Chapter 78

"Just how much do we tell Don Juan?" TJ asked Clare,

Orville and Cedric had made their assessments, Morg had analysed the mine settlement and the Crew Conference informed.

Orville reported that the ship needed only the external pods and the fission pile rods placed to be spaceworthy with a bit of assistance from "Sundowner": 1. the original GEC 'puter that had been fitted to "Sundowner" could be re-located into the ship without loss of "Sundowner" 'puter power as she still had the "experimental" GEC battle 'puter (Derrin had completely disabled that invasive com) and Derrin; nav / com capability supplied — the ship had no weapons or EW but Dune was available; 2. the galley from the club could be transferred over to the ship; 3. some of that emergency accommodation, left over from the E quarters, stored in the forward boat bay could be sent over for the crew; and 4. four T weeks would see the ship ready to space.

Cedric reported that all he could do in four weeks on the shuttles was get one out of two n spaceworthy by using one as salvage. Art would act as supervisor of the "Sundowner's" robos under Derrin's control.

Cedric could get the treasure ship warp capable in six T months but he would have to divert the robos cancelling the shuttle salvage.

Orville and Cedric wanted to use Art to reprogram the local robos, use the shuttle truck, retrieve those rods and fuel the ship's piles as well as replace the original "Sundowner's" rods which would need doing in the next four years anyway.

All this could be done in the four weeks except the warp capability.

TJ had suggested that the shuttle be salvaged and fitted as deck cargo onto the treasure ship pointing out that 119 DD Squadron, RMN, had carried "Shriek" about Paracelcus as deck cargo on one of the tincans. Orville and Cedric agreed that this was feasible.

Morg had thrown up a holo of the mine area on Monterey. He explained that the area was an unfinished armed camp. There was some heavy laser pieces emplaced to cover the most likely approaches on the ground. The heavy stuff was supported by bunkers; most likely section weapons. The other areas were covered by mediums and mortar weapons. Most of the structures appeared on ground penetrating radar to be connected by a complex of tunnels well underground. There was heavy n space and air defence — missile light but the PD positions were numerous and appeared to be interlocked. The bunkers would require the HACs to take them out as they were very well constructed from dirt filled plastercrete with thick metal cores; 737's seventy five would be useless and armoured troops wouldn't survive until the heavy weapons had been taken out and casualties in the HACs would be high possibly total. "Sundowner" could take the lot out using its artillery but there wouldn't be much left dirtside.

The mine equipment was neatly laagered up in a park between the camp site and the mine with only four pieces of heavy machinery in the camp site which from their positioning suggested they had been working until fuel ran out.

Two interesting points had come to light and Don Juan's mention of the vitamin problem gave a solution to one.

The personnel in the camp site were too few to have defended the complex and the number was decreasing rapidly every day; the one male who had collapsed outside a building had been closely vidded and Threep claimed the man had died from anaemia. Morg had to refer to old science to understand Threep's provisional diagnosis but didn't fully accept it as his reading was that anaemia is secondary to some cause which Threep suggested was vitamin deficiency. Threep had gone over the tapes and noted the decreasing numbers of outside appearances of people and his assessment of those people was they were not medically fit for anything.

The second point was the metal used as the cores was probably platinum — there were several billets lying unused in the uncompleted area of the fortifications.

Morg and Cedric had used TJ's PDA records and found somebody had been thinking — the curved shapes of the metal billets on the moon were the side billets of a cargo hold full of billets; and the billets load on the moon was 95% and change of the theoretical capacity of the ship's hold.

Morg and Cedric had gone exploring (using one scout) and located the fuel source in orbit about the star with three full fuel bladders ready.

Myriad suggestions were batted about the conference ranging from the sublime to the gorblimey.

Clare considered the pool of thoughts and then gave her directions.

The plan was to depart Monteray in four T weeks with the treasure ship loaded with metal under her own power and hyper capable; the salvaged shuttle, full of metal, to be deck cargo on the treasure ship; Don Juan and family to be carried in "Sundowner"; allow events to determine how to deal with the rebels.

Orville to get the treasure ship spaceworthy without warp capability and use "Sundowner's" assets as suggested.

TJ to fit the 'puter and make the connections.

Cedric to salvage one shuttle in three not four weeks — it would probably be needed to salvage metal.

Dorothy to use 737 to recover the fuel to the moon as a transit point to the planet if needed.

Morg to co-ordinate the efforts and to continue surveillance of the mine site and camp.

The answer to TJ's question was to tell Don Juan to be ready to depart in four T weeks, without the animals who could fend for themselves and with such personal items as they desired.

The humans in Medical volunteered their services in the work parties out of sheer boredom but Morg was very cautious where he used them — that didn't stop him from working them into the metaphorical dirtside with the rest of the crew.

HAC trained personnel were rostered for space duties to keep current and otherwise they were used in the work parties.

"Sundowner" was kept at spacing stations and the Sundowners came to regard the time on watch as relaxation from work even though Shirley Wood excelled herself in subjecting the watches to every scenario in the book and some that she threw in for good measure.

To be in three places at once, Art had commandeered a scout as its personal(?) runabout.

Morg closely supervised Derrin and kept Clare informed of progress at Eight O'clock Reports.

Threep kept himself occupied constructing jewellery pieces until he decided to branch out into vintage time pieces of varying size — from wrist to wall mount. Cedric banned the use of the clean room mini-smelter for making the steel for the wire coil springs and Threep had to juggle time frames with the Engineers to use the engine room's larger smelter. Still it was time consuming and communing with Derrin was not easy because of the demands placed upon that versatile entity.

Morg stretched Clare's instructions and conducted a night time reconnaissance using the flivver to get dirtside with only Dorothy as back-up. 'Nita was waiting for him in the boat bay when he returned and Clare had to stamp on 'Nita for her insubordination; that is until she was informed why 'Nita was so annoyed and then the ruckus coming from Clare's office set up a betting frenzy as to when she would repeat herself.

When Clare wound down, Morg reported that he had not found anyone alive in the complex — he did admit it was not a thorough search — and he had wrecked the automatic defence control.

"Wrecked as in disabled?"

"Wrecked as using the powered armour to smash the units into small sizes wrecked."

"Oh ... Well done! ... But next time..."

The harangue was only half hearted this time and Clare dismissed him. "Nita however was waiting for him and, Clare's comments to her notwithstanding, she started again where she had left off, that is, until Morg turned and fixed her with eyes that were becoming golden; 'Nita took the hint, braced, and departed to the gym where she vented her spleen on an innocent fighting 'bot.

She felt better afterwards.

737 delivered a bladder of reactor mass to the mine site and the mine robos were swung into action by commands from Derrin who was acting on Clare's instructions. The ground smelters were activated and the machinery began dismantling the bunkers to retrieve the bunker cores and all the ore already dug out.

Clare had Derrin calculate the tonnage volume of the ship and the shuttle and then produce enough extra ore formed into billets to complete the ship load of gold and platinum, and fill the shuttle with platinum. When this was done, Derrin, under instruction from Orville was to place the mine on care and maintenance.

Cedric out did himself and had the shuttle spaceworthy in three weeks.

When Clare announced the loading plans the executive went po-faced, turned eyeballs up to contemplate the inner beautitude, resumed neutral expressions, extracted PDAs, did calculations and raised hands indicating each wished to speak. Clare sighed,

"Orville?"

"The ship can lift a full load of gold off that moon provided "Sundowner" assists by tractor beam and the shuttle is decked in n space."

"Agreed (Morg and TJ lowered their hands). Cedric?"

"The shuttle. Same problem. It won't, sorry, can't, lift that mass of metal off the planet. It's built for volume not mass ... in gravity that is, once in n space no mass no problem. I recommend, we quarter load her with metal and off load it near "Sundowner" binding the billets with straps; pull the ship off with what's on the moon and finish the load in space. The platinum load sits up here until we're ready to depart and then load the shuttle and put her on the ship as deck cargo. And speaking of departing, what's our trek home?"

"Suits! Orville, Cedric's plan but we'll still use "Sundowner" to tow. I'm thinking of staying on this side of the galaxy using hard space until we reach the Orion arm and then dive into Sol. I want to go ahead at best velocity and prepare our sponsors. I'm going to leave those pods along the trek both as nav beacons and as com rebros. I'll give the ship, to be known hereafter as "Shiralee" (a grin split Clare's face) — look it up — two scouts so you can recover the pods, Cedric. Yeah, you got her. You'll take Mary and Jane of course. The Engineers and Colin, sorry Orville, their need etcetera; Seph, Juliette and Peggy of course. Allie as your second and three Trainees and three Gennies. I'm sure you will do a good job on the astro maps and we'll want copies please. We'll RV at the last beacon in hard space and then "Sundowner" will escort you in to wherever I decide "Shiralee" is going."

Clare looked around the mess lounge, took a deep breath and started

"We will have as additional fees ... Let me start from the beginning. When we were first contacted by the Cordova family, they offered a fee plus whatever gold we salvaged. Allie and Bet negotiated the financial detail with Marquis Alciente and his two brothers; the three Cordovas were unanimously explicit that they would pay the reasonable charter fee and that anything we brought back with us was ours — and they insisted that be written into the contract. All they wanted in return was our word that we would be absent from Sol for a up to a year and a day to diligently search the region they indicated for their kin. If we located the colony, the time became irrelevant. If the colony was intact and functioning, we could fill "Sundowner" with metal and return but if the colony was beyond salvage, rescue survivors if possible and help ourselves. Anything in between the Cordovas trusted us to deal honestly by them...