Ghost Station (The Wandering Engineer) (107 page)

“The
refinery?”

“The
refinery is functioning nominal across the board. The next scheduled pick up is
in a week. A tug has already been dispatched,” Sprite informed him. He'd used
his own replicator to build a gas giant refinery a couple of weeks ago when
Antigua Prime had refused to do so at his urging. Kiev had dropped it off for
him along with a copy for their own refueling needs just before they had left.
Now that he had it out there and working it was sucking hydrogen from the
atmosphere, processing it into useful deuterium. Of course since it was now
functional the station wanted the fuel all for themselves.

They
hadn't been happy when he'd slapped their hands but too bad. He'd offered a
trade, they could get one third of the fuel in exchange for usage of a tug to
go out weekly and pick it up and return all of it. The remaining fuel was his
but they would store it for him free of charge as part of the deal. He'd let
Sprite handle the details of the contract after that. She had later informed
him that the wrangling had taken over an hour and had gotten rather heated
before they'd finally agreed to his demands.

They
had immediately traded for his other two thirds in exchange for usage of the
replicators. Of course that had yet to be allowed, scheduling conflicts and all
that. Then again they hadn't gotten the fuel yet either so he couldn't blame
them for putting him off.

Things
were definitely looking down. He didn't like it, didn't like the way things
were trending against him. Sometimes he felt like he was being a little
paranoid, that he needed a break. He knew he didn't have itchy feet, the urge
to move, but he did have a feeling like something was about to happen,
something bad.

"More
Dilgarth?" A few of the eggs tucked in hidden out of the way places had
hatched with predictable results when the creeling starving young were found.
Fortunately they had had only one fatality.

She
shook her head. "Nary a one."

"Schedule
hick up?" he asked.

"You
could say that," Sprite said. She didn't sound all that thrilled about
admitting it. She was also getting to be a pain in the ass by drawing this out.
Sometimes he swore she did this on purpose to get his BP up.

"Well?"
he asked starting to get exasperated with her little game.

"I
was going to tell you but you got into a guessing game," she said smiling.
He rolled his eyes. "Okay okay, I was trying to tell you admiral that the
political establishment has started weighing in on our golden goose here.
Apparently what you have been telling them all along has finally sunken in. So
much so that I believe it is about to come back and bite us in the ass.”

“Oh?
Don't tell me...” he sighed. He was fairly certain he was in trouble. “Okay.”

“Bracing
yourself?” Sprite snorted. “I think you can figure out what comes next. They've
begun making promises to rebuild their infrastructure in exchange for votes in
their upcoming elections."

He
shrugged. He'd expected it sooner. The constitutional convention had been a big
hit, covered in minute detail by reporters from all over the planet. It had
been held in the old capital, now a crater with a bunch of tents on it. He
wasn't sure why they hadn't had it in one of the underground cities. Sure it
was a neutral spot, but it was also far from any of the utilities and the
logistics had been a nightmare for those who had attended.

Still
they had gotten it done; the constitution had made it through the convention in
less than a month and then voted on and passed by an eighty nine percent vote
yesterday.

Even
before the vote the mayors had started posturing, strutting and maneuvering to
run for the high office of star system governor. Things were going to get
interesting soon. The election was in a six weeks. "Oh, well, not bad, we
can fit them in." He was just glad they didn't have video ground side. If
they had they would be subjected to political infomercials and even more
mudslinging than what was being reported by the printed press.

Sprite
shook her head. "And therein lies the rub. They want it
now
. As
well as new appliances for everyone, a new air car in every garage, medicine,
clothes... It's well, chaos."

He
scowled. "Great."

"And
we can't tell them no, we need them."

He
held up a hand then sighed, deflating a little.  He wanted to protest he really
did. Technically he didn't need them. Oh he did, but not as much as they
thought he did.

"Okay
that really sucks," he finally said. He really really didn't want to piss
off the establishment right from the beginning. "Has anyone proposed how
they are going to
pay
for it all?"

She
shook her head, smiling bitterly. "Oh that gets better. Since it's
their
station anyway, they get it all for
free
."

"Seriously?"
he asked, eyes narrowed.

"As
a heart attack."

"Oh
hell," he sighed, closing his eyes and rubbing his temples. "They
talk to anyone on our end yet?" he asked after a moment.

"A
few of the council support it. The peace and flowers faction are all for
it." She sounded more than a little disgusted.

Politics
were just as complicated on the station as it was on the ground. They were
still trying to get a handle on it as things settled down. So far it wasn't
something he was happy about. It was something he could live with, but some of
the ruling council were becoming royal pains in his ass now that things were
settling down and the station was coming back to life.

The
station's ruling council was broken into three main groups. The first were the
old guard. Fu, his wife, and a handful of others that were still sane and
willing to participate. The love and peace group. Then there were the new
guard, led by the Warners. They were from Kiev. Finally there were the new
volunteers from the planet. Many were either people with medical issues or
aged. A few he suspected were political appointees.

They'd
just finished integrating the last one last week actually. He was surprised
that most of them had survived the procedure. The doctors had gotten good at it
apparently. Or just lucky. He wasn't sure which.

The
station council had subdivisions in the factions. A few of the old guard had
reached out to the new, shepherding them through the cyber process. They had
also passed on some of their dislike for war apparently. He'd been getting some
passive resistance lately.

"Trying
to spike the guns before they are built I bet," he grumbled bringing his
mental faculties back to the situation on hand.

"Possibly.
they've already taken orders and are working on scheduling priorities now. They
haven't interrupted station repairs
yet
..."

He
sighed. "But they probably jogged my long term plans all to hell."

"No
plan survives contact with the enemy admiral," Sprite said shaking her
virtual head.

"They
aren't the enemy," he growled in response. He wiped at his face again with
his left hand. At least not
yet
, he thought. Hopefully not. Hopefully
not ever.

"No?
They sure act like it," Sprite said disgusted. "Golden euphoria,
that's what it is I bet."

"Probably,"
Irons said in agreement. He scowled coming to a decision he knew he wasn't
going to like. "Book me some face time with the leaders." He needed
to get some face time in with these people. Some he knew but a lot of the
people from the planet he didn't know and that was a problem. He needed to know
all the players.

"You're
seriously thinking of going down there admiral? We're at a delicate moment with
the repairs," Sprite cautioned. She calculated a thirty percent
interruption in the schedule if he did go down to the surface. However perhaps
that was his intent all along? No, she calculated that the admiral's primary
reason was to avoid any avoidance of the issue if he placed a transmission
through to the planet. He wanted a face to face meeting. There was a ninety
point five percent probability that was what he was thinking.

The
admiral smiled slightly. "We need to know the players Sprite. We need to
see the big picture. Aren't you always reminding me to do that? To keep an eye
on the politics along with the engineering?"

"Throwing
my words back at me admiral?" Sprite responded, clearly amused. "I've
booked a seat on the red eye. You'll have to take mass transit to the Doonburg
town. Calculated transit time is three point four days round trip."

He
wrinkled his nose. He wasn't sure about that. "Doonburg?" he asked
amused.

"I
didn't name it. I think it's the usual name hash," she said, rolling her
virtual eyes. "I can't specify a specific time since we're relying on mass
transit and he can't keep the entire day open. We'll have to let his office
know we're in town when we get there."

"And
no doubt cool our heels as he clears his schedule,” he said.

“Hopefully
he doesn't find some excuse to not be there,” Sprite riposted in agreement. He
nodded.

“Okay,
who's he?" he asked. He hated hurry up and wait games. Half the time the
entire wait was fabricated to put the recipient off balance or a show of
dominance to show them who's boss.

"You
specified leaders. The lead mayor is Mayor Jeff Randall. Where he goes the
others inevitably follow. Thirty six, male human. Extremely charismatic, highly
sociable and very educated for his planet. His wife Sandra acts as his XO.
Their town has had the most advances since he took office when he was twenty
nine. He's a player. He has an extremely high probability of becoming planetary
governor when elections are finally organized and held five weeks and six days
from now."

"Interesting.
Anything more?"

"Only
what I can access on the public net, which isn't much. I can give you a
slightly broader thumbnail bio, but I don't have a lot to go off of
admiral," she said with a sniff of disgust.

"Backward
about electronic information?"

"They
were. Also about tying the networks together. Some still use antiquated methods
I'm still trying to puzzle out. The Randall's have been a major component of
change for that. One of their projects is a standardized planetary computer
network with dedicated unrestricted servers."

"Ah.
Interesting."

"One
of the other things he's promising is free tablet computers and open access to
education and historical records."

The
admiral grinned. Perhaps this wouldn't be so bad he thought. "A man after
my own heart. Okay book me. We'll see how it goes when I'm ground side.
Hopefully this won't take long."

"I'm
hoping it goes well," she said. "Your track record with politicians
isn't pretty admiral," Sprite replied.

"Tell
me about it," he grumbled in disgust.

The
flight across the system and down to the planet's surface had been a relatively
uneventful affair. The station was only a couple of AU from the planet now, no
more than a couple of hours to get to it by shuttle now that the starships were
gone. Fortunately Barry had been persuaded to part with his big yellow banana
boat before leaving so they had two shuttles to make the run. The school bus
wasn't comfortable at all, it seriously lacked leg room for someone adult size,
but it had plenty of seats.

Not
of course that there were a lot of people on the return flight. Quite the
contrary. He and the shuttle's crew were it. They had the ship to themselves
and talked for a bit before making planetary orbit. A bit turbulent in the
re-entry, but that was to be expected. He looked out across the port and
stretched, glad that that leg of the transit was over.

Already
vendors were cropping up all over the place he noted. He could see smoke
pouring from smoke stacks in the distance. That's right; they were still using
old iron age industrial technology he thought with a mental nod. Of course
there was the scent of barbeque in the air as well so not quite all that smog
was industrial related. He noticed a few people coughing at the smog and fumes.
He'd read that a river on the other side of the planet had caught fire again.
That was ominous, that it was that polluted that it caught fire. What was also
ominous was that it wasn't the first time and apparently the cities and towns
around the river had opted to field a highly trained fire fighting force over
stopping the pollution and cleaning the river. Hopefully when they got the
industry set up properly things like that would change.

“I
believe you have to go to the mass transit system admiral,” Sprite said,
sounding busy.

“Okay,”
he said, looking around. A constable dressed in a brown button down suit and a
British bobby hat noted his look and pointed to where most of the crowd was
heading with his billy club.

“Better
hurry gov, no lolly gagging for this lot if you want a prime seat,” the man
said, touching his old fashioned bobby hat.

“Thank
you sir,” Irons said, lips puckering in amusement as he followed the
directions. He caught sight of the constable checking him out. He realized it
was the undress uniform that had him interested.