Power Base: Book 2 of the Leaving Earth series

by Kaal Alexander Rosser

  'Don't you start!' she said as soon as she saw him.

  'I'll bloody start! Bloody quench protection?! Bloody start?!'

  'It wasn't m-'

  'I know! It was whatsizface! The old chief wotsit!'

  'Want to take a guess what genius scrawled a design for the tech centre generator installation on the back of a napkin for your old VP?'

  Grum did not explode, but it looked like his blood was only just contained by arterial musculature. 'I am going to have some serious words with Hank, right now!'

  'I just found that out myself, I was on my way for the same thing.'

  Grum knew the expression set onto Vann features. He had witnessed it from the wrong angle twice too often. He was not going to just let a loaded Vann with the safety off go and do his dirty work, though. 'Together then.'

  'Together,' she agreed.

  Grum opened the door to Hank's office without knocking, but Vann ducked under his arm to enter first.

  Hank looked up. 'Oh, this cannot be good.' His normally healthy colour was already slightly ashen and paled further as he looked at them. 'Let me guess. You've heard about HabSatTwo, found out who designed the installation and distribution grid, and have come to exact bloody vengeance?'

  'Vengeance would be appropriate, given that he also put the lives of everyone here at risk,' said Grum, icily.

  'Oh. You found out about that as well, have you?'

  'Yer damned straight!' said Vann.

  'OK. But what can I do, now? You fixed the installation, here, and the problem on the habitat has been contained for now. Do you want me to pull support for anything he did?'

  'For the last five years, yes,' said Grum, leaning forward. 'That's exactly what I want you to do. This is deadly, Hank. You know the situation with the board, and part of the pressure is because all your projects are ready to go bar the power. Well, I reckon that isn't the case. I reckon every single last bloody one of them needs going over.'

  'Who by?'

  'Vann. She knows the kit we're supplying inside and out. She's the one who designed the bodge job on the generators down stairs, though, now I know who was in charge of the actual installation, I'm going to have to ask you for some of her time back to go over it again.' Grum did not relent, and Vann nodded sharply in agreement.

  Hank look directly at Grum. 'You know what you're asking. He'll be dishonoured. Shamed. He's still a friend. I see him occasionally. And my standing on the board will take a hit.'

  That was too much for Grum. 'Fuck the board! We're talking about people living or dying, here!'

  'You're right. I'll make the calls. You know they might give me my walking papers for this, too?' Hank had hung his head, but his voice was clear.

  'Hank. Kelvin will only allow that if you try to hush this up. You're old chief engineer was not up to scratch, clearly, at least in the last couple of years. I don't think that part needs to go outside this room and the board, but it does have to go at least that far.'

  'I'll do it. I'll do it. Vann, would you do as Grum asks and look at the generator installation downstairs, again?'

  Vann nodded and walked out, giving Grum a squeeze on rump when her hand was hidden from Hank's view. Grum pretended not to notice.

  'How did your old chief get involved with the tech centre installation, Hank?'

  'Oh, he and your old VP were buds from the days of the old company. I never got on with him, myself'

  So that's where the old VP had got the dumb idea about sticking two lots of antimatter in the same containment shell, thought Grum. 'Look, not just because she's my wife, but Vann is really top notch. Give her the room and she'll run with any size job. Plus she really does know all the Nevada tech stuff.'

  'It's a good suggestion. I'll have a talk with the department heads. There will be one or two who might kick up a fuss, but after this… It's needed.'

  'Yes. It is. I'm going to send Steve Branch over here. He's a genius at political spin. Damnit, I want you to lose as little face as possible from this. You and Kelvin are my only support on the board, as it stands.'

  'Pulling all those projects is going to hurt my standing no matter what. He was on all the high-profile projects.'

  'What about the Mars shuttle?'

  'What? That's not even off the drawing board!'

  'Even better. Before you reorganise the entire Division, give it to Vann. We can supply enough generators over the next year to power one of those, like we talked about. Divert the resources from the stalled projects and get the shuttle going. That will bring your profile back up.'

  'Yessir!'

  'I don't mean to give you orders, Hank, but right now I'm angry and trying to see a way out.'

  'My friend. You're doing the job even if you don't have the papers yet. I swear you're COO material.'

  'Then take my suggestion and run with it, OK? I'll talk to Kelvin.'

  That made Hank's eyebrows go up. 'You will, will you? Without being called?'

  'Yes. I'll go to him. And I will send Steve Branch your way while I'm going.'

  'OK. Thank you, Grum. I don't know why after the reaming you just gave me, but I actually feel better about the situation.'

  'Don't get too comfortable about it. We're both going to catch seven shades of shit from the board over this.'

  'I know. But still. Thanks.'

  'You're welcome. Now. I'm off to see the wizard.' With that Grum walked out of Hank's office and towards the lion's den, pausing only to send a quick message to Stew and Steve.

  Kelvin had welcomed Grum into his office and had listened patiently while Grum outlined events and his plan of attack. Genuine mirth seemed to sparkle in Kelvin's eyes when Grum reached the part about moving the Mars shuttle up the schedule. Grum had his agreement and support. Kelvin would also support Hank in the boardroom on this matter.

  That was what Grum had wanted. He had also asked for an extraordinary consideration regarding a situation Stew — by return message — had alerted him to, and again Kelvin had agreed.

  There was a knock at his door, but the person, unusually, was standing away from the little window. If he had been wearing a throat microphone it might have picked up the little rhyme he was muttering to himself. The knock came again.

  '…Seven, eight – always pays to make 'em wait. Nine, ten, eleven, twelve. COME!' He spoke the last word loudly enough for the person on the other side of the door to hear. It was Amy, and Grum felt a little chagrined.

  'Sorry to disturb you, Grum,' she said.

  'No worries, just finishing off the notes from the budget meeting. What can I do for you, Amy?' he asked, though he already knew.

  'I've come to hand in my resignation notice,' she said, handing over said letter.

  'No, you haven't.' Grum shook his head, gravely.

  'Er.' Amy was momentarily flummoxed and stayed standing. 'Yes, I have.'

  'No, sorry. You see, I understand you intend to go to MIT and convert your Masters to a PhD. To use what you've worked on with us as a basis for new and original research and finish out your doctorate in a year! You must see how that doesn't suit us at all.'

  Grum could see that Amy could not believe what he was saying. She might expect some coercion from another person in the company, but she would have expected better of him.

  'Grum, I wouldn't tell them anything! I signed the NDA and I'd honour it, of course! I'm only taking stuff I've worked on, and even then I'm leaving out anything relating to the Nevada generators. I'm not even using it in a speculative sense. Come on!'

  'Sorry, Amy, you misunderstand me. It's just not in our best interests that you leave our employ at this time.'

  'I can't believe you! I'll sue, I'll… What are you laughing at? Oh you sod!'

  'I'm sorry, Amy. Please sit down.'

  'So you aren't going to try and stop me from resigning? You do know I wouldn't give anything away.'

  'That's not even a question, Amy, but no, I was actually serious when I said it doesn't suit us to have you
resign. It doesn't suit you either, for that matter.' He held a hand up as she looked about to interrupt. 'Please, Amy. It does suit all concerned, however, for you to complete your doctorate. With a PhD to your name, like Vann, I'd have much less resistance to moving you on to one of the other active programmes which could use you.'

  'I don't understand.'

  'I've been given the discretionary power to enter into an arrangement with MIT, starting in September, for a one-year research grant into extending the usefulness of antimatter production. I'll draw up a list of what you can disclose to them. The plan is that you can take with you some of the refinements used at Nevada and the first-draft generator plans. You will be credited for the work you've done here and the work you extend at MIT. In turn, MIT will supply a mentor so you can close out your research in the first six months, write-up for six months, then sit your viva. You'll still be on staff as a liaison, but you'll only be getting an hourly rate based on your submitted timesheets. In all other respects you'll be a full-time PhD student again and USSMC is sponsoring you as such. I will be listed as an external supervisor.'

  Amy was sitting, open-mouthed, as Grum held out his hand. She ignored his hand, ran round the desk and gave him a big hug.

  'Thank you. I completely forgive you for being cruel earlier. How did you kno- Stew!'

  'He told me you were going back to school. I had a similar game with him after my meeting with Kelvin. You should have heard the mouthful he gave me!' Grum grinned. 'But it allowed me to work something out. Good luck. You still have four months of slog before you get back into academia.'

  'Thank you again.'

  'No worries. No go on, back to work, and, er… Take this with you please.' He held out the resignation letter she had thrown on the desk during her fit of anger. She grinned at him, took the letter, and headed out the door.

  Grum sat back down in his chair. What is Kelvin giving me? Support or rope, I wonder.

  Chapter 15

  WITH the activation of the third collider put on hold, and nothing else actually pressing, Grum was prepared to put some serious thought into the recombination research.

  'As we said before: in-flight recombination is the only way to scale,' Stew was saying. 'But we have to collect the yield in the 'bottle' and make sure that it's sealed before removing it from the containment rig. You can't just stick it back in and open it up again! Sure way to catastrophic annihilation that. Which means the recombination — or more properly just combination at that point — has to happen before the containment stage. Right now, though, there is nothing between the creation and containment stages except whizzing round in circles between serious magnets at ever decreasing fractions of the speed of light.'

  So far, Stew had said nothing new. He was just covering old ground, organising his thoughts so Grum did not feel moved to comment. He had been half-listening, however, and something Stew had said struck him as important. Trouble was that he could not be sure what it was that Stew had said that struck a chord.

  Stew was silently thinking, now, too.

  'You just said something important, Stew.'

  'It was just a re-iteration of our state. Didn't even think you were listening.'

  'Half. I think the answer was in there.'

  'Just the problem.'

  'I'll have to think about it,' said Grum, slowly.

  'Just don't take seven and a half million years over it!'

  The thought that Stew had already spoken the solution aloud to him, but that he could not remember it had bugged Grum for several days. Grum's irritability – and the fact that it was somewhat directed towards Stew's unintentional obtuseness – was obviously bugging Stew. They had taken to working the problem separately, so the early morning breakfast call from Stew was unexpected.

  'There is nothing between creation and containment…' Stew said without preamble as soon as Grum answered.

  '…except whizzing round in circles…' Grum said in a tone of revelation while Vann gazed quizzically over her toast at him.

  'So all we need to do…'

  'Is keep 'em whizzing…'

  'I'm going to work on it as soon as I get in.'

  'Go for it. I'll see you soon. Join me in my office.'

  'Right!' Stew hung up.

  'What was that all about?' asked Vann.

  'We may have had a breakthrough on recombination, well…' Grum corrected himself, '…not exactly recombination, but scalable yields.'

  'Oh, that's brilliant! When can we have them?'

  'Vann! We've just had the idea! Give us some time to work out how to actually do it, please.'

  'OK, sorry. But you know we need the big generators for the major programmes.'

  'I know, but this idea won't affect the Nevada Facility for ages, if ever. It might mean a whole new plant. It certainly won't speed up getting the third collider online.'

  'So, no use to me, then?'

  'Not in the short term, no. But in the long term it will be crucial, I think.'

  'I won't tell Hank, then. I'll leave it for you to announce when you've worked it out.'

  'Thanks. That's appreciated. I've had enough of rumours getting in the way of reality for one year.'

  'I know. Well, eat up. You've got science to do, and I am going to drop Ju off in daycare on my way in.'

  'You sure? I don't mind…'

  'No. You get in to this thing. It's the most excited I've seen you in ages.'

  'Thank you. I love you.'

  'Love you, too. Now get on.' Vann smiled at him as he bolted the last of his toast and swigged down the coffee before dashing for the door.

  Grum had spoken to Hank and Vann later that week about the orbital platforms and the USSMC Moon Base. While the emergency power requirements for the orbitals were best served by smaller generators, the main power needed the big Nevada-class pods. UMB would require several fully-populated Nevada pods for their emergency power and they wanted one as soon as possible to use in the lunar facility that was the construction HQ for UMB proper — news to Grum.

  Back in his office, working with Stew on the in-flight combination problem, Grum was sidetracked by the thought of how long it would take to produce even the emergency power requirements for the Space Division's programmes, let alone main power for anything. It would take years at the current rate, without the technology that he and Stew were trying to solve.

  One of the biggest problems was that to get the kind of fine control he thought was needed you required your particles to be "stuck" in the deceleration assembly without appreciable decelerating much. Then somehow they had to keep the antimatter from annihilating whilst adding more to the deceleration rig.

  Grum's only solution so far was to have an absolutely enormous staging toroid which took feeds from the colliders and kept the antimatter moving almost as fast as they were going in the accelerators, until they reached some maximum physical amount. Then flush that toroid into a series of relatively normal decelerators, and then into a larger version of the containment stage that Nevada had.

  The single biggest issue with that was the fine tuning was down to the level where — over the distance he thought was necessary — the effect of gravity became unworkable. He had wracked his brains trying to think of how on earth he could get it to work.

  Grum jumped up.

  'Frith and Inle!'

  'What? It looks like a eureka moment.'

  'There is no way on earth this will work!'

  'That doesn't… sound… like… Oh.'

  'Indeed!'

  'For crying out loud! It was staring at us the whole time!'

  'No way on earth! But that's okay, because we'll take it to the bloody moon!'

  Chapter 16

  "SO all we need to do… / Is keep 'em whizzing…" Grum reflected. That had been over seven months ago and there seemed to still be an appreciable amount of work to put "all they need to do" into a practicable design. They were close, though.

  Things were improving generally, too. The re
view period for most of the major Space projects was closing, and Vann had been instrumental in getting the designs up to scratch. Grum was extremely proud of his wife's achievements, even as he worked hard on his own.

  In addition to producing generators for Hank, Nevada had managed to turn out several million sample units for Medical, and for wider commercial testing. Orders, and more importantly — from the board's perspective — positive cash-flow, was starting to come into Core Power as a Division.

  That situation relieved a lot of the negativity that Grum's Division had experienced over the year. Most of the board were now coming round to the idea that if Nevada could be brought up to full strength with the third collider, things could be made even better. It was beginning to look as if permission would be given to go ahead with the preparations for bringing "A" online.

  What Grum had not dared to tell anyone was what he and Stew were privately working on.

  Based on the premise of getting detailed power requirements and design details for UMB, Grum had finagled the construction plans out of Hank.

  It was a huge undertaking, and one thing jumped out at Grum. UMB did not actually need antimatter generators at all, except during the construction phase. Main power was going to be delivered by something termed UMBRA: the UMB Reactor Assembly. This was to be a suite of fourth and fifth generation nuclear power plants, not just one, dotted around the moon in various craters.

  This was important news to Grum and Stew, because what they were planning would require that kind of available power, and if USSMC were already committed to that level of investment — along with whatever international treaties and negotiations had been involved — then it would, perhaps, be possible to get their projects added to the mix.

  The generation capacity already planned was enough to power several small cities — a fact which interested Grum in itself — and their requirements for this enormous antimatter production facility would need only one quarter the energy of one of those cities. Surely it had to be doable.