To stay in business, first you have to find the work. Then you have to find the people to do the work …
Chapter 2 The Sanctuary Contract
What usually comes first is the contract. Ira Gershwin
578 Days to Flare Season (Contract Entity Estimate)
Chimera Base, Executive Level
Conrad Hanson, universally known as Mr. Hanson except to the grand-daughter who was the apple of his eye, was the Negotiator of Master Blasters. He and a crew of computer geniuses actually talked to the Entities via the PortalNet to negotiate the Contracts which kept everyone employed and the Portal in the Solar System. He was as grey-haired and bulldog formidable looking as he always was. He stood first and brought up a PowerPoint presentation.
The PowerPoint slide showed a shot of a planetary landscape. The light was a little off, like a soft light bulb. The star was a big ball in the sky and there was a giant planet resembling Jupiter in the sky, bigger than the Moon from Earth. “We’re calling this the Sanctuary Contract. The star is a red dwarf about 5000 light years from Earth. Every few of centuries it goes through a flare sequence, duration about 70 Earth years. The higher life forms, including the sentient race, hibernate. The locals find themselves a cave, lay in a bunch of preserved food and water, and basically sleep through the whole thing, waking up for a snack about once every Earth year or so. Lower forms of life have their own survival mechanisms, which we don’t care about.”
He flipped to the next slide, an RFP. “The locals have some credit. They do bio-tech, creating tailored life forms. They don’t have any space infrastructure to talk about, and subcontract space lift through the Portal. They’ve had Portal contact for about a century or so, which resulted in a population explosion. They’re at about a billion right now and they’re looking at another hibernation time. They have a problem.”
The next slide was a chart showing caves and population. “Not enough caves. About twenty percent of their population is looking at not having any place to hibernate when the flare season starts, which is effectively a death sentence.”
Jamie saw where he was going. “I take it the have-nots and the haves are going to have it out over who gets the caves.”
Jamie didn’t get the cold look he expected, just a brief nod. “Correct. 20% of the population, 200 million, is the floor figure for the body count in the civil war they have brewing. Their Responsible Entity put up the RFP for enough caves, fast enough and cheap enough, to put the pin back in the grenade. Our Proposal has been accepted.”
Jamie started making notes. This was going to be a lot different from the Fimbulwinter Contract. Sticking a hole into the magma reservoir of a volcano was enough. The tremendous pressure of magma and gas did the rest. This Contract required a nice stable cave for people to hibernate in for decades.
“The specification is by volume. Five cubic metres per customer. Our Proposal is for 25 caves, sites to be determined. Bonuses for volume over the minimum.”
Those are going to be Jesus big caves. Jamie had quite a bit of hard-earned expertise in the effects of nuclear devices, but he didn’t know if it was possible.
“Cracker.” Hanson took a seat and Catherine Ulam brought up her presentation. The Company had pirated her and her team out of Lawrence Livermore Laboratories. There might be someone who knew more about nuclear device design, but Jamie wasn’t taking sucker bets this week.
“This is going to be tougher than Fimbulwinter.” She brought up a PowerPoint slide with an animation of an explosion creating a cavity underground.
“The site selection is going to be crucial. We need a stable cave instead of a cavity full of broken rock. What we need is are sites with a layer of tough hard rock and a layer of soft rock under it. We are going to need very precise data on the density of the rock layers to make those selections.”
She looked straight at Jamie. He wasn’t surprised. Blackjack is in the room and at the table, but this isn’t his area of expertise.
He thought fast. “We’re going to need Tremornet seismic coverage of the entire area. Trust the locals – been there, got the scars.”
He glanced down at his notes. “I’ve already put the update on the seismic software into the queue in IT. We’re going to need a lot of explosives or heavy equipment to give us enough sound to get us a good clear picture. If we’re going to use mini-nukes then we’ll need permission from the locals. I’d recommend getting permission.”
A thought struck Jamie. “Can we get the locals to do it? They need to beat on the ground with something heavy. Not high-tech.”
Mr. Hanson wore his usual immaculate business suit and granite expression. He looked down the table at Jamie and made a note on his paper notebook, then gave a millimetre’s worth of nod.
Jamie figured he might as well get the rest over with as well. Jamie Cartwell and Conrad Hanson were not friends, nor ever likely to be. There was bad history between them and Hanson’s memory made elephants look absent-minded. “Mr. Hanson. I took your name in vain with IT. The software upgrade is in the queue as a Contract requirement.”
Hanson nodded curtly after a short stone-faced pause. “Approved.”
Cracker continued on to the next slide. “There is going to be some radioactive debris after the shot, which will drain down to the bottom of the cavity in the molten rock from the shot. We’re going to need a relief hole to allow the molten rock to drain off somewhere safe.”
Jamie saw the problem instantly. “Will it be part of the drill plan when we’re prepping for the shot, or do we have to do it after the shot?” The more he thought about it, the less he liked it. After the shot was going to be damned tough, approaching impossible.
“Part of the drill plan.” Cracker said.
Jamie frowned and sketched out the problem in his head. “Which will impact site selection.”
His frown deepened, and he braced himself. “Mr. Hanson, we’re going to need final say over site selection. Whatever the locals may want, we can only do what’s doable.”
Hanson gave him a very long cold look, then a very brief nod. “Approved. I’ll make it a Tier 2 clause in the Contract.”
Jamie made some notes on his phone. They’d need to build models of the potential shot sites, however many they might be, in quick time, to pick the best ones and weed out the duds, which meant a lot of computer power. IT wasn’t going to like him, but then they hadn’t for a long time.
Maybe I should just shut up and move on, but this is important. “Mr. Hanson, if possible I’d like some idea of what sort of no-go zones there might be.”
“Is it really necessary?” A trace of irritation showed through the granite of Mr. Hanson’s expression.
“I’d rather not have to work in the middle of a battle again. Makes it harder to stay on schedule.” Might as well go all the way.
The irritation vanished as Mr. Hanson reasserted control. “I’ll factor it in. No promises. Translation issues are already a serious problem.”
Blackjack took the next slide. The surface conditions on Sanctuary were totally different from Fimbulwinter. The star was a small red dwarf, on the large side for its type but much smaller and cooler than Sol. For Sanctuary to be in the life zone, where it was warm enough to have liquid water and hence life based on water, it needed to be closer – a lot closer. Sanctuary’s year was a bit more than an Earth week. The day was a little longer than Earth’s. The next planet out from the star was a big Hot Jovian, a ringed gas giant with a lot of moons. The Portal was in the leading Trojan point of the gas giant and the star.
The air was an oxygen nitrogen mix, which didn’t mean breathable. Pressure was OK, a little lower than Earth normal with about the same partial pressure of oxygen. Water vapour varied with where you were, but drier than Bill Murray’s wit was the rule. There was a lot of really fine dust in the atmosphere. Even if it wasn’t toxic, breathing it for too long would give you black lung, which had killed a lot of coal miners. A lot of the dust was seriously toxic, heavy metals and some nasty organic products of the local life forms. It would only take a few hours of exposure to accumulate a dangerous level of toxicity. Sanctuary was prone to major dust storms as the star edged toward the flare season, just to add to the fun.
Same shit, different planet. Jamie made an entry in his To-Do list. He was going to lay down a stringent set of safety rules for his crew and be strict about enforcing them. He’d seen complacency about sneaky hazards get people killed.
This was apparently one, but only one, of the factors the aliens were avoiding by hibernating. The picture of an alien showed a sort of, kind of humanoid, with all the face except the substitute for eyes covered with what looked like a full dense beard. The substitute for eyes was a flat area, and they had big ears, like a bat’s.
Man, they sure look scruffy.
“The locals don’t see using light. They use ultrasound, like bats. They communicate by ultrasound, too. Comms will be by the Portal link, as for Fimbulwinter.”
Jamie wasn’t surprised. Aliens were alien. Beaming down and talking to the aliens in English was for cheesy old TV shows. They don’t see by light at all. If we need lights for the job site, we’ll need to supply them.
Blackjack looked toward him again. “Jamie. What are we looking at for surface presence? Davina’s people will do a custom design for protective equipment, but Chief of Surface Ops will have final sign-off.”
Jamie held up his hand for a second while he did the numbers in his head. The size of a drill crew didn’t change very much with the size of the drill, so he took the number for the Fimbulwinter crew, tripled it and added a Finagle factor to cover attrition and rotation of people on and off surface work. The ideal number of accidents was zero, but the Galaxy wasn’t an ideal place. Surface work was as well paid as suit work in orbit, for damned good reason. It was hard stressful work in an environment which could kill you in a number of sneaky ways.
“Figure 75-80 people for surface operations, plus training and spares, say a production run of roughly 200 all up. I can get back to you with a better number if you want.” At least this time we aren’t doing it on the fly outbound.
Jamie frowned. Why ask me? He knows this stuff as well as I do. Hell, better.
“I’ll need that,” Blackjack said.
Jamie made a careful note. He was going to have to get Princess’ input. He’d really drawn the hot seat today. Blackjack was Chief of Surface Ops, so Jamie was comfortable with relying on him.
Bronco brought up the next key question, which would drive almost everything they did. “What’s the clock on this, Conrad?”
“There are two, actually. First is the start of flare season. I’m still hammering out the details, obviously it’s a key deliverable. I am ensuring it is defined as precisely as possible.”
“How does it come out to the clock?” Blackjack took the words out of Jamie’s mouth.
“The locals have historical data. Not totally exact, but there’s a pattern, gives us a good idea.”
Blackjack drummed his fingers on the table, then turned to Jamie. “What do you think?”
Too many unknowns. How long since the last flare season? How good was their record keeping? How good is the translation? “Plan for the worst case, put as much margin in the schedule as we can, hope the locals know what the Hell they’re talking about.”
Blackjack turned back to Mr. Hanson. “The other deadline?”
“Portal deadline is coming. We have enough credit to pay the fee, and enough for the outbound transit fee. We don’t have enough for the return transit fee. We make Contract, get paid, or you don’t come back and we lose the Portal as well, it just takes a little longer.”
Jamie did the numbers in his head, and didn’t like them at all. “What the Hell? We made 25 credit last time out. Where did it all go?”
Mr. Hanson gave Jamie his patent intimidating look, but Jamie was pissed enough so it rolled right off him. “There were fees associated with our unsuccessful Contract bids, and there are, as I will remind you, Mr. Cartwell, people here on Earth who do not like us very much. I had to negotiate some agreements to keep them off our backs.”
Jamie unclenched his fist. He liked Mr. Hanson about as much as Mr. Hanson liked him, but there was no one better at his job. “Copy.”
The meeting wound down to its end. Jamie finished making the notes to his To-Do list as the others left the room. He looked up from his phone to see he was alone at the table with Blackjack Waters.
“You did pretty well there, Mister Jamie,” Blackjack rumbled.
“Thanks.” Jamie didn’t feel any better for the compliment, however sincere it might be. There was something going on here and he wasn’t getting what it was. It made him edgy.
Blackjack’s looked like a man who was pissed over something. Jamie didn’t think it was him. He hadn’t been on-site long enough.
“I had a checkup with the medics. You’re not the only one who has the scars from Fimbulwinter. They just handed me the news. I’m down-checked for deployment. I can still sit at a desk and give good advice, but my field days are done. The Chief of Surface Ops on board isn’t going to be me.”
Jamie looked back at him in shock. It had never occurred to him that Blackjack might not have recovered fully from the explosion on Fimbulwinter. He was a big man, legendarily tough. He looked like John Wayne with more scars.
“The CSO has to sit these meetings and stand up for the people. He has to be vac suit qualified and able to lead on the surface, too. We don’t have a lot of people who can do all that. In fact, they’re all named Jamie Cartwell.”
I am in no way qualified for this. Jamie sat shocked into silence. Blackjack Waters had bossed on more drill rigs than Jamie Cartwell had college credits, including the lazy stupid courses he’d wasted time and money on.
Blackjack looked sympathetic. “You’re thinking you’re not qualified. Jamie, you’re better qualified than I am. The seismic and modelling stuff, you understand it. I have to rely on experts. The nuclear effects – you hang with Cracker and her people and hold your own.”
Blackjack rubbed the scar on his forehead. “I feel like the Roman guy. The inscription on his tombstone said, ‘I expected this, but not so soon.’ It’s time, Jamie.”
Jamie couldn’t argue with anything Blackjack said. Looking back, he could see Blackjack had been teaching him and showing him how it was done for, well, quite a while now. Time to step up.
Blackjack’s expression turned serious. “The rest of the job, you know it, you’ve done it. You make the best calls you can, but you won’t have as many people as you should, or as much of anything as you’d like. You’ll make mistakes. You have to learn from them and go on. You’ve learned the biggest lesson. You threw it in the face of a bunch of US Senators.”
The Driller is responsible for the rig. Another thought struck Jamie.”Who knows about the clock?”
It had made him more than a few enemies last Contract. The clock had been a closely guarded secret. He’d had to push hard to get things done in time. People who didn’t know about the clock had taken it as him being a demanding asshole.
“The EXCOM, some of Elroy’s senior people. No one else. You can’t tell anyone.” Blackjack said.
“This is not like the last time, Blackjack. Everyone knows we exist. Why not tell them?” Jamie was not happy at the thought of keeping such a secret from Princess and the crews, who trusted him.
“They’ll know there’s a clock on the Contract. Will telling them anything more help them do their jobs?” Blackjack said, watching him.
Jamie chewed his lip, then shook his head reluctantly. “No. Probably make things worse.” Fear makes for bad decisions.
“Part of the job, Jamie. Tell people what they need to know to do their jobs. You can’t drown them in information.”
Jamie chewed on it, not liking the taste but accepting it. I’m not going to lie to them, but I can’t tell them all the truth, either.
Well, sleep, it was nice knowing you. “I can get hold of you on the Portal link, right?”
“Any time, day or night.” Blackjack said.
Blackjack’s voice took on an edge of challenge. “Here’s something you’re going to need to watch out for. Paperwork. I already fought that fight, but you have to make sure it stays won. Do you want to be down with the crews, or do you want to sit at a desk and shuffle data?”
Jamie didn’t even have to think once about his answer. “The job is with the crews. If the boss isn’t on-site, he doesn’t know what’s going on. He’s going to screw up and get people killed. Hell, it can happen even if you are on-site.”
“Yeah, we’ve both been there. Bear it in mind. People are going to try to shove decisions they should make themselves onto you. Shove ’em right back. It’s a judgment call. Err on the side of kicking it back.”
An unpleasant thought struck Jamie. “If I’m sitting on the EXCOM, how is Mr. Hanson going to be about it? The history isn’t going to go away.”
Blackjack shrugged. “This is business. How do you feel about it?”
Jamie shrugged in his turn. “I fucked up comprehensively, paid a lot of dues to make it right. Not going to do it again. If it never comes up, sure as Hell I’m not going to bring it up. There’s way more on the table than old news.”
Blackjack gave him a lopsided smile. “There you go, then. Mr. Hanson is all about business first. You don’t need to be drinking buddies.”
“You mind some advice?” Blackjack said, after a pause.
“Fire away.” Jamie replied instantly. Blackjack was right. He didn’t have nearly enough experience. If he could lean on Blackjack’s he was going to do it without a second thought.
“Start off as a hard-ass. Being young isn’t going to help you. You might consider a moustache to make yourself look a bit older. You can ease off a bit once you establish yourself, but don’t go too far. You are not anyone’s friend. You’re everyone’s boss. If you have to bark your knuckles, then you do. If you have to fire someone, do it. I’ll stand behind you and so will Mr. Hanson.”
A moustache. What the Hell, it can’t hurt. “Who’s the #3 Driller?” He asked. It had been of interest before. Now it was his business, vital business.
“Your call, Jamie. HR has a short list, and they’ll fly ’em in for you to interview. Not my call any more. Now it’s yours.”
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