Chapter 27
Armsmaster stood at the front of the PRT briefing room and clicked for the next slide in his presentation.
A picture of a cruise liner was displayed on the wall behind him.
"This, is the Midnight Sky, formerly of Carnival Cruise lines serving the Alaska cruise routes. They retired it in response to the Leviathan attacks and kept it in storage. Six years ago, in 2005, they gave up on ever using it again, and offered it for sale. It was sold to Seagoing Holdings Limited, a front company for this man," he advanced to the next slide, showing a balding man with a crooked nose and an evil glint in his eye, "Emil Vargas, a major Colombian drug lord with sky-high ambitions. He has Swiss bank accounts filling up from a personal income equal to the entire official government income for Columbia. This comes from all his organized crime businesses, including drugs, which are summarized in the packets you each received, along with his various residences, known associates, capes in his employ, and a list of major operations he has conducted outside what is considered his territory, including internationally."
From the back of the briefing room, filled with PRT officials and Protectorate capes, came the sotto whisper in what sounded like Assault's voice "yah, but what is his shoe size?"
"Ten double E," Armsmaster replied simply, then continued.
"In May 2008, a substantial withdrawal from his accounts went missing, as far as any official tracking can determine. But we believe it went here," he advanced the slides again, now showing an aerial view of a large shipyard, "to Los Santos shipyard in Venezuela. Vargas has several contacts with that shipyard, and often uses it as a front for money-laundering operations. And it is the only one in the region with sufficient size and capacity, still in working order, to do what we believe it did: refit the Midnight Sky as a battleship impersonator. That ship now has some armor, several modifications by the Tinker known as SlaughterBot who reports to Vargas, and lots of guns, as seen here," he changed to a slide showing the battleship HMS Agamemnon, "but is not a true battleship."
The sotto voice of the cape known as Assault came from the back, "It'll do until one comes along!"
There were some chuckles, and director Piggot simply placed a hash-mark on her whiteboard under the existing heading "Fines for Assault being out-of-line."
There were already a number of hash-marks there.
Armsmaster barely paused before continuing. "Vargas is successful, in part, because he is a risk-taker, and, so far has been lucky. We believed he had been especially lucky with his sea-going drug shipments, none of which had been attacked by Leviathan. As you know, Leviathan can't be everywhere, and sometimes goes quiescent for a while, so not all ships get attacked. A very few ships, run mostly by the desperate, crazy, or stupid, still travel the seas. And Vargas' are among them."
He now showed a slide of a small fleet of miscellaneous ships docked in a small bay.
"Well, " he resumed, "now we know the secret of his success at sea. His ships are protected by something that even Leviathan evidently does not want to fight. This!"
He changed to a slide showing Godzilla standing in Brockton Bay.
There were gasps from around the room.
"This is why Vargas maintains a small fleet and a shipyard, which, by the way, was really busy from June 2008 until 3 months ago - we think refitting the Midnight Sky, even though all records of what they were doing were 'accidentally' burned in a fire."
"Back to that monster," Piggot gestured, "please."
"Yes, yes. Godzilla, or as some call it, Go-Jira, is a Case 53 cape, further modified by the Bio-Tinker known as Blasto - a cape that Vargas maintains regular contact with. It - we don't know its gender - is under Blasto's control, and he delegates that to Vargas, who not only uses it, but flaunts it. Further, having had a successful working relationship for so long, Vargas now trusts Blasto - so much so that he allowed Blasto to work on him and change his appearance, to this."
He changed to a slide of Captain Basil Snodgrass.
Someone said, "that looks nothing like his first picture."
"Exactly!" Armsmaster crowed. "That was his goal, and he achieved it. But we have evidence. That's page 32 of your packets, in fact, we will see, on the next slide, that...".
His voice was drowned out by the deafening sound of an enormous volume of rushing water.
All eyes in the briefing room turned to the window, to watch the huge sunken freighter, which had been, for years, blocking the mouth of Brockton Bay, slowly and carefully lift itself into the sky, alongside the battleship Agamemnon.
Both ships rose skyward, slowly at first, then accelerating to something like 25 miles per hour.
When they could hear again, Assault's voice was first and said "Ooh, was that in the packet? I must have missed it."
Armsmaster deadpanned "no, it wasn't."
Piggot decreed, "then update it. And until then, just finish up this briefing with a quick summary - you're out of time and I'll shortly be getting calls about flying ships."
Armsmaster looked pained, "but our evidence trail is ironclad and I want you to see that, I have 122 more slides..."
Piggot stood, "Summary. Quick. You have until I gather my papers and reach the door."
Armsmaster summarized, "their probing attacks on 2 major gangs in town was just a test. They are working up to an invasion. Villainous capes from around the area have been disappearing - going to a secret conference with Vargas where they are planning how to divide and consolidate - under Vargas - the new territory they conquer. Thomas Calvert of the PRT is working with them, as a mole in our own agency - he has disappeared and subsequently has been found to have some inexplicably-large bank accounts: payoffs from Vargas. Their plan is dependent on Godzilla, but will backfire, as that enormous reptile has a similarly enormous brain, and is starting to think for itself, as evidenced by..."
Piggot had left the room.
While others left too, Armsmaster muttered, "But I didn't even get to the analysis of how his right-hand man's affair with his secretary led to his love of tanks and battleships through a perceived need for greater security."
Assault, one of the last out of the room, heard and quipped "and most just use a blanket for that."
Armsmaster reached over and added a hash-mark to Piggot's white-board.
After the final person left the room, he muttered "unless we act now, in 3 months we'll all be bowing to our new reptilian overlord Godzilla. I was there - I saw the intelligence in those huge eyes. They'll see! Then they'll be sorry they didn't pay attention!"
-0-0-0-
The Agamemnon flew skyward, using telekinesis to also lift, alongside her, the Fat Mermaid - the ship which had for so long lain sunken across the mouth of Brockton Bay.
The formerly-sunken ship looked brand-new. For days, dozens of repair robots had been working on it - doing all the same things they'd done recently to those freight cars in the rail-yard.
And they'd done more than repair the ship.
They'd altered it for its new role.
The ship was now airtight, and former protrusions that wouldn't work well in space, or on a frozen almost-airless planet, were absorbed in and used as materials for making two new airlocks.
While they were at it, other repair robots had fixed up twenty miscellaneous sunken small to medium-sized ships as fishing boats for Lisa.
She'd given them some scented candles as a thank-you gift, proving she didn't always know everything. Boz had no use for the things.
The repair robots had also filled the cargo holds on the Fat Mermaid. Lisa had wanted the main shipping channel for the bay dredged and that had given Boz an idea.
Mars was mostly rock and rock-dust. The only soil it had was in greenhouses, in small amounts they'd brought with them from Earth. Gradually, over time, that would expand - they could make more soil by adding compost to rock dust, mixing in the right microbes, worms, nutrients and so forth.
But here was all this lovely silt filling up the shipping channel in Brockton Bay. Nobody would miss it, and where did it come from? It was topsoil that had been washed away and ended up in the sea.
Oh, sure, it had salt and other things mixed with it now. And the worms would have drowned and the microbes would have been replaced with other microbes. But all of that could be fixed. Just filter out the salt and other stuff - which the repair robots could do easily and were already started on - then expose it to some good soil and the microbes and worms would spread and multiply from there.
So the whole 26000 ton cargo capacity of the Fat Mermaid had been filled with silt from the channel, by repair robots using telekinesis.
Then they'd filled in the ship's hallways, and some of its rooms too.
And some other rooms they left full of seawater, complete with its complex biome. It would make a good start for some hydroponics on Mars.
Between all of that: the ship's own 25000 tons weight, it's 26000 tons cargo, and the full rooms and hallways, they were straining at the limits of the Agamemnon's 64000 ton telekinetic limit, so were taking things slowly and carefully.
They were also supporting the Fat Mermaid using a little help from Gravity Control, just to make sure not to break it in half or anything like that.
They had not yet reached quite 1 mile in altitude before the PRT and Protectorate attacked.
Twelve anti-ship missiles launched at the Agamemnon from the converted oil-rig that was the Protectorate base. and four more launched at the Fat Mermaid from the PRT headquarters.
It made Boz angry. "What could they possibly be thinking! They are supposed to be what passes for law-and-order here, but they are acting like they're just the strongest gang. How could you possibly rationalize this - a lethal attack - based on what we're doing: flying away. Seriously - if we didn't file a proper flight plan, they should try to fine us or something like that. Instead they act like organized crime by trying to destroy whatever they can't control. Fine, they were warned. We'll hit back."
By the time he'd finished speaking, the ship's 4 bottom-mounted lasers had already shot down all 16 missiles.
Boz had moved to the Gravity Control Console and was gingerly preparing to make fine adjustments.
"Full broadside?" Abe asked seriously.
"No," Boz responded, "I don't want to kill them in droves. What law-and-order folks have around here does depend on them. Luckily, there is another option."
Beth spoke. "Energy readings show they have a couple lasers ready to try to shoot down any missiles we launch."
"Then we'll start with particle beams to take those out. Prepare to rotate ship." Boz replied.
Beth braced herself and Ron chuckled, offering, "Not like that - we won't feel anything, since Boz will alter the ship's gravity to match our rotation. So what feels like down now will still feel like down. But the Earth will look like it moved around us, and that can get a little queasy if you watch too closely."
Ron got a nod from Basil and said "Sprich mMit all humans in a 10 mile radius. "Attention PRT and Protectorate - you organized crime loonies masquerading as a legitimate government. Since when is it a death penalty offense to fly away from here? Yet you just fired upon us. Again. You were warned about that. Prepare to receive our return fire. We will be merciful this time and not shoot to kill, even though that's what you did. Also note that our ships are moving directly above your headquarters, so if you do manage to shoot us down, thousands of tons of ship will fall right on you. Think about that and be smart for once. People of the Bay area - if your democracy still works at all, you should consider voting these abusive clowns out of office. Out"
The image of the Earth below, showing on the main screen, slowly moved to their side. Those on board felt no change, since their local gravity still pulled towards their floor, and overrode the Earth's gravity.
Then, with the ship's bottom facing West, it's top facing East, and it's Port side facing the ground, it starred firing.
First, the port-side lasers fired at the Protectorate oil rig, and knocked down its forcefield.
Then the port-side particle beams fired, and took out 3 lasers - one on the PRT building, and two on the Protectorate oil-rig.
Then the big guns fired chemical rounds.
Two each of 12 inch shells, and 9.2 inch shells, all filled with Containment Foam, hit the PRT headquarters building and Protectorate oil-rig.
Ron quipped "what, no Nausea rounds?"
Boz responded, "You're right. I normally think of those in a tactical sense, to impair the enemy's effectiveness for a while as I do something else to him. And in that sense there was no point. But they do cause severe nausea, which sucks to experience, and so would be a good use of negative feedback. Lets see if they can learn not to do things they get punished for!"
They started loading those, while the particle beams fired again. Four beams each cut partway through one of the legs supporting the Protectorate oil-rig. Their goal was not to destroy it, but weaken it and demonstrate they could destroy it. They succeeded.
The other two particle beams took out the two-by-six missile launcher on the oil-rug and the two-by-two missile launcher on the PRT building.
The next volley of 12 inch and 9.2 inch guns fired, with both Nauseate and Exhaustion chemical rounds for both target buildings.
"Reset too?", Ron asked.
"Good question," Boz replied. "On the one hand, that will be a boon for them and they don't deserve gifts. On the other hand, nobody could better use a boost to their sanity than these guys. Maybe these organized criminals masquerading as government will rule better if they are, at least, mentally well-adjusted organized criminals...yah, hit em."
"I have a half-dozen missiles full of Reset loaded up and ready to fire," Abe offered.
"But that's enough to Reset the whole city... oh, I see where you're going with that. And you're right - the whole city needs it: they're all dysfunctional in some way. Sure, fire the missiles"
Abe fired, and they all watched in silence as the missiles flew down and airburst in a pattern over the city of Brockton Bay.
"Well, that ought to help," Ron observed.
Everybody nodded.
When they'd gone another mile straight up, at their stately best flying speed of 25 mph, Lisa's voice sounded in Boz's inner ear. "Sprich mit Basil Snodgrass. You know, my dear Boz, that they will run a huge smear campaign against you for this. It will really be about you defying them in front of everybody, but they'll claim whatever sounds scariest, such as you launching chemical warfare that tried to kill them all but failed. Hah! Come to think of it they'll claim it failed because of something they did - that they foiled your evil plan to gas all of Brockton Bay to death & so we should love them and hate you. You know that, don't you?"
For once she didn't cut off his response. He said, "let them try. They can say what they like, but so can we. But whatever - when we come back, it'll just be a quick visit and I doubt that they can do much that will matter to us in so short a time."
"You know," Lisa's voice sounded serious for once, "From anybody else, I'd say 'famous last words'. But you just may be able to defy the lot of them. Good luck to you. I'll start a whisper campaign in your favor to help. It's the least I can do. Come to think of it - do you care to 'double-down'? 'In for a penny, in for a pound', right? If you are willing to try that on another city, I have the perfect target for you: Madison Wisconsin. The Simurgh attacked it a couple years ago and drove everyone there insane. The PRT gave up on sorting it out and just walled it off. So there's no risk - if your Reset chemical doesn't help, nobody is even likely to notice. But if it does help, that would be a major deal and news would get out. That's not the only city written off because the Simurgh attacked it. Success would give hope to millions. Plus, I had a friend there. What do you say?"
"We'll do it. Fire when ready Abe" Boz ordered. Their missiles had plenty of range to hit Madison from here.
"Excellent. I'll have assets monitor the results so we can use that in our favor if it helps," Lisa cheered, "But that's not why I called. I want you to take me to the moon."
"What?"
"Well, not me exactly, but representatives from my company, CAPES. It came out in conversation with Beth that there is a partially-built moon-base which you all saw and explored. I want to check into what possibilities it may offer my company. So I asked for volunteers and got 5. I just need you to drop them off on your way out, then pick them up and return them home in 2 days when you come back." Lisa said.
"That's it?"
"Well, now that you're offering, some basic support gear, like air tanks, food, and water to sustain them for the 2 days would be nice, just in case the base is no help to them. In fact, double that amount just to be safe. And shelter too, come to think of it. And some tools - I have a list. But what would really be helpful is a couple dozen of those repair robots of yours. They could really get things done with support like that. Thanks Boz honey!"
"Wait Lisa, give me a minute. I'll have to call you right back. Boz out."
"Sprich mit Dinah Alcott. Hello, Dinah? It's Boz from the ship, how are you?"
Dinah's voice replied cheerfully, "never better, thanks. What's up."
"I need to ask you a question in the form of 'what are the odds of'. Is that OK?"
"Sure, I haven't used my power yet today, so I'm good to go. I can answer several before the headaches begin. So ask away."
"Thanks Dinah. What are the odds that I can trust Lisa with truly scary levels of power?" Boz asked.
"The odds are 87.36% that she'll keep agreements made with you, even if scary levels of power are involved." Dinah replied, "why?"
"Keep them in a 'rules-lawyer' way, where she is looking for loopholes and how she can twist them, or keep the spirit and intent of those agreements?" a concerned Boz asked.
Dinah laughed, "with everybody else, it'd be the rules lawyer way. With you, she'll keep the intent in good faith. She likes you, and wants to stay on your good side. But she'd also be good because she knows you could flatten her and any organization she could come up with, if you wanted to."
Boz sighed, "Thanks a ton Dinah. That's a load off of my mind. How can I repay the favor?"
"Chocolate!" Dinah enthused. "The chocolate you gave out before was the best! But the PRT went around confiscating all of that, and the spices too. They said it'd make us your slaves or something. I think they're just big meanies though."
"They are indeed!" Boz agreed. "OK, how much and where?"
"One metric ton in my garage by dad's car!"
"So be it!" Boz agreed. "It'll show up in the next few minutes. Thanks again Dinah. Out"
"What was that about?" Ron asked.
"Certain things must be double-checked." Boz answered.
"Aren't you a bit late for that? You've already given Lisa the beginnings of a trading and shipping empire." Ron replied.
"True, but that's comparatively small potatoes. She had the beginnings of it anyway and would have succeeded. I just gave her a head-start." Boz answered.
"So what's different this time?"
"She's looking into having a moon-base. Space is the ultimate high-ground. Haven you ever heard of Project Thor?"
"I gather you're not talking about a screen projection of a comic-book movie?" Ron quipped.
Abe replied, "It's a nuclear weapon that isn't nuclear - no radiation. You simply drop something heavy from orbit onto a target. It could be rocks, but is better if it is something heat-resistant, like tungsten, so it can take the heat of re-entry. It doesn't even have to be heavy - its the orbital speeds that give it most of its energy. It hits with about as much energy as a nuke."
"Well," Boz corrected, "a small tactical nuke anyway. But, yes, given a moon-base, there's almost no limit to how many of these rocks she could prepare to throw. Think about it - people use explosives against each-other all the time. The main reason we don't use nukes is the radiation. But these make no radiation. So the wrong person would be severely tempted to use this to rule the world."
"Why haven't they?" asked Ron.
"The high costs to launch something into space. It costs a staggering amount to loft something into orbit using rockets. Thor depends on weight, and the more weight you loft into orbit, the more it costs. Bombers and such are cheaper, so folks use them instead."
Ron figured it out. "But we can loft her people and equipment to the moon for free, then she can make stuff there. And it is comparatively cheap to drop something from the moon onto Earth. So you're checking to see if she's a megalomaniac-in-waiting."
"Yup!" Boz agreed. "While I'm at it, do you all agree with Dinah's assessment?"
He had to tell them what that was, since the conversation had just been between the two: Dinah and Boz.
Then they discussed it. But in the end they decided it was accurate.
Boz made the return call.
"Sprich mit Lisa. Hello, Lisa?" Boz asked
"Hi Boz, I'm glad to hear from you. Apparently you decided I can be trusted not to take over the world through Project Thor?" Lisa sounded smug, as usual.
"More or less," Boz replied. "What we decided was that we'd accept your word on that. Specifically, if you promise not to use any ability we facilitate, in order to do something we'd be opposed to. So, go ahead and build Thor if you want to, and go ahead and use it against targets that deserve it, like an Endbringer. But don't blackmail anyone with it, or anything you know we'd disagree with. Deal?"
"Deal." Lisa replied. "And, no, you don't have to tell me that you may choose at any time to show up again, and could easily shoot down any Thor strike you didn't like. I'll be good. In fact, I was actually thinking of the moon base primarily for other reasons."
"Great," a relieved Boz replied. Then they worked out the details.
Later, when HMS Agamemnon reached orbit, she ran the star drive for a fraction of a second, to put her halfway to the moon. Her teleporter could not quite reach the moon from Earth. But from the halfway point, it could easily reach either one.
Then a teleport portal opened in a warehouse Lisa owned, and collected her 5 volunteers, plus their equipment.
They landed on Agamemnon's deck just long enough for the portal to close, and re-open with a new endpoint within the moon base.
Then those 5, plus their equipment, plus more equipment provided temporarily by Boz went through to the moon base.
All that equipment was carried by 25 repair robots.
Duplicates of Ron and Simon also went through, before the portal closed, since they were the ones who knew the most about the existing moon base and could best show Lisa's people around. When they felt ready, Ron and Simon could dismiss those Duplicates, no matter what dimension they happened to be in at the time.
All the equipment and robots that Boz sent through was Replicated, and he only promised to keep them in existence until he returned and sent her 5 people home. But anything the robots made would be permanent.
Some got to work on mines, to dig minerals out of the moon.
Some started setting up some foundries to smelt, purify, and shape those minerals.
They hoped they'd find the right minerals to make more robots - not more repair robots like Boz had supplied. He wasn't letting anybody get that design, and, in fact, had set every robot here - every robot in this dimension that he'd supplied - to dismiss itself if captured or if anybody started trying to disassemble it or figure out its design.
But the robots they'd found already working on the moon-base were reasonably capable and could possibly be reverse-engineered so they could build more 'moon-bots' as they were calling them.
Some repair robots started on domes to be used to house all of those foundries and factories.
Some housing domes already existed, but they wanted to keep those separate.
The last two got to work on making a pair of clear glass domes to be used as greenhouses.
-0-0-0-
After teleporting people and things to the moon, the Agamemnon headed straight for Mercury.
They had no business there. They just wanted to leave a false trail on general principles in case anyone was watching.
And it took only seconds.
Once Mercury was between them and Earth, and therefore blocking the view from Earth, they went through a dimensional portal back to Dimension 1, their home dimension.
Then they went straight to Mars.
With the star drive, it took only seconds.
Light takes about 8 minutes to reach Earth from the Sun, or 12 minutes and 40 seconds to reach Mars. But the star drive could go a thousand times as fast as light.
"You know," Simon commented, "we move around the solar system like it's nothing. So we seem pretty fast, at least until you realize that it'd take us 30 years, going as fast as we could, just to reach the center of our own galaxy from here. And that's just one-way. It'd be another 30 years to return."
"Yup," Boz replied, "We're pretty much limited to local exploration. Too bad, too - I was always curious about the Lesser Magellanic Cloud. That said, though, it is nice to be able to check out the solar system and nearby stars. I understand that Tau Ceti is next on our list, with half again as many votes as the next runner-up. It'll take about 4 days and 9 hours to traverse the almost 12 light-years, so we won't fit that in until we finish our business with the crazy planet we just came from. But when we do, I'm looking forward to it."
They pulled in to orbit above Mars, and the radio crackled to life. "Attention HMS Agamemnon, please identify yourselves so we don't have to pretend you're an unidentified ship and threaten to shoot you."
Ron responded faster than anybody else, with "Hi Honey, I'm home."
"That's great, Ron," the voice at the far end chuckled, "but we need something more."
Ron grinned from ear-to-ear as he proudly proclaimed "I've got a lovely bunch of coconuts!"
Simultaneously, he created, in the planetary radio room, a scale-model illusion of the Agamemnon, with hundreds of bags of coconuts dangling from its railings.
Boz snickered, "You've just been waiting to say that, haven't you?"
Ron nodded, as the radio spoke again, "That's great. That'll do just fine. I didn't know you could do that, but I'm real confident nobody else can. Welcome back Agamemnon."
Boz replied, "why so serious? What happened to the 'we're all just folks' approach I liked so much?"
"Well," the radio responded, "it's all fun and games until someone launches a nuke at you. Then you tend to get a bit serious."
"A nuke! Was anybody hurt?"
"Of course not! They only launched it a week ago. It'll take it another 4 months to get here. And even then we'll just shoot it down. Still, it's got folks a tad nervous around here."
"Ooh! Can I have it?" Boz asked eagerly.
"Help yourself"
"Awesome!" Boz cheered. "We'll get to it in the next couple of days."
The amused voice responded. "By the way, that reminds me, the CHIMP wants to talk to you, hang on a sec."
"Beth," Ron asked from across the command center, "Can you get the CHIMP on screen? I want to see if he still has the mask."
Beth nodded and in just a moment, the main screen lit up showing a middle-aged man in stained coveralls, walking across an underground cavern towards a radio console. He was walking away from a bulldozer he had been repairing - being CHIMP was just a part-time job. He had his welding gloves tucked into his belt, and was just removing his welding mask as he sat down at the radio. They could all see that the welding mask was painted to resemble a grinning chimpanzee.
Ron laughed "I gave him that, you know."
They knew.
The colonists on Mars tended to be very practical, informal people. But that had come with a surprisingly strong whimsical component.
Ron loved it and encouraged it.
It was debated whether that had been a factor in the colonists' decision regarding the naming of their chief executive office. Before anyone had been voted in, the people had decided that their chief executive's title should be the Chief High Imperial Martian President, or CHIMP for short.
One argument in favor of doing so had been that self-important stuffed-shirt types would never understand the humor in it, and could never bear having such a title applied to themselves, so it would keep some of the worst sorts of people away from the power they always seemed to crave.
They had yet to see whether that would be true in general, but so far so good: the first CHIMP to be elected, Bob O'Toole, happily went along with the joke and didn't let it bother him at all.
In fact, some said that a major factor in his winning the election had been the fact that he'd started going by first-name, last-initial: Bob O, or Bobo as it quickly became.
After his election victory, many had enjoyed calling him Bobo the CHIMP, and again he played along with it. Bob O'Toole was a man with no insecurities at all, so such jokes didn't bother him in the least.
The man in the cavern - Bobo the CHIMP - spoke, and the radio in Agamemnon's command center relayed his voice, after a brief introductory "ook, ook", where the USA would have played a couple bars of "Hail to the Chief".
Bobo said, "First Citizen Basil! I'm glad you're back. We have a couple of favors to ask you."
"First Citizen? What's up with that?" Boz asked.
"I'm chief executive and I get to name stuff if I want to!" The CHIMP retorted. "The position comes with no special privileges or anything - that isn't up to me. But the title is accurate - you were the first person on this planet, and you've contributed more to it's success than any twenty others. So there! You are First Citizen, like it or not." he finished with a faux-harrumph.
Ron laughed. "Nicely done Bobo! My hat is off to you."
Bobo laughed too. "Seriously though, how long are you here for? We have a few favors to ask."
Boz replied, "two days, then we're off to pick up some more stuff. Do these favors you want include stopping an incoming nuclear missile?"
"Well, you can if you want," the CHIMP replied, "we're pretty confident we can shoot that down. But still, it'd help some folks calm down and sleep better. But that does touch on our most urgent need - emigration. some folks - 312 of them - want to leave here and go 'home' to Earth, despite the tests that showed they could take this kind of lifestyle and all the help you've been in improving living conditions here. Seriously. When I signed up, that meant living for the rest of my life in a capsule-turned-habitat smaller than most folks' bathrooms back home, plus working in a space-suit all day every day to expand the habitats, feed ourselves, and develop the ability to make what we needed out of local materials. That would have been tough, but we were up for the challenge. But with your help, we're already at a point we'd have taken decades to get to without it. Heck, every one of the nearly 5000 people here has over 400 square feet of personal living space just for themselves - still a little scanty by the standards back on Earth, but absolutely luxurious compared to a space-capsule-turned-habitat. And that's just personal space - not counting working spaces or shared spaces like cafeterias. Thanks again, by the way. But still, despite having it comparatively easy, 312 of my people have had it and want to go back, and their attitude is poisoning things around here. can you help?"
"Sure, I'd be happy to help," Boz agreed. "By the way, what led to somebody launching a nuclear missile at you?"
"A dictatorship - a bunch of whiny envious punks if you ask me - was jealous when we claimed sovereignty over all of Mars. They announced that they deserved a share of Mars as much as anyone - nevermind all the historical precedent to the contrary - and that no 'Imperial' Mars, claiming all of Mars, would exist when they were done with us. Then they launched the nuke. It's a fairly classic 'if I can't have it, you can't either' childish tantrum."
"We'll look into doing something about that - one more thing on our to-do list." Boz replied.
"Yes, about that..." Bobo started.
They spent the entire duration of Agamemnon's descent from orbit discussing details.
-0-0-0-
Author's Note
Yes, in case you were not sure, Armsmaster did come to several incorrect conclusions in the briefing he gave in this chapter.
People do that all the time. Even when their facts are right, they often put them together in the wrong ways to get the wrong meanings.
I'm tired of people in movies or stories always jumping to the right conclusion based on little or no evidence. In my experience, the opposite is more often the case, and I wanted to reflect that here.