After five minutes of driving along the dead rolling road, they were coming up on another interchange. Lily announced, “I see five Iteeche about three kilometers away. We should be there shortly.”
“Very good, Lily.”
Six minutes later, they pulled to a stop next to a group of five Iteeche in brown jerkins and britches. All of them had a utility belt of one sort or another around their hips.
They went down on their knees and bowed their heads.
“How may we serve your Eminence?” the one with the most complex belt and the fewer large tools said.
“Lead us to the place where the rolling road has failed.”
“I am always happy to serve your Eminence,” the lead technician said as he and his team came to their feet.
The governor fell behind as Megan and Quinn were led over to the side of the road, then to a metal stairwell that took them down into a utility corridor. Off to Megan’s left was what looked like the cranky underbelly of the road. At least, there was a lot of heavy machinery and none of it was working.
“As you can see here,” the technician explained, “the rolling roads are not one single treadmill. Few treads are more than a kilometer long. Many, especially at junctions, are even shorter. It is at a junction where we have the problem.”
They walked through this service tunnel for about a quarter kilometer. Looking up, Megan could see daylight coming through some skylights where there wasn’t any road. Then, the orderly machinery became a disorganized mess.
“What happened here?” she asked.
“That spindle turns flanges. The spindle appears to have burned out when its lubricant failed and the entire spindle fell out of its place.”
“Can you replace the spindle? Are the flanges damaged as well?” Megan asked.
“The spindle and the flanges are the least of our problems,” Sak said. “It is the controller boards that the flanges hit when the spindle fell that has brought the roads to a halt. See?”
The spindle still lay where it had fallen. Flying off of it were flaps coated in hard rubber. Some of them looked scorched. All along the line of the spindle were burn marks.
Megan stepped close to one of the burned spots and found herself looking down at a square printed circuit board. Something like that only showed up in the History of Technology text books, and, likely, only on Santa Maria where things like this were still in use from the Times of Isolation.
She glanced up. Across the line in front of the fallen spindle there looked to be twenty or more of these burned out boards. Apparently, the flanges had flapped hard against the boards a few times and knocked off several transistors . . . if that was to be believed.
Megan, with Quinn looking over her shoulder, studied four of them that were in easy reach. The burn points were both the same yet different. Most had burned in three or four places. However, none had burned in the exact same place.
These circuit boards had found lots of different places to fail.
Even if we can find a way to scavenge different parts from different boards, we’ll have trouble matching them all up.
Megan doubted she’d find anyone skilled with a soldering iron. Most of those boards were just printed, if she remembered correctly.
“What spares do you have?” Megan asked the tech.
“Our inventory records say we should have forty of this version of the board.”
“It says so. What do you actually have?”
“The storage rack is empty. We have not a one.”
“And why would that be?” Megan asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Okay, let’s try that again, what other uses could that board be put to?”
“There are few places on the roads that these particular boards could be used. This is a junction where two roads are merging,” he said, then went on much slower. “However, these boards could be used in automated flying machines for their remote control.”
“As in drones spewing junk to blind our sensors in orbit?” Megan growled.
“Yes, sir.”
Clearly the Iteeche lacked a name for an in-charge woman, but that could wait for later.
“So, it’s likely that someone walked off with these boards during the recent unpleasantness and they did not enter their removal in your ordering system.”
The Iteeche gulped. “During the preparations for an invasion, anything that might be a weapon was requisitioned. Such requisitions were often informal.”
That closed that door and blew it up quite well. Okay.
“Can you order in replacement parts from another city?”
“I have sent requests to every city that uses rolling roads. All have declined to send me any. They all fear that if this is sabotage, they will be next. Also, I think some of them may have also had their supply expropriated. It was hard to tell from the different replies, but it would not surprise me.”
Megan walked up the belly of the road. A few hundred meters brought her to another spindle with its flanges and boards intact.
“Could you use these boards?”
“No. These boards control the inflow of a section going into the interchange. They are unique.”
“Unique? There have to be other interchanges.”
“Yes, sir. There are others. However, this is a very heavy-duty section of road. It controls the inflow of traffic. There are few examples of interchanges with traffic this heavy.”
“Still, there must be some nearly as heavy.”
“One or two. However, it is policy that we do not shuffle boards around from one location to another. Pulling a board, moving it, and reinstalling it could damage the board and destroying critical transportation items is a firing offense. Please understand, to lose one’s job can often lead to a person and any dependents being thrown out of their quarters and very likely starving to death in an alley.”
That was more information to pass along to Jacques. From the frozen look on Captain Sung’s face, it was news to her, too. So much for a social safety net among these fish.
“However,” Megan said, pointedly, “if you were ordered to take that risk and assured that any misstep would not be counted against you . . .?”
She looked around, the governor had not followed them below ground. He was still at the street level.
“Understand, there is a good reason for the policy,” Sak said. “Pulling boards is risky. Some boards have been seated so long that their connections have corroded. They will work fine for a long time if left in place. If they are moved, however . . .” Now it was the technician’s turn to leave his sentence hanging.
“For the purpose of conversation, where might you find a board to scavenge?”
“We have eight feeder lines into this main artery. I would go to either the last one or the first one. That would mean that one of the feeder lines would be disabled. Everyone north of that feeder line would also be left afoot.”
He paused, then added one more thought. “Remember, this is one of the most heavily traveled exchanges. It may well be that those boards can’t carry the load.”
“And if they can’t?”
“They could burn out quickly.”
“And would the system be any worse off?”
The Iteeche thought for a long moment. “No, not really.”
“Then we need to talk to your new governor.”
“I will listen. I hope you will talk.”
“Is there a problem?”
“We still have the stink of rebellion on us.”
“What was your attitude toward the rebellion?” Megan asked.
“Do I look like a clan lordling? I do my job. I live my own life. I have no interest in what those above my station do or don’t do.”
“Smart man,” Quinn said.
“Yeah,” Megan drawled.
They climbed back up into the light. The governor was now seated in his own limo, behind bulletproof glass. “What have you found? Sabotage?” he demanded after Megan approached h
im and he lowered the window
“There is no evidence either way,” Megan said, having to bend over to talk. She filled the governor in on the situation below. “So,” she said, finishing up, “We need to scavenge parts. That is against policy. I need for you to waive all punishments for those that work to move the boards from the northern most interchange to fix this one. Once it is rolling, all seven of the eight feeder roads should be back up and running.”
“However, moving a board could destroy it.”
“Yes.”
“And whoever sabotages it should be punished as a traitor.”
“They are not traitors, and they don’t intend to sabotage it. However, the boards are used and potentially could fail when we move them. We either risk moving them or the road stays dead.”
“I could order them to move the boards.”
“Without a promise that they won’t be punished, they are more likely to be nervous and make a mistake.”
“You are again trying to flood us with your human ways and customs.”
“And you are intent on starving your people. Your city is grinding to a standstill around this blockage. If you wish, I can return to Admiral Longknife and report this situation to her. Do you think the Planetary Overlord will respond to this report in the proper Iteeche way?”
Megan knew the proper Iteeche way probably involved loosing snakes and axes flashing in the sunlight.
If it was possible for an Iteeche to blanch, this guy did. Megan distinctly heard the guy gulp. Twice.
“There is no need to let this matter rise above our station,” the governor said, his words tumbling out of his mouth so fast that Lily’s translation fell behind.
“I shall grant advanced pardons and amnesties to all the craftsmen and laborers who participate in this effort. Everyone who successfully removes a board and carries it to its new place and installs it in working order shall receive authorization to become a chooser, even of choosing who swims in the mating pond with them. There will be a pension provided to raise the chosen to adulthood and a craft apprenticeship shall be opened to him. Thus I have spoken, and thus it shall be.”
“Lily, you have that recorded?”
“Done, Boss. I’ll have three copies printed off in the roadster and you can get the necessary signatures.”
34
Megan felt like she’d won another major victory for the Emperor . . . and for Human-Iteeche relations. Of course, she likely wouldn’t get much love from this city’s governor in the future, but she doubted the two of them had much of a future anyway.
Megan had done her negotiations bent over, talking into a limo window with the boss guy seated like his lordling self. Now she stood up and turned to Sak. “Please get a warrant from my vehicle,” she said, pointing at their temporary ride.
The Iteeche sent one of his team. All five of them seemed very shocked to find three pages of documents sitting on the seat of the roadster, but the junior Iteeche hoofed it back quickly to Sak, and he passed it along to Megan just as quickly.
Megan presented the agreement, pardons, amnesties, and rewards to the city governor for signing. This was one Iteeche that hadn’t learned to wear a stiff collar. From the looks of his vestigial gill slits, he was furious. Still, he had one of his flunkies produce a writing instrument, signed each of the copies with a flourish, and handed them back to Megan.
The human Navy lieutenant commander also signed the three copies, before handing one back to the governor, another to the tech, and the final to Captain Sung.
“Are we done here?” the governor snapped.
“I do believe so,” Megan said.
The limo drove off without another word from the big Iteeche lord. Apparently, his guard in the front seat knew his master’s wishes and told the driver to leave.
That left Megan standing by the curb.
“So,” she said to Sak, “who are your best men to do this work, and how do we get them some practice before they handled the really critical pieces.”
While Sak organized his work force, Megan put a call in to Kris Longknife. The admiral answered it immediately.
“How’s it going?”
“Not too bad,” Megan said and briefed her boss on her day.
“So you got it signed and copied,” Kris said at the end.
“Yes, ma’am. And ma’am, I’m going to be staying down here until this is all finished. I don’t trust this guy not to renege on this agreement.”
“He sounds like a real asshole,” Kris agreed.
“Could you send me down some clothes and maybe a meal or three? Quinn and I are in our dress whites and we’ll be working in a hard hat and overalls area.”
“I’ll see what I can do about getting you a Marine detail and a mobile command post. Maybe even a cook wagon.”
“Ma’am, the Iteeche around here are awfully thin. I think they’d have better luck handling this delicate work if their stomachs weren’t rubbing against their backbones.”
“It’s not just armies that move on their stomach. I concur. We’ll have a support staff down the next orbit. More the following one.”
“Much appreciated, Admiral. I don’t know why they call us folks ‘damn Longknifes’.”
“You are just catching me on a good day,” Kris said with a chuckle.
“Longknife 2, off.”
“Longknife 1, off.”
Megan went to let Sak in on the word that a nice, raw fish meal was on its way for his work crew. “Let me know how many are coming to dinner,” she said.
It took him a while to close his beak.
“Would you mind if I had one craftsman work each board? The next two in line could watch the first one work out the board or install it, then do it themselves.”
“And if something goes wrong?”
“We stop, figure out why it went belly up, then try it again.”
“If you lose too many boards . . .? Megan asked.
“Then we disable the feeder road across from that one and a quarter of this city is without food.”
“You do your best,” Megan said.
That afternoon, Sak had twenty-eight craftsmen in, each with a helper, and they examined their situation. They went a kilometer up the road to a joint between two sections and worked the boards loose from that one. They successfully removed 23 out of 24. The last one just kind of crumbled.
A check of the records showed that that particular board had already lasted twice its planned useful life. A new one was drawn from stores. That particular mod of the board they had spares of, so they could replace it.
“Do you have any idea how many ancient boards that we might be scavenging?” Megan asked Sak.
“I’m checking on that.”
The command center had arrived, but Megan had no time to change. As they were waiting for word back on the age of the boards they’d be trying to finagle out of their place, the cook wagon arrived. Megan offered the first seating to Sak and his crew.
Apparently, the meal provided was quite above what the workers were used to. Several of the smaller fish were still wiggling on their trays and the other fish were freshly filleted and wrapped in seaweed.
Megan and Quinn locked themselves in their command center and quickly changed from somewhat besmirched whites to blue ship suits and yellow hard hats.
When they returned in working clothes, they got a cheer from the gathered craftsmen. Oh, it was also likely a cheer for the meal.
The two Navy officers drew their meal from the Marine cooks. The Iteeche eyed their meatloaf, rice, and mix of corn and string beans, all dead, and blinked several times.
“Are you giving us a better meal than you are eating?”
“Likely,” Megan admitted. “We’re eating what all the troops are eating. The food we brought down for you was what we had in stores for any banquets we might have to throw for visiting Iteeche.”
“Who are you people?” the senior technician whispered.
“I serve Kris Longknife,�
�� Megan said. “I make things happen that she wants to happen. Your roads aren’t rolling. We saw this from orbit and asked about it, right, Quinn?”
“Yes. We keep track of things from orbit. No traffic on a major artery and we started asking questions. We have a major intelligence section in the part of our fleet that are Imperial Iteeche battlecruisers. They told us this was bad and here we are.”
“Direct from the Imperial Admiral of the First Order of Steel,” he whispered. “That someone that high would notice something this low.”
“That’s what we do, Sak. Just like I knew your people needed food to do their best on this tough assignment. If you’re a leader, you take care of those that make things happen.”
“I’m glad you’re here,” he said. “I’m glad you won your battle. I’m even more glad that you did not have to fight your way to city hall to replace our last governor. If you think the problem of this road breakdown is bad, imagine the entire city as rubble and fire.”
“That’s why we went into the bunker and dug out the Planetary Overlord. He was the rebel, not you.”
“I have been told since I was a youngling that you humans are murderous and dangerous and would destroy us if you could. Now? Now I am looking at a human and what I am seeing is nothing like what my chooser and his chooser told me.
“I’m glad we can be of service to you, and you can help us keep this planet working.”
“There are rumors that you intend to mine the sky?” one of the other technicians asked.
“We have brought an asteroid rich with iron, aluminum, copper, and other resources into your orbit. It will be a while, though, before those resources begin to show up down here.”
“Why?” Sak asked.
“We’re using the original production to build ships to extract more minerals from your asteroid field. There’s a wealth of resources out there. If we succeed in doing that, everything will change.”
“Change,” a young helper said. “You humans say change a lot. My chooser says change is horrible and hurts many Iteeche.”
“Look around you. Would you like to see change?” Megan asked.
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