Third Moon Chemicals Page 3

  Chapter 4

  It took the Militia captain three tries to unlock the door labeled ‘MASS DRIVER ORBITAL OPERATIONS.’ His hands were shaking badly. He took several deep breaths before he went inside. After the door, he climbed three flights of metal stairs and entered a control room. A pudgy lieutenant sat at a console in front of a dozen screens and as many camera views. “How did it go?” the lieutenant asked.

  “I made them buy round-trip tickets,” said the captain.

  “I’ll bet they aren’t happy with that.”

  “I don’t really care if they are happy or not. Do you know the difference between a sword and a cutlass?”

  “Sure. A cutlass is usually curved, and it’s sharpened only on one side. Swords are sharpened on both sides.”

  “How in the Emperor’s name do you know that?”

  “Haven’t you ever played Sword and Sorcery on the net?”

  “Not enough, apparently.”

  “Why do you want to know that?”

  “Never mind. Here.” He flipped a credit chip toward the lieutenant, who glanced at it and put it in his pocket.

  “Thanks, commander, oh wait— Thanks, captain. I didn’t say congrats on your promotion.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Captain now, huh. That’s great. I bet that cost a bunch.”

  “It did. I’ll be paying that loan back for years.”

  “Loan. Oh, it was one of those deals.”

  “I suppose. I want you to find this container,” the captain said. He read out one of the eight-digit numbers he had. The lieutenant typed the numbers into his console.

  “It’s just come in on the monorail.” He punched some buttons, and a camera view highlighted a recently arrived maglev train. It contained perhaps thirty containers on flatcars. “It’s set for TGI Main transfer orbit. The next window is in thirteen minutes. And after that, the next one is twenty-seven hours.”

  “Can you put it in the next window?”

  “Sure. Watch.” The lieutenant typed rapidly. On the screen, a robotic crane rolled over the monorail, dropped four locking arms, and snatched the container upward, then backed up till it was clear. Afterward, it slid down the end of the yard, then rolled forward and dropped the container on a different train. The train had slightly different flatcars, a little more aerodynamic ones.

  “I’ve never seen this done before,” the captain said. “What happens next?”

  “We attach the launch cones on them,” the lieutenant said. “The mass driver launches them, they pass near the stations, and their tugs pick them up.”

  “Yeah, I want that not to happen.”

  There was silence for a moment. The lieutenant glanced at the captain. “Look, I did that once before, and I told you it was a one-time thing.”

  “Well, it’s a multi-time thing now.”

  “Look, taking some money off stupid kids who want some orbital adventure is one thing. Sabotaging critical shipments is different. I won’t do it.”

  “That’s an order. This is Militia business.”

  “Screw your Militia business. I’m not career. I’m only here on loan for a year.”

  “I’ll court-martial you.”

  “Which means that I’ll get kicked out, and then I go back to my happy place, running a cargo deck at my station. And I’ll never have to do this stupid duty again, ever. Try again.”

  “Or I can let this go and then tell the Officers’ Council. They can take care of the matter, unofficially.”

  The lieutenant grimaced.

  “Why do you care, anyway?” the captain said. “Your folks are no friends to TGI.”

  “We’re no enemies either.”

  “They won’t find out. And if they do, they’ll blame the regular Militia, not some obscure short-timer.”

  “What do I tell my corporate people?”

  “Tell them that you didn’t want to fight the Officers’ Council. Tell them that you were just following orders. Tell them it was none of your business. Tell them you had a hangover and felt mean. Or don’t tell them anything.”

  The captain walked over to the window and looked outside. “Of course, you’ll be compensated for your work. What we paid you for hiding those kids’ records? We’ll do that again. Every time. From now on.”

  The lieutenant looked at his screen. “I hate this job,” he said. He looked up at the captain. “Do you know how my station picks who fills the Militia slot each year?”

  “No. Tests?”

  “We cut cards for it.”

  “And you won?”

  “I lost. From now on, whenever I hide records, I want double what you paid me before.”

  “Okay,” the captain said.

  “And if I do a container for you, I want the same. In advance.”

  The captain reached into his pocket and pulled out a credit chip. “I’ve got that right here, with a little bonus for you.”

  The lieutenant took a deep breath, then he turned back to his screen. “Okay, hang on.” He typed some more. “We need the new nose cones.” The robotic crane on the screen moved off. A second robot rolled over to a pile of rounded metal cones. The cones were aerodynamic, with fittings on the back side that matched the container’s. A set of four small canards extended back from the cone. The robot used four locking arms to select one, then it rolled back until it was above the special flatcar with the new container. It spun the nose cone ninety degrees and lowered it in front of the container.

  “How are they special?”

  “This cone isn’t as strong. It deforms under launch pressure.”

  “So?”

  “So, that doesn’t matter on the mass driver launch, ‘cause the train just takes more power to accelerate it up to speed. But once it’s launched off the edge, the deformed nose cone slows it down. It doesn’t go as fast, meaning it doesn’t go as high, meaning it doesn’t make transfer orbit.”

  The robot had maneuvered the spun cone in front of the container and pushed it firmly onto the front.

  “And there it is,” said the lieutenant. His display flashed green. “Train is ready to go.”

  “What happens now?”

  “Computer takes over. You can see it out the window if you want to look.” They both turned to look out the window. Nothing happened for a moment, then the loaded train began to move out of the yard, then it switched to the mainline. The train accelerated as they watched.

  “Come on, the light’s about to go. If we go up to the roof we can watch it launch,” said the lieutenant.

  “Is it okay to leave the boards empty?”

  “You’re the boss, what do you say?”

  The captain shrugged and walked to the door. Outside the control room, they climbed two sets of stairs and then went through an exit, which took them to the building’s roof. They walked around until they had a view of a mountain directly to the east. It was starting to get dark, so they couldn’t see the train, just shadows on the mountain.

  “There.” The lieutenant pointed. A series of bright lights launched from the mountain and rose into the air. The captain tried to count them, but they were so close together.

  “Thirty?”

  “Should be forty-two. But we always lose some.”

  “Always?”

  “A couple percent. Sometimes more.”

  “Losing one won’t be suspicious.”

  “Nope. Happens all the time.”

  “Even for the shuttles?”

  “We don’t lose shuttles. Well, just that once. But shuttles have engines. They can adjust. Containers can’t.”

  “What happens if the containers don’t make orbit?”

  “Burn up on re-entry over the south. I guess. We never go look for them.”

  “Good,” said the captain. He reached for his comm.

  Several hundred kilometers above, and about one-third of the way around Delta, a Militia tug loitered in orbit. There were two crews in the control room at the front. The commander of the ship, whose rank
was actually commander, typed some notes into his screen. “Okay, it’s on its way up,” he said.

  The pilot, a spaceman second class, looked at him. “Can you give me the orbital characteristics?”

  “What?”

  “When it launched, semi-major axis, eccentricity, all that sort of stuff?”

  “Do you need that?”

  The spaceman closed his eyes and shook his head. “What did you take at that fancy university again?”

  “Finance. Which is why I’m a commander, and you’re not.”

  “You are a commander because your family had the money to buy the slot, and I’m stuck with doing all the work because I didn’t.”

  “I can do this myself.”

  “Go ahead,” said the spaceman. He folded his arms. “I’m sure you are great at orbital rendezvous. Lots of classes in it at the university, huh?”

  The commander stared at him for a while. “Fine. I need you to do it. Happy?”

  “Not quite. Promotions are coming up.”

  “So, you want to be first class? Fine.”

  “Nope. I want to be a sergeant.”

  “I’m not sure I can manage that.”

  The pilot looked down at his folded arms, then back at the commander. “This isn’t a standard maneuver, you know? We’re not just picking up containers passing a station. And we have to do it right the first time because we can’t be seen in this orbit when we swing round.”

  “Emperor’s balls. Fine. With that sort of attitude, you’ll make a great sergeant. Just pick it up.”

  The pilot smiled, then reached for the controls. The commander felt the tug pivot, and then start to fire backward in relation to the orbit.

  “What are you doing now?”

  “Relax, just dropping lower.” The pilot switched screens and turned on the radar. They watched a line of objects behind them approach and then overtake them. The pilot brought up the navigation screen to his right and began to type into it.

  “Just need to drop between them…,” he muttered. The commander said nothing.

  The pilot pulsed the engines again, and the pursuing devices appeared to slow down.

  “Are we speeding up?”

  “Sort of. We’re going lower, so we need to go faster. If I time this right … there.”

  The tug dropped below the line of pulses and then held there. They both watched the radar closely.

  “Gotcha,” the pilot said. He waited as the lower container sped toward them on the screen. It looked like it was going to overtake them, but the pilot pulsed the thrusters a few times, and they dropped toward the oncoming container.

  “There.” The pilot pointed. “Think you can work the box and grapples?”

  “I can work the grapples,” agreed the commander. He grimaced. “If you get us in close, and there’s not too much velocity difference.”

  The pilot didn’t respond. He kept his eyes fixated on the approaching container. It was tumbling slowly, and the nose cone appeared to have been shredded.

  “Shouldn’t you get out of its way?” asked the commander.

  “Not yet … not yet…,” the pilot said. He positioned the tug in the path of the tumbling container.

  The commander looked out the viewport. “It’s going to hit us. It’s coming right at us.”

  “Not if I do this,” the pilot said.

  He pivoted the tug upward, exposing a large, gridded metal box just below the viewport. The container smashed into the steel frame, and the tug lurched backward with a thunk.

  “Close the box. Now.”

  The commander had been waiting, and he punched a button on his screen. Powerful hydraulics swung heavy metal grids up from the bottom and the sides of the box, capturing the tumbling container and holding it.

  “Done like dinner. Dinner for ten thousand.”

  Chapter 5

  “We’re in trouble, sir. We need to do something.”

  “Is that so, Jose,” Dashi said.

  Jose leaned toward the window and stared down toward the water a hundred meters below. The monorail was attached to the side of the cliff with brackets, but they didn’t hinder the view. He turned back to Dashi.

  “Inflation is way up. We’re seeing sustained price inflation of over 10 percent per month. And adjusted food prices have risen another 30 percent in the last two months. Production is down across all companies according to my research,” Jose said.

  “Fertilizer,” Dashi said.

  “Yes, sir, I agree—we need more fertilizer,” Jose said. “But Fourth Moon Chemicals isn’t taking additional orders.”

  “Why not?”

  “Shortages of phosphorus and potassium. Only one mine on the surface provides it, and production is declining.”

  “Orbital sources?”

  “Two problems: We haven’t had much success with our exploration, and second, we sell what we do find to them—that doesn’t guarantee us more food. They use what they buy from us to meet other orders and don’t provide us with more.”

  Dashi checked his tablet. “Turn on the heater, please, Jose,” he said. Jose opened the vent on the wall.

  Air conditioning was rarely necessary in this part of Delta. The moon orbited Sigma Draconis IV, otherwise known as ‘the Dragon,’ near the innermost part of the system’s Goldilocks zone. Delta had almost no inclination relative to its orbital plane, but the Dragon often eclipsed the sunlight, so things stayed pretty cold—at least in the Northern Hemisphere where all the settlements were. Delta was about 30 percent water. Both poles were very mountainous and glaciated. A world ocean circled the base of the Northern Hemisphere. Cold deserts rimmed the south of the ocean. To the north, massive mountain ranges reached down to the water, pieced by giant river valleys that drained from the glaciers. Habitation existed in a few dozen fjord-like river valleys separated by sawtooth mountains. A single Old Empire monorail train line stretched east and west from the town of Landing.

  Dashi smiled as the warm air started to hit him. “And if we stop selling it to them, we don’t get any more food, and we forgo revenue that we would otherwise have. I see,” he said.

  The sun flashed off the green water as the passenger car swung around a curve, then the outside view went black as they ran through a tunnel for a few seconds. Now they were on the opposite side of the knife-ridged mountain, and the ocean to their left had been replaced by a sheer rock wall. The view to their right opened up, and they could see a long, narrow valley with a river down the middle, framed at the far end by giant snow-capped peaks. Herds of domesticated buffalo roamed up and down the valley, right up to where the bottomland gave way to steep hills and the cliffs.

  Dashi looked out the window. “Good ranching land,” he said. “Pastures and water. Just what you need for cattle.”

  Jose’s boss, Mr. Dashi, was small, neat, and brown. What he did for TGI was somewhat nebulous, and his titles were innocuous, but he held real power. When he said come, they came. When he said go, they went.

  “You know cattle, sir? I thought you grew up in orbit,” Jose said.

  “My grandfather had a ranch.”

  “How do they get the buffalo out for food processing?” Jose asked.

  “They have to stop the main line and lift a container onto a flatcar. Very expensive and disruptive to the schedule.”

  “That explains why the meat is so expensive,” Jose said.

  They flashed out of a tunnel along another cliff. The valley river reached the sea here. Dashi pointed out the window. “There is a tidal bore. I have never seen one in person before,” he said. A two-meter wall of water was thundering up the river as the rising tidal force overwhelmed the river flow to force its way up between the rock walls. The algae growth of the ocean made a thick, dark contrast to the clear, blue river water.

  “That’s moving fast. Faster than I could walk, sir,” Jose remarked.

  “Faster than you could run, Jose,” Dashi said. “There are about twenty deaths every year from people who venture
too far out during low tide and can’t get back to safety when the tide turns.”

  Jose contemplated the water. “Planets are dangerous.”

  “Danger is everywhere. What’s happening with our food shipments to orbit?”

  “Loss rate from the mass driver is up, but only very slightly. It’s 1.2 percent rather than 1.1 percent. However, losses are concentrated in containers for us, and mostly food trays. Sir, I believe the Militia is stealing our food containers.”

  “Yes, yes they are,” Dashi said, examining something on his tablet. Jose waited, but Dashi didn’t say any more.

  “Yes? That’s all you have to say, sir—yes?”

  “Yes, they are stealing our food.”

  “Sir, we need to do something.”

  “What is our food status?”

  “As I said before, we’re in trouble, sir. We do have supplies of basic. Tons of the mixing powder. But operations on two stations had to break into their emergency reserves of trays.”

  “How much of a problem is that?”

  “They have ninety days’ worth of reserves normally, sir,” Jose said. “They can hold for now, provided we can get future shipments into those stations.”

  “Good. Let them hold.”

  “Should we confront the Militia?”

  “How? Where? Do we have proof that they have taken anything?”

  “Not proof per se, sir, but a strong suspicion.”

  “‘Per se’?”

  “Sorry, sir, I saw that while reading some of those books you recommended.”

  Dashi looked up from his tablet. “How do you find them?”

  “The Prince is my favorite so far, sir.”

  “Mine too,” Dashi agreed.

  Jose took a deep breath. “Sir, I purchased several dozen containers of trays on the market. I had to pay a massive premium, but we’ll be able to keep everybody fed and replenish our reserves. I’ve also contracted extra shipping to carry it where necessary.”

  Dashi looked up. “You did it without asking me?”

  “Yes, sir. I did.”

  “Why?”

  “We needed the food, sir. And you, well, sir—”

  “Yes?”