World Builders book 6 Snippet 2

 Sitrep:

So, Rea just sent me the manuscript back.

Here is a snippet from the second story, Customs:

 

Customs

 

NuevoB

 

Commander Jorge Rushbareyed the star system map with misgivings. The place to be was inward to theLagrange points around the Nuevo Alpha planet.

Unfortunately, he was ona space station around Nuevo Baker.

He scratched his headwith a hand, running his fingernails through his stubble.

The star system was a G0class system with six planets. The inner two were Mercury class rocks. Thethird planet was named Alpha because it was the first habitable world with itsown trio of moons. Outward from there but still in the goldilocks zone wasNuevo Baker, a super Earth class with 1.4 gravity and a single moon.

Outward from there wasGamma, a Mars class with two moons and finally a Neptune class gas giant withits own subsystem of moons.

The natives hadcolonized the star system in the cluster after a light terraforming effort hadmade the planets habitable. Nuevo Alpha had been settled initially by retiredmilitary personnel and their families. Nuevo Baker or B as it was also calledhad been primarily settled by a colony of Centaurians as well as a scatteringof heavy worlders.

Nuevo and a couple ofother star systems like Bek were in an isolated cluster in a pocket of spacewithin the Rho sector. There were two ways in and out of the cluster but only onewas safe to transit, the rapids.

The two Nuevo worlds hadbeen agro worlds, happy with being mostly forgotten by the Federation until theXenos had come around. Admiral Irons had visited briefly to set them up as aredoubt in case civilization fell. Bek had traded with them using their smallnumber of starships until the ships had one by one broken down and had beenmothballed or recycled.

For centuries theNuevans had been cut off from Bek and the rest of the galaxy. That was, untilthe light cruiser Caroline had managed to successfully navigate therapids and bring them back into the Federation.

The commander wasn’tquite certain he should be happy about that or not. Bek’s industry andshipyards were damn good but they came with strings. As did the army units thatwere stood up on Nuevo Alpha.

Nuevo Alpha haddeveloped an army to protect itself from swarms of worms called Tremor worms.Why they were called that he wasn’t certain. What he was certain of was thatthe colonists had been struggling with the swarms for centuries. Theirtechnology had failed, and they had been reduced to buggies and animal drawncarriages until the Federation had re-established contact.

Now they were returningto modern technology. There were two space stations in orbit of that planet.And here he was on the partially constructed space station orbiting Baker.

The space station was toship cargo and people to and from the planet. A fourth station was on the books;it was supposed to be built at the single jump point in the star system,eventually.

He wasn’t tasked withthat project thankfully.

He scratched his scalpagain and then tugged on his right ear lobe.

He was a Spacebee; hehad come from Senka. His star system lacked a habitable world; the world had beendestroyed during the Xeno war. The survivors had build colonies in theasteroids. He was at home in space even though he knew it was dangerous andcould kill him in an eye blink if he got too careless.

He ran his eyes aroundthe station. The current design had been set up for the basic species. Mostsentient species were less than three meters tall. The Centaurians, however,were not.

Their body forms weretoo large for the spaces and modules. The station had needed to be redesignedafter a lawsuit made its way through the courts. The State Department hadintervened and arbitrated a deal to redesign the station.

That allowed everyone toget what they wanted and the administration would avoid accusations of racism.The administration had accepted that compromise and sent the Spacebees in tobuild the new space station. They were using the small modular one attached tothe new one until the new one was complete.

To say that theCentaurians were prickly was putting it mildly. And that wasn’t just because ofthe poisonous spines on their backs.

Nuevo A exported armypersonnel, some military goods, and food products to the Sargasso star systemand from there to Bek or the outer Federation. They were steadily improving thequantity and quality of their exports and even expanding to other export goods.

The army had a handle onthe worms to the point that tourism was starting to pick up a little. Therewere even star liners that came in from Bek every quarter. The tourists enjoyedthe visits to the “quaint” world and welcomed a respite from their time on theships and casinos.

The natives on Nuevo Bhad only one export, information. Their work was important to science, math,genetic research, industry, physics, and navigation. Which explained whythey wanted their own dedicated ansible at three times the capacity of a normallink he thought wryly.

That was a part of hismission, build the station, build a computer center on the planet, build alarger ansible platform, and possibly build bridges and other structures on theplanet if there was anything left in the budget.

A second ansible linkwas on its way. Getting it through the rapids was tricky though; they had toaccount for losses in transit. The ansible cores were super sensitive to eventhe slightest shock to them.

The Centaurians wantedto hog the current ansible bandwidth while they waited. That was notacceptable. State became involved again, and a decree was announced that the twoworlds split the data bandwidth down the middle with exceptions for militaryand government communications of course.

Conversations throughthe ansible was expensive. He was limited to a dozen characters a month. He hadbegun to save them up so he could send an entire sentence to his family and notjust an emoji.

He shook his head andglanced at the image of Reuben Sullivan. The Neodog mutt was the undersecretaryassigned to the star system. He predated Jorge’s arrival and was the bane ofhis existence. The dog was constantly on him to find ways to speed the processup.

He would if he could.He’d love to get out from under the mutt and the prickly natives. Love, love,love that idea. But, it wasn’t going to happen. At least, not any time soon. Hecouldn’t magically pull the parts out of the void. Even though he’d love to dojust that.

Or send a certain pain-in-the-assmutt in that direction he thought darkly.

He kept tabs on thedog’s whereabouts so he could be elsewhere. Usually being on the shitter wasenough to keep the dog at bay so he wouldn’t have to listen to another lectureand whiny demand to hurry things along—oh,and keep it all under budget of course.

He shook his head anddecided it was time for him to go walkabout for a bit. In the other directionfrom the mutt of course.

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