Rumors of Honor (System States Rebellion Book 2) by Dietmar Wehr Read Free Book Online

Oracle’s size in Phase Two was
probably worthwhile. It might even be worthwhile to double it again in a Phase
Three, but that effort would almost certainly delay progress on developing
their own Majestic technology, and hopefully Oracle would be able to tell them
if that trade-off was worth it or not. The FEDs had a head start in computing
capability and in developing their raw industrial potential. Either one by
itself was bad enough, but both together was a terrifying prospect. Somehow the
SSU had to make an end run with something the FEDs weren’t working on.
     
    “You
call me when you have those long term answers, Major, and I don’t care if it’s
the middle of the night. Are we clear on that?”
     
    “Clear,
Sir.”
     
    * 
*  *  *
    Day
89/2544
    Trojan
woke to the sound of the navigation alarm. He was getting close to his
destination and needed to slow down. The needle-nosed reconnaissance craft that
he was using as his personal transport was capable of sustained flight at Mach
3. Even so, the trip from 1st Fleet/Army HQ on Hadley’s Alpha continent to the
new backup facility here on Beta still took long enough that he’d been able to
enjoy a nap while the craft flew on auto-pilot. The external view on the video
screen showed a heavy cloud cover below him, but he wasn’t worried. The craft’s
auto-pilot knew where they were. He ordered the auto-pilot to begin a
controlled descent and establish radio contact with the Air Defense center
guarding the backup site.
     
    “Site
B to 1FA01. We’ve received your transponder ID. You’re cleared to land. Welcome
back, General.”
     
    “Thank
you, Site B. How’s the weather down there?”
     
    “Better
hurry, General. Meteorology is predicting rain any minute now. We’ll have a
groundcar waiting for you.”
     
    “Sounds
good, Site B. I’m dropping through the cloud cover now.” It only took a few
seconds for the external view to show his destination. The backup command
facility at Site B had started out as a duplicate of the underground command
facility where 1st Fleet/Army Force was currently headquartered, but it had
quickly become something else. The primary site on Alpha continent housed the
Oracle computer, but because the Majestic device was so much larger, installing
it at the primary site was not possible. Site B was the solution. Trojan
chuckled as he remembered the engineers explaining to him how they intended to
install Majestic at Site B. The machine was so massive that it would be more
efficient to build the duplicate command facility around Majestic. The
machine’s components would form the walls inside the facility. Trojan and his
people would literally live and work inside Majestic.
     
    That
concept had presented some interesting engineering challenges. Unlike the
primary site, they couldn’t hollow out a large space deep underground and then
build the facility afterwards. At Site B, they started with a narrow valley.
They then constructed the facility from the bottom up at the base of the
valley, with Majestic’s components installed inside what appeared to be walls
up to a meter thick. When Majestic was finished being assembled, the top of the
facility would be added, and then crushed stone would be layered on top. Each
layer of crushed stone would be melted and allowed to cool as a solid slab of
stone before another layer was added. By the time the whole process was
finished, the valley would be filled in completely, and no one would be able to
tell that there was anything unusual beneath it.
     
    But
that was still in the future. Right now, the valley was only partially filled
in, and Majestic was still in the process of being installed. Trojan ordered
the external camera to zoom in to the site. The facility looked like a huge
maze with things moving through and over it. Those things were construction
vehicles carrying the pre-fabricated ‘panels’ of computer components that would
be connected together to form rooms and