May 8, 2440
At 7:40 that morning, Ellis Chakrobarty decided the landing strip was either big enough or they were about to find out exactly how expensive his mistakes were.
The graders had been over the near end twice. The forty-meter corridor stretched almost dead straight away from the Leta crossing, five hundred meters of packed dirt where woods had stood two days earlier.
Ravi stood beside him wearing yesterday’s oversized safety vest.
“How big is the shuttle?”
Ellis looked at his phone.
“Matt did not include that useful detail.”
“That seems important.”
“It does.”
Everyone had been pushed well back from the strip.
The shuttle came in from the south.
There was no screaming jet engine and no long approach. It simply appeared over the trees, slowed, and settled toward the cleared ground with the deeply unnatural steadiness Ellis was beginning to associate with V’ren equipment.
Ravi stared upward.
“That’s bigger than the picture.”
“What picture?”
“The one in my head.”
“Very technical.”
The shuttle touched down with room to spare.
For perhaps ten seconds nobody moved.
Then a cargo door opened.
Ellis looked toward Caleb.
“Well. Apparently we built an unloading dock.”
V’ren machines began coming out.
Some were recognizable only by function once they started moving. Excavation equipment. Drilling machines. Compact utility vehicles. Several machines whose purpose Ellis could not guess even after watching them unfold themselves.
They came down the ramp under their own power and rolled toward the staging area beside the road.
The truck turnaround suddenly stopped looking excessive.
By nine, the shuttle was gone and the staging ground was crowded.
A much smaller V’ren craft sat near the edge of the clearing.
Ellis found Matt standing beside it with two V’ren technicians and a tablet.
“What’s that?”
“Type Twelve.”
“What does it do?”
“Today? Trees.”
Ellis looked at him.
“We already have tree machines.”
“Those cut trees.”
Matt pointed across the road toward the barley field that had been harvested a few days earlier.
“This moves them.”
One of the technicians demonstrated the straps.
They were light enough for Ravi to carry a bundle of them, but wide and absurdly strong. The attachment points locked together with no knots, chains, hooks, or binders.
Matt pointed toward a medium-sized tree at the edge of the next clearing section.
“Cut it.”
Ellis frowned.
“With what?”
“Chainsaw.”
“Who?”
Matt shrugged.
“Anybody.”
Caleb laughed.
“You’re kidding.”
“Nope.”
One of the ground crew took the saw.
He was not a logger. He was barely competent enough with a chainsaw to make Ellis keep one eye on him.
The tree came down badly.
Not dangerously, because everyone had been moved out of the fall zone, but badly enough that an experienced logger would have had opinions.
Matt did not care.
“Good enough.”
The crew wrapped two V’ren straps around the trunk.
One near the base.
One farther up.
They stepped away.
The Type 12 lifted.
Nobody was aboard.
Ravi turned toward his father.
“Who’s flying it?”
Ellis pointed toward the technicians.
“I assume one of them.”
Neither appeared particularly busy.
The shuttle moved over the fallen tree, hovered, and lowered two lines.
The straps connected.
The tree rose.
Branches, crown, trunk, everything.
No trimming.
No loading.
No skidder.
No trailer.
The complete tree simply went upward.
Caleb stared after it.
“Well, hell.”
The Type 12 crossed the road and lowered the tree into the harvested barley field.
Then it came back.
Matt looked at Ellis.
“How many people can you put on saws?”
Ellis was still watching the shuttle.
“With this?”
“Yeah.”
“You don’t need loggers.”
“That’s the point.”
By noon, the process had become almost offensively simple.
Cut the tree.
Stay clear.
Wrap it.
Call the shuttle.
The remotely operated Type 12 picked up the entire thing and carried it across the road.
Good oak and walnut went into their own rows.
Cottonwood, gum, maple, lesser oak, and other useful timber went into broader stacks.
Lower-value trees still crossed the road intact. Nobody needed to decide what they would become today. They just needed them off the construction site.
Ravi returned from the barley field carrying another bundle of straps.
“You know what the problem is?”
Ellis looked at him.
“What?”
“We’re running out of field.”
Ellis looked across the road.
Rows of entire trees were beginning to cover the harvested barley ground.
Behind him, the cutters were already moving into the next section of woods.
He pulled out his phone.
“Matt.”
“Yeah?”
“We need a bigger woodpile.”
There was a pause.
Then Matt laughed.
“Good problem to have.”
