“How fast do you expect to go?” Marc asked the foreman.
“I’m shooting for two hundred meters a day,” he replied. “You’re asking for four thousand meters for this first run.”
“Yep, that should cover us for the first few months. I want to get everyone focused on the building as soon as possible.”
“Okay, you’re the boss.”
◆ ◆ ◆
“Hey Nancy-boy, I’m ready for you now!” the big Aussie yelled. “No cheap shots will work this time.”
Marc sighed and turned to face the idiot; he’d expected to see him sometime today, but he’d hoped that maybe the guy had learned his lesson.
“I’m surprised you didn’t have your guys hold me up so you could hit me!”
“I didn’t think you’d collapse so completely,” Marc said. “Otherwise, I’d have asked them to break your fall.”
“Think you’re funny, don’t you? Well, let’s see how funny you are after I pound on you a few times.”
“Sir,” Marc’s bodyguard said.
“Stand back, don’t worry,” Marc whispered as he raised his hands and took up a defensive posture.
“Now you’re worried about being hit!”
Marc just circled, ignoring the taunts.
Marc ducked the left jab that shot out. He used his elbow to deflect the right cross aimed at his ribs. “Oomph.” He didn’t deflect it completely, and it caught the back of his ribcage.
“Not so fancy now, are ye! Not when you have to square off in a proper fight! Well, I’ll tell . . .”
Marc’s left jab struck like a cobra, catching the Aussie square in the nose. The Aussie backed up as he brushed his arm across his nose, smearing the blood across his face and onto his arm.
“So, you got another lucky shot in ya!” the Aussie taunted Marc.
Marc just circled and waited. When the Aussie moved in for another combo, Marc used his left forearm to push the Aussie’s jab to the left, then he stepped to his right to avoid the counterpunch and delivered a hard-right hand to the Aussie’s kidney.
“Oomph!”
Marc bounced back out of range and kept circling.
The Aussie stayed out of range while he got his breath back. When he did, he started talking again. Marc just rolled his eyes.
“So, you can fight, but I can take a lot of punishment, can you?”
Marc feinted with his right hand, then stepped in and did a palm strike to the Aussie’s solar plexus. He dropped like a sack of potatoes, again.
“Take him to the medic! And when he wakes up, tell him that next time I’ll break his arm and put him in jail while it heals!”
◆ ◆ ◆
“You know, you’re pretty good looking for a Neanderthal,” Samantha said as she kissed Marc hello.
“Ah, so you heard.”
“ADI keeps me informed about all your activities.”
“ADI!”
“I was only following orders,” ADI said.
“Daddy, you shouldn’t get into fights,” Catie said over their Comms.
“ADI, who else have you told?”
“Do you really want the whole list?” ADI asked.
“No, I can guess.”
“Daddy!”
“Yes, Sweetie. I’ll try to be more careful. How are classes going?”
“Good, we get a week off for Thanksgiving, even though it’s a U.S. Holiday.”
“That covers your birthday this year, doesn’t it?”
“Yes, lucky huh?”
“What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to Nice with my roommate. Liz says she’ll come up with a reason to give us a ride.”
“That’s nice of her. Now, bye.”
“Bye, Daddy.”
“ADI, refuse all calls from that list unless it’s an emergency,” Marc said.
“Yes, Captain.”
“Chicken,” Samantha said.
“Just tired. How are you doing?”
“I’m doing fine. I had a meeting with all the parents today. We’re trying to figure out how to handle school once the colonists start dispersing to their land.”
“I assumed you’d go virtual,” Marc said.
“That’s what most people assume. But we need to socialize the children, too. We’re going to set up a daycare co-op so that the young ones will be able to play together and the moms can work, or have a day off.”
“Sounds good.”
“We’ll do the same for school. That way one of the parents doesn’t have to stay home and supervise the kids. We also want them to come into town for classes once a week or so. We’ll work out the details.”
“That should make everyone happy.”
“You do realize that means we need cellphone coverage?” Samantha said.
“Yeah, that and satellite coverage,” Marc said. “I wasn’t going to worry about that until next year. Until then we’re covered by the town’s antennas.”
“But what about your mining town?”
“We’ve brought one satellite that will cover them and the city. We’ll launch it in a few weeks.”
“But what about long trips, explorations, things like that?”
“Damn. Okay, I’ll tell Fred to start making satellites for us. We’ll have Liz bring them out on the first StartMerchant shipment.”
“Will that cover GPS?” Samantha asked.
“For this continent, at least. We’ll have to get more on the next shipment before we can cover the other continents.”
◆ ◆ ◆
“Marc, O’Brian wants to be the construction foreman for the mining town,” McCovey informed as they started their meeting.
“He does? What’s his experience?”
“He was on the team that built a new mining town in Australia. That’s why we picked him for this mission.”
“Well, let’s give him a chance. We need that town up and running fast. We’ll be out of copper and gold in a few weeks. We need to get the mines going out there.”
“You sure you don’t want him on the excavator crew?”
“Yeah,” Marc laughed. “That’s what I want to do, convince him that we should dig a canal to bring the river next to the town.”
“That would be fun to watch,” McCovey said. “But, now that you mention it, why are we doing that?”
“Mainly to keep the excavator busy. We’re going to have to do it eventually. We’ll be using the river to move freight as we grow, and we need to set up a fishing village on the coast, plus we’ll pull our irrigation water from
