Free Warrior Chronicles 2: Warrior's Blood by Shawn Jones

watched as the metallized Formvar began to coat it. When the barrier was thick enough, the frame was detached and Cort lowered it for disassembly. Then he left Kim and her people to finish the job. The strength of his powered armor saved them about forty man-hours of work.
     
    Back inside the colony structure, Kay walked in front of Cort as he returned to his quarters. Sköll walked beside her, and Cort’s suit was too bulky for them to walk the corridor abreast of each other. He asked, “How are you, Kay?”
     
    “Why don’t we wait until we’re alone to talk?”
     
    A few minutes later, she plopped down in his sitting area while he changed. He emerged with two drinks in his hand. He gave one to her and sat down. “So what’s wrong?”
     
    “I am pregnant.”
     
    --
     
    “Dave, I’m inclined to sell it to them. They’ll get the tech sooner or later anyway, and I don’t trust Atlantica. By selling the Asianic Alliance my weaponry, we can get a lot of needed supplies.” Cort said to Dave Keen later that afternoon. “And if I were in your shoes, I would be thinking long term, not short term.”
     
    “I think we are on the same page, Cort, especially if Atlantica really wants to come here. We need to be able to manufacture on our own. We have a lot of raw materials, but no way to mine or process them.” Keen saw Cort nod and continued, “I would rather have the ability to make our own supplies than trade research to Earth for them.”
     
    Dave Keen had all sorts of new headaches. Overnight, he had received three messages from Dar. The first one said that Atlantica was now going through old records so they could try to start replicating Cort’s weaponry and technology. The Cull and synthetics had rendered much of the weaponry obsolete, so it had been mothballed over a century before. Now that Cort was using that tech to assert independence for Mars, someone back home had decided that maybe those weapons weren’t so obsolete after all. The second message was that one of Dar’s cousins had informed him that Atlantica was considering sending a new colony to Mars, independent of either The Addison Trust’s launching facilities, or Ares Federation oversight. That would mean full scale war with Earth. Cort would destroy every unauthorized vessel that entered Mars’ orbit. But it could also create problems for the Trust’s assets on Earth. Dar was working on that problem, but it was an eventuality for which they had to be prepared. There was already an emergency evacuation launch ready to go at all times. If Atlantica did make a move against the Ares Federation, members of the pack who chose to do so would quickly be launched to Mars or evacuated to the Asianic and Southern Alliances. The third message was a trade request from the Asians. They wanted Cort’s technology now, and they were willing to trade for it. An arms race was always a bad thing, but it was even worse if you were on the short end of it.
     
    “Exactly,” Cort said. “The only raw materials we really have to get from Earth are water and reserve air. Their recovery uses a lot of our energy. If we had that energy for manufacturing, we could start forging our own building materials. And we’re going to need to do that if you are serious about a monorail system between sites.”
     
    “Okay, so we really are on the same page. I just wanted to be sure. I will get Kim and her people working on a list of what we want. In the meantime, I’ll have Dar start negotiating. What about the Southern Alliance? Do you want to let them in on it?” Keen asked.
     
    “I would. In the twentieth century, there was a very similar ‘cold war’ arms race, between essentially the same two blocs. Countries that weren’t a part of it were beholden to those that were, economically and militarily. The Asians won’t like it, but Dar can get them to go along I think. From our standpoint, if they are all trying to keep up with each other, they won’t be as