Bastion Saturn (21 page)

Today was simple enough. A radio signal would inform the scientists and engineers at the Spaceport that the sweat and labor from nearly three years before was approaching fruition.

A billion kilometers away, give or take, a humanoid robot was coursing through space. It was like nearly every other robot that humans had dragged along to the Saturn System, except that this one enjoyed similar cloaking technology to the Princess Belle. Samantha had been out there for nine months now. After being whipped around the Earth and then the moon, the machine had gotten a final boost off Jupiter as it hurled toward an eventual rendezvous with Titan. At 66,666,666 kilometers from Saturn, Samantha partially woke and briefly deployed a folding antenna from her back. The array gathered its exact position from the sun and four stars, aligned itself with Earth, and sent a tiny burst transmission before the robot returned to sleep mode.

Tom Fisher stood in the thinly populated Spaceport control room next to his only real live friend, Professor Eric Gablehauser, and noted the incoming message. With the transmission confirmed, he held his hand up for a high-five. Gabelhauser despised the touch of another human, but complied with the old social convention out of rare delight.

“Bingo,” said Tom. “Exactly on time.” He held up a glass of water. “Two months to go. Champagne?”

“Never touch the stuff,” said Gablehauser.

“Drink of your choice then.”

“Fine. Orange Fanta.”

They clinked glasses. Tom sipped his water and felt bubbles on his tongue delivering the complex fruit of a vintage Dom Perignon. He decided to let the beverage have its desired effect, noting a slightly dizzy feeling overcoming his limbs. The omniscient sensation that was AI gave off its own cold feelings of warmth and was joined by a general sense of accomplishment that spread through every human on Earth. That awareness was almost overwhelming in the pleasure it conveyed, and Tom’s mild effervescence was quickly supplanted by the high of a massively connected sentience, producing a feeling of deep satisfaction.

Nearly every moon around Saturn had a radio telescope and or other piece of detecting equipment pointed at Earth, as well as the moon, Mars, Venus, and any other place in the inner Solar System that could be a departure point for an unwanted delivery. Every one of those Saturn-based devices, if they noted it at all, failed to perceive the approaching robot for what it was.

On the moon Ijiraq, the Earthward-facing radio antenna caught the briefest disturbance when Samantha’s array deployed and searched the heavens for its location. The Ijiraq computer that monitored input from the search for such anomalies regarded it as just that, an anomaly, and documented the event, then shot it off to the Titan-based mainframe that gathered all such information. The Titan-based mainframe then failed to make any correlation with approaching disaster and filed it for the record while simultaneously sending a note of receipt back to Siggi Winter’s Ijiraq array.

Not that Siggi Winter would have given two shits if a dot 67 million kilometers away was more than an anomaly. He was fully occupied with reigning in his anger over the brashness of the fools who were landing on his rock. That the bearded jerk in the stolen cop ship had nearly blown the rock’s rotation, which Winter had worked for months to achieve, had him nearly apoplectic. He watched two people in exosuits step out of the shuttle’s airlock and bounce toward his main airlock. He considered telling the schweinhunds to eat schizer and die, but the armed cop ship was still very persuasive. Rather, he allowed the two to enter, forcing himself to offer up a host-with-the-most smile as he opened the inner door. “Good day.” (Sounded like
goot.
) “I am Siggi Winter.” (Sounded like
Vinter
.)

Jennifer held out a hand. “Jennifer Boyce. Thank you for letting us, um, intrude.”

Winter held his arms at his sides ignoring her proffered hand. “Of course, Miss Boobs. Boobs von Juggs. That has been your nickname since you called without your top.”

Jennifer let her hand fall. “Yeah, sorry about that.”

Jook pushed a hand forward and practically picked up Winter’s limp appendage. “Jook Dukemejian. Listen, Sigg, I don’t know how you’re set up here, but we’ve got a need for a place to recharge, and you’re it.” He looked past Winter’s shoulder. “Where’s the rest of your outfit?” Jennifer followed with a sheepish, “We were kind of expecting to have a bunch of nerve disrupters aimed at us.”

Winter patted a wall. “Autonomous. I am self-sufficient. Mostly.” Jook and Jennifer waited for more. Siggi briefly closed his eyes. When he looked at them again it was with hope, searching their eyes for something he could trust. “The factory is not yet on line. I am requiring certain difficult to obtain items.” He paused briefly, his pallid face flushing with a certain embarrassment over revealing more than he would have liked. The woman in front of him was disarmingly beautiful. And he had seen her boobs after all. “But I am being rude. I can offer refreshment. I have schnapps. Synthetic, I’m afraid.” He waived for them to follow him. “The Corey affect is stronger at the perimeter of the base and will be more gravitationally comfortable. A Musk tube will take us to the primary quarters.”

Jennifer pointed her thumb back at the airlock. “Um. What about the rest of us?”

“I only have schnapps for us. You will tell me your problem over a drink and then we decide about your friends.”

Caleb paced or attempted to pace around the cramped quarters of the cop ship; it was more of a step-bounce, and he had to take care not to bump into the walls. The landing area was at the center of the clockwise spinning moon. He had read about some of the smaller Saturn satellites getting spun up to create the artificial gravity known as the Corey Effect. He wanted to get inside and check it out himself.
What the hell is taking so long?
His radio wasn’t penetrating the rock and Spruck couldn’t raise Jen or Jook, either. He was about to jump into his exosuit and use the ship’s door breaker to bust in when Jennifer’s face popped up on his screen.

“Hey, buddy.”

Great, now he was just buddy. “What took so long? Christ, I was getting ready to bust the door down.”

“Diplomacy. We’re invited to stay and there is even better news.”

With the entire entourage of refugees piled into the cafeteria, there was still room to spread out. Winter had built a large operation with no one to fill it. He stood now in front of an unmanned kitchen, holding a cup of water in the air and smiling at the gathering. “I welcome you,” (sounded like
velkom
), “to Ijiraq and Winter Glass and Optics. I am Siegfried Winter. I’m to understand that you have arrived here after experiencing some great difficulty. It has been explained to me by Ms. Boobs, uh, Boyce, that you are all likely to find it difficult for repatriation at any of the larger moons in the system. It may be, therefore, that we can offer each other a solution of sorts. At Winter Glass and Optics, it is our goal to provide the finest glass and optical products available in the system. The factory is ninety-nine percent complete and potential contracts have already been arranged in the dozens or, er, perhaps a dozen—”

“Cut to the chase, Sig,” said Alice who was already calculating how to squeeze this stiff.

Winter grimaced and made note of a future trouble maker. “We . . . I, have one issue. Ijiraq is incapable of providing the means necessary to fully power the plant. The solar array is maxed out for available photovoltaic conversion, and the size of the moon offers no further real estate to expand. A fusion reactor that was to be shipped from Earth was stopped before the last cargo vessels to leave. The break with our home planet and the general hostility that has resulted makes that option seemingly permanently unavailable. I have made several inquiries with industrial printing outfits on some of the larger moons, but they all want an extraordinary price for a fuel-cell generator big enough to make this work.”

Spruck said, “So you bought this rock, tricked it out to set up shop and you don’t have the juice.”

“Not enough juice, as you say. However, the existing power does provide some surplus for life support . . . um . . .
etceteras
. There would of course be some additional draw due to added personnel, but the system was designed for far more people. Limited manufacturing could take place.”

“So are you offering us a job?” asked Alice.

Winter smiled with what he hoped appeared as warmth. “I’m offering room and board. In exchange, I would train you and have you work in the factory.”

There was some general babble among the group, most of it in the form of grumbling, until Ken held up his hand. “Deal. I’ll take that deal. My son and I will take it.” The crowd got louder, the bulk of the noise in dismay. Ken held up his hands for quiet. “And when we have helped make this place fully operational we will discuss profit sharing.” This was followed by a more positive spin within the babble.

Alice said, “I don’t work for free.”

“Room and board ain’t free, Alice,” said a crooked nosed middle aged baldy who had his arm in a cast from the chaos of the Albiorix exit. “Ken’s right. It’s a gift from God.” He looked at Winter, introducing himself as Carl Petersen. “Sign me up, Mr. Winter.”

Jook raised a hand. “Um. I could really help you out with your security situation, man.”

Caleb paced in front of Jennifer and Saanvi. They had taken a sidebar in the hallway outside the cafeteria. He said, “I can’t do it. I’m no factory worker. I’d go nuts.”

Jennifer pursed her lips while nodding slightly. “Not my cup of tea, either, really. I’m a botanist.”

“Well, I’m a doctor,” said Saanvi. “I can make myself useful that way, but this small bunch of people aren’t going to need very much in the way of medical assistance. Maybe the odd accident. Optics could be interesting.”

“Just shoot me,” said Caleb.

Jennifer said, “Big plans you had when you came here? The cop gig a fall back?”

“Yes, in fact. If I hadn’t contracted liver cancer on the way out here and had nearly every dime soaked up to fix it . . .” He let that hang as he tried to come up with something that sounded like he actually flew a billion miles into space with a plan. “I had a nice enough stake. Was going to try to set up a little trade business. Everyone needs something. I’m good at acquiring things. And speaking of acquired things, what’s the situation with the Jook dude?”

Jennifer put on an innocent face. “What?”

“Is he part of our little group or not? You’re sleeping with him, right?”

Jennifer put her hands on her hips. “Not that it’s any of your business, but no. We share the joy of being nudists. Besides, he wants to be Winter’s security guy.” She then rolled her eyes as she caught Caleb giving her figure a body scan with renewed interest.

Bert stepped out of the cafeteria. “Pardon me. They’re going to take a vote, and I was requested to ask for your presence.”

Jennifer held up a hand. “Hold on, Bert.” She lifted Caleb’s chin, forcing his eyes above her neck. “You said acquiring things. We could acquire things.”

“Huh?”

“Yeah . . . what?” asked Saanvi.

Jennifer touched her fingers together in front of her chin. “Winter needs more power to ramp this place up. Maybe we find a way to get it for him. In exchange, he pays us for services rendered.”

“With what money do we get such a thing, and what would that thing be?” ask Saanvi.

“Wait wait wait wait wait. I’m feeling something.” Caleb started pacing again. “Say we connect ourselves with someone with a small fusion reactor—”

“Again, with what money, what someone?” asked Saanvi.

He waived off the interruption. “There’re other things than money.”

“Stealing? You want to steal stuff? We’re already wanted people.”

“Did I say stealing? If you’d stop interrupting for a—”

Spruck poked his head out of the cafeteria. “Guys, waiting on you to vote.”

Caleb held a hand up to Spruck and continued to the girls. “People out here need stuff. During my year on Hanson, I did a lot of research before I fell into destitution and joined a corrupt cop force—a lot of reading about how things work out here. There’s a whole bunch of trading going on and a lot of it without the exchange of money. There are companies on Hanson whose sole business is facilitating stuff. Facilitators. We become facilitators.”

Spruck stepped all the way into the hall. “Hm? What’s this?”

Jennifer said, “We’re spitballing ways to avoid a living death working on this spinning rock of a glass factory.”

Spruck let the door shut in Bert’s face. “Tell me more.”

Caleb stood outside the cop ship with his suit tethered to the port side to keep himself from constantly bouncing away from the spacecraft as he wrenched, sanded, and cut away everything that might give it away as a cop ship. He had considered for a moment keeping the thing flying its colors (a cop ship could be an extra bit of persuasion in his new chosen occupation), but he’d known a guy who had stolen a cop car in Burlington once. Not only did skinny Georgie Cuatt do time for the theft, but he also got hit for impersonating a police officer. Why add more trouble to what was already a growing mountain? Better to make the ship generic so he could play dumb.

Caleb stripped the once-pristine ship down as best he could and then, using the rotary sander, polished the name Diamond Girl onto the side. Then he reconsidered giving a ship a name that might be involved in questionable activities and sanded that off, too. The thing had gone from a gleaming top-of-the-line law enforcement intimidator to a beater that looked like it had been picked up at auction. Perfect.

The gang would have three vehicles: the
Diamond Girl
for enforcement, the Belle for stealth and for other stuff he hadn’t thought of . . . and what the heck should he name the shuttle? Maybe Phoebe, after her home moon. A second ship that would be tagged with a BOLO. He’d have to work Phoebe over next.

The gang had chosen to abstain from the vote in the cafeteria. The rest of the survivors had unanimously decided to become glass factory drones. With the deal done, Caleb asked for a side bar with Winter. He and his team (Caleb liked thinking of them as his team) gathered in the small conference room outside of Winter’s office. They brought freshly baked, 3D-printed bread with a butter-like spread from the fancy cooker on the
Phoebe
.