Troy Rising 1 - Live Free or Die (54 page)

“It's important,” Senator Lamarche said. “More and more electric cars with these new nanny
capacitors. They're using a lot of power. Of course, coal is a very important supplier as
well...” He added, quickly. He was the senior senator from Pennsylvania which still mined
a lot of coal.

“Of course,” Tyler said, trying not to grin.

“I was actually thinking about concrete plants,” Senator Gullick said. “They use an
enormous
amount of power and we can't build them fast enough. And over there?” he asked, pointing
to an area on the wall where dozens of tugs clustered.

“That was why I wanted to schedule this trip for today,” Tyler said. “That is where we're
going to be installing the turn-key operations center. It has quarters for crew, shuttle
bays, the main command center, which is initially going to be using only ten percent of
its allotted space, and resupply docks. We've cut the plug for it and are going to be
pulling it out.”

“Plug?” Congresswoman McEntyre asked.

“First we drilled a thirty meter hole three hundred meters into the wall,” Tyler said. “It
was the first time I was happy we didn't get
Troy
to full size. There's still a good kilometer of nickel on the outside of the command
center. Then we installed a reflector mirror and cut from within the hole to slice out the
back. In the meantime, we cut out the edges.”

“Where are the cuts?” Senator Gullick asked.

“Here,” Tyler said, handing him a set of binoculars. “If you look down and to the left of
the cluster of tugs you should be able to spot the initial thirty meter hole.”

“Oh, my God,” the senator said, laughing. “It's a
dot
.”

“Yeah,” Tyler said. “And the cut lines are only eighty millimeters on a side so you're
going to have a hard time spotting them. But...” He paused as he listened to his implant.
“Right, they're going to engage the tugs. We're pretty sure we got all the edges cut out.
But if not, we'll have to do some more drilling.”

In the light from the Dragon's Orb, the rippling effect of the tugs' engines could be seen
distorting the light. It was reflected in a waterfall of prismatic colors on the inner
wall of the battlestation, the ripples of color reflecting and shining in a rainbow of
light.

“That is... pretty,” Congresswoman McEntyre said. “I hadn't expected it to be pretty.”

“Neither had I,” Tyler said. The effect was
damned
pretty. Beautiful even. And while there was immense satisfaction in the jobs he'd been
doing, beauty, except for the unchanging starfield, was rare. “I just realized that if we
ever
can
rotate this thing, it's going to have the same effect.”

“Rotate, hell,” Senator Gullick said. “What's it going to take to get this thing mobile?”

“Senator...” the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs said. “We'd prefer to keep our defenses up,
thank you.”

“Hell with that,” Gullick said. “The best defense is a good offense. The Glatun negotiator
on the Multilateral talks should be
shot
. It's worse than Chamberlain. When we lose E Eridani, the Horvath will have nothing to
prevent them attacking at any time.”

The combination of attacks against Earth had gotten the Glatun to, at least, provide
assurances that no more Horvath warships would be allowed through the E Eridani system.
When at this point, not if, they ceded it to the Horvath, earth might as well get ready
for a pounding.

“Senator,” Tyler said, delicately. “Two point two trillion tons. The
Constitutions
, for way of comparison, mass three hundred
thousand
tons. Six orders of magnitude difference and we have a hard time getting them to have more
than five gravities of acceleration. The
door
is one billion metric tons and it took every tug in the system four hours to get it open.”

“If we can't secure E Eridani, we're still open to attacks,” the Senator said. “I think
that the
Troy
is amazing and vital. Don't get me wrong. I also think it's worth looking at making it
mobile. You're usually the big idea guy, Mr. Vernon. Don't tell me you haven't thought of
it.”

“Well...” Tyler said, hanging his head and toeing at the rug in embarrassment.

“You're kidding?” Admiral DeGraff said then belly laughed. “You
haven't
?”

“I've been setting aside ten percent of all extracted platinum group since we started,”
Tyler said. “It's getting to be a pretty big pile...”

“How big?” Senator Lamarche asked.

“Not big enough for the power plant we'd need,” Tyler said, shrugging. “But it's getting
bigger every day we work on
Troy
. We need two thousand tons.”

“Two thousand tons of platinum?” DeGraff said, guffawing again. “Oh, Tyler, you're killing
me! You're not
seriously
thinking of making this thing
mobile
?”

“We can't produce the grav plates,” Tyler said, shrugging. “Or the secondary power
converters. We need an
enormous
amount of both. About... two hundred years worth of production based on current Sol System
output. And, of course, more
osmium
than has ever been mined in the history of the human race. Possibly in the history of the
spiral arm. Most efficient power plant material. Do you want to know how much
fuel
it will consume to go through the gate and into E Eridani?”

“No,” Senator Lamarche said. “Yes. I guess I do. Just because the entire question is so
absurd.”

“Think of all the buildings we lost, sorry, in New York and Washington,” Tyler said. “In
one pile. And made of helium three, which we don't even produce, yet. That's three hour's
fuel at one sixtieth gravity of acceleration.”

“That exceeds the requirements for the six hundred ship fleet we're envisioning,” DeGraff
said. “For about ninety years.”

“So, yes,” Tyler said. “I
have
thought of it. There are some alternatives. We could use an Orion drive. But I'd really
rather not have to irradiate the surface and such a drive is vulnerable to damage. I mean,
more damage. Orion is damage in big numbers just as it exists. The big problem remains
that we don't have any onboard weapons that match the defenses. Not by dozens of orders of
magnitude. So... If I can get the grav plates for about six hundred Glatun
super-dreadnoughts, a power plant the size of a small city and a laser emitter system that
can match two hundred VDAs in power... We can get it to move at the pace of a very anemic
snail and gut any fleet stupid enough to come in range,” he finished with a grin.

“I withdraw the question,” Senator Gullick said.

“We can't even figure out how to fill the
magazines
you've got planned,” DeGraff said, shaking his head. “Not with any sort of reasonable
budget.”

“Are any of the defenses online, yet?” Congresswoman McEntyre asked.

“Uh...” Tyler said. “Sort of. We have one laser firing port and collimeter installed and
testing. We're finding that there are all sorts of bugs. The channel has to be in vacuum
and when we cut the firing lanes there was all sorts of microscopic material left behind
not to mention trace atmosphere. So we're going to have to grav sweep each of the ports.
We're building bots for that in the Wolf system at the moment. Once the lanes are swept
and we reinstall the focal systems, blast doors and collimeter... it'll be able to fire.
We're still waiting on Boeing for missiles.”

“Looks like you're having trouble,” Senator Lamarche said.

The tugs were reconfiguring towards the center of the plug which
still
wasn't out.

“Argus?” Tyler said. “Status on the plug?”

“There are spot welded points in numerous places,” Argus replied. “I'm preparing to do a
cut. We're moving the tugs to prevent confliction. I'm going to have them pull as we're
cutting.”

“This should be
much
more interesting,” Tyler said.

“What is...” Congresswoman McEntyre started to say. “Oh. My. God.”

Seven VDA mirrors were floating in a vaguely rectangular array within the main bay, SAPL
power being fed to them by more VDAs aligned alongside the door.

The Congresswoman's exclamation, and she wasn't the only one, was from the sight of all
seven opening up at once.

There was just enough atmosphere in the bay for the beams to be, for once, visible. They
were incandescent lines of fire burning into the refractory nickel-iron, portions of which
went bright white at the very touch of the petawatt beams.

The enormous chunk of nickel-iron finally started to move but the beams continued to cut,
ensuring that no more spot welds formed as it was removed.

“Those tugs,” Senator Gullick said. “They're about the size of the
Paws
,
right
? Two stories high, about five long?”

“Most of them,” Tyler said. “Some larger.”

The cluster of sixty tugs was centered in about one third the area of the plug being
removed. Which just kept coming and coming and coming.

“That's the size of a
stadium
,” Senator Lamarche said. “A
big
stadium.”

“Uhm...” Tyler said. “Bigger.
Much
bigger. Six hundred meters long, four hundred high, three hundred deep. Twice the length
of a super-carrier, about the same length as a
Constitution
. The plug is going to have to be removed entirely and then cut. We're planning on almost
totally sealing the center within the wall. So we'll put a fifty meter thick section of NI
back on top of it. Maybe steel. We're working on some really big steel projects. But
welding it is tough. Then we'll get to work processing the plug for materials.”

“I thought there were supposed to be shuttle bays,” Senator Gullick said. “How are you
going to get the shuttles in and out?”

“Uh,” Tyler said. “
Really
big doors? That's going to take longer to do than pulling the plug and cutting. I
hate
fiddly bits.”

“This is really awesome,” Tyler said.

“Even if it
is
a fiddly bit?” Nathan asked.

The tube was three meters in diameter with walls of iron that reflected the light from the
space suits.

Tyler had just had to check out the first missile tube since it had been an unimaginable
pain in the ass to build.

The basic concept was simple, a zig-zagged tube that ran from the missile magazine, which
was still being constructed, to the exterior of the battlestation. Put in grav plates to
move the missiles. Since the missiles were pretty solid state and with the exception of
the capacitors, didn't tend to explode if they were hit, even if there was a major hit on
a full tube, all the missiles were going to do was seal the tube. Shift to another and you
were rocking again.

There were... issues. To make sure that an enemy couldn't get a hostile weapon in, the
tubes needed blast doors. Just drilling the tubes was a pain. Putting in the blast doors
had started to look like a deal killer. But by building some special mirrors and bots,
they'd managed to basically cut out a chunk of the wall on either 'side' of the tube. By
cutting away some more, they ended up with two 'sliding' doors that overlapped and, when
closed, extended fifteen meters into the wall of the station. They were operated by grav
plates, which had to be supplied with power and controls, and the base of the doors and
the plate they rested on had to be perfectly smooth and...

Fiddly bits.

The missile magazine was going to take a while. Not only was it planned with more cubic
capacity than the initial living quarters, which meant a bigger plug to pull, it had to
have systems to move the missiles into the tubes. Fast.

More fiddly bits.

Troy
was eventually planned to have
five
magazines, each capable of holding two hundred
thousand
missiles, and forty-eight launch tubes running off of each.

The missile complex was only a small portion of 'Zone One.' There were five planned zones.
Each zone would be capable of independent operation. It would combine a purely military
side, missile magazines, laser tracks, barracks, shuttle and eventually ship bays, repair
areas, headquarters, supplies for thousands, support sections, air, water and, especially,
a tremendously large fuel storage area.

There would also be a smaller 'civilian' area. This would house the dependents of the
military personnel as well as civilian support staff and a 'general support' area that was
designed to grow organically just like a small town supporting a military base.

Five was going to take a while. Like, a couple of hundred years. Of fiddly bits.

For now they had one missile tube and one laser tube. But the SAPL had started small, too.
It now had twenty-eight
million
square yards of VLA mirrors capable of generating seventy-one
petawatts
of power. Doing so, including BDA, VSA and VDA production, had used up about half the
'trash' portion of the Near Earth Asteroids. The SAPL division had been busy beavers and
every year they just about doubled production while cutting costs. And to make matters
better, the 'good' part of the asteroids paid for the production.

“You're getting the new laser mirrors?” Tyler asked.

“Yeah,” Nathan commed. “Capable of handling an exawatt? An
exawatt
, Tyler? The whole
VLA
doesn't put out an exawatt.”

“I'm tired of never being able to concentrate enough power,” Tyler said, running the waldo
of the suit over the seal on a blast door. “And it will be capable of it eventually. Of
course, we'll need several thousand VDAs by then.”

“What does UNG stand for?” Nathan asked.

“What?” Tyler asked, continuing on.

“What does UNG stand for?” Nathan said. “Very Scary Array, Very Dangerous Array. What does
UNG stand for?”

“Nothing,” Tyler said. “The first time we activated it I got an actual button installed to
fire it. And I went 'ung, ung, ung' just before I pushed the button. Everybody who had
anything to do with it pretty much went 'ung' the first time they thought about it. I
think the cover acronym is Unified Nuclear Grappler or something. But it really means
just... ung.”

“Ung is right,” Nathan said. “Cooling them is going to be a bitch.”