Orders of Magnitude (The Genie and the Engineer Series Book 2) by Glenn Michaels

Author:Glenn Michaels [Michaels, Glenn]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Tags: Genie and the Engineer, wizards, AIs, glenn michaels, Magic, engineers, urban fantasy, Adventure
Published: 2015-12-23T00:00:00+00:00

SEVENTEEN

‘Staging Area’

Open Pit Goldfields Mine

Southwest of Kalgoorlie, Western Australia

September

Friday 4:11 p.m. AWST

“What do you think?” Paul asked his wife with undisguised curiosity.

Capie grimaced while she strolled through the clutter. Daneel, now a four year old, floated along behind her, gawking and pointing, naming everything in sight. Paul eyed the new titanium cage holding the A.I.’s PC boards and cable harnesses, with the monitor mounted along one side. Still not very pretty but a substantial improvement nonetheless. For one thing, it no longer looked as if the connectors were going to disconnect themselves at any second. Altogether, the new hardware was a temporary solution at best, and he intended on a more permanent solution later on.

“It’s so…Mad Max,” she criticized, comparing the litter all around her to the 1979 film.

Paul chuckled. “Considering that we are in Australia, there’s a lot of truth in what you say.”

The three of them were in what Paul euphemistically was calling the Staging Area for the construction of the spacecraft. To be exact, this was at the bottom of an open abandoned Goldfields mine pit, seventy feet below nominal ground level. The mine was in a desolate area where even the scrub brush was having a difficult time subsisting.

To disguise his activities here from aerial view, Paul had erected a large set of camouflage nets over their heads on tall poles, fastening the nets securely to stakes pounded into the cliff-like walls all around them. Underneath the nets, on the floor of the mine, there were a great many boxes and containers of all sizes and types scattered around. On one shelf was the tantalum block with the small emerald sitting next to it.

Capie turned toward several large metal structures stacked up in the northwest corner of the mine pit.

“And these?”

“Storage compartments, of course, but these don’t have any quadro-triticale,” Paul answered with a smirk, referring to the Star Trek episode “The Trouble With Tribbles.”

That got a faint smile in response from her. “Oh, so this is where you are storing the metals you mined. The titanium you’ve been talking about.”

“And the other minerals,” he said, confirming her guess. “That bin there did hold the one hundred bags of charcoal briquettes which had the carbon I needed for the rocket engines.” He grinned widely. “I’m glad that the Australians like to barbeque a lot. Nobody in the store even blinked when I bought that many bags.”

“And this strange…monstrosity?” Capie pointed towards the middle of the Staging Area at the object mounted on a rusty iron stand. “These are the engines that you’ve been bragging about? This whole…thing looks like a speed racer out of Star Wars Episode One: The Phantom Menace.”

Paul laughed, reaching out to give her a quick hug. “Yes, very much like one of those speed racers.”

The ‘racer’ in front of them consisted of two engines, mounted on each side of a small platform, on top of which there were two bucket seats. At the front of the platform was a large transparent shield tilted backwards from the front of the craft.

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