Troy Rising 1 - Live Free or Die (50 page)

“I thought that was a bit much,” Granadica said. “But that was the specification. I
wouldn't want to be looking
into
a five terawatt light, that's for sure.”

“Nor would I,” Kelly said. “The ERS has twenty gravities of acceleration so it can move in
and out of orbit rapidly. This, of course, would place some strain on passengers so there
are conformal seats that can be moved in and out. So it can either be an open box for
carrying emergency supplies or, with the acceleration couches, a very fast rescue ship.
The ERS can operate for up to seventy hours on its own at a cruising acceleration of five
gravities and has bunks and support facilities onboard for the two member crew. Thus, a
single ERS can cruise out to Neptune orbit and back on onboard fuel. Just in case we have
a ship stranded out by Neptune. At maximum drive it exhausts onboard fuel in about ten
hours.”

“I can think of thousands of purposes for that,” Tyler said. “Wish we'd had a bunch of
them during the plagues. We probably ought to make...”

“Lots,” Kelly said. “We already have a contract from the USSN for three hundred.”

“Thank you, Granadica. And my stockholders thank you as well.”

“You're welcome, Mr. Vernon.”

“Most of the portions of the ERS are being made by subcontractors,” Kelly continued.
“Final assembly takes place here and there are certain components Granadica can just make
better, faster and cheaper. Essentially, we're feeding her components and Grandadica puts
out the finished product.”

“Any problems with integration?” Tyler asked.

“Not integration,” Granadica answered. “Quality control, yes.”

“We think we've fixed that issue by a change of providers,” Kelly said. “And,
unfortunately, we still have to pull most manufactured equipment out of the gravity well
on Earth.”

“Earth's a bad enough target,” Tyler said. “I don't think I want to build any space
factories. Not in the Sol System.”

“The problem remains,” Kelly said. “And we simply don't have enough space capable
shipping. Granadica, Night Wolves and Apollo mining, therefore, reinvented an old idea.”

“Liberty ships?” Tyler asked.

“Yes, sir,” Kelly said, frowning.

“I was going to ask about those,” Tyler said. “It was on my mind. Continue.”

“When Apollo mines most asteroids, there is, unfortunately, a good bit left over,” Kelly
said. “Mostly silica.”

“We're using a good bit of that in the Sol system on the VLA,” Tyler said. “They're doing
silica mirrors with a thin nickel or aluminum backing.”

“Yes, sir, they're doing the same design here,” Kelly said. “They still make more melted
silica than they can use. Together with some Apollo engineers we came up with this.”

The picture looked like a Mason jar with a robot spider on one end.

“The hull is mostly silica,” Kelly said. “We've set up a production facility that turns
those out in large quantities. Then a lift and drive engine is installed that has a low
but sufficient drive. Specifically, two gravities of acceleration with a full one
hundred-thousand ton load. Higher empty. Maximum acceleration empty is ten gravities since
that is the maximum inertial controls available to us. The bottleneck is the lift and
drive systems. We're having most of the raw equipment built on earth, again, and
assembling it here.”

“Silica... is not a good structural material,” Tyler said. “
Glass
hulls?”

“Not
entirely
silica,” Kelly said, smiling. “They have wound in carbon nanotube. That's another
bottleneck but Granadica made a fabber that produces carbon nanotube winding in good
quantity.”

“It's basically an old-fashioned version of the Gorku spinners,” Granadica said. “And
mine
can handle anything that's got carbon in it. Apollo broke up a carbonaceous asteroid and
we're turning out more nanotube than you can believe. We've been gluing it on the outside
of the shuttles since you figure in a space disaster there's probably a lot of debris
flying around.”

“We don't have people to run them, unfortunately,” Tyler said, sighing.

“They don't take
much
,” Granadica said. “Three watch crew, three engineering and a few support. They've got
their own gravitic loading and unloading system. Send us some personnel and we'll have so
many ships going back and forth between here and Sol you won't believe it.”

“Alas, we still don't have the trade,” Tyler said. “But we will. This is great, but it's
got to be looked at as a prototype for now. I'll get some people working on crews, though.
We do need to get the components moving back and forth. It can lift out of the grav well?”

“Easily,” Kelly said. “The hulls have the added benefit of being convertible to Helium
Three tankers with some minor modifications. We've also looked at modifications for... in
space repair and support ships.”

She carefully had not said 'Fleet colliers.'

“Well, we still don't have much in the way of ships that need support,” Tyler said.
“Anything else?”

“A new tug system,” Kelly said. “This is purely for Apollo Mining at the present. It has
four hundred gravities of acceleration but, of course, can't actually use that for
internal delta-v. It also has a very wide angle for pressor or tractor beams. Apollo has
been doing a lot of space shaping and they needed something that could generate a
wide
pressor beam. The tug is capable of maintaining a one hundred gravity pressor over a three
hundred yard band.”

Tyler didn't see the military application and raised an eyebrow.

“Purely for Apollo?” Tyler said.

“Nobody else needs them,” Kelly said, shrugging. “Apollo gave us the specs and we figured
it out. Didn't we, Granadica?”

“It was different,” the AI said. “Most races don't mine the way that you do.”

“Anything else?”

“Last we have a
support
ship for the emergency shuttles,” Kelly said, smiling slightly. “The problem was making a
ship capable of keeping up. That required conformal systems throughout the ship as well as
acceleration modifications.”

“I'm not sure how long I'd
want
to take ten gravities,” Tyler said. “I took seven for twenty minutes one time and it
nearly killed me.”

“Hopefully not for long,” Kelly said. “The ship has launchers for small... buoys. Remote
sensing platforms. Those have been designed for
six
hundred gravities of acceleration for... rapid and widespread dissemination.”

“Better hope they don't run into anything,” Granadica said. “Because they're an awful lot
like missiles. That's what I based them off of. An old missile design. Slap a heavy
warhead on them and they're going to play merry hob if they, for example, run into a
Horvath ship. Just the kinetic impact after thirty seconds running will blow through
Horvath screens.”

“But since they're... sensor buoys?” Tyler said, frowning.

“All good,” Granadica said. “Hey, how you humans want to do search and rescue is up to
you. And what you want to mount for sensors is also up to you. The ship has hard points
for mounting more big flash-lights. And you can point the spotlight on something at up to
three light minutes. Very accurate spotlight. Since that's a long way away, it can be
dialed up to a three megawatt laser. And gravitic sensors to spot anything that needs
rescuing. Up to seven light seconds out. They're very sensitive. With a little
triangulation, which the system can do using sensors on multiple ships, in movement or
with the sensors on shuttles or remotes on the buoys, they can spot even a hypercom node
that's active within two light seconds. Or, say, something accelerating on a collision
course. They also can handle up to one hundred sensor buoys in movement at the same time.”

“An Aegis search and rescue ship,” Tyler said, nodding. “Very nice platform.”

“More of a frigate,” Kelly said. “They're smaller than the
Constitution
class. Also faster and more capable.”

“BAE is just going to love the hell out of that,” Tyler said, grinning. “Not that it's a
warship, of course.”

“Of course,” Granadica said.

“Granadica,” Tyler said, musingly. “How big are the fabbers you made to make nanotubes?
No, let me say this a different way. Can you make some fabbers to pre-separate the carbon
from a carbonaceous asteroid?”

“I can do it,” Granadica said. “There's going to be a fairly significant energy penalty.
It's going to cost more. And I'll have to rearrange the schedule.”

“Do it,” Tyler said. “Anything else?”

“That's about it,” Kelly said, suddenly looking nervous.

“That's all good,” Tyler said, nodding. “All good. Thank your team for me.”

“Permission to speak freely, sir?” Kelly said.

“What is this, the military?” Tyler said, smiling. “Of course.”

“You look tired as hell,” the manager said. “No offense. But you look as if you could use
a break.”

“I've got a lot of pressures,” Tyler said, shrugging. “I can take it. I've
learned
to take it. But, Granadica, between you, Kelly and I, I'm serious about doing the fuel
mine in three years. I'm hoping we have
three
.”

***

“How was Wolf?” Bryan asked.

Dr. Foster had stepped down as head of Apollo Mining nearly three years before.

There was a progression to management. Some people were great with small start-ups but
couldn't handle big business. Others were best at handling large scale operations and were
driven crazy by start-ups.

Apollo, and LFD Corp., were, without question, big business. Tyler and Bryan had talked it
over and then three people had taken over various bits of the management. There was an MBA
with extensive experience of terrestrial mining and materials sales as the CEO, an Army
general as Chief of Operations, mostly devoted to the increasingly complex task of moving
light around, and even a Chief Science Officer who oversaw production of the SAPL
components and an increasingly large team of people who studied better ways to move it and
use it.

Bryan's title was now 'Chief of Special Projects.' That way he always had new things to
wrap his head around and Tyler had somebody's head to throw them at.

“Busy,” Tyler said. “I think I need to get a ship made.”

“You have... a lot of ships,” Bryan pointed out. “I mean, if you count all the tugs...”

“I mean for me,” Tyler said. “I've been putting it off for forever. But if I'm going to be
running back and forth between here and Wolf, running around poking my nose into people's
business... I think I need a ship. A shuttle at least. The Night Wolves have a pretty good
design. I think I may have one sent to Burger Boat.”

“They know anything about space?” Bryan asked.

“Not a thing,” Tyler said. “Time they found out. And taking the shuttle not only takes
time I can't afford, I'm just getting too old to sit next to a hulking miner who's looking
forward to getting back to mamasan and some real showers. Okay, we've got a problem.”

“I live to serve,” Bryan said, grinning.

“Steel.”

“Hard,” Bryan said. “We've been looking at making a smelter. Problem is, most of our stuff
is mobile enough to run if the Horvath come through the gate. A smelter... isn't going to
be really mobile.”

“Right,” Tyler said. “And what I'm talking about is going to be too big for a smelter,
anyway. You've seen the general design for the Wolf mine I take it.”

“Yep,” Bryan said. “Those support plates are going to be fun to make. They'll have to be
welded.”

“Not if we can cast them in one piece,” Tyler said. “I was thinking about it on the
shuttle back. What's steel?”

“Iron,” Bryan said. “Carbon. Various trace elements. If you want stainless...”

“Which we do.”

“A bunch of chromium or nickel. About fourty percent by weight if I recall the class.”

“Okay,” Tyler said. “Think of a McGriddle.”

“A what?” Bryan said, chuckling.

“A
chupaqueso
, then,” Tyler said. “Take a plate of iron, more or less pure.”

“Which we have,” Bryan said, nodding.

“Then layer it on both sides with crushed carbon. Mix in the trace elements you need. Then
on the outside, smaller plates of chromium or nickel. Heat, melt, let collapse into a ball
through microgravity.”

“May work,” Bryan said. “Except the carbon's going to get very kinetically active and tend
to move away.”

“Ah,” Tyler said. “Why I mentioned a McGriddle. Seal the edges of the outer plates. That
will keep the carbon contained.”

“How big we talking?” Bryan asked, making some notes.

“Two kilometers,” Tyler said. “The final form. Sort of like a washer with a one hundred
meter hole in the middle. And about thirty meters thick. Two of those. We can figure out
how to make the bracers if we can do the washers.”

“That's an interesting project,” Bryan said, grinning. “We ordered these new tugs from
Night Wolves...”

“Yeah,” Tyler said. “What's up with that?”

“We needed bigger fields for shaping,” Bryan said, still making notes. “We're doing a lot
of spin processing. We needed wider fields to handle big projects. This is a good example.
To get this thing even, we're going to have to shape it in three dimensions. But with the
tugs we can do that. We're calling them
Potter's Hands
. I'm
not
going to start with two kilometers, mind you. But BAE has been screaming for steel for the
Constitutions
. We're having to carry it up out of the well. This might be the answer.”

“Call me when you've got the material spun up,” Tyler said. “I'd like to see that.”

“Will do. Anything else?”

“About a thousand things,” Tyler said. “Oh, Steren's getting married. You should be
getting an invitation. I put you down for one.”

“Steren?” Bryan asked, confused.

“Younger daughter?” Tyler said. “The tomboy?”

“I... don't think you'd ever mentioned her name,” Bryan said. “I knew you had two
daughters. But that's about all.”

“Really?” Tyler said. “Not even when we were melting...”

“Icarus,” Bryan said. “No. And we talked about a lot of things. But not family. I'd sort
of wondered.”