[SFAP] Chapter 12:8

This is the eighth section of the twelfth chapter of Sonnets from a Proton. The novel starts here.
The next section is here.

Jane read through the message she had just received from her construction yards around Jupiter. On her authority construction has begun on the new AM drive units, after the successful field test of the prototype units on the Freedom the full size ones for the colonisation craft are being built along with a raft of them ready to be fitted to the new fleet of battleships. At the behest of the admiralty a new battleship has been started at the military doc yard. Similarly work had begun on some new dock yards so that multiple ships could be built at once. This endeavour would either sink Fillwick or raise it to the largest ship builder humanity had control of.  A few months work were needed though before the first ships are available. In the meantime Laurence or Stephen as she still thought of him was in the wild held hostage. Or dead. Whatever Fillwick Enterprises would either find him or go down trying to.
So she had done it. If she was wrong then Fillwick was in serious trouble when the asteroid incident turned out to be a storm in a teacup. If she succeeded then it was because interstellar war was on the cards.