by PP Corcoran
What Dave had been doing in the intervening months was the subject of intense speculation among the building’s staff. That had all faded into the past as soon as a new subject of idle gossip arrived in the form of Kyle Henderson, twenty-year-old grandson of Maddix Henderson, sole owner of Henderson Shipping. Kyle was his only blood relative and everyone knew that someday it would be Kyle who replaced Maddix at the head of the company. Office rumor said that Kyle had been dispatched to Agate by his grandfather to learn the ropes in preparation for his inevitable coronation as Maddix’s successor. The young Henderson’s work ethic went a long way to support that assumption. Kyle was in the office by seven every morning and his office lights could be seen burning long after most employees had clocked off for the day. It was not unusual for Kyle to work part, if not all, of the weekend. The playboy lifestyle of the rich and famous was not for Kyle. If what his personal staff said was true, then the only down time the young man had was in the company of the mysterious Mr. Carter. Reports said that he was a frequent visitor to Carter’s home in the suburbs and—again, this was only speculation, but why allow the truth to contaminate a good rumor? —had been seen with a mystery girl at his beach front home. Whatever the gossip, one thing was an acknowledged fact. Kyle Henderson was intent on learning everything there was to know about how his future company operated, and woe betide anyone who attempted to bluff him, for he would catch them out and they would find themselves looking for a new job pronto.
Office gossip was not something that Dave Carter was prone to listening to, especially on a beautiful day like today. As the door to his office slid silently closed behind him, he slipped off his jacket with a grateful sigh and walked the few steps to a seemingly blank wall which cracked open at his approach, revealing a concealed closet where he hung the offending piece of clothing. You would have thought by today we would have come up with a more comfortable piece of office apparel, thought Dave to himself as he perched himself on the corner of his desk and took in the view of downtown Gemini City. The park with its green trees and wide grassed spaces led the eye naturally to the golden beaches and the lapping blue water of the bay beyond. Dave appreciated the view; however, he was more of a forest and rolling hills sort of guy and he missed the endless hinterland of Eriti Prime. He could have insisted on an office on the opposite side of the building, which would have given him views of the Scraggy Mountains that ringed the city, but that would have placed him too far from the offices of young Kyle. With a wry smile Dave slumped into his chair. His desk, detecting his presence, automatically activated its inbuilt display and keyboard, bringing up Dave’s itinerary for the day ahead. Grudgingly Dave ran his eyes down the short list. The blinking of the incoming message alert caught Dave’s attention and he called up the appropriate directory and opened the message. A toothy grin tugged at Dave’s cheeks as he read the message. Maddix Henderson might be paying Dave to keep an eye on his grandson, but that wasn’t going to stop him checking up on Dave as well. According to the message, Maddix had begun his annual branch office visits early, no doubt accompanied by the force of nature that went by the name Margaret Finlay and, after a brief stopover in the sector capital of Doberman, he would be heading on to Agate. Dave’s grin became a chuckle as he pictured Kyle’s reaction to the impending visit of his grandfather and his entourage. He briefly considered forwarding the message to Sue to let her know that Maddix was planning a visit; however, he much preferred to see the look of despair on her face when she realized that one of the richest men in human space, who ate at only the most exquisite fine dining restaurants, would be coming to dinner. Whistling happily to himself, he returned to his computer and the planned day ahead.
CHAPTER FIVE
The Mine
H HOUR MINUS TWO HOURS
THE CALLEY MINE, TWENTY-EIGHT KILOMETERS NORTHWEST OF GEMINI CITY.
“Good morning, boys and girls, and welcome to the Calley mining complex.”
The collective groan that went up from the group of young adults at being addressed as ‘boys and girls’ did not phase the plump tour guide in his spotless white one-piece jump suit in the slightest. Sue guessed that his script for schools didn’t vary in any shape or form, no matter what the age group of his audience.
The large welcoming smile on his face, the ruddy cheeks and the massive growth of beard reminded Sue of Santa Claus, and by the looks some of the kids were giving him, immediately followed by whispered words to their nearest neighbor and suppressed giggling, it seemed they had made the connection too.
Oh, it’s going to be a long day, thought Sue as she made a silent wish that whatever ailed Mr. Wilson was truly horrible. Get a grip, Sue, remember it was your own choice to go into teaching, nobody forced you. The image of Dave, sitting at his desk in a comfortable office with a view over the park and the blue-green Asimov Sea lapping on the golden sands just a short walk away as he shuffled papers from point A to point B all day long, came to her. God, she’d go insane if she had to do that.
Santa’s voice faded away into the background as Sue’s thoughts returned once more to the canceled finance meeting that she had spent so much of her time preparing for. It was then that the irony of the situation hit her. Looking around, she was surrounded by whispering teenagers on the cusp of adulthood; the sight of the Nivens’ boy with his wild mop of ginger hair and acne-covered face reminded her that adulthood was closer for some than for others. An unexpected childish giggle escaped her, which she immediately tried her utmost to hide with a loud cough and a mumbled apology to Santa, who graced her with a forgiving smile to the amusement of the assembled teens. Oh, how my life has changed, thought Sue as she wished the ground beneath her feet would open and swallow her up.
Her savior came in the unlikely form of the irrepressible Santa who, with a wave of his info pad and a loud, “Let’s get on with the tour, shall we?” stepped off in the direction of a row of squat carriages that would carry them into the mine and two hours of her life that Sue would never get back.
Surprisingly, the tour was not as dreary as either Sue or the class had been expecting. As opposed to the damp, dark rough-cut mine shafts that she had envisaged, the Calley Mine had been well-lit, with smooth permacrete walls and floors, bright overhead lighting interspersed every couple of hundred meters by wide, vertical shafts which contained powerful fans that alternately sucked air down from the surface or expelled dirty air skyward. This simple system kept the atmosphere within the mine fresh and clean with no hint of dust or pollutants. Then there had been the high-tech drilling machinery employed at the actual mine face, gleaming white contraptions with massive cutter heads encased in a pressurized shroud filled with inert gas. The cutting heads themselves were fitted with non-conductive teeth the size of your head, which chewed ever forward, funneling the raw Redlazore ore to a collection point in the cutting head’s center that passed the ore through the guts of the glistening white machine and dropped it into vacuum sealed hoppers that the machine extruded from its rear like eggs from some giant burrowing worm, precisely every ten minutes. These hoppers would take the raw mineral up to the surface and the waiting purpose-built processing plant. When the mineral had been purified, it was stored in yet more vacuum-sealed bins, awaiting collection by the heavy lift shuttles that would take the precious cargo to the brand spanking new Henderson Shipping cargo handling facility in high orbit, from where it was dispatched to the star ship construction yards of the far-off Core Worlds. At no point was the purified mineral exposed to oxygen. Ever. It might have been 150 years ago, but the disaster of Coronus IV was etched in the mind of every Redlazore miner.
Coronus IV had been a small satellite orbiting the gas giant of Coronus in the Golas system. A small mining company had secured the rights to drill exploratory boreholes, and one of the cores had indicated the presence of Redlazore. In the company’s haste to confirm the find, safety protocols had not been adhered to. No one knew exactly what had happened. Theories ranged from a malfunctioning miner’s
breather tank to a leak in the surface habitat. Whatever allowed the Redlazore to encounter oxygen, the result was cataclysmic. A moon with a diameter of 250 kilometers was reduced to a collection of millions of rocks no bigger than a fist by the ensuing explosion, and Coronus inherited a dust ring to rival that of the Sol system’s own Saturn.
The miners at the Calley mine didn’t intend to repeat the Coronus IV experience. Each level of the mine could be sealed individually and flooded with inert gas at the first sign of a problem at the mining face. Correction, mine faces. Although the tour only visited one mine face, the ever-cheerful Santa informed his charges that there were eleven similar machines, working away under strict human control, spread throughout the sprawling 128-kilometer labyrinth of tunnels which extended as deep as four kilometers below the imposing Scraggy Mountains and, as Santa took great pride in pointing out, this was only one mine, be it the largest, spread across the entire planet. Calley alone produced over 300 tonnes of the precious Redlazore per day, more in a single day than had ever been mined in Sol’s entire system! This one mine freed humanity from dependence on external Redlazore imports for decades. Couple the production of Calley with that of the myriad of other mines covering Agate and humanity was about to become the largest net exporter of the only known mineral that made the Cazmir Engine function. The only practical interstellar drive in the known universe. The K’Tai stranglehold on Redlazore was a thing of the past, expounded Santa. Humanity was the future, not the K’Tai.
The tour guide’s last statement regarding the K’Tai continued to nag at the back of Sue’s mind as the carriages emerged into the bright sunlight. Sue pondered on how a millennia-old Imperium would take to being relegated to second place. Sue recalled how, only that morning, Dave had mentioned that the K’Tai delegation had walked away from the trade negotiations being held on Earth. Santa might have thought that sticking it to the K’Tai was something to make light of, but Sue had learned the hard way that there was nothing to be gained by antagonizing an opponent without being prepared to accept the consequences. To the K’Tai, honor, in the form of the teachings of the ancient warrior Rig, was everything. It was the core of who they were as a people. If they considered that their honor was even the slightest bit tarnished, then God knew how they would react.
CHAPTER SIX
Entering Orbit
H HOUR MINUS ONE
As the screen returned to its slowly rotating image of the BPS Hawk’s coat of arms, Rear Admiral Louise Alderman sank back into the comfortable chair and took a deep breath as she tried in vain to process what the Duty Watch Officer had just informed her was fast approaching Agate.
The image of the pleading, barely under control face of Agate’s Port Controller--who had recorded and transmitted the cry for help that the cold, tactician’s part of her brain had already decided was not an option--vied with the other portion of her brain that screamed at her to come to his aid. No matter how many times she reran the decision process in her mind, desperately seeking a different outcome, it always came out the same.
Alderman had taken the squadron on a series of training scenarios that combined complex high-speed maneuvers and live firing exercises. With the amount of civilian traffic in the Agate system, it had been only prudent that the exercises be held as far from the regular shipping lanes as possible, so she had signed off on an area around the system’s gas giant, which was currently diametrically opposed to Agate.
This single decision not only put her cruisers as far from Agate as you physically could be and remain within the system’s Harbridge Zone, it had also inadvertently masked the K’Tai fleet’s approach. Her logical side reassured her that even if the entire squadron had been able to intercept and engage the K’Tai, it would have ended with the same predictable result. Alderman’s aging Border Patrol cruisers were sufficient to defeat anything pirates could field, but against ships of a modern navy, they would not stand a chance. The signal from Port Control had contained long range scans of the K’Tai force, and the sheer numbers had been enough to send a shiver down her spine. The cruiser screen alone outnumbered her own squadron nearly five to one and behind them, partially concealed by the haze of the cruiser screen’s electronic counter measures, were far larger energy returns. From the limited time her analysts had to review the data, they had identified several capital ships and what they believed to be transport ships. The capital ships could swat her ships from space without pausing for breath, while she could only hope to inflict minor damage before her ships were destroyed, and she wasn’t willing to throw away the lives of the men and women under her command in some noble and ultimately futile gesture. However, it was the transport ships that were troubling her. You didn’t bring transport ships on a raid.
Alderman unconsciously straightened her uniform as she activated the pin camera on her screen and began recording. “Governor Vandenberg. I believe it would be impossible for the squadron to be able to prevent the K’Tai from reaching Agate. I understand that this is not what you want to hear, but this is a purely military decision and one that I take in view of the following: Firstly, the K’Tai force is of such size that once they have ensconced themselves around Agate, it will take elements of Battle Fleet to remove them. Secondly, the K’Tai force consists partly of large transport ships. I believe these ships to contain troops, and that it is the K’Tai’s intention to occupy parts if not all the planet. Most likely their initial objective is to secure the Redlazore mines. As such, it is my intention to split my command and leave a small force beyond the Harbridge Zone to picket the system, while taking the remainder of the squadron to the sector capital of Doberman and appraising Eighth Fleet of the situation. Alderman clear.”
Alderman really felt that she should say more, but there was nothing more to be said. She ensured the correct message header was attached before pressing the commit key. The simple action sounded the death knell for her career.
#
Angry fists came crashing down on the desktop, sending a neat pile of data chips flying and threatening to do the same to an exquisite bone china cup and saucer that balanced precariously at the edge of the desk. The assistant who had brought Governor Vandenberg his usual morning beverage made a hasty retreat to the outer office, allowing himself a sigh of relief as the door slid closed behind him, thankful that at least for the moment he was safe from the anger of his boss.
“Damn that woman to hell. She’s not even going to try and put up a fight!” The question, if that was what it had been, was aimed at the room’s two remaining occupants. The older of the two, a brigadier general dressed in a badly pressed light brown uniform of the Agate militia that, just like the brigadier himself, had seen better days, shared the governor’s anger.
“Don’t you worry, sir, I’ve ordered all militia units activated. Once the air defenses are online they’ll knock these K’Tai bastards out of the sky and my mobile units will take care of any that make it to the surface.”
Lieutenant Colonel Jessica Reynolds, Commanding Officer of the 182nd Marine Battalion, stood out in stark contrast to the rumpled militiaman. Her dress blue uniform had creases in the sleeves and pants that you could cut yourself on. The white cap on her head was perfectly boxed with the League Marine Corps globe and anchor front and center. The marines of the 182nd battalion were the only regular League unit on the planet. Originally assigned to provide boarding teams for the Border Patrol ships of Rear Admiral Alderman’s 6th Independent Cruiser Squadron, it had been obvious from the start that Admiral Alderman’s Border Patrol crews were none too happy with having marines aboard trying to tell them their business. The antagonism that had been bubbling below the surface had erupted the month before, when marines aboard one of the Border Patrol cruisers were left without running water in their quarters for three days. The cruiser’s captain claimed that it had been an oversight on the part of his engineering department. The marine detachment commander, a rather outspoken lieutenant, didn’t see it that way, and without a word of
complaint said, he had simply marched his whole detachment into the naval officer’s quarters and set up home. The cruiser captain had been furious and had sent his master at arms to remove the marines and arrest the lieutenant for insubordination. This had only led to a standoff as stunner-wielding members of the ship’s company faced off against marines armed to the teeth with the latest assortment of lethal firepower. The water supply was quickly returned to the marines’ quarters, upon which the marines decamped and marched back to their bunks, securing the hatch behind them.
Word of the incident spread throughout the remaining ships of the squadron like wildfire, and within days there were reports of fist fights breaking out. Admiral Alderman, with the full consent of Reynolds, decided that a period of intense mountain warfare training on Agate was just the ticket to separate the two belligerent sides and allow time for tempers to cool, hence Reynolds and her marines’ presence on the planet surface. Now, however, Reynolds found herself and her marines in the middle of a shooting war alongside a militia brigadier who must have thought he was in some ancient western where he could ride in and save the day. Did Singh not realize that he was not only outnumbered and outgunned, but he had millions of unarmed civilians to consider as well? The loud snort of derision which escaped Reynolds got her a venomous look from the militia general.