Countryman settled heavily into his sofa. The meeting had gone long, there had been a lot to discuss for this year’s annual budget. Now he had a crap ton of new scientific theories to read, but progress was certainly being made. The new computers Ruri’s department was working on looked promising. Faster, sturdier, and more capable than conventional optical computers, they’d revolutionize computing. Yet a new computer revolution was exactly what they needed. The new sensors, the medical research into the mutation problem, a whole host of science projects, the war, industrial needs, and even civilian use were eating into their computer resources. It was only going to get worse. If they didn’t expand computing, they’d fall further and further behind.
Ruri came in at that moment looking exhausted. “I swear the council meetings get more heated every year.”
Countryman sighed, “They do, but at least they stay civil.” He shifted a little, “So what did you get from Robins?”
She collapsed into the opposite chair, the pad she was holding bouncing a little as it settled onto the low table. “I spent some time talking to him about the new theories. Did you know they were in part based on the data we received from the Wovnar?”
“I’ve done some reading on that. I wouldn’t be surprised. They have some pretty fascinating theories.”
Ruri blinked, “Did you get to their theories on galactic seeding and parallel evolution?”
Countryman knew exactly what theories Ruri was talking about. The Wovnar had noticed something that humanity was only recently familiar with. The compatibility between the Valorian and human species was a good example of it. Genetics were oddly similar on vastly different worlds. The Wovnar had theorized that all life in the galaxy could be traced to one of several common ancestors. Based on the research he’d seen, they might be right. According to the Wovnar research early life evolved somewhere in the galaxy billions of years before Earth even formed, and began on most worlds when they’d barely cooled. Early microbes and viruses were delivered to these worlds via planetary bombardment. These same space rocks would send new microbes up and out where some of them eventually colonized a new world. “Yeah pretty fascinating stuff. It helps explain a few things, but even their data seems to be missing a few explanations on what’s happening to us.”
“I know, but that’s what the new theories are meant to explain.”
“I just hope they pan out.”
“You and me both,” replied Ruri, her eyes on the ceiling, “I don’t like wondering what new change I’ll find in the morning.”
Countryman had to agree with the feeling. It didn’t help that he was always aware of the changes. Thankfully, the mutations weren’t lethal, just plain inconvenient. Still he wouldn’t bat an eye if someone's blood turned toxic or something. Just too bad the theories were only a start, they were still months, if not years, from a solution. He sighed, “Well speaking of mornings, we better get to bed or we will be useless in the morning.”
“I wouldn’t mind being useless for a day.”
He chuckled but pulled himself up, “You staying?”
She grinned, but said nothing as she followed him to the bedroom.
January 9th, 009 SDE:
Countryman took the lift down to the factories. At this hour he was usually heading to the bridge, so it felt odd to be going another way. Two hundred years old and he was already feeling set in his ways. Well almost 200 years, the big day was just four months away, and for once he felt like celebrating. A thought that made him stop for a moment, for eight years he’d not bothered to celebrate his birthday. For eight years the wounds left by the Day of Sorrows, the day Earth fell, had left a scar on them all. One that was hard to forget and since his birthday fell so close to the anniversary of the Earth’s fall, it was always overshadowed. Perhaps it was time to change that.
It had been nine years. Almost a decade had passed, sometimes it was hard to believe that they had survived out here for so long without a homeworld to back them. Without a fleet behind them, or any support. Nine years was a long time, long enough that they had children born out here, children that had never known Earth and never will. Sometimes Countryman wondered how many generations would be born out here in the storm, how many will be born on ships? With every passing day his hope of finding a new homeworld died just a little bit more. Perhaps they would never find one? Countryman sighed. It didn’t matter, so long as they survived. No, not survived, thrived out here. They could one day reclaim what was rightfully theirs. Earth was dead now, but in ten thousand years it should be a thriving world again. That was a long time, plenty of time to rebuild.
The lift came to a stop and he stepped outside near the forward observation deck on this level. From here he could see the storm roiling, a reminder that they needed to survive the storm first. Countryman didn’t know if they would. The radiation had tried to kill them, and when they solved that, resources led them to another region that tried to rip them apart. Now they were fighting a war. One he’d very much prefer not to be part of, but at this point they couldn’t back out. Hell they’d have ended up involved no matter his feelings. Countryman was reminded of the United States back in the 20th century, the country had not wanted to be involved in either war, yet they had been dragged in and fought both of them, or Britain in the Second World War, they’d tried to avoid war time and time again. A mistake, but they had tried, and ended up at war regardless.
The parallels were striking but the circumstances were not the same. This was not a war they could afford, but since they were fighting it, he’d do his best to win out. Not for his sake but for the children. If they lost this war, what future would they have? Humanity couldn’t afford to lose, they had almost nothing left. As a species, they were endangered and this war threatened to make them extinct. A fate he very much wanted to avoid.
Turning, he made his way towards the meeting he was down here for. It wasn’t too far from the lift and he put thoughts of war and time aside. He had other business to attend. So with that thought in mind, he pushed a door open to where Richards and Smith were waiting.
“Morning sir, glad you could come down for this.”
“Right, so what do you have for me?”
They brought up an image of the destroyers they’d been building for the Drifters. “We have been looking into lessons learned during the construction of these ships.”
“Interesting.”
“Right. Well, each one currently costs us two hundred thousand credits a ship. With our current deal we keep the extra materials and that nets us about sixty thousand credits in profit for each ship. Respectable, but we think we can do better.”
“Better? How much do you think you can shave off?” inquired Countryman as he mentally went over the construction.
The destroyers in question were much smaller than his former escorts at 520 meters long and a primary armor belt five meters thick. Each one was armed with numerous torpedo and missile launchers based on Drifter specifications. Thirty-two mounted turrets running along the dorsal and ventral of the hull made up the main battery, each turret mounting dual high-energy pulsed laser cannons. The tech was all dated to be sure, but proven and reliable. More importantly, it wasn’t that expensive for them to build in the first place. A design using more modern technology would run them double or more. Projections for the proposed Saber class, discounting research and development, put the cost of the destroyers around 480,000 credits or more. These cost estimates ran in brackets, actually, with the low-ball estimate being 400,000 credits
Countryman would be shocked if they actually did end up running at 400,000 per but at this point, that was all in the air. They’d frozen development and had no budget for ship design.
Richards let out a breath and brought up several new displays, “The Razorwing hull is already pretty solid, and armor performs to spec. However, that’s also where we can save.” She tapped an image, showing an altered primary starframe, “Nano-lattice construction. We’ve done the calculations. This new configuration is just as strong as the configuration we put in the first few batches, but will save us 10k per hull.”
Smith interjected, “5% may not be much but it isn’t the only place with room for cost savings.” She focused on a section of the armor. “The battle revealed that the bracing for these sections was over-engineered; we can reduce costs here by scaling back the internal braces and switching to the same construction style proposed for the starframe.”
“How much?”
“11k.”
“So 21k in savings? That’s not bad.”
“Oh, it gets better. We can use nano lattices to further reduce materials used in non-structural plating. That will save us a further 5k.”
Countryman did the math. If all this worked out, they’d be slashing 26k off a 200k price tag. Given they were selling these ships for 260k a pop, that would net them a new profit of 86k per ship. A 13-point savings, translated directly into a proportional increase in profit. “That will be a major boon for the council budget.”
“So it would, the calculations work out, so we’d like permission to build a test hull.”
“Build five, just so we are certain. We can sell them to the Drifters when we are done, or scrap them if they don’t work out.”
Richards smiled, “Wonderful, in that case we can get started on the construction right away.”
Countryman watched them go, as he considered the report they had. It wasn’t unusual for shipyards to make iterative improvements on a hull as they started working on it. Finding so much in saving wasn’t typical perhaps, but they hadn’t designed the hull. Nano-lattice construction was something they were already familiar with, but it wasn’t in widespread use with the drifters. Who were the ones who made the initial specifications. Countryman had actually noticed that bit, but he was one of the few with experience with starship construction and design. Smith however had none, and he wasn’t planning to hold her hand. He was actually quite proud of her for noticing. In fact, he set aside the material for those test hulls some time ago. It was nice to see it being used so soon. Now the question was, how long before she realized other improvements they could make?
Not all of them would save them money but would improve on the performance of the hull. Countryman had noted quite a few things that could be subtly improved with nothing more than minor alterations. Nothing he was going to mention, the hull as it stood was perfect for testing and challenging his engineers to do better. Standing up, he headed out into the hall as well. He had places to be, things to do. Not to mention he still needed to visit the bridge, see if any new developments had occurred in his absence.