Escape from Paradise, page 11
If everything went according to plan, the bulk carrier would take one hundred and seventy-two million metric tons of ore from Ulietta, helon being the rarest—and most tenacious—metal found in the Galaxy. One hundred and seventy-two million metric tons, that is more than all the shipyards and processing plants of the Federation had used over the last two years.
“If …” This one word covered the whole drama of the situation. Since the bulk carrier was to be fully laden several thousand people would have to sacrifice their lives—just as many as worked one shift in the mine. The Admiralty doubted that all of them would give up their lives for the benefit of Humankind willingly, so Darski received clear guidelines how to suppress the mutiny. Guidelines he couldn’t disagree more with, by the way.
He’d been told to make these people remain at their posts until the very last moment. He’d even gotten clearance to shoot the most recalcitrant miners if other coercive measures failed. Three companies of uniformed esdees were to assist him in this work—they would appear on Ulietta in a few hours to fill strategic positions in the mine and, if necessary, smother any sedition.
Darski was beginning to regret that he hadn’t declined the offer. But if he’d said “no” to Rutta, someone else would have been sent in his place. Someone much more ruthless. An officer who would have executed any order. If the miners were to have a chance of survival, then it was him who had to complete this mission and find a way … a method thanks to which on the one hand, helon ore would remain in Humankind’s hands, greatly increasing its chances of winning the war with the Aliens, and, on the other hand, the miners’ lives would be saved. Of course, Henryan knew it wouldn’t be easy. And time was running out.
THIRTEEN
In here, gravity was so low that the rover, in which one of the corporation managers was chauffeuring him around, spent more time above the moon’s surface than on it. And this fact had nothing to do with the driver’s recklessness—Iandreas Drechsler was a staid, stout Hindu in his eighties, one of the mine’s six deputy technical directors. That was simply how driving in 0.4 G looked like. Luckily, the force that allowed them to glide (and the flight sometimes lasted even ten seconds or more) was also the best shock absorber when it came to the inevitable contact with the ground. The six-wheeled rover fell on the rocky surface as softly as a cloud.
“Another mile and we’ll be there!” the driver called out when the metal wheels left the rocky surface yet again.
Henryan nodded, though he realized that the other man couldn’t see it. The colonists used such archaic equipment, so different from anything he was accustomed to, that after landing on this moon he felt as if he’d gone back in time to the days before the hyperspace drive was invented. The space suit he’d put on to inspect both the aboveground and underground installations weighed more than a hundred and fifty pounds, and the bulbous helmet, although very large, had an exceptionally small visor and was practically devoid of virtual support, so Henryan had to rely on his own perception. He couldn’t even use his holopad, because whoever designed this model of suits didn’t think of a suitable hookup.
The miners stayed in touch with one another and their supervisors thanks to radio communicators, and a straightforward CPU was enough to handle the life support system of their vacuum suits. No one needed sophisticated high-tech gear; simplicity and reliability were most important here. In that order, as Drechsler had stressed when after leaving the main dome they’d headed for the first of seven installations which Darski meant to visit.
Three hours later they were approaching the penultimate point of interest: the ejectors.
The rover left a long ravine, which floor had been leveled to create a makeshift road, and came to a halt at the foot of a steep embankment surrounding one of the craters, excavated in the surface when another celestial body had collided with the moon millions, perhaps even billions, of years ago. At the height of thirty, maybe forty feet, where the rock was almost vertical, Henryan saw the outlet of a rectangular tunnel. A long chute of iridescent plasteel ran out from it. Supported by dozens of pillars, the installation crossed a boulder-covered flatland and at a distance of about a mile curved gently to aim at the black sky.
“This is the pride of our mine, one of the most powerful ejectors ever manufactured,” Drechsler explained. Glancing at his watch, he added, “And … now!”
A large container adorned with the corporate logo noiselessly emerged from the inside of the tunnel. Rushing just above the electromagnetic chute, it was accelerating continually; it reached the arc in the blink of an eye, left the rail, and, finally, sprang out into the boundless blackness. Darski watched the plasteel container for a few seconds until it blended with the darkness of space.
“The next one will be launched in four hundred seconds,” Drechsler said. “This rate allows us to send nine loads per hour, each weighing more than ten thousand metric tons. And we have five similar installations here. Please look—” He pointed to a container over their heads, which must have been launched from another electromagnetic railgun, because this was what in its essencean ejector was.
Darski didn’t answer, in this very moment trying to figure out whether at this pace the miners would be able to meet the Admiralty’s demands. It seemed that loading would end in about thirty-six hours—ballparking, of course. By that time, the Aliens would have already traveled halfway the distance from the jump zone, even if the rest of the squadron had been able to pull them away from their original target, which was by no means certain.
They moved on, heading for the structure looming another mile away. The elevator leading inside one of the dozens of zonal control rooms was on the other side of the ejector.
“Can you speed up this process?” Henryan asked when they were driving under the chute.
“No,” Drechsler said without a second thought.
His voice sounded strangely metallic, and it was hard to understand him through the static and interference. A few moments later Drechsler slammed on the brakes in a narrow strip of shadow cast by the ejector.
“What are you doing?” Darski huffed.
As if to calm him down, the driver raised his hand.
“We are in a dead zone, Captain,” he said. “The field generated by the ejector won’t allow for either listening in to our conversation or recording it. We can speak freely here. Ninadine had asked me to be completely honest with you.”
Henryan looked him straight in the eye, or rather at this part of the foggy visor where they should have been. Truffaut had promised to help him and apparently, she’d meant it. But why this conspiracy? Did corporations have their own security department?
“What do you think our chances are?” he asked hesitantly.
“Of completing the task?”
“Yes.”
There was a long moment of silence. Drechsler didn’t even move when another container flew over their heads.
“Not too great,” he said finally.
“Why?”
“We’ve been working at this pace for more than two hundred hours, and the equipment is on its last legs.”
“Are you afraid of failure?”
“It’s a wonder that we haven’t lost any ejectors yet. They are designed to launch one container every ten minutes. And we’ve not only exceeded the time limit, but also have been loading a thousand metric tons more than we should, which is ten percent above permissible levels. And this won’t hold forever.” He raised his chin toward the chute above their heads.
Darski glanced up, reflexively. The poro-concrete was covered with a cobweb of cracks. Here and there, dust was flowing. You could see it clearly, because in such low gravity it took long minutes for the particles to drop to the surface of the moon.
“What’s the probability that these installations won’t hold for another thirty-six hours?”
“I talked to the chief engineer before your arrival. In his opinion, there’s seventy-five percent chance that one of the lines will fail within the next twenty-four hours.”
Seventy-five percent? Henryan thought. That’s not good, not good at all …
“How much time will you need to repair it?”
“I don’t know, but—”
“Please remember that I’m not an engineer,” Henryan interrupted him. “So spare me the details. How long did such repairs take in the past?”
“The problem is none of our ejectors ever broke,” Drechsler said.
“What?” Darski shifted in his seat. “Then how—”
“Easy, Captain,” Drechsler cut in. “I’m not done yet. We’re not afraid of equipment failure, we deal with things like this regularly. For three days in a row now, we’ve experienced over a dozen minor malfunctions. The real problem is that—” He pointed his finger at the cloud of dust, falling as if in slow motion. “Our ejectors have never worked so long and under such heavy load. These depots have been filled for the past five years,” he added by way of explanation. “And the biggest single shipment which I recall was seven million metric tons. All done without haste, without making norms more stringent.”
“I see.”
It made sense even to such a nonexpert like Henryan.
“So now you know …” Drechsler watched the sinking dust with a look of sadness in his eyes. “And it’s getting worse with every hour,” he added almost as an afterthought.
“What will happen if one of the pillars collapses?” Henryan asked.
“What will happen?” Drechsler laughed. “It depends. If we lose the prop after the container has been launched, we’ll just turn the ejector off, print the required element and fill the gap.”
“How long will it take?”
“A day at least. Optimistically speaking, that is. The cambering itself can take up to eight hours, then a trial launch … And it’s always possible that things will go sideways.”
“Then what?” Henryan asked, though he had a premonition of what he would hear next.
“Nothing.” Drechsler shrugged. “Game over. An unbalanced container will demolish a length of the chute. Dozens of pillars and hundreds of yards of rail.”
Neither of them spoke for a long moment.
That would have reduced the effective shipping tonnage capacity by one-fifth, Henryan thought, and did some calculations in his head. About a hundred thousand metric tons per every hour of loading, and this multiplied by twenty-four hours, maybe more—
“Will reducing the load to the permissible level change anything?” he came up with a suggestion.
Drechsler nodded.
“Yes. Definitely. But I’m not allowed to make such a decision. None of us is.”
“I’ll take full accountability,” Darski said.
“Will you put it in writing for me?”
“Absolutely. Upon my return, I’ll discuss this with the chief engineer first and then with my superiors. Don’t worry, I’m going to tell them what I’ve seen here without mentioning your role.
“We don’t know exactly how much time we have left, so maybe, just maybe, we’ll have one or two hours to spare and that would compensate for the losses, although if another ejector breaks down, we’ll lose much more than one and a half million metric tons.”
“I’ll get in touch with some people too. Within an hour, we’ll implement the new system,” Drechsler promised.
“What’s the holdup?”
“Hundreds of pieces of equipment are going to need reprogramming, plus it will be necessary to create a new timetable for the tug crews, who handle reloading in orbit.”
“Pardon?”
“Reloading in orbit,” Drechsler repeated.
“As I said before, launching ore into space isn’t exactly my cup of tea. What I do is I deal with laser weapons and blow everything to smithereens, more like. I’m not familiar with the mining procedures.”
“It’s just that we know all of it backward and forward, so I thought you’d been told what’s what.”
“All I know is that I have to supervise the loading of this rod-ship and protect it until the jump is made. Even at the cost of my subordinates’ lives.”
“I understand and I don’t envy you your job. From what I heard—”
“Can we just get to the point?” Darski interrupted him unceremoniously. He was all edgy, knowing that it was him who would have to pass the dismal news to High Command.
“Yes sir. The containers launched from the ejectors go to low orbit, where they are intercepted by tugs and connected to the air locks of the freely orbiting holds. We pump the helon ore …” He hesitated. “It’s just a common term, because it’s really about pressure pom—”
“I don’t have to know all the details.”
“Yes. Of course. Where was I?”
“Pumping the helon ore.”
“Exactly. The ore goes into the holds, then the drones bring empty containers over special magnetic traps, or so-called landing pads. From there, we transport them back to the depots, fill them up and once again send to space.”
“So you don’t actually load the containers into the rod-ship hold?”
“And what would be the point of it? Have you any idea how many containers would be necessary to carry a hundred and seventy-two million metric tons of helon ore? Even Etoile Blanc Corporation doesn’t have so many of them.”
“Interesting,” Darski muttered. “Very interesting …”
FOURTEEN
On the way back, his comlink became red-hot. The reports from the moon were coming in one after another—Drechsler did very well, just as the chief engineer. The latter was quite eager to do accurate analyses. Fifteen minutes after the shuttle had taken off, he’d told his technicians to scan all the pillars. Their findings were to be expected within the next two hours, but even the preliminary reports clearly showed that Darski had been right. Six of the ten pillars tested so far had major structural defects.
Keeping an open comlink, Henryan spoke to Truffaut too. He asked her to organize a meeting in a narrow circle of trusted people right after his return. Not being sure if the crazy idea he’d had while talking to Drechsler had a chance of success, even though it took shape after he’d questioned several other engineers, he decided to discuss it with some people who had not only sufficient expertise but also the means to implement his plan if it made sense. He didn’t mention any of it to Drechsler because the corporate communications system was reliable only within the magnetic field of the ejectors, and the idea brewing in his head was one of the craziest sorts. Furthermore, it meant losses during the loading so there was a strong possibility that the employees loyal to the Board—those who the deputy technical director was talking about before—would forfeit the initiative.
Ninadine responded a moment before the shuttle landed, informing Henryan that everything was ready. The official cover for the meeting with her, Dupree, Pallance, and another man, whose identity Darski didn’t know yet, was a formal dinner in honor of their “savior,” as he was christened.
Hopefully, they don’t mean it with a capital S, Henryan thought. He looked through the translucent plasteel to watch the blue waters of the ocean and the fast-approaching pastel smudge of the colony. Beyond that an emerald thicket was extending as far as the mountains looming in the horizon.
For some reason, Truffaut laughed when he’d said he’d like to walk through these woods …
FIFTEEN
Since he’d been invited to a formal event, Henryan breezed into his suite to take a shower and put on his parade dress uniform. Such at least was the official story for the benefit of the hosts, in case they had the courage to ask why the captain was late. The truth was, Darski wanted to sink into the lap of luxury. A glass, or even two, of Valisian rum and a long, hot shower in actual water. Humankind would lose this planet in just thirty hours or so; Henryan thought it only fair that he should use the offered comforts, especially that he’d spent most of his life in cramped cabins in artificial gravity.
Refreshed and relaxed, he stepped into Ninadine’s much smaller quarters fifteen minutes late. He could tell at a glance that third-level managers weren’t particularly pampered by Etoile Blanc Corporation, though Truffaut’s apartment was five times bigger than his cabin on Cervantes. In no respect, though, could it compete with the luxuries offered to him on Delta. The furniture, equipment, everything looked meager. Even the palette of available colors was limited, not to mention the window taking up only half of the outer wall.
All the invited guests were already seated at a large table. Henryan greeted the three men, starting with the doctor and ending with a stranger: a young athletic blond, whose attire differed from the standard outfit of a colonist. It was … somewhat archaic. Darski was curious why this man had joined them, because surely there must have been a good reason for his presence.
“Captain, will you allow me to introduce the head of the scientific department, Professor Olivernest Fitz, our grand huntsman and the best cook that can be found in this part of the Inner Rim …”
“Nice to meet you.” Henryan shook the professor’s hand, which was strong and toilworn, so unlike the soft hands of the eggheads he’d known on Xan 4. But it didn’t escape his notice that the identity of the big guy didn’t clarify anything.
“I’ve taken the liberty of asking Ollie to serve real meat. It’s kind of our corporate tradition,” Ninadine babbled, leading the guest of honor to his seat. “I hope you don’t mind?”
“I like meat,” Darski confessed, dropping onto a chair. Seemingly very simple, it was equipped with an antigrav. It never ceased to amaze him what sumptuosity these people lived in. “Contrary to popular belief, we eat decently up there,” he pointed to the ceiling.
