Chapter 7
The control panel blinked with green and yellow indicators in front of her. The array of lights and switches glimmered back in her eyes. She looked up to see the robotic arms and hoppers do their little automated dance. There were no materials coming in, yet. When would they have anything to process in this new, shiny, factory, was known only to the boss.
Not that he treated them like ‘a boss’, in any real sense. Mostly, Major Diggs, as everyone called him, treated them as equals and usually heard her out, no matter how silly her ideas seemed at first. But so far, the big plans he had for this powerhouse of engineering wonder, were mostly unknown. There were lots to the North that were now being set up for a couple of bioreactors, but that would take weeks to build, and months before the crops would be ready. If what Diggs wants is to package all of that food here, then this factory would stand empty for a while, now.
But she had to admit, it was great fun setting it all up. The previous buildings she had constructed for him were challenging, but none of them much more complicated than what she’d seen in school. The warehouse and extractors were fairly straightforward, although it was good to have Takeshi help out with those. He had some ideas how to set up all the moving parts that made a lot of sense from the miner’s point of view. And the refineries were not so simple, but she’d already assembled one during her last year in the academy. It wasn’t like this, not exactly. Building on open dunes, strewn with boulders and away from the easy mobility of pre-established tread-wires and cement landings to help you find your footing when you needed to regroup. But still, the refineries went up, by the book, no muss no fuss.
The factory, though, that was a different story. There were a lot of moving parts. A convoy of hoppers carrying expensive gear, bulky, delicate robotic arms and stainless steel pipes, that had to be kept aside while other units positioned the ground-works and steel covers, without crashing into each other in the occasional puffs of dust brought about by all that activity. You’d think that there would be simple, step-by-step instructions for these kinds of things. But the truth was, a lot of it had to be improvised on the spot. The modules arrived when they arrived, depending on shifting markets across the planetoid. The foundations had to fit into the existing topography of the specific lot, and the assembly lines could be placed in one long row or several parallels, or just set to wind between the curves of the landscape, and each design had advantages and disadvantages when the time came to push materials in, and hopefully get finished products on the other side.
A red light blinked on the console. She hovered over to the rear of the control unit. There was a hopper coming in to land, a personnel carrier. It was a visitor, maybe. But most visitors will hail you on the radio when they were coming in. She considered reporting this back to her friends on the mining site, but decided to go see who it was, first. She adjusted the sleeves of her suit, her hand running over the thin, ridged metal strips that went up her forearms, right up to the cuffs, before she fitted the vacuum gloves into their interlocking bracers. She put on the helmet of her vac-suit and blew into the receiver. It was working fine. She kept the channel open as she stepped out of the airlock, gliding down towards the rim of the factory.
There were a few figures moving on the landing pad. They were wearing black vac-suits, which was strange. Soon they reached the tread-wire and were quickly pulled over and across the sands to the cement sidewalk that surrounded the building. She turned a few dials on her left-hand wrist console, and checked that the radio was listening on all common frequencies. She casually reached around to the small of her back, feeling for a small knob under her suit. It was not easy, with the layers of fabric in the way, but she thought she could twist it if she really had to.
Three men approached, she could now see they were all men, and when they reached the edge of the walkway, the one in the front was eyeing her from a distance, for a short minute, before fiddling with his wrist controls. The radio started to hiss and a voice finally hailed her.
“Hello there,” he said. She could see the man speaking was shorter by a head and a half than his two overgrown companions, who gave her a disinterested look as they approached, and otherwise seemed more impressed with the architecture.
The shorter man continued, as they reached her, half-way from the edge of the factory to the ladder that went up to the control unit. “My name is Edward Eddington. We are here for an inspection of your facility,” he paused as if to give her a chance to seem worried.
“We are here as representatives of the Prime Council,” he added, as if that wasn’t clear.
“I’m Lyra, Starfield.” She wasn’t sure if she should welcome them in, or what. “No one told me that you were coming.”
“Ahh yes, I’m afraid that’s part of our methodology. You see,” it was clear he loved explaining things to other people of lesser intellect. “The whole point of these little inspections is to see what kind of processes are going on when people don’t know the Prime Council is looking. In most cases, there isn’t anyone around when we do this…” He gestured to his men to start looking at the factory ground-floor. “But it is always a pleasure to have someone who’s in charge, to, um, show us around.”
She was going to say she wasn’t in charge, but that made her feel even more guilty. “What would you like to see?” She tried to sound as polite as possible. These people, if they were indeed PC representatives, didn’t carry any weapons. There were no weapons in Adalia. They didn’t seem more threatening than the bureaucrats she’d run into when she was at school, or as a child. But there were three of them, and only one of her. The fact that the two goons went on their way was little comfort, given that she now didn’t have any idea where they went or what they were up to.
“Things didn’t use to be this way,” he said, as they bobbed slowly towards the ladder. “But the Council has decided to give the freedom of building and maintaining the economy into the hands of the Arvadians… I mean, Adalians, and to let the people run their own production in whatever ways they choose.
“This, of course, has led some… Adalians…” he clearly didn’t like this way of referring to what was left of humanity, “to take advantage of the lack of oversight, which had already caused… less than ideal outcomes.
“In fact, there have been quite serious accidents over the last few years, that caused a bit of a stir with the Council. Have you heard of the steel wire that broke in Schuyler? Caused a decompression of one of the habitation modules. Cut through the aluminium pressure vessel like a hot knife through, well,” he considered her and quickly assessed her life experience, “through a well-cooked potato.” He tried.
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“I know what butter is,” she said, “I’ve seen movies.”
“Well, anyway, it was pure luck that no one was in that hab-module at the time. Dear god, could you imagine if the children were in there? The damage was quite substantial. Traced back to sub-standard steel coming from one of these independent,” he gestured around him, “establishments that are now producing all of our materials.”
They reached the ladder. “Although, I’m sure we won’t find anything that isn’t up to code here.” He clambered up, using mostly his hands to pull himself against the fractional gravity. Lyra bounced once on the tips of her toes and landed gracefully at the entrance to the airlock above him. “Yes, quite impressive,” he said as he reached the top, the slow way. “Let’s see the command circuits, shall we?”
From the command unit, Lyra could see the two other men checking the production lines, and for a while, they were interfacing with the worker hoppers. Mr. Eddington ran a few diagnostics and activated some of the robotics, but did nothing more complicated than the tests she had been conducting over the last few days. When he was satisfied, he turned to her with a few more questions. His voice wasn’t any more appealing over the air than it was over the short-range radio. “So, what products are you making here?”
“I, I’m actually not sure. We haven’t gotten any materials yet, even the refineries haven’t been started up.”
“But surely you have a plan for a production line?”
“Well, maybe my boss does. He hasn’t been really specific.”
“So you aren’t the owner of this establishment?” He seemed disappointed to have been intimidating the wrong person.
“No, I’m the engineer in charge. You can talk to Major Diggs, in Siderotil hab.”
“Ahh, yes, of course,” he said while checking some records on his tablet. “And has Mr. Briggs told you anything about what he’s planning to produce?”
She thought about the few discussions they’ve had. She wondered if any of the details she’d provide were going to require additional paperwork. “I think we were going to make cement, to start with. Maybe food, at some point.” The mention of food prompted him to make a few more notes in his document. “Interesting. We will have to come visit the bioreactors at some point… I’m assuming you, or your boss, are planning to grow the crops locally, not just buy and package them?”
She nodded. “The two lots just after the row of processing buildings, are set up as space for the farms.”
He continued to take notes. “This is all well and good. It is always a good idea to grow more food.” He stopped for a second, then, “not that there’s any danger of running out of food in Adalia. Those are just nasty rumors.” He was turning to leave, and then turned back. “You did get a sufficient supply of vitamin supplements?” He flipped his tablet back on to jot down her response.
“Yeah, I mean, we got a few boxes of that stuff, along with the first order of soil.”
“Great. I’m happy to hear the Adalia Prime merchants are following the instructions of our dietitians. Anyway,” he started towards the airlock, “we’ll be continuing our inspection at the refineries. No need to join us, we can check your instrumentations just as well by ourselves.”
As the men left the factory, she was worried. She wasn’t sure if this was really a routine inspection or not. They didn’t seem to find anything out of spec, anyway. But she was a lot more concerned about the questions she couldn’t answer. What was she going to produce here? Cement was clearly not a viable business plan, with prices as low as 1 SWAY per ton. The big construction boom of Adalia Prime was already done, and the leftover construction materials, at least those that could be produced locally, were not making anyone a profit. Maybe this factory will end up producing large amounts of food. Chopped up, mixed and cooked, spiced and packaged, the raw materials like potatoes and soybeans could turn into something edible. It could all happen right here. Locally grown, fully self-sufficiently produced food. Except for the sulfur and other vital minerals that still had to be rocketed down to AP, those pesky vital minerals that are necessary for making proteans inside Earth-originated life-forms. At least the vitamins were provided by the Council, free of charge.
“One day,” she said to her command console, after she checked her transmitter was off. “One day, we’ll be making steel beams and aluminium pipes and put them together into a rocket that can blast us off of this rock.” She thought about this, then added, “well, I’m gonna blast off this rock. You,” she gestured at the room, “are too big to fit in a spaceship.”
She ran some more tests and dry-run assemblies, but it wasn’t as much fun anymore.
