Winner said:
[X] Diplomacy
-[X] Buy modest living modules from Deckard Station
The steel mill and asteroid mine has offered to sell and ship you completed housing units for a reasonable price, plus they'll buy some of life's necessities from you if they're making the trip to you anyways. A win-win for everybody involved, you'd say. DC 20
[X] Security
-[X] Ships
Buying anything better than a tugboat attached to a fuel tanker is expensive. Really, really expensive. But you need to be able to project your power beyond your immediate colony. Whether as a statement to accompany your diplomats or as strike craft against asteroids or pirates, you'll be on the market for a proper spacecraft. DC 75
[X] Engineering
-[X] Farms expansion
You've a solid culture of different plants, but as you continue to grow it's just not enough. Build another tower next to the first one and get more food. Ken is always happy to try new strains and cultures of plants and growing more of the old stuff is just as fine with him. For the moment you even have an excess stockpile of soil and seeds. DC 15
-[X] Docks
Your launch facilities are in a word pathetic. Refueling takes ages and is wasteful, you need to cart the supplies way too far and there's still a very real risk of something crashing directly into your domes. Set up something resembling a dock, instead of having a nice flat patch of rock some half a kilometer away serving as a launch site. DC 40
[X] Internal Affairs
-[X] Background checks
Sure, you've vetted everybody important on board, but can they spot the lies on their underlings' resumes? Didn't think they had any? Maybe, but now you're thinking about it. Look into the staff of your staff, maybe they let someone accidentally slip through. If you intend to maintain control of your colony you'll need all the info you can get. Sic your spymas- set internal affairs to finding out about the people here, see what they'll dig up. DC 25
[X] Research
-[X] Silver nanites
Miss Weissmeier has charmed you into supporting her research on silver nanomachines for medical purposes. It'll be easier now that you have proper mining set up for the silver, your refining options are greatly expanded and you actually have a lab; thus she assures you that she can start her work now, if you give her the green light. DC 60
(Roll, buy modest living modules from Deckard Station, required 20: 70)
Dealing with the station now that you have an active communications channel goes smoothly and mere weeks after you've finalized the deal, the first module arrives.
It's delivered by a dingy tugboat; the kind that doesn't have its own generator or crew facilities beyond a cockpit for the three people piloting it. It's barely got enough oxygen to make it to you and its batteries are running low when it arrives, touching down on the usual landing spot. You've decided to keep the clearing empty for emergencies while your currently-under-construction dock goes up nearby.
Attached to the front of the tug is your first modular home. It comes with in-out sockets for air and water, a power coupling, a fiber cable and a waste tank – all of which you can connect to your existing infrastructure with very little hassle. Unlike your housing so far, each unit comes with its own tiny airlock attached to the entrance. Your usual rooms are all part of the same network of corridors and stairs and so you've maximized them for space, with only an airtight seal on doors instead of a full pressure chamber, but the new ones can be laid out on the surface near your complex, forming a kind of suburban section of your base. After a bit of deliberation you decide to do just that, with only the utility pipes connecting them to the main structure. On the one hand, it means more hassle to get to and from for the residents, but on the other hand it means you essentially don't have to worry about constructing bigger and bigger corridors for the base. Perhaps you'll revisit that idea later as your own version of urbanization, but for now it's not really necessary.
As part of the deal, you then recharge the boat's batteries and tanks, followed by sticking an extra container of foodstuff to the thing. While your dockhands manage that, you and some of Ragnar's people take a secure server unit given to you by the Deckard crew and transfer over the agreed upon payment from your node. Apparently they haven't felt the need to hook themselves up with anything more complicated than the equivalent of a wallet.
The pilots spend a night in your station before setting back for the ten day journey back to their home, promising to be back in three weeks with another two modules. Thus a pattern of deliveries a little less than a month apart forms. Their manufactories can produce pretty much exactly the amount that the tug can comfortably push in the time it takes to make the round trip.
(Steady increase in housing availability established, Deckard Station happy with the deal.)
(Roll, ships, required 75: 82)
You're woken up in the middle of the night by an insistent knocking on your door. From the lack of any alarms blaring, you take a moment to pull on your pants as you make your way to answer and are greeted by Amanda nearly bashing your nose in.
"Sir, there's a flash sale on a ship."
You blink, then brush past her towards the offices, "Brief me."
"A satellite based passenger transport company between Earth and Mars declared bankruptcy and their assets are being sold in a Vickery auction. There's an hour to submit the bids and more than half of that time is gone. Accounting for lag we have a bit over ten minutes left to decide," she falls into step behind you as you rush through the empty, dimmed hallways. "If I had to guess, sir, I'd say they were pushed out of the market by the Chinese initiative to Mars, so the ship itself should be in fine condition."
"And we're probably competing with them for the price," you surmise, "Any idea on how much they've usually bid for similar situations?"
"Not a whole lot, sir. They force the short time window so that the bigger buyers can't react fast enough. It's still on the edge of our budget and the reason I woke you: if we make a higher bid, we can snag it and probably still pay what they offered, which would be within our constraints. Otherwise, we might lose the chance," you walk into the security hub, the active terminal with the auction timer open on screen, all the while running numbers in your head. To your surprise, Lena is curled up on one of the chairs, her face lit by the glow of her tablet.
"Good evening, Miss Weissmeier. Carpenter, give it an extra twenty percent, I can cover that if it's necessary."
"Yes, sir."
By the time your bid reaches the server back on Earth, there's single digit minutes left until the close and you bring three cups of coffee to the office to watch the timer tick down. When it hits zero in real time, you'll still need to wait a few minutes for the results to reach you, and those minutes stretch in companionable silence as the three of you sip the hot drink.
A soft tick signifies the page refreshing and Amanda taps open the message you've received on the site, then reads the contents out loud.
"Congratulations, your purchase of the vessel…" there's no need to go on as all of you sag into the chairs. The final price ends up even lower than you budgeted for, a small stroke of luck, and the shuttle is set to arrive by the end of the year.
The spaceship is of middling size, neither a full on cargo hauler nor a single person craft. It's not rated for atmosphere entrance or a launch from a gravity well, but neither of the two is a problem for you, nor do you expect it to be one for a long, long time, if ever. It does have a small nuclear generator on board alongside enough fuel capacity to go from Earth to Mars in a single trip. The interior is something you'll likely refurbish on your own time, but for now it's got a bridge for the crew and a row of cabins that can fit about fifty people – six per room and a suite for a couple – alongside an exercise room and a mess hall plus entertainment center, and the necessary utility rooms and storage.
It's not built for great speed or with a powerful engine to drive high mass, but you can probably either repurpose it to handle raw cargo or just weld extra containers to the sides. It'll be slowed down, but it sure beats having nothing available. On the military side, it hasn't got a lick of defense or weaponry beyond the last resort of crashing into something; not an option you intend to entertain. Likewise, the only radio equipment on the boat is a short range comms broadcaster and a single tightbeam to keep in contact with home, no sensors or targeting arrays. Navigation is also handled offsite, a preprogrammed trajectory to start with followed by a docking protocol broadcast from the end destination on arrival. Fortunately that part a captain can override when necessary, assuming manual control.
Visually, it's about as appealing as you'd expect it to be, the gray steel and aluminum dominating the bulky shape, reminding you of the old pictures of submarines you've seen in your schoolbooks. It's melded together into a trio of thrusters, fuel tanks and a central tube, dissimilar from the freighter designs you're used to, which are little more than a bridge strapped to arrays of rocket funnels when they're not pushing cargo modules.
When the vessel arrives all that's left to do is fill in the internal registry info and name your first ship.
[ ] Ship Name
-[ ] Write-in
(Access to a spaceship worth the name acquired.)
(Roll, farms expansion, required 15: 37)
This time, the steel arrives on time and the skeleton of the second farm tower can be filled in properly. This one won't be filled with the leafy greens and vegetables of the first one but instead by Ken's miracle grain; not entirely, you'll still grow a respectable amount of tomatoes, beans and a new assortment of peppers and chili, but the bulk of the space is for grains. Your engineer has further developed the method from barley to wheat, rye and oats, all of which you now have a good crop of. As expected, the harvest festival, one of the three holidays you observe – the other two being a combination of Christmas and New Year and your founding and signing of the constitution – has a new assortment of baked goods and porridges on offer, companied by jams from various fruits.
However, unlike previous years, Ken is nowhere to be found, and you soon extract yourself from the festivities to track down your fellow engineer. Perhaps unsurprisingly you find the man in one of the offices overlooking the farm hall, rows of currently dark earth stacks visible through a glass window.
"Hey, Ken," you knock on the doorframe and he gives you a lazy wave as you enter and pull a chair beside him, "Not a fan of the crowds?"
"It's not that," he sighs, "Tell me, Will, how many people are there now on Little Klondike, our colony?"
"When the new shuttle arrives, we'll probably get near seven hundred. Why?"
"When we started out with a hundred people, I felt like I could know them all," he starts and you nod along, "Now, there's all these people around that I've never even met before. I went for a walk through the old farms a few nights ago and one of the workers stopped me and asked what I was doing there. He meant well, but I couldn't even guess which crew he was a part of, let alone his name."
"Yeah, it can be a bit intimidating at times. All these people blindly trusting me to lead them all."
He sighs again, "It's not that, either. How can you trust all of them here? Any one of them could bring your dream to a crashing halt if they wanted to. Those laws you made, any one of them could get people to turn against you and vote you out. Any one of them could get some mining gear and dig out the banking mainframe. Any one of them could weld an airlock shut and fly off in that ship that's coming. How do you deal with that?"
"I guess I don't," Ken blinks and turns to look at you, "I mean, I do, two fifths of my council deal with it: Carpenter and her underlings aren't armed just for show and I've had Erikson do two passes over the people here so far. But I don't deal with it in the sense that I don't really think of it that way. I'd like to believe that if I do a good enough job then it won't be relevant at all, that the people here are working with me to triumph together. Hasn't been an issue so far, and I don't intend to slow down."
The man shifts to the window once more, his tone bittersweet, "I hope your optimism pays off."
(Roll, docks, required 40: 84)
So far, the twin structures of the farms have dominated your skyline, alongside the spiky, prickly refinery that resides on the outskirts. Now, a massive pyramid takes their place as the tallest structure around by a long shot. The outside base of the thing is mainly shock absorbers covered in regolith, the inside is fuel and air storage tanks surrounding a massive freight elevator. Closer to the top, you have four currently empty hangar bays reinforced with steel and concrete pillars. On top of those, a thin but heavy layer of batteries and capacitors sits beneath the landing rails. The very tip of the pyramid is cut off to form the landing plateau, with twin electromagnetic silver rails ready to catch and bring to a stop the last little bit of the horizontal momentum of an incoming loaded freighter. The elevator opens up between the two piers to load the goods to and from any ships. There's also a detachable airlock that you can extend to a ship entrance, connecting it to the cramped personnel tunnels that weave through the pyramid.
The outside of the structure is covered in heat-resistant panels. Normally you'd use ceramic plating, but with the new aerogel deposit resting beneath you, you commission an exploratory cutting operation and quarry out a thin layer of panes to use instead. The coating is necessary for ships taking off, the break-rails lifting up with massive hydraulics to tilt the ships even with the pyramid slope, giving them a starting trajectory skywards.
A comparatively tiny but no less important tower rests by the base of the megastructure, covered in broadcasting equipment: the control tower for incoming and outgoing flights. Beneath it is the customs office and the biomedical checkpoint, alongside a few apartments for when someone actually needs to be quarantined.
From there, what you might generously call an avenue of storages and shipping containers flanks the main path to your living complex, with a half-submerged pressurized tunnel set off to the side. The latter emerges directly in front of your bar, forming a tiny square with the establishment on one side, your main airlock on the other and branching corridors deeper into your complex flanking the sides.
(Food production significantly increased, port structure with two piers and four docks complete.)
(Roll, background checks, required 25: 11)
"No significant gang affiliations in the newest batch either," Erikson is going over his data with you. "A pair of Lunar dockers with the right tattoos, but both of them have been clean for years now."
"Alright, how about corporate espionage?" you're flipping through the data sheets of people, names and images blurring together with biometric data and employment history.
"Also in the clear. I guess they could be bought after arriving, but I went over Lena's staff and the engineers with access to the aerogel especially carefully and with all due respect, there's little else that's worth stealing tech wise."
The amount of data on hand is staggering. So much so that you almost wish you had less of it; it's deceptively easy to notice patterns when you have too many points to go off of, and to miss the real connections in the noise.
"How about internal tensions. Anything to worry about there?"
"Earthers are the biggest group, but that's statistically normal. Honestly, I'd almost expect the ratio to be more skewered, not less. In the same vein, there's not that many Martians, but nothing to suggest they're in any way estranged," he taps through some of his own notes, "I noticed an increase in painkiller and sleeping meds requests in the block of flats we put up in '76, but none of the residents are selling them on or exhibiting signs of addiction otherwise. It is pretty close to the old landing site and the conveyors that feed the storage units there can sometimes rattle the ground, but that's the best I can come up with."
"So a little case of collective insomnia. If that's the worst of it, then I'm sure Miss Weissmeier can sign off on the extra drugs. How about the big three, any obvious spies?"
Erikson spreads his arms, "Plenty of people who come from Europe, China or especially the States; nothing strange about that. Nothing strange about some of them keeping contact with family or friends back on Earth either. Is there anyone who's obviously got a hilariously fake backstory or false credentials? Also no, and I can't really guarantee that I'd catch something like that. The CIA is good at what they do, or so I'd assume. If you've got any ideas on a waterproof process to find out if there are any, I'm listening."
"Fair enough," you're forced to agree with him, then switch gears, "Is this something we'll need to revisit someday soon or is there a system in place to screen new arrivals?"
"The folks at customs have been instructed to forward my staff a similar bio for newcomers," he indicates the documents scrolling on screen, "We'll be going over them periodically, probably alongside the audits." He frowns at the pages, "It'll probably become unmanageable eventually and older records need to be archived. There is a solution, but if it's to be effective, then it won't strictly speaking be legal by international definition."
You raise an eyebrow at him, letting him continue.
"Lena's floated the fledglings of the idea before – an AI could trawl through the set in moments and pick out any relationships in the blink of an eye. But social engineering with computers is very explicitly banned right alongside chemical weapons. Can't tell you if governments actually respect the ban, but they sure like to make a big fuzz over it. Point of order however: we're not signatories of the TAIC."
"I'll keep it in mind. For now, it's not even an option and I'm not sure we should make it one either."
"Yeah, me too."
(Crowds scanned, something set up.)
(Roll, silver nanites, required 60: 70)
Your ability to parse the infamous Lena Weissmeier report has not significantly improved over the years. You've always been a more practical person and your expertise is more engineering and business with a dash of diplomacy than biology, chemistry and theoretical physics, so it's no wonder that it takes you significant effort to chew through the dense pages. Still, from what you've surmised, her progress is going well, and as you're exiting the quiet season her work is expected to reach final trials any day now. The latest report is in your mailbox and you're mentally preparing yourself to dig into it as you sip your morning coffee.
Just before you route your calls to voicemail, your tablet pings a connection request from Dr. Strauss. Secretly, you're glad to answer, "O'Rielly."
"William, I know it's early, but could you come by the labs for a minute?"
Upon arrival, the massive man bashfully greets you, "It's nothing really. Just that I need access to some of the equipment in one of the labs in particular, but the door's been locked."
"Why's it locked?"
"The logs say Lena's using the room since yesterday evening, but she isn't opening the door or answering calls. I think the poor girl's probably fallen asleep in there. I'd let her get the rest, but I really do need access to one of the MRI helmets in there."
"Strange, it's not like her to be anything less than completely professional," you muse as you give her a priority call yourself, the kind that the network on base always puts through, regardless of the device settings. When she still doesn't answer, you shrug and pull up your access override, unlocking the door.
The room beyond is relatively sparsely furnished: a metal printer, a computer screen and a microscope fill the countertop on the far wall, off to the side a few mannequin heads support the MRI helmets that the doctor was after and some surgical tools, while the center of the room is dominated by a table filled with various projections from the holodeck, another of the helmets and the slumped form of your head scientist.
"Lena?" you gently touch her shoulder. It's raising and falling in the deep rhythm of her breathing, but other than that, she doesn't respond. You shake her again, slightly more insistent, and the motion causes her head to loll to one side, revealing a strip of white gauze glued to the back of her skull right behind her ear. There's a little red dot in the center of the cloth.
"Doctor," you call Sebastien over, "I don't think she's just asleep."
The man rushes over, checking her pulse, breath and shines a light into her pupils, then carefully peels back the bandage before muttering mostly to himself, "Looks like a syringe mark," then louder, "She's unconscious, but other than that seems fine on first glance. We better get her into the hospital."
It is some thirty minutes later that the doctor has ran a full diagnostic on her and is delivering the results to you and Amanda, the latter kitted out in armor and carrying an assault rifle with a pair of her team securing the entrance to the hospital room while another two guard the lab you found her in.
"Near as I can tell, she's just in a particularly deep sleep. I've seen the like countless times before: general anesthesia. If she doesn't wake up in the next hour or so, we'll be in trouble, but the best remedy I can prescribe right now is bedrest," Sebastien finishes, glancing nervously at the weapon in his workspace.
"We'll wait," you and Amanda both speak at the same time.
"Right," the doctor chuckles, "Ping me when she wakes up, I've got more tests to run."
The next half-hour passes in tense silence. You've told Amanda everything you know about what happened and she'd decided to hold off on a full-blown investigation until Lena wakes up. As if on cue, the woman in the bed stirs and Carpenter hands her rifle to you while she carefully walks over, leaning into Weissmeier's field of vision. "Hey," she quietly calls out, "how are you feeling?"
"Hi," she whispers back, slowly waking up, "I'm… fine? Where am I exactly?" The gears in her mind are starting to turn again.
You walk up to the edge of the bed yourself, "You're in the hospital. Do you remember what happened last night?"
(33)
"I do, I think," she looks you up and down, eyes lingering on the gun, then inspects Amanda, "Why are you armed?"
"Strauss and I found you knocked out in one of the labs, this is just in case someone attacked you."
"Ah," she glances down to her lap, "Sorry about that. No, I wasn't attacked."
"Would you tell us what happened?" Amanda gingerly takes her hand into her own armored one.
"A test of the nanites, nothing more," she's starting to come back to herself, sounding more confident and in control, "I didn't realize anyone needed the lab, but I do distinctly recall locking the door, sir."
"A test to see if they work as anesthetics?" you raise your eyebrow at her, not deterred by her light rebuke.
"A test to verify their final effects on the blood-brain barrier, perfectly safe, sir."
"I didn't say anything about it being unsafe. Did you inject yourself with silver dust?"
"A minuscule amount, the syringe is meant precisely for gathering brain fluid samples and developed by my sister. I know dealing with the head makes people squeamish, but I assure you, everything was under control, sir. I got the MRI scans to prove it."
She could show you scans of an apple and convince you that they were hers, but you don't tell her that, instead you ask, "What about the knockout?"
"I can dose my own anesthesia just fine. Slowing down brain function accelerates the cycling of the nanites into the liver and spleen. In fact, I should be drinking some extra water, and then I've got urine samples to analyze."
Finally, you relent, stepping back with a few final words as Dr. Strauss enters the room, "No more experimentation on yourself. I didn't think that needed to be an explicit rule, but I will make it your access password if I need to."
Both you and Sebastien agree that she should be kept in the hospital for a few days of monitoring regardless of her insistence on being perfectly fine. Still, that doesn't stop her from sending you the final report on the silver nanites, obviously rearranged to place the user safety section on top. Working through it, everything seems to be in order; the nanites, you really need to come up with a catchy name for them, are perfectly inert in the biological sense, capable of travelling between cells without breaking into the nucleus or damaging the membrane and expelled from the organism by ordinary biological methods of waste disposal. They work as antibacterial agents, they're capable of breaking up clots and they can be used for targeted drug delivery or depositing and retrieving radioactive material from cancerous cells. Near the end of the report is a section on what she's dubbed 'more esoteric uses', which is even more technical than the rest – were the topic any easier, you'd think the jargon was excessive – discussing the potential for restructuring telomere ends and noting a failure to refold some protein structures.
Much more familiar is the accompanying production schema for the tiny machines. The control mechanism relies on extremely precise magnetic impulses, but nothing is stopping you from scaling the field up from using it in humans to using it on whole rooms, letting you disinfect your complex in a much more efficient manner.
(Medicinal silver nanomachines developed, patent awaiting approval, can sell either the product or production license, mass production requires facilities.)
The next evening, just as you're finishing up the report, Amanda knocks on your door and you wave her in.
"What can I do for you, Miss Carpenter?"
"Just Amanda today," she sits down opposite you, looking strangely unsure of herself. You set aside your tablet and fold your fingers on the desk.
"Is everything alright, Amanda?"
"Yes," she quickly replies, "Everything is alright… I think."
You remain silent as she wages some sort of internal battle before continuing, "I don't deal with secrets very well, Will. But this time I think I could be breaching someone's trust, so I hope I'm doing the right thing by telling you anyway. Just…" she trails off, unsure what to ask of you.
"I promise I'll be delicate."
"It's about Lena. I went to visit her in the hospital this morning and I don't think she's OK."
"OK how?" you hold back on suggesting the involvement of Strauss in the discussion for now.
"Her tablet was cracked. She told me she dropped it, but these things break easily in Earth gravity, not ours," she takes a moment to let that sink in, "And her eyes were red. She'd hidden it with makeup, but I could tell she used extra concealer that she normally doesn't use."
You wish you had a real answer for her, but the best you can do is empty platitudes and guesswork, "Be there for her, it sounds like she needs friends, not me poking into her business."
Alas, time flies and the very next day you have an important meeting to hold. Present are yourself, Ken, Ragnar and Hailey; Lena is still stuck in the hospital and Amanda is making sure she stays there until discharged. This suits you just fine however, as the topic isn't the annual agenda, but the upcoming summit.
"Right, boss," Hailey is extra chipper to offset your own gloomy thoughts, "We have a pleasure boat. Let's take her for a spin!"
"Perhaps," you allow her, "Here's the deal: the summit is happening in a month. If we go, then I, Hailey and Erikson will be the core delegation. The question on the table is whether we go or not, and if we do, who else would come."
"We can easily fit Amanda and her squad in the ship," Ragnar comments, "Or we could still decide to keep our vessel secret and take up the C-O-D on their offer." Hailey crunches her nose.
"Or we can take the diplomatic approach and not bring an army to the friendly, nice, make-allies meeting."
"If we go," you turn to your engineer, "Ken, you'll be in charge while we're gone, the important day-to-day mining and maintenance is routine for you. Just keep things running until we get back."
He nods, "I can do that."
"Right, then…"
[ ] Summit
-[ ] Go
-[ ] Don't go
[ ] Crew
-[ ] Just you, Ragnar and Hailey
-[ ] You, Ragnar, Hailey and security
-[ ] Write-in
[ ] Ship
-[ ] Your own
-[ ] Rental ship from Children of Dreamers
Rumor mill:
Toronto Star: historic Five Eyes treaty broken, Canada, USA to withdraw, stop sharing intelligence.
The EU has detained five Canadian nationals, including CEO Mark Milton of Milton Industries after a hearing in Luxembourg. All five Canadians were called to testify based on freely shared intelligence originating in the Five Eyes treaty, which saw to the sharing of domestic security resources between Canada, US, Australia, New Zealand and the EU. The joint North American Diplomatic Assembly called for the immediate release of its citizens, which was denied by Europe late last night.
EuroNews: Europeans face discrimination in reopened US docks, domestic production inadequate.
After the end of American shipyard closure by US government due to overwhelming international pressure, European based clients face delays and pushbacks on orders while other buyers climb ahead in queues. Consumer rights groups' calls for justice stonewalled by Ambassador Riley. Meanwhile EU shipyards are slowly ramping up production, but clients have many complaints, quality of vessels called 'subpar', safety standards 'dated'.
Ming Pao News: Ping-Lin Group reaffirms commitment to STT, placates fears amid Earth-Mars route expansion.
Megacorporation Ping-Lin CEO Ren Mao released personal statement on committing to the reduction and clean-up of space trash in Earth orbit. New ships sourced by recycling and refurbishing older vessels as biggest privately owned company fleet continues to grow in anticipation of opening up light metal frontier.
Tranquility Gazette: Euro-Conservative Faction wins Tranquility election by narrow margin, radical groups call vote rigged.
ECF wins second term in power, leaders looking for coalition with spacer and lunar factions, opposed by US friendly parties. The opposition lost by two points, but radical Lunar independence groups cast doubt on all results, not just the winners. "We will not fall for blatant bait-and-switch between two colonizers" spokesperson told Tranquility Gazette.
Mariner Times: Olympus business booming thanks to new cash influx.
New Chinese investment in Martian economy brings back life to local businesses after a decade in decline as New Belt resources start flowing into Earth. Interview with Olympian, 99, "A birthday gift for my century jubilee, is what this is! My grandson sent me whiskey from his own farm."
L5 Orbiter: EU space elevator delays causes shifting alliances at L1.
While Lunar leader Tranquility remains in EU grip, the waystation on L1 is feeling the slowed transport and lack of tourists. Anonymous sources report that the station is seeking US partnerships, leaving L4-Troy the last significant EU spaceport and cutting Union Lunar influence. Experts speculate US to reject deal, bring down tensions among powers.
Wasn't entirely sure how to structure this vote although I'm pretty sure I can guess what'll win. If you do decide
not to go, then I'll whip up an unrelated interlude and post the updated council options alongside that one. I'd post them here, but if you do go, you'll probably want to reconsider the choices after the summit, which would make voting now weird. If you go, then we'll have a few different turns to go through.
In other news, I've added some very general sliders and counters to the colony info post under finances. It might not be as specific as you'd like, but I'd get lost in trying to simulate semi-accurate numbers in a heartbeat if I gave them with any more accuracy. Each pip on the sliders is vaguely exponential in nature, or at least that's how I imagined it working.
Also, I do believe image number 1 has been voted as your face. Turns out you bear a striking resemblence to a French painter called Émile Friant.
