Chapter 10
Chiira,
7 Miraa, 4393, Orthodox Calendar
The council meeting was long, heated,
and very, very nervous.
Jason was not the only one who saw the
unbelievable danger that the exomech posed to the community. Clem and Paul Meredith saw what Jason saw,
Death’s scythe should the Faey somehow come to know that they had possession of
it. But unlike Jason, who saw some other
potential, Clem and Paul were absolutely against anything other than
immediately getting rid of it, taking it out and dumping it into the
The meeting went on for almost six
hours, and many townsfolk were lurking out in front of Jason’s house, trying to
eavesdrop on what was going on. They
knew about the exomech, and they knew that the council was debating the fate of
that machine. They were wildly curious,
for only a handful of people had seen them move it into the garage, a garage
which was now locked, all the doors annealed, all the windows boarded up, and
with two mounted deputies with real
MPACs, not hunting rifles, standing guard outside it with orders to shoot
anyone who tried to enter the garage.
They couldn’t hear much, since it was taking place down in the basement,
but they did hear the occasional bouts of shouting that rose up…which told them
how heated the concil session was.
It came down to two people who were so
absolutely convinced that they were right that they would not even listen to
the other side. Jason was a bit surprised
that Clem was being so stubbornly adamant, for usually the man was very wise
and quite open to hearing the opposing point of view. But on this he had dug in his heels and he
would not budge. Julianne was being just
as stubborn, refusing to entertain any proposal that included getting rid of
the exomech. She understood the danger,
that was for sure, but she was completely confident that it would never be
found by the Faey, and if it ever was used, well, they’d be abandoning
In the end, though, it came down to a
vote that left neither side happy at all.
After all the shouting and finger-waggling, it had been decided to keep
the exomech for now. The matter would come up for a vote again in
three weeks, during which time Jason, Tim, and Steve would be required to study
their current security measures and attest without any doubt whatsoever that
the exomech was undetectable. If any one
of them was not absolutely sure about that, had even one doubt, then the vote
would be cancelled and the exomech immediately destroyed. Clem and Paul wanted it destroyed now, and Leamon and Julianne didn’t want
it destroyed at all…but the measure
had passed, so they had to live with it.
The vote was 3-2, with
He felt drained and exhausted when the
meeting finally broke up, going up and sitting in the living room for a minute
with his head in his hands. Symone, Tim,
and Temika came in immediately after the other council members left, as did
Mary and Danielle. Mary and Danielle had
become best friends since she’d arrived, and were rarely apart anymore. “What did they decide to do, Mister Jason?”
Mary asked.
“We vote again in three weeks,” he
answered dully. “If the techs can’t
absolutely guarantee it won’t be detected, we destroy it. If we vote to destroy it the next time it
comes up, we destroy it.”
“Why is it so important?” Mary
asked. “I mean, we got lots of Faey
stuff around.”
“Because it’s a military machine,” he answered her.
“If the Faey saw it, they’d send troops in here to capture it and
us. They don’t interfere in what goes
out in here as long as we are no threat
to them, Mary. Yeah, they know I
have the airbikes, they know I have a couple of MPACs, they know I have the
skimmer and some Faey tech, but none of it’s really dangerous. What could I possibly do with a civilian
skimmer and a handful of MPACs? Not
much. But an exomech is an entirely
different ball game, hon. It’s a war
machine, and if they knew we had it, they’d attack us immediately.”
“But why? What could one exomech do to them?” she asked.
“It’s not what it can do, hon, it’s what
it represents,” Jason answered. “They
wouldn’t tolerate anyone out here with that kind of major firepower, because
it’s a threat to them if they come
out here to raid us. And besides, they
wouldn’t want anyone out here that
could manage to get their hands on one in the first place. If they see it, the first thing they’ll ask
after they get over the shock is how many
more do they have? Then they’ll come
out here with a few thousand troops
to find out.”
“That about sums up what they’d do,
alright,” Symone agreed with a nod.
“If it’s that dangerous, then why keep
it at all?” Danielle asked.
“Because if they Faey ever do attack us,
pulling that thing out would shock them so bad that it would give everyone time
to get away,” Jason replied. “That’s
what a couple of council members see using it for, as a last resort in case the
Faey attack.”
“But you just said that if they attack,
they’ll come with a huge army.”
“That’s if they knew it was there,”
Symone said, nodding in understanding.
“They’re talking about if the Faey ever raid the town, like I’ve heard
from the others about how Faey patrols raid squatters to make sure they don’t
have any plasma weapons, or shit like that.
If they came knowing it was here, it’d never get out of the garage. They’d just have a fighter hit it, or have a
cruiser hit it from orbit. Hell, they
could blow this entire city off the map from orbit without having to send a
single soldier, but they wouldn’t do that.
They’d want to know how we got it.”
“What do you think, Mister Jason?” Mary
asked.
“I think I’m not going to sleep well
knowing it’s here,” he answered. “I’d
like to keep it for a while because I can learn a great deal from it, but it
makes me very nervous knowing that
it’s here. As soon as I learn everything
from it I want to learn, I’ll vote to have it destroyed.”
“I’d have thought you’d want to keep
it,” Symone said seriously.
“It’s ten times more a liability than it
is an asset,” he told her. “The only
possible practical use it has for us is as a learning tool. If we ever had to really use it, it would be the end of this community. The only way I could possibly see using it is
if the Faey attacked the town and started killing people, or they intended to
steal all our food and equipment, which would make it impossible for us to
survive. Either way, if it ever gets
used, everything we built here will be for nothing, but at least it would keep
us alive long enough to gather up what we can and relocate to a new place.”
“If we could,” Tim added.
Jason nodded. “God, I’m hungry,” he grunted. “I haven’t eaten all day.”
“I have some leftovers in the fridge,
Mister Jason,” Mary told him.
“Spaghetti.”
“Spaghetti? Where did you get the pasta?”
“One of the new people can make pasta
from scratch,” Mary said with a grin.
“Sophia Frellini. She’s been
selling it. It’s wonderful,” she said dreamily.
“She’s making a killing, too,” Danielle
added. “She gets flour from Ruth and
uses it to make pasta.”
“I’m not too sure I approve of her
selling something she’s getting from the shared food bank,” Jason said with a
frown.
“Clem knows she’s doing it, he said it
was alright,” Mary said. “So long as she
doesn’t gouge people.”
“Oh.
Well, I guess it’s okay then, if Clem knows.”
“I’ll go get it for you, Mister Jason,”
she said, then scurried out. Danielle,
as always, was right behind her.
Anything
else happen in there? Tim asked, his sending curious.
Just
a lot of shouting, Jason answered, leaning back heavily in his chair. For a
few minutes, I thought Clem and Juli were going to start throwing punches. It got intense.
I can
imagine, Symone sent, nodding in
agreement. You might want to pull those guards with MPACs off the garage. Just in case they saw that cargo carrier
land.
That’s
true, he agreed. They
might see them if they have their cameras pointed at us. Rather not give them any reason to start
looking at us too closely.
That turned out to be a moot point, he
discovered later, watching TV as he ate the delicious spaghetti that Mary
brought to him. It turned out that the
drop was known to the Faey, because
it made the “local” news—that being CNN, the last of the news networks since
the subjugation, which had become the news network for Earth. CNN was the local version of
That news story was curious to Jason,
for a couple of reasons. His main
concern was that it made Trillane admit
that there were squatters out in the preserve, something that they had never
done before. Oh, everyone knew that they
were there, but Trillane had never officially
admitted it before. Admitting that the
squatters were there was tantamount to admitting that Trillane was failing the
Imperial mandate of a smooth and fluent transition from the human ways to the
Faey ways. Squatters in the preserve were
a public display of the fact that not all humans were ready to embrace the Faey
system, and that wasn’t the kind of image that Trillane wanted for the new
jewel in their house crown. It was also
sure to raise a few legal questions about the official status of the
squatters. They were seen as citizens of
the Imperium, and what they were doing was breaking the law by refusing to
work. Sure, Trillane could have went in
at any time and captured all the squatters, sent them to work on farms, but
that would put a disruptive element into an area where the Trillanes needed
dependable productivity. Letting the
squatters stay out in the preserve removed the disruptive element. He had little doubt that the Imperial
observers knew about the squatters, and turned a blind eye to them to keep them
out of mischief and the food continuing to flow into the Imperium. As long as they were isolated in the preserve
and kept suitably controlled, they were harmless.
Obviously, this “humanitarian mission” was nothing but whoever that
mysterious woman worked for concealing the delivery of that food to Jason’s
community. They’d enlisted Kumi’s aid—no
doubt very expensive, knowing Kumi—and had explained it away by making token
food drops in other locations.
And certainly, this story would never
reach
Locally, though, the story had several
different impacts. Jason’s people got
food, Trillane got a bit of a public-relations story out of looking caring and
concerned about the squatters, and people with relatives or friends might feel
a little better about it.
In any event, he wasn’t going to get too
much sleep until that thing was either gone or so well hidden that there was no
way the Faey would ever find it.
And he had a boatload of work ahead of
him.
Kaira,
18 Miraa, 4393, Orthodox Calendar
They were running out of time.
Jason sat in his basement workshop,
alone, with drawings, external displays, panels, bits and pieces of equipment,
and quite a few dirty plates scattered all over the shop. They’d been given three weeks to guarantee
that the exomech would never be found, and as of right now, with only three
days to go until that second council meeting, Jason could not make that
guarantee.
Oh, it was safe enough where it was,
that was for sure, as long as it wasn’t turned on. The inverse phase emitter would prevent the
Faey from detecting the exomech, but the instant it was activated, the passive
arrays would pick it up, and that would be it.
And since it was nothing but a huge paperweight without being able to
turn it on, Jason wouldn’t sign off on it.
If he wanted to learn anything from it, he needed to turn it on. The most he could learn from it the way it
was was maybe learn more about its systems, which wasn’t very useful.
So, he wouldn’t sign off on it until he
could defeat passive sensors, and that was what he’d been working on feverishly
since the day after the council meeting.
He’d argued about ideas with Steve and Tim, he’d built prototypes based
on different ideas—none of which worked—he’d researched and researched and
researched on Civnet until he was on a first-name basis with most of the people
who perused the technical boards. And
still, nothing. Not that he really
expected to have a breakthrough in three weeks; he knew it’d be a miracle to
come up with something that fast.
It just kept coming back to a simple
problem…nothing he could come up with could stop a plasma signature. He couldn’t hide it, he couldn’t mask it, and
the passive nature of the sensors he was trying to beat wouldn’t allow him to
trick them the way he did the active sensors.
There was no energy pattern he could put over the signature to conceal
it, and the exomech was too large to shield its signature. Smaller plasma signatures could be masked
with a special alloy of Neutronium and Yttrium, which dampened the plasma
signature to the point where a class X PPG looked like a class II, and outright
concealed signatures from a Class VII or smaller. But the power plant in the exomech wasn’t
just a PPG, it was a full-blown reactor engine, complete with plasma power
capacitors and spatial engines and backup PPGs placed all over the exomech,
that each would show up to passive sensors.
He’d have to lay on so much shielding to mask that power plant and all
those tertiary systems that it would overload the exomech, make it too heavy to
move. Same for his skimmer…he’d have to
put on so much shielding, everywhere,
that it would be too heavy for its own engines.
So, it came right back to the same
problem he’d struggled with for months.
How did he hide a large, unshielded plasma signature from passive
sensors?
He blew out his breath and put his head
in his hands, thinking the problem through.
Maybe he was making this more complicated than it needed to be. If he couldn’t shield the power signature
without overloading the unit, then he needed to find a shielding material that wouldn’t overload the unit, because
shielding the unit was the easiest approach, one that was proven to work.
But that was the problem…there was no
shielding material he could use. The
unique density of the Neutronium/Yttrium that closely matched a plasma
signature let it absorb plasma energy—
--Absorb!
It was like a neuron in his brain
suddenly exploded, the flash of insight hit him so quickly. If he couldn’t shield a unit with the alloy,
then he had to actively reinforce
that alloy! And what absorbed
energy? Shields!
Building energy matrixes inside solid
objects was already a tried and true Faey technology, because that was exactly how plasma conduit
operated. It created a magnetic “pipe”
through which the plasma flowed inside a flexible hollow rod of a
carbon-silicon composite. The magnetic
pipe was channeled through the molecular structure of the conduit to prevent
the hyperphased power plasma from striking the sides of the conduit and
creating a drag eddy, which interfered with plasma flow. Hyperphased plasma was safe at room
temperature, which prevented it from exploding if a conduit ruptured…it was
like liquid energy. One certainly didn’t
want to touch it with bare hands, but it wouldn’t do any major damage if it was
sprayed all over the internal systems of a piece of equipment, just scorch it. The magnetic pipe wasn’t absolutely required
for it to work, it just made it more efficient.
Quickly, Jason sketched out his
idea. He needed to create a stable
energy matrix inside a layer of either Neutronium or that alloy, a shield
specifically designed to act against plasma. Unphased plasma like the kind of radiant
signature generated by plasma technology was stopped by shields just like any
other form of energy, and the energy emissions of a plasma device were
unphased. He looked up Neutronium on
Civnet, checking out its physical characteristics, and found, to his utter
delight, that it would be compatible with what he wanted to do with it. The metal’s molecular structure would support
building an energy matrix within it.
With that confirmed, he went over what he’d need to do, and how to do
it.
The Neutronium would have to be isolated
from everything else, but this wasn’t going to be a problem. In fact, Faey armor was already designed this way, with the layers of
Neutronium with the synthetic phase cloth in the middle. The inner layer and outer layer were
separate, with all the moorings and mounts on the back of the internal layer,
with the bonded phase barrier material between them. Jason looked up what kind of material they
used in exomechs, which wasn’t easy, because it was a military
application. He did find what he was looking
for after about an hour, on a shadowy board with that kind of sensitive
information, and was very
pleased. Exomechs used a metallic
synthetic material for the phase barrier, which, after checking out its
physical properties, he discovered would not
conduct the energy matrix. It would
serve as a perfect insulator. There were
anchor moorings through that phase material attaching the outer layer to the
inner layer, but those could be found and insulated.
Okay, he knew that it could be done. He quickly sketched out what he’d need to do
this. He’d need some specialized shield
emitters, which would be mounted into the outer layer of the exomech. These emitters would have to be
tachyon-based, not the usual tetryon technology used by the Faey, because a
tachyon shield would be capable of operating at the necessary composite harmonic
shield frequency required to absorb plasma signatures. Tachyon shield technology was old by Faey standards, a century out of
date, abandoned after tetryon shield technology was discovered. Tachyon shields were considered soft, lacking strong physical resistance
present in tetryon shields, which were called hard shields, much more capable of dealing with physical force and
kinetic energy. But Tachyon shields
could be used in a harmonic manner,
introducing more than one frequency into the shield without creating a feedback
that would blow the shield matrix. Jason
needed that ability to operate with harmonics.
The emitters would have to be mounted
into every modular plate of the exomech, wherever a joint separated the plates,
and into the joint plates themselves.
One emitter per plate, with 97 separate plates and joints in the
exomech’s armor. Each emitter would be
operating at a very low energy level, only just enough to absorb a passive
energy signature, allowing the entire system to be powered by the spare power
generated by the main power plant. The
exact operating harmonic frequency wasn’t that hard to work out, but then he
redid it to add to the shield the ability to absorb the hyperthreaded pulses of
active sensors as an emergency backup in case the inverse phase emitter he
intended to mount onto the exomech failed.
The absorption would cause the exomech to be a “hole” in a sensor
return, more noticable the closer the exomec was to the sensor, but it was
better than nothing. That was very easy for him to do, since he’d done
so much research on them, and had built the inverse phase emitter. He could even design the system to absorb
light energy, which would cause the exomech to become utterly black, a
two-dimensional shadow of utter darkness.
Rather useless in the daytime, but that would be quite handy for moving
the exomech at night.
He’d need conduit and datalines, and
he’d need to program the control system and introduce it into the exomech’s
operating system. He’d need to study the
exomech’s technical drawings to figure out where and how to install these
emitters, then join their datalines and conduits to those already in the
unit. After that, he’d have to write the
operating program and get it to work with the exomech’s main computer.
And if all that worked, he’d end up with
a system that completely masked the exomech from Faey sensors, and make it all
but invisible in the darkness of night. The
exomech would only be visible to gravometric disturbance sensors, detecting the
effect of its mass on space as it moved, but those couldn’t detect something as
small as the exomech while it was in the gravity well of the planet. He had a good theory, that was for sure, but
he had to make that theory work.
Tim!
Jason sent in a loud, urgent broadcast. Tim, grab Steve and come to my shop! NOW!
What’s
wrong? he asked in reply.
Shut
up and move, dumbass! Before I lose my
train of thought!
It didn’t take the two of them long to
get there. Jason explained his idea to
them and showed them what technical data he had that backed up his theory, then
sat back and let them think it over.
“Hmm,” Steve hummed, tapping his
forehead with a finger. “I think it just
might work, Jayce. If the metal can
support the matrix, it should work.
It’ll fail if the metal’s damaged or if it’s hit by an MPAC, all that
plasma would overload the system. But
then again, if they shoot holes in the armor, it’s pretty obvious they know
it’s there already.”
“What about magnetic fields?” Tim
asked. “Isn’t tachyon energy vulnerable
to magnetic fields?”
“Yeah, it’s highly polarized,” Jason
affirmed, “but there’s not going to be a magnetic field we’ll have to worry
about, and it’s going to be inside the
Neutronium. We couldn’t expose the
matrix to contact with shields, and the magnetic envelope of an MPAC would
overload the matrix and kill it. The
magnetic field it creates will be strong, but it won’t extend more than a
micron outside the energy matrix itself, which will be inside the Neutronium.
That’s going to help insulate the matrix from magnetic disturbance. Neutronium’s not magnetic, it’ll act as an
insulator for the matrix. Iron wouldn’t
even stick to the armor when it’s running.”
“But wouldn’t their active sensors then
pick up the Neutronium if there’s going to be part of the hull not inside the
field?” Steve asked.
“Ah, yes, it would,” Jason said, holding
up a finger, “if there wasn’t an
inverse phase emitter on the exomech designed to block anything that shouldn’t
be there, as well as the life signs of the pilot. I designed this system to also absorb sensor
pulses as an emergency backup if the emitter fails. If that happens, the field will have to rise
up to the surface of the Neutronium,
which would be easy for us to design.
The magnetic field will be exposed, but it shouldn’t be an issue because
the field will only extend a micron beyond the hull. Anything magnetic would stick to it if that
was done, but if you have to switch to that, but only something magnetic that
came into direct contact with the hull.
But if you have that running, then you’re not going to be hanging around. I also worked up a way to raise the field to
the surface and also make it absorb light.
In the darkness, it would be all but invisible.”
“Clever,” Steve nodded. “Now, since you have this great idea, how
about we aim it at what we’re supposed to do?”
“Huh?” Jason asked.
“The Council wants a way to hide the exomech, not a way to make it
undetectable if it’s not under cover.
So, with that in mind, how do we adapt this idea to do what they want?”
Jason gave him a look, then
laughed. “Yeah, you’re right. A box?”
“That’s what I was thinking,” Steve
said, drawing on a piece of paper before them.
“We just build a box inside the garage, then hook the system up to it. We have Luke dig a trench kind of like you
see in bays in places like Jiffy Lube, where we can get in and out. Then we can learn how it ticks, learn from
something cutting edge.”
“Something military,” Jason nodded in agreement. “We learn how the computer works, then we
tear it apart and see how it’s built. We’ll
just have to keep people with plasma rifles away from the garage, and we’ll
have to make sure the pole transformer there by the garage is shielded. I don’t even want the PPGs near it, or anything capable of generating a
magnetic field that might be strong enough to disrupt the matrix.”
“There’s an idea,” Tim chuckled. “MPACs are plasma inside a magnetic envelope
to keep it from blowing up til it hits something, right? Just reverse the polarity of the matrix so it
repels the magnetic envelope, which would make the plasma go with it. MPAC fire
would just bounce off.”
“You couldn’t do that—holy shit,” Jason said, his eyes
brightening. “We couldn’t do that with
this, but that’s a hell of an idea,
Tim! I think I could make something that
could do that!”
“I think I could too,” Steve said with a
laugh. “You couldn’t use an MPAC around
it, but we could definitely build something that would bounce the magnetic
envelope of an MPAC round.”
“I’m writing that one down,” Jason said
quickly, typing furiously on his panel’s holographic keyboard. “That’s definitely our next project.”
“Okay, let’s start working out how we’re
going to do this,” Steve said. “You
still have the exomech’s schematics loaded into that hologram, Jayce?”
“You know I do.”
“Bring it up, let’s start working this
through.”
It was worth a loss of a night’s sleep.
Jason, Tim, and Steve stood in the
garage and looked up at the exomech’s “head,” all of them just taking a moment
to revel in their success. After almost
29 continuous hours of research, study, and planning, of simulations and some
old fashioned tinkering, they were done.
The idea would work.
All in all, they figured it would take
them about six days to build the box, install the system, test it extensively,
then declare it operational. The idea
was sound, all it would take would be a five-layered wall, which was Steve’s
design. The matrix-carrying Neutronium
would be inside layers of simple nickel, and with a steel layer on the
outside. Nickel was a metal that was not
magnetically conductive, which would insulate the matrix from contact with the
steel or magnetic fields, and the steel on the outside layer would conduct
magnetic lines of force away from the interior, protecting it. The emitters would be installed into the
Neutronium, one emitter for every five square feet of wall it had to defend,
each emitter hooked up to a control computer that coordinated the entire
matrix. One of their spare panels could
do that easily.
Every simulation they ran told them that
the idea would work. According to the
simulations, the matrix would absorb 99.996482% of the ambient plasma
signature. The power signature of the
matrix itself would be stronger, and it would not have that high of a signature either. The metal roof of the garage would garble the
signature of the matrix enough to make it invisible to passive sensors, mainly
because the field generated within the Neutronium would be very, very low-power. After all, all it had to do was absorb an ambient plasma signature, and that
required virtually no power.
First, the walls had to be built. That was Jason’s job, with a great deal of
help from Luke and the other mechanics, who could work under his supervision. Steve’s job while they built the walls and
installed the shield emitters would be to write a program to govern the matrix. Tim, whose casted arm would prevent excessive
labor, was to watch Steve and learn more about TEL language.
After that was decided, they dedicated
an hour or so to looking over Jason’s original idea, which was to install such
a system into the exomech itself. They
figured that doing that would take at least three months, as they meticulously
removed the outer hull section by section, plate by plate, modified it,
insulated the plate moorings from the inner hull, then reinstalled it. Then they would have to run all the dataline
and mini-conduit to connect it to the exomech’s power and computer systems, and
they would have to write a program that would allow the exomech’s computer to
control the matrix.
If the simulations were accurate, the
system was almost everything Jason could hope for. It would hide the unit from both active and
passive sensors. Its ability to absorb
light would allow it to move undetectable by optical scanners at night, with
some sensible precautions like not putting a the exomech between the camera and
a light source, and avoiding contact with magnetic materials. He still had no way to hide the unit’s mass,
meaning it had to stay well inside the planetary gravity well, but those were
some limitations he could live with. The
system would consume very little
power, requiring no extra power at all, running purely off the excess power
generated by the exomech’s power system.
There were some down sides to the system, they’d discovered. MPAC weaponry created a distortion in the
system in the simulations they ran, so the exomech could not use its built-in
MPAC weaponry while the matrix was engaged, such as the arm MPACs and the
shoulder-mounted plasma cannon. The
shield also interfered with the exomech’s sensors in simulations, rendering
them useless. The pilot would have to
run the exomech with visual only while the cloak was engaged. Outside of that, though, the system had no
other detrimental effects on the exomech’s systems in the simulations they ran.
But, the most important part was that in
the simulations, Faey sensors could not
detect the exomech’s signature.
They had the plan, even if one of them
was far-reaching, now they needed the materials…and that meant Kumi. But this time, he decided he didn’t want her
to have any hint of what he was
doing, like when he bought the materials for the railguns. She very well could puzzle out how to build a
railgun just by going on what he bought, then falling back on good old trial
and error. No, this time he wanted her
to have no inkling of what he was doing.
He didn’t need her for buying it, only
for delivering it. Jason told Tim and
Steve to go to bed, then he went back home, sat down in front of his panel,
cracked his knuckles, and got down to some serious shopping. There were any number of places on Civnet
that would sell what he needed, and all he needed to get it was an account to
transfer money and an address for delivery.
And he had both, after using a little address matching on Kumi. He knew her name, and now he knew she lived
in Dracora, the capitol city of the Faey Imperium, so he knew where to look for
her. In ten minutes, he had her
address. In thirty minutes, he had everything
he wanted bought from an industrial and military supply company based right
there in Dracora, and ordered it assembled at an independent warehouse there so
it could be picked up and delivered at a later date, using Kumi’s address as a
reference and a person of contact if the dealer had to talk to someone. After he got his order number and got
confirmation that the order would be assembled within two hours, he went on to
rent the warehouse space, and then went through the new list that the city council
had given him of things that he could get that they could use. It took him a while to find some of those
items, and a few of them, like the machining tools that Luke and Zach needed to
help manufacture replacement parts for the appliances and equipment, stuff that
couldn’t be replicated, weren’t very cheap.
Other things were easier to get, however. He bought a large bulk of winter clothing to
be held in reserve, as well as winter coats and jackets in various sizes. He bought a few snowsuits, and he remembered
to go to a medical supply company and buy the things on the list that Doc
Northwood had left for him. Those items
he also had delivered to the warehouse, and then further ordered the warehouse
to box up the entire order into a shipping container once all deliveries were
received. After he was done, he looked
at the state of his bank account and sighed…it was going to be at least a month
before they could buy anything else. The
armor for Irwin and Luke would have to wait.
He completed the task by placing a call to Kumi.
She appeared on the display wearing a
frilly little bra and holding a sleek, shiny shirt-like garment in both hands
before her. “Eleri. Talk,” she said brusquely, then she smiled
when she recognized him. “Oh, hey
babe. What’s up?”
“Care to play delivery girl for me?” he
asked immediately.
“Any time, babe. You got a list?”
“I have an order number and an address
of a warehouse where it’ll be waiting for you in about four hours. Just pick it up and bring it over.”
“You don’t like my shopping taste or
something, babe?” she asked with a laugh.
“This wasn’t so hard that I needed
outside help,” he answered dryly. “Just
assorted stuff to help us get through the winter.”
“Sure, I can do that for you,” she told
him with a nod. “Since I can’t charge
you a percentage of what I buy, we’ll just have to go with a flat rate. A thousand credits is fair enough.”
“Works for me,” he shrugged. “You coming with it?”
“Of course,” she told him with a
nod. “Nobody delivers to you but me. No one. Same place?”
“Always,” he said.
“Okay, I’ll invite a few friends over
for a picnic,” she winked. “That gives
me an excuse to go. I told everyone that
I love that little place, so much so that I’m talking about buying that part of
the preserve to make it a personal retreat.
Sathiri just bought some waterskimmers, maybe I can convince her to
bring them along so we can play with them,” she mused aloud.
“They’d travel here just to play on a
lake?” he asked in surprise.
“Babe, we’re nobles,” she said pointedly.
“We have lots of money and lots of time.
Lots of my friends loved the party I threw there last month because it
was new. They’d never been to a party in wild
territory before, they loved it. They’re asking me if I’m going to throw another
one, and I think I’m gonna. One more, a
really big one, just before my conscription,” she said, making a face.
“Oh yeah. How much longer?”
“Ugh, seventy-nine days,” she
frowned. “The first day of Demaa.”
Jason looked at his watch, and realized that’d
be around the first of the year. Right
now the Faey’s standard calendar and Earth’s calendar were running almost in
sync, because the Faey calendar had had 2 consecutive 30 day months just when
their 36 day month ended at the same time as August did. The next month, Suraa, was a 36 day month.
“You have to do basic training, don’t
you?” he asked.
She gave him a face. “Nobles don’t do commoner basic training,” she said sharply. “We have our basic induction phase, but we
don’t have to do what commoners do, since nobles already know how to handle
weapons and been trained to fight.
That’ll take 2 months, then I’ll be at my job as an aide here on
Draconis. Boring,” she growled.
“Kumi will have to work. The world will end,” Jason said dryly.
“Why don’t you bite my ass, babe?” she
said gratingly.
“Behave,” he told her with a faint
smile, then he yawned. “I’m going to
have to cut this short, hon. I’m very
tired. I worked all night.”
“On what?”
“On getting us ready for winter,” he
said vaguely. “There’s lots to do, and
more and more people are coming every day, so that means we have even more
work.”
“Why are they coming?”
“Safety,” he answered. “We’ve proved we can protect ourselves
against raiders, so now everyone’s flocking here. They’re bringing all their things and all
their food stocks, so we’re really busy getting everything put away safely and
storing it so it won’t go bad over the winter.
We’re also starting to run out of places to put people. We’re going to have to expand our walls
again,” he grunted. “For the fourth
time.”
“Raiders? What raiders?”
“Raiders, hon, remember that video you
yanked off Civnet?” he asked sharply.
“That was a band of raiders.
People who go around and kill off other people to steal their goods.”
“Oh.
I never really thought about that too much. That’s what they were doing?”
“Yes, that’s what they were doing. What did you think they were doing? Stopping by for milk and cookies?” he asked
testily.
“Geez, bite my head off will you,” she
grunted.
“Sorry.
I’m tired, if you didn’t notice,” he said, passing his hand in front of
his face. “Call me before you head
out. Oh, and give over on that
waterskimmer idea,” he warned. “It’s
gotten pretty cool here, and the trees have turned colors and have already
started losing their leaves. Winter’s on
the way.”
“What does that mean, lose their
leaves?”
“You’ll see when you get here,” he told
her. “Riding skimmers on the lake would
be rather cold. Now, I’m going to bed.”
“Okay babe. Sleep well.”
Jason ended the call, then put his head
in his hands over his panel and tried to clear the cobwebs for a moment. He was so tired…but he was also quite excited
and very hopeful. This technology, he
could easily adapt it to his skimmer, and he’d ordered the parts and materials
he’d need for that. All he had to do was
coat the exterior of the skimmer with a microscopic layer of an insulating
agent, and on top of that, he only needed a two millimeter layer of Neutronium. That was all it took. It would add a grand total of 37 kilograms to
the weight of the skimmer, which was less than an adult human.
And there were some other things to
think about. The cloaking system would
be nullified by an MPAC, so he couldn’t use MPAC weaponry. But he had access to something else,
something not based on plasma, but
was just as powerful. The railgun. He already had an idea, the beginnings of a
concept for a weapon to use in conjunction with this cloaking system, a weapon
based on his railgun technology, which could
be fired without disabling the cloaking system.
That, and Tim’s idea was so promising. It was so simple, so elegant, attacking MPAC
weaponry at a very basic level, by going after the magnetic envelope that
encased the metaphased plasma, which kept the plasma coherent and in prevented
it from detonating just from traveling through the air. All it took was some kind of magnetic shield,
a solid layer of magnetic force that would cause the magnetic envelope of the
MPAC charge to rebound off of it without
disrupting. Solid magnetic field
technology was, yet again, a tried and true Faey technology, because that’s how
MPACs worked. The plasma was trapped in
the envelope, it would rebound with the envelope, thereby rendering the shot
harmless. And since all MPACs used the same basic technique for building a
plasma charge and magnetic envelope, they could design one shield and not have
to worry about magnetic polarity, since all MPAC envelopes had the same
polarity. Damn clever. He had to admit to himself that he had never thought of that.
The only trick of it would be designing
some method for the shield to reflect the magnetic envelope of the MPAC charge
without rupturing it. It was a very
fragile construct, and that was how it was designed, so the plasma inside could
be released against the target. The
plasma in the envelope had mass and momentum, and that was going to place
considerable stress on its encasing envelope when it struck the shield. Maybe electrostatic charge on the surface,
which would jolt the envelope and give it a sudden surge of power. That had potential, creating the shield so it
actively strengthened the MPAC’s envelope so long as it was in physical contact
with it—
–well holy Christ, he was being so stupid.
That was all it needed to
do! The momentum of the plasma would
cause it to bounce off the shield on its own. Basic physics! It would be like throwing a rubber ball
against a brick wall! So long as the
magnetic envelope didn’t rupture, the kinetic energy of the plasma would cause
the MPAC charge to bounce off the shield.
All they had to do was figure out some way to strengthen that magnetic envelope when it impacted the shield. Those envelopes were solid magnetic force,
and most importantly, they were non-polarized, interleaved magnetic lines of
force that both attracted and repelled one another equally, causing them to
remain stationary with respect to one another.
It was like woven cloth, but using magnetic lines of force instead of
threads. Electromagnetic principles were
at work here, and the first law was that magnetism and electricity were
directly related. If he wanted to
strengthen a magnetic field, he only had to use electricity. And electricity was the flow of electrons…and
of course, the flow of positrons,
when using advanced Faey science.
It took him all of fifteen minutes to
sketch out an initial design. It would
be an energy shield, constructed of
alternating concentric rings of electrostatic force, which would generate an
interleaved magnetic shield wall exactly like the envelope used by an
MPAC. An EM shield, to coin a term.
Magnetic lines of force could not cut one another, and the underlying
electrostatic energy would energize the magnetic lines of force in the MPAC
charge, preventing them from dissipating or breaking. Since the lines of force couldn’t cut through
one another, the envelope as a whole would be unable to pass through, and since
it wouldn’t break down and disrupt either, then the kinetic energy of the
plasma inside would rule how the MPAC charge reacted to the shield. Being an object of mass, the plasma would simply bounce
off.
It was a design almost artistic in its
elegant simplicity, and Jason realized he could build one out of parts laying
around the shop. Four telescoping arms
extending from the center unit, which would house the PPG and the shield
generator, with the arms serving as the emitters.
He blinked. Holy Lord above, this idea…in theory, it
might work, if the magnetic envelopes that held MPAC rounds were basicly static
in magnetic alignment. And it was, in
its own way, a much more potentially important discovery than their cloaking
device. This, this was a direct way to
defend themselves against the primary weapon that the Faey used. These shields, they’d only weigh about two
pounds, and be so small they could be carried around in a backpack. Hell, he could build a glove and armband into
the back of the shield’s PPG housing so it could be worn just about all the
time, situating the housing on the forearm, just like an old shield that
soldiers used to use back in the Middle Ages.
If
it would work. He’d have to research the
exact physical mechanics of an MPAC round’s magnetic envolope, and how it
behaved in reality than rather in subjective pondering.
If they could defeat an MPAC…it made his
mind wander back to that old idea of open rebellion. But that was still impossible, because of the
telepathic advantage. If the Faey ever
attacked
One thing was for sure, though. If this
shield worked, and if it didn’t jam the cloaking device, he wanted one on the
exomech. Put a means to stop MPAC fire
on that thing, and it would suddenly become a very dangerous piece of machinery if it were manned by a telepathic
pilot, someone capable of defending himself against Faey telepathy.
That was a stupid thought. He had no intention of keeping that
thing. It was a dire threat to the
community, and thinking of ways to adapt things to it like that were relatively
pointless given the fact that in a month, it was going to be in about fifty
different pieces laying all over the floor of its storage site.
Just wishful thinking, he supposed. The pilot in him yearned for the chance to
pilot the exomech, to take it out and see if he could make it work, see if he
could learn to use it. It was a
challenge, an almost childish dream, to drive around a big robot and play war.
His head dipped lower and lower as he
dreamily mused about that very thing, of him learning how to operate the
exomech without any expert training, then he dropped off into sleep before his
head even hit the desk.
Kumi held good on her telling him that
she would turn the delivery into yet another party of sorts. When he arrived at the lake, he found that
there were already five dropships on the ground, and the place was crawling
with Faey. The trees rustled in a cool,
sharp wind, their fiery colors undulating in the breeze, almost making the
forest look like it was on fire for a fleeting moment, but the brisk wind
didn’t seem to dissuade these Faey nobles from trying out odd vehicles that
looked almost like old Jetskis, if not for the fact that they floated just
above the water’s surface. The riders
were wearing sleek skin-tight suits that looked like wetsuits, but he saw that
they were all perfectly dry, even though water was spraying all over them as
they zoomed to and fro on the very narrow inlet. Jason couldn’t feel that cool wind because he
was in his armor, but he remembered how delightfully cool it felt that morning
before he put the armor on.
He sat down well out of sight of them,
on the top of the hill on the opposite side of the inlet, and simply
waited. He watched as they had their fun
with the waterskimmers, then had a lunch under a tent, then, after about two
hours, got into their ships and ascended into the sky and out of sight. Only then, after the others were gone, did he
come down from the hillside and skim across the inlet to Kumi’s side of the
lake. Meya and
“I don’t have time,” he told her with a
shake of his head, then he took off his helmet.
“Thanks for getting it here so fast.”
She pursed her lips, then gave him a sly
smile. “I’m starting to wonder what
you’re doing out here, babe. I mean, the
tools and clothes and shit yeah, I can see why you need those, but I don’t
understand what half of this military grade stuff is for, but I’m pretty sure
it has nothing to do with you getting through the winter.”
He gave her a dark look.
“Hey, it was on the manifest, dink,” she said defensively, and the little red fellow
held out a display window unit. She took
it and showed it to him. “Shield
emitters? Cabling? Phased armor?
Neutronium blocks? I don’t
understand what you’re doing.”
“It’s another experiment,” he answered
her carefully. “If it works, it’ll help
protect my people from injuries if any more raiders attack us.”
She gave him a look, and he could see it
turning over and over in her mind. What
he got was military, but it was also
obsolete by modern standards. Him saying
that it was meant as an experiment to protect the people she’d seen against
raiders with archaic powder weapons would definitely be logical to her. “Well, babe, you’d better be really careful. I know you are careful and you have your PPG’s well shielded, but if you get
too exotic, you’re gonna attract space-based sensors. Some of this stuff’s gonna draw some serious
power, you know, more than enough for the passive arrays to pick it up.”
“Well, I’ll make sure not to use all of it at once,” he said with a
chuckle. He realized then that Kumi did not know about the exomech, that that
mysterious woman had concealed that information from her.
“So, what’s this experiment?”
“A shield, obviously,” he said with a
chuckle.
“No go, babe, that’ll get picked up for
sure,” she told him.
“Trust me,” he told her, looking at the two
large crates. “The emitters aren’t for making
the kind of shield you’re thinking about.
I’m going to use them for something else.” He had the Deuce parked not far, and it would
easily fit in the bed. He grabbed the
handles on the crate and tugged, and found it much too heavy. He then activated the strength augmentation
system in the armor, and after trying again, he found he could pick it up. “I just don’t want any more of my people
hurt. Nobody was killed when the raiders
attacked, but a few people did get some broken bones when bullets hit their
cloth armor. I’d like to avoid that, and
that’s what this is for. It wouldn’t
stop an MPAC, but it’ll stop a bullet for sure.”
“Personal
shields?” Kumi asked curiously.
“No comment,” Jason chuckled as he put
his helmet back on. “I have to keep my
secrets a secret.”
“You got me real curious now, babe,” she said, coming over to him.
“Life is hard,” he said. “I just realized. Where are Meya and
“They’re outside,” she answered. “Fure’s up in the cockpit. You know he doesn’t like you,” she
winked. “Well, not like isn’t quite right.
He thinks you’re too dangerous to associate with, I should say. He thinks he has you figured out,” she grinned.
“How do you mean?”
“Well, he thinks you have talent,” she
said boldly. “He thinks that Marine
trained you, and since she’s a Marine, that means you got trained right.
He thinks that’s the reason why you bailed from school.”
“I think Fure needs to lay off the
coffee,” Jason said mildly as he picked up the large crate, a crate that was
bigger than he was, that weighed nearly half a ton. It caused his strength system to spike, its
gauge to yellow out on his display, but it could handle it. “I need to get this to my truck.”
“Well, you know what?” she said.
“What?” he asked as he started down the
ramp.
“I think he’s right,” she told him. She
ran past and started walking backwards in front of him. “I’ll bet my left tit you do have talent, babe. And you know what? I don’t give a shit.”
“Well, that’s nice to know,” he said
neutrally.
“Seriously. I don’t give a shit if you have talent or
not, babe. If you do, hell, you did the right
thing by bolting, and I wouldn’t turn you in even if you did. You’re my friend, and I take care of my
friends. I just wanted you to know
that. I’ll still be here for you when
you need my help. For my usual fee, of
course,” she winked.
“I’m so glad to hear that,” he said
blandly.
“And I think you’d better give some
thought to making some other kind of arrangement, babe,” she told him. “I got my conscription coming up in two
months, and I won’t be able to do this anymore.”
“Yeah, now that I’ve thought about,” he
said. “I figured I’d just stock up on
what I need before your conscription. I
do have to cut the umbilical cord sometime, Kumi. If we can’t be self-sufficient, there’s
really no reason for us to be out here.”
“But still, you might have emergencies,
so you need a system,” she said. “I had
an idea, but it’s gonna require some risk.
There’s no way to do this other than with risk, you know.”
“Okay, let’s hear it,” he said as they
walked towards his truck.
“What you need to do is buy yourself
some warehouse space in a town close to the border of the preserve,” she
started. “I can find an old hovertruck
and buy it for you, and you can use it to move your buys. Set up a dummy company and buy what you need
through it, have it delivered to that warehouse, and then it’ll be a matter of
finding a way to get across the border to come pick it up. It ain’t something you should do every day,
but if you ever have a real
emergency, it’ll be there for you.”
“I can’t set up a company,” he said as
they came around a sharp bend in the road, where the Deuce was parked just
beyond it. “Remember, I’m a fugitive.”
“No, but I can,” she said.
He stopped and looked at her, the huge
crate balanced on his shoulder creaking ominously.
“Think about it, babe. I’ll set up the dummy front for you and find
you a truck, and there’s a Faey farming town not far from here that has some
warehouses in it. I’ll buy one of the
smaller warehouses in the company’s name, and if you ever have an emergency and
need something, you can buy it on Civnet and have it sent to that warehouse.”
“Someone would have to be there to
accept it,” he said as they reached the truck.
He set the crate in the bed, pushed it back to make room for the next
one, and they started back for her dropship.
“Yeah, the people who are gonna bring it
to you,” she told him. “They cross the
border and meet the cargo dropship, then they just put it on the truck and
sneak it back across the border. The
warehouse won’t be nothing but an address and a valid reason to be accepting
large cargo containers. It’s a warehouse, after all.”
Jason turned it over in his mind several
times, as they reached the dropship and he picked up the other crate, which
wasn’t as heavy. The first had to have
the Neutronium blocks in it. He wondered
why there were two crates when he’d ordered only one, but then he realized that
the first had been the military equipment he’d ordered, and the second was the
other things. He’d ordered the warehouse
to stick both in a shipping container…they must have bundled up all the
civilian equipment and boxed it together, then put both boxes in a
container. Kumi must have taken them out
of the container, because a container would have looked mighty suspicious
considering that she was coming out here to play on waterskimmers.
He thought about her idea as he picked
up the second container and started back for his Deuce. It had merit.
Done right, the company couldn’t be traced back to him or his people,
and as long as he paid the rent on the warehouse, he could use it to receive
shipments of critical equipment and supplies.
She was right in that it couldn’t be something that they could use all
the time, because it would require people to cross the border in a truck.
That would be rather dangerous.
But, on the other hand, they had someone in the community who had
extensive experience in the art of crossing the border…and now that he thought
of it, he never had collected his
payment for that airbike. Temika still
had not shown him how to cross the border.
But, with her there, this idea was certainly something that would be
worth the heavy investment in money…and it would
be a heavy investment. He had no
idea how much it would cost, but he had no doubt that it wasn’t going to be
cheap. Business licenses, charters for
companies, renting commercial warehouse space…not cheap at all. “You know, Kumi, that’s not a bad idea.”
“No shit, babe,” she taunted with a
grin. “After all, I thought it up,
didn’t I?”
“Let’s not get too arrogant before conscription,” he teased, starting out again.
“Bite my ass, babe,” she retorted. “So, that sound like a plan to you?”
“How much is it going to cost?” he
asked.
“Well, it ain’t gonna be cheap, that’s
for sure,” she answered. “Well, the
company side of it actually won’t be that expensive. I can’t set up the company as a noble
company, so there’s gonna be some taxes and license fees. There’s also the cost of the warehouses, and
the yearly property and business taxes.
You can cover those yearly expenditures with your royalties, but the
initial payments are gonna be kinda steep, at least from a noble’s point of
view. It’s gonna twenty thousand at the
minimum, where a noble could get a company set up for around five thousand. But the warehouse is where it’s gonna get
expensive. You’d be looking at ten
thousand a month minimum if you rent,
and around two hundred grand if you buy
the warehouse. That’s more expensive
right up front, but it’ll be cheaper in the long run, and maybe a little
safer. If you own the warehouse, you never have to worry about others hanging
around it when you’re receiving a shipment and make people get curious.”
“Yeah, well, I’m broke now,” he told
her.
“So am I,” she admitted. “But you’ll have the cash to set up the
company with your next payment, and you’ll have enough to cover the warehouse
before I start conscription. Even if you
don’t, that’s something I can set up any time, even in basic training. And you can always rent for now, then come
back and buy the warehouse later. We can
set up the company on paper, then wait to do the warehouse part later.”
“Sounds like a plan,” he told her. The truck came into view around the curve,
and now Meya and
“See, there they are,” Kumi said, then
she giggled. “You’d better be glad you
had your armor on,” she told him.
“Why?”
“Cause I was gonna get you back for what
you did to me,” she told him.
“That’s why I’m wearing the armor,” he
said dryly, which made her laugh.
“You ass. I was so horny I banged Fure all the way back
home.”
“I did not need to know that,” he told
her blandly.
“It’s your fault,” she accused.
“At least now you know better than to do
things like show a naked picture of me to your friends, don’t you?”
She laughed. “You’re an evil son of a bitch.”
“Thank you. I try,” he agreed evenly.
“Home,” he answered, which made her take
on a crestfallen look.
“You have got to make me one of those,” she said.
“Why do you keep asking when you know
I’m not going to do it?” he asked, a bit testily.
“Because that’s how a woman gets
something from a man,” she winked. “Keep
asking til he caves in. We have a
saying, you know: only the persistent
woman finds a husband.”
“Well, I’m not a Faey,” he told
her. “When I say no, I mean no.
I know that’s a hard concept for you to understand, but you’ll save yourself
a hell of a lot of grief if you do.”
“Well, there’s no, and then there’s no,”
“They’ve been getting entirely too
annoying lately,” Kumi grunted, looking at
“She can’t take her personal guards to
induction,” Meya said as she came around the truck. “But we’ll be back on duty when she takes up
her post.”
“Two months of vacation,”
“Shut up,” Kumi hissed.
“Two months of lounging around, reading
magazines, watching the vidscreen—“
Kumi came around and smacked her on the
back of the head. “Someone wants to have
her paycheck get lost, doesn’t she?” Kumi threatened, which made
“Your mother pays me, not you,”
“I can fix that,” she said in an ugly
tone.
“Children,” Jason said, squatting down
on the edge of the truck bed. “I have a
ways to go, and I don’t want to leave knowing I might have to pull you two
apart.”
“They always fight, Jason,” Meya said
with a smile. “Pay them no mind.”
“I’ll take your advice, Meya.”
“I don’t see how you tell them apart,”
Kumi said. “Sometimes even I can’t.”
“Then you’re blind,” he told her,
pointing. “This is Meya. She wears her hair just a bit longer, and she
has a faint scar on the right side of her chin.” He pointed to
“Very good, Jason,”
“It’s become a learned skill,” he
grunted.
“Well, it’s been fun, but I have to go,”
Jason prompted.
“Not as much fun as it could have been,” Kumi grated.
“Look at it as more time to plot the
ultimate revenge,” Jason said mildly, nodding to the twin sisters. “Ladies.”
He climbed down and got into the truck,
and started it. He waved out the window
and drove away, opening up his mind just enough to pick up the sending he knew
was flying between them.
--with
that, Meya’s mental voice drifted to him.
I’m
not sure, but it sure makes you wonder, Kumi answered. That
shield shit he bought is a century obsolete.
Odds are he really is going to do with it what he said. After all, what other use could it possibly
have?
If she only knew.
I
hope he’s careful. Playing with shield
tech’s gonna draw lots of power. I hope he knows what he’s doing.
He seemed
pretty confident, Meya answered. I
wonder.
Wonder
what?
I wonder
if he really has talent. I kept close watch
over his thoughts the whole time he was up on that ridge, and they
seemed…normal.
He knew
we were here, he’d be on guard, Kumi
noted.
Sister,
didn’t you notice? They were too normal,
Of course
he was expecting it, Fure
injected. I still have my bet on the table.
Either of you care to pick it up?
We know
better than to bet against you, Fure, Meya said, her sending saturated
with amusement.
Too
bad he wore his armor,
We’ll
get him, trust me, Kumi promised in an adamant manner. He
wants to play with me, well, he’ll learn that I bite harder than he does. Fure!
Yes, Lady
Eleri?
Get us
ready to take off.
At once,
my Lady. Should I put the video
equipment away? he added with dry
amusement.
Bite
my ass, Fure, she growled.
As
soon as you return to the dropship, I can carry out your orders, my Lady,
he sent with that same tone.
Jason had never really thought Fure had
a sense of humor.
One thing though…if Kumi’s revenge
involved video equipment…he didn’t want
to know what she had in mind.
Chiira,
24 Miraa, 4393, Orthodox Calendar
It was done.
What was more, it was perfect.
The box had been constructed, which hadn’t been as easy as any of them thought it would be. The thicknesses of the metals of the walls had to be rather precise, and since they had to apply those coats by hand, it caused quite a bit of extra work. It took almost three days to manufacture the walls in st