Battletech counterattack.., p.37
BattleTech: Counterattack (BattleCorps Anthology Vol. 5), page 37
Nils was the team’s outrider—normally he would have circulated, assessing threats by moving through the crowd. But here, where there was no crowd. he stayed in close formation.
There were two groups waiting for them, both proximate to a central table of refreshments everyone seemed to be ignoring. The group to the right had perhaps a dozen men and women wearing clothes of fabrics more appropriate to the climate than Olaf’s greatcoat and cut in a fashion that struck him as elegant. These, he surmised, were the Oberons.
Standing opposite them—so that the approaching JarnFolk made a triangle—were four men in heavy robes and broad hats in rich but somber colors. Forming a crescent moon behind them were a dozen men in grey jumpsuits and black vests with the unmistakable bulk of ballistic armor. They carried short carbines slung across their shoulders.
Olaf almost let go of his pocket pistol. The supposed guards were so unready none would live to unlimber his weapon if and when. Then it occurred to him that such apparent laxness may be as much a ruse as his casually pocketed hand. He checked the safety with his thumb and flexed his fingers before giving his full attention to his father and the negotiation.
“Well met, Sir Bjørn,” said the regal woman who evidently lead the Oberon contingent in oddly accented Star League.
“Lady Marsa, you know well we JarnFolk do not use your titles,” Olaf’s father said with the grin he was coming to realize was his elder’s bargaining mode. “I am Bjørn Jepersen of the Jepersen clan. A simple trader, no more.”
The woman—Lady Marsa—bobbed her head, acknowledging the correction. Olaf was certain she did not accept his father’s self-evaluation as a simple trader, no doubt assuming the JarnFolk chose not to share some arcane social order similar to her own. Why would someone so evidently a woman need to identify herself as “Lady?”
“And this young man?” Lady Marsa asked, looking at Olaf. “Those are your eyes, if I am not mistaken.”
“My son Olaf,” his father admitted. “Come to learn the trade.”
“A pity he should waste his journey on your last visit to Oberon VI.” The gravelly words came from the fattest of the Hansa.
“Herr Frederich, that has not yet been decided,” Lady Marsa said sharply. “There are many options to explore.”
The fat man turned his shoulder toward the JarnFolk, obviously dismissing them from any discussion.
“You wish to industrialize your world,” Frederich said. “Develop, exploit the natural resources of Oberon VI. The people of the ice moon cannot help you do that. The simple traders cannot help you do that. Only the Hansa can help you do that—we have the personnel and the materiel to offer a long-term and profitable relationship. Technical expertise simple traders lack.”
Olaf bristled, but he did not need Frieda’s warning glance to keep his peace. It would take far more than insults from a man so clearly unaware of whom he faced to provoke him to ill-considered action. Besides, the Hansa had merely echoed his father’s words.
“Ah,” said Olaf’s father as though pleasantly surprised. “If Oberon is seeking a construction contractor, the Hansa is right. Our technicians and craftsmen cannot meet the prices offered by slave labor.
“Though if it is craftsmanship you seek, from the poor condition of their JumpShips and DropShips, it is evident the Hansa lack the JarnFolk’s understanding of technology.”
“Gentlemen,” Lady Marsa said before Frederich could respond.
Olaf understood why everyone was ignoring the refreshments. They wanted to have their weapon hands free when the shooting started.
“What did you learn?” his father asked in the groundcar an hour later.
“That the Hansa are offering a labor force in addition to equipment, something we are not interested in doing,” Olaf answered. “While Oberon VI may become a profitable market once they have completed their industrialization, there is no percentage in trying to break the Hansa demand of exclusivity while they are so essential to the Oberons attaining their goals.”
His father nodded slowly.
“Good as far as you go,” he said. “But you looked only at the here and the horizon. What of the past?”
“The past?”
His father did not answer, waiting for Olaf to puzzle out the meaning behind his words. The Oberons were determined to develop the gold and mineral resources of their world. Resources that had attracted the first settlers to the isolated world, but which could not be exploited because the world’s ecology was so delicate the least pollutant caused massive vegetation die-offs. There had been a famine generations ago when—
“Water purification!” Olaf said, recalling the key sentence. “They have acquired water purifiers effective enough to remove all pollution generated by their mines and factories.”
“Water purifiers and—more importantly—simple water purification technology they can replicate to meet any need,” his father nodded. “Otherwise they would not dare expand as rapidly as they are proposing.
“Now: Why is that good news?”
“Because they acquired it,” Olaf said. “And what they acquired, we can acquire. And sell. Our only task is discovering who sold them the purifiers.”
His father sighed.
“You were not paying attention.”
Sigurd
Oberon Confederation
22 July 2972
The striped sphere of the gas giant filled a third of the sky. Only a slender crescent of the globe was lit by the distant primary—an unblinking white point that burned with the intensity of an arc light in the deep blue sky. The shadowy portion not lit by the faraway sun glowed with its own sullen red, like an ember covered with a thin film of black ash.
Olaf had his cloak on over his greatcoat and was still cold. He doubted even frozen Hamar could match the bitter cold that soaked its way through layers of wool and leather.
The cold in partner with the oppressive weight of the huge planet above made him want to hunch his shoulders as he followed his father across the ice field. It took all of his discipline to walk like a man and not pull himself into a heat-conserving ball. So deadening was the moon, so oppressive the planet above, that despite weighing only two-thirds what he did on his native Hofn, Olaf could manage no more than a trudge through the powdery snow covering the ice.
Almost as disturbing as the world above him was the knowledge there was nothing but water below him. The ice on which he walked extended down—how many hundreds of meters he was not sure—until it reached a point where the pressure kept the water fluid despite the temperature. There was some debate whether there was anything other than water at the core. Depending on the assumptions one brought to the readings, there was either a ball of rock a hundred kilometers down, or the pressure became so great that the liquid water was indistinguishable from stone.
Olaf found the core of rock theory more palatable. The thought that there was something solid beneath his feet was comforting.
Glancing back—and the hood of his cloak required he turn completely around—Olaf thought the brightly-colored landing shuttle looked forlorn on the icy field of whites and greys. The crew was already out, chipping away at the ice that had refrozen around the hot landing gear as it cooled. His father—and the ship’s captain and Frieda—had explained that even a DropShip was in no danger of melting all the way through Sigurd’s icy shell, but Olaf was still glad his father had chosen the smaller craft for this visit.
Directly ahead a glacial cliff rose from the plain—patterns of darker grey against the grey-white revealing windows and entrances. No trading pavilions or passenger concourses here. The moon’s two thousand natives—fewer than found in many family enclaves on Hofn—lived in caves carved from the living ice.
The ground—ice—rose beneath their feet. The even gradient and raised edges convinced Olaf they were ascending a man-made ramp. Evidently leading to the entrance of the colony. Looking ahead, he found a wide archway in the cliff face to confirm his theory.
Olaf was startled by the sight of a carpet woven in an intricate pattern of greens and pinks that rose from the floor of the corridor ahead of them to cover the walls, framing the broad entrance. As he and his father passed the carpet revealed itself to be a brightly colored lichen, any pattern to its clashing hues an illusion.
The oppressive cold lost its bite the moment Olaf and his father stepped across the threshold into the lichen-lined tunnel and out of the wind. A dozen paces carried them around a sharp turn and the temperature rose a dozen degrees.
A party of natives—Sigurders?—waited for them in a circular chamber from which four other tunnels radiated. Glancing up, Olaf noted the light came from low-energy neon fixtures of ancient design—and that the carpet of lichen extended to cover every square centimeter of wall and ceiling.
There was a pungent scent to the air, like a baking spice he could not quite place, and a faint mustiness. A godt bytte—good exchange—for natural insulation he decided.
Copying his father’s example, he opened his cloak and removed his gloves as they approached the welcoming committee. The Sigunders were a uniformly dark people, a phenotype that did not exist among the JarnFolk, but which Olaf recognized as African. They wore no-nonsense jumpsuits of bright safety orange with thick hoods, now thrown back in the cavern’s relative warmth, and bulges at each cuff which no doubt held gloves.
There was no indication of rank, but the Sigurders’ positioning made it clear a stout man with bars of grey through his densely curled hair and beard was their leader.
“Greetings,” Olaf’s father said in Star League. “I am Bjørn Jespersen and this is my son Olaf. We are simple traders of the JarnFolk come to see if there may be some means by which both you and we can profit.”
“Tomas,” the heavyset man answered in the same language. “We know the JarnFolk. Lars Heyerdahl and his son Liam traded here in my great-grandfather’s time. After so many years we thought you had died out or forgotten us.”
“I cannot speak for the Heyerdahls,” Olaf’s father said. “Except to say they valued you enough as trading partners to have never mentioned dealing with you. One does not broadcast such things. Why they have not visited in so long, I have no idea.”
Tomas seemed to consider the words for a long moment.
“Come,” he said at last. “Eat.”
Without another word, he turned toward one of the tunnels that led deeper into the ice. The other Sigurders followed without a glance toward Olaf or his father.
“They do not get much company,” Olaf said to his father in Norse.
“To offer food on a world as tightly rationed as this must be?” the elder Jespersen asked sharply. “You will seldom see a more hospitable act.”
Chastised, Olaf fell in step behind his father.
“Comets,” Tomas was saying. “Meteors. For millions of years Odin has pulled them into orbit and Sigurd has swept the orbit clean.”
Olaf nodded, though the headman was speaking to his father.
Expecting a stew of lichens, he had been pleasantly surprised by a vegetarian feast of unexpected variety. After the meal the Sigurds had taken their guests on a tour of the underground—underice?—farm: acres of rich topsoil imported from Oberon VI and warmed by banks of ultraviolet lights.
Sigurd’s agriculture was not self-supporting, however. Lacking a complete ecology, the soil’s nutrients had to be replenished regularly. The fertilizer—like the fabric for the Sigurders’ clothes, and all of the raw materials for their limited manufacturing—was imported from Oberon VI. The Sigurders were aware the fertile planet claimed their world as part of the “Oberon Confederation,” but as they saw their supposed rulers only for brief trading exchanges twice a year they paid no attention to their supposedly vassal status.
It was what the citizens of Sigurd traded for their fertilizer and building materials that interested the Jespersens. Olaf knew his father had expected to be shown a sophisticated manufacturing facility and suspected he was as bemused as Olaf at their tour through a wandering network of tunnels.
Here the insulating lichen was not so prevalent. The Sigurders had raised their hoods and pulled the mittens—not gloves—from their sleeve pouches. Olaf once again had his cloak firmly laced over his greatcoat, the fur-lined hood framing his view of the tunnels. Light was still provided by the ancient neon fixtures—suspended from wires so the minimal heat of their battery packs did not come in direct contact with the ice.
“Using sensors we are able to trace the densest veins of ore through the ice,” Tomas pointed to something in the translucent wall that meant nothing to Olaf. “Then it’s only a question of grinding it out.”
“Grinding it out?” Olaf’s father asked. “I thought lasers were used in mining ice.”
“On worlds where you have ground to stand on,” Tomas turned so his guests could see his grin. “Here we move much slower and are careful not to raise the temperature so much.”
“So you have been trading heavy metals to Oberon VI in exchange for your basic needs,” Olaf’s father said. “How does their planned mining and industrialization affect that balance?”
Tomas’s grin disappeared.
“It is not a good thing,” he said flatly.
Turning abruptly, he resumed the tour of the ice mines.
“We drill or grind, depending on the ice and the sort of ore,” he said, his voice echoing back off the walls of the tunnel. “Impact hammers and lasers both carry too much danger of fractures. Concussive or thermal, a sheer in the wall ice could crush a crew between ceiling and floor before anyone realized the danger.”
“Coming down from the top is not an option?”
“More difficult to trace the veins and a much greater volume of ice must be shifted. That alone increases the danger far more than following the minerals through the strata.”
“Way!” called a voice behind them.
Olaf and his father pressed themselves to the wall as a half dozen men and women pushed rectangular skids past them.
“Belts carry the shards of ore ice to the extractors along the main lines,” Tomas explained. “But in these smaller tunnels we use hand sleds.”
“Extractors?” Olaf glanced a belated apology to his father for blurting out of turn and was glad to receive an approving nod in return. “Are those a new development?”
“No,” Tomas answered. “And yes. We have always used extractors—how else to separate the valuable metals from the ice? But until Alma’s invention we had to transport the ice rubble to the surface because the heat of the process posed a danger to the tunnels.”
“And what did Alma invent?” Olaf’s father asked, only casual curiosity in his voice.
“I do not pretend to understand the science,” Tomas answered. “But it is a method for pulling the metal from the dross with little energy.”
“And it’s simple,” Olaf’s father said, his eyes on his son rather than the back of their guide, “because Alma developed it using only basic materials imported from Oberon.”
Olaf missed whatever Tomas answered.
The Sigurders had not developed a water purification system; they had developed a method of extracting comet dust from ice. For them the purified water was “dross.” How long had it taken the Oberons to figure out what their poor fetterne had created?
“Here is the heart of what we do,” Tomas said, standing aside. “This is a soft ice strata, so we are scraping our way forward.”
The tunnel ended in an open room, well lit by neon lights on stands. Olaf saw a large device, looking very much like a small cannon with three meters of spiral bottle brush projecting from its barrel, mounted on a heavy tripod facing the far wall. Three men—a pair of those who had brought the sleds and one he had not seen before—pushed the tripod forward until the outsized bottle brush was pressed against the wall. Once they had secured it in position, two other sled-haulers joined them, adding their weight to brace the tripod as the brush began to spin.
Skipping and whining across the face of the ice, the wildly gyrating brush stripped away layers of ice, throwing chips in all directions. Most, however, slumped down from the wall to spread across the floor.
The two sled pushers not bracing the scraper used broad shovels as paddles to separate the flow. One shoveled dirty ice into the waiting sleds with practiced efficiency while the other slapped shovelfuls of clear ice against the wall around the tunnel. Olaf realized this transfer from the far wall to the entrance of the tunnel allowed the drilling room to move forward while leaving a narrower, more stable tunnel behind.
In a matter of minutes, the six skids were full. The brush operator shut down his machine. As the sled pullers left the chamber he began disassembling the brush, using what looked like a giant comb to clean the bristles.
Tomas gestured after the departing sleds, evidently indicating he intended to lead his guests to the extractors.
“Father.”
Bjørn Jespersen stopped at his son’s quiet word. He cast a quick glance after Tomas, then turned sharp eyes on Olaf.
“How much heat,” Olaf asked in Norse, “is generated by a sand blaster?”
Botany Bay
Periphery
12 October 2972
“Damnedest thing,” the trader Giles said for what Olaf believed was the thousandth time as he watched the giant skip loader fill another container. “All they want is bloody sand?”
Olaf nodded, aware of his father standing to one side. He did not glance toward the elder Jespersen.
This was his handelen; his first. True, his father had suggested including equipment for molding insulating building materials from sand in their presentation to the Sigurders—a practical safeguard against development of a recycling system, but the original idea had been Olaf’s. And as the originator of the deal, the forhandler—the negotiating to bring it all together—was his to complete.
Fortunately the Sigurders and Botany Bayers both believed they were getting the best of the bargain.
