by John Ringo
“That’s real crayon. We encourage the youngest children to draw on these because it’s a well-defined space. It keeps them from coloring on every wall they can find. Yes, I do mean encourage,” O’Reilly said. “This is when they’re too young to even begin the early headset exercises. We give them toy versions and encourage them to be interested in the colors of walls, because tuning the color of Galplas is a very early exercise. The children think of it a bit like playdough.”
“Galplas?” Stewart asked incredulously. He found it hard to think of the major GalTech construction material as a child’s toy. It was stronger than steel.
“Didn’t you ever wonder how a GalTech product was so comparatively cheap? And abundant?” the older man asked.
“Playdough,” Stewart repeated.
“That’s about it, yes. Primarily because if it goes wrong, it’s not a particularly high energy reaction,” Nathan said. “Ah, here we are.” He opened a very sturdy looking door that opened on to a bay about the size of a small airplane hangar. They were at the bottom, but stairs, ladders, and catwalks laced the walls, and a network of pipes hung suspended about four meters off the ground.
“The stairs and such are vertical exit routes in case the halogen foam system has to address a dangerous mistake. Here, we need these.” The priest reached out and took two pairs of safety glasses and two rubber aprons from the shelves beside the door.
“The room is large less because of need to build large things and more as part of the safety design for the pressure-venting system. We could, of course, disassemble part of the fire suppression system if we had something big to build, but for the foreseeable future, this is a training lab and large projects are beyond the scope of what we do. Beyond the scope of what we can do,” he admitted.
Stewart noticed that only about a quarter of the tanks, down on this end of the room, were in use. The others were empty. At half of the operational tanks, one or more human child was working under the direction of several Indowy. Indowy alone were running the rest of the operating tanks. It was the first time Stewart had ever seen a Sohon tank in real life, much less one in use. They didn’t look very impressive. Just big vats with people sitting around the edge, wired in. The headsets looked a lot like the headphones on personal stereo systems when he was a kid, other than having too many pads at seemingly random places on the head.
O’Reilly gestured to the empty end of the room, “The legacy of our internal divisions. We have more headsets and tanks than we have nannites to run in them. This is why I can tell you we’ll maintain operational capability after the evacuation. We’ve got idle tools to move out, even though the practitioners we have here and their own tools will go last. As part of healing the breach, we can count on enough nannites to restore any equipment we can save to operational status. Get the Tchpth to provide enough code keys for the generator, put some of the many refugees who are high level Sohon practitioners to work, and our capacities go way, way up.”
He nodded towards the children. “Those are our real treasures, right there. No politics can take them, and the Tchpth will provide them with enough nannites to operate in exchange for being allowed to observe their development. Human Sohon practitioners are our next baby step towards, if not independence, then comparable footing with the other races. I’m afraid that’s likely to take Galactic-level time, but we do what we can.”
“They’re talking,” Stewart said, feeling kind of stupid for saying it. “I thought they had to be deep into some kind of trance or something.”
“They do talk to the instructors sometimes, a little. It’s just that what they’re making right now isn’t particularly challenging.”
“Not that side,” a child of about ten yelled at a boy that was maybe a couple of years younger. “Put it over there, between the blue marks. Blue. See ’em?” The older child pointed to an area of the large tank he was operating and the smaller child obediently walked around the tank, appeared to find the right marks and began shaking something out of a plastic jar into the tank. Stewart couldn’t see what, as the child’s body was in the way and the plastic was dark brown.
“They still need reagents, of course, but mostly they’re putting the right things together in the right order, managing heat, moving things around and monitoring. You can’t see it, but the tanks have built-in heating and cooling coils, and one of the things an operator does is use the nannites to control membranes that keep the wrong things separated from each other, everything at the right temperature and pressure, do separations, that kind of thing. My understanding is that one of the things the nannites can do is make one tank into a potentially near infinite number of vessels of varying sizes. The children understand a great deal of chemistry, of course, but a lot of the information is stored and available through the headset and managed by a limited AI. The operator’s job is to manage everything to spec. Let’s go see.”
“And give me five more of those, and be ready with my other stuff. I’m ready to start outputting,” the older child ordered, sounding calmer. A bit.
A robotic arm lowered a small, white, plastic bin down into the sludgy-looking tank, lifting it back up in less than a minute, filled with what looked like white sand. The arm moved the bin over onto a shelf on a large cart and picked up a second bin, repeating the process.
As they approached, the older boy’s face shifted more and more into the placidity characteristic of the other eight children operating tanks. “You’ve got nine of these children?” he asked.
“Oh, no. A bit more than three times that. Some are sleeping, some are in classes. We operate the tanks around the clock to make the most of our nannites’ lifespan.” He nodded to the child who was making the white stuff. “The kids go through all the normal developmental stages. It’s biochemical, and it would be bad for them to try to flatten those out. Usually when a child operator reaches a stage that he or she can’t control perfectly, either they put the child on safer tasks, or if they don’t have the work to do that, pull him from the rotation into full-time classroom education and meditation. It makes the stages considerably shorter. For one thing, kids like to work. At this,” he amended.
“Really?” This was news to Stewart, who had always equated human Sohon training with brainwashing and drudgery. “How can kids like keeping still for hours at a time?”
“Indowy have exercises for the drive to move. They’ve adapted some human games — don’t ask. As for the work, it builds on the theories of Montessori. Light years beyond, but she had a base observation that’s the keystone of all this. Children have a drive to work, especially productively. Consider it arts and crafts with results that are useful and usable. They take so much pride in that.” The priest smiled fondly at the children in the room, both the tank operators and the dozen or so children on the floor doing the various tasks to feed the tanks.
“The Indowy equipment, it’s like it was scaled for children, anyway,” Stewart said.
“Another one of Montessori’s observations. It helps tremendously to give children tools and facilities that are size appropriate, without patronizing them. Patronize a child and he will try to please you by behaving childishly. Human children are the size of Indowy adults. I’ve never seen an Indowy patronize a child.”
They had arrived at the tank of the first boy. Stewart liked him already. He was a real kid.
“This guy’s still safe to operate a tank?” he asked the Indowy standing at the boy’s arm.
“Richard is ordinarily in classes,” the small green alien said. “But this task is simple and relatively safe. So simple as to court boredom, I’m afraid.”
He could see Stewart eye to eye, since the operator platform was elevated.
“I’m sorry for my outburst, Father,” the kid said. “I did let boredom get to me. I thought I was getting better.” He grimaced, glancing back to Stewart.
“I’m making cyclotrimethylenetrinitramine,” he said self-importantly. “It’s easy, but we need a lot of it, and for vol
ume I’m the best,” he bragged.
“Cyclo-what?” Stewart looked at O’Reilly.
“RDX.” The priest said.
“Relatively safe?” Stewart squeaked. He might not recognize the chemical name, but he knew the explosive that was the primary element in C-4, and it wasn’t stable until stabilized.
“Yeah,” the boy said. “Don’t worry about the output. You can’t see it, but it’s got a few nannites laced through to make it pretty unlikely to explode or anything. They’ll be reclaimed during the mixing process. It would be hard to mess this up.” The boy looked glum, returning his full attention to his work.
As they walked on to the next tank, O’Reilly whispered, “These kids see getting pulled from work as a punishment similar to grounding. The Indowy discourage that idea, but personally I think it’s beneficial.”
A smaller girl worked at a smaller tank. “Don’t pay any attention to Richard. He’s been being a brat and he’s lucky they’re letting him make anything. It’s because he’s good at volume, and he really is,” she admitted. “None of this is hard, but I’m making molds for plastic casing, then I’ll move on to polyisobutylene and 2-ethylhexyl sebacate — the binder and plasticizer. The real little kids can make the plastic to go in the molds,” she explained.
O’Reilly pointed to the far end of the room where cardboard boxes sat on pallets. “Motor oil, ball bearings, and washers,” he said.
“Claymores?” Stewart asked.
“Sunday tells me we’re going to need quite a lot of them.” Nathan looked a little sad. “Such a waste. Most of those boys we expect will have no idea what kinds of things their orders can lead them into. Babes in the woods.”
“They pick up a rifle, they’re choosing big boy rules,” Stewart shrugged. “They shoot real bullets.”
“I know. But it’s still a waste.”
“You’re not expecting professionals?” Stewart asked doubtfully. It wasn’t good to count on the enemy to make mistakes. He frequently didn’t get that memo.
“From the Tir? No. He has the classic Galactic fallacy. Humans are all vicious omnivores, you put a weapon in their hands and point them at something to kill.”
“Fire and forget,” Stewart agreed. He’d seen it before, and it was almost a universal. They could get their heads around elites facing Posleen, but they tended to chalk the improvements up to the suits and ignore the greater quality of the men in them.
“We’re not just counting on him to be stupid. Who does he have to send? Sending U.S. troops would give away the Darhel game wholesale. Send West Coast DAG in as a black op? They’d know, back channel, and mutiny wholesale rather than attack their brothers. If the Darhel or their brass plants were ever afraid of a mutiny, it’s now when they’ve just had one.
“We’ve been watching the contracts of known mercenary groups and we have a general range of who and what we can expect if we get hit with military force.” Nathan said. “None of the contract forces in the range of available have ever fought trained human troops. None.”
“Lambs to slaughter,” Stewart grinned ferally.
O’Reilly winced.
“You’re catching the O’Neal meme,” he said.
“Don’t worry about me, Father. I was already like this.”
Tuesday, January 26, 2055
Somebody had taken some time in building this police station. The building had an exterior of standard red brick, but it wasn’t stacked the boring way. Slantwise, patterns, arches. Somebody took their brickwork seriously, and had a pretty damned good artistic eye. It took imagination to get a gothic feel with simple brick. The window frames had gargoyles at the corners, and a pair also flanked the main entryway.
“More than you’d expect from a county PD,” Cally said.
“Must have come up at the end of a fiscal year,” Sands agreed.
“What?” Cally asked absently, surveying the building. “We’re sure he’s still there, right?”
“Yup.” The girl held up her PDA. “Just checked.”
Tommy and George were playing some kind of two-player shooter game next to her. George was short enough that Amy didn’t have to sit in the middle.
Cally got out of the car and walked into the station, broad daylight, nothing special. After Tommy verified that one Reginald Erbrechen was still in police custody, they’d reluctantly crashed at a truck stop overnight so they could sack out and pick their time today. It was two in the afternoon. Too late for the lunch rush, too early for people to be going home. She didn’t have to look like anyone in particular for this mission. Just not-Cally. A wig and cheek pads had been enough.
The pickup really did go off as a milk run for once. She just went to the window and bailed out Reginald Erbrechen, in cash, and waited until they brought him out.
“Boy am I glad to see you!” he said. “Ellen got you, right? I knew she’d raise the money to pay you guys.”
“Your lucky day,” Cally lied as she walked him out of the building. Anybody who bailed you out of jail was, of course, your friend. Nobody put up bail money as a throwaway expense.
“Oh, wow. That was the worst place I’ve ever been in in my life.”
“Never been in jail before?”
“Oh, no. I’ve always been lucky. Oops. Sorry. Hey, I admit it, I’m a bad man. But I’m a bad man with really good luck,” he grinned. “Should I try it with you?”
She hit him with the Hiberzine. The organization made the shit by the boatload. “Your luck just caught up with you, asshole,” she said.
Tommy had gotten out of the car to help her with the dead weight of the puker. She didn’t need help, but for the look of the thing it was better that she had some. They had decided that speed and lack of complication was their best strategy. Do it quick, do it smooth. Risk of somebody noticing, but less risk if they just did it and got out of there. They’d taken precautions to ditch pursuit effectively if they got unlucky, but sometimes get in and get out was the best way to play it.
Tommy froze and Cally could see him looking behind her. Damn. This time, their luck wasn’t holding so good either.
“Hey! You’re not gonna kill him, are you?”
Cally turned her head and saw that it was one of the guys who’d brought Reginald from the back, come out for a smoke break.
“No,” Tommy lied smoothly.
“Oh. Okay,” the cop shrugged. “Just get him back for his court date.”
“No problem. When the time comes, he’ll be present for justice,” Cally dished out the half truth with a vicious appreciation of the irony.
A road trip plus a few hours later, Cally stood up from the uncomfortable plastic seat in the interrogation room. It was easier watching it happen to somebody else. Besides, he wasn’t immune to any drugs, so it was soft as hell. Sadly.
“He’s repeating a lot. Have we gotten everything we’re going to get out of him?” she asked the intelligence specialist.
“Yeah, I’m done,” he said.
“Good enough.” Cally drew the pistol from her side and put two rounds into his skull, to the visible discomfort of the intel weenie. “You didn’t need to worry. They’re frangible,” she said, then realized. “Oh. You mean him. Saves debate.”
Wednesday, January 27, 2055
Tommy Sunday stood with James Stewart in the atrium, a room approximately two floors down from the surface, converted to a combination manufacturing facility and pre-ready room. The actual ready rooms were immediately at the surface, but for now, the atrium was convenient as long as they had power. They didn’t anticipate losing power, but in one corner a backup generator idled just to make sure. Two of the three elevators that serviced the atrium sat locked out from other users, one at the final pre-surface level, one at the atrium level itself. Traditional exit signs marked the stairs. All of these entries to the facility had blast doors as part of the base’s built-in defenses.
The designers of the Bane Sidhe’s Indiana facility had never expected to hold the facility in case of
attack. The powers that be, and residents, had always understood that the primary defensive strategy of the base was, as that for the Bane Sidhe itself, concealment. In a direct fight the whole organization was screwed, anyway. The organization’s primary strategy to avoid that was inter-species politics. Unfortunately, sometimes politics fell through on you.
The base did have secondary defenses, but those were all designed to buy time in the event of attack for scuttling anything of use to the enemy and covering evacuation and retreat if possible.
The designers had known the Bane Sidhe resources did not extend to maintaining standing troops for actually defending the place like the fortress it was. Its fortresslike nature was more a matter of convenience than anything else. A Sub-Urb was optimal for concealment of a facility of this size, and they were natural fortresses unless someone obligingly disarmed the defenders and threw open the gates to the enemy, as had happened at Franklin during the war. Since they had a fortress anyway, the designers had put in any defenses that were easy, cheap, and not too inconvenient for the inhabitants.
Two back doors led out ten to fifteen miles away from the facility. The Himmit had done the concealment, and the Bane Sidhe maintained those doors and passages carefully, but never, never ever used them. Even the present evacuation was all going out the front door. Those back doors were not on the official plans, and were a closely held secret between the Himmit and the human faction of the Bane Sidhe. They were entirely of human construction, and Himmit concealment.
Human double-conspirators had used GalTech materials and hybrid equipment. They trusted the Himmit with the secret for three reasons: one was that they had no choice if they were going to get their help; two was that the Himmit would find out anyway; and three was that the Himmit preferred to collect secrets, not divulge them. It had taken very few additional stories to bribe the Himmit to hold it close.