Troy Rising 2 - Citadel (30 page)

“That would be Rudolph,” Hartwell said. “So, trying desperately to change the subject. Where were you yesterday? Normally when you're off-watch you're in the squadron area. Releasing dock.”

“Ahem,” Dana said as the shuttle detached. “Are you, Engineering Mate First Class Hartwell, asking me, Coxswain's Mate Third Class Dana Parker, exactly what I was doing on my off-watch time? Because if you are, Engineering Mate First Class, it's none of your business.”

“Trying desperately again to avoid an EEOC complaint . . .”

“For your general FYI,” Dana said, chuckling. “Did you know there's a pool?”

“There's a pool? You were at a pool?”

“I was at the pool,” Dana said. “Part of my off-watch time. The rest is not up for discussion.”

“You were at the pool,” Hartwell breathed. “In a bathing suit?”

“EM,” Dana said. “Don't make me request a new engineer, okay?”

“No, seriously,” Thermal said. “What kind?”

“Do me a favor and crack your suit seals while I accidentally outgas us, okay?”

“There's a pool?”

“Seriously. You will be breathing vacuum . . .”

“And releasing gravlocks,” Thermal said.

The chunk of “Sierra Nine,” a former Rangora, Horvath run, now ripped to shreds, battle-ship had, indeed, been “in the shipping lanes.” It had drifted, due to some really funky Newtonian physics, towards the gate and was just about to pass through it to the “entry” side to spinward.

It was also a very big chunk, the sort of mass that would normally be the job of the Paw tugs to handle. The Myrmidons had been “helping out” with the salvage operations for several reasons. The Navy got paid for their time, it was good training for the crews and clearing up the debris of the battle before some bit of wreckage holed a ship was in everyone's best interests.

Usually, though, the Myrms would handle something their own size. In this case, it had taken almost the entire 142nd Squadron to handle the destroyer sized chunk of steel. Since their system was not optimized for towing, the CO and the senior flight NCOIC had had to carefully arrange the squadron to push it along.

Then there was the destination. Most of the scrap from the battle had been pushed into a more or less compact lump about 200,000 kilometers from the gate and more or less in a stable orbit. It was, in fact, slowly drifting away from the gate and the Troy. There it was out of the way and no danger to anyone except Martians in about two hundred years when it would deorbit onto the red planet. Long before then, though, it was scheduled to get turned into orbital equipment including Solarian destroyers and cruisers.

This chunk, though, somebody wanted in the main bay. So the 142nd had pushed it back to Troy and through the hatchway, what people were starting to call the Comet Hatch, and into the main bay.

A set of tractor projectors had been arrayed on the interior wall hard by the new missile fabber and as soon as the 142nd got the chunk in range the tractors took over.

Recently, some cargo containers had been attached to the side of the fabber. It still wasn't producing missiles but apparently they were getting ready.

“Backing away,” Dana said, checking her vectors. The shuttles were pretty crowded around the battleship bit and she would prefer to avoid a ding with another shuttle.

She'd backed up about five hundred meters when Thermal let out a grunt. It was his “that's interesting” grunt.

“Problem?” she asked.

“No,” Hartwell said. “You got spare cycles?”

“I can do this in my sleep,” Dana said.

“Switching view,” Thermal said.

The picture on one of her side screens was the debris they'd brought in. A SAPL beam had already cut off a goodly chunk which was being moved, apparently by the tractors, into the maw of the missile fabber.

“I guess they wanted some raw materials,” Thermal said.

“Should work,” Dana said, going back to watching her driving. “Most of the stuff you need for missiles should be in a battleship.”

“I wonder what the cargo containers are for?”

“Another sight for sore eyes,” Admiral Kinyon said.

“Yes, sir,” Colonel Helberg replied. “With the debris finally in place we should be able to start production within the hour. It can take the material from the wall mining but formed steel will reduce production time and slag.”

“God knows I could use some missiles,” Captain Sharp said.

“Start the brief,” Admiral Kinyon said, keying off the view of the missile fabber.

“After some difficulties the new civilian side quarters are installed.” Commodore Kurt Pounders was the Chief of Staff of the Troy. “Power and air tests are complete and the section is ready for use. On that subject. The Senate has finally approved the bill to authorize Troy as a port instead of a ship. We still get space pay, that was one of the things holding it up, but it will shortly be designated as an accompanied tour. Paris has prepared protocols to keep non-EVA qualified personnel away from dangerous areas.”

“Good luck with the kids,” Captain Sharp said.

“They're military brats,” Admiral Kinyon said. “They're not complete fools. Are we being budgeted for the movement?”

“Yes, sir,” Commodore Pounders said. “The tasking is being prepared at SpacCom. The current count is upwards of six hundred dependents who are prepared to make the move.”

“Things are about to get somewhat interesting I suspect,” the Admiral said. “I want to personally meet with all the ombudsmen. This isn't earth. Just going out for a walk is out of the question. And while I think the Captain has some points about military brats, I'm less sanguine about some of the spouses.”

“I have known some few spouses who didn't have the sense God gave a baby duck,” Colonel Helberg said. “I take it the American Navy has the same problem.”

“In spades,” the Admiral growled. “Next?”

“Since Troy has been redesignated as a base,” the CoS continued, “Apollo has lowered its standards for entry of personnel. So we're expecting a mixed lot of civilians from their side as well. All have been given a quick screen, but . . . they're a mixed bag. Among other things, their ‘morale and support' portion includes some ‘semi-professional entertainers.' ”

“Are we talking USO tours?” the Admiral said.

“Ahem,” the CoS said. “Not as such.”

“Figure the house gets a cut . . .” Captain Sharp said.

“Not that sort of entertainers,” Colonel Helberg interjected. “Dancers would be the polite term.”

“I think the full term is ‘exotic dancers'?” the Admiral said.

“That would be the line item, sir, yes,” the CoS said. “They also have done a heavy EEOC based drive for various non-EVA positions including administrative personnel, medical and even retail clerks to expand the shopping area. Their new hires are going to be running about four to one female to male. Almost all non-EVA personnel.”

“The dating scene just got more interesting,” Captain Sharp said. “For which this confirmed bachelor is decidedly thankful.”

“I'm not sure about . . .” Commodore Marchant said. The commander of Task Force One, the cruisers and frigates attached to the Troy, shook his head. “That's going to make the ratio pretty close to one to one. How many of the females are going to be accompanied by kids? Is it an accompanied tour for Apollo?”

“Yes,” Pounders said. “And that's not clear in Apollo's documents. But they are opening a K-12 school if that's any indication. Which, fortunately, we will be able to access. Since we are going to have dependent minors.”

“Admiral?” Marchant said, looking at Troy's commander.

“It will increase complexity somewhat,” the Admiral said, crossing his arms. “But it's fully within the contract with the new bill. We're going to have to work closely with Apollo to ensure that the new personnel are clear about boundaries.”

“All the sections are implant secured,” the CoS said. “And Apollo is adding additional security.” He shrugged. “I'm not really comfortable with it, but I also don't see a good reason to prevent it.”

“Because this is a battlestation and the first line of defense for the solar system?” Commodore Marchant said.

“I was asked about this, privately, by policy makers and gave them the same answer I gave you,” the Admiral said. “It increases complexity and I did not have objections. Next item.”

“Missile fabber,” Commodore Pounders said. “Running solid. Started at one missile every ten minutes. It's now up to one every minute and headed for one every ten seconds. That depends on supplies of components, mostly the electronics, which we're getting from groundside. We're trying to keep ahead of the requirement but it's running through components like lightning. And the more pre-prepared components we get, the faster it works. Right now, we're just having trouble keeping up with raw material requirements. We can use the material that's been mined out building phase one, but it's not as good as pre-prepared alloys and such.”

“The scrap yard?” the Admiral asked.

“Shortage of tugs,” Commodore Pounders replied.

“Captain DiNote,” the Admiral said.

“Tug duty, aye, sir,” DiNote said. “How much scrap do you want, Commodore?”

“Just keep pulling it in,” Pounders said. “We're going to have a use for it eventually. I'll talk with Apollo about installing some more tractor clamps for it.”

“I'm sure my people will just enjoy the heck out of it,” DiNote said, wryly. “They've got that can do attitude.”

“Okay,” Dana said, nervously. “You sure you can do it?”

“I can definitely do it,” the tattoo artist said. “It's going to take about a month on and off. Maybe more depending on our schedules. The question is, do you have the squeeze? Cause it's going to run you around ten grand. Should be more but this is going to be a walking advertisement and, sorry, I don't get to do many chicks up here. That's a bonus.”

“Yeah,” Dana said. “To say that I've been saving up would be an understatement.”

“Your body, your choice, babe,” the artist said, looking at the sketch. “If you don't mind, though, we're going to have to work on the art some more. You want this to be right.”

“I can't draw very well,” Dana said. “Just . . . you know the story.”

“Yeah,” the guy said, looking at her and shaking his head. “I think we need to go for more metaphor, though. This is gonna be good. This is gonna be cool.”

“Okay,” Tyler said as he stepped out of the Starfire. “This is very effing cool.”

Tyler had had the pilot take the Starfire down on the “scenic” route, circling around and around the space needle on the way down.

The Wolf gas mine was a space elevator. The upper portion sat in geosynchronous orbit around the small gas giant Nimrod that had been discovered during Earth's first exploration of the planetary neighbor. The upper portion “held up” the massive gy-wires that supported the two kilometer wide lower platform. That was where the actual gas mine was placed with more woven pipes that led deep into the planet's atmosphere.

Raw gas, mostly hydrogen but with admixed nitrogen, oxygen, methane, helium and, notably, the relatively rare helium three that powered galactic annie plants, was pumped up from the deep atmosphere, refined, the majority returned to the depths on return pipes and the helium three separated. Then it had to be pumped up to orbit so that the massive tankers could pick it up and take it to the earth system and the other Wolf projects.

“It is rather, isn't it?” Byron Audler yelled.

The landing platform of the gas mine was partially open, the area being inside a hangar big enough to hold a blimp. But even there it was noisy with the gale force winds outside.

Normally even if the atmosphere of a planet had oxygen and nitrogen, it was a “reducing” atmosphere meaning that the oxygen was locked up. Such planets tended to have very high levels of CO2, methane and ammonia instead of O2 and N2. The Wolf gas giant had a large “moon” not much smaller than Earth that had that exact mix.

Producing O2 and N2 from that toxic, to humans, mix was the result of biological processes. First, bacteria that converted methane and ammonia to energy “ate” the methane and ammonia. Then the more recognizable plants, on earth the first were blue-green algae, came along and used sunlight to convert the CO2 to fixed carbon and oxygen. Eventually you had what, to humans and most other sophonts in the galaxy, was a breathable atmosphere.

When the Wolf gas giant had first been detected, the fact that it had free oxygen and nitrogen had come as a surprise. Subsequently, studies had shown that there were free-floating biologicals in the atmosphere that had converted the expected reducing atmosphere to O2 and N2. The mine had plans to include a biological laboratory to study them in time.

The upshot of it all was that the mine could remain “open” with people working in shirt-sleeves and not space-suits.

Well, not shirt-sleeves. It was cold. The Wolf star was relatively small and dim gas giant within the life-zone but between the height of the mine, the dim star and the constant wind it wasn't exactly a garden spot. The mine was also placed in the “twilight” zone because Wolf was rather active and tended to flare a lot. Having the planet partially shielding the mine was a good thing.

Still very cool. The mine seemed to hang suspended among the clouds and the cables of the space elevator soaring into the heights just added to the majesty. It was a worthy creation.

“I've got to talk to Steve Asaro,” Tyler said. He'd come prepared for the temperatures and was wearing a heavy coat but it was still freezing.

“Why?” Byron said, shaking his hand.

“He had the right to name this place,” Tyler said. “He named it Nimrod. I want to change it to Bespin for really obvious reasons.”

“Well, they didn't quite get the temperature right,” Byron said. “Let's get inside!”

“Is it just you or does everyone squeak?” Tyler asked as they walked rapidly to the doors of the mine. The squeak wasn't terribly noticeable, but Byron usually had a fairly deep voice.

“Slightly higher than normal level of helium in the atmo,” Byron said, opening the door for the boss. “Not dangerous long-term. It's only about two percent. But that's enough to raise voices.”