So a machinist's crew — Hadeishi presumed that meant Master's Mate Helsdon and his wrench monkeys, who seemed to get all the tricky jobs — had dismounted the reactor core and plasma thrust drive and jimmied in a hand-built propulsion unit straight out of the "Firetower" era of space exploration on Anбhuac.
"Saw this on a 3v about the race to the moon," Helsdon confided to Smith, while Hadeishi happened to be in hearing. "Simple. Reliable. Not too fast — which is good. Don't want a missilelike velocity signature to pop up on someone's passive scan."
The Outrider crossed a range of spikelike peaks and emerged from shadow. The cameras adjusted to the faint sunlight, though Hayes did not make any course corrections. He was flying almost blind, letting the stream of telemetry returning from the drone via a laser-whisker guide him along a plot derived from the g-array scan data. Somewhere ahead, still out of sight, the refinery was lurking, hidden between the screening mass of two mammoth asteroids.
"Three minutes," Kosho announced, eyeing her navigation display. "You should have visual by now."
Hadeishi steepled his fingers and continued to watch quietly. Young Smith-tzin was sweating hard, eyes flickering back and forth between the confusing array of scan data. A problem with the software running the "consolidated" display had left him to reconcile the regular passive scan and the g-array by hand. The wildcatters did not seem to have deployed their own sentry drones, but…
The camera view changed again. The Outrider had passed into the shadow of the two asteroids. Now — dead ahead — there was a half-familiar outline floating in the ebon void. Points of light gleamed against a greater darkness, and they were not stars.
"Contact," Hayes announced in a whisper. "Stabilizing platform."
The Outrider slowed to a halt, hanging in the abyss, both cameras cycling through a variety of wave- and focal lengths. Shipside comp gobbled up the data and began building an enhanced image on the main display. Hadeishi sat up in his chair.
The keglike shapes of ore carrels became visible, the lights now revealed as EVA lamps strung along supports surrounding the massive containers. A cluster of circular exhausts came into view, the flaring nacelles blackened by plasma flux. A scale indicator appeared beside the screen. One of the Cornuelle's shuttles would fit into the maw of a single thruster. The cruiser itself would fill only three of the dozens of ore carrels now visible.
"Drone hold position," Hadeishi said quietly, his eyes traveling along the bulky, mammoth lines of the refinery. Mazes of pipe filled the spaces between the ore containers. The actual ship itself was entirely hidden, save for the massive engines protruding from the globular mass. "Shift the Outrider so the asteroid backdrops the drone. We need a full scan workup of the refinery before we move to phase two. No sense risking a star or planet silhouette by accident."
He tapped a builder's schematic on a secondary v-pane. "Update the plans we have. I want to know about anything out of the ordinary, no matter how small. And see if you can get a registry number from a side-stencil or something."
Hayes and Kosho nodded before turning back to their panels. Mitsuharu opened a downship channel. "Engineering? This is Hadeishi. I would like hourly updates on refitting progress."
Engineer Second Yoyontzin hurried into the service bay at clockwise two on the engine ring. The high-vaulted space was crowded with machinery, men and the hiss of welding torches. A sharp, metallic tang of heated metal and plastic permeated the air. The atmosphere recyclers in Engineering had been operating over capacity since the Cornuelle had launched from the Teotihuacбn Fleet contract yards sixteen years ago. A packet of schematics were crammed under his left arm, while his right fumbled for a fresh tabac. Spying Master's Mate Helsdon and his crew swarming over a box-shaped structure in the middle of the bay, the engineer turned their way, scowling furiously.
"Helsdon — come down here." Yoyontzin ignored the other machinists, most of whom were packing up their tool bags or doing fine finishing work on the sheets of hull fabric plated onto a big open framework of hexacarbon pipe. The Nбhuatl lit the tabac and puffed furiously, feeling his nerves settle slightly, while the master's mate pushed up his work goggles and shut off a sealing torch.
"There's an addition to this platform," Yoyontzin said when Helsdon had climbed down, rubbing his face clean with a very dirty cloth. The engineer opened the packet on a nearby work table. Like every other square meter of the engineering ring, the metal surface was discolored, scored, chipped and pitted. It was also antiseptically clean. "Chu-sa Hadeishi just called down. He says to disable the broadband and laser comm on the platform. He wants a wire-spool instead."
Helsdon knuckled his chin, looking over the schematics. "How far from the ship to the refinery? Ah — six k — that's a bit of wire. Do we have that much comm wire?"
Yoyontzin nodded, his nervousness fading a little bit. "Of course — first thing he asked me. I've got a crew bringing it up from stores. So — you'll need to mount it underside, I think, keep the spool out of the way of the gas exhaust."
"And a patch to local comm. Wait — how is the assault team going to interface with a wire-based comm system?"
Yoyontzin grunted, exasperation plain on his face. "One of the Marines," he said in a rather disparaging tone, "is going to run a second wire roll from the platform into the refinery. We have…" He dug a glossy sheet covered with cutaway views and a picture of a combat trooper standing in a field out of the bottom of the stack. "…a field relay unit, Marine code 'Snorkel', which runs off the wire and handles short-range, scrambled comm. Backpack-sized unit."
"Sure." Helsdon shrugged. He didn't have the time or energy to worry about what the Marine assault squad was going to do once they were inside the refinery ship. His concern was refitting a maintenance platform to get them there and back again. "Do you have the unspool speed for the wire? Oh, good. Yeah, we can mount this — take a couple hours."
"Get on it." Yoyontzin's brief moment of good humor faded, remembering the rest of his discussion with the chu-sa. "There are some other…things."
Helsdon made a questioning motion with his hands. The engineer stubbed out his tabac on the edge of the table and then ground the rest out under his boot. The master's mate said nothing, but his mustache twitched in surprise.
"The platform needs to be ready to go at a moment's notice. We have the refinery ship on visual now, so as soon as the Marines are ready and command has double-checked their scan data, we'll be standing by for the order from Hadeishi-tzin."
"Right," nodded Helsdon, separating out the diagrams he would need for mounting the wire spool. "We're going to move the EVA platform up to boat bay two. The Marines usually assemble there and the lock doors are facing the right direction. What else?"
"Double-check everything." Yoyontzin's fingers were trembling and the look on his face made Helsdon stare in mounting concern. He'd never seen the engineer second in such a nervous state. "I mean it. The chu-sa is going in with the Marines."
"What?" Helsdon rubbed his ear, refusing to believe what he'd heard. "You're drunk."
"Wish I was." Yoyontzin tapped another tabac out of the pack and jammed it into his mouth. Pinching the lighting paper from the end and taking a deep drag seemed to steady him. His deep-set eyes narrowed in amusement. "I'll bet Heicho Felix is going to faint when she hears."