April 29th, 009 SDE:
Countryman stepped off the lift and into a busy corridor. Dozens of men and women were passing in each direction as they went about their daily business. Another typical day on the ship. At this moment, they were en route to Anchorage again, while Admiral Laikan had taken her fleet on the offensive into Raider-controlled territories. They only stayed at the Lodge long enough to patch up their ships and establish control of the outpost. He’d also received reports that a fighter patrol from Anchorage had intercepted and captured a Raider Supply Convoy that had not yet received the memo about the outpost being seized. A fairly sizable convoy based on the reports he’d read. Sixteen ships carrying food, weapons, fuel and other military supplies that the garrison at the Lodge needed. Most of which had been captured intact by his forces.
Some of those supplies weren’t of much use to him, but they might be useful as a trade good. Modern technology didn’t rely much on copper and they didn’t make use of fissile fuels so they had little need for enriched Uranium and Plutonium. They’d gained about sixty tons of the stuff, which was actually a fairly large amount of fissile material. Such a supply was once considered quite valuable but these days they had little need for it. It wasn’t used in power generation or weaponry anymore. Still it wasn’t useless as a weapon, they just had better options.
Weaving through the crowd, he took a turn down a different hall. Only to stop when someone waved to him, “Morning sir! Don’t often see you around this time. Something going on?”
“A council meeting was called, I’m heading to the council room,” replied Countryman, “But I still have a moment, you need anything?” he asked the familiar guard.
“Not particularly, I was just on patrol. It’s been a quiet day so far, which is a good thing in my book. It’s when things get noisy that you have to worry.”
He nodded, and wished the guard good luck as he made his way to the council chamber. After nine years on the ship, Conference Room 122, located on Deck 15, had become the go-to place for the council to meet. Unofficially it had become known as the Council Room or chambers and it was where many of the government decisions for the Sol Refuge were made. By now it was becoming increasingly evident that they were formalizing a government but turning their makeshift military council into a full on government was still a work in progress. While they had made some efforts to formalize the structure of their government, it still remained heavily entwined with the ship's company. Yet with so many other things to worry about, they’d not had the time to sit down and draft proper articles of governance or anything. Hell some parts of the legal system still relied on a structure established under the now fallen United Earth Federation.
Countryman thumbed the panel by the door and stepped inside. It was honestly a miracle they hadn’t run into more issues with a government as patchwork as this, but perhaps their general lack of population helped stabilize things. Countryman had compared himself to a king before, and that comparison still held. The Enterprise was his kingdom, one run under a military oligarchy with himself at the helm. For a people struggling to survive it would do for now, but Countryman was thinking more and more of the future as of late. He had one child already, and Ruri wanted a second. Sooner or later she’d get that second child and it fell on him to provide that kid with a society and home he could be proud of, that they all could take pride in.
Right now they were stuck in this storm, but they couldn’t last forever, it would surface in a few years and by now he was feeling pretty good with their diplomatic position among the locals. By then they would be able to make an attempt to escape, and once more resume a search for a homeworld. Yet that brought to question several problems. Any new world they claimed would need a government to organize society and a fleet to defend the world from would-be aggressors. Taking a breath he centered himself for the meeting, focusing on problems much closer to home. Those cracks would need to be paved, but not today.
Looking around the great table, he noted many of the usual faces were already present. Vera and Ruri were seated next to each other. Reynolds, Drakes and Greyman had already taken their seats and across from them were the Generals Forest and Kirk.
The door opened to admit June Smith and April Baker, the head of their factories and head of security respectively. They quickly took their seats by Quartermaster Kurtz and Technician Redfox.
A few of his bridge officers were already here, notably Eri Maki, Kaori Tani and Misaki Amano. They were chatting among themselves, while the last few faces remained unaccounted for but not for long. Chief Engineer Megumi Richards filled in moments later, soon followed by the Valorian representative Reia of Clan Urko, and finally Chief Robins arrived.
As he took his seat, he commented, “Before anyone asks, No I have not made significant progress since the last update, no sudden breakthroughs.”
Countryman chuckled, “Not why we are here, last I checked and I have not heard of any big breakthroughs just yet.”
Vera interjected, “My projects are proceeding apace, we are focusing on two different applications of new generation forcefield technology; one in reactor containment shielding and the other in reactive armor. Tests in both fields are promising but nothing ready for practical deployment.”
Ruri said, “Much the same in my department with the next gen computers, tests remain promising and we did hand off some of the prototypes for practical tests under Robin. We aren’t quite ready to actually deploy the systems for widespread use.”
Robin said, “And they were much appreciated, my progress has accelerated with the new computers. I’ve put them to work decoding and predicting our genetic changes.”
Greyman said, “It is nice to hear the labs are making progress, but our main subject for the day is actually recruitment and training for our armed services. Generals Forest and Kirk brought to my attention the need for better facilities for training our marines and security forces.”
Kirk interjected, “Our current facilities on the ship were designed almost entirely for practicing ship-to-ship boarding operations, along with the occasional boarding a station scenario. We do have a couple of setups for practicing ship-to-ground missions, but nothing substantive. We can barely do the usual ship-to-facility scenarios and we have no venue for our vehicle crews. Scorpion crews have to rely entirely on the simulator, and this means we can’t really practice combined arms mission scenarios.”
Countryman commented, “I understand that and while the Enterprise is a big ship the Scorpions aren’t small.”
Forrest said, “We don’t expect you to be able to fix that problem but with more space we can do proper combined arms between infantry and tank companies. The scorpion crews can make do with simulator training only. They are useful systems but the bulk of our fighting is done by the infantry.”
Countryman was well aware of what the Scorpion was used for. It served as a mobile command post for ground forces, but it was also a mobile artillery platform. The large hull could also carry significant surface-to-air weaponry and its main cannon was a capable weapon with the range to hit targets in low orbit. With enough firepower to deal serious damage to medium vessels like frigates and destroyers. For them that final ability was a non-factor, the Enterprise would serve to negate hostile orbital forces, so they only needed to deny hostile air cover in the area of operations. “Debatable, but I’m not sure how we will procure more space. The...”
Greyman interjected, “Justifying more space for military training alone would be difficult, the civilians want more housing, other departments are competing with legitimate uses for the same spaces as well. That’s why I asked them if they’d considered opening them to the public.”
“Open to the public?” inquired Countryman fishing for the angle.
Greyman nodded, “Unlike contemporary powers, we have little reason to worry about espionage. In addition, I’ve been receiving countless complaints about a lack of public sports. By opening these spaces to the public we can justify the extra space and tackle the sports angle.”
Countryman blinked, “Sports, eh?” He thought back to some of his conversations, “More than a few parents have expressed wanting proper courts for their kids to play.”
Kirk spoke up, “With a kid on the way I can understand the sentiment. Right now it’s either the corridors, the markets, or the gardens. There just isn’t anywhere for the kids to really play, I guess we have the gyms, but kids need proper space to just run. The gyms don’t really offer that.”
Forrest said, “Yes they do, but I’m not sure military training grounds would be the right venue for that.”
“Certainly not, but Greyman isn’t wrong if we set that much space aside it needs more than one function.”
Countryman interjected, “We can set out parks alongside the new military training grounds, but if we do this we need to discuss what facilities we can give up.”
Smith sighed, “The current ones are all on the lower decks, most of what is already there is industrial storage and a few smaller fabrication bays. With our new fabrication process, I was planning to redesign the factories anyway, giving up a few bays won’t hurt us. Giving up the storage, however, that’s going to be tight.”
Misaki spoke up from her spot, “Surely we can move a few storage bays.”
Kaori sighed, “We might, but we’ve converted a lot of storage into other things already. There is only so much of it we can give up.”
Countryman interjected, “Not much more before we cut into essential storage, but we can move some of it to Anchorage. Plenty of space there for materials storage and we can expand the local warehouses as needed.” he sighed, “But it does mean we will have less space to put anything we need on the Enterprise. If we ever have to go back to the Deep Storm, we won’t be able to bring as much valuable material back with us.”
Greyman chuckled, “Maybe we should make the Enterprise bigger.”
“Now there is an idea, just make the ship bigger,” said Smith between bouts of laughter. Several other chuckles and laughs went around the table. Countryman didn’t laugh.
Neither did Richards, who commented, “Um, theoretically we can do that.”
Several faces looked right at her, “Eh, wait what?” said Smith, “We can?!”
Richards nodded, but it was Countryman who explained, “I designed the Enterprise around two primary space frames joined along her horizontal longitudinal axis. Meaning it is technically possible to split the ship in two and build out new ship sections.”
Greyman looked between the two engineers in the know and asked, “And, um, how practical is that for us?”
Richards sighed, “It’s a lot of work, a great deal of engineering equipment will need to be relocated, power lines redrawn, entire compartments shuffled around. In short we are talking about a major rebuild of the ship.” she let out another breath, “The engine work alone is going to be a nightmare.”
Countryman said, “We aren’t exactly looking to rebuild the Enterprise just yet, maybe in a few decades.”
“Right. Well it does open options for us, knowing that such a thing is theoretically possible.”
“Bringing things closer to home, let’s focus on the problem at hand, a redesign of the lower deck spaces.”