They Said It Would Be Easy (April Book 7)

by Mackey Chandler

  They Said it would be Easy

  Seventh Book in the April series

  Mackey Chandler

  Chapter 1

  The board, What's Happening, had grown to be a community newsletter similar to a small town newspaper. April was reasonably sure ex-President Martha Wiggen was the site's publisher. The idea of just asking her made April uncomfortable. She noticed that there was still nothing in the header to indicate it was published for Home. It was only when you read past the first few pages you started to see notices for club meetings and ads for businesses that made you realize where it was based. Wiggen still didn't sign it as owner or editor. If she wanted anonymity, pressing her would be rude. It probably wasn't worth the aggravation for Wiggen to take credit. There was such a polarization of political thought in North America that some people would automatically hate anything connected to her.

  After thinking on it a moment April decided the other side of the coin was true too. There were undoubtedly still many in North America who would listen to anything Wiggen said because of her previous office and associations. Which could be worse for her, because the current military government might see it as an attempt to rejoin public life. That would invite all sorts of trouble.

  Wiggen was firmly retired and had no desire to live on Earth again. April had heard her make quite a few private statements on several occasions, that left no doubt in April's mind of her resolve to make a permanent home here. Others might not be so sure. April wondered how many people found the site and read it on Earth, and if it was blocked in many countries?

  The board had a little political commentary by named writers. All fairly mild stuff really, comments about Assembly votes and opinions on the actions of other space habitats. There wasn't much about Earth politics, USNA or others. That was probably for the best since the oddest things seemed to unexpectedly upset the Earthies.

  What's Happening had a number of regular contributors, although none of them wrote daily yet. April had been surprised at first by some of the community news and club meetings posted. She watch with interest as the list grew to include things like an Elks club, USNA Veterans of Foreign Wars, chess club, Italian club, community help and charity groups, ham radio club, several religious groups, and a bridge club. The gossip in which some other boards specialized was absent. April saw that as a plus.

  The currently dated edition listed two births and an Earth-side death of a resident's father, but no weddings. The classified ads were similarly growing week by week in both number and breadth. They featured a lot of courses of instruction, such as a cooking class that met weekly with a limit of six students, vacuum suit safety and procedures, a mixed martial arts class, video cinematography, a piano teacher offering lessons at three skill levels, technical and literary writing, dance, computer languages and programming, drawing, water color instruction, and origami.

  There were people seeking roommates or closer relationships, others offering to share sleeping quarters for shifts alternating with theirs. There was a fellow offering marriage in very detailed terms. There was a variety of storage both short and long term as well as household goods such as furniture, cookware, serving items and decorative items ranging from wall art to sculpture and rugs. Items of clothing, shoes and jewelry and small personal electronics were common. Anything, no matter how small, seemed to be worth selling. That wasn't surprising because anything lifted to orbit or higher carried the price of shipping to lift it. Even cuttings from plants were offered by those who had them.

  On the other end of the spectrum were a few ads for residential cubic at prices that went into eight digits in USNA or Aussie dollars. There was one orbit to orbit spacecraft listed, and a few rather expensive things like a complete detached Mitsubishi airlock assembly, a five axis metal and ceramic sintering printer, and a complete millimeter radar unit with matching ballistic computer.

  Perhaps the oddest offering was an ultra-lightweight road bicycle with a bucky foam filled aluminum steel frame, carbon disk wheels, and graphene lined high pressure tires. It had electric shifting hubs, a powered active suspension, and two wheel drive. The saddle was covered with genuine leather, and it was painted Blazing Blue Metal Flake. April tried to imagine why anyone would pay to lift a bicycle to Home even if it did weigh slightly less than two kilograms. The tool kit for it weighed more. Had the owner thought he could ride it at high speed through the corridors? Sometimes people amazed April.

  The ad for Cindy and Frank's Tailoring and Design featured a drawing by Lindsey Pennington. Chances were Lindsey would be getting messages asking to buy the original art. She was doing very well as an artist. Her work was in demand and she received commissions. She'd been expanding her subject matter beyond fashion and portraiture.

  April was happy to see Lindsey didn't just drop the tailor shop when she had better paying work. Cindy and Frank gave Lindsey her start. She'd been more interested in fashion design when she started working for the couple. April's buddy Cheesy had his usual small ad for his burger place outside spin on ISSII. April wondered how hard it had been for him to get supplies with the mess shipping had been from Earth. There wasn't a source of ground beef off Earth. There probably wouldn't be for a long time.

  There was some financial analysis by Aaron Holtz, a former fund manager who retired to Home. He weighed the relative damage the flu epidemic had done to Earth, and predicted who would recover first in various industries and regions. Aaron estimated that it would take three to four years for shipping traffic to recover to the pre-epidemic levels, but said a large part of the delay would not be recovering lift capacity. Rather it was because off Earth businesses, unable to buy from their usual sources, made provisions to manufacture things on their own. Once the investment was made some of that would become permanent, even after Earth supply was restored.

  April thought about that a bit. Her close friend and ally Heather on the moon said they were going to be shipping salad greens to Home within a couple weeks. The lunar greens would be slightly cheaper than produce from Earth, because of lower shipping costs. The vegetables had to go as filler freight but that was fine, because there was enough lunar traffic now to need light filler items. There wouldn't be lettuce at first. They would be sending beet and dandelion greens first and spinach even before lettuce, but when the people who had been some months with almost no fresh greens or fruit they weren't going to be picky about getting their favorite kinds.

  April remembered a time, not that long ago, when Jeff spent a big chunk of all their cash, to buy a large piece of steel for the plasma engine on their lander. It was a special high strength tool steel and had been very heavy and expensive to ship to orbit. Now he had a Central company on the moon making such parts from local materials. In fact the new parts were lighter than the original ones, that had been machined from a solid billet. The people at Central had gradually improved the density of laser sintering shapes in vacuum from around 99.9% to better than 99.99%. The sintered pieces also had a layered micro-grain structure that was actually more resistant to cracks propagating. The heat treatment was part of the process too, and very even.

  The more April thought about it, the more she decided Holtz was if anything underestimating the effect that being cut off from Earth supply would have on Home's independence. She knew of several products and services in the planning stage that weren't public knowledge, which would displace Earth made goods.

  The site featured an abbreviated market report for those who had a casual interest. More a discussion than report really, lacking extensive charting and tables. Not all the traditional Earth markets were back functioning yet, some were trading but with limits. Hong Kong and
Sydney both had limited trading of equities. Some of the stocks were very speculative because one had to wonder which of the companies would recover to have any value in a year or two, although some of the retail companies had significant assets like real estate.

  There were also some limited commodity quotes for the Australian/Far East market and some discussion of what real world currency swaps were possible. Such an open discussion would probably be condemned as encouraging black market trading on Earth, since they were not at official rates.

  Today the Australian dollar was trading for two dollars and thirty one cents USNA, at par to the Tongan Pa'anga, both officially and in reality. The Aussie dollar was going for four point seventeen EuroMarks in Australia and more elsewhere. It surprised April to see One Gold Solar with the ☼ symbol listed as trading for 25.86K AUS$. Gold wasn't trading freely anywhere on Earth as far as April was aware. Hong Kong always published a price, but without any data on trading volume. The fact the 'price' stayed the same for days at a time suggested the market was mighty thin. April wasn't sure if there was a real official gold price right now or if the Solar quote was the closest thing. The New York and London fix hadn't been published since deep in the middle of the flu epidemic. April had no idea at all what the value of Platinum Solars might be. She had to wonder what those quotes actually meant, as far as the buying power of her Solars. April would have to ask Jeff what his people were saying about prices on Earth.

  Pure water at Home for immediate delivery was 40.17 AUS$ the liter. Cometary water at Home for six month delivery was 17.50 AUS the liter. That reflected some certainty for both the first snowball that was almost back to Home and the follow on one her friend Barak was helping bring in. She was glad investors were that confident in its safe arrival, after all the problems the expedition had encountered. There hadn't been any public discussion about that, and she wasn't about to leak it. But she was sure the people who had a direct interest all knew. The snowball was basically being brought in by remote instructions because they'd lost half the crew and didn't have a fully qualified command pilot. April was much more concerned with Barak than the price of water. Water you could recycle. Friends were dearer.

  Iron granules of meteoric composition screened for sintering stock were 10 AUS$ the kilogram FOB Central on the moon. Heather had privately told her that in another month she'd be selling carbon dioxide and elemental carbon, but hadn't named any prices. On a longer timeline, Heather also intended to market some licensed yeast based foods and pure alcohol, the flavoring, if any, being your problem.

  April hadn't seen real coffee offered at any price for several weeks and the last time it was listed in the classifieds it was four kilograms offered for two tenths of a Solar. April wasn't sure she could actually enjoy a cup at that price, and stop thinking about what it cost.

  Thanks to Jeff advising her to dump all her EuroMarks and USNA dollars and buy goods back at the start of the flu epidemic on Earth she still had a couple bags of coffee beans. She was rationing her hoard of coffee to stretch it out and couldn't imagine selling it at any price. It seemed like a crazy dream that they used to have unlimited coffee from concentrate in the cafeteria, although it had only been gone a few months now. They had some freeze dried, but it wasn't the same.

  Everybody missed fresh fruit and vegetables. Enough freeze dried and frozen got through to add a little variety but fresh stuff was really just a taste or garnish. Meat for soup or stew was served at the cafeteria a couple days a week but there had been no premium cuts for grilling for a couple of months. Last week they'd gotten some bacon and it was rationed out two slices to a customer for breakfast and used to season freeze dried green beans and bean soup.

  They had some limited amounts of fruit and decent meat the last week. It situation was finally improving. But it would be awhile before there was a big variety again, and it didn't run out between shuttle runs.

  It could have been much worse. If the flu epidemic on Earth had been twice as bad or if there had been war outside of China, the people of Home and other spacers might have actually starved instead of just suffering for variety. There was plenty of oatmeal and pancakes for breakfast and people were eating a lot more bread and soups than would have been their choice, but they had enough bare calories.

  April was heavily gene modified and was glad now that she'd cut back her calories severely right at the start of the supply crisis, before things got scarce. She'd been pretty miserable and grouchy for a week, but the low calorie diet reset her gene-mod-boosted metabolism so she could function on about twelve hundred calories a day. She missed eating more and didn't have as much energy, but it would have looked terrible and selfish to keep eating four or five times what she needed to survive.

  Her employee Gunny wasn't as heavily gene modified as April, and she'd seen him grow thinner eating twice what she did, but he was a huge fellow. Gunny had the additional stress of recovering from the loss of a hand he's suffered on an Earth mission. The itching and false sensations from forcing it to grow back had driven him crazy. When the protective shell and growth promoting electrodes were removed the hand had the same pasty grey appearance as when someone had a cast removed. He wore a protective glove over the delicate skin for now, increasing the time without it each day. He'd cut back on his usual training and exercise while healing and on short rations, which was bad for a security professional. About all he was doing right now was squeezing an exercise ball he carried everywhere to build up his new hand. He'd have to play catch-up when they had good supply again.

  Her friend and business partner Jeff told April a few days ago that they should start seeing a sharp improvement in fresh goods and low priority freight in about six months. They might even start up standby freight again by then. Jeff based his predictions on the orders he was seeing for aerospace components and perishables to support renewed shuttle traffic. April was aiming at making her coffee last a year, because she suspected it was further down the priority list than if she was making the list. She wasn't about to use it up faster until she actually saw new stock delivered.

  Gunny had registered no complaints about only having two small cups of coffee a day. That meant splitting a half pot with her from their machine at home. He also dumped the used grounds in a flask and let it sit all day to extract another two cups later. April tried a cup of it once but it wasn't anywhere near as good as the fresh stuff made properly. On the other hand Jon, head of security, had bummed a cup of the weak brew one evening and had only praise for it. But he also hadn't had any real coffee for weeks.

  April always took their spent grounds to the cafeteria to be added to the organic waste the kitchen dried and sold to Central for the carbon content. She didn't get paid anything for it, but it helped keep her cafeteria subscription price down and her mother had always taught her to avoid waste. The station also sold its environmental waste, but it took more processing than the kitchen slops and paid less, so it made sense not to flush the grounds down the drain. If they got an efficient lunar trade going both ways with little loss, that would be great, because it cut their dependence on Earth. Right now everybody keenly saw the need to be independent of Earth supply, since their vulnerability had been so rudely demonstrated to them.

  April now realized what an easy childhood she'd enjoyed, maybe not normal, but without want. She grew up with her own tiny room, and a bathroom built as an integral shower stall, like a travel trailer would have on Earth. Her dad was station manager for Mitsubishi with a generous housing allowance and her grandfather had helped build the habitat. Her grandpa, Happy, put all his savings and the considerable salary of a beam dog into cubic. It had been an excellent investment. Then with that pay-off, he'd gotten in on the first asteroid capture mission. That voyage successfully returned a small metallic Earth crosser to be mined. The Rock, as everyone called it, was only a couple hundred thousand tons, but as a result of saving the expense of lifting all those tons from Earth a vast fortune was created in cheap accessible materia
ls. That opened the door for a big expansion in LEO building.

  That was the point at which things had gotten much less carefree. The Rock was just too much temptation. A few billion dollars worth of metal, held by a small number of owners, with dubious political clout, was an easy target. Coming at a time of economic turn-down it was an easy political decision to nationalize it without compensation. That was plain theft in the owners eyes.

  April and her friends Jeff and Heather were terrified they'd be ripped from the only home they'd known. Their parents and friends were likely to be displaced and impoverished by the process of stealing The Rock. New people would be brought in to replace the angry former owners, and they'd be forced to move back to the Slum Ball below, where they couldn't easily make trouble. The three conspired to avoid that at all costs.

  Like most huge shifts in history Home rebelling from the United States of North America was the sum of many small actions. But April and her friends had anticipated those actions and helping nudge them the right way. They had huge allies in both bumbling government stupidity and the independent nature of the population who sought to live away from Earth on Mitsubishi 3.

  The USNA greatly underestimated the value of the small lead in technology the habitat and people on the moon had over Earth. The various Earth powers also used the cover of the conflict with the habitat to destroy each other's ships and satellites. They did near as much damage to each other in the first few days of the conflict as the spacers inflicted. When the rebellious faction that would form Home bombarded ship-building assets on the ground, and started seriously hurting the USNA, they had to sue for peace. It was an uneasy peace the USNA didn't honestly keep, and eventually Home had to leave Low Earth Orbit to avoid constant sniping and assume a safer halo orbit around L2 beyond the moon.

  Even after relocating, Earth powers tried to assert themselves over Home again, using old agencies and agreements over the allotment of satellite orbits. Home had to set a doctrine of no armed Earth ships beyond L1. It required a battle to establish that limit, and Central on the moon also took damage in siding with Home to draw that line. April had hopes after that there would be a little breather in their history with peace and no drama after all that, but then somebody unleashed a gene-engineered flu virus on Earth that threatened anybody with LET – life extension therapy.