Zoya nodded.
He looked at Natalya who nodded in turn. He took a deep breath and shook his head. “Sorry. It’s just I’ve never heard of that before.”
“What? NDAs?” Natalya asked.
“No, no. I’ve heard of them but usually relating to big companies, places with trade secrets like manufacturing concerns.” He stopped, his gaze going back and forth between them. “Ah.”
“Sorry,” Natalya said. “It was nothing bad.”
He looked at her and a little chuckle escaped his mouth. “Well, criminals usually use a more permanent solution, so yeah, I figured that. How long were you doing whatever it was you can’t tell me? Can you tell me that?”
“Just about two stanyers.” Zoya shrugged. “They paid very well but we got tired of the grind. Took our marbles and went looking for a new game to play.”
He nodded and looked down as if just discovering the cup in his hand. He took a sip and looked across the table at Natalya. “So, what are you going to do now?”
“First, we’re going to get this situation resolved,” she said.
He gave each of them a look. “Together?”
“Well, I’ve got nothing else going on at the moment and we’ve been working together for a very long time now.” Natalya shrugged.
He nodded. “Then what?”
Natalya shook her head and glanced at Zoya before answering. “A lot will depend on how long it takes and what we need to do to get it resolved.”
“Higbee says we’ll be operational with the month with the grinder. Smelter will be a little longer. They haven’t even shipped the last pieces yet.” Zoya waggled her head back and forth a bit. “I suspect we’ll be here most of a stanyer unless my grandparents throw another wrench in the gears.”
Regyri’s head bobbed and he pursed his lips. “You’re putting in more than the smelter then?”
“Full vertical production,” Zoya said. “Ore to plates and bars.”
Regyri’s eyes widened at that. “You’re going to need a lot more help.”
“Yeah. Seeing how we need to start over from scratch, that’s kind of a given,” Zoya said.
“Is Usoko sending out a supervisor?”
“They did. We’re here.” Natalya smiled at her father.
He looked back and forth between them again. “I see,” he said.
Natalya glanced at Zoya, who shrugged in return.
“Dad? Madoka Usoko wants Zoya to take over the company.”
He nodded. “A logical choice. Is that what you want?” he asked, looking at her.
“Not really. What I want is my captain’s stars but that’s a long way off.”
He nodded and grinned. “Something tells me Madoka Usoko isn’t happy taking no for an answer from anybody, let alone family.”
Zoya laughed. “You have a gift for understatement.”
“You want me to hang around a bit? Keep an eye on the contractors?” he asked.
Zoya leaned forward and rested her forearms on the table, cradling the cup between them. “What I’d like is to ask if you’d use your ship to shuttle crew out of here if they want to go.”
“What? Taxi duty?”
Zoya nodded. “We’ve got a lot of crew here who haven’t seen a normal port for weeks. Probably months. We can’t send them out again for a while. Right now they’re sitting around the mess deck and berthing areas of our luxurious Hotel Mindanao here. There’s nothing much for them to do. Even their own ships are overmanned at the moment. If we give them leave now, it’ll only help us long term.”
“And get them out from under foot where they can’t make any more trouble for you,” Regyri said.
Zoya grinned. “A secondary concern, but yeah.”
He shrugged. “Sure. I can make a run to Mel’s. It’s not that far.”
“How many can you take at once?” Zoya asked.
“I’ve got bunks for twelve.”
“How much do you want for transporting them?”
“What? Pay?”
Zoya nodded. “You’ll have expenses. I need a bill for those bottles of gas and fuel, too.”
He shook his head. “That’s not necessary.”
“Mr. Regyri.” She paused and took a breath. “This is my sector, at least for the moment. I make the rules here. I could really use your help but if you’re not going to accept my rules, I need you to leave.”
His looked at her with a laugh in his mouth. “You’re going to kick me out if I won’t send you a bill?”
Zoya nodded. “We run a business here. We pay our bills. We expect to have the bills we send paid in return. Everybody here is on salary plus contracts. We can give you a contract to transport employees to a station where they can decide whether they want to come back or go elsewhere. We can buy our supplies from you. You have generously offered them to us for free but that’s not acceptable. I really don’t want to have to give them back to you but I will if I must.”
“You’re serious.”
She nodded.
“So if I give you a bill, you’ll pay it and we can put this behind us?”
“Yes.”
“Very well. I need to get back to my ship and look at the accounts, but I’ll send you a bill when I know how much it should be.”
“Thank you for your understanding, Mr. Regyri.”
“Demetri. You know how to pronounce it. That’s my rule, Ms. Usoko.”
She grinned. “Thank you, Demetri. It’s Zoya.”
He held out his hand. “Shake on it?”
She shook his hand and they both smiled.
“Here to Mel’s? Up to twelve people?” he asked.
“Yes, please,” Zoya said.
“I’ll send you a proposal. I want to meet with Jerry to make sure I’ve got the correct numbers.”
“Thank you, Demetri.”
Regyri looked at Natalya. “She always this tough to bargain with?”
Natalya grinned. “Tougher than I am, for sure. I’m a marshmallow.”
Zoya laughed. “If you believe that, she’s got an asteroid belt to sell you.”
Regyri shook his head. “I’ve known her longer than you have and I know better. She could argue the paint off a bulkhead.”
Chapter 51
Smelter Seventeen:
2368, March 26
The area around the Mindanao felt crowded with twelve barges all parked nearby. “We need to do something about this before the Higbee people get here next week,” Zoya said.
“You want some suggestions?” Ahokas asked.
“Please.”
“Assign them parking positions above and below the marshalling yard. It’s not so far that they can’t go back and forth between there and the Mindanao. Gets all the loose pieces gathered in one relatively compact space so the Higbee crews can set up the new station with the least amount of stress.”
Zoya nodded. “That’s a good idea. What do you think about moving the Mindanao over, too?”
Ahokas nodded. “I like it. Can we do it?”
“Nats? What do you think?”
Natalya looked out at the cluttered sky around the marshaling yard and then over at the storage area. “Yeah. I think we maybe move the Mindanao first because it’s the least maneuverable and most cumbersome, but that makes a great deal of sense.”
“How do we want to do this?” Zoya asked.
“I’ll assign the parking positions,” Ahokas said. “Including one for Mindanao. If you can get her somewhere near the right location, we can organize there rest to move over. Not like it’s a long move or a terribly complicated course.”
Zoya nodded. “I like it.”
“Better to do it now that my father has taken a dozen of the crew away. Fewer people to get bent out of shape,” Natalya said.
Ahokas chuckled. “True.”
“That brings up a good point,” Zoya said. “Does every ship have enough crew to move their barge?”
“Aren’t they all identical?” Natalya asked.
“Should be.”
“Then we have enough people,” Natalya said. “All it’ll take is an engineer and a pilot. Granted we lost a lot of captains to the mutiny, but at this point, most of the people here are those who didn’t know about it.”
Ahokas nodded. “Makes sense.”
Zoya nodded. “All right. Let’s get this moving. I want all the shuffling done before the first component comes in.”
“I’ll work up the parking orbit, if you and Natalya want to get the Mindanao moved first?” Ahokas said.
Natalya nodded. “I’ll pass the word for Fries to join us.” She pulled out her tablet and pinged the pilot.
It took almost the entire day, but in the end, Hotel Mindanao had a new berth a hundred meters below a rack of Barbell cans. Zoya did the main navigation while Natalya flew the shuttle alongside to spot the cans and make sure the ship lined up properly.
While the ship was moving, Zoya met with the crew members aboard and told them of the plans. She put one of the first officers in charge of the radio to coordinate between barges and crews. Only one barge lacked sufficient personnel to move the ungainly ships, but the other crews pitched in to get it into the correct position.
In the meantime, Ahokas contacted the incoming ships—another five—with their assigned parking positions.
“They seem to be taking it well,” Ahokas said, looking out of the observation deck on the marshaling yard.
“I didn’t hear any grumbling from them while I was on the Mindanao.” Zoya surveyed the array of barges already in position and nodded. “Yes. Call me finicky but having those barges all hanging loose out there made me itch.”
Natalya laughed. “With all those components coming in, I don’t blame you. Did you see the scale on those things?”
“The first one is bigger than this station,” Zoya said.
Bean stuck his head up from below. “Hey, boss, you might want to check this out.” He disappeared down the ladder before anybody could ask any questions.
The three women shared a glance and followed him down.
He’d set up an office corner in the common room. His big display hung on the wall, one of the folding tables served as a working surface, and both of his tool boxes snugged under it, leaving enough room for him to slide under the table between them.
The display showed the artist’s rendition of the final station that they’d seen before.
“What cha got?” Zoya asked.
“I was digging through the packet they sent over.” He opened a list on the side of the screen. “There’s tons of stuff here. This one grabbed my attention.”
He clicked it open and another artist’s sketch popped up on the screen. It looked like a layer cake.
“What am I looking at?” Zoya asked, stepping up to the screen.
“Unless I’m missing something—which I can’t rule out at this point—that’s the residential and retail area.”
Zoya looked at Natalya. “Look familiar to you?”
“Yes,” Natalya said. “That’s a CPJCT orbital. That wide band around the center is the docking gallery. Are there ten decks above and below?”
Bean looked at her for a few heart beats and then turned back to the image. “I can’t tell. There’s not enough detail in this graphic.”
“Dig. See if you can find something labeled retail or residence.”
The list on the side of his screen scrolled almost faster than Natalya could read it.
“Or orbital,” Zoya said when the scroll froze on that file.
Bean popped it open and they watched as the graphics routines painted deck after deck onto the screen.
Natalya counted as the layers appeared. When the image stopped growing, she said, “Five up. Five down.”
“It’s not a standard orbital but what is that doing here? There’s enough space in that for a thousand people or more,” Zoya said.
“How many people are you planning on needing here?” Ahokas asked.
Bean clicked something and another window opened. “The linked spec sheets say a lot more than a thousand. That’s housing for five thousand people. Main deck is docking. Twenty-four rings. One and oh-one are offices. Two and oh-two are designated apartments. Three and oh-three are designated ‘entertainment and retail.’ Four and five aren’t tagged. The central core is all equipment space.”
“What are they building out here?” Ahokas asked.
Zoya slumped against the bulkhead, her eyes focused somewhere in the distance.
“Zee?” Natalya asked. “Is this what I think it is?”
Zoya didn’t speak for several long moments. When she started, Natalya had to lean forward to hear her mutters. “Manchester will have the yard capacity. They’ll need housing. There’s no building regs out here so that’s more than double what they have in Margary. We’ve only got a few hundred.” She blinked several times and seemed to come to life all at once. “Son of a bitch.”
“Zee?” Natalya asked again.
“They’re doing it. They’re moving to Toe-Hold space,” she said, looking around at them. “This was never going to be just a smelter.” She looked at Natalya. “Your father said this sector is a gold mine. It got overlooked in the original exploration reports but when we ran our own we picked up a lot of rare earths, precious metals, and even water ice. There’s no habitable planet here, but that doesn’t matter. Actually it works in Usoko’s favor. It probably has a low desirability factor because there’s no good planet and it’s out in the middle of nowhere.”
Natalya blinked. “Bean? You have a chart of the Western Annex in your bag of tricks?”
“Sure,” he said.
“Put it up.”
A familiar high level sketch of the annex flipped over the top of everything on the screen. The familiar ring of sectors around the dark core. It wasn’t particularly accurate but it gave a sketch of the geography.
Natalya stepped up to the table and put her finger on the screen. “We’re here, more or less. Can you mark it?”
A yellow dot pulsed where her finger pointed.
She stepped back.
“How did nobody claim this?” Zoya asked, staring at the map.
“What are you seeing?” Ahokas asked. “I don’t get it.”
Zoya ran both hands through her cropped hair and stared at the map. “I met Natalya’s father, Demetri, when I jumped over to Port Lumineux to report in and get our comms buoy reset.”
“I remember that trip,” Ahokas said. “What of it?”
“He predicted that the smelter would be rebuilt. He’d seen some of the survey reports and they showed this system to be particularly rich. Lots of minerals for making metals, alloys, and even the more exotic materials needed for communications gear, computers, all that stuff. He specifically mentioned water ice.” Zoya stopped and looked at Natalya. “He said something like, ‘He’ll rebuild. Usoko is a lot of things but stupid isn’t one of them.’”
Ahokas shook her head and looked at Bean. “You following any of this?”
He looked at the map, then glanced at Zoya. “They’re moving,” he said.
Chapter 52
Smelter Seventeen:
2368, March 26
Ahokas stared at Bean. “Who’s moving?”
“Usoko Mining.” He pulled the map out of the way. “This is big enough to run the whole company and still have room left over for Manchester to staff a full shipbuilding operation here.” He looked at Zoya. “Am I right?”
Zoya frowned and crossed her arms, fingers on one hand pulling at her lower lip. Natalya knew that look and placed a hand on Bean’s shoulder. “Give her a tick.”
Zoya’s eyes narrowed as her frown deepened. “Would you put that map back up, Mr. Bean?”
He clicked and the map reappeared.
“Margary in Dunsany Roads,” Zoya said, almost to herself. “Blanchard in Venitz.” She paused. “Mr. Bean, I’ve been out of the loop. Do you know if there’s a Usoko operation in either Diurnia or New Cal
edonia?”
“Sorry, I’m not in those kinds of circles,” he said.
“New Caledonia,” Ahokas said. “They moved one of their barges here about a stanyer ago. The crew bitched endlessly.”
Zoya nodded. “No, Mr. Bean. I don’t think they’re moving, as such.”
“Then what?” he asked.
“Consolidation,” she said. “This point is very near the geographic center of the Western Annex. “Impromptu and Nuevo Samba are a bit outside the ring but other than that, we’re right in the middle.”
“But we’re in the middle of nowhere,” he said.
“Not so, Mr. Bean.” She paused. “Nats, can you bring up a plot of Toe-Hold stations and pass it to Mr. Bean?”
Natalya punched a few codes and screened out the smallest stations. She sent the chart to Bean’s computer. “Overlay that on this map if you could, Rob. They’ve got the same orientation but you may need to adjust the scale.”
Bean pulled it up, shrank it a little, and was still lost. “Where do I put it?”
Zoya reached forward. “This dot is Port Newmar. It goes about here.” She pointed to a spot on the screen.
Bean shifted the overlay so that the dot for Port Newmar went where Zoya pointed.
Zoya nodded and reached forward again. “This dot is Odin’s Outpost. It should go just about here on the map. Scale it and rotate until you can get those two dots in the right locations on the map. It won’t be precise but I think it’ll show what I need it to.”
Bean fought with it for a couple of ticks but finally nodded as the overlay fell onto the screen.
“There,” Zoya said. “The yellow dot is still us. This dot here is Mel’s.” She pointed to a spot very near their location on the map. “Port Lumineux is here. It’s even closer but it’s hard to tell on this scale.” She pointed again and then cupped her hands around the sector maps at Ventiz and Dunsany. “This is the narrowest part of the Deep Dark. We’re so close to the middle that if this isn’t it, we could spit on it from here. A manufacturing operation here is almost equidistant from Port Newmar on the galactic east side and the Confederation seat at Dunsany in Dunsany Roads.”