75% Certain
25% horse thief
My guess is that the biophage crisis gave each side a close enough look at the other's defenses to render those secrets merely notional.
To Boldly Go... (a Starfleet quest)
- Thread starter OneirosTheWriter
- Start date
- Sci-Fi
-
- Tags
- star trek exploration fully automated luxury gay space communism top level canon (canon) #hashtagcontent all-encompassing space amoeba cardassian boy bands cardassian magical girls darkest bureaucracy debate makes the qm cackle like palpatine hoh is an empire quest it has to be foreign infiltrators more ships ship happens singers delenda est starfleet this is not an empire quest ur waifu is collective?
lbmaian
a thirsty squirrel
- Location
- USA
@Briefvoice I think you're just copying the colony income figures from the updates themselves, but I want to point out that:
- the BR/yr tech bonus for BR-producing colonies is now 15
- the SR/yr tech bonus for SR-producing colonies is now 20
- the RP/yr tech bonus for RP-producing colonies is now 4
- (the RP/yr tech bonus for non-RP-producing colonies is now 3)
- (the PP/yr tech bonus for any colony is now 1)
- the BR/yr tech bonus for BR-producing colonies is now 15
- the SR/yr tech bonus for SR-producing colonies is now 20
- the RP/yr tech bonus for RP-producing colonies is now 4
- (the RP/yr tech bonus for non-RP-producing colonies is now 3)
- (the PP/yr tech bonus for any colony is now 1)
- Location
- Australia
Btw, just wanted to take a moment to thank everybody who has been helping flesh out the wiki. I think things are coming along nicely though there's still plenty to fill out. And just a reminder that it is open to everyone to edit and help develop! We especially need people to help get the timeline and events against character pages fleshed out.
Kolar
Is Not A Robot
Little surprised the shipyards don't have their own pages yet. Could list out what berths they have, years they were built/expanded, ships they built/repaired. All kinds of stuff. Might try to learn how to wiki and go digging for some of that on the weekend if no one else starts on it. (don't count on it though.)
Night
Widow Null
- Location
- Hoff
Not...particularly? Knowing it's there may make them more cautious, but in the end they've still gotta broadcast if they want to issue orders efficiently, and the listening post still gets to listen. In reality most people notice antenna farms on their borders and just kind of put up with it.
Plus if they ban all ship traffic in 15 lightyears in case it's seen that's kind of a win anyways.
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
It is desirable that a listening post be undetected, usually. But there are, as you say, also advantages to forcing the enemy to act circumspectly because they know you're watching.
75% Certain
25% horse thief
We also have to factor in that we're listening in on their listening posts with our listening posts, and vice-versa. Hard to hide.
- Pronouns
- They/Them
I feel like we have to take this one if only for the events it'll produce.
Nervos Belli
Don't think this means you've won!
- Location
- Murica
Unfortunately, the Gaeni attempts to materialize Special Resources via distillation of pure unadulterated !!Science!! have so far proven fruitless.
We have been getting that, actually. A lot of ship options at MWCD have cost rp, an rp has been able to buy some Task Force attachments.
Night
Widow Null
- Location
- Hoff
Throw more boosts at our refinery research teams.
Omake - Non-Interference - Iron Wolf
2322.Q4.M3.D13
She stood outside the Commandant's house, lit by the setting sun in pastel pink and orange. Her hands clenched tight, salt breeze from San Francisco bay tugging at her hair, bag weighing heavily on her shoulder. She squeezed her hands tighter, took a deep breath, and began walking across the lawn, the deepening shadows in the grass seeming to advance with her.
She made it five steps before a woman's laugh caused her to stop mid-step. "Are those," said a mocking voice from behind her, "Flowers?"
She gripped tighter still. "What's it to you?"
The breeze danced, and a woman in a divinely immaculate Starfleet uniform appeared in front of her. "Everything concerning our departing Commandant concerns me, little interloper." The woman gave Her a nasty smile, "Fresh from the Explorer Corps into San Francisco and coming here to see your old senpai before he flies off into a possible war zone. It's almost cliche."
"Cliche or not," She said, "It's what I'm here to do." She shifted her bag slightly, "So let me through." Her eyes hardened, the flowers dropping to her side as she jabbed at the other woman with her other hand, "Now listen here, you sublimed interloper. This is business between me and the Commandant. I've studied everything I can about your kind. You're not supposed to interfere like this."
"Oh, that's true!" The woman said, laughing, "You are correct. Being too direct brings certain oversight from… well, we're on campus, so let's call them stakeholders. But that doesn't mean I can't make certain coincidences occur, subject you to a battery of hellish tests. Not interfering, of course! But if you don't corral those wild thoughts of yours and step into that house, well…" The woman shrugged, "... I can make you wish I had simply snapped my fingers and sent you into deep space, my little pony-loving friend."
She gripped her flowers tighter, then threw them at the woman. "Fine." She spat, "Keep him. I didn't need him anyways."
"You keep telling yourself that." The woman called after Her, "Michel will just love when I give these to him, by the way!"
Shoulders hunched, She stepped through the outer gate and skulked into the dusk.
She stood outside the Commandant's house, lit by the setting sun in pastel pink and orange. Her hands clenched tight, salt breeze from San Francisco bay tugging at her hair, bag weighing heavily on her shoulder. She squeezed her hands tighter, took a deep breath, and began walking across the lawn, the deepening shadows in the grass seeming to advance with her.
She made it five steps before a woman's laugh caused her to stop mid-step. "Are those," said a mocking voice from behind her, "Flowers?"
She gripped tighter still. "What's it to you?"
The breeze danced, and a woman in a divinely immaculate Starfleet uniform appeared in front of her. "Everything concerning our departing Commandant concerns me, little interloper." The woman gave Her a nasty smile, "Fresh from the Explorer Corps into San Francisco and coming here to see your old senpai before he flies off into a possible war zone. It's almost cliche."
"Cliche or not," She said, "It's what I'm here to do." She shifted her bag slightly, "So let me through." Her eyes hardened, the flowers dropping to her side as she jabbed at the other woman with her other hand, "Now listen here, you sublimed interloper. This is business between me and the Commandant. I've studied everything I can about your kind. You're not supposed to interfere like this."
"Oh, that's true!" The woman said, laughing, "You are correct. Being too direct brings certain oversight from… well, we're on campus, so let's call them stakeholders. But that doesn't mean I can't make certain coincidences occur, subject you to a battery of hellish tests. Not interfering, of course! But if you don't corral those wild thoughts of yours and step into that house, well…" The woman shrugged, "... I can make you wish I had simply snapped my fingers and sent you into deep space, my little pony-loving friend."
She gripped her flowers tighter, then threw them at the woman. "Fine." She spat, "Keep him. I didn't need him anyways."
"You keep telling yourself that." The woman called after Her, "Michel will just love when I give these to him, by the way!"
Shoulders hunched, She stepped through the outer gate and skulked into the dusk.
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
Leslie:
"I know we've been trying to keep it hush-hush, but... Do you want to tell him, or shall I?
pbluekan
Somethin's Fucky ...
- Location
- Trumpistan
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Never has an omake of such minuscule proportions filled me with such overwhelming discomfort and dread.
See, this is why Thuir never talks about his personal life.
Ah, so that's where our bad luck was hiding.
We need a way to search threadmark titles, reading the list of all 1152 makes my eyes gloss over.
Which IRL-month or in-game year should I be looking for?
If hat happens then 'Nash Magic' never existed, it was Enterprise magic the whole time!
To this day, the crew of the original 5-Year Mission are still banned from Argo.
We have 6 Engineering Teams and 6 systems to claim from the Spoonheads, let's make it happen!
Last edited:
Thors_Alumni
Proud member of Thors Class VII from Liberl
- Location
- Liberl Zemuria.
We need to claim all five colonies in the Adrazzi Gulf so don't forget that. as for the sixth and final colony I would like to grab the Mortuary Expanse if only to get access to all of the events that it would generate for us.
Omake - Outside Agitators Part 1 - brmj
Series: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17
Outside Agitators Part 1: "The Lumpers do damn good work"
Gryer watched the steadily approaching shipyard complex with an odd mixture of excitement and trepidation.
It was big, sure, with one of the five largest berths in Yrillian space even, but it wasn't much to look at. But then, the Lump had been around in some form for almost 700 years, so perhaps that was to be expected.
A series of domes and prefabricated modules sat scattered randomly on the surface of a medium-sized reddish asteroid like a nasty rash. Here and there, the surface was scuffed to reveal gray rock underneath, or pockmarked by access hatches and skylights hinting at the tunnels within. To one side a pair of frameworks of metal bulged from the surface like the ribcage of a dead animal, the half-seen form of an ore hauler and what might be the start of a light transport's frame taking shape within. A thick truss, filled with pipes, wires and what was probably an access shaft, rose from another part of the surface and connected to several other berths of various sizes and obviously newer construction, the last of which being almost twice as big as the next largest. Unfortunately, they had some kind of a barrier of plastic sheeting strung up, perhaps to protect it from dust during a sensitive stage of construction, but just as likely to discourage any prying eyes.
As he watched, some kind of robotic cart slid down a track built into the truss with some blocky, unidentifiable assembly strapped to it before turning off into one of the smaller berths to be unloaded. Everywhere he looked, workers in spacesuits, little utility craft and the like darted back and forth on little plumes of cold gas doing one incomprehensible task or another. Everything looked at best utilitarian and a bit shabby, and at worst run down and antiquated, but if nothing else it seemed to be a hive of activity, with every berth filled and what looked to be the start of another, matching the large one he was here for, in construction opposite it on the other side of the truss.
The woman sitting next to him, a born and bred upsider warp technician named Praz or Pruz or something like that, noted his slight look of wariness and poked him with her elbow, muttering "It's not much to look at, but the Lumpers do damn good work". Baring that one comment, for the first time since they'd met at the spaceport on Orga 9 the rest of the passengers were quiet, just as focused on the viewscreens as he was.
Despite the project having started to come together over the network years ago, this was the first time some of them had met in person. This was far less than the full crew, let alone everyone involved from a distance, but was a good mix heavy on engineers and technicians that could knowledgeably comment on the progress that had been made and share there impressions with everyone else. They'd been chatting all through the trip, but as they approached their destination a hush had come over the cabin for no single reason anyone could identify. The runabout's pilot, who had been jutting in with a running commentary of witty observations and improbable anecdotes, had apparently sensed the mood and trailed off after his last few comments went unanswered.
It was odd seeing things finally coming together like this. The plan had sounded mad to him at first, but in a strangely compelling way. Put together a crew to act as mercenaries, free traders and the like. Use it as cover to hang around in trouble spots and sites of mass struggle, agitating for full, direct economic and societal democracy, equal rights for all, and all that good stuff. After all, everyone knows a war that is dragging on too long is one of the best places to find a revolutionary movement spring up. When an empire finally pushes the people too far, support the revolution as much as possible. If it fails, help leading figures escape the inevitable crackdown. Between jobs, maybe even go raid the shipping of the handful of especially loathsome civilizations known to practice outright chattel slavery, though that last bit wasn't in the public pitch for deniability reasons. The sort of plan that makes for an entertaining series of holovids but doesn't ever really happen.
But somehow it seemed to be happening. A team had come together to craft a decent proposal, the referendum had attracted far more interest than they'd dared hope, and they'd amended it with a bigger request since all they'd originally thought they could hope for was an armed freighter. Then things got even weirder when some commenter working at a Rigelian scrapyard chimed in saying that he'd "found a battlecruiser for you guys". One thing led to another, and now here they were, about to get a look at what one of the best ship building work gangs in Yrillian space had been able to do with it.
It felt almost surreal. He didn't like to admit it, but this was the first time he'd so much as left the Etinjur subcluster, and here he was, heading over to get his first look at the warship they wanted him to fly.
Sure, he'd spent the last couple years flying in-system low warp transports between Etinjur and the belt colonies, and he even liked to think he was good at it, but that didn't remotely qualify him for the job. That said, as one of only a handful of people in the planned crew with any substantial experience at the helm of something bigger than a runabout and warp capable, he supposed he would have to do. His admittedly near-record high scores in Star Command 3: Battle for Kebril apparently made him the one of that select group with the closest thing to combat experience. "Starfleet, we are not."
As the runabout approached, it swung around the asteroid revealing a cavernous docking bay with huge doors swung open and the glimmer of a forcefield holding air in place. As they entered, he noticed you could still see the tracks where a second set of doors once acted as an enormous airlock. The space was a crude one, with stone walls, exposed piping, and raised metal frameworks in the back for anything especially large to dock to. Most flat stretches of wall featured crude platforms of metal grating with what looked to be gravity plating hiding under it. Catwalks and steps connected them, twisting in ways that hurt to look at a bit to transition between the different gravity directions. Shuttles, utility craft and even a few smallish cargo ships were scattered throughout with no apparent order, and almost everywhere he looked, a spacer was doing some important-looking task or another. Well, except for a patch of deck almost directly opposite the one his runabout seemed to be heading to, which seemed to instead be in use for some type of ball game. Gryer realized with a start that this docking bay must have been built well into the Collapse and only later equipped with artificial gravity.
A deckhand stopped whatever she was doing to direct the pilot in to a patch of free deck with a couple light wands, then just as quickly went back to it. As the group filed out, most of the non-upsiders found themselves stumbling a bit at the transition to what couldn't be more than a quarter Yrillia standard gravity. There didn't seem to be any kind of welcoming committee at first, until a scrawny, androgynous, startlingly young person wearing bulky gray spacer's coveralls came jetting over from one of the other platforms on some kind of ducted fan thruster pack, landing in front of them with a practiced motion. Probably a girl, but it was not entirely clear.
"Hi all! Welcome to the Lump! I'm Yiyral, and I'll be leading you to berth 7 so you can see what we've done with the Kelsatha! It's a little bit of a hike, but the main lift shaft from here is down for repairs, so what can you do? Right this way, watch the gravity transition on the walkway over there, they take some getting used to!" Their name and voice didn't really clarify things, and Gryer figured it would probably be most polite to leave it at that.
As they followed their guide down an oddly twisting catwalk to another platform, Gryer was hit by a sudden, intense bout of disorientation as his eyes and inner ear disagreed about how he was moving and which way was down. Fighting back nausea, he almost lost his balance several times until he hit on the trick of closing his eyes and just following the handrail. Baring a few of the experienced spacers, the rest of his comrades didn't seem to be doing much better. Yiyral seemed more or less oblivious to it, though he got the distinct impression that leading them on foot rather than just jumping across again was intended as a courtesy.
They were led across most of the platform, down a ramp that, with another less severe sickening twist, became level floor again, and through a hatchway (where the thruster pack got stowed on a rack) into a rough-carved tunnel with the same grated floor over gravity plating and a bundle of wires, pipes and and such suspended from the ceiling, with little strips of lights scattered here and there. Every time it changed directions, the floor remained "down" and a handrail was supplied to help cope with it. Intersections occasionally branched off in all directions, though steps were taken to provide uninterrupted floor where the direction would other wise be up or down. All the while, their guide kept up a running commentary about "the Lump", explaining things as they passed and going off on tangents about local history, daily life and so on. It turned out that Yiyral was someone's teenage kid, currently apprenticing with the maintenance team ("but I often get roped into whatever needs doing, like fetching things or passing messages or babysitting downsiders!"), and that this section of the station had been old mining tunnels that were first re-purposed some time during the phase of the collapse when artificial gravity was something you could only get at great expense through trade with neighboring civilizations. Apparently there were more modern sets of tunnels from the docking bay, but the ones off of the closest entrance to them hadn't ever been properly redone.
Passing a series of closed doors, several more intersections with other tunnels, a large room outfitted as a hydroponic farm, and an odd little nook with an overstuffed sofa where a pair of old women sipped tea from microgravity bulbs, they soon found themselves stepping into a more finished section of corridor with a straight layout, consistent gravity and actual walls and ceilings beyond just bare rock.
This area seemed quite a bit busier, with much more foot traffic than the last set of tunnels and more frequent intersections and doorways. The gravity was a bit heavier too, more like 60% standard. ("Enough so kids can grow up normally, without being too bad for someone used to less. Also, we don't need to move heavy things by hand around here, so there's that too.") A doorway to the right revealed a tall courtyard with a cunningly painted imitation sky, the walls lined with what would have to be apartments or quarters or whatever one would call them in a place like this. Another revealed a little park, complete with stunted trees and an actual fountain where three small children could be seen splashing water everywhere. ("We didn't have any fountains until maybe ten years ago when someone figured out how to contain them with shields if there's a gravity outage.")
After a supposed shortcut through a cafeteria, where Yiyral garbed a skewer of barbecued meat and a bulb of some brightly colored drink, they soon found themselves in a more industrial area. The tunnel was now wider, with a pair of marked lanes that little electric carts occasionally sped down bearing cargo or a handful of workers. Everything was just a bit dirtier and more scuffed up, and a faint mechanical hum grew until it was hard to ignore. Before long, Yiyral stopped them at an odd, metal door that was up three steps from floor level.
"Okay, this isn't quite the fastest way to where we're going, but it's got the best view. This is an observation walkway across industrial bays 3 and 4. It's enclosed, so no need for ear protection or anything, but watch out for the gravity again. It goes back down on the other side of that door."
Sure enough, the view was worth it.
The door opened up into a walkway, almost more of a catwalk, surrounded by bulged-out walls of transparent aluminum or something of the sort. The floors were once again grating over low-powered gravity plating, hand-rails ran down either side and a metal framework held the sections of window together, but the view was otherwise unobstructed. To either side, the enormous room it was suspended in stretched out perhaps 20 meters, but with a "floor" and "ceiling" more like 100 meters away. At a moment's glance it was obvious that the "walls" on either side were set up as a floor, and each contained an endless grid of mostly identical blocks of almost primitive-looking computer controlled factory machinery, separated by a grid of tracks and with access catwalks overhead. The noise from outside had grown into a dull roar, not loud enough to hurt, but more on the order of the sea crashing against a cliff. There was constant motion, both in the machines themselves and in a system or robotic arms sliding down the tracks, repositioning parts, loading or unloading parts and materials, even what looked like doing some simple repairs or maintenance. A set of carts on the same tracks carried materials and parts from place to place, and a few technicians scurried about on the catwalk overhead keeping everything running, here and there tending to a broken-down machine. As Gryer looked closely, he spotted a bank of the little robot arms assembling what looked like it might be navigational deflector emitters, while elsewhere several complementary pieces of equipment seemed to be cutting and rolling metal panels for something. In an area of empty space towards one side, a handful of some of the same factory equipment found on the rest of the floor seemed to be coming together.
"Here and 1 and 2 are where most of the smallish stuff gets done. 5 and 6 are materials processing, 7 and 8 are for large frame sections and outsize parts, 9 and 10 are for precision work, 11 is nacelle assembly, 12 is drive components, 13 is computers, and we've got smaller ones for all sorts of special purposes. Most of the materials are refined off-site and brought in these days, just like the parts we can't build ourselves."
A turreted tractor beam emitter clatterer down a track that must be built into the framework of the walkway carrying what might be a fusion reactor. As it passed, Gryer was startled to notice a tiny, bearded figure in a control booth attached to it who he belatedly recognized as a Tellerite. He briefly wondered what his story might be, and how he ended up here of all places.
The other end of the observation walkway opened up into a control room filled with banks of screens and consoles monitoring the industrial bays. As they entered, many of the operators glanced up and some smiled or nodded, but all immediately returned to work. Another length of hallway very much like the one before the observation walkway, a quick turn at an intersection and another of those awful sloped hallways where the gravity direction shifts brought them into a surface structure with a good view of the old berth built onto the asteroid surface. Their guide informed them that this was actually part of the structure at the base of the truss, and led them through a doorway into a room full of racks and lockers of space suit components and common tools and equipment, with a large door in the opposite wall looking rather like an oversized cargo turbolift. A handful of people, most in full space suits or spacer's coveralls, stood waiting at the door. Yiyral started to pick out a helmet before putting it back. ("Sorry, habit. The Kelsatha holds air, no need to worry!")
The lift, a room-sized thing large enough for easily forty space suited Yrillians that seemed to be intended as much for cargo as people, proved to run on a track up the outside of the truss just like the cargo carrier he'd seen as the ship was approaching. It featured substantial windows looking out at the asteroid's surface and the smaller berths on the way up, which was interesting but perhaps a bit disconcerting, especially given the faint creaking and groaning noises he couldn't quite ignore. With no real gravity to let it fall it was obviously perfectly safe, but a lifetime of downsider instincts couldn't be overcome that easily.
Perhaps three fourths of the local passengers stepped out at the first two stops at lower, smaller berths, with the remainder riding all the way to the top. When the lift shuddered to a halt for the last time, Gryer found himself and his comrades in an odd little landing wrapped around the truss with doors leading off to a break area, bathrooms and the like as well as an airlock, some storage rooms, and an obviously modular hallway to the Kelsatha's berth. Following Yiyral down the (disconcertingly flexible) passageway led them to an observation room.
He caught one look out the windows that took up most of a wall, and stopped short. He hardly even noticed when Yiyral banged on a hatchway and shouted for someone from the engineering team before turning to go.
Gryer had seen pictures, of course. Pictures during the Kelsatha's glory days as the pride of the Andorian fleet. Pictures during it's time pushing back the unknown at the edge of federation space. Pictures of a stripped and broken hulk in a Rigelian junkyard, and even pictures of the refit progress and renders of what the result should look like. Somehow, actually seeing it with his own eyes was different.
The design called to mind the ancient Kumari-class in general form, but only as one might see hints of Archer's Enterprise in the lines of an Ambassador with the benefit of hindsight. The same armored wedge of a hull in the front, but now more rounded and a bit wider, and blended more smoothly into the armored spine. Instead of a pair of vertically stacked sublight engines in the rear, a single bank of smaller impulse engines taking up that entire space. A pair of angled, slightly flattened projections out of the hull perhaps hinted at the overall lines of a Kumari's over-sized, close in nacelles and part of the first segment of wing, with the outer segment ending in nacelles rather than gun pods. It looked solid, somehow, and sleek not quite in the way of a bird but more in the way that a fish with some unusual constraint on its body shape can still evolve towards sleekness. It was a good looking ship in the way that well-engineered, functional objects often are, but no more than that.
Signs of the refit now approaching completion were everywhere. The nacelles had been replaced entirely with new ones with a distinctly non-Andorian design aesthetic. The gaps in the hull where weapons and many of the sensors from its days in the Andorian Survey Corps had been ripped out where now covered over with shiny new hull plating, many of them with replacement equipment of Yrillian make installed. Large sections of the hull appeared to have been stripped of paint, giving it an odd, blotchy look. Though most of the exterior work seemed complete, here and there spacesuited figures could be seen walking on the hull or flitting around on thrusters.
There was no "love at first sight" reaction or anything so dramatic. Instead, there was just a feeling of unreality, the same one from before but back stronger than ever. This was actually happening. He was going to fly an actual warship with a storied history, adventuring around the galaxy, helping workers of all species throw off their cruel masters. He, who had never flown something even a third the size, and never above warp 3. If he didn't die on that ship, it would be the adventure of a lifetime. If he did, technically perhaps even more so.
As all of it finally sunk in, he found himself starting to smile.
A/N: Sorry for any deficits in overall quality. I'm not really used to writing fiction, and this was meant to take us all the way through looking over highlights of the refit to the ship from the inside but the first bit kept growing.
People may remember the Kelsatha from my "New lives for old hulls" omake, for which I was rewarded with it ending up refit fairly decently and made available to the Romulans as a mercenary. This is a stripped and rebuilt Andorian battlecruiser from the middle of the last century. C3 S2 H3 L4 P1 D4 now, so not exactly cutting edge but not completely useless.
This particular station is very large as Yrillian independent shipyards go, and the associated asteroid habitat has a population in the mid to low tens of thousands. This one is especially chaotic internally, but many upsider space stations from the collapse era have an unfortunate habit of making gravity point whichever way is convenient, at whichever strength is convenient. More recent ones are generally much more conventional about this, though you may still sometimes see things like the arrangement in the industrial bays described above as a way to more efficiently use large, enclosed spaces.
Outside Agitators Part 1: "The Lumpers do damn good work"
Gryer watched the steadily approaching shipyard complex with an odd mixture of excitement and trepidation.
It was big, sure, with one of the five largest berths in Yrillian space even, but it wasn't much to look at. But then, the Lump had been around in some form for almost 700 years, so perhaps that was to be expected.
A series of domes and prefabricated modules sat scattered randomly on the surface of a medium-sized reddish asteroid like a nasty rash. Here and there, the surface was scuffed to reveal gray rock underneath, or pockmarked by access hatches and skylights hinting at the tunnels within. To one side a pair of frameworks of metal bulged from the surface like the ribcage of a dead animal, the half-seen form of an ore hauler and what might be the start of a light transport's frame taking shape within. A thick truss, filled with pipes, wires and what was probably an access shaft, rose from another part of the surface and connected to several other berths of various sizes and obviously newer construction, the last of which being almost twice as big as the next largest. Unfortunately, they had some kind of a barrier of plastic sheeting strung up, perhaps to protect it from dust during a sensitive stage of construction, but just as likely to discourage any prying eyes.
As he watched, some kind of robotic cart slid down a track built into the truss with some blocky, unidentifiable assembly strapped to it before turning off into one of the smaller berths to be unloaded. Everywhere he looked, workers in spacesuits, little utility craft and the like darted back and forth on little plumes of cold gas doing one incomprehensible task or another. Everything looked at best utilitarian and a bit shabby, and at worst run down and antiquated, but if nothing else it seemed to be a hive of activity, with every berth filled and what looked to be the start of another, matching the large one he was here for, in construction opposite it on the other side of the truss.
The woman sitting next to him, a born and bred upsider warp technician named Praz or Pruz or something like that, noted his slight look of wariness and poked him with her elbow, muttering "It's not much to look at, but the Lumpers do damn good work". Baring that one comment, for the first time since they'd met at the spaceport on Orga 9 the rest of the passengers were quiet, just as focused on the viewscreens as he was.
Despite the project having started to come together over the network years ago, this was the first time some of them had met in person. This was far less than the full crew, let alone everyone involved from a distance, but was a good mix heavy on engineers and technicians that could knowledgeably comment on the progress that had been made and share there impressions with everyone else. They'd been chatting all through the trip, but as they approached their destination a hush had come over the cabin for no single reason anyone could identify. The runabout's pilot, who had been jutting in with a running commentary of witty observations and improbable anecdotes, had apparently sensed the mood and trailed off after his last few comments went unanswered.
It was odd seeing things finally coming together like this. The plan had sounded mad to him at first, but in a strangely compelling way. Put together a crew to act as mercenaries, free traders and the like. Use it as cover to hang around in trouble spots and sites of mass struggle, agitating for full, direct economic and societal democracy, equal rights for all, and all that good stuff. After all, everyone knows a war that is dragging on too long is one of the best places to find a revolutionary movement spring up. When an empire finally pushes the people too far, support the revolution as much as possible. If it fails, help leading figures escape the inevitable crackdown. Between jobs, maybe even go raid the shipping of the handful of especially loathsome civilizations known to practice outright chattel slavery, though that last bit wasn't in the public pitch for deniability reasons. The sort of plan that makes for an entertaining series of holovids but doesn't ever really happen.
But somehow it seemed to be happening. A team had come together to craft a decent proposal, the referendum had attracted far more interest than they'd dared hope, and they'd amended it with a bigger request since all they'd originally thought they could hope for was an armed freighter. Then things got even weirder when some commenter working at a Rigelian scrapyard chimed in saying that he'd "found a battlecruiser for you guys". One thing led to another, and now here they were, about to get a look at what one of the best ship building work gangs in Yrillian space had been able to do with it.
It felt almost surreal. He didn't like to admit it, but this was the first time he'd so much as left the Etinjur subcluster, and here he was, heading over to get his first look at the warship they wanted him to fly.
Sure, he'd spent the last couple years flying in-system low warp transports between Etinjur and the belt colonies, and he even liked to think he was good at it, but that didn't remotely qualify him for the job. That said, as one of only a handful of people in the planned crew with any substantial experience at the helm of something bigger than a runabout and warp capable, he supposed he would have to do. His admittedly near-record high scores in Star Command 3: Battle for Kebril apparently made him the one of that select group with the closest thing to combat experience. "Starfleet, we are not."
As the runabout approached, it swung around the asteroid revealing a cavernous docking bay with huge doors swung open and the glimmer of a forcefield holding air in place. As they entered, he noticed you could still see the tracks where a second set of doors once acted as an enormous airlock. The space was a crude one, with stone walls, exposed piping, and raised metal frameworks in the back for anything especially large to dock to. Most flat stretches of wall featured crude platforms of metal grating with what looked to be gravity plating hiding under it. Catwalks and steps connected them, twisting in ways that hurt to look at a bit to transition between the different gravity directions. Shuttles, utility craft and even a few smallish cargo ships were scattered throughout with no apparent order, and almost everywhere he looked, a spacer was doing some important-looking task or another. Well, except for a patch of deck almost directly opposite the one his runabout seemed to be heading to, which seemed to instead be in use for some type of ball game. Gryer realized with a start that this docking bay must have been built well into the Collapse and only later equipped with artificial gravity.
A deckhand stopped whatever she was doing to direct the pilot in to a patch of free deck with a couple light wands, then just as quickly went back to it. As the group filed out, most of the non-upsiders found themselves stumbling a bit at the transition to what couldn't be more than a quarter Yrillia standard gravity. There didn't seem to be any kind of welcoming committee at first, until a scrawny, androgynous, startlingly young person wearing bulky gray spacer's coveralls came jetting over from one of the other platforms on some kind of ducted fan thruster pack, landing in front of them with a practiced motion. Probably a girl, but it was not entirely clear.
"Hi all! Welcome to the Lump! I'm Yiyral, and I'll be leading you to berth 7 so you can see what we've done with the Kelsatha! It's a little bit of a hike, but the main lift shaft from here is down for repairs, so what can you do? Right this way, watch the gravity transition on the walkway over there, they take some getting used to!" Their name and voice didn't really clarify things, and Gryer figured it would probably be most polite to leave it at that.
As they followed their guide down an oddly twisting catwalk to another platform, Gryer was hit by a sudden, intense bout of disorientation as his eyes and inner ear disagreed about how he was moving and which way was down. Fighting back nausea, he almost lost his balance several times until he hit on the trick of closing his eyes and just following the handrail. Baring a few of the experienced spacers, the rest of his comrades didn't seem to be doing much better. Yiyral seemed more or less oblivious to it, though he got the distinct impression that leading them on foot rather than just jumping across again was intended as a courtesy.
They were led across most of the platform, down a ramp that, with another less severe sickening twist, became level floor again, and through a hatchway (where the thruster pack got stowed on a rack) into a rough-carved tunnel with the same grated floor over gravity plating and a bundle of wires, pipes and and such suspended from the ceiling, with little strips of lights scattered here and there. Every time it changed directions, the floor remained "down" and a handrail was supplied to help cope with it. Intersections occasionally branched off in all directions, though steps were taken to provide uninterrupted floor where the direction would other wise be up or down. All the while, their guide kept up a running commentary about "the Lump", explaining things as they passed and going off on tangents about local history, daily life and so on. It turned out that Yiyral was someone's teenage kid, currently apprenticing with the maintenance team ("but I often get roped into whatever needs doing, like fetching things or passing messages or babysitting downsiders!"), and that this section of the station had been old mining tunnels that were first re-purposed some time during the phase of the collapse when artificial gravity was something you could only get at great expense through trade with neighboring civilizations. Apparently there were more modern sets of tunnels from the docking bay, but the ones off of the closest entrance to them hadn't ever been properly redone.
Passing a series of closed doors, several more intersections with other tunnels, a large room outfitted as a hydroponic farm, and an odd little nook with an overstuffed sofa where a pair of old women sipped tea from microgravity bulbs, they soon found themselves stepping into a more finished section of corridor with a straight layout, consistent gravity and actual walls and ceilings beyond just bare rock.
This area seemed quite a bit busier, with much more foot traffic than the last set of tunnels and more frequent intersections and doorways. The gravity was a bit heavier too, more like 60% standard. ("Enough so kids can grow up normally, without being too bad for someone used to less. Also, we don't need to move heavy things by hand around here, so there's that too.") A doorway to the right revealed a tall courtyard with a cunningly painted imitation sky, the walls lined with what would have to be apartments or quarters or whatever one would call them in a place like this. Another revealed a little park, complete with stunted trees and an actual fountain where three small children could be seen splashing water everywhere. ("We didn't have any fountains until maybe ten years ago when someone figured out how to contain them with shields if there's a gravity outage.")
After a supposed shortcut through a cafeteria, where Yiyral garbed a skewer of barbecued meat and a bulb of some brightly colored drink, they soon found themselves in a more industrial area. The tunnel was now wider, with a pair of marked lanes that little electric carts occasionally sped down bearing cargo or a handful of workers. Everything was just a bit dirtier and more scuffed up, and a faint mechanical hum grew until it was hard to ignore. Before long, Yiyral stopped them at an odd, metal door that was up three steps from floor level.
"Okay, this isn't quite the fastest way to where we're going, but it's got the best view. This is an observation walkway across industrial bays 3 and 4. It's enclosed, so no need for ear protection or anything, but watch out for the gravity again. It goes back down on the other side of that door."
Sure enough, the view was worth it.
The door opened up into a walkway, almost more of a catwalk, surrounded by bulged-out walls of transparent aluminum or something of the sort. The floors were once again grating over low-powered gravity plating, hand-rails ran down either side and a metal framework held the sections of window together, but the view was otherwise unobstructed. To either side, the enormous room it was suspended in stretched out perhaps 20 meters, but with a "floor" and "ceiling" more like 100 meters away. At a moment's glance it was obvious that the "walls" on either side were set up as a floor, and each contained an endless grid of mostly identical blocks of almost primitive-looking computer controlled factory machinery, separated by a grid of tracks and with access catwalks overhead. The noise from outside had grown into a dull roar, not loud enough to hurt, but more on the order of the sea crashing against a cliff. There was constant motion, both in the machines themselves and in a system or robotic arms sliding down the tracks, repositioning parts, loading or unloading parts and materials, even what looked like doing some simple repairs or maintenance. A set of carts on the same tracks carried materials and parts from place to place, and a few technicians scurried about on the catwalk overhead keeping everything running, here and there tending to a broken-down machine. As Gryer looked closely, he spotted a bank of the little robot arms assembling what looked like it might be navigational deflector emitters, while elsewhere several complementary pieces of equipment seemed to be cutting and rolling metal panels for something. In an area of empty space towards one side, a handful of some of the same factory equipment found on the rest of the floor seemed to be coming together.
"Here and 1 and 2 are where most of the smallish stuff gets done. 5 and 6 are materials processing, 7 and 8 are for large frame sections and outsize parts, 9 and 10 are for precision work, 11 is nacelle assembly, 12 is drive components, 13 is computers, and we've got smaller ones for all sorts of special purposes. Most of the materials are refined off-site and brought in these days, just like the parts we can't build ourselves."
A turreted tractor beam emitter clatterer down a track that must be built into the framework of the walkway carrying what might be a fusion reactor. As it passed, Gryer was startled to notice a tiny, bearded figure in a control booth attached to it who he belatedly recognized as a Tellerite. He briefly wondered what his story might be, and how he ended up here of all places.
The other end of the observation walkway opened up into a control room filled with banks of screens and consoles monitoring the industrial bays. As they entered, many of the operators glanced up and some smiled or nodded, but all immediately returned to work. Another length of hallway very much like the one before the observation walkway, a quick turn at an intersection and another of those awful sloped hallways where the gravity direction shifts brought them into a surface structure with a good view of the old berth built onto the asteroid surface. Their guide informed them that this was actually part of the structure at the base of the truss, and led them through a doorway into a room full of racks and lockers of space suit components and common tools and equipment, with a large door in the opposite wall looking rather like an oversized cargo turbolift. A handful of people, most in full space suits or spacer's coveralls, stood waiting at the door. Yiyral started to pick out a helmet before putting it back. ("Sorry, habit. The Kelsatha holds air, no need to worry!")
The lift, a room-sized thing large enough for easily forty space suited Yrillians that seemed to be intended as much for cargo as people, proved to run on a track up the outside of the truss just like the cargo carrier he'd seen as the ship was approaching. It featured substantial windows looking out at the asteroid's surface and the smaller berths on the way up, which was interesting but perhaps a bit disconcerting, especially given the faint creaking and groaning noises he couldn't quite ignore. With no real gravity to let it fall it was obviously perfectly safe, but a lifetime of downsider instincts couldn't be overcome that easily.
Perhaps three fourths of the local passengers stepped out at the first two stops at lower, smaller berths, with the remainder riding all the way to the top. When the lift shuddered to a halt for the last time, Gryer found himself and his comrades in an odd little landing wrapped around the truss with doors leading off to a break area, bathrooms and the like as well as an airlock, some storage rooms, and an obviously modular hallway to the Kelsatha's berth. Following Yiyral down the (disconcertingly flexible) passageway led them to an observation room.
He caught one look out the windows that took up most of a wall, and stopped short. He hardly even noticed when Yiyral banged on a hatchway and shouted for someone from the engineering team before turning to go.
Gryer had seen pictures, of course. Pictures during the Kelsatha's glory days as the pride of the Andorian fleet. Pictures during it's time pushing back the unknown at the edge of federation space. Pictures of a stripped and broken hulk in a Rigelian junkyard, and even pictures of the refit progress and renders of what the result should look like. Somehow, actually seeing it with his own eyes was different.
The design called to mind the ancient Kumari-class in general form, but only as one might see hints of Archer's Enterprise in the lines of an Ambassador with the benefit of hindsight. The same armored wedge of a hull in the front, but now more rounded and a bit wider, and blended more smoothly into the armored spine. Instead of a pair of vertically stacked sublight engines in the rear, a single bank of smaller impulse engines taking up that entire space. A pair of angled, slightly flattened projections out of the hull perhaps hinted at the overall lines of a Kumari's over-sized, close in nacelles and part of the first segment of wing, with the outer segment ending in nacelles rather than gun pods. It looked solid, somehow, and sleek not quite in the way of a bird but more in the way that a fish with some unusual constraint on its body shape can still evolve towards sleekness. It was a good looking ship in the way that well-engineered, functional objects often are, but no more than that.
Signs of the refit now approaching completion were everywhere. The nacelles had been replaced entirely with new ones with a distinctly non-Andorian design aesthetic. The gaps in the hull where weapons and many of the sensors from its days in the Andorian Survey Corps had been ripped out where now covered over with shiny new hull plating, many of them with replacement equipment of Yrillian make installed. Large sections of the hull appeared to have been stripped of paint, giving it an odd, blotchy look. Though most of the exterior work seemed complete, here and there spacesuited figures could be seen walking on the hull or flitting around on thrusters.
There was no "love at first sight" reaction or anything so dramatic. Instead, there was just a feeling of unreality, the same one from before but back stronger than ever. This was actually happening. He was going to fly an actual warship with a storied history, adventuring around the galaxy, helping workers of all species throw off their cruel masters. He, who had never flown something even a third the size, and never above warp 3. If he didn't die on that ship, it would be the adventure of a lifetime. If he did, technically perhaps even more so.
As all of it finally sunk in, he found himself starting to smile.
A/N: Sorry for any deficits in overall quality. I'm not really used to writing fiction, and this was meant to take us all the way through looking over highlights of the refit to the ship from the inside but the first bit kept growing.
People may remember the Kelsatha from my "New lives for old hulls" omake, for which I was rewarded with it ending up refit fairly decently and made available to the Romulans as a mercenary. This is a stripped and rebuilt Andorian battlecruiser from the middle of the last century. C3 S2 H3 L4 P1 D4 now, so not exactly cutting edge but not completely useless.
This particular station is very large as Yrillian independent shipyards go, and the associated asteroid habitat has a population in the mid to low tens of thousands. This one is especially chaotic internally, but many upsider space stations from the collapse era have an unfortunate habit of making gravity point whichever way is convenient, at whichever strength is convenient. More recent ones are generally much more conventional about this, though you may still sometimes see things like the arrangement in the industrial bays described above as a way to more efficiently use large, enclosed spaces.
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- Location
- Outside the Box
- Pronouns
- She/Her
I use the "find in page" browser function to look for the right title, omake author, or a date close to the post I'm looking for. (Real date or fictional date.) I also usually open "view all threadmarks" in its own tab to make it simpler to look through. Unless you mean something else?
Doomed Wombat
Let's go Darling!
- Location
- Dancing on wires!
Quick question have the Honiani ratified yet? I can't find anything indicating they have?
- Location
- Australia
Not yet, but expect some movement on that front soon.
Doomed Wombat
Let's go Darling!
- Location
- Dancing on wires!
Ah good, cause I'm pretty sure they are at 500/500 now.
The Honiani have been at 500/500 for for two years now (2321.Q2). They've just been delayed, repeatedly, because the current President wanted to force through her Federalization plan before they joined up and messed with her numbers on the Federation Council.
From what the GMs have said 2324.Q3 is the earliest we can expect to see a Honiani ratification since Federalization takes effect 2324.Q1 and ratification always happen in either Q3 or Q4. There is also a good chance of them being pushed back to 2325 with all the goings on right now.