“And we’ve got to do something about deliveries until the depot is up and running. Take three foundation robots from those just produced and have them construct a pallet big enough to accommodate shipping containers on three sides. Make those four robots. Shift your salvaged conveyor system to deliver bots coming off of the line to the temporary pad and have the containers loaded there. We don’t need anything fancy. It’s only got to maintain its integrity for three days at the outside. Meanwhile, pull as many material transporters off the feed line as you can spare and start using them to transport finished goods to where the ones being loaded into the containers are coming from. Finally, cut the speed of the production line by thirteen percent. That’s thirteen percent, Lars, no more and no less. It could compensate for the bottle neck at the end of the line and still keep us on track for production quotas. After that, we’ll wait and see. Questions?”
Lars simply stared at the man. In the last five minutes, Lord Mathew of Rhoedraegon had totally reorganized the production and distribution systems of the facility and had done it without a single analysis of subsystem operations.
“Um, what do we do with the debris?” he asked, still in a state of shock.
“Recycle it,” Mathew said, and then cut his eyes from the vid screen and its scene of disarray at the ruined depot. He looked at Lars Sanburg and frowned. “I would have thought you’d already done that.”
“We’ve been too busy to think of everything, My Lord.”
Mathew grinned. “You’ve done well. That’s why you’re here. Now I’m going to leave all this up to you. For the moment, I’m going to inspect the production floor and see what security’s found out. I want to see if I can figure out who and how the sabotage took place. This is the second attack this year. If the separatists are behind this, I want to know why.”
“If they’re behind it, My Lord? Is there any doubt?”
Mathew didn’t answer. He was already through the portal and moving toward the elevator. He retraced his train of thought about the whole affair, moving step by step through the logic and once again coming to the same conclusion. Something told him that there was more to this than a simple attack by separatist commoners. The attack had been too sophisticated, too well organized. Otherwise the security screens would have detected them before they were even able to set up their equipment for a shot, and no amateur was that lucky in this day and time.
A quick perusal of the production floor assured him that they were still creating bots at a normal rate of output. Everything was working smoothly in spite of a slight buildup at the end of the line, but the crew was valiantly fighting to keep up with the constant stream of machines coming off the line. Satisfied, he offered a word of encouragement to the crew and proceeded next to the security offices, already knowing in general what he would find.
Ike Wannamaker had been security chief at the Bay of Naples facility for nearly twelve years now. He was already on duty and in the position of assistant head of security when Mathew first took over direct management of the Rhoedraegon business interests and had been a tremendous help to the young Lord in settling into his new responsibilities. It was natural then that six years later when the then head of security died in an accident on the production floor, that he was appointed to his present post. He had a wife and two children, as recommended by the Church and expected by social convention, and they lived modestly for someone of his position in a villa on the northern Italian coast. He was a solid citizen, dedicated to preserving the order afforded the whole population by the rule of the Nobles, and he was nearly fanatical about excellence not only in his men but in himself as well. Mathew liked him personally and appreciated his professionalism. It meant one less headache for him to deal with in overseeing operations.
When Mathew entered Wannamaker’s offices he looked around the small room with his usual sense of amusement. For a major administrator, his office was so tiny and so sparse that people often wondered if he was really as powerful a figure in the company as he was reported to be. Ike sat at his desk, a smallish one piece monolith of black granite with multiple built in screens and a holo-vid unit exactly in the middle of the desk top. Beside his own chair there was only one other place to sit in the office, and it was an uncomfortable straight back wooden chair, a copy of an early nineteenth century design that the chief of security said was originally intended for front porches in country houses. Mathew had once asked him why he worked this way and Wannamaker had replied, “Well, My Lord, if I make my office small and uninviting, people don’t come in to talk to me unless they really have to. I’m too busy for people with nothing better to do than socialize during office hours. The office is designed to discourage visits and it works well, present company excepted, of course.”
Mathew had been so impressed with the idea that he had changed his own offices to smaller, less comfortable arrangements to achieve the same end. Ike was right. It discouraged visiting and kept it to a minimum.
Ike Wannamaker, or Chief as everyone called him, rose automatically when Mathew entered, moving to one side of the desk to offer his employer the only decent chair in the room. Mathew waved his action aside, signaling for him to take his seat again and sitting ramrod straight in the wooden chair.
“I won’t stay long, Chief, which I’m sure will suit you just fine.”
“Yes, My Lord,” Wannamaker said with deference.
“So how’s the family?”
Wannamaker gave Mathew a confused, almost pained look, to which Mathew laughed.
“I just thought I’d get the chit chat out of the way. I know how much you like it.”
The chief smiled and chuckled. “I see you haven’t changed much, Mat. You’re still a smart ass, um, My Lord.”
“And you’re still irreverent as hell, thank God. So what have you found?”
The chief was already instructing the holo-vid as Mathew was speaking, bringing up a scene of the plant and surrounding countryside as a full three dimensional model. His equipment was state of the art, and there was no ‘curtain effect,’ as the tendency of older holo-vids to appear ghost like, with partial transparency in the image. This one was so solid that it looked as if you could reach out and touch it. Mathew stood, leaned forward and scanned the model quickly.
“You can see that the attack came from this small valley just beyond the outer boundaries of the complex. The weapon they used moved so quickly that the detectors didn’t have time to react before it detonated.”
Mathew frowned, looking at a small glowing ‘x’ that appeared in a slight topographical depression to the right of his view. “What could do that, Chief?”
“We have no idea.” He paused for that to seek in.
“None whatsoever?”
“It doesn’t match the profile of any weapon we know of. It’s not a particularly complicated device either. What makes it so unusual is its flight time. That’s a distance of four thousand yards that it covered in less than two seconds.”
“And it was physical?”
The chief nodded. “It was an object, not an energy wave or photon packet or any other kind of plasma. We’ve been trying to figure it out, but nothing’s come up so far.”
“Tell me about its trajectory,” Mathew said.
“I see you haven’t lost any of your sharpness. It’s the first thing I thought to check. If it had been a high arc, of course, I would have guessed
