Plague Planet (The Wandering Engineer) (2 page)

While making his rounds he bumped into a woman on the street, she
turned out to be the local chemist and pharmacist. She had been tasked by the
doctors to come up with some outlandish chemical compounds with no formula or
understanding on how to bring them into being. He handed the distraught woman a
flash chip with a micro-computer. It had a copy of his chemistry texts as well
as useful other things like a copy of his Encyclopedia Galactica. The
mini-comps were becoming incredibly handy he realized. He now made them by the
hundreds to hand out.

Hopefully the little computer would help teach the mostly
self-taught local chemist the basics of more advanced chemistry. Sprite even
dug out formulas for various things like anesthetics, plastics, and other
things, most of them out of a high school chemistry book she had downloaded in
their recent travels.

He visited the Sweet Meat bar on Fifth avenue again; he was amused
by how it hadn't changed much in his absence. He'd come there briefly just
before he'd left on Io 11, meeting one of the security girls from Io 11 for a
promised drink before they'd lifted for Pyrax.

When he realized what an opportunity Gaston was he took an extra
two weeks to gather additional small Aten asteroids. He ran the replicators
full out, even the one on the little shuttle. He churned out tons of material
for the colony as well as tons for something else.

They hadn't quibbled about providing him water for fuel and
manufacturing once he gave them the first shipments of equipment and supplies.
He did offer to pay, but they'd waved that offer off with a smile. He did toss
in water pumps, solar panels, and a filtration system to help them there too.
Hopefully the system would also help any passing ship as well.

When he was ready he'd hired an intermediary to handle a shipment
of goods to Commander Logan and the navy in Pyrax. The materials were stored in
a series of wooden warehouses near the edge of the space port. There were
several hundred tons of materials there, precious parts all carefully cataloged
and stored.

He'd set it up to run on the next ship passing through on its way
to Pyrax, but had been careful not to leave anything behind that was classified
or illegal to ship by civilian hands. There was no ammunition, no weapons or
military grade replicators. It wasn't that he didn't trust them, after all he'd
shipped some of that with the Lieandra and Kiev 221, it was that he wasn't
going to be there to broker the deal and thus couldn't feel out the captain for
his or her honesty. Also he didn't want military grade hardware sitting on the
ground where a passing pirate might come around and pick it up.

He'd been careful to caution Mr. Fenly about the shipment, even
explaining about the self-destruct and how it worked. He had even demonstrated
it with a small tablet. The fat man older man had stared and licked his lips as
he watched the simple device explode in a shower of sparks and then melt into a
steaming puddle of plastic goo.

If anyone attempted to open or use the parts the built in
self-destruct packages would melt them into slag. He'd also put in for a bonus
for Mr. Fenly and the captain of the ship if it went through okay. He'd been
careful to pick out Fenly, he had a reputation of honesty and integrity to go
along with his grit and seemingly sour no nonsense attitude. He was well
respected by all, some grudgingly. The Delgado family and Jerry both vouched
for him. Hopefully things would work out.

He hadn't shipped military grade replicators or weapons but he had
tucked in small but critical items that he knew the Pyrax group couldn't make
for themselves. Things like hyperdrive and reactor components, as well as a
copy of the shipping manifest, some software, his various travel journals,
copies of his updated databases, and orders to get a ship to Antigua as quickly
as possible. Hopefully they would help out.

If the captain did a good job he'd left a healthy incentive, one
he'd made certain Fenly knew about so he could pass along. The ship would
receive an overhaul and refueling at the Navy expense in Pyrax. That should
make certain the packages arrived safe and when word got around to other
freighters of the bonus they would be eager for business with the Navy. That
should go a long ways to help spread good relations with the various freighter
captains.

All in all his entire six week stop in Gaston had been productive
but not what he considered in the best long term interests of the Federation.

He had to stop in Epsilon because, he was about out of fuel and
the long periods of being alone were getting to him. Sure he had his AI and
smart bots but it wasn't enough. Being cooped up with the same beings for that
long a period wasn't doing his mental health or his patience any favors.
Fortunately he could and would barter his replicator services to get more fuel
and material. Not to mention bartering his own skills, keys, and abilities to
pay for his port and landing fees.

 The battered world had a large population, which had managed to
hang onto a decent tech base, near twentieth century tech level according to
the brief Sprite gave him.  Epsilon Triangula had been on Sprite's beta list of
possible new core worlds after they'd picked up more information about it.

The colony world had twenty times the population of Pyrax, but it
lacked any form of space architecture or interest in space. Like a lot of
grounders they had an anathema to space travel. To some the Xeno war, the
viruses, the pirates, and such were just a sign that nothing good ever came
from the sky. It was a sad sign of affairs when people toiled and worked with
such a limiting vision.

...*...*...*...*...

He'd wondered about the name. Epsilon Triangula was an odd star
system name. The planet usually went by Epsilon. Old systems discovered by
human astronomers before human star flight were usually named using the ancient
Greek alphabet. Some in the Bruin sector had been renamed because the Taurens
had not only seen them, they'd visited them first. A few were named for Veraxin
explorers, but Veraxins in the early days weren't known for taking on missions
of exploration.

He'd had to look it up in the Encyclopedia. Fortunately someone
had left an entry about the name. The Jason, one of the earliest hyperspace
exploration ships had discovered the system and named the planet out of a bit
of amusement. He could understand that in theory, explorers tended to run
through their famous and inspiring name list rather quickly. But Epsilon
Triangula?

It turned out that they had named it not for what the words meant,
but for the letters. E.T. A joke about Extra Terrestrial.  Apparently future
settlers who bought the rights to the system and terraformed it never bothered
to change the name. That showed their lack of imagination.

The planet had been heavily terraformed using asteroids and nano
air exchangers over a period of fifty years or so. The asteroids and comets had
given the planet a jump start, battering her a bit, he could still see some of
the massive craters, but they had done the job. They'd even managed to move the
planet from the outer most edges of the Goldilocks zone and into the deeper
habitable zone. The comets had added additional water and other gaseous
materials to the atmosphere to thicken it and give the nano terraformers
something to work with.

The mountainous exchangers and their power supplies were gone, not
due to any bombing but because they had been sold off to help clear the colony
of startup debt. That was typical; they had probably been used to terraform a
quarter of the planets in the sector. But the craters and island rings where
asteroids and comets had impacted and burrowed into the crust were still
self-evident, again, like the naming of the planet no one had bothered to
smooth their ugliness over.

In fact, some had become tourist attractions. One small city was
near a crater lake. It was called Crater City, another indication of the lack
of imagination of the populace.

There was even a perfect circle lake in the south west of the main
continent. Islands dotted the lake and Sprite focused on it for a brief moment.
He snorted at the words stenciled into the cliff. “Perfect circle lake resort
and spa.”

“Sounds like a tourist trap,” Sprite replied.

“Most likely.”

The planet had been bought by a consortium of back to basic
colonists and businesses, financed by the low interest loans of the time period
before the Xeno war. They had leased several colony stasis ships to make the
run back and forth between the core worlds and the new colony once the
terraforming had produced a hospitable environment. They hadn't even waited for
the trees and plants to take hold as they had on Eden or other worlds. In fact,
according to the encyclopedia entry there had been some scandal involving the
colonists clear cutting great swaths of forests for firewood in the first
winter. The response from the colony leaders about those news reports were a
resounding mind your own damn business.

Of course with the additional greenhouse gases in the air and the
lack of solid ozone, not to mention the lack of trees to keep the oxygen levels
maintained they'd had problems. The algae in the oceans and other waterways
hadn't spread far and fast enough to sustain the oxygen atmosphere so twenty
four years after the incident the colony had come to the Federal government
asking for assistance. They had nearly run through their resources and since
the planet had never supported life it didn't have other natural resources they
could access. They'd gotten a cold shoulder response.

According to the report, the colony representatives had been
approached by a lobbyist who had also been in the capital at the time. They had
struck a series of deals in a bar. Six months later Perfect Circle resort had
broken ground.

They'd used aircraft to do an orange peel over the planet, seeding
it with additional plant life. They had also set up reserves of land to remain
untouched by the colonists for at least a century to give them plenty of time
to take root.

They buried pockets of biomass for conversion into fossil fuels
over the centuries, and even cleaned up the devastated forests. It had been a
windfall of good publicity for the company when it had needed it.

Still, due to the planet's location and its' population's
selective interest in only north American, European, and Russian biota the
planet didn't have tropical rain forests or jungles. Most of the northern
continents were pale echoes of what the America's and Russia had back before
the AI war.

Perfect Circle had tried to change some of that, they'd seeded
remote areas with additional seeds, but had mixed results. Apparently the
director of terraforming repair on the planet had been a bit of a crusader. She
had diverted some of the funds to such projects and had eventually been found
out and fired. She'd remained on the planet and risen into politics on the
world before she'd been killed in a suspicious incident that hadn't been
detailed. It was odd that the incident and the woman were even mentioned.

The most contentious part of the Perfect Circle deal was the
location of a series of island prisons. Apparently the resort company did a
sideline business running private prisons. Since Epsilon was a cross roads to
other systems it became a dumping ground for excess prison population before
the war.

The resort had another side to it as well, a mental health
institution for the rich. It was part rehab, part private resort prison for
those people who had a great deal of money, or their children. If they ran
afoul of the law they would buy their way out and come to this world to
'meditate and recover'.

With some of the seedier side of civilization already on the
planet it wasn't too surprising that some of the original colonists took
offense to it. They attempted to tame the lawless groups with heavy rules
banning alcohol and illicit substances but that only drove them underground and
made the population complicit in its trade along with its consumption.
Unfortunately organics thought they needed these substances to have a good
time.

Irons paused as he caught that last line. Apparently the being who
had wrote the entry had been an AI. He snorted and read on. The next part was
from Sprite. She'd assembled the information from various sources. It was
filled with qualifiers and appendix notes. He ignored them, focusing on the
main content.

Most of the world had been rural; the back to basics people hadn't
been interested in a recreation of the cities they had run away from. During
the Xeno war the planet had been resettled by refugees from Pyrax and other
systems that had been devastated by the war. But the lack of industry and a
population unsupportable with the current infrastructure had caused chaos and
famine. Also, most people wanted as far away from this sector as possible so
many had moved on over the decades, most were tradesmen or people with some
education wanting a better life for themselves or their families.

This had given rise to the power of the mob. They had grown in
both popularity and power, for they took care of their own people. Everyone got
a cut, and you got what you put into the business. Robber crews roved the farms
during harvest time. Any truck was targeted. Some farmers cut deals with the
mobs and either just turned their contents over to them willingly or burned
their own crops and hid their stores.