IUSD10

==Chapter 10 - I used to Dream==
Coast Guard Laboratory
Spacecraft Snark VI
Kowloon System
Lyran Commonwealth
December, 3085
[Patrick Ngo's point of view...]
Prefabricated segments being de-orbited to the moonlet made the over-all 'roughing in' phase easier, but now we're down to tuning, and that is turning out to be a real pain in the ass.
It doesn't help that someone broke the safety barrier and somehow got caught in the tube right before our first power-on testing.  Five kilometers of superconducting conduit ten meters in diameter have to be replaced, and we haven't figured out which crew these guys came from, or why there are...okay, you can stop laughing.
YES.  I know, they're not our people.
They also didn't survive the stage zero power-on test, and they really did break ten kilometers of accelerator-by being dragged through it, crushed by acceleration, and broken apart by magnetic flux.
"Some of these fragments might be from a laser initiator." the construction chief, Warrant 4 Kameron Jennings821 told us.
"A laser initiator-like the trigger on an Alamo?" Penny clicked on it quick.
"Yeah."
"Well, we know they're not beltas at least." she says to him, and I give a questioning glance.
"Beltawallah wouldn't bother with a military warhead, there's rocks and we really can't stop those." she tells me, reminding me how Mom put down Geneva.
I don't want to say it but, I do.  "Dirtyfeet.  Foreigner Dirtyfeet, someone's intelligence op?"
"Seems likely." she says with a nod.  "Someone is targeting science programs, libraries..."
"I thought ComStar was out of the Commonwealth?" I'm confused, isn't the Word of Blake's extinct??"
My girlfriend shakes her head, "There are always people who will pick up for groups like that, where do you think they get their recruits?"
The Chief laughs on the common channel, and I can see his body language, he's exaggerating it. "Terra, of course!"
Penny's sunshield's up, and I can see her grimace of distaste-she might be adapting to being Kowloonese at breakneck speed, but her ancestors and her 'birth family' in the Clan still hold Earth as something somewhat sacred.
You know, like a New Tel Aviv Yisroel might see ancient Jerusalem.
Up the hill, they're still separating the damaged sections from the support towers.  They'll be shipped by Ferry to the Yards at Boojum, and recycled.
The replacement segments are already staged for delivery.
"We're going to have to tighten site security.  Those guys might've been here to destroy the project but, it killed 'em. The next bunch might be a little smarter." I note.
"Ayeh." the Chief says.
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