The Assassin
Chapter 12
A Building Force (TY13-month 146)
“Good morning, Commander Nelson. I’m afraid I’m coming with my hands out again. We’re expecting a thousand families over the next few months. I think we need more housing units,” I said when I had the Fleet Auxiliary commander connected.
“I don’t think I can supply that many units, Deputy. We barely keep up with the repair work and replenishing of navy ships docking. We have only one factory replicator and it takes care of ship repair as well as pod manufacturing. Traffic up here has changed significantly in the past three months. One of the major ship repair facilities near the front line was destroyed by an advancing Swarm fleet. The command decision was to shift traffic farther out and you can’t get farther out than Tara.”
“I’m informed that our first load of refugees is coming from that same system,” I said. “Probably on one of the ships coming for repair.”
“You may need to start building your own,” Nelson said. “I could get you an industrial scale replicator inside a week, but it’s a do-it-yourself kit, not a factory replicator. If you can build out of native materials, it has the patterns and would deliver supplies. I understand you have laborers.”
“Yes. I’ve assigned most of my crews at the moment to putting in infrastructure. Our planetary nanites get utilities to the sites and lay the road bed, but we put in everything that lies above the surface. I may need to pull resources from harbor construction. If an industrial replicator is what you can get me, please expedite its delivery.”
“Five days. Good luck, Cho.” The commander signed off. She may have been less help than the first time I went to her, but her attitude toward me and by extension the Militia was much improved.
«Rhett, we’re going to need a manufacturing facility nearby but preferably not in the fort. Can we extend our facility to the north or east?»
«Negative, Deputy. The north is protected forest and the base cannot extend in that direction. A portion of the forest was included inside the fort’s boundaries to have some wilderness area in the fort. The east is also wilderness area with a single road to Lake Genoa. West, the fort borders on the new harbor. Most of the immediate south is the city of Drylanders with farm and ranchland extending down as far as Lake Florence. There is a narrow band of rocky land to the southeast that touches on the fort. A modest expansion there would be permitted.»
«If that is where we can put a factory, then let’s get it established.»
«If I understand the needs correctly, that area would also have sufficient raw minerals to be a natural source for the construction replicator to make both bricks and varying degrees of cement or concrete.»
«You’re proving your worth, Rhett. Keep up the good work. According to the commander’s specs that she just forwarded me, the major construction material will be brick and mortar. We should look at the same process for the harbor sea wall instead of quarrying blocks and carting them to the site.»
«I will investigate the feasibility in more depth.»
“Capo Jeffries, I hate to pull more people from your harbor crews to do work inside the fort, but we have a major development and I need capable construction workers for further work on the orphanage,” I said.
“I’d rather have all my crew working inside the fort than out here on the harbor,” Jeffries said. “Working with the sponsors in charge of this is frustrating. You’d think they were Pharaoh and the Militia was the Children of Israel. We all understand and agreed to perform heavy labor, but half the time I expect the sponsors to be carrying whips.”
“I need to know things like this in order to do anything about it. I want Raven Cohort moved to the fort. Capo Johnson can take over as construction lead there. I know that cuts significantly into your Outfit. We’ll transfer as many new comrades as we can from Drovers Run. They’ll need additional on-the-job training, but it will be more bodies to throw at the job. I’ll discuss the problem with the architect and make sure he understands we are slowing progress on the harbor because of urgent developments elsewhere.”
“Better you talk to him than I,” Jeffries said. “When promotions come up again, please consider leaving me where I am. I’m not interested in becoming an officer.”
“I will take that into consideration.”
“What makes you think you can just transfer half the workforce to a different project without consulting me first?” Orson Daniels demanded of me.
“Mr. Daniels, we have a planetary emergency. We have begun recruiting faster than ever, but the balance of sponsors and concubines needs to be maintained so we can’t simply recruit every concubine into the Militia. However, I think our emergency may also become an opportunity to recruit more members. We expect over a thousand new unhomed concubines to arrive over the next few months. We will recruit heavily.”
“I want you to know that I am filing an official complaint with the governor over your obstruction to our progress. I want assurances that the cohort you are leaving on the project will be working twice as hard to finish our project on the same schedule. I won’t let your incompetence be the reason my project is not on time.”
“Mr. Daniels, your ownership of the project extends to the design of the harbor and management of the port. Construction will be done at the pace the Militia moves. You are free to recruit sponsors for work crews and we’ll be happy to have the additional laborers.”
“Sponsors are not going to do the manual labor you drones are here for. If you were capable of managing these projects, you’d be sponsors and not slaves.”
I was pretty sure the governor would side with me, but I reported the situation to Director Kotter and let her handle the fallout. I was pretty sick of sponsors acting like demigods while concubines did all the work. I couldn’t see that we had a need for so many sponsors on this world.
«Cricket, is the entire confederacy filled with imbeciles acting as sponsors and good people as concubines? It seems like such a waste.»
«CAP testing was designed primarily to identify soldiers who could fight the Sa’arm. To encourage those people to take up arms on behalf of the Confederacy, sponsors were encouraged to take two or more mates with them when they emigrate, have children, and raise them to become sponsors. Many borderline sponsors were moved to Tara as unsuited for normal military, but likely to contribute to the success of Tara. Unfortunately, the popular notion is that concubines exist solely for the pleasure of the sponsors. The real reason was that they were present only to have and raise children to join the fight in fourteen years.»
«I don’t think sponsors on Tara are breeding and raising children that become sponsors. The statistics I’ve been shown indicate only about one in five new adults become sponsors here on Tara.»
«That’s true, and is reflected in some other colonies as well. However, there are also colonies who graduate sponsors in a four to one ratio to concubines. This is common on planets that are closer to the front lines and do a superior job of training children to pass the CAP test.»
«They teach to the test,» I complained.
«That’s true. Our sleep training of children could be designed to teach children specifically to pass the test. The results of experiments in that area were disappointing. The children coming of age managed CAP scores of greater than 6.5, but had no concept of what loyalty, courage, nurturing, aggression, etc. really meant. They simply were conditioned to respond in certain ways. And when it came to teaching and having a good example in the home, sponsors by and large are not great examples to children. In most areas, the sponsors are deployed and absent as much as eighteen months of every two years. The children are raised by the concubines. They are educated by the concubines. The concubines are their examples, not the sponsors.»
«Surely, Tara should be an example of the opposite. Our sponsors serve on the planet. They’re home all the time. Why don’t they breed more sponsors?»
«I expect the rate of conversion will increase as it has in the past three years. More of the children becoming adults were now either born on the planet or are too young to remember coming here. But even they do not see sponsors under military discipline. Most are hard workers, but they are firmly attached to the land. Many became volunteers partly because of the threat that the Swarm would destroy the land on Earth more than the threat that people would be eaten. This planet was settled to preserve the agricultural ecosystems of Earth. The people, including the sponsors, simply don’t have a commitment to save the universe from the Swarm.»
«You’ve given me a lot to think about, Cricket. As always. I can see that our governor has been planning for this day for a long time and I don’t think she’s any happier about it than we are. I think we need to put some more thought into the school we’ll have at the orphanage.»
“Mandatory service? Please explain, Niall.” As we neared the arrival of the first refugee ship, I was meeting with the governor, the Centurion, Director Kotter, and Deputy Kramer about every other day. I’d come up with this new idea while discussing various options with Cricket and Rhett. It was interesting what the very different processors of the two types of AI could come up with when they worked together.
“The Militia is currently approaching 700 comrades,” I explained. “That isn’t enough to keep up with the demand being placed on us. The dispute over the harbor at Drylanders is only one example of simply not having enough personnel to go around. We’ve reduced harvesters of algae in both large lakes on Elysium and we’ve decreased border patrols as well as the personnel on the harbor. Simply put, we don’t have enough people in the Militia. Part of that is due, I believe, to new concubines assuming they can get away with just floating in the concubine pool and not having any real work responsibilities.”
“That’s not true,” Neville said. “We tend to send more concubines into service industries than labor, but they do work.”
“I understand that and am only reporting the perception. What I am suggesting is something similar to the old style. Any concubine who is unhomed for forty-eight hours after testing—let’s be generous and say seventy-two hours—would be required to enter mandatory service for two years. During that time, we would continue their education and use them in labor, teaching, and service industries. I believe that since they will already have served their probationary period, we will have an increase in those who volunteer to remain in the Militia,” I explained.
“What’s the scope of this? Would we all need to work the mandatory service people into our systems?” Derek asked. I nodded to the other deputy.
“I’m told there will be 13,500 new adults coming of age this year. Of that, 11,000 will be concubines. Based on our averages, 6,000 of those will still be unhomed after a year and two-thirds of those will be male with little chance of getting a sponsor. We could use those bodies,” I said.
“I’m concerned that we’d end up with a lot of trash who decide they want to stay in the Militia so they can have concubines,” Director Kotter said.
“I thought of that as well, Lillian,” I said. “I’m proposing that we only accept people to continue in the Militia who have at least a 5.5 CAP score. It’s not a perfect solution, but half the population scores less than 5.5. We’d still get two years of labor out of them. Plus…” I hesitated before I exposed my underlying objective. “My goal is to have every concubine on the planet trained in the planet’s defense. Even if they are not part of the Militia, everyone should be trained in weapons and in emergency services like fire-fighting, natural disaster response, search and rescue, and medical relief. We are still a population of only a million souls. Every single one of them needs to be trained to defend the others.”
“Niall, you’ve put a lot of thought into this. I like it,” Scarlett said. “I need to carefully draft a proclamation and have it reviewed by the Council. I think they will go along with me. I could simply make the proclamation regardless, but it is always stronger if I have their backing. If we can get the details hammered out, I’ll have this start at the first of next month. In the meantime, you can assume that the new law is in effect regarding all new refugees. If a concubine arrives without a sponsor and does not sign up to be in the Militia, she will be immediately conscripted into the auxiliary corps and you may assign her—or him—to whatever schedule you deem appropriate. Derek and Lillian, I think it is time you promoted another Deputy and divided the units up a bit so they can more effectively manage the maturing population. This will also slow our population explosion slightly. No conscripted corps person should become pregnant during her two-year term. I’ve been bothered by the rush to get fourteen-year-olds pregnant since we first came to this planet. Thank you for your thoughtfulness on this problem, Niall.”
“Like most things, the infrastructure is created by nanites and automation,” Capo Johnson informed me. I’d come to the orphanage the day after my meeting with the governor and was surprised to see the beginnings of a skeletal structure on the site where the new school would be. Part of the shift in resources from the harbor to the orphanage included some heavy machinery and half a dozen machine shop replicators.
Nanites had stirred the soil for a foundation that would harden. Beams and columns were being cast by the replicators. We had a crane that stood the column up in the wet foundation, which then solidified. When it came to affixing the beams between columns, the beam was lifted into place, lodged against the column, and then nanites dissolved and fused the materials at the joint to create a single piece out of the two.
“The industrial replicator, in addition to transporting raw material into the machine shop replicators on site, is producing bricks. They’ll be moved over here tomorrow when the bulk of the infrastructure will be finished. I’m sorry to say, we’ll have child labor on the project as soon as bricks get here. The eleven to thirteen-year-olds will be furnishing some of the labor to move and lay the bricks,” Johnson said.
Part of improving CAP score percentages would be making sure everyone achieved as high a rating as possible, regardless of gender. The vast majority of the dependents who came with the Kindertransport were female. Older boys who didn’t pretest as likely sponsors were left behind to battle the Swarm on Earth. But CAP testing was acknowledged to be biased toward males. The Confederacy was such a fucked-up mess it was a wonder there were races reputed to be millions of years old.
“Assignments are made according to ability and interest, not gender,” he continued. “There are jobs that require physical strength and jobs that require dexterity or other abilities. The kids are all getting into it. Some things needed in classrooms can be manufactured in kitchen appliance replicators. The trick is that the concubines need to plan food ahead because the replicator might not be finished making a tablet for a student by the time people want to eat.”
“You can count on more people to work once the newcomers arrive,” I said. “We’re instituting mandatory service, regardless of whether they are in the Militia. Some will serve in classrooms, some in kitchens, some in construction. Wherever we can put them to work, we will. We’re slated to receive only about half as many concubines and dependents on the first arrival of refugees as we received on the Kindertransport. Therefore, we’re converting empty pods from the Kindertransport to quadplexes with slightly better division of space for family units than was available in the original configuration. We think that will house everyone we’ll receive from this first transport.”
“I noticed the AI was instructing the empty pods to reconfigure into four discreet apartments instead of the way the Kindertransport was done up,” Johnson said. “With the need for additional housing that seems counter-productive.”
“Remember that even though the total number of immigrants will be lower than on the Kindertransport, we might actually have more family units. Concubines will be coming with their children but not necessarily other children. And some of the family units that we want to preserve if possible, will have multiple concubines with their dependents rather than just one. Widows of Marines will likely still be in whatever configuration they were in with their sponsor. If there were four concubines in the sponsor’s household, all four will be shipped together. In the case of a low qualifying navy person, however, he or she was likely traveling with one of his concubines on the ship. The remaining concubine, or more for higher scorers, will not only have lost her sponsor, but her fellow concubine as well. She’ll be traveling with both concubines’ children. We have no way of predicting in advance what the family unit sizes will be.”
“The orphanage AI has been very helpful in configuring the pods for flexibility,” Johnson said. “It’s funny. The kids call it Cricket. They think it’s as real as their guardians.”
“Believe me, he is,” I laughed. “Carry on.”
I left the construction site even as the first load of bricks arrived on a truck from the industrial replicator and people set to work unloading it. There was a brief instructional period for the Militia, concubines, and dependents who would begin laying the blocks. The commander had called it ‘brick and mortar,’ but there was no mortar involved. The blocks were tongue and groove that interlocked together. Like the columns and beams, as soon as a block was in place, the nanites fused it to the block below and beside it.
«Cricket, how are the orphans and concubines responding to the work?»
«Quite well, Niall. There has been some concern that if they didn’t show their usefulness they would be discarded. Apparently, there were a number of threats of recycling thrown about on their transport.» I cursed Decurion Gladstone once again.
«Make sure they know there is no such threat to them here at Fort Butler. As soon as you get word of the composition of the families coming in, I’d appreciate hearing from you. Not to denigrate your abilities, I’d just like to be aware of the size of any problems we might expect.»
«If I may suggest it, we could create a number of scenarios and role-play them. That helped you a great deal when you took command of Fort Butler and when you started looking for concubines.»
«Let’s do it. I want as many scenarios as possible.»
New Arrivals (TY13-month 146)
“Concubines and dependents, I want to welcome you to Fort Butler and the Oliver Transitional Home on the planet Tara.”
It was our first load of refugees. On the Aurora class ship that brought them, there were over five hundred concubines and two thousand dependents. They packed the new assembly hall in the school to overflowing. It was more chaotic than the zoo I remembered at my pickup—far more chaotic than receiving the Kindertransport. Those folks had been trained how to assemble and move. Some of these new arrivals were still in tears. Others had a vacant or haunted look in their eyes. Dependents were cowed behind their mothers or in a few instances, behind fathers.
They had been near the site of the destruction of the shipyard and other Confederacy orbital installations. Some saw friends and sponsors lose their lives even as they had been evacuated. When the Sa’arm managed to get one hive sphere on the ground, there wasn’t enough fleet left in the system to effectively combat it. Marines had managed to contain the invaders more through good luck than extraordinary effort. The hive sphere had crashed on a narrow peninsula and the defenders had cut off access to the mainland. Sheer pressure of numbers would eventually drive them back, but as reinforcements arrived for the Marines, they packed as many concubines and dependents onto ships as they could and moved them away from the doomed planet. At their first stop-over, a clearing house for refugees, they were repacked onto Aurora class transports that were temporarily repurposed from moving immigrants from Earth. It was a new diaspora.
“I also want to offer you my personal condolences on your loss. This has to be the most difficult of times for you, suffering the loss of your sponsor, sometimes your co-concubine, your parent, and your home all at once. We will try to make sure your transition here on Tara doesn’t add to your stress.” There was a lot of sniffling. I just hated having to greet the refugees, but Governor O’Hara made it clear that it was my responsibility. She didn’t want anyone to think that a sponsor they’d never met was lording over them.
“Part of making the transition less stressful is to assure you that you are not under immediate pressure to find a new sponsor. In fact, from the day of your arrival, there is a two-year moratorium on new pregnancies. We will keep you together with your family as long as we can. You have a home here as we work to provide for you.
“If you have tested with a CAP score of 5.5 or better, Tara has a Militia made up of concubines who can gain planetary citizenship by fulfilling their obligations. Planetary citizenship includes all rights of any citizen on this planet, including the ability to sponsor two concubines. You will be offered that option at any time this week—an extension of the normal day of arrival time, granted to us by our governor so you have a chance to make a reasoned decision. The opportunity is repeated on each anniversary of your arrival, or in the case of dependents arriving today or born hereafter, on their fourteenth birthday and each birthday thereafter. Capo Greer and her cohort are fully trained to give you information and guidance about the Militia and how to join if you are so moved.”
“Why is it limited to people with a score of above 5.5? Sounds like a CAP consolation prize,” shouted one of the male concubines.
“I guess it is,” I said. “The rule is recent. Up until a few months ago, we took anyone. But when we looked at our statistics, we discovered nearly everyone who completed the probationary period and stayed in the Militia had a score over 5.5. Those under 5.5 washed out or quit before the two-year probationary period ended. Now, however, we require every unsponsored concubine arriving on the planet to complete two years of mandatory service. This service includes training, labor, teaching, organizing, childcare, and other tasks as assigned. Should you find a sponsor during that time, you may resign your mandatory service.”
“How soon do we need to find a new sponsor and when do we have to work in a brothel?” asked a weary-looking woman.
“No one here is required to work in a brothel. If you intend to find a new sponsor, the brothel certainly offers more opportunities than you will find here. Young sponsors—I mean those who are new fourteen-year-olds—are encouraged to visit the area here and will have access to your CAP scores and compatibility. You may entertain offers from one of them, but they are carefully monitored and are not allowed to simply come here and work their way through available concubines. The request for a test drive has to be posited on the assumption that it is the last step before you are accepted as his or her concubine. You’ll also find that the most successful placements come from serving in the hospitality industry at Sunnybrook. That is where a large population of transient Marines comes through. They often have available slots and would be happy to fill one with an experienced and successful concubine.”
I looked at the assembled group and inwardly shook my head. There was little chance that most of these concubines would either want or find a home with a sponsor or a place in the Militia. They would complete two years of mandatory service. Then what? I could see from here that these faces would still be in my sight a year from now. Five years. We were on the verge of a new free concubine population.
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