Mark S. Geston by Lords Of The Starship

Author:Lords Of The Starship [Starship, Lords Of The]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 2012-05-31T13:03:57+00:00

XVIII

Aside from the engines, the most puzzling thing that emerges is the fact that Marlet could disappear so completely into an arm of his own Government.

It turned out that the Armories and the front organization, the Office of Procurement, were operating virtually without any supervision whatsoever.

In the eighty years or so in which the Armories operated as a separate agency, it would appear that the Office had simply been created and then immediately submerged from the sight of men. Toriman had given Limpkin comparatively little to go on in the creation of the rechanneling arm of the Admiralty; in fact, the General’s instructions on this point were not only limited but also rather confusing in their omission of certain broad points of policy which anyone else would have considered absolutely necessary, while dwelling at great length on apparently minute details (such as the location of its base, the modification of which so upset Moresly).

In the absence of direct instructions, Limpkin had no choice but to turn over all management to Moresly; the only communications with the Government being a bimonthly progress report and the annual “Budget, Capability, & Necessity Report”. The public at large, regardless of class, knew nothing of its existence let alone its function.

Left alone, the Armories formed a tight, closed society long before the Technos at the Yards even began to approach such an end. Leadership was centralized within the physical limits of the caves; the Admiralty saw a total of seven different signatures affixed to the reports and budget requests, and it saw four of these men appear in its offices on official missions. Of course, no one outside of the Armories had any way of knowing that all seven of the names and all four of the faces belonged to Moresly, Toriman’s man.

The caves that actually made up the Armories had originally been part of a nation called the Aberdeen; its caves, tunnels, and vaults not only occupied the cliffs bordering the Tyne, but honey combed the plains above the river for a distance of nearly ten miles inland. Formed in an era when nuclear warfare was enjoying particular popularity, its ambitious founders had proposed to construct an entire country below the ground. The Armories were as far as they got before internal strife and newly developed radiations made the tunnels useless: but this was many ages ago, when the weapons and concepts of the First World were still very much in evidence.

As weaponry and diplomacy reverted to more primitive forms, the Armories acquired enormous value as one of the outstanding fortresses of the age. It has been estimated that over a score of major wars had been fought with possession of the Armories as their sole object. The caverns had lately been occupied by the old Garilock Empire; Yuma, sensing the progressive senility of that nation, acquired the complex through the judicious use of Plague carriers. They in turn were followed by the Caroline and Moresly.

Under the successive hands of these many conquerors, the

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