A Deep Sleep (Valhalla Book 1) (38 page)

Oh yeah, I have control over that function now.
She thought, smiling happily to herself.

One of the modifications had given her the ability to control many of her body’s chemical production centers. While she didn’t directly control it, per se, she told the computer in her chest what to do and it complied, so the effect was nearly indistinguishable. Of course there were limiters to prevent her from incurring a host of unfortunate side-effects, but she had reasonable control. If she switched to combat mode most of the limiters would even go away.

“Here we are sir.” Rhodes brought Athena out of her own thoughts.

“Admiral on deck!” Athena didn’t see who announced her presence.

“Thank you Lieutenant.” Athena nodded to the man as she entered the compartment.

As she did so she immediately noticed several things, first the compartment was a decent sized conference room that could hold at least twenty people and it was very nearly full. Second, the array of shoulder patches on the duty-coveralls present represented a half-dozen nations, at least. While they were predominately American, she saw British, Japanese, Brazilian, and at least one Australian flag present.

That makes things more interesting…

“As you were.” Athena set herself into command mode and moved to the front of the room. There were several chairs empty at the back, but she moved towards the woman at the head of the table. She was the only woman to have not snapped to immediate attention when Athena entered the room. Athena noted that she was Aegis and wore a colonel’s eagles on her shoulder. Athena nodded to herself, this was the woman in charge, she simply exuded command and was seemingly totally in control of her surroundings.

“Rear Admiral Grace Harper, better known as Athena.” The woman stood and extended her hand.

“Colonel, I don’t believe we’ve had the pleasure.” Athena took the seat beside her that was offered, indicating to the others present to sit as well.

“Of course, I was so wrapped up in the moment, I apologize.” The woman’s exterior faltered for the barest fraction of a second and Athena was certain nobody else noticed. “I am Colonel Zoe Martin, commander of Agema Special Operations Command.”

“I can’t say that is surprising.” Athena laughed softly. “An enterprise such as this, I would expect to find a Martin personally directing things.”

“Colonel Martin laughed in return. “That is true enough, though now that you are here it will be your command soon enough.”

Athena only nodded, her smile remaining on her face but fleeing from her mind. The weight of her future command was heavier than ever, sitting here in this massive facility and meeting those she would actually command. They were all heading into the unknown and she, more lost than they, was leading. It had a certain poetry to it, the most lost leading the lost into the deep unknown of the future.

“I think we can get started now.” Colonel Martin nodded to Lieutenant Rhodes and he entered a few commands onto a wall-mounted interface, sealing the room. The assembled officers and noncoms quieted instantly.

“Thank you all for joining this enterprise. The reasons and the risks have been explained to each of you, yet here you are. I am deeply humbled by this. While I am not staying here with you, I will continue to support your efforts until my last day.” Colonel Martin activated the display behind her. Athena was about to turn until she noted that she and the Colonel had a smaller display in front of them that precluded the need to awkwardly turn in their seats.

“While I know that some of you are aware of at least some of the contents of today’s briefing, I will give a complete accounting to bring everyone up to speed.” Colonel Martin nodded in Athena’s direction as she spoke. “I would also like to introduce your new commanding officer, Admiral Grace “Athena” Harper. You all know her accomplishments; she’s been through the ringer as bad as anyone. She’s also dealt out more than enough hurt. I think you’ll all agree her record speaks for itself.” She indicated for Athena to speak.

“I am honored to be given this command, to lead the team that will safeguard all we have fought for. We are in a new role, no settling into the peacekeeping roles of our comrades who remain, safeguarding the peace we have lost so many to achieve. Instead, we stand to end any future war as swiftly and favorably as we can, so that others can safeguard the peace once again. We do not do this for our children, but for all future generations.” Athena nodded back at Martin who got back to her briefing.

“Now then, you should all become intimately familiar with this image; this is your new home. Officially, it is Object 45-16A-01, but we’ve come to call it Valhalla, for obvious reasons.” Martin smiled wolfishly. “And in it we have begun stockpiling the most bleeding edge technologies ever assembled in a single location. The specifics will be dealt with in individual briefings and the notes will be available for you to peruse at your leisure. I suggest you do so. There is a lot of information and I can assure you, even augmented as you all are, it will be a long and boring process to assimilate it all.” She manipulated the controls and the conference table in front of them activated with Valhalla floating and revolving slowly.

“You’ll notice that there are a number of hidden weapons installations all across the surface. Some are in ravines and crevasses, but most are housed behind rock hatches and abutments. The primary defense of this facility, however, is stealth and anonymity. This asteroid belt is considered devoid of anything useful to mining, though in the case of this particular asteroid, that is not true. A large vein of platinum existed and has been mined. It is stored on the station and will be of great use in the future. Intel and SpecOps, we have some plans and ideas drawn up for you in that regard. Obviously,” She turned towards where the sole engineer sat, Athena recognized the unit patch. “there are manufacturing applications as well, but the stockpile is substantial. Between what was recovered here and some other asteroids out of system, there is in excess of twenty thousand tons of platinum in storage.” Several people choked at that. That much platinum wasn’t a small fortune, it was a large one. “Yes, well, that is not even close to the most valuable stores in this facility, but that is for a little later.”

Colonel Martin continued for the better part of three hours, roughly summarizing the state of the facilities and their capabilities. Athena watched as she detailed the numerous landing bays, storage facilities full of every conceivable raw material, and the physical training facilities for anytime when they were not in stasis. She also discussed, in somewhat greater detail, the advanced robotic factory complex at their disposal. The facility was the equivalent of some small industrial systems entire production capacity. It was capable of producing anything they could design and had been the first thing constructed. Colonel Martin explained that it had created almost everything they used here, including the very pieces of the briefing room they sat in. This had limited the heavy cargo shipments required to get the facility up and running. Raw material was much more carelessly tracked by intelligence services, since the major industrial nodes were well watched.

The other major items shipped in had been the six colossal boring machines and their numerous smaller counterparts. With their attending support facilities, they ate rock and dumped processed raw material in their wake. While much of the material wasn’t of great value, engineers had long ago figured out how to incorporate the materials with various resins to form a concrete-like substance. Most mining bases throughout human space were constructed of such materials. The remaining fractions of useful material were used to supplement the raw materials being shipped in for the fabrication of additional equipment. Athena had been surprised to hear that these machines were remaining on the base, indeed they were already ensconced in their own cave.

“They’re simply too big to risk shipping back out and we already listed them as destroyed or cannibalized for parts back at the shell company Aegis had set-up for their purchase.” Colonel Martin had explained when she’d inquired.

Athena had been a bit overwhelmed by the information overload, fully intending to do as Colonel Martin had suggested and read up once she got some downtime. Her attention had become completely focused when the briefing had moved to the thing everyone was interested the most in; the stasis systems.

“Here is where the real money lies.” Colonel Martin proclaimed. The holotank image of Valhalla began to ablate and enlarge. The screen was quickly filled with a cutaway view of the very heart of the asteroid. “Housed at the center are thirty battleship-grade fusion reactors, with dozens of back-up fission units nearby. That is only about a third of the total power generation capability, but most is spread out in local hubs. This is the only substantial concentration. Wrapped around it are the stasis facilities.”

“Wrapped around a bunch of bloody plasma in magnetic bottles?” One Royal Marine Captain cried out with muted shock, even forgetting the ‘sir’.

“Yes, Captain, that much is true. We did not, however, wish for the power lines to be any longer than needed. This is the very beating heart of the system. Without it, your stasis units will fail in short order as their capacitor back-ups fail. The risk was deemed acceptable.” Colonel Martin said sharply, clearly having noticed the break in discipline but choosing to mostly overlook it. She turned back to the group at large. “Now, as I was saying, the stasis units. The basic unit is not much more complex than current medical stasis units. They are more advanced in their ability to slow the human body. In one of these, every hundred years is the same as nearly two years outside of them.” The two medical personnel present leaned forward on that, clearly shocked and intrigued.

“Is it safe to assume the specifications for those units are stored in the data banks, sir?” One of them asked, not forgetting courtesy.

“Indeed they are. I imagine you will also be interested in the interface.” Again the holo changed, highlighting an even six compartments spread around the fusion cores. “These are the interface units. Three are required to maintain the environment continuously. The others serve as a one hundred percent redundancy. There are dozens of data nodes to augment your stasis unit’s own. This allows for not only your own consciousness, but also whatever constructs you wish to create to be realized. We have loaded several planet’s worth of environments, but again, we have redundant capacity. There is enough storage capacity to generate and keep active several solar systems. Now this means that the overall capacity is actually somewhat limited. We have the ability to bring additional data cores online, but they have not been shipped yet. We will have additional discussions relating to that.”

“I assume you wish for the system to be brought online and in use to determine how it truly functions, sir?” The engineer offered.

“Just so.” Colonel Martin agreed. “I am by no means an expert on these systems, but my engineering team for the environment tells me that without actually running a large scale instance of this entire set-up, they can’t predict how much is enough. Not to mention the fact that nobody knows just what you will wish to create in there. It is as much a question of usage as engineering.”

“I am sure we can begin exploring that soon.” Athena added confidently.

Colonel Martin nodded. “The final piece of the puzzle, as it were, is the triple quasi-sentient AI units. They control every aspect of the environment. Now, they are under the control and direction of our people at the moment, but once we leave, Valhalla command staff will subsume that role. Athena and her top commanders will have exclusive control of the environments and we will be placing the external link controls under their control as well. Nobody will be able to access the system from the inside or out without their permission.” That headed off any objections, Athena noted. “We have, perhaps cheekily, nicknamed these units Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos. The Fates, as it were.”

Several snorts of amusement followed, as well as some good natured grumbling, for the most part.

“Appropriate enough I suppose.” The Royal Marine Captain from before intoned flatly.

“Tempting them a bit, I think.” A surgeon added.

“Maybe they’ll appreciate the irony.” Lieutenant Rhodes suggested humorously. “Though if they do, they would be the ones who wrote that it would be so. Boggles the mind.”

That drew several more short laughs and smiles. Colonel Martin brought everyone back on point, though she herself sported a small smile.

“Indeed they may, Lieutenant. These Fates, however, control only that which they are allowed to control, but it is still entire worlds. They are crucial to the function of the virtual interface, parsing and working though the massive amounts of data that are required. One can run the system, but it will shrink the habitat substantially. We have three additional units in cold storage that can be brought online. In the event of a total and catastrophic failure of all three simultaneously, smaller computers will take the load for a short time while the back-up units are brought online. They will not support a complex environment however. The current default will place everyone into a small complex so that everyone in in contact and there are things to keep you occupied. The boot process takes about two days from cold storage. It is deemed highly unlikely, however, that such an event will occur. I am assured that the reliability of these systems is better than ninety-nine point nine, nine, nine, nine, nine, nine. Mean-time-between-failure is predicted at seven hundred years, plus or minus one hundred years.”