4.1
22 March
✧
Clementine Cislunar Fuel Depot
Earth-Moon Lagrange Point 1
Cislunar Space
“Sir,” an anonymous functionary was saying, “we had very little warning you were coming.”
His accent was Moldovan. He was blocking the hatchway that led from the pressurized hangar to the station interior, forcing Grigory to hold a grab rail to keep from floating away. The wisdom of including a pressurized hangar in this station was debatable, but Grigory had wanted his men to be able to load, unload, and service gatherbots in a shirtsleeve environment, and that had seemed the easiest way. But the problem with a big open space like this was that if you weren’t extremely careful, you could get stranded in midair and have to wait for air currents to drift you toward a surface. Not even microgravity to help you here at L1.
Impatiently, Grigory asked the functionary, “For what do you require warning, crewman? To cover up your failings? This facility should be prepared for all things at all times. May I enter?”
“Of course, sir. Apologies, sir.”
The functionary (whose name tag said Epureanu) was blocking the hatchway, but presently he attempted to bow and fold his hands submissively, and also to step out of the way, but since there was no gravity here both instincts failed him, and he simply flopped and rotated in the air. Grigory felt momentary embarrassment for the man, and also the countervailing urge to simply brush him aside like a curtain and swing into the station—his station: the Clementine Cislunar Fuel Depot.
But he reminded himself why this young man was afraid: not of being pushed aside, not of looking a fool. Of losing his job, perhaps, but at the very back of it all he was fearful of being stuffed out an airlock and declared an industrial accident. Such fears were useful, and Grigory knew better than to squander them with petty schoolyard behavior. Instead, he waited silently, which he could see on Epureanu’s face was far more effective.
The man got fumblingly out of Grigory’s way, and then Grigory did enter. And now that his point was made, he let the sympathy rise to the surface, and he said, “I don’t know you. They sent you down here alone, to face whatever mood brought the boss here ahead of schedule, in an otherwise empty shuttle. I spent a hundred million dollars to arrive here early, and this makes them afraid. So they sent you.”
“Sir,” the functionary agreed, apparently unsure what else to say.
“Rest assured, if I’m indeed angry it is not with you, nor will they succeed in deflecting it onto you by such tactics.”
“Sir,” the man said again. “Thank you, sir.”
“What is your job here?”
“Maintenance supervisor, sir. My crew checks the gatherbots every time they come in.”
“Ah. Real work, then.”
“I don’t hold a wrench,” Epureanu admitted, “but I put in longer hours than the men and women who do.”
Grigory considered this. For the man to speak so—like a human being talking to another human being—implied some courage back there behind the nervousness. Grigory decided to respond as a fellow human, and so he said, “Men of small imagination expect me to behave like a cartoon gangster, and I find it is easier to oblige them than to explain why I don’t need to. Thus, I have brought real vodka with me, and real caviar, and two cigars. Only two, Epureanu, to show who has earned my favor. In two hours’ time, you will join me in the mess hall for a public celebration, to show these men they fear the wrong things. What is it with spacemen, ah? So smart, such strong chins, and yet so many of them are fools.”
“Yes, sir,” Epureanu agreed. Back now to playing recorded phrases from the Obsequious Spaceman Handbook.
Grigory sighed. Perhaps the vodka would loosen this man’s tongue, and once the cigars were lit and the caviar and eggs and chopped onion consumed, Grigory would also invite Morozov and Voronin, the station’s commander and subcommander, to join the party, lest their offended dignity get the better of them and swing back against Epureanu somehow. And when they’d all had a few drinks, then and only then could they truly speak. He’d often thought this was the real reason for Russian alcoholism; not the grim winters, not the wild gyrations of the economy, but a simple inability to connect, person to person, in any other way, alas. Or perhaps an unwillingness, but it amounted to the same thing; Russian culture admitted few other bonding mechanisms.
In zero gravity, one did not sling one’s flight bag over one’s shoulder. Rather, one tucked it under one’s arm and kicked off with the feet. Grigory brushed past Epureanu and made his way into the station proper.
“Why are you here?” Epureanu asked.
“The Coalition has put a naval blockade on Suriname. Surface ships are prevented from entering or leaving the country until further notice.”
“Oh. Shit. Really?”
“Yes, really. The bastards fear what they can’t beat.”
“Well, uh, your quarters have been prepared,” Epureanu said, trailing along behind him. “By me, I mean. Personally.”
“Good,” Grigory said. “I’ll take a large shit and then head down to Operations.”
“May I ask, sir? Why don’t you have any windows in there?”
Because I fear assassins looking in there through telescopes and knowing for sure that’s where I am, Grigory was tempted to say. Instead, he answered, “The Sun revolves very slowly around the station, once per month, and when it’s on this side I find no window shade ever fully blocks it out. You live here, this should be obvious. But this is not the time for small talk, Epureanu. You’re dismissed. No need to hang at my elbow while I shit, ah? You’ll meet me in two hours, and I’ll tell you all about it at that time.”
“Very good, sir.”
Epureanu looked grateful to have the opportunity to retreat.
Grigory sighed. Alone among the Horsemen, he had not built his empire from scratch, but inherited the foundations of it from his father, Magnus Orlov, the Great and Terrible. It was hardly Grigory’s own fault that he’d inherited a very Russian legacy of violence and corruption, with all the attendant risks. He had standards to uphold, and quite frankly Orlov Petrochemical had always run on fear and jealousy and greed, in that order, and such a legacy was not lightly overturned if one valued one’s life. Indeed, it was by paying close attention to this legacy that Grigory had expanded his father’s business into nuclear fusion, and then into asteroid mining.
And so, in order to maintain a reputation as the sort of person who could have you killed, Grigory had in fact had people killed. He had, yes, but only twice! And only because there truly hadn’t seemed to be any way around it. But twice went a long way, and the people who worked for him sometimes also had people killed, and all of that stuck to him, as he supposed it must. The Eastern Bloc energy sector was not for the squeamish or faint of heart. Which of course made it all the more annoying that Morozov and Voronin had sent a junior manager—a foreign junior manager—to receive him. After all this time, they should certainly know better than that.
In Operations, Morozov looked up at Grigory’s arrival.
“Mr. Orlov,” he said, with utmost respect and just a tinge of resignation. “You made it.”
“I did.”
“Welcome,” said Voronin. “I see you dodged the blockade.”
There were three other people in here—two men and a woman—but none dared look up from their tasks.
“I did,” Grigory said again. In truth, he’d taken what he feared might be the last commercial flight into Paramaribo—a commercial flight!—and then ordered a shuttle slapped on top of the next available OP rocket, and he had flown it here himself, not trusting any automated systems because the shuttles were built by Lockheed Martin and not his own people. But he made it here, yes, because he feared what violence might happen to his reputation if the Godfather of Space and scariest of Horsemen should find himself trapped Earthside. Space assets created a small fraction of his total revenue, but close to one hundred percent of his growth potential and perceived importance, and he wasn’t about to compromise that.
“What is our status?” he demanded, leaving the question deliberately open-ended just to see what they would say.
It was Morozov who spoke first: “Still operating, for the moment. Enough of our LV fuel production has shifted into Suriname that we’ll keep flying for another ten days. But then, if the blockade doesn’t open up, we’ll be out of launch vehicles. And that’s the most optimistic scenario; if the Coalition declares a no-fly zone, we’re grounded immediately and for the duration.”
“Duration of what?” Voronin asked.
“Of whatever these cocksuckers are doing,” Morozov answered.
Men of little imagination, yes. Grigory told them, “Our facility is not the target of this interference. Although we could bomb them from orbit, the governments of the world know we’re within reach of their immediate reprisal. What do they fear? Rogue actors.”
“Renz Ventures?” Voronin asked.
“Of course,” Grigory said. “Who else? But Esley is a long way off. To attack there would be costly, and slow, whereas a naval blockade of Suriname requires only a reallocation of existing military assets.”
“Making us collateral damage,” Voronin said, getting it.
“Indeed. Along with all space commerce that doesn’t go through Coalition governments directly. This is fear, gentlemen. Fear of the unknown, and of the future generally. These governments pine for days gone by, when men like us were under their thumbs, or at their service. And how do we respond to fear?”
He waited a few seconds, for an answer he knew they wouldn’t attempt, because they themselves were afraid. Of the unknown, of what he might do to them if the Clementine Cislunar Fuel Depot were idled for even just a few days. Then he answered the question himself: “We feed it, while appearing to cooperate. We can still land things on Earth, yes?”
“In Kazakhstan and North Africa,” Morozov agreed. “Or on the ocean.”
“Fine. That’s fine. Order twenty landing bodies from Renz, one every week until further notice, rush delivery. We’ll repay their fuel costs in kind, with fuel. What do we make here, Morozov?”
“Fuel.”
Orlov snorted. “You’re a small man, you know that?”
Morozov looked offended. “You tell me, then. What do we make?”
“Customers, Andrei. We make customers. Tell Harvest Moon we’ll buy their entire output of Helium-three for the next four years.”
It was the oldest play from Magnus Orlov’s rulebook: find what people need, and position yourself between them and it, and charge as much as the market would bear, and ignore the weeping of widows and orphans. It had worked for Magnus in oil and gas and the refineries to process them, and for Grigory in deuterium—heavy hydrogen—and the fusion reactors to ignite it, hot as the Sun.
He could see Morozov and Voronin still didn’t get it, and right now he didn’t have the patience to explain it to them. It was a simple enough plan: monopolize the production of RzVz to deny assets to Harvest Moon, and monopolize the production of Harvest Moon while they lacked their own transportation. If Earth was taking itself out of the picture, then the Horsemen were dependent on one another for resources, and with a little maneuvering that could mean—it must mean—that they were all dependent on Clementine, which of course was just a thin mask for Orlov Petrochemical. Named for an American lunar probe (which in turn was named for an imaginary daughter from an old American mining song) Clementine was an independent company, only forty percent owned by Grigory Orlov, and with an international crew, only forty percent ethnic Russians. And yet, most of the startups and nonprofits and hedge funds and high-net-worth individuals who held shares in Clementine were in Grigory’s pocket one way or another, and the Clementine entity was self-incorporated according to its own laws. Each man (and three women) aboard had renounced an Earthly citizenship, and held a passport issued by Clementine itself. The station was, for all practical purposes, an independent nation, with Grigory Orlov as its ruler, and any profits that didn’t land directly in his pocket came with . . . encumbrances. The arrangement was mostly for the purpose of avoiding taxes, but it had other advantages as well. It let him risk other people’s money, for one thing. It let him bring in people eager to take on a large share of his risk, for a relatively small share of his profits, and it gave him a handy pool of scapegoats for when things, inevitably, didn’t go according to plan.
As for the business at hand, Helium-3 (also known as “tralphium” to nuclear chemists and “threelium” to the tabloids) was simply a lightweight version of the normal helium atom, with only one neutron instead of two. Though fantastically rare on Earth, it was actually rather common throughout the universe, and one of the many volatiles Harvest Moon Industries was pulling out of lunar craters. And the thing about that was, Orlov-brand utility-scale fusion reactors were fully capable of burning a tralphium-deuterium mix instead of their usual deuterium-deuterium. In fact, they already produced and combusted tralphium that they produced internally, as part of their normal fusion cycle! Feeding it in as a primary fuel would require some minor plumbing changes and software updates, but simulations suggested the reactors would not only produce five times as much net energy, but would last six times longer before neutron-producing side reactions wore out their components.
This was by design, not by coincidence, for Grigory Orlov had always believed in a future when he controlled a supply of 3He. He just hadn’t counted on controlling the only supply, so quickly. It made sense, though; he already had seventeen reactors operational around the world, whereas Sir Lawrence Edgar Killian, the CEO of Harvest Moon Industries, owned zero, and was presently selling his tralphium output to a diverse and ever-shifting assortment of government labs and quasi-governmental utility companies, plus a trickle to Dan Beseman for his alleged Mars colony. By selling through Orlov exclusively, Killian could probably reduce his own overhead, making it actually a good deal for him, as well as the only deal Grigory left open to him.
It had taken Grigory all of ten seconds to work this out in his head. He could see that Morozov and Voronin needed time to catch up, but they could do that while following his instructions.
“Place the orders,” he told them. “Right now, before one of them figures it out and beats us to it.”
Of course, Clementine did also produce conventional fuels (hydrogen, oxygen, and methane) and other volatiles (mainly nitrogen and CO2), so he spent a few minutes thinking about these, and when Morozov and Voronin were ready he told them, “With terrestrial carbon unavailable, extraterrestrial carbon is about to become a lot more valuable. I want you to double the price of CO2, and triple the price of methane. Triple nitrogen while you’re at it. Leave hydrogen and oxygen alone, or we’ll simply force Beseman and the Chinese to buy it from Harvest Moon. That must not be permitted. Drop those prices if you have to.”
“You’re cornering the market on three separate materials,” Morozov observed.
“We. We’re cornering the market, and in two cases it’s only the extraterrestrial market, so let us not get too excited.”
Unlike Renz Ventures, Clementine only sent its gatherbots after carbonaceous, volatile-rich space rocks. Still, they did produce some elemental aluminum and magnesium as a waste product of the processing (for which Beseman was the sole customer), as well as iron and slag, which Grigory practically gave away to the Chinese for radiation shielding. Now, Grigory dropped the price on these, mainly (again) to keep Harvest Moon at bay. Let them control trade on the lunar surface itself—there was little Grigory could do about that!—but he would do what he could to stymie their growth into other sectors.
“Is that all?” Morozov wanted to know.
Grigory thought about that. “It is all I can think of for the moment. Clear a workstation for me here, and I will go through the books. You gentlemen are adequate at following orders, but I’m guessing there are patterns you’ve missed, and every ruble is going to count in the coming weeks. In fact, order ten kilograms of sulfur and ten of phosphorus from Harvest Moon, right now, before they start raising their own prices. We’re going to need it for the food and drug synthesizers.”
After that, he drew up orders to convert his fusion energy plants over to deuterium-tralphium—a contingency plan that was already in place for most of them, and easily drawn up for the remainder. And then he simply farted around for a while, looking at numbers and adjusting allocations here and there. For all his bluster, he did tend to hire good people, and they should be more than competent to take matters from here. But he liked to stay closely involved, particularly with his off-world assets, so he dutifully expanded each line of the cash flow statements until he had a clear understanding of what Clementine and its people were doing, and ought to be doing. He could of course have done this work from his quarters, or Earth, or anywhere really; taking up space in Operations was mostly theater and partly social, since even cartoon gangsters need some level of human contact.
Finally, he logged out of the workstation and excused himself to the mess hall, stopping by his quarters along the way for the bottle of vodka and the bento boxes of egg and onion and caviar. And the cigars, of course.
In the mess hall, Epureanu was waiting for him, with a slightly nervous impatience.
“Drinking with gangsters can be unnerving,” Grigory told him. “I should know; I’ve been doing it all my life.”
“I don’t doubt it,” Epureanu said.
There were tables and benches in here, and seat belts, to create the illusion of sitting down to a meal with one’s crewmates, who were of course also one’s neighbors and coworkers and friends. In early days, the module had simply been a big open space where people could hang about at any angle they pleased. That was certainly a more efficient use of space, but Grigory found it weirdly isolating, so he’d ordered it changed to this admittedly rather silly configuration. There were also festive decorations taped to the walls—paper flowers and paper animals, shipped up from a party supply store in Paramaribo. It was silly, but it worked. It set the tone Grigory wanted for this room: relaxed camaraderie.
Settling down across from Epureanu, Grigory stuck down his bottle and bento boxes on their magnetic bases, and leveled a gaze at the young man.
“I can assure you I’m no gangster, but drinking with the boss can be tricky as well. One worries about saying the wrong thing; will I pump you full of truth serum and then punish you for what you say? This is a legitimate fear. This is exactly the situation I’ve put you in. But it’s also one of the only ways for grown men to make a real connection. This is valuable, particularly for a man in my position, with whom the right sort of people might be loath to connect, while the wrong sort are entirely too eager. I think you’re the right sort, Epureanu, and this is why I compel you to drink with me.”
“I appreciate the invitation,” Epureanu said, with a nervous attempt at warmth.
Grigory smiled at that. “You’re very kind to say so, and I believe it demonstrates my point.”
He took up one of the cigars, clipped it with a tool snugged into the lid of one of the bento boxes, and let the fingernail-sized cut end drift away as someone else’s problem to clean up. He then took up the cigar lighter from the lid of the other box, ignited a butane flame, and puffed the cigar to life. And then, in a naked and admittedly somewhat juvenile show of power, he handed that very cigar to Epureanu.
“It’s not Cuban,” Grigory said. “For all their vaunted reputation, the Cubans roll a harsh smoke, and this has only grown worse as the global market for tobacco products has declined. No, this is a Don Collins, from the American island of Puerto Rico. The size is ‘robusto,’ which means it will burn for more than half an hour. Do not inhale the smoke, or it will make you ill.”
“Thank you, sir,” Epureanu said, taking the cigar from him and puffing from it experimentally.
“Call me Grigory.”
“All right.”
Grigory then clipped a cigar for himself, and lit it with the little butane torch. An old-fashioned cigarette lighter would never work in zero gee; the lack of gravity convection would turn the flame spherical, and burn the thumb holding down the thumb switch. A proper cigar lighter, though, was a pressurized torch that spat its flame a centimeter and more from the butane nozzle. It actually worked better in zero gee than it did on Earth, as the flame shot out straight, rather than curving upward.
Next he saw about the vodka, the drinking of which in zero gravity Russians had been perfecting for decades. Yet another tool clipped into his decadence kit was a stopper syringe, and once he’d uncapped the bottle and tossed the cap over his shoulder, he jammed the stopper part into the neck of the bottle, cold and sweaty with condensation, and pulled back the plunger on the syringe, drawing a perfect shot of liquor into it, which he then withdrew and injected into his mouth, and swallowed gratefully.
He was not above drinking warm vodka, or bad vodka for that matter, but this was Stolichnaya Elit, and the bottle had come fresh from the chiller in his quarters, cold enough to freeze liquid water. It would certainly do the trick, and meanwhile taste good on the way down.
He drew the syringe full again and passed it to Epureanu, who sipped from it and mmm’ed his appreciation.
“Don’t be a schoolboy,” Grigory told him. “You drink the good stuff the same way you drink proletariat swill: a gulp at a time. Come now. There, yes. Let me fill it for you again.”
Once you got past the first couple of shots, you had to move the bottle a certain way to get the vodka within reach of the syringe. He did so, and then when he’d filled and handed over the syringe he began prepping crackers and sliced hardboiled eggs with smears of caviar topped with diced raw onion, held in place by surface tension and hope. A few gawkers had stopped by already, to watch Grigory and Epureanu drink and smoke and eat, and that was fine and according to plan. A feast like this was meant to nourish the ego as well as the body, and it did help to have an audience.
He knew he was succeeding when, a few minutes later, Epureanu drew a third shot for himself without waiting for Grigory and without asking permission.
“Yes,” Grigory said approvingly, “like a man. Good. Take what properly belongs to you, without apology. Men like us do not apologize, Epureanu, unless there’s something to be gained by it. Or shall I call you Daniel Florinovich? I’ve read your dossier.” Calling a person by first name and patronym was a sign of familiarity in Russia. Not necessarily of friendship, though; one could also be “familiar” with underlings, who could not respond in kind. So the question was simultaneously neighborly and domineering.
“If you like,” Epureanu answered.
“What did I just tell you, Daniel Florinovich? You must tell me what to call you. Me, your boss’s boss’s boss.”
“Then call me Daniel,” Epureanu said. “You are not my mother.”
“Fuck your mother,” Grigory said, and laughed. The vodka was taking hold, yes. So was the reek of cigar smoke, sure to let the entire station know their leader was on board, for no one else here was authorized to ignite anything but a welding torch.
“Grigory?” A voice from behind him. He turned, and saw Andrei Morozov hovering there.
“The grown-ups are drinking,” he said. “What is it?”
“We’ve received a message on the entangled channel. For you, I presume.”
It was a valid presumption; the ul’trashirokopolosnyy was for Grigory’s own personal use, so any message on it was, by definition, intended only for him.
“Contents of the message?” he asked.
Morozov looked uncomfortable. “A woman’s voice, sir. Saying, in English, and I quote, ‘The asset is embedded at TPS.’ Nothing after that. Do you know what it means?”
“I do, yes.”
“TPS is Transit Point Station, I assume. Have you got a spy in position there?”
“You’re a nosy fucker, aren’t you?”
“Just doing my job, sir. Do you want me to reply?”
“No,” said Grigory. “The asset has its instructions already. You look thirsty, my friend. You and Voronin should find a squeeze bottle of that drug-printer vodka and join us here.”
“All right,” Morozov said neutrally. Grigory knew Morozov enjoyed a good party as much as the next man, but he was on edge, and this display wasn’t helping his mood. Nor was it intended to, but now that the point had been made, they could all let down their guard. In fact, he required it.
“Your soft, flabby underbelly is showing,” Grigory told Morozov. “Get Voronin and have a fucking drink with me and Daniel Florinovich here. Bring everyone, in fact; the world doesn’t know it yet, but we made a trillion rubles today. We took a trillion rubles from Lawrence Killian, and there’s not a thing he can do about it. So now we celebrate.”