Frado nodded as he held out his hand for a shake. “I will have my one of my engineers contact you with the details you ask for. This planet is wide open, so he will have a site picked for a factory by this afternoon. Look over the plans and coordinate with my engineer. I’ll say, Mr. Hardy, you do make things exciting. I look forward to this, and possibly other ventures, with you and your associates.”
Frado Knuttin left for his ship. Banis Mwap, a chief engineer for the Knuttin Corporation, forwarded factory schematics, diagrams, and resource lists. A comm was opened to the Revelation, and Jasper received a list of the supplies that would be required. The following day, several freighters arrived. The materials were unloaded, as well as two thousand well-equipped Targarian workers.
Johnny stood next to Mace on a newly-built construction tower. “Jasper doesn’t waste any time, does he?”
Mace replied, “We don’t have time to waste. Not only is Earth vulnerable, so are his Targarian colonies. That Quelli raid did a number on them in only a few hours’ time.”
Johnny leaned on a rail. “You think we’ll ever really be safe again? I mean, we had our problems on Earth, but most weren’t of the kind that could wipe you out. Mutual destruction was an absolute last resort. There’s nothing mutual about the threats we now face.”
Mace looked around. “This is your first trip without Jane, isn’t it? Does it bother you at all to think she’s so many light-years away right now?”
Johnny shook his head. “What bothers me is that she’s not well-protected. This microwave defense system will be a welcome addition. I just wish I had faith it’ll do the job when the time comes.”
Mace nodded. “Right there with you on that one. I’d be thrilled if we could put the galactic cat back in the bag, but that’s not happening. Our only options are either to submit to whoever comes along, or to make ourselves powerful enough that no one will mess with us. I’m inclined to lean toward the second of those options.”
By the third day the property had been cleared and a foundation poured. By the fifth day the framework had been erected and the roofing was beginning to be applied. By the seventh day the exterior walls were up and the interior walls, power feeds and plumbing were being hung and routed. By day twelve, much of the factory equipment, stamps, presses, clean-rooms, and assembly lines were in place. All but the most critical items had been installed.
Chapter 4
*
Two weeks to the day that Frado Knuttin had boarded his ship, a comm came in for Mace. “Tell me the good news.”
Frado replied, “We have received approval, with one caveat.”
Mace asked, “What’s that?”
Frado pushed a response letter to the display. “This is from the manufacturing council. They’re demanding ten tons of platinum and five tons of industrial diamonds.”
Mace rolled his eyes. “I don’t know that I can get that, Mr. Knuttin. I’ll see what I can do. Would they be willing to take substitutes?”
“Possibly.”
A comm was opened to Jasper. The industrial diamonds would not be an issue. The Targarian stockpile of platinum was limited to two tons. He was only willing to part with half. A search on Earth brought in another half ton from an old government treasury site.
Mace consulted with Jeff. “Wasn’t there some diamond planet supposedly found years ago? By astronomers, I mean.”
Jeff nodded. “55 Cancri e. Twice the size of Earth. It was predicted to possibly be made of diamond. Later studies lowered that likelihood. But its parent star does appear to have a high carbon content.”
Mace asked, “Do we have that on our starmaps? Any information in the database on that?”
“I’ll check… location mapped but not yet explored.”
Mace said, “Might be time for a trip there. If those speculations are true, we might have something of real value to trade that doesn’t take all of what we have.”
A jump was made. The Gerty waited in orbit as the Rogers dropped to within ten kilometers of the surface.
Humphrey performed a scan. “Looks like the astronomers were off, Mr. Hardy. The planet isn’t made of diamonds. However, I do see extremely large deposits. Our issues will be with mining it. I show gravity as 212 percent Earth standard. And it’s hot down there. These battlesuits won’t cut it for very long.”
Mace replied, “Do we have any kind of automated gear? Some remotely piloted drones or something?”
Jeff shrugged. “We only have what’s on this ship. And we both know what that consists of. You’ll have to talk to Jasper. Maybe his people have mining equipment for this kind of environment.”
A ten minute wormhole comm with the Targarian king gave the answer. The Targarians had only mined moderate to cold temperature planets.
Mace asked, “Mr. Humphrey, how close to the surface are those deposits?”
Humphrey looked through the data. “I show two that are within half a kilometer of the surface.”
Mace turned. “Mr. Hobbs, take us to the closest location. Mr. Mueller, see if you can blast us a hole to the diamonds.”
A dozen plasma rounds later, Humphrey raised a hand. “We should be there. Let the debris settle and we’ll look down in the hole.”
A new scan was run. “We’re into the pocket, Mr. Hardy. I show diamonds on the surface. And… wow. I’m seeing numerous chunks of up to twenty kilograms. We should be able to pick those up with the grapple on the shuttle. They’re too hot to bring aboard, though. I would suggest we take them up and allow them time to cool.”
Mace said, “Mr. Crawford, want to split that duty with Miss Taub? You take shuttle one, she gets shuttle three?”
Jordan headed for the exit. “I appreciate the break, Mr. Hardy.”
The shuttles descended, returning with large pieces of diamond. For seven hours, the small ships returned with the diamond hoard. The remaining space in bays two and four held four tons each. The Gerty opened a wormhole and the two ships moved through to Canto.
Frado Knuttin was waiting with the needed designs. “Interesting. I will have to see if your offer is acceptable.”
Mace said, “You’ll have to tell them it’s the best we can do.”
Frado looked over an image of the cargo. “Those are enormous diamond fragments, Mr. Hardy. How were you able to come by them?”
Mace smiled. “Can’t give away my secrets, Mr. Knuttin.”
Humphrey added, “They are of extreme high quality as well. Almost a shame to use them as industrials.”
Frado nodded. “Yes, well, it may be possible to trade out some of our existing decorative supply. That will be for the defense council to decide, as they are the new owners—if they accept, of course.”
A comm from Frado confirmed the council’s willingness to accept the trade. Two days later, the first of the microwave reflectors emerged from assembly. Tests confirmed manufacturing shortfalls. Adjustments were made. Four days after its start, the first viable reflector emerged. Within a week, the line was putting out twenty-four per day.
Back on Earth, two factories were constructed in the valley near the cave. One produced klystrons, the other waveguides. A month after the first new reflectors had arrived, the second microwave station was up and running. The month following, the construction pace had quickened to five per day. Crews were trained in the operation and minimal maintenance. A friendly-fire application was developed and loaded into the control software. The number of microwave ground stations soon topped a hundred.
Jeff joined Mace on the front porch of the gift shop. “We’ll have all the initial ground sites complete in three weeks’ time. Jasper’s teams are relentless workers. Without their expertise, we’d probably still be building the first one.”
Mace said, “He wants to split the building of the space-based systems between here and Divinia. His spies are telling him the Union may be thinking of moving against him.”
Johnny replied, “I might have to agree with him. We’ll have the basis f
or protecting Earth in a few weeks. If he loses Divinia we may lose him and his fleet. I can see him bent on retribution no matter the cost. I know I make jokes about it, but I think he feels responsible for the Targarians now. He’s actually a pretty good king.”
Mace stroked his long black beard. “We had an agreement, but I have no problem putting it to a vote.”
Jasper came over the comm. “Greetings, Earthlings. I come bearing gifts. I’ll be on the ground in five minutes or so. Those battlesuits you wanted… they’re here. I went with a bronze color. They each have a series of silver stars that run across the shoulders and down each arm. They look sharp.
“And they all have the built in holo-projectors. You can surround yourself with any image you want, out to almost a meter from the suit itself. You want to be a rock? Blam! To the casual observer, you look like a rock. Want to be a bear? Be a bear. Or in Johnny’s case, be an ape-man. I’ve preloaded a couple dozen images into each suit. You can use the scanners on your arm pads to add more. I think you’ll have a lot of fun just playing with them. I practically wore myself out horsing around when I first got it back.”
Johnny grinned. “I can’t wait!”
The Revelation hovered just above the cave. Jasper walked down the long ramp with a horde of workers following. The suits were distributed. Within ten minutes, five bears could be seen facing off against a group of gorillas, while a semblance of rocks moved around them.
Mace said, “This is just crazy. I can’t believe what I’m seeing now.”
Jasper replied, “Turn on your sensors and feed the output to your helmet display. You can adjust the mix to show what’s real and what’s projected. I have the projection set at 40 percent so it looks more like a ghosted image surrounding the wearer, which is what it is.”
Mace made the adjustment. “Now, that is a cool feature. What’s to stop any enemy from using their sensors?”
Jasper shrugged. “Nothing. Our advantage is that nobody walks around with those sensors running. And if they are, they won’t likely be set to a mix. Unless word gets out, we could really mess with some of these little pukes. Turn your sensor off and check this one out.”
Mace complied. Standing two meters in front of him, the image of Jasper Collins in his battlesuit turned into an almost three meter tall, slimy green alien covered with skulls. Worms crawled in and out of the skulls’ eye sockets in an endless parade of gruesomeness.
Mace laughed. “Now that is just messed up. If I saw that coming down a corridor at me, I’d definitely be turning to run.”
Jasper flipped the image off. “The only limit to this thing is your imagination. You dream it up, model it, upload it to the projector storage, and you can be just about whatever you want.”
“Was this a Targarian technology?” asked Mace.
Jasper shook his head. “They have the holo-projectors all over the ship and on our arm pads. I just thought it would be fun to project something other than myself around this suit. I had my engineers put it together and here we are, fresh out of my imagination.”
Mace said, “Imagine outfitting your armies with this tech. You could disguise them all as Human. Your enemies would scatter.”
Jasper grinned. “That thought hadn’t occurred to me. I’ll have to ponder that for a bit. Our problem with this is, the more it’s used the more chance it becomes useless. Which reminds me. We need to tell everyone not to make mention of this or to show it off. This is for during a battle only, and should only be used when preapproved.”
Jasper opened a comm to the others at the cave. “Listen up. While this tech is fun and cool and entertaining, we need to protect it as one of our most vital secrets. So I’ll ask that you all turn those projectors off and reassemble here.”
The group of fifteen who had received the suits gathered around. “Mace and I were just discussing this suit and its possible uses. I just wanted to let you all know that it can be defeated, and easily so. Going forward, you will only make use of this option when in a training exercise, or during battle when authorized. This technology could provide us with an extreme advantage, and we need to take all possible steps to protect it.
“So from now on, it will only be used under the two conditions I just spoke of. And it’s not to be mentioned to any other team members. Even if they get a suit with the tech embedded, we don’t want them to know until we feel it’s the right time. So you dozen or so here, consider yourselves the beta testers for a top secret program. Don’t tell your spouses, or anyone else. Tretcher, that goes for you too. Jane doesn’t know about this until Mace and I decide she does. Got it?”
Johnny nodded. “I got it. You had to go and take the fun out of it, didn’t you.”
Jasper replied, “I’m the king. That’s what I do.”
Jane leaned out the window as she, Tres, and Vanessa pulled up in mace’s old Jeep. “New suits?”
Johnny replied, “With the built in—”
Jasper yelled, “Ack!”
Johnny chuckled. “I was going to say ‘with the built in exosuits.”
Jasper scowled.
Johnny turned back, helping Jane out of the vehicle. “It has a nice feel to it. And there’s nothing to get caught on like the exosuit.”
Jane asked, “They all look the same? No insignias or names or anything?”
Jasper shook his head. “Those will be programmed into your helmet display. You’ll of course know the ape-man by his size, but with your helmet on you’ll see his name floating in front of his torso.”
Jane nodded. “These have the projectors?”
Jasper replied, “That tech is under development. I’ll let you know when it’s ready. See Pablo over there for your suit.”
Jane looked over toward the porch. “Pablo?”
Jasper pointed. “The one on the steps. His name is Ikin-ninni… o’something or another. So I call him Pablo. He don’t care.”
Jasper turned back to Mace. “I wanted to talk about the space-based microwaves. As I said, I think we should split produced units between here and Divinia.”
Mace replied, “I’m actually in agreement with you, but we need to put this to a vote.”
“As long as you sell that point, I have no problem with it. What’d you say we were producing? Six units a day?”
Mace nodded. “Currently. I was planning another run to 55 Cancri e for more resources.”
“What’s out there?”
“Diamond. And lots of it. That’s why we asked about the mining gear. And it’s what we traded to Frado to get that factory operational. I was thinking, if we go back for another load, we might be able to get Frado to up his production.”
Jasper smiled. “When do we leave?”
Mace looked up in thought. “I suppose there’s nothing stopping us right now.”
Mace turned toward Johnny and Jane. “I’m taking Jasper on a run for more diamond. You two are in charge until I get back. We’re gonna see if we can get Mr. Knuttin to increase production.”
Jane asked, “And why didn’t you ask him this before?”
Mace shrugged. “I don’t know, because I’m a sergeant and not a king?”
Johnny chuckled. “We’ve got you covered.”
The Revelation slowly lifted up through the atmosphere. A portal was opened to the Cancri system and the mega-warship passed through. The same mine was selected and shuttles with grapples were used to haul in the bounty, twenty-six tons in all. A new portal to the Canto system was opened. Minutes later, the Revelation settled in over the spaceport at Travis Forks.
A comm came through from Frado Knuttin. “Mr. Hardy, has there been a problem?”
Mace replied, “No, production has been good, and we’re close to having our initial systems all up and online.”
Frado smiled. “Excellent news. You must have a reason for contacting me. Is there something else I can do for you? Those diamonds by the way, the council ground them all for industrial use. I wouldn’t suppose you could get more coul
d you? The United Front has many wealthy citizens.”
Mace nodded. “Actually, that’s one of the things I came to talk to you about. What would it take you to triple the output of that reflector factory?”
Frado pulled back. “Triple?”
“Yep. My friend here is in need of building defense stations for his home world as well. If that all works out, he has another sixteen colonies that he might want to protect. How much of that diamond would you want in exchange for tripling the current production run on the same schedule?”
Frado paced back and forth in front of his comm camera. “I was not expecting this offer, Mr. Hardy.”
“Just throw a number out as a starting point. We’ll work from there.”
Frado rubbed his chin. “Five… no, six… six tons?”
Mace smiled. “Let’s step up the game. We’re currently expecting another seven thousand units. Would it be possible to bump that number to say… forty thousand? With the same schedule?”
Frado opened his eyes wide. “My … that’s a significant increase.”
Mace nodded. “It is. But I have a load of diamond here that says you can do it.”
Frado continued his pacing. “Fifteen tons?”
Mace grinned. “You make it fifty thousand and I can give you twenty-six tons. Some pieces as large as a hundred kilograms.”
Frado stopped. “My… if you can deliver the diamond as you say, I can make the fifty-thousand-unit goal happen.”
Mace patted Jasper on the shoulder. “King Collins, I’d say you just hit the jackpot. Mr. Knuttin, I have the diamond load here for you right now. I’ll even deliver it up front, if you promise to do your best to meet our goal.”
Frado returned a grin of his own. “You might have just increased my wealth by 15 percent with a single transaction, Mr. Hardy. I am brimming with gratitude at the moment.”
Mace bowed. “I hope to have continued profitable deals with you, Mr. Knuttin. You’ve been a pleasure to work with.”
Frado returned the bow. “The pleasure is mine, Mr. Hardy. I will have my staff get to work on the updates immediately.”
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