GblaRCS Chpt 19

==Guided by the light of a (Red) Cameron Star - Chapter 19 -==
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"The impossible we do immediately, the merely difficult was finished the day before yesterday"Unofficial Motto of the Star League Department of Mega-Engineering
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===Eco-governance of worlds and development===
Association Council Building – Niops Association (Niops VII) – 2830
The holographic projector that a technician had set up in the middle of the conference room had once sat in a much similar room in Columbus Base in the Epsilon Pegasus system. Even if you traveled in a straight line it would take a year to get there from Niops, and the circuitous route the device had taken to end up where it had was anything but direct.
Most of the people in the room had never even left the Niops system, let alone be as remotely well traveled as the projector, and it occurred to Trish Ebon that the only person in the room with more mileage on them than her was Colonel Roger Callahan, the man currently presenting his report on the world being projected up there as a visual aid.
"Due to a lack of anything resembling a central government we ended up having to visit most every settlement on Comstock, both to introduce ourselves and inform them we intended to make the planet a protectorate of the Niops Association." Callahan told the steering committee and their invited guests. "In the majority of cases they were deeply suspicious of us at first, assuming reasonably that we were pirates or other ne'er-do-wells merely pretending to be the SLDF, but once we managed to establish our credentials their reaction was overwhelmingly positive to the news."
"I imagine that returning the people abducted by the Blood Rain helped immensely?" Samantha Hollister, the new chair of the committee and a nuclear chemist, suggested. The previous committee chair had resigned because of a disagreement with the High Associator over a need to cut the university budget to help fund a new technical college.
"It did, Ma'am." Callahan confirmed. "As did them learning from the abductees that we had decisively defeated the pirates in open battle, demonstrating our martial prowess and ability to take on and beat even the best trained and equipped threats out here." he continued. "As an aside, although I certainly wouldn't claim to any expertise in agriculture, my impressions of much of Comstock from traveling around the place so extensively are that it could easily become a breadbasket world with the right investment. I know the Star League wanted to develop it for industry, starting with leatherworking as there was a ready supply of materials from Francas, but from what I could see the soil across much of the planet is prime farmland waiting for the plough."
Hollister nodded. "There are a couple of worlds we've surveyed that have even more potential for arable farming, but since neither of them have an existing population near as large as Comstock we're already advocating developing the planet as both an agrarian and industrial world in the long-term" she told him. "Since you mentioned Francas I'll note that we've already decided it will continue as a world devoted to livestock farming because its vast swathes of grasslands and wide open plains are so suitable for the purpose. Fortunately they managed to maintain a functional central government of sorts there so we're much further along the track with them diplomatically."
Callahan smiled. "I'm not sure if you're aware but apparently there's always been a friendly rivalry between those two worlds, they actually remained in contact after the fall of the Star League because the Jumpship that transported meat and leather from Francas to Comstock continued operating. If it hadn't then the food shortage on Comstock would have been even more severe." he told them. "If we're ever at the stage of asking systems to formally band together to form a new Hegemony then tell Comstock that Francas is working hard to becoming the second member to sign up after Niops, that'll motivate them." he advised, grinning.
"We'll make a note in our report to that effect, Colonel, thank you." the Hollister replied. "Returning to Comstock, what do you think the prospects are for them forming a government we could negotiate with on a more formal basis as we did with Francas?"
"If we facilitate the process it's possible, but it could be a few years before they're in a position to elect a government, even with our assistance" Callahan replied. "The food shortages they suffered once grain shipments stopped arriving took a wrecking ball to their political structure. They lost faith in their planetary government because it was unable to cope with the situation, it was never really that strong to start with anyway because most important decisions were made by officials on Terra, and it could be a while before they get that faith back even if we try and nudge them back towards a more centralized and less fictionalized society."
"How would the local populace react if we appointed a governor from Niops to take over running the colony until they were ready to do so themselves, do you think?" one of the other members queried.
Callahan frowned. "There's no simple answer to that, Sir." he responded. "A large number, perhaps even a majority would accept it as long as we could keep order, fend off pirates and steadily improve their standard of living, but a significant minority are still going to object to outside rule being imposed." he warned. "Though most people seemed glad to see us there were more than a few who were angry that the Star League seemed to forget about them and occasionally directed that anger towards my personnel. They seemed to accept our cover story that the reason the Niops Association didn't show up before was a fear of being blasted into oblivion by the Great Houses, who had already razed other developed Terran Hegemony worlds necessitating an isolationist policy until we could amass a sufficiently large nuclear deterrent to feel somewhat secure, but there remains an undercurrent of resentment."
"I know it's not your field of expertise Colonel, but having witnessed the situation on the planet first-hand what methods would you advocate?" Hollister asked him.
Callahan thought about that. "Nothing revolutionary, just following much the same approach as we took on Alphard in order to get the locals on side would work wonders on Comstock too." he replied. "Building more schools and hospitals, providing farming equipment and agricultural technical expertise to improve their food situation would quickly bear fruit" he continued with a mild joke. "As regards law and order issues, well as long as we make clear that the legal system we expect them to follow is simply a book of Terran statute law and precedent which we wrote 'Niops Association' on the cover of there shouldn't be any major objections. There are still people on Comstock that were born in the Hegemony and will happily tell the people around them that it was far from totalitarian." he said. "On that note I'd argue that acting like the Terran Alliance would get quicker results, but the Terran Hegemony approach of leaving domestic affairs up to the member worlds leads to fewer rebellions in the long term." he observed wryly.
"What of law enforcement?"
"The SLDF is already planning on training and arming a local militia which could help with that, but I can't see why the NAPD can't train them up a few professional cops too" Callahan replied. "They have local town sheriffs and the like there already, it's not a foreign concept" he said. "Keep in mind that civilization on Comstock may have collapsed shortly after the Star League did, but that wasn't so long ago that they don't remember what civilized society actually is" he said. "There are still more than a few people on Comstock who emigrated there from the Hegemony after receiving the same anti-agathic treatments that some of the people in the room here today did, including myself."
"You served throughout the entire war against Amaris, Colonel?" one of the committee members asked curiously.
Callahan laughed. "I look good for my age, but not that good." he replied. "I was only in it right at the end when we took back Terra, barely eighteen years old and green as grass" he explained. "I've got a few years on General Hallis if you're wondering, he was only a kid during the Exodus."
Trish knew that Roger Callahan and Sarah McEvedy had actually played together as children, he was her oldest friend and when the clans were formed had naturally joined her in Clan Wolverine. As to why Sarah had wanted Dwight Robertson and later Franklin Hallis to be her saKhan instead of Callahan the answer was pretty simple, they were much better administrators and he just wasn't interested in a job that was far more politician than it was mechwarrior.
The committee chair leaned forward. "Colonel. If we advocated a more interventionist approach, not outright annexation of Comstock but taking temporary control of the planet until they were able to govern themselves, would you be open to accepting the position of Military Governor?" Hollister asked him seriously.
"I would not, and my wife would divorce me if I did." Callahan replied flatly. "That would require moving there, not just being there for a mission lasting a couple of months. We've uprooted ourselves more than enough already" he stated with conviction.
Unlike most of the rest of the senior leadership of the 331st, Roger Callahan was a family man. He already had a wife and a couple of kids when he followed Nicholas Kerensky on the Second Exodus from the Pentagon Worlds to what became the Kerensky Cluster, and those kids were now Mechwarriors themselves, two of them having fought against the Blood Rain on Algenib.
Thanks to the Iron Wombs, he also had a son in Sibling Company Gamma, one that his wife insisted they take in, and he was finding it was pretty fun to be a dad again, even if the Gamma kits were weirder than his own had ever been.
"Furthermore," Callahan continued, "while I realize that as a colony of the Terran Hegemony we have some legal grounds for going that route, even putting aside the sweeping authority provided by the Pollux Proclamation, I would like it placed on the record that I personally consider it a very bad idea" he said. "We want the people of Comstock, and of Francas for that matter, to see themselves as Hegemony citizens again, not oppressed denizens of the periphery with an SLDF boot planted firmly on their necks" he continued. "Again, it's a personal opinion, albeit one based on experience, but after Operation Klondike the clans that treated the population of the Pentagon Worlds badly ended up tying down much of the military strength in keeping the lower castes from rising up against them, and I imagine that will be an ongoing problem." he opined, thinking of the Smoke Jaguars in particular because their laborer caste despised their military caste and with good reason. "Loyalty is earned, not taken, and we want our protectorates to follow us into a bright future by choice, not harbor seething resentment towards us."
"A simple 'no' would have sufficed, but we appreciate both your candor and your perspective" the committee chair responded, seemingly mildly amused by his impassioned argument. "Are there any more questions for Colonel Callahan before we move on to the next item on the agenda?" Hollister asked the others, everyone shaking their heads. "In that case, thank you for your time, Colonel Callahan, we might wish to get back to you after studying your written report but until then you are free to go."
"Thank you." Callahan replied, turning to leave as Trish smiled at the irony that once again on Niops the military seemed to have less of an authoritarian streak than the civilian administration. She idly wondered how many other places that was true of in the Inner Sphere and doubted it could be too many.
How the Niops Association might have evolved as a society if the SLDF-in-Exile had not turned up at their door one day was a scenario she found diverting to contemplate sometimes. The technocratic instincts of a bunch of academics could have readily morphed over time into a 'benevolent' oligarchy of sorts, as they tried to maintain a decent standard of living, sacrificing some personality liberty for security and making sure everyone had their basic needs met.
The planetary image of Comstock being projected changed to that of Alphard as the next person arrived to make their presentation. Their tan certainly indicated plenty of time spent recently in the blazing sun of Alphard, although it would have looked less comedic if the area around her eyes wasn't so pale by comparison with the rest of their face.
"Good Afternoon, Professor Jeffs, nice to have you back." Hollister greeted the geologist they had invited to come talk to them.
"Nice to be back, Sam." Stephanie Jeffs replied sincerely. Much as she enjoyed fieldwork there was much to be said for being able to take regular showers, eat something other than what the military considered healthy and nutritious rations, and go out to a bar if you felt like it.
"Would I be correct in assuming you spent much of your time on Alphard wearing sunglasses?" the chair asked, trying to keep a straight face. They had known each other long enough for her to get away with it.
"Haven't you heard. The reverse racoon look is all the rage." Jeffs replied wryly, knowing full well she looked daft. At least they couldn't see her legs, they were tanned brown to just above the knees while remaining their normal pasty white above.
"At least you didn't get sunstroke." Hollister commiserated.
"I didn't but one of my grad students did." Jeffs told her. "That'll teach them for not wearing the boonie hat that were given because it messed up their hair." she added without much sympathy for the hapless, and hatless, girl concerned.
Trish had already heard this story from Major Gao whose unit had been providing security and transportation for the geology team. The girl concerned had been flirting relentlessly with one of his VTOL pilots and had prioritized looking pretty over staying cool as a result.
Gao had also joked that it was a good thing that the survey ended when it did, because the arguments that his male personnel were having over which of the female grad students looked best in the khaki shorts they all seemed to wear were becoming more heated than the arid terrain. His female troops however had remained cool and aloof, albeit mostly because they unanimously agreed which of the male geologists had the best ass.
As Jeffs began her presentation with a summary of the scale of the germanium deposits already starting to be extracted at the Crux facility, and her geological survey of other sites on the island continent that showed signs of being almost as rich in the strategically vital resource, Trish jotted down some notes. With the Great Houses having once again set the Inner Sphere ablaze the High Administrator wanted to move ahead with plans to purchase the plant and machinery necessary to rapidly develop the Niops economy, requesting that the committee provide him with their final recommendations as soon as possible. To this end they had urgently called in various subject matter experts to provide last-minute evidence, not wishing their report to be less than thorough.
"Moving on to the rest of the planet." Jeffs continued her presentation, "While the northern continents of Typhon and Echidna are extremely mineral rich, I concur with others that it would be a criminal waste of arable farmland not to devote as much of them as possible towards food production" she said. "The soil samples we collected confirmed that with better irrigation there is no reason to believe we cannot eventually grow enough crops there to support a population on Alphard well in excess of a billion people, though it will certainly never be a garden world."
"Over a billion people on such an arid world? Really" Hollister queried.
"Typhon and Echida are both very large continents with vast areas of land potentially available for cultivation." Jeffs responded. "You have to remember that Alphard is only 55% percent covered by ocean compared to just over 70% for Terra." she said, pointing to the holographic globe. "There's not enough potential farmland to support anything like the population of Terra, or Atreus or Capella for example but low single-digit billions, perhaps three at the top-end, that would be feasible."
"That would certainly provide a sizeable workforce for future industrialisation" one of the other committee members observed.
"As regards industrial development I would point you at the largest continent, Hydrae" Jeffs suggested, pointing to it on the globe. "Most of it lies in the Northern hemisphere, but it straddles the equator making much of it even hotter than Crux if anything" she said. "It does however benefit from several mountain ranges, a couple of which are high enough for sufficient precipitation to fall to form rivers. These either flow into either the ocean or the large inland sea known as Lerna" she continued. "Hydrae has great mineral wealth, but it is also somewhere we could develop as a centre of industry because, unlike Crux, some of it is reasonably habitable. Building homes and factories on the coast where the larger rivers meet the ocean would seem ideal, because not only could food be shipped in by sea from Typhon and Ecidna, we can use the river itself for bulk cargo transportation inland until a maglev network is constructed."
"This mineral wealth you spoke of is conveniently near these rivers?"
Jeffs smiled. "If you'll forgive the hyperbole, Hydrae is practically made of metal ores." she said. "While the richest deposits we found aren't near the rivers alas, the ones that are located nearby are still well worth digging up. I'm not just talking germanium either, though it's there, we also found copper, aluminum, titanium, tungsten, magnesium and practically anything else you might care to mention, and without even having to look very hard" she continued. "It's not even like we have to worry about despoiling the environment. Much of Hydrae away from the rivers is practically a barren, lifeless wasteland and frankly open cast mining would only be improving the view" she joked.
"You mentioned the inland sea, I assume it's salt-water not fresh?" Hollister asked.
"Freshwater, but too much evaporation for it not to be a bit salty, it has some potential for irrigation projects but the land around it doesn't exactly have great soil" Jeffs replied. "There are fish in there and it would make a great place for a tourist destination, all the sunshine you could ever ask for, if that happened to be your thing, and the water is warm enough to make swimming in it an absolute pleasure."
Hollister looked amused. "You took time off to go swimming?" she asked chidingly.
Jeffs blinked. "We were testing the buoyancy as a measure of salinity" she replied unconvincingly. "We also collected examples of various aquatic species for the biology department, including a very interesting one we're calling the Alphard Mudskipper that might be on the evolutionary track to becoming a land animal eventually."
"I thought you geology people were only interested in rocks" someone joked.
"We're mainly interested in rocks, that doesn't make us incurious about the other sciences" Jeffs replied evenly. "On the subject of other disciplines, before I forget can you please make sure that the credit for our expedition to Alphard is shared with the geography department" she requested. "Without the help of a couple of their people who tagged along our report wouldn't be as thorough and would lack a broader perspective."
"There's a geography department at the university?" someone on the committee queried in surprise.
"It's like six people and a bunch of maps" another responded. "They're basically an adjunct of geology, they just refuse to merge with them."
"The fields are radically different" Jeffs responded. "Why not just merge us with geometry too" she growled, her reputation as being the academic more prone to threats of violence of any on Niops causing everyone to quickly abandon the topic.
Rumors that she had once beaned a student with an accurately thrown whiteboard eraser, the student concerned having fallen asleep during one of her lectures, were widely believed though officially denied.
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===Angling to stay in shadows, while others destroy themselves.===
"A complete planetary survey would have taken longer than we had, but if you read my full written report you'll find it already provides a list of sites my team believe are either worth further investigation or are worth setting up a mining operation there straight away." Jeffs told them. "I doubt there are many strategically important minerals that Alphard does not boast in abundance."
Hollister nodded. "On the subject of germanium in particular how long do you think we can expect to extract it from Alphard at meaningful rates until it runs out?"
"I'm not sure how you define 'meaningful' but there's enough germanium that we could pull in excess of a billion dollar's worth of the stuff out of the ground every year for over a century before we even had to go looking for deposits I can't already point to on a map." Jeffs replied. "Incidentally, if anyone wants a few billion in platinum and palladium let me know and I'll tell you where to start digging" she added, chuckling.
"I assume that a century of mining at over a billion of germanium per year is a high-end estimate?"
"No. It's a rather conservative one actually." Jeffs replied, shaking her head. "The old ATC were doing noticeably better than that themselves, and they concentrated all their mining efforts at one primary site on Crux only. Which is admittedly the location holding the richest deposits, but ore that would be considered low-grade by Alphard standards is still better than most of what's dug up in the Inner Sphere" she told them. "I really must warn you that we don't want to dig it up any faster than that because if we did we could actually end up lowering the market price considerably and that's not in our interests."
"That seems unlikely given the massive demand for germanium to build JumpShips" one of the other committee members responded dubiously.
"That would be the case if there were still as many shipyards in the Inner Sphere still making the things as there used to be but there aren't are there." Jeffs asked rhetorically. "The bottleneck to production used to be germanium supply, hence it always maintaining its value and making it an excellent means of backing the Star League dollar, but if the Great Houses don't stop blasting each other back to the Stone Age then eventually they'll have a stockpile of germanium and be unable to build enough JumpShips to use it all up. I can't see it being a good idea to speed up the process of them building up a reserve so they become less interested in buying it at the usual process even sooner."
"Logically the price per kilo would start falling dramatically if supply starts to exceed demand" Hollister concurred. "We've already considered that we might want to be careful how fast we spend the germanium we already have, monitoring the markets to make sure we aren't hurting our own profits, but we weren't really thinking about having to do that well into the 30th Century and how much demand might potentially drop off in the long-term."
"That's actually a good argument for starting to construct our own JumpShips from the germanium earlier than initially planned and selling those instead." Trish spoke up. "They're only going to increase in value as more shipyards are destroyed."
"It's a good point but our orbital manufacturing capability is already sorely overstretched which is why constructing a shipyard is as far down the list as it is." one of the others chipped in. "That is unless we look again at the proposal to only partially construct the Olympus stations in our own system and Annie Jump Cannon. Instead of eight batteries at each, only build four for now, and only complete one grav deck and the larger of the three repair bays, completing the work when we're not as stretched."
"The smaller bays are for Dropship maintenance and with luck we'll have the actual Dropship yard from Camelot Command operating before the year is out anyway." Trish added for herself. "If we are able to get the licenses and blueprints needed to build the CargoKing we might not need to devote as much effort to maintaining our older dropships, we'll be building brand new ones and by the time they need servicing the Olympus charging stations might be fully completed and available for the task."
The committee chair looked thoughtful. "We're certainly not short on Dropships in any case so we could simply mothball any that are becoming unsafe to operated." Hollister observed. "We should probably call in the engineering people again to discuss this all again in detail" she said. "I'm slightly surprised you seem to have placed such weight on the implications of the scale of your find in terms of market economics, Professor Jeffs" she remarked. "Not exactly your field of expertise I would have thought."
"My department literally teaches courses in Economic Geology." Jeffs responded, seeming amused by the comment. "If you'll forgive the pun, geology is a little more 'grounded' than many of the other sciences. We don't just dig up rocks for fun, a big part of it is to go looking for the valuable ones so other people can dig them up to make money" she said, "and we're often called in to help advise how to dig them up too because local geology can make a difference to how you want to handle that" she continued. "Less pure science just for the sake of it, more profit motive you might say."
"Consider me better informed as to your department then. Moving on, in the light of your survey of Alphard should we be considering diverting some of the planned efforts to expand mining output in the Niops system to there instead?"
"If you wanted to maximise output then as regards the plans to dig new open-cast mines on Niops V and Niops VI I would say yes, although that decision should really be balanced with the presumed need not to have all our eggs in one basket strategically" Jeffs replied. "I would certainly advise to still go ahead with mining rare earth metals on Niops III for that very reason, and of course the expansion of the asteroid mining program because when you're talking about the tens of millions of tons of material needed to construct orbital and jump-point infrastructure, and then supply zero-gee factories and shipyards on an ongoing basis, you don't want to have to haul it all up the Alphard gravity well in Dropship sized chunks and then cart it all here by JumpShip."
"I would have to agree" an astronomer on the committee concurred. "Moreover, one of our greatest advantages is just how close everything in this system is to everything else, our asteroid belt is only a stone's throw away, forgive my own pun, so we can easily and quickly ramp up orbital factory production when required" he said. "We can grind up a big floating rock, feed it into an arc furnace and have the metal to the factory weeks before we could do so if we relied upon imports instead."
Jeffs nodded. "My colleagues and I discussed this in consultation with some of the engineering department and an authority in meteorites and there are a few strategic metals that aren't found in abundance in the Niops asteroid belt that we are going to want to import" she told the committee, "but as regards iron, titanium, aluminum and so on, the ones we use in bulk, there's no good reason to import them and several good reasons not to" she said. "We'll still want to mine them on Alphard, but only to feed the industries there."
"Out of interest who did you talk to about the makeup of our asteroid belt" the astronomer queried. "I'm not aware of anyone from geology approaching my department."
Stephanie Jeffs looked shifty for a moment as if reluctant to say. "He's not actually from your department although…"
"Farnstrom," the astronomer realized with distaste. "he's a fruitcake."
"He does know a lot about our asteroid belt though and he was readily available without making an appointment to answer a few quick questions' Jeffs defended herself, "mostly because they don't let him lecture the undergraduate students anymore after the incident with the particle accelerator and the cheese sandwich" she undermined her case. "He really does know a lot about the subject. I can't be the only person he's droned on to about floating rocks at parties surely?"
"A knowledgeable fruitcake is still a fruitcake" the astronomer replied, "and we don't let him anywhere near any of the social events my department organises" he told her in a tone that indicated mystification that anyone would. "For obvious reasons I'll be double-checking any information he gave you."
"I'm always open to peer review." Jeffs responded with a shrug. "You should have already all received copies of my full report so there really isn't too much more to say at this juncture other than one particularly interesting discovery on the smaller of the northern continents, Heracles, situated roughly between Typhon and Hydrae."
"That being, Professor Jeffs?" Hollister asked.
"It looks like Alphard might have taken a hit from a particularly hefty comet at some point, the remains of part of the impact crater can be seen on land with the rest underwater" Jeffs told them. "We're talking about something on the scale of the Chicxulub crater on Terra, but the lack on an Iridium layer indicates big ball of ice not big rock as the culprit on Alphard." she continued. "Preliminary estimate gives an impact date of approximately twenty-five million years ago. If we had a paleontology department I'm sure they would want to start digging into the fossil record to see what impact the impact had on how the planets native species developed."
"That is interesting" the committee chair enthused, everyone else apart from Trish seeming equally interested in news that was apparently aeons old.
The next person to be invited to speak was apparently running late so the committee members and guests talked among themselves for a while before an annoyed looking engineer wearing a disheveled SLDF jumpsuit arrived, being immediately directed to a spot next to the projector so he could provide his report.
"Thank you for coming, Captain Murray" the committee chair greeted the engineer. "I'm afraid we do not seem to have received your written report regarding the electronic auto-factory project" Hollister noted.
"That's because I thought it was more important to get the thing running than it was to stop working on it and tell you about it" Murray replied gruffly. "I should be back there right now" he complained.
Trish fought back a smile. SLDF orbital engineer James Murray had recently passed his hundredth birthday and was also long past the stage in his life where he cared much for civility, or paperwork other than blueprints and operating instructions for that matter.
The committee chair sighed. "We will try not to detain you longer than we have to," she replied. "I assume you know our role here? That the recommendations of this committee will be used to determine the spending priorities of the Niops Association for perhaps the next decade."
"Yeah" Murray confirmed.
"Good, then I hope you realize that it is important that we hear from you given that once the auto-fac you are constructing is operational we can use it to produce important replacement circuitry that would otherwise have to be made in a Project Workshop." Hollister checked. "Workshops that could be used to make something else instead so we don't have to import them."
"Obviously." Murray nodded.
"In that vein can you please give us an update on when exactly the auto-factory for producing electronics that was stripped from the Camelot Command facility might be running."
Murray crossed his arms. "Yesterday" he replied.
"I'm sorry?" Hollister responded in surprise.
"Yesterday. We started it running yesterday." Murray told them. "We're still putting it together but because we know what we're doing we started with the module that processes raw materials and puts them into storage, connected up a fusion reactor and turned it on" he said. "We've been feeding it copper, silver, silicon and various other materials while we connect up the other modules that can convert the processed materials into components."
"I'm sorry but how have you 'turned on' an automated factory that as far as I know is still packed up in crates?" Hollister responded nonplussed.
"Only part of it is still packed up in crates, the part that actually produces the finished product because obviously that can be left until last, but judging from your expression I'm assuming that you think the auto-fac is like one big machine" Murray surmised. "It's not, it's a lot of separate auto-facs bolted together that all do different things" he explained. "Okay, so I'll give you an example. This morning we put together the module that makes resistors, that's all it does, it takes raw materials from the storage hoppers containing those and turns them into a few dozen different types of resistors, which it then places into other storage hoppers ready for when the module that actually makes the finished circuit boards needs them" he said. "This afternoon we'll be plugging in the module that makes diodes and if it goes smoothly then hopefully get started on the module that makes capacitors next"
"You make it sound like a big construction kit!" one of the other committee members exclaimed.
"That's exactly what it is," Murray replied. "The SLDF needed something that could be made in manufacturing plants in the Terran Hegemony, taken apart, shipped to where it was needed and bolted back together so that's exactly how they designed the things" he said. "We took it apart on Camelot Command, properly labelled the boxes, and now we're just reversing the process, being smart enough to do it in the right order so we can get it running while we do so."
Hollister frowned. "I'm just surprised that you don't have to completely assemble the thing before turning it on."
"If all you needed was a couple of non-standard transistors to fix something with, a type that weren't already in the storage bins you could just reach in and take, you wouldn't want to have to turn on an entire factory to get them would you?" Murray asked rhetorically. "The way it's designed you can just tell the computer running the entire thing to tell the transistor module to make them and wait for a few minutes until it has, with most everything else still powered down. They'll pop out in a drawer on the side" he said. "The biggest pain in the ass is actually fitting all the conveyor belts and other internal connections that lets the whole thing work together. Some of the robotic systems that collect components from all the various storage hoppers and feed them to the circuit-board module are clunky. They were designed to be hard-wearing which, makes them bulkier than they would be ideally. You have to squeeze past them sometimes to get to where you need to be, we might need skinnier maintenance people to look after it in the long-term" he joked.
"It all sounds like you've got quite a project to manage, Captain Murray." Hollister remarked, though it did seem like he knew what he was doing.
"I started out as an apprentice engineer working for the Star League Department of Mega Engineering before signing up with the SLDF, Ma'am." Murray replied. "Anything less than terraforming an entire planet seems less than daunting to me" he said. "The more complicated modules will take longer to install, the big one that makes microprocessors could potentially cause us problems too, but you can safely assume I'll have the entire thing up and running, spitting out any circuit board you might need, inside of five weeks" he said, pretty sure it would take less than three, but it looked good to come in well ahead of schedule.
Hollister raised her eyebrows. "That's… rather quicker than we assumed" she said.
"I'm a miracle worker, what can I say?" Murray responded wryly. "Just don't forget that this type of auto-fac was never intended for ongoing mass production, running around the clock. It was intended to make replacement parts for equipment on Camelot Command that went wrong, and to do the same for ships that went there" he warned. "You can use it to make the electronics needed to run a manufacturing plant like that, but it's no substitute for one."
"We're aware" Hollister told him.
"Can I get back to my job now please" Murray requested. It wasn't so much that the big ugly concrete warehouse just outside of town where they were reassembling the auto-fac was an appealing place to be, he just wanted to get it finished so he could move on to bigger and better things. To be specific he wanted to start putting the orbital dropship factory together, partially just because he liked working in an EVA suit in orbit, it reminded him of his youth placing orbital mirrors above planets as part of a terraforming project.
Much to his chagrin the Niops Association had refused to allow big orbital mirrors to be constructed above Niops VII. They might warm the planet up to a more comfortable temperature, thanks to all the extra reflected light hitting the surface, but they ruined the sky for astronomy.
"Any more questions for Captain Murray that cannot wait for now?" Hollister asked the committee, "It seems like his time might better serve the interests of the Niops Associator spent elsewhere" she observed, with nobody seeming to disagree.
Hollister watched with amusement as the centenarian engineer dashed off. "If he's right then one of the Project Workshops currently tied up in making replacement electronics might be available for other duties sooner than expected. Are we in agreement that it should be put to work making parts for additional Project Workshops as soon as possible?" she asked with nobody voicing any objections.
For decades whatever manufacturing capability Niops boasted had been tied down making replacement parts for things that broke down, and the Association lacked the excess capacity within the system to get ahead. The Terran Hegemony had intended the science colony to be self-sufficient, not an industrial powerhouse, and what limited headroom for production they had barely coped with the increased demands on the system resulting from the arrival of the Capellan Refugees and then the SLDF.
If they could get ahead of themselves however, free up a Project Workshop to start turning out additional manufacturing capability starting with duplicates of itself, now then they could really start to get things moving.
Now we're cooking, Trish thought to herself with satisfaction. Imagining a half-dozen Project Workshops beavering away to make the machines, needed to make the machines, needed to make fully-automated robotic Battlemech and aerospace fighter production plants.
And if those morons running the Great Houses keep blowing up each other's shipyards we'll sell them JumpShips at a horrific mark-up in price so that they end up paying for it all, she realized, grinning inanely.
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===Regional Star Map Anti-Spinward as of 2830===
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==Chapter Notes==
*;Notes from the Author : Roger Callahan started his military career as a SLDF mechwarrior in the 331st Royal Battlemech Division and found himself back in the same job decades later (albeit at a much higher rank). I'm assuming there was a reason his childhood friend Sarah McEvedy (they were military brats following the unit around until old enough to fight themselves) never picked him to be her saKhan and him not wanting to get involved with the bureaucratic side of things seemed plausible. As an experienced old-hand he was assigned the task of making contact with Comstock and starting to strike up relations with that world (a job made tricky by just how far society had fallen there after the Star League collapsed). I can imagine most people being pleased to see the SLDF again, but quite a few being annoyed they hadn't showed up before to help. The Niops Association using a cover-story that they wanted to keep their heads down despite having inherited a sizeable military has a plausible ring about it, Terran Hegemony colonies were being routinely razed during this whole period. I've placed Comstock on the map between the Magistracy and what would have been the Marian Hegemony. In canon pirates from there raided Campoleone in the FWL which is another reason why I put it (and Francas) where I did.The return of short-tempered geologist Stephanie Jeffs, last seen in Part VI. I've not used the names the Marian Hegemony did for the continents on Alphard (because it's not full of Roman cosplayers). Italia (where Nova Roma, the capital city of both the planet and the Hegemony was located) becomes Hydrae, the most northerly continents of Alba and Gaul become Typhon and Echidna, Hispania becomes Heracles and Ostia become Crux. The large inland sea in Italia Hydrae is now called Lerna (not Stella Maris). All that germanium coming on the market at the same time that there are fewer shipyards using it to make jumpships should logically have an impact on market prices.A half-built Olympus recharging station is still a big step up from no recharging station at all. Getting the things partially operational then moving the construction crews over to another project for the time being might be a better use of them given limited resources.Since the Battletech universe doesn't have Star Trek style replicators their automated robot factories (raw materials in one end, complex finished product out the other) are logically a lot of mini-factories stuck together doing different things. One auto-fac manufacturing circuit boards presumably has a part making LED's, another making microchips etc. etc and the last part of the production line takes the various manufactured components and slots them into the boards. This basically all being a big modular kit seems to make the most sense because they had to be taken apart and transported from Terra to other places (and easily maintained in the case of auto-facs on space stations that are months of travel-times away).The Department of Mega-Engineering was well-named, they really worked on some big projects.Niops will surely be keeping a close eye on when JumpShips are becoming scarce, ready to pop up saying "So you need jumpships do you? Here's an Invader at only half again as much as they used to cost. What do you mean that's extortionate? It's not a buyer's market now is it? I'm sure the Taurians would be only too happy to... okay great, just sign here. Delivery should be in six to eight weeks."
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Chapter 19