April 5: A Depth of Understanding (30 page)

"I'd be happy to wait until we dock. This has been stressful. I went past my lunch and never thought about it. I was too concerned with defecting safely to think of food."

"I can understand that. We've done interceptions and boarding before. Believe me, it's stressful from the other side too. When we went to investigate that North American sat that fired on us when we were still in LEO, it kept trying to bring its rail gun to bear on
Begger's Ride.
We stood off and let them do the boarding, but they had to burn the rail gun off so they could stop maneuvering to keep from being shot. We were scared to death they'd blow themselves up and take out the
Begger's Ride
too. They heated the cabin until the fellow had to come out and surrender or cook. Then the big blond guy you saw, Al, went over and carried the fellow away before searching the ship."

"There was just one man aboard?" That would be odd.

"A lieutenant. There was another higher ranking officer in her, but he
was
going to blow it. So the junior popped him in the back of the head," he explained making a gun with forefinger and thumb. "He didn't feel particularly ready to be martyred."

"I see. He made a grave error allowing his subordinate access to arms."

"That he did."

Sam decided now was not the time to ask Lu if
he
was comfortable with an armed crew. He was after all a guest...

Chapter 20

"There was a section completely collapsed at about three hundred meters depth. So I determined to weld up the last pressure curtain, reinforce it and start cutting a parallel tunnel offset a hundred meters. I eased the new route away at ten degrees, clear back to the previous curtain, so if we use it a long time it isn't an abrupt curve where we'll have to slow down too much and it would always be a hazard for bumping the wall or crossing the center line."

"Thank you Mo, as always, you are doing a great job," Heather praised him. "Somebody else might have just cut off the old tunnel at a right angle and we'd be stuck with it for years."

"That would be short sighted. It cost a half hour at most."

"How long
do
you estimate to reach the surface?"

"Five days if nothing busts. That's just a one lane narrow tunnel with no clean up and a rough floor. We'll go back and open it up, shape and finish it and install cable ditches and pressure curtains. Something will bust, so figure six to seven days."

"Will we have to walk out in suits?"

"Oh no, it'll be big enough to drive a maintenance cart. But you'll have to power it off your pistol. You have one of the early ones with a big accumulator don't you?"

"Jeff has been putting the big one in the current model I get. The power port will run a suit. I'm not sure it will run a cart. How much does it draw?"

"Looking it up...To go twenty five kilometers an hour on a ten degree slope, somewhere around thirty five to forty amps at forty eight volts."

"It'll get warm, but it can do that. We're golden."

"We'll stick a thermometer tape on it. If it gets too hot we'll slow down, or stop for a bit and let it cool down."

"We have enough open cubic to back fill?"

"Yeah, we'll fill a third of the long tunnel and maybe the garage, but we can do it. I could lay a hundred centimeters of gravel on the floor too if I needed. But I don't think we will need to."

"Now I can stop worrying about
that
and worry full time about what is happening out there," Heather said.

"Amen."

* * *

"You are getting the VIP treatment today," Lu told him. But from the smile it was either a joke, or there was much more to the story. So Sam just smiled.

"This is the south dock, which is normally reserved for passenger shuttles. They charge a higher fee to use it. It's handy to the high rent district where all the big businesses rent and the com shack and cafeteria, but with the UN declaration all the traffic was outbound and nobody is coming back until it is resolved, so our tacky little merchant ship gets to dock here. Jon cleared it with the station manager as a no fee, to accommodate me. It's closer to my cubic to pick up your spex and I don't want to subject you to the other place to eat by the north dock. That's all beam dogs and workers. They serve alcohol and get rowdy. This is the nicer area with a cafeteria that doesn't feature thumping music and video game noise."

Sam elected to leave his pressure suit aboard. Lu assured him his ship jump suit wouldn't draw any hostility, even with military insignia. The docking boom was needlessly luxurious. The utilities hidden inside covered runs and carpeted to reduce noise. The lighting was hidden in slots playing indirectly across the crème colored uncarpeted sections. There were two continuous hand rails for the inexperienced.

The opening through the bearing into spin was near big enough to fit a ground car. Sam was impressed despite his resolve not to be. Lu saw him looking at the joint, Someone had drawn a peaceful New England village spread out on one side and a huge armada of flying saucers patrolling above. The saucers were speckled with tiny button batteries, topped with flashing LEDs. Lu did wonder how they were made to flash synchronized on each saucer.

"Last week it was a sailing ship going round and round over a sea full of whales. Next week it'll be something else even more bizarre."

"You could set up a camera and catch whoever is defacing it," Sam suggested.

"What would be the fun in that? Somebody will clean this off to put up a new one. If you repress creative people they will do something else and this at least is relatively harmless. If they feel oppressed they may turn to pranks much less benign."

Sam could see there was going to be some culture adjustment required. The elevator he noted had instructions in Chinese and several other languages beside the English and Japanese he'd seen in the hub. He slipped a toe under the strap provided until he perceived some weight.

As soon as the door opened he smelled good cooking odors. Lu led him to the cafeteria as promised and he didn't object. He was finally relaxing enough to eat something.

The serving lady was tall, thin with long fingers, slightly almond eyes, dark skinned, but not really black and smiling friendly but poised. Her name plate said Ruby. She glanced at his rank tabs and said, "Good Afternoon, Shang Xiao, what can I get for you?"

Sam was so shocked his mouth fell open. Most civilians didn't know their own nation's insignia, much less another countries. She ignored his shock. "It's between lunch and supper. We can serve you either, except we ran out of the Lamb Shanks already. What's your pleasure?"

The menu board had so many choices it was hard to choose. One could get any entree with a choice of several side dishes. It made for so many possible combinations. What was Pastitsio? Or for that matter Coney Dogs? Surely not...

"I'll have iced tea, the meatloaf with garlic mashed potatoes, green beans, apple sauce and cottage cheese and a double piece of apple pie for dessert, but just save that back for me. I'll come back and get it so the ice cream doesn't melt."

"French Vanilla or Ginger?" Ruby asked.

"Yes," Lu agreed.

Ruby looked back at him. "The same," he said taking the easy way out. Ruby just lifted an eyebrow, but didn't object. When he got the tray he understood the lifted eyebrow. Did Lu really intend to eat all of this? Apparently he did, along with a couple dinner rolls and a hand full of butter pats he grabbed from the buffet table in passing.

The meatloaf was excellent, with olive slices and onions mixed in. The gravy went well with it and the green beans were bright, not over cooked, with a little oil and almond slivers. The apple sauce was hot, which surprised him, with lots of cinnamon. All of a sudden it was all gone and he was shocked he finished it.

"I'm getting my pie, you ready for yours?" Lu asked.

"Yes, but just one piece," Sam said begging off a bit.

"I'll bring coffee too."

Lu returned with the tray and Sam found he had one generous slice of pie, but both kinds of ice cream still. The coffee was different than the ship's, stronger, but very good with the sweet pie. Lu inhaled the pie like he was still hungry. A very young boy, maybe eight years old came in at a trot and handed Lu a sealed envelope. Lu swiped his hand pad past the child's and got a near bow of thanks. The boy was wearing spex too. That was transport, advice, the spex and courier service he owed Lu on top of the hospitality of dinner now.

When the pie was all gone Lu leaned back. "What is Shang Xiao?" he asked. Almost saying it correctly. "It must not have been an insult, you looked surprised, but not put off."

"It's my rank," he said touching his collar tabs. "Was the lady by any chance in the military? Few people know insignia well. It's about the same as a Colonel in your service, maybe an O-5 or O-6. Why would she know that?"

"She was a loadmaster in the USNA Air Force and her husband was in black operations."

"They still segregate black troops? I thought that was far in the past and if my own people told me that I'd suspect it was propaganda."

Lu grinned big, amused. "No, this is idiom. Black operation are covert, hidden. Off public budget too. The kinds of troops dropped in with no insignia who do assassinations or blow crap up and then vanish quietly into the night. Like the Russian's Vympel, or Alpha Group. I'm not sure what you call yours."

"Oh, One of
those
. They are dangerous."

"No shit. Easy was the pilot of the
Happy Lewis
who ambushed the
Pretty as Jade
and the
James Kelly
at the same time and destroyed both of them, back when Home's war with North America started. I wasn't here then. Her husband probably taught her to read the tabs. He'd have wanted to know who to shoot first in a group you know."

"I will treat him with the utmost respect."

"Good plan. Ruby is pretty formidable all on her own. Not much gets past her."

"I can believe that too," Sam agreed, looking in his empty coffee cup. Lu took that for a signal to refill them. He was weighed down with supper enough he was content to sit. He hadn't eaten like that in a long time.

A very young couple came in the door, the girl waving to another young girl and a man working on a full sized computer. They both looked hard at him, then went to Lu and spoke, he brought them back to the table with him, but the young man said, "Right back," and went to get coffee for him and the girl. There was a hulking big man who came in the door with them, a hard looking fellow, but he went to get coffee and sat at another table surveying the room. He must not be with them after all.

"This is April Lewis, she's a business partner of Jeff Singh, who is getting them coffee. Mr. Singh wondered if you'd do him the favor of allowing him to interview you. That's exactly how he phrased it. I believe he didn't want you to feel any compulsion."

Sam looked at Lu very strangely. He wanted to ask why he'd feel compelled and what the young people's interest was. He couldn't imagine. Perhaps a school project? People appreciate if you treat their children well and it didn't cost anything to be polite...

"Certainly. Lets finish out coffee while we grant them their interview. Then we do need to find somebody to buy some of my, uh, equipment," he hated to speak of something as rude as weapons in front of the young woman. She might get a bad impression of them, "or loan me money against the sale of them even."

The young man came back to the table and deposited their mugs. "Mr. Bia, I'm Jeff Singh. I have an interest in Central on the moon that your fleet bombarded. I don't intend to let that create an adversarial attitude in me. I was told you rejected continuing your mission because you objected to attacking civilians, do I understand that correctly?"

"Yes, it was offensive and it appears from their destruction ill advised as well."

"The
Scepter
wasn't the fleet command vessel then?"

"No, that was the
Guan
and being the lead vessel it's commander was of General staff level rank. The command officers of the other vessels were like me, of a rank somewhat equivalent to what you'd call a Colonel."

"Do you have a copy of the orders under which he was operating?"

"No, this is not how the head of a task force operates. He keeps his orders, I believe in English you'd say, 'close to his chest'," he said, holding his hands close like he had cards. "To share them just invites his juniors to question his execution of them. The People's Army operates within the strict order of command, not consensus."

"Do you believe his instructions were to destroy Home?"

"Oh, undoubtedly. We had no Marines on board, there was no way to do a boarding and take control of Home. The only thing we were really
equipped
to do was put a missile in you."

"What of Central then? Have you any idea if he was instructed to bombard them too?"

"I doubt it, but it would be well within the scope of his orders to deal with any belligerents incidental to his main operations. We heard Ms. Anderson speak with Commander Ding in the clear and she warned him a state of war existed between them, including our Terrestrial homeland. Knowing Ding, he'd never let that go unanswered, in fact he invited her to make war if she could and not talk."

"Well she did that, though your survival was an oversight I'm sure."

"Do you know with what she destroyed them?" Sam asked. "We saw no missiles and when we activated our targeting radar we got a bunch of very small targets receding at extreme range, yet the pieces seemed to be too large and of a size to be shrapnel from a warhead burst."

"Oh, she does have missiles, but I imagine she fired on you with a 57mm Bofors cannon. A robust and mature technology, very dependable and it is rather economical, although this is the first time she's fired on orbital targets. She used it to lay a grid down on the lunar surface before and it was very effective in removing a rover force."

"A cannon?" Sam said, unbelieving. "Nobody uses a cannon in space."