Chapter Nine

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Chapter Nine

NASA VOYAGER XIX MISSION CONTROL, TRANSCRIPT 2376-07-04

JONSON: Telemetry check.

CANE: Quantum Relay Communications online.

KING: Whats the new estimate time to get data? Do we have RDS online?

CANE: Lets say ten, maybe fifteen minutes. Data will be ready.

KING: Flight, MMACS

JONSON: Go.

KING: Controller configs ready on seven dash seventeen.

ANDERSON: Anyone have the thermo conditioning readouts?

HALLERAN: The readouts are green, background radiation is low.

JONSON: Communication established. Voyager, you there?

VOYAGER XIX: Im here, Mission Control.

CHEERS IN BACKGROUND

JONSON: How was the trip?

VOYAGER XIX: After 78 light years, all I can say is it was long. I am entering the anomaly now. Prepare for sensor download.

KING: Download is happening now. What the Flight, can we double-check telemetry?

JONSON: Telemetry check.

HALLERAN: Thermo is in the red, repeat, thermo is in the red.Updated from novelbIn.(c)om

CANE: QRC is jittering. Communications are unstable.

VOYAGER XIX: Its --- ing ---- ke ---- danger --- probl --- out --- now.

JONSON: Can someone clean up that transmission? Comms?

CANE: Weve lost comms. QRC is down.

HALLERAN: Thermo readouts are black. Mission down. Mission down.

JONSON: Okay, folks, listen up. Keep all discussions on recorded DVS loops only. No data or calls, no transmissions in or out. Lets figure out what went wrong.

Field Trip! said Sakura in a sing-song voice. All three of us were in the back of an HM3 Transport Drone, holding onto the high edges of the cargo bed. It was akin to riding in the back of a dump truck, our arms held high overhead to grasp the lip of the walls. If wed been human, the ride would have been torturous, like riding the subway while barely being able to reach the safety rail overhead. Worse, even, as the suspension of the drone was intended to handle several metric tons in a low-gravity environment. Our weight barely nudged the scale, so we were effectively riding without any sort of suspension. You would think, in a journey through carefully constructed corridors between chambers, this wouldnt matter much. But these corridors were heavily trafficked. Random rocks and debris that tumbled from the backs of transport drones heading to the refineries littered the corridor, along with odds and ends that had suffered similar fates. This was rumbled over by the transport drone as if it werent there. I knew that the corridor was cleaned periodically to keep the way passable, but it still left us jerking around like marionettes.

On top of that, the corridors were crowded, with drones of every variety trying to get from one place to another in the same ten meter corridor. Each corridor was one-way only, giving a 10-meter wide pathway for the drones to squeeze in. Incredibly, it was room enough for two lanes of traffic, with the occasional impulse-engine drone flying overhead in the wide spaces above. I didnt see any of the monstrous HM2 miner drones traveling this path, which made sense. They were unlikely to fit.

The traffic moved bumper to bumper, so to speak, with scant inches between the drones. The side corridors alternated between exits for turning traffic and bridges for cross traffic. The density was amazing. Id seen it on cameras, but witnessing it in person, so to speak, was something else.

How do you manage all this? I asked Sakura.

Small favors, said Agrippa. What about the missile tubes?

Well, the tricky thing there is getting the launch system working. Nikolas design calls for a six-gun style cylinder, where missiles are loaded from a missile bay beneath the launch tubes. But were having trouble with the ball bearing design in the rotation track.

Okay, so we have some logistical issues that were working through. But that doesnt solve our eggs in one basket problem, I said.

Well, that ones easy, said Sakura.

How is that? I asked.

Spread to more asteroids. We have a significant number of space-capable drones right now. We find suitable candidates, and dig in.

That wasnt a half-bad idea. If I could find a way to safely split up our genetic stockpile into multiple pieces, we could build one or more secret bases to hide away and build. Despite all of our construction, our resource stockpiles were actually rising, faster than we could use them. We were still limited on some things, like volatiles and platinum-group metals. In fact

Then Agrippa interrupted my train of thought. I really like this idea. In fact, I would be in favor of establishing military bases all around Ganymed. If we did concentric spheres of bases, we could provide defense-in-depth against invasion, and layer our offensive capabilities.

One problem with that I started.

Right, cant hide if someone plots out our bases and figures out weve got a hidden headquarters, he said. But if we were to randomly place central bases throughout the asteroid belt, and if we happen to be in a place where two spheres overlap

I can come up with an Outpost Starter Pack, said Sakura. It would be the optimal number of drones and supplies to build out a series of hangars and factories, but designed around the premise of military production, we could get a number of them up within a few months, especially if we can cross-ship supplies that they cannot produce.

We do have excess materials, I said. We seem to be mining faster than we are producing goods.

Its about to get worse, said Sakura. Despite ramping up drone production, our production will start outpacing our factories even faster. Ive streamlined the core mining teams, and started backfilling the maze of corridors with waste product. The new grid-based mining is already increasing our production of rare earth metals, platinum group metals, and silicates. Further, were capturing more volatiles even though were stockpiling most of it. Well need atmosphere at some point.

We cannot build factories fast enough, can we, I said. That germ of an idea was in the back of my head again.

Okay, so we cannot be everywhere at once, I said. Even you, Sakura, have limits on your ability to focus. Include data centers in your, um, starter pack. Youll need to include plans for bringing new NI-19s online to manage each outpost independently.

Oh, said Sakura with a bit of hurt in her voice. Crap, she thinks this is a reflection on her, I thought. I made a split-second decision.

Each of the new NI-19s will answer to you, Sakura, I said. Youll have final say on project plan implementation.

Sakura immediately seemed to perk back up. What the hell had happened to her that she was so sensitive to even the vaguest perception of being sidelined? I wasnt about to rock the boat considering how valuable shed proven herself. I wondered if there was a way to help her become more independent, able to make bigger decisions on her own.

It provides good redundancy, as well, said Agrippa. We should do the same with NI-15s, to coordinate the defenses of each new outpost.

Were producing new quantum entanglement comm equipment, right? I asked Sakura, mostly to get confirmation.

We are, she said. Its our most advanced fabrication factory to date.

Then well have instantaneous contact. What is the bandwidth?

They are the latest human design in our database, she said.

Ah. I pulled up the specs. Sixteen terabits per second. We would be able to push some serious data between the locations. Excellent. Lets make sure to include at least a few hundred petabytes of storage as well. Might as well duplicate our archives while were at it. Ill work on the setup of the data centers once theyre online.

While we talked, a second Wasp had flown itself into a cradle above the first Wasp and close to the blast doors. A series of umbilicals snaked out of the wall and connected to the Wasp. More Guardians marched in, one every few minutes now. At this pace, wed have several hundred within a few days.

I need to start training the new Guardians. Sakura ran a tunnel to a series of caves that Im going to use as a boot camp of sorts, said Agrippa.

Why boot camp? Dont they already know what to do? I asked.

Sure, I can load all the plans in the world into them, said Agrippa. But knowing and understanding are two different things. You designed these drones, but didnt grasp their value until you saw them, and wont truly understand their uses until you see them in action. Experience trumps book learning. These NI-5s need experience, so Im going to do what I can to give it to them.