David Weber - Old Soldiers

There weren't very many guests. The Governor himself, his daughter Allison, Lieutenant Governor Berthier, Brigadier Jeffords, Maneka, and Edmund Hawthorne. Over the often seemingly endless months of the voyage here, the six of them had become a tight-knit, efficiently functioning command team for the colony effort. The last two months, as the colony began to become an actual living, breathing entity, had been exhausting for all of them, yet Maneka often thought that there were no words in any human language to express the satisfaction all of them took from their demanding duties.

Even me. Maybe especially me. She glanced sideways at Hawthorne's profile and felt a warm glow deep inside her. I joined the Brigade because I believed in what it stands for, and I still do. But I've seen enough death and destruction to last me for two or three lifetimes. It's so ... unspeakably wonderful to see my efforts contributing to life for a change.

She looked around. The table sat on a terrace behind the rapidly rising shell of what would become Landing's combined town hall and Governor's residence. At the moment, it didn't look particularly prepossessing, but Maneka had seen the plans. It would be a gracious structure when it was completed, and the people who'd designed it had been careful to provide for the inevitable growth it would suffer as the colony's population grew and government and its service organizations grew with it.

The rest of Landing's first-flight structures were going up with equal speed. Despite all the industrial and economic strains under which the Concordiat labored in its desperate battle with the Melconians, it had spared no expense when it came to equipping the colony fleet. Unlike many privately funded colonizing expeditions, this one was lavishly provided with highly capable automated construction and earthmoving equipment, including no less than seven ceramacrete fusers. One of those fusers was still rolling quietly along under the control of its rudimentary AI, running lights lit and proximity sensors alert for any human inept enough to get in its way, as it moved back and forth, laying down the almost indestructible ceramacrete paving of what would become Landing's central square. Other self-directed machines continued to work on the other buildings currently under construction, and piles of building materials marked where still more structures would shortly rise.

The colony's originally targeted population of approximately twenty-two thousand had been reduced to barely fifteen thousand by the Melconian attack. At the moment, almost all of them were down on the surface, housed in the prefab, temporary housing military units (called "Quonset huts," for some reason Maneka had never been able to track down, even searching Lazarus' files). The Quonsets weren't particularly palatial, but they were infinitely preferable to the cramped accommodations aboard the transports. And, unlike the transports' quarters, their inhabitants could open the front door, step outside, and suck in a huge lungful of fresh, pollen- and dust-laden, unrecycled air.

Unlike some military bases Maneka had seen, the Quonsets on Indrani really would be "temporary," too. At the current rate of construction, Berthier, who was in charge of that particular endeavor, estimated that permanent housing for the entire population would be completed within seven months. Not all of that housing would have all of the amenities Core World citizens were accustomed to, but those could always be added once the orbital industrial platforms could begin devoting capacity to something besides self-expansion and the production of basic necessities.

"I can hardly believe how quickly all of this is coming together," Maneka said, waving her wine glass in a semicircle to indicate the city appearing out of nowhere all about them.

"Careful planning back home," Agnelli said. "Too many colonies exhaust their economic resources just arranging their initial transportation to their new homes. They have to skimp on their equipment budgets, or even rely on old-fashioned hand labor to establish their initial infrastructure. We've got the quality of automated support you might find in a major city on one of the Core Worlds, if on a smaller scale, so it's no wonder things are going well. In fact, we'd be doing even better if we hadn't lost Star Conveyor."

He looked at her quickly, his expression silently apologizing for reminding her of what had happened to Kuan Yin, but she only shook her head and looked back with a slightly sad smile. In many ways, Maneka sometimes thought, Allison had actually adjusted better to her husband's death than the Governor had. Then again, she'd discovered, Adrian Agnelli took any death personally. It was his job to see to it that death was something that didn't happen to the people for whom he was responsible, and he took that responsibility very seriously indeed.

And speaking of responsibilities ...

"Allison was telling me this afternoon that the agricultural terraforming is already ahead of schedule, sir," she said to Agnelli.

"Yes, it is," the Governor agreed, giving his daughter a quick smile of mingled pride and thanks. The colony's chief agonomist had been aboard Keillor's Ferry, and Allison had taken responsibility for that aspect of the colonization effort. It wasn't exactly her area of specialization, but she'd quickly identified half a dozen improvements which had helped expedite the process.

"We should be putting in our first locally grown crops within the next couple of months," he continued, returning his gaze to Maneka. "While I know some of us would have preferred a rather cooler climate," he grinned as she grimaced at his jibe, "locating this close to the equator gives us effectively year-round growing seasons. So even though our initial cultivated area is going to be restricted by the need to seed it with the proper Terran microorganisms and bacteria, we ought to be almost completely independent of shipboard hydroponics and stored rations within the first local year."

"That's what's Allison was telling me," Maneka agreed. "And I also had a discussion with Henri—" she nodded at Berthier "—and Ed about the industrial side, as well. Things seem to be going just as well on that side."

"Not quite," Berthier disagreed mildly. "What happened to Star Conveyor is hurting us worse up there—" he pointed an index finger at the steadily brightening disk of the visible moon "—than it is down here. She had one of our two complete orbital smelter plants on board. Worse, she had two-thirds of the extraction boats that were supposed to handle the asteroid mining for us, and that's putting a crimp in our expansion rate. We've diverted some additional effort to building more of the boats we need, but that's going to take considerably longer than building housing units."

"Agreed," Maneka acknowledged. "On the other hand, I think I heard you'd managed to find yourself a truck driver to help speed things up a bit."

She grinned at Hawthorne, who made a ferocious face and growled something under his breath.

"That's one way to put it," Berthier said with a little smile of his own. "The transit time to and from the asteroid belt is part of what's costing us productivity. The extraction boats are fully automated, so they don't suck off any manpower, but they have to make the complete round trip from the belt to Indrani orbit. I'd considered moving the primary smelter closer to the belt, but you shot that one down on security grounds, Madam Generalissimo. So I'm stealing your transport right out from under you."

And my boyfriend, Maneka added mentally.

"Thermopylae's got a lot of heavy-lift capability," Berthier continued. "If we send her out to the belt and let the boats we have shuttle back and forth between her and their extraction sites, she can play freighter and haul the raw materials in to the smelter. By cutting transit times, we estimate we'll improve the productivity curve on the extractor boats by almost thirty percent. It won't fully compensate us for Star Conveyor's destruction, but it will sure help." out in the very near future?"