Austin wasn’t sure if he wanted to see what military capability the MBA might be developing or if his purpose was to see Marta again. She was a benign splinter in his mind, always obvious, yet not doing anything to fester. Try as he might, Austin could not find evidence that Marta had arranged Dale’s death. The trail of guilt went to the technician loading the live rounds and abruptly stopped there. When the inventory had been delivered to the field, one crate had been mismarked; the tech actually thought she had given the tank commander dye-marker warheads. But how the crates had become confused—or switched and the labeling altered—was something Austin had failed to determine. There was one soldier in the supply chain he had been unable to identify, but pursuing the lead had proved difficult because his father had kept him so busy with small, time-consuming chores.
The only chance he had of proving to his own satisfaction that Dale’s death was anything more than the officially reported accident was to dig around in Marta Kinsolving’s businesses to eliminate her and the MBA as suspects.
She and AWC had profited immeasurably by Dale’s death. The contract Sergio Ortega had announced helped offset the loss of revenue from the HPG net failure and gave All WorldComm a position that challenged the Ministry of Information for eventual influence over Mirach. The Span-net proposed by AWC would connect citizens directly, doing away with the need for scheduled newscasts vetted by Lady Elora. A single flip of the switch on a handheld unit would connect to any news provider, and the small cost for maintaining such a service would ensure that dozens of competing private companies would flock to set up their own direct-transmission news operations.
The Ministry of Information might still control a significant portion of the data flow, but Elora’s stranglehold would slip when the citizens found other, more diverse sources for their information.
Austin didn’t know if his father realized it, but Sergio had significantly reduced his own power by providing this new conduit of information. Although Lady Elora seldom followed the script as Austin would have written it, she paid some lip service to supporting the Governor and his policies.
Not enough, not anymore, Austin thought, distracted from Marta. Would it be better for the Governor to seize the news services or to give wider access, as he was doing? Austin wasn’t sure how Marta, the MBA, and all the other factions on Mirach would use this direct pipeline to every citizen. He hoped Marta meant it when she said All WorldComm was interested only in supplying the equipment and that content could be someone else’s bread and butter.
He wished his father confided in him more, rather than treating him like a minor functionary. Not for the first time Austin wondered what it would be like if he had remained with the First Cossack Lancers, even serving under Legate Tortorelli’s direct orders. He felt he had a flair for being a soldier. He certainly felt adrift working as an aide-de-camp for his father.
He hoped poking around MBA-affiliated factories, such as this new IndustrialMech assembly plant, might prove useful. How, Austin wasn’t sure, unless it gave some clue about Dale’s death, but he needed to keep busy. And he had talked Marta Kinsolving into being his guide through the Mirach Industrial Giants factory.
“I hope the project clears all the fiscal hurdles,” Marta said.
“What project?” Austin asked before he thought about how such a question made him appear. He had to stay more alert and not let his thoughts wander.
“The Span-net, of course,” Marta said. “We’ll have operational relays on all four moons within two weeks and cheap full-spectrum broadcast capacity for whomever your father approves.”
The Span-net would help direct attention inward, to how well others on Mirach were doing rather than making comparisons, probably created out of sheer vacuum, with other planets.
“Will only MBA companies be able to contract for transmission time?” he asked.
“Since we are such an encompassing group, I’m sure many will. But the licensure won’t be limited strictly to members.”
As long as “many” means more than the Ministry of Information, Austin thought. From Marta’s expression, he saw she meant what she said.
They reached the entrance to the huge assembly building. Stretching a hundred meters inside were ranks of MiningMechs in various stages of assembly. The ones nearest were almost complete, standing six meters high with a rotary drill on one arm and a giant scoop weighing down the other. Such a machine could bore into a planet and clean out a stope with relentless efficiency.
“Are these units going to Nagursky?” he asked. Austin studied the lines of the ’Mech nearest him. Squat and vaguely menacing, the ’Mech wouldn’t take much refitting to become a deadly fighting machine. It was nothing compared to a real BattleMech, but there weren’t any in the Mirach armed forces. He and Dale might have trained endlessly in the simulator, but it was only play.
“I’ll see,” Marta said. She drew out a small handheld unit and spoke rapidly into it. She tucked it back into a pocket and said, “Ben Nagursky’s got eight on order.”
“Eight!” This startled Austin. “Is he expanding his mining empire that much?” Austin knew enough about MiningMechs to know this many could ream out the interior of an entire mountain in a few weeks.
Marta gave a small shrug. “I can’t say. We work together for the common good of Mirach industry, but plans for our individual companies are not shared, except in general terms. He might have a new strike waiting to be exploited. Nagursky wouldn’t make such a find public until ore began coming out of the ground and he had a market to announce.”
Austin felt she wasn’t telling the complete truth. He hesitated to brand her words a lie, but they carried a feel of …untruth.
“That phone. The portable one. Is that part of your Span-net?”
“Here,” she said, pulling it out of her pocket and handing it to him. “Use it like a standard phone. Or you can punch one of those small blue buttons for news reports, weather, that sort of information.”
“Fair, twenty degrees, wind from the north at ten kph,” reported the phone when Austin thumbed the weather information button.
“The news available to Span-net is still sketchy, but when the moon stations are finished and the entire world is under a decent reception footprint, there’ll be more,” Marta said. She obviously thought more of this small communications device than she did the looming ’Mechs on the line.
The truth is mightier than the ’Mech? he wondered. That was hard for him to believe; it sounded too much like something his father might say.
“Do you mind if I take one for a test drive?” Austin asked.
“Keep the phone,” Marta said.
“Not the phone. One of those.” Austin pointed to a MiningMech standing at the end of the assembly line.
“It might not have been checked out yet,” she said.
“Who do I contact to find out?” Austin held up his phone, giving her the goad to reach the plant supervisor. Marta showed him how to use the device by dialing up the super. Austin spoke to the supervisor for a few minutes, then tucked the phone into his pocket.
“All settled. The super said I could take one out, as long as I didn’t redline the equipment.”
“They only have internal combustion engines,” warned Marta. “Not a fusion unit like on your simulator.”