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finish, and an open door led to a fresher.
"All like this?" I asked.
Kemra crossed the passage and pushed another plate, and I looked again at a
mirror duplicate of the first empty room. The rooms reminded me of the
descriptions of ancient monastical cells.
"I just wanted you to see." She retraced her steps to the main corridor, and
we continued aft. "This whole section here is for troopers."
I calculated as we walked. Even on one level, there had to be room for more
than five hundred marcybs 6,000 at a minimum on the twelve ships, 18,000 if
the quarters stretched up even three levels, and more than 50,000 if six
levels.
"Did you really think you'd need fifty thousand troopers for broken-down Old
Earth?" I asked.
"Gorum thought fifty thousand was too few, but feeding large forces you may
not need takes power and storage space."
Maybe they did need those huge hydroponic systems.
After that, another four hundred meters aft of the marcyb quarters another
four hundred meters unmarked with side hatches or doors we stepped through two
heavy open hatches. Even before I stepped through the hatches, I could sense
the energy swirls.
"The power section. I'm sure you can sense the fluxes." "It must be difficult
for your shipnet." "It's not a problem anymore. The initial engineering was
difficult."
Once again, we were talking around issues, she because she wished to reveal
nothing when every word was being monitored, and I because ... I wasn't sure.
Personal cowardice? Fear that revealing capabilities would push me too far
beyond the envelope of the Construct?
"It won't hurt to show you a single module." Kemra guided me to another
interior hatch lock and we stepped up to a small oblong armaglass window.
There wasn't that much to see through the armaglass just an insulated oblong
fifty meters on a side with supercon cabling exiting into a conduit. Each side
of the composite oblong contained another lock-type door, probably double or
triple thickness, and everything was gray, gray, and gray. Even the light
seemed gray.
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"Each module is self-contained," Kemra pointed out, "and the flow conduits are
independently channeled. Any single module can handle the ship's
housekeeping."
"But not ops or weapons or drive systems."
"No."
"How many modules?" I asked idly.
"Enough."
From the power flows I sensed, I figured between twenty and thirty twenty or
thirty far larger than anything on Old Earth not connected to the defense net.
"I'm sure."
Further aft were the drive systems, but I didn't see them. As we returned to
the main corridor, Kemra just pointed, "There's the drive section, but we need
to get forward now."
"Demonstration time?"
"It will be before long."
We turned forward. As we left the power section, well before the marcyb
dormitories, Kemra paused. "I forgot. There's one other thing. This way."
She led me down a side corridor the whole ship seemed like a maze, comprised
of adiamante walls and composite supports and corridors. She coded the
lockplate of another hatch, and I picked up the codes, not that they'd be
particularly useful.
"This is lock two."
In the massive multi-level lock were twenty craft the size of a large
magshuttle.
"Armed scouts." Kemra pointed to the nearest. "Each one carries a full range
of weapons."
I waited to hear how extensive that range of weapons was, but she seemed
unlikely to elaborate.
"Antimatter pellets, tach-heads that sort of thing?" I asked.
"Standard weapons," she answered.
In short, at least as nasty as I'd predicted not that the scouts mattered that
much, since launching them, in my view, would also negate restrictions on me
under the Construct. In a way, seeing the scouts was beneficial, since it
clarified that any hostile action was backed with impressive force. That would
negate any restrictions on response, assuming we could create an effective
response. I hoped Elanstan and Rhetoral ancient shield and longsword were
managing to rebuild poor defunct Delta station.
"What do you think?" asked Kemra.
"About the same as before," I admitted. 'Your fleet represents the greatest
concentration of force since the Rebuilt Hegemony."
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"Greater than the forces of Old Earth?" A faintly amused smile crossed her
lips and vanished. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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