Troy Rising 3 - The Hot Gate (30 page)

“And we will be told, ‘thank you very much for playing but you’re not good enough, goodbye,’ ” Dr. Barreiro said, angrily.

“Yes,” Admiral Duvall said. “In prettier diplomatic language. Again, this is a decision of DOD not State. And the only thing that DOD cares about is ‘can you defend the solar system.’ The proven answer is: No. The President is in concurrence.”

“Unless we can turn them around,” Tyler said.

“I…” Admiral Duvall said then stopped. “Do you have a specific proposal?”

“Not at this time,” Tyler said. “But I hope to have one by the end of this series of conferences. Obviously, the agendas are now moot. But I would strongly suggest that we continue as we have been going. If I can come up with a recommendation which meets your approval and SecNavs, we can pretend this meeting never happened.”

“What would you recommend for the rest of the week?” Dr. Werden asked. “We do have other duties.”

“The simple answer will sound insulting,” Tyler said.

“What is one more insult?” Dr. Barreiro asked.

“Then I would recommend that you gentlemen let myself and my people give you as much of a class on the necessities of survival in space as is possible in the next few days,” Tyler said. “This problem isn’t actually cultural. Or rather, the solution has to ignore culture. Space isn’t about culture except in the negative. Space is a binary solution set. You only have to breathe vacuum once to realize that at a very real emotional level.”

“I do not intend to let any of these ministers breathe vacuum,” General Barcena said.

“Not what I meant,” Tyler replied. “Wolf is a mass of space industry. You guys want to know what it takes to really survive in space, this is the place. And the gas mine is very freaking cool. Heck, I’d strongly recommend going over to the shuttles for not just a meet and greet, isn’t this neat, but spend time with your sons and your subordinate’s sons seeing what they do. And asking them why they do it. Try to understand that if the US military had the same cultural approach, we would be unable to do this. We’d have the whole squadron of boats deadlined.”

“We have had similar situations in the past,” Duvall said. “Ships that simply were not up to snuff. Maintenance is a major issue in water Navy as well.”

“What did you do?” Tyler asked.

“Canned everyone in a position to affect the overall running of the ship,” Duvall said. “Starting with the captain and working down. Complete retrain for the crew. Usually complete replacement of the senior NCOs and chain of command. Napoleon said it best with a little paraphrase. There are no bad ships. There are only bad officers and NCOs. Which, for political and cultural reasons, is very difficult to do in South American countries.”

“What gets me is, I know that Argentineans and Chileans can do this!” Tyler said, waving his hands in the air. “We buy some very high end parts from you guys! Stuff that’s hard to make and has to be perfect! And it is! You make great stuff! You can’t make them if you don’t pay attention to detail! You can do this! Why can’t you do it in the One-Four-Three? These are your ‘best and brightest,’ right?”

“Finding such people is…extremely difficult,” Admiral Benito said.

“Do you think we send every starry-eyed kid who comes to a recruiting station into space, Admiral?” Duvall said, chuckling. “Failure rate in A school for space based operations is right at sixty percent.”

“Ditto here,” Tyler said. “About the same fail rate at Apollo’s training center. And most of the people applying are Americans so it’s not racist.”

“Which is why we’d really prefer not to have to remove people from the Alliance,” Admiral Duvall said. “This isn’t World War Two and masses of conscripts help. The US, Canada, Australia, cannot supply enough force. We need the bodies. And the money. But warm bodies won’t do it. We need, absolutely require for survival, people who can do the jobs. Sorry.”

“So you will send our sons home in disgrace,” Dr. Velasquez said, quietly.

“Disgrace is cultural,” Admiral Duvall said, shrugging. “From one of my briefings on the subject, it would appear that an inability to perform ‘minor mechanical work’ is anything but a disgrace in your culture. Quite the opposite. That being said, everyone in Parker’s division we’d be willing to retain. Which just says that it’s actually Parker. But there’s no form for that. Your son has passed the review with flying colors, Under Minister. And Under Minister. They’re boats are as close to perfect as you could wish. I understand from the same briefing that that is potentially a liability in their home culture. Which, from our POV, sort of says it all.”

“Parker, MOGs.”

“Yes, sir?” Dana said.

With the afternoon conference cancelled, Parker wasn’t going to have her little sheep wandering adrift. As soon as they got the word it was definitely cancelled, she rounded them up and had them in the boats faster than you could say Preventative Maintenance Checks and Services. She’d sent Palencia over to Boat One, under the supervision of the Chief, while she worked on Twenty-Three and Velasquez took Twenty-Four.

“Afternoon reschedule now explained,” DiNote commed. “We’re doing a dog and pony. Bring Twenty-Three into Bay One, Twenty-Four into Bay Two. The ministers and muckety mucks are going to ‘observe maintenance operations.’ ”

“Oh, joy,” Dana said. “Twenty-Three to Bay One, aye. Twenty-Four to Bay Two, aye.”

“Palencia and Velasquez are to do the dog and pony,” DiNote said. “Which, by order, is to ‘perform initial portion of thirty day standard checks and service.’ Benito and Mutant will stand by in the flight compartments to explain flight operations. You and Thermal will stand by in the cargo zone to explain maintenance issues and general operations. The ministers are anticipated to be present for up to two hours.”

“That’s a pretty long dog and pony, sir,” Dana said, frowning.

“Understood,” DiNote said. “We’ll just have to figure out something interesting.”

* * *

“Parker,” Dr. Velasquez said, nodding at the Engineer’s Mate.

Parker had been standing at parade rest in the cargo bay of Twenty-Four for nearly an hour with no one, not even Mister Vernon, really acknowledging her presence. On orders the teams had pulled out all the crash couches first then started pulling panels to reveal the masses of circuitry and grav plates that made up the bulkheads and decks of the Myrmidons.

Mister Vernon, of all people, had been pointing out most of the stuff and the conversations had been…guarded. There was something more than a simple dog and pony going on. The South Americans, particularly, looked very unhappy. When there were questions beyond Mister Vernon’s level of expertise, either Velasquez or Granadica had answered them. Velasquez, between questions, had been doing his checks. She had had to just stand there and hope he was really doing them. Not to mention worrying that with all the plates off, and untrained people wandering around, anything could have happened to the circuitry. They were going to have to run a full diagnostic after this. And as soon as they got back to the Therm they were running a thirty-sixty-ninety just to make sure.

“Sir,” Dana said, coming to attention and looking past the minister at the far bulkhead.

“You don’t have to…” the minister said then sighed. “Very well. What is a gravitational vortex?”

“A gravitational vortex is a quantum interaction produced by the intersection of one or more pseudo-gravitational fields due to relational frame dragging leading to an anomalous gravitational condition in the vortex region, sir,” Dana said. Straight out of the manual.

“Engineer’s Mate,” Velasquez said. “My doctorates are in international relations and anthropology. I also speak seven languages, including Glatun. None of those permit me to translate what you just said. Could you put it in terms I can understand?”

“When two or more pseudo-gravitational fields that are not properly tuned interact, you get gravity that is not what you wanted in that area, sir,” Dana said.

“Higher gravity?” Velasquez asked.

“Depends, sir,” Dana said. “I’m not a quantum gravitational expert, sir. But from experience, you can get anomalous conditions that mimic micro gravity, low gravity, high gravity or some things we don’t have good names for. The worst I’ve ever seen was negative gravity.”

“Negative gravity?”

“Negative momentum?” Dana said. “Negative gravity would be things going up. As I said, we don’t even have names for it. It’s when things in the area tend to fly apart. Only place I’ve ever seen it was in Twenty-Two, sir, just after I joined.”

“What…happened?” Dr. Velasquez asked.

“Had an anomalous reading on the number sixty-three plate, sir,” Dana said. “Powered it up and put in a grav meter. Grav meter came apart. Somewhat explosively.”

“What would have happened if a person were in that field?” the minister asked.

“Not sure, sir,” Dana replied. “Nothing good.”

“It depends upon the strength of the dren field,” Granadica interjected. “Low strength the colloidal simply feels minor to extreme pain. At the extreme pain end there is internal damage. At high strength, equivalent to forty or more gravities, the colloidal normally suffers explosive rupture. Given the failure of the gravity meter, it was in excess of fifty gravities. It would have terminated a colloidal.”

“Oh,” Dr. Velasquez said. “If I may ask without causing more issues… Would that perhaps have been an original fault?”

“No real way to tell, sir,” Dana said. “My gut says it wasn’t per se. My guess, at the time, based upon…other data was that it might have originally been a minor fault that turned into a major one as the system got out of tune. It was during the first period when I took over as division chief and we were working a good bit of maintenance issues, sir.”

“So…if these are tests,” Dr. Velasquez said. “And I imply no insult to Granadica by saying that…”

“I’m fully cognizant of the issue at this point, Mister Under Minister,” Granadica said. “Please continue.”

“Then it sounds as if it might have been a fault that was, at first, non-lethal but the more you ignored it…”

“The more lethal it became, sir,” Dana said, still at attention and looking at the far bulkhead.

“That certainly sounds like a test to me,” Dr. Velasquez said. “Even an elegant one.”

“As you say, sir,” Parker responded.

“Engineer’s Mate,” Dr. Velasquez said, carefully. “There is no way to unsay the things that have been said if not between us than…between our two positions. But I would like to thank you for keeping Diego alive.”

“Sir?” Parker said, looking at him for a moment then returning to stare at the bulkhead.

“Two months?” the minister mused. “Three? The power is on in the shuttle bay. He is for some reason walking in that area…”

“Then he paints the walls,” Granadica said.

“Thank you for that graphic image, AI,” Dr. Velasquez said. “As the AI said.”

“You are welcome, sir,” Dana said. “He’s a good kid.”

“And you’d much rather be back with the One-Four-Two,” Dr. Velasquez said.

“I go where the Navy tells me to go and do what the Navy tells me to do, sir,” Dana said.

“And I think we’re starting to come to an understanding that she does that very well, Minister,” Tyler said, drifting over. “I’m pleased you brought up the question of gravitic interactions, Under Minister.”

“Because?” Velasquez said, cautiously.

“It’s part of our demonstration for the day,” Tyler said. He was, for some reason, holding a broomstick in his hand. “Parker?”

“Sir?” Dana said.

“I need you to set thirty-seven plate to a relative positive two gravities,” Tyler said. “And thirty-eight to a relative one gravity. Both on sixty-five percent over spread. Do not engage.”

“Sir?” Dana said, looking over at Captain DiNote who simply nodded. “Thirty-seven to two pos, aye. Thirty-eight to one pos, aye. Sixty five percent over spread, aye. Hold engage, aye. Please clear the area, sirs.”

“You’re not going to the engineering compartment?” Minister Velasquez asked.

“I can do that from here, sir,” Dana said, tapping her head. “Implants. EA Velazquez. Ensure area clear.”

“Sixty-five percent over-spread,” Velazquez said, thoughtfully. “That would be…”

“Dr. Barreiro may want to step back to the bulkhead,” Tyler said, gesturing with the broom. “In fact, we probably should have safety goggles and all that. But if everyone would please form along the bulkheads?”

When the group had cleared the center of the shuttle Tyler looked at Parker.

“Is the gravity set?”

“Set, sir,” Dana said, dubiously.

Tyler stepped forward and extended the broomstick into mid-air.

“Ministers, before I do this brief demonstration,” Tyler said, momentarily lowering the broomstick. “First, personnel of South American extraction can check as to what gravities are being exerted. Second, the gravities involved are low. One earth gravity and two earth gravities. You can experience more on a roller coaster or a particularly hard bank from a plane. They should have no particular effect. Is that understood?”

“Understood,” Dr. Barreiro said.

“Thus,” Tyler said, extending the broomstick again and closing his eyes. He even put his left hand over them. “Parker, engage as ordered.”

“Roger, sir,” Dana said, still puzzled.

She engaged the power as ordered and flinched when the broomstick more or less exploded.

“Ow,” Tyler said, pulling a splinter out of his face.

“Mother of God,” Dr. Barreiro said.

“Dr. Velasquez earlier asked about gravitational vortexes,” Tyler said, flicking at some bits of wood on his suit. “That, gentlemen, was a gravitational vortex. Extremely low power interacting in just the wrong way causes extremely high power gravitational fields. It is the basis, and this is not particularly classified, of penetrator missiles. Furthermore, in normal use grav plates drift out of alignment. In this case very small vortexes exerting about one hundred gravities over a two millimeter area from, relatively, one and two gravities. Even if they are perfect out of the yards, failure to maintain plates and controls systems, constantly and consistently, eventually causes a gravitational vortex.”