Chương 9: Chapter Nine

NASA VOYAGER XIX MISSION CONTROL, TRANSCRIPT 2376-07-04 JONSON: "Telemetry check." CANE: "Quantum Relay Communications online." KING: "What's the new estimate time to get data? Do we have RDS online?" CANE: "Let's say ten, maybe fifteen minutes. Data will be ready." KING: "Flight, MMACS" JONSON: "Go." KING: "Controller configs ready on seven dash seventeen." ANDERSON: "Anyone have the thermo conditioning readouts?" HALLERAN: "The readouts are green, background radiation is low." JONSON: "Communication established.

Voyager, you there?" VOYAGER XIX: "I'm here, Mission Control." CHEERS IN BACKGROUND JONSON: "How was the trip?" VOYAGER XIX: "After 78 light years, all I can say is it was long. I am entering the anomaly now. Prepare for sensor download." KING: "Download is happening now. What the… Flight, can we double-check telemetry?" JONSON: "Telemetry check." HALLERAN: "Thermo is in the red, repeat, thermo is in the red." CANE: "QRC is jittering. Communications are unstable."

VOYAGER XIX: "It's --- ing ---- ke ---- danger --- probl --- out --- now." JONSON: "Can someone clean up that transmission? Comms?" CANE: "We've lost comms. QRC is down." HALLERAN: "Thermo readouts are black. Mission down. Mission down." JONSON: "Okay, folks, listen up. Keep all discussions on recorded DVS loops only. No data or calls, no transmissions in or out. Let's figure out what went wrong."

"Field Trip!" said Sakura in a sing-song voice. All three of us were in the back of an HM3 Transport Drone, holding onto the high edges of the cargo bed. It was akin to riding in the back of a dump truck, our arms held high overhead to grasp the lip of the walls. If we'd been human, the ride would have been torturous, like riding the subway while barely being able to reach the safety rail overhead. Worse, even, as the suspension of the drone was intended to handle several metric tons in a low-gravity environment.

Our weight barely nudged the scale, so we were effectively riding without any sort of suspension. You would think, in a journey through carefully constructed corridors between chambers, this wouldn't matter much. But these corridors were heavily trafficked. Random rocks and debris that tumbled from the backs of transport drones heading to the refineries littered the corridor, along with odds and ends that had suffered similar fates. This was rumbled over by the transport drone as if it weren't there.

I knew that the corridor was cleaned periodically to keep the way passable, but it still left us jerking around like marionettes. On top of that, the corridors were crowded, with drones of every variety trying to get from one place to another in the same ten meter corridor. Each corridor was one-way only, giving a 10-meter wide pathway for the drones to squeeze in. Incredibly, it was room enough for two lanes of traffic, with the occasional impulse-engine drone flying overhead in the wide spaces above.

I didn't see any of the monstrous HM2 miner drones traveling this path, which made sense. They were unlikely to fit. The traffic moved bumper to bumper, so to speak, with scant inches between the drones. The side corridors alternated between exits for turning traffic and bridges for cross traffic. The density was amazing. I'd seen it on cameras, but witnessing it in person, so to speak, was something else.

"How do you manage all this?" I asked Sakura.

"I assigned six NI-5's as traffic controllers. Drones turn over control while on the main thoroughfares, and get local control returned when they exit."

"Are all the thoroughfares like this?" I asked.

"Pretty much," she said matter-of-factly.

"It's why I need that rail system. I'll be able to reduce cross-Ganymed traffic by 63% by centralizing and optimizing transport, and a rail system will be able to handle a 413% higher cargo capacity. Transports like this will be used for local traffic from rail-hub to factory, or factory to rail-hub, and utility drones will be able to be carted across the Outpost inside the rails far faster and with less power consumed, increasing their running time, and thus, of course, their productivity once onsite.

Fortunately, the bulk of transported goods only needs to go less than a kilometer, due to optimal factory placement and strategic placement of warehouses." Mentally, I bumped up the rail-system design to the number two slot, right behind the Mark-III design I was finalizing now. The rest of the trip took less than thirty minutes. Once we were off the main thoroughfare, we went into a new corridor that had little traffic. This corridor was lined with chambers in various states of construction.

I even glimpsed three HM2 miners grinding away at raw rock from a corridor camera as we whisked along. Finally, we entered a cavernous space, completely unlike any of the others. The transport drone came to a stop, and we climbed out. The space was a cube, 400 meters long on every side, with empty metal cradles lining the walls all the way to the ceiling. The far side of the cube had another door leading to a corridor. But centrally located in the center of the floor was a set of massive blast doors.

I knew, because I had designed the room, that the blast doors were five meters thick. Beyond these doors was a second, thicker set of blast doors. This was the first hangar bay for assault drones. The cradles that lined the walls would soon be filled with assault drones, the first ones even now being finished in the drone fabricators. When complete, the walls of this room would have 200 assault drones per wall, eight hundred for the room.

There would also be an assigned drone tender to each drone, to handle minor repairs, rearming and refueling. This was the first, but another dozen were being dug out around the asteroid even as we gawked at the shiny new facility. But we weren't here to see an open room. Waiting for us in the far corner was ten humanoid figures - the first of our new internal defense drones.

Even as we stood there staring at the room, another corridor entrance two hundred meters down the same wall we'd entered from opened, and four more drones marched in and took up position in the beginning of a formation. We walked over to inspect the troops, as it were. Agrippa stepped forward and began broadcasting to both Sakura and myself. I was fascinated. I'd helped design them, so I was intimately familiar with the specifications.

But there is a huge difference between understanding which pieces and parts I integrated, and why they were important. I'd relied heavily on Agrippa for that portion. My concern had primarily been on balancing utility with power consumption.

"May I present the Guardian Infantry Drones," he began.

"These units are designed for close-combat scenarios, such as Ganymed Outpost defense, ship-to-ship incursions, and ground-based combat. Currently there are four variants - Infantry, Heavy Infantry, Sniper, and Support." I could only spot three types in front of us. The drones were all humanoid, based off of the Boston Dynamics frame rather than my own design. This was because Boston Dynamics had actually produced similar units for military use that we used as a template.

It had not been designed for space-based or asteroid-based conditions, so we'd had some modifications to figure out. Each Guardian had two centimeters of composite armor on the arms, head and legs, and three centimeters of composite armor on the torso. This composite armor was titanium at the core, with layers of industrial ceramics layered on top. The ceramics helped stop HEAT rounds from penetrating the titanium layer, while the titanium layer added strength and hardness to the armor against normal ammunition.

The armor gave the units a bulky appearance, with a thick, domed and faceless head that gave the impression of bulky shoulders. The armor was tinted dark gray and black, camouflage that was ideal for space.

"The Infantry units all have a rifle in each forearm, using 5. 7x28mm cartridges with a muzzle velocity of 716m/s. In Earth-norm gravity, they have an effective range of up to 200m. Ammunition is top-loaded with horizontal feed, each magazine capable of holding fifty rounds. Each unit carries six additional magazines in standard loadout, eighteen in heavy loadout, and each carries four grenades. The Support variant uses the same design, but focuses on logistics and field support.

They handle basic repairs, munitions, and damaged unit recovery." Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings. I looked at the Guardian that Agrippa pointed out, noting the boxy rectangles protruding from the top of each forearm, and the gun-barrel opening above the wrist. Additionally, radiators protruded in waves above the forearm to help dissipate the heat of the weapon.

"The Heavy Infantry units, on the other hand, have thicker armor and an additional shoulder-mounted heavy machine gun. This short-barrel design fires a 12. 7x99mm copper-jacketed tungsten carbide penetrator round, up to one hundred rounds per minute in full auto mode. Using electromagnetic anchor points on the bottoms of the feet and the knees, the Heavy Infantry can anchor itself and take advantage of the multi-mount on the shoulder to aim and use their heavy gun.

Finally, the Sniper variant uses a longer barrel for increased accuracy, and uses 12. 7×99mm high-explosive incendiary/armor piercing rounds, or HEIAP. These rounds hit with the same 12 kilojoules of energy as the penetrator rounds, with an incendiary head to help penetrate heavy armor and explode outward in a 30 degree cone once inside. These are tank killers.

Oh, and one last feature - they have electromagnetic palms, so these units can climb any metal surface, even going so far as to hang upside down and fire their main weapon if needed," Agrippa said, wrapping up the brief rundown. He'd skipped over the extensive battery systems run through every part of the body, the full sensor suite of cameras, and the NI-5 cortex in the torso to operate the drone. He skipped the encrypted IFF system that identified each Guardian individually, and prevented friendly fire.

"Ooh, ooh, ooh!" said Sakura.

"I have a question. I thought guns don't fire in space."

"That would be true of black powder weapons," said Agrippa.

"The modern gunpowder we use actually contains its own oxidizer."

"And why didn't we use hypervelocity coilguns?" she asked.

"We actually have a spinal-mount coilgun on the assault drones," I said.

"The power cost of firing the weapons meant the Guardian units would only get two or three shots off, and would need to replace barrels after nine or ten uses. The assault drones are much larger, so can have a stronger, thicker barrel that lasts up to six hundred shots before needing to be swapped."

"I really wanted the Heavy's to have them, too," griped Agrippa.

"Talk about one shot, one kill. But the logistics of supporting that were needlessly complex."

"Same with lasers, then?" asked Sakura.

"Exactly," said Agrippa.

"Not to mention, diffraction of the beam cuts down range significantly, and heavily armored opponents can easily ablate the beam and essentially shrug it off, even with a pulsed laser array with a wide aperture. We do have two quad phased-array laser turrets on the assault drones, but it is primarily for missile defense, destroying radiator systems, and targeting enemy weapons systems." Behind us, a corridor door opened. We turned to see a large assault drone rolling in.

I could almost hear Agrippa squee in excitement, even though he broadcast nothing. This was the first of our external defense units. The craft appeared sharp and deadly. It was narrow, like ancient Earth fighter planes, but with short, stubby wings. The purpose of the wings was not to fly with, but to hold the bulky laser arrays. The body of the LAC also housed a single coil gun, running along its central spine so that firing wouldn't interfere with the LAC's flight trajectory.

The matte black paint job would help hide the craft from easy observation. I was impressed with the engineering.

"These are our light assault craft, named the Wasp. Each Wasp carries five hundred depleted uranium, steel jacketed 20mm coil gun rounds and a quad phased-array laser turret on each wing. They have ion engines for thrust, with solid-rocket afterburners for sudden changes to delta-v. We coated them with the latest in stealth technology, with radar-absorptive paint and optically diffusing angles to make them hard to spot, either by sensor or by eye," said Agrippa, his excitement bleeding into his narration.

"The heavy assault craft, which will be done when…?" asked Agrippa.

"First one rolls off the line in 3. 2 days," confirmed Sakura.

"In three days, the first Scorpion heavy assault craft will roll off the line. The Scorpions are the big guns. Each has reactive armor with an ablative fullerene coating, able to withstand much more damage than the Wasps, at the expense of maneuverability. They mount a 70mm spinal mount coil gun with a three hundred round loadout. They also have twin turreted 20mm gatling guns, slug throwers, not hyper-velocity, and an underbelly quad phased laser turret for point defense.

Both the Scorpions and the Wasps can extend radiators behind them for cooling as needed, but retract them for combat, as radiators are a major target."

"That sounds very impressive. If radiators are a big target, why are we not using heat-seeking missiles?" My knowledge of weaponry was mostly limited to video games, but they were rooted in reality.

"Fuel costs for rearming," Agrippa replied.

"The Earth-model of having a carrier for fighter planes that come in and re-arm before going back out makes little sense here in space. The deliberate dumping of delta-v to catch up or slow down to a carrier, refueling time, and cost to re-enter the engagement envelope makes little sense. I have plans to add missile boats later for strategic assaults, but production limitations and the need to deploy missiles defensively has delayed them until next year at the earliest.

We need fleet tenders, ammo boats, and Guardian assault carriers first."

"And none of that does us any good if they just hit us with an asteroid again," said Sakura glumly.

"Which still leaves us hiding in our asteroid, hoping to hide through obscurity," I said.

"I am building the coilgun emplacements on the surface, but they are going slowly," said Sakura.

"Since we cannot alter the terrain heavily and want the bunkers to be camouflaged, the work is slow. Fortunately, the ammo tanks and barrel replacement system will be finished well before the actual guns. So, when the guns come online, they'll be immediately ready to fire."

"Small favors," said Agrippa.

"What about the missile tubes?"

"Well, the tricky thing there is getting the launch system working. Nikola's design calls for a six-gun style cylinder, where missiles are loaded from a missile bay beneath the launch tubes. But we're having trouble with the ball bearing design in the rotation track."

"Okay, so we have some logistical issues that we're working through. But that doesn't solve our 'eggs in one basket' problem," I said.

"Well, that one's easy," said Sakura.

"How is that?" I asked.

"Spread to more asteroids. We have a significant number of space-capable drones right now. We find suitable candidates, and dig in." That… wasn't a half-bad idea. If I could find a way to safely split up our genetic stockpile into multiple pieces, we could build one or more secret bases to hide away and build. Despite all of our construction, our resource stockpiles were actually rising, faster than we could use them. We were still limited on some things, like volatiles and platinum-group metals. In fact…

Then Agrippa interrupted my train of thought.

"I really like this idea. In fact, I would be in favor of establishing military bases all around Ganymed. If we did concentric spheres of bases, we could provide defense-in-depth against invasion, and layer our offensive capabilities."

"One problem with that…" I started.

"Right, can't hide if someone plots out our bases and figures out we've got a hidden headquarters," he said.

"But if we were to randomly place "central" bases throughout the asteroid belt, and if we happen to be in a place where two spheres overlap…"

"I can come up with an Outpost Starter Pack," said Sakura.

"It would be the optimal number of drones and supplies to build out a series of hangars and factories, but designed around the premise of military production, we could get a number of them up within a few months, especially if we can cross-ship supplies that they cannot produce."

"We do have excess materials," I said.

"We seem to be mining faster than we are producing goods."

"It's about to get worse," said Sakura.

"Despite ramping up drone production, our production will start outpacing our factories even faster. I've streamlined the core mining teams, and started backfilling the maze of corridors with waste product. The new grid-based mining is already increasing our production of rare earth metals, platinum group metals, and silicates. Further, we're capturing more volatiles even though we're stockpiling most of it. We'll need atmosphere at some point."

"We cannot build factories fast enough, can we," I said. That germ of an idea was in the back of my head again.

"Okay, so we cannot be everywhere at once," I said.

"Even you, Sakura, have limits on your ability to focus. Include data centers in your, um, starter pack. You'll need to include plans for bringing new NI-19's online to manage each outpost independently."

"Oh," said Sakura with a bit of hurt in her voice. Crap, she thinks this is a reflection on her, I thought. I made a split-second decision.

"Each of the new NI-19's will answer to you, Sakura," I said.

"You'll have final say on project plan implementation." Sakura immediately seemed to perk back up. What the hell had happened to her that she was so sensitive to even the vaguest perception of being sidelined? I wasn't about to rock the boat considering how valuable she'd proven herself. I wondered if there was a way to help her become more independent, able to make bigger decisions on her own.

"It provides good redundancy, as well," said Agrippa.

"We should do the same with NI-15's, to coordinate the defenses of each new outpost."

"We're producing new quantum entanglement comm equipment, right?" I asked Sakura, mostly to get confirmation.

"We are," she said.

"It's our most advanced fabrication factory to date."

"Then we'll have instantaneous contact. What is the bandwidth?"

"They are the latest human design in our database," she said.

"Ah." I pulled up the specs. Sixteen terabits per second. We would be able to push some serious data between the locations. Excellent.

"Let's make sure to include at least a few hundred petabytes of storage as well. Might as well duplicate our archives while we're at it. I'll work on the setup of the data centers once they're online." While we talked, a second Wasp had flown itself into a cradle above the first Wasp and close to the blast doors. A series of umbilicals snaked out of the wall and connected to the Wasp. More Guardians marched in, one every few minutes now. At this pace, we'd have several hundred within a few days.

"I need to start training the new Guardians. Sakura ran a tunnel to a series of caves that I'm going to use as a 'boot camp' of sorts," said Agrippa.

"Why boot camp? Don't they already know what to do?" I asked.

"Sure, I can load all the plans in the world into them," said Agrippa.

"But knowing and understanding are two different things. You designed these drones, but didn't grasp their value until you saw them, and won't truly understand their uses until you see them in action. Experience trumps book learning. These NI-5's need experience, so I'm going to do what I can to give it to them."