by John Ringo
“Six hundred and ninety-three meters from where it was when we were given the vector,” Dana said. “Antispinward since it was apparently one of those weird rocks that’s spinning in the wrong direction and we’re... here.”
“Here” was a collection of rocks, small asteroids or planetismals, that were, for space, remarkably close together. The remains of an earlier Aten mining project, the rocks were the space mining equivalent of furnace slag. They were mostly composed of silica and, strangely from an Earth perspective, iron. And had at one point been nearly atomic level. Since the mining project shut down they had been slowly pulled together from their own microgravity. As the boat approached, one of them made contact with another, turning both back to dust. Most were the size of a small tract house. Some were smaller. There was dust, for that matter, and probably thousands of micrometeors.
“We’re going there?” Angelito said.
“We’re going in there,” Dana answered, picking an open spot between two of the bigger rocks.
The rocks were moving in multiple vectors from their point of view. They were moving to spinward as well as “down” in relation to the elliptical plane. Most had some rotation around others. Furthermore, they were doing so at different velocities and had a slight approach to each other. Smaller rocks were circling them like moons, occasionally filling the slot between the two and just as occasionally colliding with each other, then bouncing off randomly.
It was, in other words, complete chaos. For all practical purposes it was the sort of “asteroid belt” you saw in bad science fiction movies.
Dana shot the gap, a loud bang! coming from forward as one of the micrometeorites hit the screens, then flipped and applied power to swing around the sunward rock and snake through three more passages. There were more bangs and thumps as they shattered fist-sized and smaller rocks into dust.
“The screens take up almost as much power as the lasers,” Dana said, yawing around the only rock that was significantly larger than the shuttle. “Minor masses that are below their threshold are not a problem or we couldn’t work the scrapyard at all. But if the mass you hit is similar to your own, either due to relative approach velocity or static mass of the object, your deceleration on impact exceeds the ability of the inertial compensators and you turn into goo. And wreck the shuttle, which would be the real bitch. Or, in the words of the manual: Intercepting a gravitic-engined vessel at any velocity and vector other than its own turns it into an unguided kinetic-energy weapon of somewhat lesser density, but the same vector and mass.”
“Please just concentrate on flying,” Angelito squeaked.
“This is a piece of cake,” Dana said, yawning theatrically.
Finally she cleared the mass of debris and headed back to the formation.
“That doesn’t even go in my log since it was less than forty-five minutes,” Dana said, unstrapping. “Your conn, Coxswain. Oh,” she added, hitting a control and bringing up the default screen layout. “I figure you’d want your screens configured back.”
“Thank you,” Angelito said thoughtfully.
“Space is a very big place,” Dana said. “But crowded is a relative term. It’s a matter of velocity, maneuvering and size. If you’re in a spacecraft going near the speed of light and you pass through the solar system, you’re going to hit all sorts of stuff, like, say, planets, no matter how well you maneuver. On the other hand, your comparative mass, if you’re near the speed of light, means that the planets puff into dust rather than your ship.
“If you’re going slow through vast areas that are fairly clear, and Athena’s been steering us away from stuff like that scrap and we’re going damn slow, it’s pretty empty. If you’re working the scrapyard, no matter how slow you’re going it’s crowded as hell. And most of the stuff has more relative velocity than those rocks and most of the stuff is massier and more solid. So, CN Mendoza, if you found that a tad exciting you don’t want to work the scrapyard.”
“So the training was that we’re not ready to do more work so Apollo can make another billion dollars?” Mendoza said.
“Working the scrapyard pays off dividends to more than just Apollo,” Dana said. “For one thing, it’s one hell of a navigational hazard that will keep spreading out and making stuff like that end up all over the system. Two, it’s very useable scrap for the fabbers to make, oh, missiles and boats like this. Three, it’s damned good training and Apollo pays the Navy for our time. The fact that you’re not working the scrapyard is, seen one way, an insult, CN Mendoza, or, seen another, a rational appreciation of your space skills. The last, and honestly stupidest, way to see it is as ‘we’re glad we’re not making money for Apollo.’ As to your skills, CN Mendoza, I checked your flight records against other records and as far as I can tell, CN Mendoza, with the exception of your first week after arrival and this last week you have had only two hours in the simulator and less than nine in boats, period. So, technically, you’re unqualified as a coxswain.”
“I see,” Mendoza said tightly.
“Which also explains why you didn’t fly the Wolf mission,” Dana said.
“And not because you’re in a relationship with Tyler Vernon?” Mendoza asked.
“And because, for various reasons, Tyler Vernon asked me to fly,” Dana said. “And I was given the choice of who among the junior coxswains was to take the other boat. I chose Benito because while I think he’s personally a pig, he’s a good driver.”
“And I’m not,” Mendoza said.
“How could you be?” Dana asked, exasperated. “There are three requirements for being a good driver of anything from a horse to a ship. Training, experience and talent. You had the basics of training but you lose that if you don’t practice it and keep current. This isn’t a horse or even a car. You have to do computations for three-dimensional vectors on a constant basis. That takes not only knowing the physics, you have to be adept at doing them. You have to learn the tricks and practice them. You get all of that from, and this is an important point so please listen to me, experience, CN. Forget that you were playing Halo and going to parties when you were supposedly logged into the simulator, you should have been asking for more simulator time. And, frankly, you should have been out in boats every moment you weren’t on the simulator. That’s not your fault, it’s engineering’s and command’s. I don’t even know if you have talent. I haven’t seen you do anything that was actually hard flying and that is where the talent part comes in. After training and experience, then you find out if you’re talented. If you’re not, you can still be a coxswain. You’re just not superb. Doesn’t matter. Navy doesn’t need superb coxswains. Navy needs trained and experienced ones.”
“And what the Navy wants the Navy gets?” Mendoza asked.
“What the Navy wants is what the solar system needs” Dana said, sighing. “I’m not sure that’s getting through the cultural filters, though. But, I mean, you know you have to practice to be able to drive a car or ride a horse, right? These things are ten times tougher.”
“I drive a car just fine, thank you,” Angelito said. “As to horses, I am not a great son.”
“Translation issue,” Dana said. “Or do you mean you don’t ride horses because you aren’t a great son to your family?”
“I mean I am not the son of a...” Angelito stopped and thought about it. “I would say it in Spanish as a great man. But that comes out simply as great man.”
“Yeah,” Dana said. “You mean your dad’s not a big guy in your government?”
“No,” Angelito said, shrugging. “He is a senior official with the Ecuadorean military. But we are not... We do not live in the great house with the thousands of adoring peasants bowing at our feet.”
“You are.. .joking, right?” Dana said.
“Exaggerating a bit,” Angelito admitted. “But only a bit. Do you know why Palencia and Benito do not get along?”
“Chilean and Argentinean?” Dana asked.
“That is part of it,” Mendoza replied
. “But the greater part is... cultural. And class. And Palencia is all about whether you are of the proper class. And to him that means a very small and distinct group. My father, for example, is not of that class and therefore nor am I. Beni’s great grandfather was a stevedore. Benito’s grandfather became rich through simple trade. Dockyard work, as a matter of fact, and he started as a stevedore as well.
“He used his connections to ensure that one of his sons became an officer in the Navy and later an admiral. Oh, don’t get me wrong, Admiral Benito is a fine man and a good commander. But he, too, has had to struggle against the fact that his father was a merchant. You in America might call it ‘new rich’ but you really can’t quite grasp it. Palencia’s family came from the silver Argentina was named after. The family derives from Spanish nobility. They own a huge expanse of the pampas, still, and they are very much treated as nobility upon their lands. Many of the farmers, especially the older ones, do literally bow as they pass. That is what he means by class.”
“That sort of makes sense,” Dana said. “And makes more sense of Palencia, that’s for sure. I’m related to the last king of Ireland on my mother’s side. Does that help?” she asked, chuckling.
“If he was polite he would say ‘Of course,’” Mendoza said. “If he was being impolite he’d mention that he is, in fact, closely related to the current king of Spain and therefore half the children on his father’s lands are.”
“He’s certainly shaping up lately,” Dana said, mulling that one.
“Being told that all of our countries are about to be terminated from the Alliance for failure to meet standards might have something to do with that,” Mendoza said. “It has, you understand, put a bit of habañero in our willingness to comply.”
“What?” Dana said. “You’re serious?”
“I assumed you knew,” Mendoza said, uncomfortably. “I would appreciate you not spreading it around. Amazingly it has not been picked up by the news media. But with your relationship with Vernon I’d assumed—”
“My relationship with Tyler Vernon is... not of that sort,” Dana said. “And be aware that the relationship is very much... I’m trying to think of the word.”
“May-December?” Mendoza said.
“That’s a phrase,” Dana snarled. “And the opposite of what it implies. Something about philosophical or something. We’re friends. Just friends.”
“Platonic,” Angelito said.
“Yeah,” Dana replied. “That!”
“I appear to know your own language better than you,” Angelito said.
“If that’s a comment on the American educational system,” Dana said, “no comment. I still can do your job better than you can and mine as well. I am woman, hear me roar.”
“Women are a very major part of...” Angelito said, then paused. “I’m getting a really large radar return...”
“That’s because we’re here,” Dana said, slewing one of the cameras and putting it on the main screen.
“That is...” Angelito said, then considered his instruments. “I thought these mirrors were small!”
Perspective is very difficult to determine in space. But when something is still five hundred kilometers away and perceptible with the naked eye—and the viewscreen was set to zero magnification—it means it is either very large or very bright.
VLA Packet Twenty-six was both.
“The first series was,” Dana said. “SAPL finally figured out what any woman knows: Bigger really is better. Up to a point. I think they finally took down the five hundred kilometer mirror—”
“Five hundred kilometers!”
“I did not misspeak,” Dana said. “We ran a team out here one time to help move it. The joke was ‘how do you tell the difference between a mirror and a light-sail?’”
“Okay, how do you tell the difference between a mirror and a light-sail?” Angelito asked, still boggling over the VLA packet. Especially since the closer they got, the more mirrors he could pick out. They just went on and on.
“The logical answer is if you have to apply noticeable thrust to correct for the solar wind effects,” Dana said. “In Mr. Vernon’s case, the answer is ‘if a planet can be moved out of its orbit by the solar wind effects’”
Angelito laughed hard at that but there was a slightly hysterical edge to it.
“There are... so many...” He paused and leaned forward then brought up the view on one of his screens and zoomed in. “Are those...?”
“Paw tugs,” Dana said, nodding. The tiny dots were clustered to shadow-ward of the mirrors. “And that’s one of the Monkey mining control ships. I don’t think it’s the actual Monkey Business” She pulled up the ship’s registry. “Nope. That’s the Monkey Bread. Rangoran built to Glatun specs. That ship came out of the same shipyard as one of the Aggressors we captured. And two that the Troy cut in half.”
“Uh...” Angelito said, pulling up the same information. “How... where did you... ?”
“I happened to remember because I carried the Marine boarding party,” Dana said. “Second battle of Troy. And I was interested in the Aggressors. When I pulled up the information on the Aggressor I sort of found it amusing that one of the Apollo tugs was built in the same shipyards. The name sort of stuck in my head. Aruhop Shipyards. No, I am not Hop. Are you? Wasn’t just those three. Aruhop is one of the big Rangora shipyards. Does military and commercial. About half the E Eridani fleet was built there. Besides, I like monkey bread.”
“I don’t even know where to start,” Angelito said. “So I’m going to leave it.”
“Leave what?” Dana said, distantly.
“Leave off that while you didn’t know the word ‘platonic,’ you seem to be a walking encyclopedia of ship types and their construction.”
“It’s called ‘a broad base of functional knowledge,’” Dana said. “One of the standing requirements to get promoted. And as part of that I’m wondering when Raptor is going to tell us to start—”
“Formation, prepare for one hundred gravity decel burn,” Raptor commed. “Open formation. Rotate turn to decel on my mark...”
“And that answers that question,” Dana said.
* * * *
TWENTY-TWO
“This is...” Angelito said as they approached the target mirror.
The job was to pick up four mirrors and move them inward “merely” twice the distance from Earth to the moon. The problem being that the mirrors were two kilometers wide and, they had been told repeatedly, somewhat “fragile.” The grapnels had been installed with special rubber pads. She was still wondering if this was really going to work.
“Going to be interesting?” Dana said. “Think of it this way. If you break it, you and your family couldn’t pay for it in a couple of hundred years. Technically. The materials are worth a fortune. This one’s palladium backed for some reason. The actual manufacturing is cheap as dirt.
“Okay, Flight,” Dana commed. “We need the shuttles to approach to within half a meter of your mirror and hold. Then we engage the grapnels. Get everyone in position, first. Can I get a readback on that?”
While Raptor took a group of four shuttles from another division to hook up to another set of mirrors, Dana had been left in charge of “her” division for the evolution.
The mirrors were nothing more than thin discs of glass with a thin “shiny” backing. They looked more than “somewhat” fragile. Moving them was going to be... interesting. Docking to them was going to be interesting.
She hoped none of the flight realized that if they accidentally-on-purpose broke a mirror—which would only require deviating about three percent from their targeted vector—it was not going to look good on her resume.
“Twenty-One, approach to half meter and hold, aye.”
She waited for the readback and considered the vectors one more time. The mirror was remarkably stable for its size and the local solar wind conditions. Of course, that was why it had stabilization packs. Which would need to be turned off as soon a
s they engaged power. She checked the positioning of all the shuttles, then nodded.
“Engineers, on my mark you will engage grapnels to hard points. Grapnels’ power will be set to two percent of Earth’s gravity. Readback on that.”
“Two percent Earth gravity, aye,” Vila commed.
She set her own grapnels, then pulled up the readings on the other shuttles.
“Sans,” she commed on a private circuit. “Two percent, not one percent.”
“Roger, EM,” Sans commed back.
“Twenty-Two, restabilize,” Dana commed, rechecking positioning and settings of the grapnels. “You’re drifting.”
“Roger, EM,” Tarrago replied, correcting.
“And on my mark,” Dana commed. “Three ... two ... one ... engage.”
The mirrors weighed two hundred tons. A Myrmidon weighed sixty tons.