currency make your own. Call them Homies, or anything you want, but you won't be permitted to ride on our coattails to get the public to accept them, you can demonstrate they are reliable and gain your own trust."

  Jeff made a motion like he was going to sit down, but before he could the young man who had introduced the measure started a slow mocking clap. Every eye in the cafeteria turned to him. By the fifth clap he had everyone's attention.

  "Such brave words from a killer of women and children. I don't believe you have the guts to challenge anybody you can't kill by remote control," Patrick said.

  April was poking Jeff in the butt with her pad. She had the information on who the man Patrick was and where he was from, but Jeff was ignoring her. It didn't matter anymore.

  Understanding dawned on Jeff's face. "You sir, have wasted all our time. This was a ruse from a provocateur. You could have simply spoken to me privately and challenged me without boring all these people with your private quarrel. May I assume you are Patriot Party scum?" Jeff asked.