Citadel

by John Ringo

  "What's jungleball?" Dana asked as they reached the null grav court.

  "Null grav actually has about a hundred thousand rules," Sean said. "Most of them related to no hitting, biting, scratching or kicking the other guy in the balls. The Marines wear a cup. It's like Aussie Rules football. The first rule of jungleball is 'No weapons.' There's seven more."

  "Oh," Dana said.

  They'd reached the court and Dana started to get a feel for why Sean wasn't exactly looking forward to null-grav ball.

  The viewing wall fronted on the corridor and was a three-story-tall wall of optical sapphire. The door was even sapphire with a small, recessed latch. The other five walls were lightly padded. One end of the court was broadly marked in blue, the other red. The overall court looked like an extended version of a handball court.

  The goals were recessed nets about two meters wide surrounded by six recessed hand-holds. Dana recalled that the only person who was allowed to retain traction, hold on to the grips, was the goalie.

  The court was apparently still under gravity since First division's engineering personnel were just filing in. The engineering crew, a couple of administrative seamen including Sarin and CM1 Glass. Glass was tossing a soccer ball up and down in his hand and looking positively happy.

  "Since I'm not neutral in this group, I'm going to be refereeing, not playing. Bigus and Carter, you're team captains. Divvie them up."

  Dana ended up on Carter's team but got cut from the first string along with Sarin. All the SAs and EAs got cut and pulled out of the court to watch.

  "This is going to be insane," Sarin said. "Carter was bitching up a storm."

  "It looks like it should be fun," Dana said.

  The two team captains faced towards their own goals with Glass in the center, holding the ball.

  "And... grav off," Glass said, releasing the ball. "Game on."

  Bigus, the EM3 of shuttle Thirty-Two, managed to hit the ball first, sending it towards the blue team that was starting to float up, slowly. Carter had taken a swing and floated off in a random direction.

  The ball missed the blue team entirely, caromed off two walls and headed down court towards red. Which pushed off from the floor and all missed intercepting the ball. Which, fortunately, was slowing due to air-resistance. Sean managed to get a hand on it and passed it to Bigus. Which sent Sean spinning off into the sapphire wall, cracking his head hard enough to ring the aluminum alloy.

  In no time at all it was a maelstrom. Despite the jerseys, Dana couldn't keep up with what was happening and she was pretty sure neither could anyone on the teams. People were more or less randomly ramming into walls. She saw Bigus drive for the goal at one point—he'd managed to snag the ball in midair while headed in more or less the direction of the goal—and nearly make it. Problem being it was his own goal. He corrected at the last minute and tried a pass to Sean but that was intercepted by a red team SN Dana didn't know, who made the goal.

  "Dead ball," Glass called. The ball had stopped in mid-court and so had all the team members. He'd managed to take up a position near the top of the court and more or less hang there by making very light motions. He pushed off lightly and plucked the ball out of the middle of the court.

  "Sean for Danno," Bigus called. He was sort of upside-down and drifting slowly in the direction of the blue goal but so far away from the walls he might never make it.

  "How am I going to get out?" Sean called. He was hanging more or less motionless on the red side but, again, nowhere near the walls.

  "Easy," Glass said, hitting him with the ball and sending him careening towards the red wall. "Now get your butt out."

  Dana stepped into the court and slowly bounced her way over to the defender's position. The one thing she knew about micrograv was that it was hard to move fast. Not impossible, Glass seemed to have the knack. But it was hard.

  She managed to stabilize up in the corner by the blue goal and waited for play to resume.

  "And... game on," Glass said, sending the ball spinning into the middle of the court.

  Bigus had the angle of the bounce figured right and probably would have intercepted. If Glass hadn't put some English on it. The ball passed his flailing hand and got to the red team.

  It was headed for a red team player in position to shoot for the goal when Dana pushed off the wall and made possibly the slowest intercept in the short history of nullball. The pass had been long and the ball was slowing so she nearly missed but managed to snag it. The impact of the ball on her hand and pulling it in caused her to rotate. But she let herself follow around and then pushed the ball off with both feet towards the red goal.

  "Bust a move, Danno," Bigus called, grinning. "But you might want to—"

  Dana slammed into the sapphire wall head first. Since she was grinning, it ground her teeth together painfully.

  "Ow!" she said, rebounding towards the "floor" and rubbing her head. "That hurt."

  "You okay?" Glass said.

  "One hundred percent, CM," Dana said, not wanting to add that it was one hundred percent headache and neck-ache.

  —|—

  "I can understand your lack of joy at playing nullball," Dana said, rubbing her neck. "But it's pretty fun if you keep your situational awareness."

  "Which is the point," Glass said, coming up behind Dana and Sean. The flight NCOIC had the lightest step Dana had ever seen. "It's good training for micrograv. It's even good flight training. Speaking of which, EA, you're four hours behind on coxswain quals. I want to see you in the simulator course one night a week for the next week."

  "One night a week, aye, CM," Dana said, trying not to sigh. There went sleep.

  —|—

  "Personnel cycling air lock will perform a visual check of all seals prior to sealing inner door..." EM1 Hartwell said in a rapid patter.

  "Personnel cycling air lock will perform a visual check of all seals prior to sealing inner door, aye," Dana said, adding a manual check for burs or scratches by running her hand over the seal. The latter wasn't part of the air lock operations procedure but it would be if Chief Barnett ever had her way.

  Dana had been qualed on basic suit function and function in a microgravity atmosphere environment. The latter translated as she was starting to kick some serious butt at nullball.

  So now it was time for her full suit quals.

  "Procedure Two-Nine-Six-Four-Eight-November, Secure Safety Line complete," Hartwell said. "Personnel will contact air lock and integrity control to release outer door."

  "Personnel will contact air lock and integrity control to release outer door, aye," Dana said, clearing her throat. "Paris, EA Parker One-One-Three-Eight."

  "EA Parker One-One-Three-Eight, Paris."

  She got her usual thrill hearing the AI. Paris didn't have much time to chat with an EA rate, which was too bad. He had a really sexy voice.

  "Request release, Air-lock Outer Door Six-One-Seven," Dana said. She was still a bit iffy on comming without speaking. She'd passed quals but she preferred to talk. Especially with Paris, she tended to add "unintended transmissions" when she internal commed.

  "Release Air-lock Outer Door Six-One-Seven, aye," Paris replied. "Verify Procedure Six-Six-One-Four-Eight-Alpha, Open Air-lock Doors complete."

  "Procedure Six-Six-One-Four-Eight-Alpha, Open Air-lock Doors complete, aye," Dana said.

  "Verify Procedure Four-Seven-Three-Six-Charlie-Alpha, Suit Integrity check complete."

  "Procedure Four-Seven-Three-Six-Charlie-Alpha, Suit Integrity check complete, aye," Dana said, trying not to sigh. There was a reason for all the readbacks but they got to be a pain in the butt.

  "List personnel using air-lock for manifest integrity..."

  "Verify Procedure..."

  —|—

  "All procedures for EVA verified and checked," Paris said. "Open Air-lock Outer Door Six-One-Seven, Procedure Niner-Niner-Four-Four-Eight complete. Pumping down."

  "Pumping down, aye," Dana said.

  The red
light overhead started to rotate and Dana could feel the slight change in texture as vacuum started to surround her suit. She took a deep breath and hoped that all the checks, which she had completed and verified, were good.

  "It's all good," Hartwell said. "Ready to step?"

  "Ready to step," Dana said, starting to move forward.

  "Whoa there, Space Eagle," Hartwell said. "What do you do next?"

  "Procedure Eight-Seven-Four-One-Six-Delta," Dana said, reaching out the air-lock door and clipping off her outer safety line. It wasn't like she was going to do a Dutchman. She was wearing a navopak that could get her nearly to Mars on internal power. "Complete."

  "Procedure Eight-Seven-Four-One-Six-Delta complete, aye," Hartwell said. "Begin procedure..."

  It made things safer but it sure took the fun out of life.

  —|—

  Finally they were out in EVA and the air lock closed. The air lock was near the base of the tube to which all the shuttles were attached and shuttle Twelve from Flight A was more or less entirely blocking the view of the main bay.

  "Okay," Hartwell said. "We need to get past all this crap to get to Twenty-Nine. Give me a one-eightieth vertical thrust on navo."

  "One-eightieth vertical thrust, aye," Dana said, giving the system just about its lowest possible boost "upwards."

  This lifted them "above" the shuttle and the main bay was finally revealed.

  "Holy hell," Dana muttered.

  "You okay?" Thermal asked.

  "It's..."

  "Stabilize and drink it in for a minute. I'll give you that. Most people need to get a good look before they can get their heads around getting to work."

  The main bay of the Troy was six kilometers across. She knew that intellectually. But seeing it was something different. It was just hard to get the scale of the thing. Down and to port there were two ships that looked like the sort of toys she'd played with when she was a kid. One was a freighter or an Apollo miner. Those were three hundred meters long. As long as a supercarrier. More than three football fields in length.

  It looked about the size of her pinkie. Smaller.

  Next to it was a Constitution-class cruiser, the biggest true "ship" produced by humanity. It didn't look much bigger. There were some tiny dots moving around on its surface and she realized they were other suits doing EVA. They were almost microscopic. The bay was just immense.

  But there was more that was throwing her. Jutting up from the walls were three massive spikes. They reached up through the interior to very nearly meet in the middle. Then she realized they were about three kilometers long.

  What got her wasn't just the size. She was sort of intellectually prepared for that. But she wasn't prepared for the fact that the interior was so shiny it was almost like a mirror. There was a God damned big, she had no clue how big but it had to be immense, light bulb "down" from their position. The light filled the hold and reflected off the surfaces so there were no shadows at all. None. Even the Constitution and the spikes didn't cast a shadow. That was a bit eerie. But with no atmosphere and the reflection of the mirrorlike walls, there was nowhere for shadows to hide.

  "It's beautiful," Dana said, softly. "I wasn't expecting it to be beautiful."

  "There is that," Thermal said. "Think you can pay attention to exterior checks on the shuttle?"

  "I am prepared and ready to perform, EM," Dana said.

  "Then let us, slowly and carefully, make our way over to Twenty-Nine and actually get some work done."

  —|—

  "How you doing, Parker?" CM1 Glass asked.

  "I am five by, CM," Parker said, examining her engineering screen.

  She was most of the way through quals. The truth was, there wasn't time to teach all the procedures and processes involved in doing the job of a shuttle engineer in A School. All that A School could do was produce people who sort of had a basic understanding of the systems. How to work with them in the environment of a permanent position was "makee-learnee" after you got to your post. Until you learned enough to not be a danger to yourself and others, you were a FUN: Fracking Useless Noob.

  That meant that when the shuttles went out, whether for training or a "real-world evolution," the FUN EAs and CAs were left behind with the nonshuttle personnel, called Troglos because they never got out of the Troy, to work on their quals, polish the brass, clean heads or whatever else the BMs could come up with to motivate them to finish quals.

  But part of quals was, occasionally, heading out into the bay, or sometimes the Black, to show that they'd mastered how to work with the shuttles in the real world.

  When she'd arrived on the Troy she had initially despaired of ever learning all the SOPs and processes necessary to do her job. Take the engineering display. It had readouts of all the monitored systems, four hundred and twenty-eight, on the shuttle. Power levels, relay conditions, avionics, hatches. It all added up. And much of it interacted so you had to have some clue what the cascade issues of a failure might mean.

  But after a bare three months, here she was with CM Glass doing her final deploy qual.

  "All the little bits ticking over?" Mutant asked.

  "Tick, tock, CM," Dana said.

  She had been out in the main bay doing EVA work on the birds so many times the view had gotten common if not boring. It was hard to imagine the main bay ever getting boring if for no other reason than that it kept changing.

  She had finally looked up the full plan for Troy and been absolutely shocked. The construction plans were barely in "Part One, Phase One" of the full plan. The full plan was intended to take at least a hundred years. And it was only referred to as a rough plan because nobody knew how technology was going to change.

  Troy was broken up into six notional zones, North, South, East, West, One and Two. South was the zone that had the main door, a kilometer-wide, kilometer-and-a-half-thick plug that was currently the only way in and out of the battlestation. North was the general area where the big ships hung out. There wasn't much going on over there and it was out of the way. Currently there were four Constitutions and a new Independence-class frigate holding station in the Arctic. Gravitic tractor docking systems were being constructed down there by a swarm of bots and EVA personnel. In the meantime the cruisers and frigates had to maintain station against the slight gravity produced by the Troy.

  Zone Two was where most of the construction materials were piling up. There were entire "environment packs," prefabricated quarters, bays and repair shops, piling up down there. The next big construction phase, involving pulling out a chunk of the wall and installing the packs, was about to take place. But all the packs had to be in place, first. Pulling the wall out was only going to happen once.

  East and West were mostly empty. There was an Apollo mining support ship hovering over in East. It was probably there to get ready for the pull. West only had some piled up material that had been cut out of the walls.

  On the other hand, West also had the Dragon's Orb, the one-hundred-meter diameter ball of "dirty" sapphire that provided light to the main bay. The blazing ball was held in place by a sculpted four-prong setting of nickel-iron that looked like an eagle or dragon's claw. The light came from a four terawatt SAPL beam that reflected off of embedded "micro beads" of platinum embedded in the sapphire. It fully illuminated the main bay. Perhaps too fully: the ball was hard to look at it was so bright.

  Phase One was simply getting full support systems in place in Zone One, the part that Dana was based in. There still weren't shuttle bays for the current Myrmidon complement and Zone One was eventually supposed to house, internal, a wing of Myrmidons, three full squadrons and all their support personnel and equipment.

  That was nothing compared to other parts of the plan. There were plans to build internal bays for the Constitution-class cruisers as well as other combat and support ships. By the end of Phase One, an entire task force of ships was to be installed in the walls of the fortress. With launch systems to send the ships out without using
the main bay doors. They were going to be shot out like missiles. The same plan was in place for the shuttles. They would eventually go out by a bypass system rather than flying around the main bay.

  Like everything with the Troy, the plan was beyond big. But it was going to be fun to watch. And occasionally support. The Myrmidons spent about half their active time training and the rest acting as "filler" tugs for the construction projects.

  She recognized all the classes, another qual, except one.

  "CM?" she said, tilting her head to the side quizzically. "What class is that?"

  The shuttle looked like a Myrmidon but it didn't have the gravity grapnels. And it was painted bright white with an Apollo logo on the side, a graphic of a chariot towing the sun. It was parked on the Zone Two side of the bay apparently involved in some of the moving of materials. It might be a command ship for that matter.

  "That is in a class by itself," Glass said, adjusting his vector slightly.

  By swinging around, Mutant was able to get a position where they could see the starboard side of the shuttle. They'd been looking at the port and base before.

  "Is that a glass wall?" Dana asked. The starboard side of the cargo bay of the shuttle appeared to be glass or sapphire. It was reflective so you couldn't really see in, but it was clearly not steel.

  "Sapphire," Glass said. "That is the Starfire, the personal transport of Mr. Tyler Vernon."

  "Oh," Dana said, her eyes widening. Vernon was about as big a name as you got. He was the richest guy in the solar system, the owner of the SAPL, which was, at base, nothing more than a gigantic mining laser, and the visionary who had conceived and created the Troy. "Is he in there?" she squeaked.

  "Probably," CM1 Glass said. "He spends about half his time in a compartment in the civvie side of Zone One. A big compartment that is appropriately fitted out for a multibillionaire. And from what I hear the Starfire is a flying boudoir."

  "I hear he doesn't even have a girlfriend," Dana said.

  "A boudoir does not require women, EA," Glass said, moving back into his lane and out of sight of the sapphire bulkhead. "That simply means it's very comfortable."