It's Hell To Choose (The Kurtherian Gambit Book 9) (16 page)

“Really?” Eric turned to Jeo.
 
“No one told the lead on mining and manufacture of metals in space where his post is going to be?”

Jeo shook his head, “No, I figured I would either be in Colorado or possibly on the ships they talk about on the News.”

Eric grinned, “Jeo, there is one thing Bethany Anne doesn’t mess with, and that is inefficiency. Where do you believe she would have her new lead of Industrial Outer Space Mining and Manufacturing?” He paused a moment, then helped him out, “The hint is in the title.”

Jeo’s eyes lit up, “Outer space!”

Eric nodded, “Hell yeah! Buddy, you are just going to the Polarus to meet, greet, and get some work done. Your final destination in a few days is your new office on Space-Station-One.”

His father looked confused, “Don’t you mean Moon-Base-One? Or is there a new space station up there, like Skylab?”

Jeo wanted to face palm in embarrassment, “That’s ISS dad, the International Space Station.”

His dad merely winked to Eric.

Eric replied, “Well, I hope you realize that if you spill this information, you could be endangering your son’s life, but we have a Space Station at L2, that’s Lagrange Point 2 out beyond the Moon. Jeo’s home and office will start there and then move as quickly as he can help get us into production out to the mining area.”

“Oh,” his mother answered, “Is that on the moon then?”

Eric looked down to the shorter lady, “No ma’am. Although I don’t know for sure, I imagine Jeo knows the most likely location for mining; it is his occupation after all.”

“Holy crap,” Jeo breathed, “I’m going out to the asteroid belt, aren’t I?” Before Eric could respond, Jeo continued, “With your technology, we don’t have to worry about Delta-V or crossing the Earth's Orbit or even water, right?” Eric just nodded, “So, take those out of the equation and we want to go after Type M asteroids for metals and outer space manufacturing. No wonder Ms. Bethany Anne told me minimum three months.” He asked, “How long would it take to get out to the Asteroid Belt?”

Eric shrugged his shoulders, “Beat’s me. I doubt that distance and time is a factor. Probably more of a short timeframe on this project.”

“Short…Timeframe?” Jeo asked.

Eric looked at his watch, “Here, let’s get your gear stowed and we will talk. We need to be on the Polarus in thirty minutes.”

“Right, of course!” Jeo hugged his Mom goodbye and shook his Dad’s hand. Grabbing his suitcases, he walked out into the backyard. Even with the back porch light on, the black Pod holding a foot off of the ground was difficult to see. “Is that sucking light in?”

Eric answered, “Well, I can tell you it is not reflecting most visible light rays, so if that is the same as ‘sucking’ them in, then yes.” He opened the front hatch, “Store your gear back there.”

Mr. and Mrs. Deteusche watched as the two men got into the Pod. Mr. Deteusche asked before the hatch was shut, “Did you just say you are going to the ship Polarus?” When Eric agreed they were, he asked, “Didn’t you say that was near France right now?” Eric agreed it was. “How are you going to make it to France in thirty minutes?” getting to his real question.

Eric hit the button to close the hatch, “Short-cut!”

Mr. Deteusche could hear his son’s laugh get cut off. A few seconds later, the Pod smoothly went up about twenty feet, then they both heard the heavy ‘whoosh’ of air when it practically disappeared into the night sky.

—

Jeo stood in his office. It was, effectively, one shipping container in size. One-quarter of the wall in his office was a massive whiteboard, that was digitized. So, whenever he and William would work together, whatever he drew on his board here was automatically duplicated on a board William had down on the Polarus and vice-versa.

That was cool until William started writing ‘words’ on his board when he wasn’t expecting the words to appear -- that was scary as hell.

William found it ‘funny as hell’.

Jeo found the controls to shut off the ability except for when they were working together. Now, he didn’t feel like his office had William's ghost looking over his shoulder.

Personally, he was in heaven. His time on the Polarus getting to know Bobcat, William, Marcus, TOM, and ADAM was awesome. He had a voice chat channel hooked into talking with ADAM and TOM right now. There were only fourteen people on the Space Station at this time. Ten of them were protection.

Protection from whom, he had no idea. It wasn’t like any of the major superpowers had the ability to just run a space shuttle over here and knock on the doors. Hell, he should know considering his previous employer.

ADAM had informed him that his previous employer had shown up at his apartment while his stuff was being moved. They were unhappy to find out that he had a job already, and the people on site did not know where he went.

Then, they tried to contact his parents with seemingly legal documentation which stated he was to come back to the offices and open some locked areas. Supposedly, no one had realized previously he was the only one who had the combination.

Jeo had smiled to himself. He had forgotten about the safes. The previous employee before him provided the combination to him and split. The last Jeo had heard, he was surfing in Asia somewhere.

When his parents had provided TQB with the document, the inside council Jakob Yadav had fired off a response that ended any harassment of his parents, and Jeo received a nicely-worded email from the company asking how much he wanted in a severance package to provide the combination? Would a year’s pay be sufficient?

Jeo sent confirmation that would be wonderful and supplied the combination to Mr. Yadav at the same time.

A week later, he had been pleased to receive an email with the deposit information.

SWEET! He still grinned thinking about how that flaming gas sack, Javier, must have felt to have authorized the payout.

Now, he was working at the beginning of the refining parameters and how they would mine the ore, and where, in the belt.

“ADAM, what is the status of the modification technology for the platforms?”

“Well,” the alien TOM’s voice came out of the speaker, “You could ask me.”

Jeo grimaced, “Sorry TOM. I always depend on the AI.”

TOM’s voice came back, “I don’t bite, Jeo.”

“It’s not that, well, it’s mostly not that.” Jeo temporized, “It’s more that I’ve always wanted to work with AI’s and figure he is always available. I’m never sure what you are up to, so I don’t want to interrupt.”

There was a pause from the speaker, “Ok, I never considered it from that perspective. ADAM can get ahold of me very easily, we are closer to each other than you might believe. Either way, I’m the one who Bethany Anne has working on this project with Marcus and William. Jeffrey is in charge of the manufacturing and assembly from different locations.”

Jeo interrupted, “Why are they being done in separate locations? Is there a raw materials issue?”

“No, security,” TOM replied. “We don’t want the knowledge out yet. The stresses on the platforms were originally designed for implosive, not explosive. So, these coatings are going to be applied to change the underlying strength of the beams and operational support no matter which direction the pressure is pushing on the frame and other structural members.”

“Does this change it forever?” Jeo asked.

“Long enough, but I wouldn’t plan on the applications to last more than ten years for those we are changing presently. For newly built platforms where the application can be applied to all components as it is built, then I would feel comfortable with at least five decades of service.”

“Damn, that’s impressive” he murmured. “Bobcat wasn’t kidding when he said that Bethany Anne wanted to be mining in months, not years.”

TOM’s voice interrupted Jeo’s thoughts, “No, she wants to be mining in weeks, not months. Bobcat was trying to help you cope with the aggressive time schedule.”

Jeo’s original thoughts left him as he stared at the speaker on his desk. “I’m sorry TOM, did you say Bethany Anne really wants to be mining in weeks?”

“Yes, I can confirm with her if you wish. However, the last time she and I spoke on this subject she hoped you would be live in eighty-four days, so that is about three months on the outside.” TOM said.

Jeo turned to open his work tablet and look at the Calendar. “That’s twelve weeks.” Jeo started computing solutions in his head. “We are going to need a week to push the platforms out to the mind fields, plus I need to confirm which asteroids we are going to mine first. That means that the Pods I need to be modified for the research need to leave on Tuesday. When was Bobcat going to let me know this?” Jeo asked, not really expecting an answer.

“How long have you been on the station?” TOM asked.

Jeo looked over to the speaker, “Not long, maybe twelve hours, but what has that got to do with my questions?”

“Because Bobcat believes you should check out your surroundings and enjoy space before he calls you.”

“When is that going to be?” Jeo asked, thinking about everything he now needed to be doing.

TOM replied, “In twelve hours.”

“When would Bethany Anne have told me?” Jeo wondered, not really expecting an answer.

“Twelve hours ago” was TOM’s reply.

“Oh” Jeo considered TOM’s reply. “I guess she isn’t into ‘being in the moment’?”

“Sure, if you mean the moment when you are pushing forward towards the goal of making the human race safe? She does tend to be rather focused on that part. Don’t get me wrong, she knows that Bobcat did not focus you on this twelve hours ago and is allowing it to happen. Before you ask, she allows it because she can understand her methods might need softening from time to time.”

Jeo looked around his office, “TOM, let’s discuss the requirements for the platforms and how we are going to get them modified. She wants three months? Let’s be mining in two.”

Jeo pulled the second keyboard towards him. A monitor screen was projected on the wall in front of him. There were twelve incredibly powerful projection cameras placed on the four walls of this office which could project multiple screens, or join for even larger screens. Team BMW was using four of them for a holographic projector like you would see in science fiction movies. That was incredibly cool, but until he had need of it, Jeo thought it was a little much and utterly useless for his spreadsheet work.

Each projector could also ‘see’ when he placed his hands to manipulate the screen as if it was a touchscreen and also detect hand gestures in the air in front of the screen. Jeo reached up to the fifteen-inch monitor displayed on the wall and opened two fingers from about an inch apart to roughly two inches apart. The display on his wall went instantaneously from fifteen inches to thirty.

“Computer, I need a Project Plan, Name it Destiny Zero Zero One.”

“Understood Mr. Deteusche.”

“Computer, replace calling me Mr. Deteusche with Jeo.”

“Understood Jeo.”

“Computer, replace your designation with ‘Samantha’ and switch to feminine voice.”

A warm and inviting feminine voice greeted Jea, “Understood Jeo.”

Jeo shivered, “Samantha, switch your voice to female, pragmatic. I don’t need your voice causing my mind to wander.”

A much cooler and clipped female voice responded, “Understood Jeo.”

“Samantha, project a countdown timer in quadrant office A-1 for fifty-six days and start it counting down.” He looked over to the wall he would see each morning as he walked into his office. “Switch the timer text to light blue.” Satisfied with the result, he turned back to his own monitor, “Samantha, open a diary application and every time I say ‘Captain’s Log’, I want you to copy my comments into the diary application, is this understood?”

“Understood Jeo” the female voice responded back to him.

Jeo grabbed his keyboard, “Excellent. Let’s make history, Samantha.”

Costa Rica - South America

The warehouse was useable. Phillip Simmons had last used this location some three months back. It was in a seedier side of San Jose and still close enough to the main airport to be useful.

In the mid-afternoon sun, there weren't many places to hide coming up to the doors. He had arrived here two minutes before and knew he had at least three, if not four, pairs of eyes on him. The mercs he was hiring were not Johnny-come-lately types. They all had been in the business for at least five years, and each had at least eight major projects under their belt. God alone knew how many minor or personal projects.