by Mark Wandrey
“The part where you asked what I was thinking. I was thinking that when I saw last year’s research logs, they looked like a cluster fuck. I was thinking that I’m in charge of this lab, and I’m responsible for creating a productive schedule, not for accommodating a mish mash of individual wants and needs.”
“So what made you decide to bump a project I’ve been working on for longer than you’ve been a Chosen?”
“Reading.”
“Huh?”
“I read all your briefings and project logs—”
“All of them? How could you—”
“Do not interrupt me again,” Minu said in a slow, measured tone, full of warning. She moved a half step closer. Despite only coming up to Mandi’s chin, Minu set her jaw, leaned her head back, and speared her with the striking green Alma Eyes of Doom. Mandi clamped her mouth shut and took a half a step back before she caught herself. “As I was saying, I read all your project logs and briefings from the time you were assigned the artifact. They lead me to the clear conclusion that you are at least another two months from being able to begin physical work, and set-up, at this point, is a waste of resources. You may be able to do some preliminary breakdown and disassembly, but that hardly requires the attention of the entire team. The EPC interface Alijah is working on is already half-finished and would benefit greatly from the entire the team’s dedicated efforts. This might allow us to complete the interface report and be available for other projects much sooner.”
Mandi clearly wasn’t ready for this. This snot-nosed Chosen not only had a firm grasp on the lab’s projects, she’d also figured out how to best use each of her team members to make the lab as productive as possible. Minu knew the civilian was bullying the rest of the team to make her pet projects a priority. She also knew Mandi was a castoff from a dozen other Chosen science teams. According to her personnel file, she was unreliable and highly resentful of the Chosen. A little research had helped Minu understand that resentment.
“Mandi, I know you tried to be a Chosen and didn’t make it through the Trials.” Minu watched Mandi’s face turn bright red and a little vein start pulsing on her left temple. “I know you once owned a small scientific firm in New Jerusalem, and it went bankrupt five years ago. After that, you bounced from firm to firm until landing a general research assignment with the Chosen. Considering your resentment of the Chosen, I’m sure it was a last resort job.
“Now, I’ll tell you one more thing. I’ve reviewed your qualifications, and I think you’re a top-notch engineer. Some of your civilian work was brilliant, and if your financial investors hadn’t mismanaged your company, you’d still be doing great. Thanks to you, I now understand a bit better what Bjorn meant when he said the Trials needed a better balance between brains and brawn. The Chosen are poorer for not having someone like you on the inside.”
“Oh,” was all Mandi managed to get out. In the course of a few seconds, Minu had puffed her up like an over-inflated balloon, then pulled the plug and let all the air out. The woman didn’t know what to say. “Well, I guess we’d better get to work,” she finally said after a moment.
“Thanks. Any time you want to talk, my office is just down the hall.” Mandi walked toward her work bench, glancing once over her shoulder at Minu. Pip did his best not to fall on the floor laughing. All in all, it was an interesting first day.
* * *
“Science?” Gregg sputtered around a spoonful of potatoes. Aaron, acting as if his friend was choking, smacked him on the back hard enough to send several spoonfuls sailing across the cafeteria.
“Hey!” several people protested. Minu laughed, and Gregg apologized as he reached around to massage what would, no doubt, be a bruise.
“How did you land in Science of all places?” Aaron asked, while Gregg wiped up potatoes. Minu thought Aaron looked even more muscled after a month. He was also quite a bit more tanned, while Gregg was medium rare.
“It’s a long story. What’s with the tan?” she asked Gregg, pointing at him with a skewered piece of mystery meat from her tray.
“GCX01998, a true garden spot of the galaxy,” Aaron said between bites of salad.
“Garden spot, eh?” she asked.
“Sure, if you like B-sequence stars way too close to the planet,” Aaron replied with a sneer. “The planet is tidally-locked with the star, so the side facing is cooked, while the terminus has a narrow inhabitable band.”
“Very narrow,” Gregg agreed.
“So, what made it worth it?” Gregg shrugged, but Aaron had a theory.
“There is an ancient Concordian facility at the terminus between light and dark. The planet is tidally-locked to this sun, you see?”
“You already said that.”
“Right, sorry. So this place is mostly half-melted junk now, but our commander thinks it was once an industrial facility, something to do with harvesting molten metals that bubbled to the surface on the sunlight side.” Minu took a bite and nodded.
“Have you ever wondered how big the industrial base for the empire must be?” Gregg asked. Minu shook her head as she chewed. “Our commander says there are thousands of these factory worlds scattered around, all deserted. Once they wore out, they were abandoned.”
“Well why don’t they fix them up, or whatever?” she asked, after swallowing. Neither of them knew the answer. Just then Cherise showed up.
“What’s this I hear about you being in Science now?”
“Really, she’s in Science?” This time, Gregg slapped Aaron on the back as hard as he could. Aaron put out a hand as if he’d felt a few tentative drops of rain. Gregg sputtered, and Aaron started to laugh. Gregg’s plateful of potatoes hitting his face smothered Aaron’s guffaw. He roared with rage, grabbed his own half-eaten plate, and the battle began. Those seated nearby figured complaining was useless. Chairs scraped, and people dove for cover as the two men went to war. Minu snatched the remains of her lunch and fell back to another table with Cherise. The boys ran out of food and switched to wrestling, each trying to shove the other’s face into the mess of trays and food on the floor. They writhed around in a tangle of limbs, chairs, and goulash. Minu shook her head and sighed, as a few other scouts ran in to break up the fracas. Nearby Chosen stood holding their trays and watched. Minu saw money exchanging hands as people placed bets.
“So,” Cherise said, once they settled down, “tell me about your new gig.” Minu plucked a pickle from her friend’s hair and filled her in on the details, including Bjorn’s explanation of how she’d come to be there. “I don’t get why you weren’t prime material for a scout team,” Cherise said when she finished. “That mission wasn’t exactly textbook. Considering the shit we went through, it’s a miracle you got us back alive.”
“What are people saying?”
“Opinions vary.”
“I’m sure I can guess what a few of those are,” Minu said with a frown.
“You can’t make everyone happy,” Cherise reminded her, and Minu shrugged. Gregg and Aaron were generally unappreciative of the scouts who tried to break up the wrestling match. As a result, there were now four in the fight. Three more came running, and Minu wondered if she and Cherise would have to retreat to her quarters to continue their conversation.
“What’ve you been up to?” she mumbled around a bite.
“We’re working on a distribution system for factory-scale EPC.”
“That can’t be too complicated. I mean, one decent-sized EPC can run a city for a week.”
“That’s the problem; we can’t buy the larger ones. Instead, we get skids full of little ones.”
“Huh? What’s the sense in that?”
“There isn’t any sense. We buy power from a broker by the erg, and they deliver it however they want. No brokers will guarantee the type of EPC we get. Most of the bigger factories use about one 39 zeta erg per month. The problem is we only get them in 39 tera erg.”
“Hold it, I can’t remember my high school physics. The zeta is an order of magnitude bigger th
an the tera, right?”
“Yep.”
Minu awkwardly did the math in her head and whistled. “Wow, that’s quite a shortfall. They use about a million megawatts a month, and you only get one megawatt EPCs?” Cherise nodded. “Damn, those tera cells are about the size of a standard lithium-ion D battery. So, a million of those a month go to each factory?”
“Correct. Now you see the logistics issues.”
“With only two portals, it must be a nightmare.” She tried to imagine a pile of a million D cell-sized EPCs and failed. “The portal here is busy half the time with work for the Chosen, and the one in Tranquility is busy with civilian traffic. So how are you doing this?”
“We’re talking about reactivating one of the portals used by the tribes during the exodus from Earth and fabricating a robotic handling system. And there are plans to open three new factories next year. I don’t see how we can manage.”
“Can you imagine the Concordian factories pumping out these power cells? I mean holy shit! Billions, trillions of them?!”
“Yeah, and we ship them back and forth to be recharged. I saw one of the power stations the other day, at that polymer factory in New Jerusalem. It’s a mess. The factory floor has three hundred employees and is fairly efficient, from what I can tell. The power station that runs it? There are more than a hundred employees doing nothing more than walking along plugging in cells and removing discharged ones. It takes days to dump them all into the one Zeta cell the factory uses for power storage.”
“Sounds crazy, all right. Any idea why we can’t get the bigger cells?”
“Nope. I think it’s something to do with our being so low in the pecking order. Pip said he thinks it’s a shortage.”
Suddenly, Minu recalled the conversation she had with Dram, just before her first mission to the frontier. His theory that the Concordian empire was dying had sounded ludicrous. Somehow, it didn’t sound so far-fetched anymore.
“Where does all the power come from?”
Cherise thought for a moment, then shrugged. “You know what, I don’t know. I guess the Concordia have some massive power generators somewhere.”
“So, why don’t we make our own?”
Cherise didn’t have any answers, so Minu decided she’d talk to Pip later in the day. As she suspected, he had some answers. And a few more questions. “From what I’ve learned, the Concordia harvest high energy plasma directly from the photospheres of stars. They call it Solar Tapping. I’m not sure how the process works, since nothing I’m aware of can survive the heat. It must be like dipping into a fusion bomb for power.”
“So,” Minu asked, “they suck up plasma and stick it into an EPC, then ship it around?”
“Yep, that’s about it. I’m sure they clean it up, of course, remove stray radiation, neutrons, and other undesirable leftovers from the solar fusion process. The brokers we buy our energy from get the filled EPC from factories, and in turn, distribute them.”
“How much of their economy is based on energy?”
“Most of it, I think. It’s the most valuable commodity, and the basis of everything. I don’t think any worlds make their own power.”
“Except us.”
“No, not any more. We haven’t built a new power plant in a hundred years.”
“Why?”
“It’s easier to buy it, or in our case, beg or trade for it.”
“And eventually, it’s like being a drug addict,” Minu said.
Pip leaned back in his chair and smiled. Behind him, an instrument continued its analysis of a complex alien circuit. “Too bad you weren’t around a hundred years ago.”
“We’re hopelessly addicted?”
“Hopelessly? No. Addicted? Without a doubt.”
“What can we do about it?”
“Not much.”
“Why?”
“You need to meet Ted.”
“Who the hell is Ted?”
Ted Hurt came from the same mold as Bjorn. He was a Chosen, at least as old as Jovich, but he’d started as a civilian and was made a Chosen as a reward for his service. At the age of seventy, he was the oldest five-star in service. Pip took Minu to where the distinguished scientist spent every waking hour, and a good part of the sleeping ones.
“I should warn you, Ted is a little over the top.”
“Like Bjorn isn’t?” Minu laughed.
“Ted is more composed and just as radically brilliant. There aren’t many who dedicate themselves to pure science. He’s one of them. He has a lot of wild theories and some not so wild ones.”
Ted had an unassuming look about him. He was of medium build, slowly going to seed like many men his age. He had a halo of wispy silver hair around the sides and back of his head and glittering blue eyes. When Pip and Minu entered his private lab, Ted was sitting in a chair next to a table covered in computer tablets, reading one. There was an amazing amount of stuff in the lab. Unlike Bjorn’s office, Ted kept his things organized. There were no piles of random artifacts; instead, samples were in display cases or carefully set up for meticulous examination. As Minu approached him, she realized he was asleep and gently snoring.
“Quite an amazing scientist, all right,” Minu laughed.
“You have no idea,” Pip whispered, the reverence in his voice very evident. Pip stepped up behind him and gently tapped his shoulder. Ted started and looked up, using his hand to massage his neck.
“Must have fallen asleep,” he said in a surprisingly strong voice. “What month is it?”
“Month?” Minu coughed.
“December fourteenth,” Pip said, “about three in the afternoon.”
“Ah,” Ted said and turned to look at his visitors. “Pipson, good to see you, boy.” His gaze fell on Minu, and his smile became altogether different. His eyes traveled her body, taking in every feminine curve in as much detail as if he were examining a new piece of tantalizing technology. “And who is this lovely lady?”
“This is Minu Alma, Command branch, assigned to my Science team. Minu, this is Dr. Ted Hurt.”
“Really? I thought there were only six women currently in the Chosen, and I know them all well.”
I bet, Minu thought. “I was in the most recent Trials.” She offered him her hand, which he took, then disarmed her completely by lifting her hand to his mouth and planting a very warm and attentive kiss on the back. Tiny little prickles ran up her arm to her back and down her spine. How could a kiss on the hand have that kind of effect?
“Already a four-star? I’m impressed, and that’s a difficult thing to do.” Minu smiled against her will and reclaimed her hand. He smiled back and gave her a lopsided nod. So, he’d noticed more than her hips and breasts after all. He turned to Pip, looking away from her lithe form with difficulty. “What brings you to my corner of this austere edifice today?”
Pip spent a few minutes summarizing his discussion with Minu. Ted listened with keen interest until the story was complete. “So, it’s a lesson in energy economics and geology you’re looking for?” he asked Minu.
“Sure, I guess.”
“Okay, why not?” He gestured to some chairs, and the two young Chosen sat. “First, a little history. Five hundred years ago, we were on the verge of reaching for the stars at long last. Our technology was only a pale shadow of what the Concordia has achieved, but it was enough to allow us to tentatively reach into space, develop sophisticated electronics, and harness the atom. Then at that critical moment, a cruel twist of fate killed us. It was the same twist of fate that ushered the dinosaurs off the stage. Another century, and we would have been beyond such a minor nuisance, I’m sure of it.”
“I’m sorry to interrupt sir, but I’ve heard all this in school.”
“You are interrupting, but I’ll grant you some leeway considering how woefully inadequate your education has no doubt been.” Minu scowled, and he chuckled. “Don’t get all in a huff; I know you’re from Plateau, and you most likely graduated from the Keeper’s Academy, or you would
never have passed the Chosen testing. Academy graduates are proud of their educational system, especially in Tranquility. But there’s still an awful lot you haven’t learned, especially considering who your ancestors were.
“So, five hundred years ago we were swept off the stage before we’d even completed our first dance. Along came the Tog at the last minute, and they threw us a life preserver. Stopping the ship from sinking might have been appreciated,” he shrugged, “but for whatever reason, that option wasn’t offered.” Minu was about to ask him to elaborate when he continued.
“We were whisked away to a new home by our anonymous benefactors. This world possessed everything we needed to survive, if not exactly prosper—because you see, Bellatrix is a very sick, very old world.”
“I love this stuff,” Pip whispered. Ted glared at him and he sealed his lips.
“Maybe you learned in science that Bellatrix is an improbable life-supporting planet; you likely didn’t hear that impossible would be a better description. You see, our star is a couple billion years older than Sol was in our own solar system. That sun was not quite middle aged, while Bellatrix prime is an old man. And like an old man, its heart doesn’t burn with passion anymore, and it’s beginning to get wider around the middle. Astronomers searching for life in the galaxy back on Earth looked at this system and quickly moved on. There was no possibility it could support a life-bearing planet. Maybe a few billion years ago…
“After we got here, we set about exploring. We mapped this world, we dug for minerals and fossil fuels, and we squabbled with our neighbors. For such an old world, we found very little of what we expected. There was iron and titanium, but diamonds were rare, and radioactive elements were almost nonexistent. We know that on Earth, every cubic meter of seawater has a couple of atoms of uranium. Here, not a damn thing.”
“So, the planet is poor?” Minu suggested. “A bad roll of the dice?”
Ted shook his head, and his eyes gleamed with that special look of a teacher sharing rare knowledge. “It’s more like an orange eaten on the inside; only the skin is left with a few little bits of fruit clinging to the rind. No, Bellatrix is mined out.”
