Bootstrap Colony (8 page)

Getting an idea he took the stick
and suddenly buzzed the group. The group of women looked up in alarm. There
were seven, dressed in a variety of clothes. One had shocking bright red hair
and a full figure. She pointed to the UAV, and then waved. Several of the women
began to jump up and down, but a few muttered and dug into the kill, ignoring
him. He buzzed them again, and then circled the approaching Rex. When they
didn’t look he buzzed downward, then back up into a bank then around to circle
the lead Rex. The women began to stop waving, then the red head turned, shading
her eyes against the western sun tried to spot what was there as if she got the
message.

He buzzed the Rex again, one of
the juveniles jumped and snapped. The large one reared its head and roared,
then clopped its jaws with a mighty smack. The women got a clear view of the
head over the tree line and all hell broke loose. Several ran north, while
others called them back to drag the deer. “Idiots,” Mitch muttered as they
tried to drag the kill to a beat up red pickup truck waiting under the trees on
the far side of the clearing. “Okay, maybe not so dumb. But the blood will lead
them right back to your base, you're upwind of them, give it up ladies,” Mitch
muttered, knowing what he said was not going to be heard. He buzzed the Rexes
from behind again; they were now no longer focusing on the retreating women. He
smiled grimly as the truck pealed out. He gave one last spin around the Rex
family then wagged the wings and set the autopilot to return.

“Well, that was interesting.” He
drawled, stretching. “Nothing like saving a couple of damsels in distress to
top a day.” He smiled down as Hera butted at his leg commandingly and then gave
it a thorough cheek rub. He bent down and gave her a petting, chuckling as she
rumbled. “I see you approve huh?” She meowed, and then began to kneed the
carpet. He scooped her up, protecting her gravid belly. “Now now Missy, you
know better than that,” he admonished. He stroked her soft silky fur and then
set her down by the scratching post so he could start dinner.

He checked the video recording
before going to bed; the red head was definitely a looker. She had been wearing
a plaid long sleeve shirt, knotted in the front of her full figure. Tight
fitting blue jeans accented her figure. It looked like she was the sensible
one, wearing hiking boots. The rest of the troop had been wearing sneakers and
an assortment of ill suited garments.

They hadn’t been particularly
well armed either. A pair of hunting rifles, a shotgun, handgun, and a bow and
arrow. There had been a few crude spears, but they would be splinters against
the full fury of a Rex charge. He hoped they had made it okay. The red head had
seemed to be one of the leaders, she had tried to get them to abandon the kill,
but the others had not listened. It looked like one had even taken a pot shot
at the lead Rex during the retreat. Waste of ammo, that twenty two at that
range was more likely in the bush then in the beast. He snorted at his whimsy
then flipped the laptop and lights off and turned in for the night.

The next morning he sent the UAV
off north east to check for more granite and human sign. He wasn’t sure if the
transplanted humans were still were the aliens had left them; it would take a
pass with the longer ranged UAV or a trip up with the hummer to know for sure.
He set up the cement works, tapping the fire truck to pump more water to it, and
then ran lines and hoses power and hydrogen for power and fuel. The massive
graveler was set up, while the electric kilns were put up nearby. He had a GP
robot run loads of limestone to the first kiln, when it was full it will turn
on and cook the limestone down to calcium carbonate.

With the materials he had on hand
he could make Portland cement, but it would take up to a week to fully cure
with the accelerant he had on hand. There was accelerant that could do the job
in as little as ninety minutes, but he had no intention of playing race the
clock with concrete. The last thing he needed was a bad pour or a droid wearing
cement shoes.

He needed an aggregate like
granite to make concrete for the outdoor applications. He set the grader to
grade the landing strip, knowing it would need constant checking. Unlike the
other AI, the grader was the robot with the least amount of field testing and
development. Hidden stones would quickly befuddle the software into a sulking
lock up.

Two days of exploration had
yielded an outcrop of granite five kilometers north east, about a kilometer
away from the lake beyond. A trip there and back had yielded a bit of rubble,
and a couple pulled muscles. He needed the jack hammer rig to break the rock,
or explosives. Once he had it down to rubble he could transport it back to base
for further processing.

The idea of playing with Semtex
was tempting, but enough to make him break out into a cold sweat. He had no
experience with blowing up cells of rock and wasn’t sure how far shrapnel would
fly. Jackhammer it was then. Planning the expedition would take a day, he needed
to have a least two robots on security on site, robots to load the rock, one of
the mini skip loaders, along with the train of vehicles going back and forth.

The remainder of the rabbits had
given birth; there were quite a few fuzzy little things in the cages now. Cute
little things. It was going to be hard to cull them when the time came.
Fortunately there hadn’t been many stillborns to feed to the Cheetah.

Hera and the female cats and dogs
all drop their broods almost within the same day; he was a little annoyed that
Hera insisted on doing it under his bed. The constant mews of newborn kittens
were enough of an incentive to get the cave ready to be occupied.

Most of the rodents had also
given birth; the raccoons chittered a lot, dancing back and forth in the cages.
The tiny ones would grasp their paws out to reach things, and a few had begun
to explore the latched door to their cages with alarming interest.

The limestone cooking was going
well; he already had a pretty good supply of the calcium carbonate. He had done
a quick test with water, sand, clay, accelerant, and the calcium, the Portland
cement was still drying. If he planned it right he could pave some of the pot
holes in the cave floors, once he was sure he didn’t need to run cables or
plumbing through them of course.

In fact he might be able to get
away with using some of the feldspar and limestone as the aggregate, at least
for the time being. As the idea began to take shape he started to follow
through. He needed a runway for the long range UAV, so he might as well test it
out there. The grader beeped an error, so he trotted over to it and stepped
into take control. He used his Bluetooth as he drove, commanding the GP robots
to grind the limestone then set up the cement works for its first load. The
cement truck was turned on and brought over to the cement works.

He realized he needed a better
bed, so ordered some of the sand to be dumped behind the grader with the dump
truck and bobcat. Choreographing everything was quite a chore. He had to order
the roller out and over to the area, it would be needed to pack the sand down. Hopefully
it wasn’t too wet that it would muck things up. It was a bit alarming and
disconcerting to see just how much sand he went through just making the three
hundred meter long runway. It became obvious he would have to run out for more
sand quickly.

The AI reported the cement truck
filled just as he finished grading, he pulled the vehicle over to the hangar
and taxi area and set it to work on that area. The cement truck arrived; he
watched it warily as it dumped the first load on top of the sand. Two general
purpose robots were nearby, directing the chute and acting as a second set of
visuals. A second set were standing by with a long metal scree bar. The four
had just finished setting up the plastic form, a stack of plastic rails nearby
were for the rest of the forms.

He took a break for lunch,
pausing to check over the first pour. It was messy, and looked a little watery.
Getting a sandwich, he paused at the cement factory and dialed down the water
mix for the next batch. The cement was already pouring into the truck for the
second batch. He checked the screeing as he walked back to the landing field,
noting it was going okay, if slow. A pair of humans could have finished in half
the time. “Gotta use the tools I got,” he muttered. He looked over the robots
noting the spattered cement. “Command, all robots assigned to cement to hose
off every other hour,” he ordered. He sighed, and then pulled himself up the
ladder and into the grader.

When the sun came down it was
almost a relief, almost because he was dirty and tired, but not done. Stepping
up to the hummer, he led the bobcat and dump truck with double trailer load to
the sand embankment. It was dangerous he knew, he was tired and predators
lurked about. He watched from the cab of the hummer, tweaking the bobcat’s
movements from time to time as it filled the giant bins. The first truck
trundled off and the one of the tractors replaced it. It was towing the last of
the fertilizer trailers. The four other tractors behind it were each towing
small trailers. One by one they were filled and sent off. A donk on the other
end would tip the trailer to dump the load, and then reset it on its wheels.

He managed to watch two
revolutions before it became too dark and the robots were having many visual
faults. He called a halt, and then general retreat after the last vehicle was
loaded. Arriving back at base, he was glad to see that he now had enough sand
to pack the hangar taxi area, and maybe enough to complete the twelve
centimeter thick runway. Faults with the vision systems forced him to turn spot
lights on and direct them to the work area. Now that the pour was on he was
reluctant to stop, knowing it would take a week or so in this weather to harden
and fully cure. The cool night breeze was a concern; he was gambling a lot of
effort on Murphy not rearing its head.

Cradling a cup of coffee, he
watched as the robots worked. It took a bit of work to get things sorted out in
the dark, the sharp contrast of shadow and light was causing a few problems. It
sucked when he had to cut stress lines in by hand, it took a couple of tries to
get it right, and he knew he was messing things up a little as he went. After
five more loads he called a halt, the strip was complete, and he even had the
hangar and taxi area done. “Time for bed,” he yawned. “Computer, night routine
implement,” he said on his way to his motor home.

The next morning he took a walk
over to the edge of the strip. He tapped it with his hand, finding it was
pretty soupy. “Damn I hope this works,” he muttered. The UAV launched nearby,
he turned to watch it head off. He fingered the coffee cup gently, took a sip
as he watched the craft bank as it followed its programming. He had a crude map
of the surrounding thirty kilometers, but needed to find more. Iron was going
to be important soon.

Sure, when he started recycling
the damaged materials, packing materials, and unused flatbeds he would have
plenty of metal from the frames. The flat metal plates that made up the beds
were going to be used for various things. Some were already in use as roofing
for the animals. A few panels would be cut into doors, shelves, flooring, or
other useful things.

It was tempting to grade and pour
one of the permanent greenhouse sites, or the warehouse site, but he put it
off. Better to use the trencher to lie some of these cables underground and out
of the way. It was backbreaking work, he was glad the robot could do it. He
smiled wryly at the thought, and then saluted the trencher with the cup. The
thing looked like a giant chain saw on wheels and sure did a job tearing the
ground up. The bobcat and trucks were already out getting more sand. He had
found that they could handle the job with only minimal supervision during the
day.

He checked in with the Andy bots,
discovering that they had done a good job of clearing the rubble from most of
the accessible ground level chambers. He took a diamond saw to one of the
stalagmites, but soon found that without plenty of water for thermal relief and
lubrication it was not going to budge. He put the saw away and turned to the
sledge. A few good whacks at the tops knocked pieces down, and it did a smash
up job on the lower stalactites too. Wore him out pretty fast though.

Mid afternoon he checked on
things, finding the grader was doing okay, trucks were running convoys out and
back, and the trencher was done. He ordered the GP robots to push the cables
into the trenches, and then hook a dozer blade to one of the donks to have to
fill in the holes.

He checked the animals, finding
most were okay. The sheep, alpaca, and goats were a problem; they had clear cut
their entire pastures. He was forced to stop what he was doing and set up two
additional pastures for them, and then herd them to their new stomping grounds
with the collies. The sheep went with minimum fuss, but the goats were a
different story, one of the billies was none too happy about the collies and
kept charging and attacking them. It even charged one of the GP robots,
smacking into it before staggering off. Once that happened it was a bit more
docile and he got it into the pasture.

The dairy was running okay, he
had gone back over the manual and discovered keeping the works out in the open
wasn’t a bright idea a few days before during the last rain. He disconnected
the butter churner, and then had a donk relocate it to the stables. He wasn’t
going to get much butter anyway, the milk was starting to taper off, and some
of it was off color or smelled weird. Probably the alien grasses messing with
the digestion he thought and then sighed. He was going to need to set up a shed
over the current dairy center, and program a GP robot and donk to transfer milk
from it to the tanks inside the caves daily. Maybe program one to clean the
tanks every day too he thought, rubbing his chin. That reminded him, he was
going to need to set up the areas for the calves and kids soon and break out
the gear to take care of them.