The Commander (22 page)

Luke stared at the fourth colony ship from his chair on the dais and leaned toward Amanda. “Are those things getting bigger?” he asked.

“Not that I know of,” she said.

“Seems like it.”

Amanda shrugged her shoulders. “What me to check?”

“No, just wondering.”

“I’m a bit worried because I feel like there’s a drop off in interest across the board. I’m glad you decided to come. It makes a big difference to the VIPs.”

“Morrow guilted me into it. I still hate these things. I’m not all that much of a people person.”

“
Give
yourself a little credit. You do fine.”

“I suck at it.”

“Not really. Did you think about what we talked about?”

Luke searched his mind. What
had
they talked about? He had no idea what Amanda was referring to. “Yeah, I did.”

“And?”

Crap!
Should he say he agreed or disagreed? He made a mental note to kill Morrow the next time he saw him. Every time he was around Amanda she pestered him for one thing or another. It was hard to always put her off. “It’s an interesting concept. I can say that much for sure.”

“So we can move forward with it?”

“I guess if you’re absolutely sure you’re comfortable with it,” Luke said cautiously, hoping his words wouldn’t come back to haunt him. Sometimes, dealing with Amanda was like working with a land mine.

“Wonderful! I promise you won’t regret it; you’ll see.”

“I hope not.”

“And I’ll make sure they stay out of your hair. You don’t have to worry about that at all.”

That didn’t sound good. What had he just agreed to? Morrow would pay if there was trouble.

# # #

Luke walked into the engineering room looking for Morrow.

“Hi, Commander,” Riley said. He was standing in front of the latest hologram design, spinning it this way and that. “How was the colony launch? I should go watch one of those.”

“You haven’t seen one? I have to go to all of them!” Luke groused. “Where’s Lou?”

“I think he’s at Far Side, Commander. Want me to call him?”

“No, I’ll go find him myself.” He turned to leave but Riley spoke before he could reach the door.

“While you’re here, Commander, want to see what you think?”

Luke stopped and turned back to Riley. He was like a kid with a new finger-painting. It wasn’t really fair to ignore kids when they wanted to show off.

“Sure, Riley.”

The engineer took Luke through the latest design. The guided missiles had been added along the fuselage. The interior design was about done. There were a lot more mechanical rooms than Luke would have expected.

“It’s a big ship, sir,” Riley explained.

Luke asked about lifeboats. Riley looked surprised.

“We didn’t include lifeboats, Commander. It didn’t occur to me.”

“Got to have lifeboats or something like that. I hope it doesn’t happen, but if we take a big hit, everyone needs a way to get out and get down to a planet. In fact, the life pods, or whatever you come up with, should each have a gravity drive and a preprogrammed destination. They could all be different; not just toward Earth. They ought to have the option to head for an out-of-system destination. After all, a survivor may not want to stay in the same system if the Bakkui are so strong that they take us out.”

Riley digested the idea. “We could keep a database so if we get the word you go down, we would have a starting point to send our search and rescue.”

“Good thought,” Luke agreed.

Without anyone to rein him in, Riley’s design review went on for over two hours. It wasn’t all wasted time. Luke asked why the ship was constructed like a wedding cake with dozens of floors instead of like a train that was long and narrow.

“It’s the gravity drive, Commander. Our ships accelerate at tens of thousands of gees. For interstellar travel it’s hundreds of thousands of gees.”

Luke nodded. “I’ve always wondered why we don’t get squished flat. Sam told me it was a gravity bubble.”

“That’s a fair analogy,” Riley said. “The area inside the ship is isolated from the force of the main drive by gravity plates in the deck, walls, and ceiling. They are modulated by the AI to maintain a one-gee environment.”

“I don’t get it.”

“Let me try another example,” Riley said. “You used to fly fighters, right?”

“Yeah. The F-35.”

“Did you ever fly in a T-38?”

Luke thought back. As an evaluator, he had flown a few chase missions at Red Flag. “A couple of times.”

“Did you go supersonic?”

“We did, as a matter of fact. We were chasing some F-18s.”

“Okay,” Riley said. “While you were supersonic could you talk to the other pilot?”

“Of course.”

“That’s what I mean,” Riley said. “Although the aircraft was flying supersonic, it didn’t change what was happening inside the cockpit. You were in a
sound
bubble. All the laws for propagation of sound applied inside that bubble. Think of astronauts orbiting the Earth. They can talk to each other, but their capsule is moving much faster than sound.”

“I still don’t get it,” Luke admitted. “You mean the floor has a one gee gravity?”

“Not exactly. Let’s say the main drive is accelerating you at one hundred gees. That means the drive under your floor is driving you at one hundred gees.”

“Right. I would be flattened.”

“That’s true,” Riley said. “But if there was a barrier between you and that main drive, and on the other side of the barrier was a smaller gravity drive that was pushing you away at ninety-nine gees, the total force on your body would be one gee.”

“Okay, I get that.”

“So because of that,
Lulubelle
, as are all of our colony ships, is constructed in levels. The decking on each floor pushes just that floor away from the main drive at a force that is the total acceleration minus one. In the case of deceleration, the gravity plates in the ceiling do the reverse. Overall, the drive management is just much easier to control with a wedding cake configuration. At those accelerations there’s no room for error.”

It still didn’t make sense to Luke. He assumed that Riley was oversimplifying; not that Luke would understand if they talked about it for days. After all, he was a history major.

When Morrow arrived, he scolded Riley for bending the commander’s ear. By that time Luke was so confused he didn’t bother to bring up his complaint about Amanda.

After his escape from engineering, Luke headed toward Starbucks. It was a nice memory of Annie. In the two weeks following their first time sitting under that gorgeous dome, they’d returned often. It lasted until her sudden departure.

With a mocha in hand, Luke headed toward one of the tables. It seemed unusually crowded today. A pair of elderly ladies approached. Luke had never known there to be many elderly people among the recruits. He looked around and noticed there was quite a crowd of seniors sitting at the tables.

“Excuse me, young man. Aren’t you that commander fellow?”

It was strange to be accosted so at Moonbase. Luke couldn’t recall that it had ever happened. “Yes ma’am. Can I help you?”

The woman handed her cell phone to her partner. “Here, Viola. Take my picture.”

Viola took the handset and promptly snapped several pics. “Smile, young man,” Viola chided. “She won’t eat you.” Both women laughed. “Now me. Take one of me, Renee.”

The women switched phones and Luke found himself again suffering through several unwanted photos.

“Are those cell phones?” he asked.

Viola held up one of the phones and pouted. “Reception here is horrible. Look at that. Not a single bar. I thought you would have better service. I’ve heard so many things about this place. Now I wonder how many of them are true.”

“We don’t have cell service,” Luke said. “Didn’t you get that information during your recruitment?”

Viola looked at him as though he had lost his mind. “No service?”

Renee snatched the phone out of Viola’s grasp. “Did you tell him about the service?” Renee asked.

“I did. He said they don’t
have
service. How do they talk to each other?”

“No service?”

“That’s what I said.”

Luke wondered if he was in the
Twilight Zone
. These women had no conceivable business being on the moon. “Ladies, excuse me, but—”

“I’ve noticed you have a lot of foreigners here too.” Viola cut him off, looking at a group of younger people seated in the adjoining restaurant. “Is that legal? Did you have to get visas for all of them? Why didn’t you hire local people? I always say that Americans should hire Americans.” She looked suspiciously at Luke. “Don’t you think so?”

An out-of-breath Amanda suddenly appeared at Luke’s elbow. “There you are, ladies. Now, now. We shouldn’t be bothering the commander. Remember we talked about that?”

Viola pooh-poohed her concern. Or was it Renee? Luke wasn’t sure anymore. They seemed like a set of twin, evil senior citizens. “He’s such a nice-looking young man, Mandy. I just had to have his picture to put on my Instagram.”

“Come on,” Amanda insisted, pulling them away. “Let’s get back to the tour.” She looked over her shoulder as she tried to steer them away.
Sorry
, she mouthed.

“Amanda!” Luke barked at her. “What the hell is going on?”

Amanda left the women with an orange-vested assistant and came back toward Luke. “It’s our first tour group. It’s what we talked about at the launch.”

“Tour group? That’s what I approved? Are you freaking insane?”

“Luke, watch your language!” Amanda glanced around to be sure no one heard Luke’s outburst. “We talked about this! You said I could go ahead. It’s only once a week and I think it will help our image. This is a good thing for recruitment.”

Luke wanted to rage at her.
Tour groups!
It verged on being the last straw. He glared at Amanda for a moment and then whispered savagely, “I think you need to improve your orientation briefing at the very least. And for Chrissake, keep them away from me in the future.”

Luke turned away before he lost complete control of his temper. The mocha went into the trash and he stalked away from the plaza, back toward his apartment. All of a sudden, he was looking forward to moving onboard
Lulubelle.

Luke and Roth sat in
Sadie
’s cockpit to watch the startup sequence of the orbital replicator. They were in a geostationary orbit above Far Side.
Floating
in space before them, a nine-thousand-foot long rectangular framework supported a closely grouped series of replicator heads mounted in an open circle almost two thousand feet across. The round module attached to the framework with giant wheels on massive tracks. Once the process started, the module would roll along the structure, leaving the completed starship anchored within.

A medium-sized rock, borrowed from the asteroid belt, was fastened to a roller on the outside of the framework, and a wide, flexible pipe connected it to the replicator module to provide a constant source of raw material.

“Why do we call this thing a replicator?” Luke asked. “It’s a 3D printer. That’s what Sam told me.”

Roth scoffed. “You were the one calling it that. Everyone just followed along.”

Luke sighed. “I was too overwhelmed back then. It still boggles my mind the scale of the things we’re building these days,” Luke said.

“Know what you mean,” Roth agreed. “I don’t know how you come up with these ideas.”

“I don’t. We’ve got a good team.
You
have a good team, I guess I should say.”

“That worries me more than anything, you know. You’re the force that holds this together.”

“Thanks. But I know better.”

“What should I do when you pull out of here?” Roth asked.

Luke shrugged. “I think about that a lot. You understand the odds of our success, I’m sure.”

“Snowball’s chance.”

“Exactly. We have to try, but we both need to be realistic. I think you should keep building a self-defense force, keep deploying sensor packages…and for God’s sake, keep a least one colony ship ready at all times. Maybe two; one here, one at Far Side.”

“Even two ships won’t take everyone,” Roth observed.

“Do the best you can. I told Amanda to start drawing down recruitment. My departure will take a big slice of the population. Right now, we’re processing about fifteen thousand newcomers a week. After two more colony launches you could reduce that to about five thousand or leave it as is. It’s your choice to focus colony ships or defense.”

“Probably try to do both,” Roth admitted.

“Sounds good. It would be advisable to keep enough new people coming in to supply a colony ship every other week; that’s what we’re doing now. We found plenty of habitable star systems inward toward the center. We also have probe results from the next spiral out. They looked good too.”

“I saw those.” Roth smiled. “One of them looked like the Garden of Eden.”

“Yeah, I’d stay away from that one. Seemed too good to be true.”

“Know what you mean. I’m almost tempted to pick out some ice planet that no one else wants.”

The two men chuckled at the notion.

“I got an update from the doc,” Roth said.

“Did he give his blessing on the implants?” Luke asked.

“I thought he was gonna cry, he was so excited. He wants to do more research before rolling them out but I made it clear that everyone on the
Lulubelle
has to have them. He had no problem with that. Once you’re gone, I’ll push hard for general distribution.”

“That’s good to hear,” Luke agreed. “I can’t believe it took us this long to get that info out of George.” Luke pointed to the orbiting construction platform. “There it goes.”

The familiar replicator shimmer illuminated the framework’s interior. Cross structures at the near end of the assembly anchored the nose of the spacecraft. As the module traveled the length of the structure, crews were standing by to attach external beams to the ship’s hull to keep it motionless during the process.

“How long is this going to take?” Roth asked.

“Because we’re doing it in 3D, Ambrose said it will only take a couple of weeks. It’s gonna suck if the Bakkui show up just before we finish.”

Roth shivered. “Don’t even joke about things like that, man.”

“Sorry,” Luke apologized. “Just one of those stray thoughts.”

“I know. I have the same worries.”

“It’s not like I’m leaving forever,” Luke said. “We’ll send back regular drone reports. As long as you’re getting the reports, everything is fine. We’ll let you know where we are and where we’re going. It will also allow the two Georges to keep synced up. That way, you’ll know everything I know. If we are predictable enough, you can send a drone to where we’re going to be. I just don’t know if that will happen very often, if at all.”

“Where you headed first?” Roth asked.

“Tyler and his guys are figuring that out. He wants to pick a system that we think the Bakkui will hit next. It would be nice if we could get there in time to save a planet full of people. Our main objective is to get intel on what the Bakkui are planning. What scares me is that they seem to be leap-frogging systems.”

“I take it that’s why they’re moving so much faster now.”

“We’re just guessing,” Luke said. “We can’t tell why they’re hitting some systems and skipping others. I’d like to draw their attention to a system away from Earth. Then, if we can find allies, maybe we can put together a force that will fight back.”

“I haven’t seen anything like that in the drone reports, though.”

“Me neither. Everything is like looking for the proverbial needle. Can you imagine the odds that some bureaucrat in the center of the galaxy decided that we needed some friendly help and sent Sam to us?”

“I’m not sure I want to think about that,” Roth said. “You know, most of my life I was completely happy not thinking about anything outside the city limits of wherever I lived. I guess those days are gone.”

“That’s depressing. That was my goal as well. Now we’re at the center of an alliance that includes how many planets?”

Roth thought for a minute. “There’s us, Mars, and four colonies. I don’t count Earth, not yet. Imagine the paperwork if it wasn’t for George. I guess that’s a bright spot.”

Luke pointed to the replicator. “I think I can see a piece of the nose. See that?”

“I see it. I can’t believe you named the thing
Lulubelle
. Sounds like a dairy cow.”

“Yeah. Well, just so you know, I found out that you’re the guy that came up with
Far Side
. So just keep your ideas about naming conventions to yourself.”

Roth grinned. “Who told you?”

“George. I asked him early on. I kept it a secret. Figured it was your little joke.”

“I did it to needle Ambrose. He really can’t stand it.”

The friends chuckled again. For another two hours they sat and watched the infinitesimal progress of construction.