Читать книгу The Rhoedraegon Chronicles: Book Two - Paul Sr. Alcorn - Страница 9

The Bay of Naples complex came into view all too quickly, floating in a holo in the center of the compartment like a hazy image through a scratched lens. The annoying voice of the skimmer’s internal control shook Mathew from his netherworld where he had busied himself with routines and code, oblivious to his surroundings.

“I say again,” the voice said. “Please make all preparations for landing. Please secure loose items and return seating to a normal configuration. Our landing site is under security alert and privacy bubbles are recommended for your own safety. Please acknowledge that you understand this information.”

“Understood,” mumbled Mathew and set his work aside. He was not about to stow ‘all loose objects,’ most of which were the materials he was working on, and privacy bubbles were not needed. He understood the nature of the security alert better than anyone. He had instigated it and he was aware that there was virtually no danger to them right now.

Archer seemed better. She straightened herself in the chair, arranging the folds of her knee high skirt and checking the heads-up display of the vehicle’s interior, running her fingers through her hair and studying her face. Mathew marveled at the woman, traumatized, depressed and physically sapped of strength from the trip, yet she could still check to be sure she was presentable. He wondered if she was even consciously aware of her actions, whether or not it was an automatic action learned over the years, but he not sorry to see it. Any sign of a return to normality was a good sign right now.

“The landing will take a few moments,” he said setting his comm screen aside on the bench. “You might want to take a look at the scenery. It’s really quite spectacular, far better than any holo can show.”

“That’s Vesuvius to our left, isn’t it?” she said, suddenly fascinated. “Can I see it as a real image?”

Mathew instructed the skimmer and the holo disappeared as the walls of the craft became transparent. He looked at the huge ruined cone of the mountain, now below them and to the right, its side totally blown away by the last eruption, creating a horseshoe shaped cavity large enough for a medium size city. It dominated their view on the landward side of the craft.

“That’s Vesuvius,” he said flatly. “To the left there just on the horizon is what’s left of Naples. To the right, further south, you can see Sorrento. It’s not as large as it was, but after that last eruption over half the population left and moved further down the coast. It’s too bad, really. There wasn’t any damage at all to Sorrento when the mountain blew.

“I’d move too,” she said and looked over at him. “Just the thought that the next eruption could come in their direction would be enough to convince me to get out of the way. Isn’t that what any sane person would do, Mathew? Wouldn’t they avoid the possible disaster if they could see it coming?”

Mathew didn’t speak for a moment. He knew she was no longer talking about the mountain or the threat of eruption. “If they could see it coming, yes,” he said carefully.

Archer looked back out of the window in silence not really looking at anything.

The skimmer spiraled in on the small landing area atop the main building, circling several times as security required so that they could be scanned electronically and visually from all sides for anything out of the ordinary, and then settled lightly on the pad itself, and floating inches above the surface. It wouldn’t settle completely onto the surface of the landing area until all passengers had left in order to offer them the absolute minimum of discomfort. They would probably not even notice the fine nuance of the vehicle to avoid any jostling or sudden bump from the landing itself.

As the door slid open, two uniformed security agents stood at attention. They were unarmed and beside of the one on the left floated a baggage flat ready to receive their luggage. Mathew stepped out onto the landing area followed by Shamreel, who seemed to cause no stir among the local personnel at all. He nodded in response to their salute. Mathew had never liked the custom of being saluted upon arrival, but it was good for discipline, and they would have done it in any case, even if he had requested not, so he simply acknowledged them and then ignored them. Archer followed, hesitant at first to step out and eyeing the security units tentatively. In Mathew’s mind, he could almost hear her internal dialogue, remembering the security forces that had found her and her father in the mountains and the ruthless way they had eliminated the ‘rebels’ they had found in the area. Anyone in uniform would probably make her a bit nervous right now.

“Memo to security,” he said to no one, “Have your men dress as workers while we’re here. Yellow arm insignias should be enough. We don’t’ want to distress our guest.”

“Affirmative,” the bone speaker embedded in his ear rattled loudly.

“And correct the volume!”

“Affirmative,” he heard in a softer tone.

He smiled at Archer’s questioning look at his talking to himself. “I was in contact with control, telling them that we were coming and would need to be shown to quarters. I never know where they’re going to put me.”

“Understood,” said the voice of the control. Archer smiled and nodded.

They entered the building to find themselves in a rather small plain foyer, three walls of which were dominated by wide door elevators. The center one opened immediately and they went in. When the doors closed, the compartment began to rise and then suddenly turned to the right, moving horizontally along what must have been a curved tunnel, because as they gained speed, they could feel themselves being pushed back toward one wall and then another. Several more S-turns and a short drop to a lower floor and the doors opened, depositing them into a much larger and much more ornate parlor.

Archer gasped when she saw it, which prompted Mathew to look around as if for the first time. He’d been here hundreds of times before, but until now, he’d never bothered to pay attention to his surroundings.

The parlor was perhaps forty feet in diameter with several gatherings of furniture strategically placed to create intimacy and at the same time, a feeling of friendly inclusiveness with the other seating areas. The area directly opposite the elevator door was clear plastisteel, forming a long curve and clear expanse from floor to ceiling some thirty feet above. Beyond was the ever present Vesuvius in the background, but in the foreground, spread out before them perhaps twenty stories below, was a modern industrial complex, all narrow roads and tramways, circular buildings interspersed with square or rectangular ones, and open areas like small parks, filled with trees and benches and each with its own small pool.

“Welcome to our main production facility,” Mathew said, but he noticed that she wasn’t looking at the view out the observation window any more. Her eyes took in the rest of the room, her body turning in a small circle and she grinning, eyes sparkling like a small child’s. Mathew looked around to see what was so fascinating.

A new mural had been installed on the wall of the room. It was a scene of green countryside and rolling hills dotted with Roman ruins and scenes of what would have been the Vatican, if it still existed. The sun was high in the sky and slowly rotated across the wall as if it were real. But none of it was real, and that was obvious from the style of the art. It was all angles and straight lines, garish colors and odd ‘almost shapes’ somewhat similar to the period in the early twentieth century known as Art Nuevo. Sun rays radiated out from the perfectly round sun in widening triangles that resembled long slivers of wood. The countryside in the scene was flat, stacked and lacking true perspective yet hauntingly familiar. Even the rolling hills had flat surfaces along their margin and the clouds in the sky were like a series of crystals with sharp points and edges, giving it a hard quality. Mathew thought it atrocious, but Archer seemed to revel in it.

“I had no idea,” she said in awe.

“Neither had I,” said Mathew with much less enthusiasm. He led her across the room to a small door in the wall and they passed into another short corridor and finally into a wider one lined with conventional doorways. Two of these, side by side and somewhat larger than the others, were blinking in a rose light projected from the ceiling.

“Yours is the far one,” Mathew said. “I’ve got the other one. There’s a connecting door but it can be sealed from your side. I’m afraid I’ve got to get to work, but I’ll be back later. I’ll arrange for a mid day meal to be sent if you want, or you can join me. It’s up to you.”

Archer looked almost wounded. She stared as if stunned for a moment and then asked in a very small voice, “Would you prefer I eat here alone? I don’t want to interfere with what you’re here for.”

Mathew softened and smiled. He shook his head. “I’d rather you eat with me, but I didn’t know if you wanted to. I was just making sure that you knew you didn’t have to do anything you didn’t want to.”

“I’d rather eat with you,” she said with a weak smile.

“Good. Settle in and I’ll be back in about three hours. Is that all right?”

“Perfect”, Archer said. “I need to clean up and change.

That takes three hours?” he thought to himself, and to her, “Good I’ll see you then.”

In engineering, Mathew was met by his chief engineer, Lars Sanburg, who was as robust and sturdy as his name seemed to imply. He was of Scandinavian ancestry, and he looked like an extra in a holo-vid about Vikings. Lars stood at least six foot six inches tall and was broad shoulders with a ruddy complexion and long blond hair. He even sported a bushy mustache; an affectation that only an actor would be expected to have. Lars was in his prime at age fifty three and he was a bachelor. He had two children both of whom he loved dearly, but as he had once explained, he had no time for wives and home and hearth. He called science his religion and engineering his liturgy. When he saw Mathew, he grinned, but his look changed to a frown when he saw the concerned look on his superior’s face.

“Where are we?” Mathew said without greeting.

“We’ve cleared away the wreckage and resurfaced the floor of the facility. All that we now need are the instruction sets for the bots. They can get started as soon as we have those.”

“Estimated time to complete the rebuild?”

Sanburg gave Mathew a worried look. Two days five hours at the outside. My Lord? Are you alright? You don’t seem yourself.”

Mathew looked up from the holo of the now pristine storage floor and realized that he was frowning, almost glaring at his chief engineer. As with Archer he suddenly softened his look, relaxing somewhat and cursing himself for his own intensity. “It’s personal, Lars. Sorry to let it interfere with the work.”

“I just wanted to be sure,” the man said.

“I’ll be fine. I think I’ve found a way to cut about four hours off that construction time, so once the figures are verified, let’s set up a schedule for restocking. Where have you got the finished units now?”

This had probably worried Mathew more than anything else. Producing robotic construction units was a continuous process, one that had to be kept in motion without a break. Just because there was a shortage of storage space did not mean that the plant could shut down. The units would still be produced and that they would have to be stored somewhere. He had confidence that Lars would find a place for them, but the more they stacked up, the more complicated the repairs would become. In addition, once the loading dock area was again available, the completed bots would have to be sent there and quickly. Cargo containers were constantly arriving and leaving the facility with units destined for all the inhabited worlds in the Empire.

“At first we were putting them anywhere we could, including in the parks, but that was only temporary. I pulled five bots off of the line and had them begin construction on temporary housing for the new units. An old transport system no longer in use was brought from the old production building and set up for moving them to the depot when it’s finished.”

Mathew nodded. Sanburg was the best in the business and this was one of the reasons why. They both knew that a matrix program would come up with a similar solution, probably a superior one, but that would take time that they didn’t have, and matrix multi-linearity solutions were usually complicated. It would be weeks before they could be totally integrated.

“What about the shipping containers? Are they piling up too?”

“I’m afraid so,” Sanburg said.

“Okay. Here’s the new programming for the shipping depot rebuild.” He handed Lars a small hand unit and he immediately turned it on, the information being transferred to the production “I for processing. “And we’ve got to do something about deliveries until the depot is up and running. Take three foundation robots from those just produced and have them construct a pallet big enough to accommodate shipping containers on three sides. Make those four robots. Shift your salvaged conveyor system to deliver bots coming off of the line to the temporary pad and have the containers loaded there. We don’t need anything fancy. It’s only got to maintain its integrity for three days at the outside. Meanwhile, pull as many material transporters off the feed line as you can spare and start using them to transport finished goods to where the ones being loaded into the containers are coming from. Finally, cut the speed of the production line by thirteen percent. That’s thirteen percent, Lars, no more and no less. It could compensate for the bottle neck at the end of the line and still keep us on track for production quotas. After that, we’ll wait and see. Questions?”

Lars simply stared at the man. In the last five minutes, Lord Mathew of Rhoedraegon had totally reorganized the production and distribution systems of the facility and had done it without a single analysis of subsystem operations.

“Um, what do we do with the debris?” he asked, still in a state of shock.

“Recycle it,” Mathew said, and then cut his eyes from the vid screen and its scene of disarray at the ruined depot. He looked at Lars Sanburg and frowned. “I would have thought you’d already done that.”

“We’ve been too busy to think of everything, My Lord.”

Mathew grinned. “You’ve done well. That’s why you’re here. Now I’m going to leave all this up to you. For the moment, I’m going to inspect the production floor and see what security’s found out. I want to see if I can figure out who and how the sabotage took place. This is the second attack this year. If the separatists are behind this, I want to know why.”

“If they’re behind it, My Lord? Is there any doubt?”

Mathew didn’t answer. He was already through the portal and moving toward the elevator. He retraced his train of thought about the whole affair, moving step by step through the logic and once again coming to the same conclusion. Something told him that there was more to this than a simple attack by separatist commoners. The attack had been too sophisticated, too well organized. Otherwise the security screens would have detected them before they were even able to set up their equipment for a shot, and no amateur was that lucky in this day and time.

A quick perusal of the production floor assured him that they were still creating bots at a normal rate of output. Everything was working smoothly in spite of a slight buildup at the end of the line, but the crew was valiantly fighting to keep up with the constant stream of machines coming off the line. Satisfied, he offered a word of encouragement to the crew and proceeded next to the security offices, already knowing in general what he would find.

Ike Wannamaker had been security chief at the Bay of Naples facility for nearly twelve years now. He was already on duty and in the position of assistant head of security when Mathew first took over direct management of the Rhoedraegon business interests and had been a tremendous help to the young Lord in settling into his new responsibilities. It was natural then that six years later when the then head of security died in an accident on the production floor, that he was appointed to his present post. He had a wife and two children, as recommended by the Church and expected by social convention, and they lived modestly for someone of his position in a villa on the northern Italian coast. He was a solid citizen, dedicated to preserving the order afforded the whole population by the rule of the Nobles, and he was nearly fanatical about excellence not only in his men but in himself as well. Mathew liked him personally and appreciated his professionalism. It meant one less headache for him to deal with in overseeing operations.

When Mathew entered Wannamaker’s offices he looked around the small room with his usual sense of amusement. For a major administrator, his office was so tiny and so sparse that people often wondered if he was really as powerful a figure in the company as he was reported to be. Ike sat at his desk, a smallish one piece monolith of black granite with multiple built in screens and a holo-vid unit exactly in the middle of the desk top. Beside his own chair there was only one other place to sit in the office, and it was an uncomfortable straight back wooden chair, a copy of an early nineteenth century design that the chief of security said was originally intended for front porches in country houses. Mathew had once asked him why he worked this way and Wannamaker had replied, “Well, My Lord, if I make my office small and uninviting, people don’t come in to talk to me unless they really have to. I’m too busy for people with nothing better to do than socialize during office hours. The office is designed to discourage visits and it works well, present company excepted, of course.”

Mathew had been so impressed with the idea that he had changed his own offices to smaller, less comfortable arrangements to achieve the same end. Ike was right. It discouraged visiting and kept it to a minimum.

Ike Wannamaker, or Chief as everyone called him, rose automatically when Mathew entered, moving to one side of the desk to offer his employer the only decent chair in the room. Mathew waved his action aside, signaling for him to take his seat again and sitting ramrod straight in the wooden chair.

“I won’t stay long, Chief, which I’m sure will suit you just fine.”

“Yes, My Lord,” Wannamaker said with deference.

“So how’s the family?”

Wannamaker gave Mathew a confused, almost pained look, to which Mathew laughed.

“I just thought I’d get the chit chat out of the way. I know how much you like it.”

The chief smiled and chuckled. “I see you haven’t changed much, Mat. You’re still a smart ass, um, My Lord.”

“And you’re still irreverent as hell, thank God. So what have you found?”

The chief was already instructing the holo-vid as Mathew was speaking, bringing up a scene of the plant and surrounding countryside as a full three dimensional model. His equipment was state of the art, and there was no ‘curtain effect,’ as the tendency of older holo-vids to appear ghost like, with partial transparency in the image. This one was so solid that it looked as if you could reach out and touch it. Mathew stood, leaned forward and scanned the model quickly.

“You can see that the attack came from this small valley just beyond the outer boundaries of the complex. The weapon they used moved so quickly that the detectors didn’t have time to react before it detonated.”

Mathew frowned, looking at a small glowing ‘x’ that appeared in a slight topographical depression to the right of his view. “What could do that, Chief?”

“We have no idea.” He paused for that to seek in.

“None whatsoever?”

“It doesn’t match the profile of any weapon we know of. It’s not a particularly complicated device either. What makes it so unusual is its flight time. That’s a distance of four thousand yards that it covered in less than two seconds.”

“And it was physical?”

The chief nodded. “It was an object, not an energy wave or photon packet or any other kind of plasma. We’ve been trying to figure it out, but nothing’s come up so far.”

“Tell me about its trajectory,” Mathew said.

“I see you haven’t lost any of your sharpness. It’s the first thing I thought to check. If it had been a high arc, of course, I would have guessed some sort of mortar device or a rocket designed to run out of fuel just in time to drop the payload on the target from above. No luck. This came in vertically, straight line from the source to the target. Whoever it was that did this, they were good. They set up shop where they had a clear line of sight between two hills on the eastern side of the valley directly at the shipping depot. It was a straight shot.

“What about a rail gun?” Mathew asked. The chief looked at him for a moment and blinked.

“I hadn’t thought of that. It’s such old technology.”

“But not cheap. How difficult would it be to set up a small portable rail gun, firing a projectile over that distance?”

Wannamaker was pouring over a side screen, doing an instant search through the archives and proposing a scenario involving the type of weapon Mathew was suggesting. A rail gun is an almost frictionless projector, consisting of a channel above which floats a solid projectile that is thrust forward by electromagnetic couplings at tremendous speeds. Larger units had been developed that could produce several million foot pounds of thrust on an object as simple as a cylinder of plastisteel four inches long and one inch in diameter. The destructive force would certainly be enough to have created the effect of incinerating the storage depot on impact.

“It’s possible and the expected results match what happened to the depot, but it would have to be massive in size! That was the original problem with railguns as a weapon. They were stationary, making them easy targets, they were massive, meaning they were easily detected, and they used massive amounts of energy. As soon as energy pulse weapons were perfected, they were abandoned.”

“Well it seems someone may have resurrected the technology.”

Ike Wannamaker whistled and shook his head. “If somebody has found a way to create a portable rail gun, even one of short range, they’d have an unstoppable weapon, wouldn’t they?”

“That was my thinking. Has anyone been out to the site yet?”

The chief nodded and brought up another image on a side screen. It was a list of names and an official action report.’

“A team was dispatched as soon as we located the probable source of the projectile. Six troopers and one of my sergeants, all humans, were sent out for a look-see but they reported nothing.”

Mathew thought for a moment. “Still, I think I’ll have a look for myself. What time is it?”

“A quarter to noon, local time.”

“Right. I have a guest I need to see to. Maybe we’ll take a little trip this afternoon, just to enjoy the countryside.”

Wannamaker stiffened slightly. “It will take a while to arrange an escort…”

“Not necessary, chief. We’re just going out for a little run around the country. Don’t mention any of this to anyone, and that includes your assistant chief. You might see what else you can find out about rail guns while we’re gone. I’ll check with you later.”

“Yes, My Lord.”

Mathew sat back down for a moment, and stared at the display. He scanned the whole area to see if there were other possible sites from which the attack could have come. There were none. This had to be a well planned and well executed attack and once again he had the nagging feeling that this was no random terrorist action by some small group of radicals. There was organization here, and planning. That frightened him more than the attack itself. He rose, nodded to Chief Wannamaker without further comment and left.