Live Free or Die-ARC

by John Ringo

  Night Wolves' main mission, which was only discussed when Granadica couldn't listen, was to design around the lock-outs.

  "Oh, nothing we work on here is evil, Mr. Vernon," Kelly Ketterman said, smiling. Kelly was the managing design chief for the Night Wolves, a large title for a very short, even elfin, blonde. "All of it has purely commercial or emergency purposes that are for the betterment of all mankind."

  "Your mission statement in a nutshell," Tyler said. "And what have you created?"

  "The first item is a new, improved, VDA mirror," Kelly said, bringing up a schematic. "It is lighter, stronger, more accurate and has better heat transmission. All of the materials, including now the superconductor, are producible by human manufacture. Granadica's main contribution was in bringing in some engineering we didn't previously have access to and building the prototype."

  "You're welcome," Granadica said. "This is the sort of thing I enjoy!"

  "We're working on an upgraded system," Kelly said. "For . . . extreme mining. We're hoping that it will take up to one hundred times the amount of energy of a VDA."

  "Ung," Tyler said, grunting.

  "Yes, that's what we said," Kelly said, dimpling. "If it works, it is going to be great for mining."

  "Uh, yeah," Tyler said. "Great."

  "The first ship design is an emergency response shuttle," Kelly said, bringing up a picture of what looked very much like a rectangular box with some jet engines on it. "The prototype is complete and works very well. The ERS has a crew of two and can carry up to thirty-eight personnel or eighteen casualties. The forward assembly consists of four magnetic grapnels, a bivalve ramp system that works to prevent damage to the airlock or for deployment or rescue on land, and a multi-connector expansion airlock. If there is no standard airlock available, the MEA permits the ERS to dock directly to a distressed ship's hull so that rescuers can cut into it to rescue stranded personnel. The ERS has two external mounts for searchlights that can generate up to five terawatts of raw light for searching."

  "I thought that was a bit much," Granadica said. "But that was the specification. I wouldn't want to be looking into a five terawatt light, that's for sure."

  "Nor would I," Kelly said. "The ERS has twenty gravities of acceleration so it can move in and out of orbit rapidly. This, of course, would place some strain on passengers so there are conformal seats that can be moved in and out. So it can either be an open box for carrying emergency supplies or, with the acceleration couches, a very fast rescue ship. The ERS can operate for up to seventy hours on its own at a cruising acceleration of five gravities and has bunks and support facilities onboard for the two member crew. Thus, a single ERS can cruise out to Neptune orbit and back on onboard fuel. Just in case we have a ship stranded out by Neptune. At maximum drive it exhausts onboard fuel in about ten hours."

  "I can think of thousands of purposes for that," Tyler said. "Wish we'd had a bunch of them during the plagues. We probably ought to make . . ."

  "Lots," Kelly said. "We already have a contract from the USSN for three hundred."

  "Thank you, Granadica. And my stockholders thank you as well."

  "You're welcome, Mr. Vernon."

  "Most of the portions of the ERS are being made by subcontractors," Kelly continued. "Final assembly takes place here and there are certain components Granadica can just make better, faster and cheaper. Essentially, we're feeding her components and Grandadica puts out the finished product."

  "Any problems with integration?" Tyler asked.

  "Not integration," Granadica answered. "Quality control, yes."

  "We think we've fixed that issue by a change of providers," Kelly said. "And, unfortunately, we still have to pull most manufactured equipment out of the gravity well on Earth."

  "Earth's a bad enough target," Tyler said. "I don't think I want to build any space factories. Not in the Sol System."

  "The problem remains," Kelly said. "And we simply don't have enough space capable shipping. Granadica, Night Wolves and Apollo mining, therefore, reinvented an old idea."

  "Liberty ships?" Tyler asked.

  "Yes, sir," Kelly said, frowning.

  "I was going to ask about those," Tyler said. "It was on my mind. Continue."

  "When Apollo mines most asteroids, there is, unfortunately, a good bit left over," Kelly said. "Mostly silica."

  "We're using a good bit of that in the Sol system on the VLA," Tyler said. "They're doing silica mirrors with a thin nickel or aluminum backing."

  "Yes, sir, they're doing the same design here," Kelly said. "They still make more melted silica than they can use. Together with some Apollo engineers we came up with this."

  The picture looked like a Mason jar with a robot spider on one end.

  "The hull is mostly silica," Kelly said. "We've set up a production facility that turns those out in large quantities. Then a lift and drive engine is installed that has a low but sufficient drive. Specifically, two gravities of acceleration with a full one hundred-thousand ton load. Higher empty. Maximum acceleration empty is ten gravities since that is the maximum inertial controls available to us. The bottleneck is the lift and drive systems. We're having most of the raw equipment built on earth, again, and assembling it here."

  "Silica . . . is not a good structural material," Tyler said. "Glass hulls?"

  "Not entirely silica," Kelly said, smiling. "They have wound in carbon nanotube. That's another bottleneck but Granadica made a fabber that produces carbon nanotube winding in good quantity."

  "It's basically an old-fashioned version of the Gorku spinners," Granadica said. "And mine can handle anything that's got carbon in it. Apollo broke up a carbonaceous asteroid and we're turning out more nanotube than you can believe. We've been gluing it on the outside of the shuttles since you figure in a space disaster there's probably a lot of debris flying around."

  "We don't have people to run them, unfortunately," Tyler said, sighing.

  "They don't take much," Granadica said. "Three watch crew, three engineering and a few support. They've got their own gravitic loading and unloading system. Send us some personnel and we'll have so many ships going back and forth between here and Sol you won't believe it."

  "Alas, we still don't have the trade," Tyler said. "But we will. This is great, but it's got to be looked at as a prototype for now. I'll get some people working on crews, though. We do need to get the components moving back and forth. It can lift out of the grav well?"

  "Easily," Kelly said. "The hulls have the added benefit of being convertible to Helium Three tankers with some minor modifications. We've also looked at modifications for . . . in space repair and support ships."

  She carefully had not said 'Fleet colliers.'

  "Well, we still don't have much in the way of ships that need support," Tyler said. "Anything else?"

  "A new tug system," Kelly said. "This is purely for Apollo Mining at the present. It has four hundred gravities of acceleration but, of course, can't actually use that for internal delta-v. It also has a very wide angle for pressor or tractor beams. Apollo has been doing a lot of space shaping and they needed something that could generate a wide pressor beam. The tug is capable of maintaining a one hundred gravity pressor over a three hundred yard band."

  Tyler didn't see the military application and raised an eyebrow.

  "Purely for Apollo?" Tyler said.

  "Nobody else needs them," Kelly said, shrugging. "Apollo gave us the specs and we figured it out. Didn't we, Granadica?"

  "It was different," the AI said. "Most races don't mine the way that you do."

  "Anything else?"

  "Last we have a support ship for the emergency shuttles," Kelly said, smiling slightly. "The problem was making a ship capable of keeping up. That required conformal systems throughout the ship as well as acceleration modifications."

  "I'm not sure how long I'd want to take ten gravities," Tyler said. "I took seven for twenty minutes one time and it nearly killed me."

  "Hop
efully not for long," Kelly said. "The ship has launchers for small . . . buoys. Remote sensing platforms. Those have been designed for six hundred gravities of acceleration for . . . rapid and widespread dissemination."

  "Better hope they don't run into anything," Granadica said. "Because they're an awful lot like missiles. That's what I based them off of. An old missile design. Slap a heavy warhead on them and they're going to play merry hob if they, for example, run into a Horvath ship. Just the kinetic impact after thirty seconds running will blow through Horvath screens."

  "But since they're . . . sensor buoys?" Tyler said, frowning.

  "All good," Granadica said. "Hey, how you humans want to do search and rescue is up to you. And what you want to mount for sensors is also up to you. The ship has hard points for mounting more big flash-lights. And you can point the spotlight on something at up to three light minutes. Very accurate spotlight. Since that's a long way away, it can be dialed up to a three megawatt laser. And gravitic sensors to spot anything that needs rescuing. Up to seven light seconds out. They're very sensitive. With a little triangulation, which the system can do using sensors on multiple ships, in movement or with the sensors on shuttles or remotes on the buoys, they can spot even a hypercom node that's active within two light seconds. Or, say, something accelerating on a collision course. They also can handle up to one hundred sensor buoys in movement at the same time."

  "An Aegis search and rescue ship," Tyler said, nodding. "Very nice platform."

  "More of a frigate," Kelly said. "They're smaller than the Constitution class. Also faster and more capable."

  "BAE is just going to love the hell out of that," Tyler said, grinning. "Not that it's a warship, of course."

  "Of course," Granadica said.

  "Granadica," Tyler said, musingly. "How big are the fabbers you made to make nanotubes? No, let me say this a different way. Can you make some fabbers to pre-separate the carbon from a carbonaceous asteroid?"

  "I can do it," Granadica said. "There's going to be a fairly significant energy penalty. It's going to cost more. And I'll have to rearrange the schedule."

  "Do it," Tyler said. "Anything else?"

  "That's about it," Kelly said, suddenly looking nervous.

  "That's all good," Tyler said, nodding. "All good. Thank your team for me."

  "Permission to speak freely, sir?" Kelly said.

  "What is this, the military?" Tyler said, smiling. "Of course."

  "You look tired as hell," the manager said. "No offense. But you look as if you could use a break."

  "I've got a lot of pressures," Tyler said, shrugging. "I can take it. I've learned to take it. But, Granadica, between you, Kelly and I, I'm serious about doing the fuel mine in three years. I'm hoping we have three."

  * * *

  "How was Wolf?" Bryan asked.

  Dr. Foster had stepped down as head of Apollo Mining nearly three years before.

  There was a progression to management. Some people were great with small start-ups but couldn't handle big business. Others were best at handling large scale operations and were driven crazy by start-ups.

  Apollo, and LFD Corp., were, without question, big business. Tyler and Bryan had talked it over and then three people had taken over various bits of the management. There was an MBA with extensive experience of terrestrial mining and materials sales as the CEO, an Army general as Chief of Operations, mostly devoted to the increasingly complex task of moving light around, and even a Chief Science Officer who oversaw production of the SAPL components and an increasingly large team of people who studied better ways to move it and use it.

  Bryan's title was now 'Chief of Special Projects.' That way he always had new things to wrap his head around and Tyler had somebody's head to throw them at.

  "Busy," Tyler said. "I think I need to get a ship made."

  "You have . . . a lot of ships," Bryan pointed out. "I mean, if you count all the tugs . . ."

  "I mean for me," Tyler said. "I've been putting it off for forever. But if I'm going to be running back and forth between here and Wolf, running around poking my nose into people's business . . . I think I need a ship. A shuttle at least. The Night Wolves have a pretty good design. I think I may have one sent to Burger Boat."

  "They know anything about space?" Bryan asked.

  "Not a thing," Tyler said. "Time they found out. And taking the shuttle not only takes time I can't afford, I'm just getting too old to sit next to a hulking miner who's looking forward to getting back to mamasan and some real showers. Okay, we've got a problem."

  "I live to serve," Bryan said, grinning.

  "Steel."

  "Hard," Bryan said. "We've been looking at making a smelter. Problem is, most of our stuff is mobile enough to run if the Horvath come through the gate. A smelter . . . isn't going to be really mobile."

  "Right," Tyler said. "And what I'm talking about is going to be too big for a smelter, anyway. You've seen the general design for the Wolf mine I take it."

  "Yep," Bryan said. "Those support plates are going to be fun to make. They'll have to be welded."

  "Not if we can cast them in one piece," Tyler said. "I was thinking about it on the shuttle back. What's steel?"

  "Iron," Bryan said. "Carbon. Various trace elements. If you want stainless . . ."

  "Which we do."

  "A bunch of chromium or nickel. About 40% by weight if I recall the class."

  "Okay," Tyler said. "Think of a McGriddle."

  "A what?" Bryan said, chuckling.

  "A chupaqueso, then," Tyler said. "Take a plate of iron, more or less pure."

  "Which we have," Bryan said, nodding.

  "Then layer it on both sides with crushed carbon. Mix in the trace elements you need. Then on the outside, smaller plates of chromium or nickel. Heat, melt, let collapse into a ball through microgravity."

  "May work," Bryan said. "Except the carbon's going to get very kinetically active and tend to move away."

  "Ah," Tyler said. "Why I mentioned a McGriddle. Seal the edges of the outer plates. That will keep the carbon contained."

  "How big we talking?" Bryan asked, making some notes.

  "Two kilometers," Tyler said. "The final form. Sort of like a washer with a one hundred meter hole in the middle. And about thirty meters thick. Two of those. We can figure out how to make the bracers if we can do the washers."

  "That's an interesting project," Bryan said, grinning. "We ordered these new tugs from Night Wolves . . ."

  "Yeah," Tyler said. "What's up with that?"

  "We needed bigger fields for shaping," Bryan said, still making notes. "We're doing a lot of spin processing. We needed wider fields to handle big projects. This is a good example. To get this thing even, we're going to have to shape it in three dimensions. But with the tugs we can do that. We're calling them Potter's Hands. I'm not going to start with two kilometers, mind you. But BAE has been screaming for steel for the Constitutions. We're having to carry it up out of the well. This might be the answer."

  "Call me when you've got the material spun up," Tyler said. "I'd like to see that."

  "Will do. Anything else?"

  "About a thousand things," Tyler said. "Oh, Steren's getting married. You should be getting an invitation. I put you down for one."

  "Steren?" Bryan asked, confused.

  "Younger daughter?" Tyler said. "The tomboy?"

  "I . . . don't think you'd ever mentioned her name," Bryan said. "I knew you had two daughters. But that's about all."

  "Really?" Tyler said. "Not even when we were melting . . ."

  "Icarus," Bryan said. "No. And we talked about a lot of things. But not family. I'd sort of wondered."

  "Ah," Tyler said. "Two children. Christy and Steren. Christy's getting her MBA at the moment. Wharton which makes me very proud. Steren . . . wasn't big on school. She also wanted to be her own person. Which meant she was working as a vet's assistant. She's marrying a guy named Thomas Schneider. He's a mechanical engineering grad stud
ent. I'd guess he's going to want a job which is no big deal."

  "You haven't met him, have you?" Bryan said.