The Tranquility Wars by Gentry Lee

Author:Gentry Lee [Lee, Gentry]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fixed, SciFi
ISBN: 9780553573381
Amazon: 0553573381
Publisher: Bantam Spectra
Published: 2000-11-30T14:00:00+00:00

NINE

Three days later Lance himself came to the clinic in the late afternoon. “The mission’s set,” he said excitedly, “and you’re part of it. You have a video from Goldmatt.”

Ursula looked at Hunter quizzically as he walked out of the main tent with Lance. “I’ll explain later,” he said. “If there are any serious problems, send one of the interns to find me. Otherwise, handle the patients yourself.”

“From this point forward,” Lance said, “your work on the mission must take precedence over everything else. Ursula and that lazy bastard Jake can take care of the clinic. It’s about time he earned his keep again anyway.”

They went to the hotel. “All our planning and coordination for the mission will be carried out over here,” Lance said, “away from the rest of the band. That way each of us can give our effort the highest priority.”

Lance and Hunter passed Cooperman on the way into the hotel conference room. He greeted them, but walked on by without stopping. Cooperman looked preoccupied.

“He has the second biggest job on this mission,” Lance said, referring to Cooperman. “He’s the intelligence officer. Only Goldmatt himself, who is the ultimate commander, has more responsibility. And if Cooperman can’t deliver on his promises, then we’re all dead meat.”

Inside the conference room, Lance handed Hunter a data cube. “This is the only decrypted version of this video in existence,” he said. “It’s not to leave this building. Is that understood?”

Hunter nodded. Lance departed. Hunter inserted the cube in the video player. Goldmatt wasted very little time with a preamble. Hunter’s first task? To define the full range of medical equipment and supplies that would be needed to provide optimal support for the operation. Goldmatt also provided a set of baseline allocations for volume and weight for the medical equipment and supplies.

“Start working on this immediately,” Goldmatt said on the video. “Of course you will have questions. Ask them as soon as you are certain they are legitimate. We must have the medical-support design completed in one week, so that we have ample time to locate everything that we need.”

The second time he watched the video, Hunter took notes. Seventy-five pirates and nine spaceships, including a small two-person medical shuttle, would be involved in the mission altogether. The medical-support planning should cover combat injuries as well as normal medical maintenance to support a two-week journey to the target and back. Goldmatt presumed that each spaceship would be equipped with a standard, low-level survival kit, and that the important and sophisticated equipment and supplies would remain in the medical shuttle. Was that a reasonable assumption? If so, how much volume and mass needed to be allocated to these survival kits?

“What about redundancy?” Goldmatt also asked in the video. Suppose the medical shuttle was itself interdicted. Or that the two medical officers were killed. How should either of those contingencies be handled? Was there some equipment and/or supply set that was so critical that duplicates needed to be carried on another ship, just in case the medical shuttle was destroyed? All his questions were pertinent and thought-provoking.

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