“That someone is me, Colonel.”
“I must protest, sir. They’re noncombatant support personnel without a need for direct real-time access to my assault force.”
Geary tried not to let aggravation show. “They won’t do any harm.”
“With all due respect, sir,” Carabali stated stiffly, “engineers are capable of wreaking total havoc in the real world if not closely supervised, and I do not have the luxury of the time to be able to so supervise them.”
On the heels of Carabali’s words, Captain Tyrosian’s reply came in on her window. “Captain Geary, we don’t have a list of specifications as to what we’re supposed to look for.”
His earlier tension replaced by a growing headache, Geary spoke through gritted teeth. “Wait, Colonel. Captain, your engineers are supposed to look for anything that shouldn’t be in a mining facility.” Tyrosian nodded, but her eyes remained puzzled. “Bombs. Booby traps. Things that will blow up.”
Tyrosian’s puzzlement increased. “A lot of equipment will suffer catastrophic failure if improperly—”
“Captain Geary,” Colonel Carabali declared, both her face and voice rigid with disapproval, “I advise against this in the strongest possible—”
“My people need to talk directly to the Marine officers in the facility about what they’re seeing,” Tyrosian suggested hesitantly. “Without detailed guidance—”
“All right!” Geary interrupted both of them. Bad idea. I can tell them to just go ahead and do it, or just cancel the whole thing. I’m mad enough to say, “Just do it,” which tells me I probably shouldn’t. Serves me right for trying to improvise something between two such different mind-sets. “Cancel my previous direction. The feed from the assault force will be available to the engineers but on a receive-only basis. If they see anything they regard as suspicious, you are to contact me without delay, Captain Tyrosian. Colonel Carabali, please continue your assault, and my apologies for the distraction.”
Both officers looked startled by Geary’s orders, as if they’d expected a different outcome; then Carabali saluted hastily just before her window blanked out again. Tyrosian nodded. “Yes, sir. The, uh, shuttles with the engineering exploitation team and equipment have launched.”
“Good. Make sure everyone on those shuttles understands that they are under the control of the Marine assault force commander.”
Geary slumped back as the other comm window closed, rubbing his forehead to help with what was now a raging headache. Desjani, who couldn’t have heard Geary’s private communications with the other officers, gave him a sympathetic look. “Engineers?”
“And Marines,” Geary replied sourly. “Why does it sometimes seem I have to spend more time fighting my own officers than I do fighting the enemy?” His gaze went back to the display showing the assault on the mining facility. The Marines continued to penetrate the objective, occupying almost the entire facility now and posting forces to guard the mine shafts where the Syndic defenders had withdrawn. Arcing down from above came the shuttles carrying the engineering exploitation teams, preparing to drop their skilled personnel directly onto the facility’s main landing pad.
If something was going to explode, it would probably happen any moment now.
THREE
Alliance Marines entered the main control room of the mining facility, spreading out, using portable gear to check for booby traps. Green lights shone on the many panels in the room, indicating the mining equipment was in full operating condition. The Marine officer who Geary was monitoring stepped close to one panel with multiple red lights blinking. “Maglev rails,” the Marine reported to his superiors, Geary hearing the transmission, too. “That’s the only equipment showing failures. Everything else is up and running.” Instead of sounding happy about that, the Marine seemed worried.
A window popped up in front of Geary, showing Captain Tyrosian frowning. “They didn’t shut down their equipment.”
“No,” Geary agreed.
“This is going to cause a lot of delays,” Tyrosian complained.
“I would have thought powering up the equipment would have taken a while.”
Tyrosian seemed surprised at the question. “Well … yes. If the equipment had been shut down, then we’d have to power up slowly to make certain none of the equipment had been sabotaged mechanically or in its software. You know, worms and such embedded in the operating systems. But it’s already operating, sir.”
Meaning any worms or other destructive programming were also running. Never trust gifts from Syndics. “I see.”
Colonel Carabali’s face reappeared, frowning in tandem with Tyrosian. “Sir, we’re going to have to do a controlled shutdown of everything, do a clean sweep of all systems, then bring them back up one by one.”
Geary exhaled heavily, wondering why this had to be the one thing both his Marines and his engineers agreed upon. “What’s the worst case if we try to operate the systems now?”
“Catastrophic failure of all systems, destructive shutdowns of equipment, fatal damage to the operating environment, individual injuries and fatalities, and loss of all mining facility capabilities,” Tyrosian replied.
“Everything blows up,” the Marine colonel noted succinctly.
Geary nodded. Okay. Bad things happen. “How long to do what we need to do?”
“Estimates will vary widely because of the many factors involved—” Tyrosian began.
“This fleet cannot linger around this mining facility, Captain Tyrosian!” Geary snapped.
“How much of this stuff do we need?” Carabali asked. “To access the stockpiles of elements we require and get the rocks analyzed and loaded?”
Tyrosian made an angry gesture. “You need the mining subsystems. You have to have the main operating systems to issue commands to the mining subsystems. If the safety systems aren’t activated and monitoring activity on the main operating systems and the mining subsystems, then the safety interlocks won’t allow anything to happen.”
“Damn near everything, then,” Geary noted.
Tyrosian nodded.
“We can’t—” He paused as a high-priority message alert blinked, indicating someone wanted to join in his conference with Carabali and the engineer. He took a look at the message alert, seeing the communication was from Titan. Messages from Titan tended to be bad news. Frustrated by the delays, Geary almost slapped the Deny command. I don’t need anyone else complicating things. Hell, how much more complicated can they get? What I need is better options, and maybe whoever this is will have some ideas. Geary paused, counted to five, and tapped Accept instead.
Commander Lommand’s face appeared. Captain of the Titan. Young for his position, but Geary had already learned that Lommand tended to make up for lack of experience with initiative and enthusiasm. Now Lommand appeared slightly regretful. “My apologies for breaking in, Captain Geary, but I was told Captain Tyrosian was tied up in this meeting with you, and I thought she’d want to know immediately that the two Mobile Mining Units on Titan are loaded on heavy-lift shuttles and ready to launch.”
Geary glanced at Tyrosian, who was unsuccessfully trying to look as if she weren’t surprised to hear the news. “Mobile Mining Units?” Geary asked. “Can those help?”
“They can if the equipment at the Syndic mining facilities can’t be used,” Lommand stated innocently. “It seemed a good idea to have them ready in case that happened.”
“Yes,” Tyrosian interjected just as if she had ordered Lommand to do that. “There’s a risk in deploying them, because the two on Titan are all we have left in the fleet, but the MMUs can locate, analyze, and load the Syndic stockpiles of the trace elements we need.”
“What’s the flight time?” Geary demanded, scanning his controls for the right ones to give him the information.
Commander Lommand answered immediately. “Thirty-one minutes if we launch now.”
Colonel Carabali was checking something herself. “We can’t risk having critical equipme
nt down here while the Syndic systems are still operating and capable of executing some Trojan horse action. Carrying out a safe shutdown of the Syndic gear will take approximately … twenty minutes.”
Geary nodded. “What about everything else needed to use the Syndic gear? Should we employ these, uh, MMUs instead?”
“Sir, it’d take at least a couple of hours to go through the Syndic systems and scrub them clean, then maybe another half a day or more to bring them up in a controlled fashion—”
“How quickly can the MMUs start operating once they’re on the surface?” Geary asked the engineers.
“Immediately, sir,” Commander Lommand responded. “Start-up is carried out on board the shuttles. Once the shuttles land, the Moo-Moos roll off the ramp and start grazing.”
Nice. One more little thing that Geary had to depend upon hearing about from his subordinates. Fortunately, one of those subordinates was Commander Lommand. Geary was about to order Lommand to launch his shuttles from Titan when he caught himself and faced Captain Tyrosian, Lommand’s immediate superior. Commander Lommand had jumped the chain of command again, but this time at least he’d done it in a way that looked legitimate by pretending he was updating Tyrosian. “Captain Tyrosian, have Titan launch those shuttles, and get them to that facility. I want them working when they hit the surface. Commander Lommand, thank you for the status update. Colonel Carabali, have your system geeks shut down everything the Syndics left working. I want it all off when Titan’s shuttles get there.”
“Yes, sir,” Carabali replied, smiling thinly. “Do you want us to proceed with scrubbing the systems for sabotage?”
“Not unless it’s needed for the safety of your troops. I don’t intend powering up those systems while we’re there, and as soon as we leave, we’re going to flatten every piece of equipment in the facility.”
Carabali’s smile widened. “Yes, sir.”
As the Marine’s image vanished, Captain Tyrosian gave Geary a confident look, as if this was a plan she’d developed. “I’ve ordered Titan to launch her shuttles, sir.”
“Thank you.” At least Tyrosian had thought on her feet and reacted properly when Lommand broke into the conference. “Good work. Let’s get those rocks and get out of here.”
The windows vanished, leaving just the system display floating in front of Geary. He watched the symbols marking his fleet racing past the moon holding the Syndic mining facility, looping around the gas giant to come past the moon again, then ran some quick calculations to see if he would have to slow the fleet even more due to the delays on the surface.
It looked okay at this point. Not great, and with way too small a margin of error left, but if the mobile mining gear could do the job quickly, he wouldn’t have to burn off further fuel cells braking the fleet’s velocity more.
Geary leaned back, noticing Captain Desjani trying not to look curious. “The Syndics left the equipment running at the mining facility,” he explained to her.
“Bastards,” Desjani replied with a frown. “They knew we’d have to assume it was laced with soft and hard booby traps.”
“Yeah. But Titan has a couple of portable mining things they’re sending down to take care of getting the stockpiles.” Geary looked back to include Rione in the conversation. “The Marines are shutting down the Syndic gear.”
Rione shook her head. “Odds are the Syndics didn’t have time to plant elaborate booby traps in the systems, but we have no choice but to act as if they did.”
“They’ve laid traps everywhere we’ve encountered Syndics.” Geary watched the shuttles from Titan arcing down toward the moon, wishing the enemy was a little less devious and his own fleet’s situation a lot less perilous.
The voice of the chief petty officer supervising Titan’s Mobile Mining Units seemed startled and awed when he heard Geary. “Sir. It’s an honor to speak with you, sir.”
Geary tried not to let his unhappiness at the hero worship show in his voice. The sailors in the fleet were more likely than the officers to believe that Geary had been sent by the living stars themselves to save the Alliance, and this fleet in particular. They were also more likely to believe that Geary really was the mythical hero of the past. But he owed them respect for their faith even as he tried his best not to believe in it himself. “Do you have a moment, Chief? To talk about your gear?” Nothing was happening elsewhere, but Geary felt that he had to stay on the bridge until this mess was over, and anyway Geary was curious about the MMUs.
The view from the chief’s helmet showed one side of the Syndic facility. Big doors giving access to stockpiles of mined and refined minerals had been blown off their hinges by Marines happy to get a head start on wrecking the Syndic installation. The hulking shapes of the two MMUs had crawled on treads across the surface of the moon, crushing or shouldering aside some Syndic safety barriers, and now crouched in front of the accesses.
“Yes, sir,” the chief replied. “The crews on the Moo-Moos are operating their own cows, and I’m just here if needed.”
Cows. The nickname made as much sense as any other for a piece of equipment with the official designation of MMU. “I’m not familiar with your gear, Chief. What can you tell me about it?” He’d already tried looking up information in the online library on Dauntless, only to be submerged by a huge mass of documents, none of which seemed to have a single simple, clear diagram or discussion about the capabilities of the MMUs. After unsuccessfully trying to wade through a mass of complex data, Geary had decided to follow his training as a junior officer; when you needed to know something, ask a chief petty officer.
This particular chief sounded disbelieving that the great Black Jack Geary would really need to be told anything. “The technology hasn’t changed much since … uh … since…”
“In the last century?” Geary asked dryly. “I didn’t know much about it then, Chief. No need arose in those days for me to worry about it.”
“Oh, uh, yes, sir. Well, like I said, the tech hasn’t changed much. It’s simple and robust. Everything that’s been tried as a replacement is more complicated, more expensive, breaks more and, uh, you know.”
“I certainly do, Chief,” Geary agreed, recalling many of the “improvements” to ship systems that had bedeviled him a hundred years ago by creating new problems with equipment that had worked perfectly well before being upgraded into temperamental, buggy pieces of junk. “I’m glad they’ve let you stick with something that works well. What are your cows doing now? Waiting for clearance to enter the facility?”
“No, sir! They won’t have to go any farther in. The cows are sending in worms, sir. Once the worms—”
“Worms?”
“Uh, yes, sir.” The view from the chief’s helmet changed, focusing on the front of one of the Moo-Moos and zooming in. What looked like a nest of very fine wires extended out, the wires leading into the storage buildings. “Do you see the leashes, sir? Every one connects to a worm. We call them that because they’re about the size of worms and work the same way. They eat dirt. Or rock.”
“How do they get through rock?” Geary asked.
“What amounts to really tiny shock cannon mounted around the front mouth. The worm analyzes the rock structure and sends out vibration pulses that shatter the rock right in front of it. Of course, in this case this stuff has already been mined, so they’re going through stocks of solid metal. The worms eat the dust and move on, constantly doing the same thing. As the dust runs through the inside of the worms, molecular-level sensors analyze the content. Then it goes out the back. Just like a worm, like I said, sir.”
“What are the wires for?”
“Command and control, and power. A mining worm has to move a lot faster than a real worm and keep doing it, so they need a lot more energy than a real worm-sized object could hold. And we don’t want stray radiation being emitted in a mining environment—you know, because of explosive gases and detonators and stuff—or have our links to the worms blocked by metals or other stuff, so al
l the communications to and from the worm run through the line.” The chief’s view pivoted and focused on where the lines ran into the building. “In a normal mining operation the worms go out, dig in below the surface, and find the ore or veins of material you need. In this case, we know where the stockpiles are, so right now the worms are tunneling through the stockpiles, identifying what’s in each one, and looking for contamination or nano-bugs.”
Nano-bugs. Geary knew that much. Tiny devices planted to cause problems in equipment once triggered by heat or pressure. “I thought nano-bugs were outlawed since they were so hard to keep contained.”
He could see the motion caused by the chief’s shrug. “Yes, sir. But there’s a lot of stuff that’s been outlawed, if you know what I mean, sir.”
“Yeah, Chief, I do.” Outlawed didn’t mean it wouldn’t be used. Not in the case of the Syndics, and not in the case of the Alliance either, as Geary had been shocked to learn. Century-long wars too easily bred contempt for life and law. “Any problems identified so far?”
“No, sir. We’re giving the worms time to do a decent sample check, then we’ll send in the moles.”
“Moles?”
“Yes, sir. The moles actually go out and dig down to the stuff, load it on board, then bring it back to the cow. The cows have big moles and little moles, depending on how much you want to recover. And we can hook up a monster mole to a cow if we have to, but Titan’s only got one monster mole. It just digs a big hole and feeds the stuff back through a conveyor tube on its ass.” The chief went silent for a moment, then spoke in a slightly choked voice. “Excuse me, sir, the material is expelled through the aft matter-expulsion portal.”
“I get the idea, Chief.” Geary paused to consider the information, watching as shapes scuttled away from the cows and into the Syndic storage area, each shape trailing its own wire. “Everything looks good, then?”
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