exposed
to any gas that wasn’t inert, workers had to wear rebreathers, but they were lightweight and comfortable, and the air they
supplied was pleasantly odorless, unlike ship air.
“How long till shift end?” Duj asked.
Jak turned his left hand up to check his purse. “Sixteen minutes. Time for three more panels.”
“This was challenging when we started but it’s kind of routine now.”
Jak chuckled. “I’m glad you retain your gift for under-statement.”
The constantly-on lecture switched over to an account of the history of the Aerie, which toktru Jak needed anyway as a review
of background for his next exam. The frustrating part of trying to learn it, though, was that it was too simple at the abstract
level and too complex at the detailed level.
In broad outline, he only needed to know that after the Bombardment and the attempted Rubahy invasion, there had been thousands
of surviving space habitats all over the solar system, most of them centuries old. Though they had mostly begun in orbit around
Earth or Mars, fifty years of the Bombardment and ten years of Rubahy surface raids had made planetary orbits dangerous; by
the end of the war the planets were really just vast high-gravity refugee camps anyway, so there was little economic reason
to move back. So the energy-poor habitats had gravitated economically, as much as physically, to the stable Lagrange libration
points in the solar system, where an object would stay in place without expending energy to station-keep, and the concentration
of those stations into tight nests created free trade zones, which developed rapidly and made the decision to move to a libration
point more and more inevitable for each successive station. Since most of the free-floaters orbited between Earth and Mars,
and the Mars libration points are much weaker and hence less stable positions, the cheapest stable libration points to reach
were the Earth-sun L4 point, sixty degrees ahead of Earth in orbit, or the Earth-sun L5 point, sixty degrees behind.
At L5, Nakasen’s Wager had led many of the habitats to pool resources, fuse themselves into a single design, go to the enormous
expense and effort of constructing a small black hole for a central waste sink and power source, and create the Hive. Over
four hundred habitats which chose not to give up their independence clustered at L4, where, to reduce the risk of collision,
they had all tied in permanently to a gigantic common docking body; the hundreds of stations on long arms extending out from
the docking body now formed the Aerie.
But though the broad outline of Aerie history was easy, it was doubtful that any human being could really have comprehended
the whole detailed history of the Aerie. Hundreds of nations each had an origin, a history before the Bombardment, a history
free-floating in deep space, a migration to L4, a period of free-floating in the cluster, a reconstruction during tie-up,
and finally a history since complete conversion into a unit of the Aerie.
The lecture didn’t hesitate to point out how neat and coherent Hive history was by comparison; all the 723 founding nations
had been abolished and mutually assimilated into the new culture of the Wager. The nations of the Aerie were simply disorderly,
something which they could easily have fixed if only their Confederacy charter didn’t prohibit the annexation or colonization
of habitats in the Aerie by the Republic of the Hive. Jak wondered why the Confederacy charter did that; all he could remember
was that for his teachers it was a matter for indignation. Had he missed something or was it one of those things not to be
talked about?
Their earphones told the three CUPVs that they were done for the day, and they gladly airswam back to the gaslock.
Moments later, in the corridor, Jak could finally pull back his rebreather hood and wipe his face. Duj’s hairless scalp shone
with sweat; Myx was running a hand
to any gas that wasn’t inert, workers had to wear rebreathers, but they were lightweight and comfortable, and the air they
supplied was pleasantly odorless, unlike ship air.
“How long till shift end?” Duj asked.
Jak turned his left hand up to check his purse. “Sixteen minutes. Time for three more panels.”
“This was challenging when we started but it’s kind of routine now.”
Jak chuckled. “I’m glad you retain your gift for under-statement.”
The constantly-on lecture switched over to an account of the history of the Aerie, which toktru Jak needed anyway as a review
of background for his next exam. The frustrating part of trying to learn it, though, was that it was too simple at the abstract
level and too complex at the detailed level.
In broad outline, he only needed to know that after the Bombardment and the attempted Rubahy invasion, there had been thousands
of surviving space habitats all over the solar system, most of them centuries old. Though they had mostly begun in orbit around
Earth or Mars, fifty years of the Bombardment and ten years of Rubahy surface raids had made planetary orbits dangerous; by
the end of the war the planets were really just vast high-gravity refugee camps anyway, so there was little economic reason
to move back. So the energy-poor habitats had gravitated economically, as much as physically, to the stable Lagrange libration
points in the solar system, where an object would stay in place without expending energy to station-keep, and the concentration
of those stations into tight nests created free trade zones, which developed rapidly and made the decision to move to a libration
point more and more inevitable for each successive station. Since most of the free-floaters orbited between Earth and Mars,
and the Mars libration points are much weaker and hence less stable positions, the cheapest stable libration points to reach
were the Earth-sun L4 point, sixty degrees ahead of Earth in orbit, or the Earth-sun L5 point, sixty degrees behind.
At L5, Nakasen’s Wager had led many of the habitats to pool resources, fuse themselves into a single design, go to the enormous
expense and effort of constructing a small black hole for a central waste sink and power source, and create the Hive. Over
four hundred habitats which chose not to give up their independence clustered at L4, where, to reduce the risk of collision,
they had all tied in permanently to a gigantic common docking body; the hundreds of stations on long arms extending out from
the docking body now formed the Aerie.
But though the broad outline of Aerie history was easy, it was doubtful that any human being could really have comprehended
the whole detailed history of the Aerie. Hundreds of nations each had an origin, a history before the Bombardment, a history
free-floating in deep space, a migration to L4, a period of free-floating in the cluster, a reconstruction during tie-up,
and finally a history since complete conversion into a unit of the Aerie.
The lecture didn’t hesitate to point out how neat and coherent Hive history was by comparison; all the 723 founding nations
had been abolished and mutually assimilated into the new culture of the Wager. The nations of the Aerie were simply disorderly,
something which they could easily have fixed if only their Confederacy charter didn’t prohibit the annexation or colonization
of habitats in the Aerie by the Republic of the Hive. Jak wondered why the Confederacy charter did that; all he could remember
was that for his teachers it was a matter for indignation. Had he missed something or was it one of those things not to be
talked about?
Their earphones told the three CUPVs that they were done for the day, and they gladly airswam back to the gaslock.
Moments later, in the corridor, Jak could finally pull back his rebreather hood and wipe his face. Duj’s hairless scalp shone
with sweat; Myx was running a hand
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