Post by The Kortl Rheus on Apr 1, 2014 4:44:59 GMT
Rald had always been a hands-on sort of overseer. That was why he was neck deep in heavy methane sludge near the power cores of what was once the finest shipyards in the quadrant.
He coughed, sputtering bubbles of methane as he adjusted his breather. Usually the methane air was clean, even towards the center where the gravity was weaker and loose chemicals tended to gather. But the yards had been disconnected for too long from the world around which they orbited. The methane wasn't recycled as often and was now thick with a brown gel-paste of dredge and exhaust. It was clogging up the yard power cores. To make it worse, the blackwater tanks had been leaking constantly for the last month and the water, spilling around their feet, was thick with floating swill.
"This shit will give you cancer," Rald muttered to his crew of underphid labourers. No-one laughed.
They needed to make replacements, not repairs. That required contact with the homeworld. They'd been running on fumes ever since the shields went up. Rald hadn't spoken to his wife in almost half a year.
No one had heard from the surface, even the sole off-world councilmember, Lewiddyion. He was supposedly wandering space, trying to manage negotiations with the other species, the rest of the council was hunkered deep in under the shields of Verdantis Prime and hadn't opened the shield for anything, in constant fear of attack by the fleet, still in range of the world half a year later.
There were no windows, but Rald could sense the fleet out there, waiting in the black distance, brooding. Fucking snakes, he thought. If they would just go home already.
Rald shook his head and gestured to the workers. "You three, check on those ion drives we rigged to our core, trace why they are not improving filtration rates." Without contact with Verdantis, they had been forced to make repairs with whatever was handy. Ship-scraps were handy.
They'd had a hard time getting rid of the orbital debris after the yards were razed and now Rald wished he'd spent more time collecting, rather than incinerating those ion cores. Radioactives were in short supply.
The yard overseers had grouped together their entire scavenged supply of radioactives and minerals to push out a mobile shipyard four months ago, it was off building orbital extractors. Even that supply, now trickling in, barely kept them above critical. What little they kept collecting was being funneled back into more extraction.
The overseers had talked about doing some retrofitting, junking the older model yards and repairing the existing ones, but Rald didn't agree with that path. It might look as though they were gearing up for wartime activities and give the snakes a reason to attack. Maybe the cursed Brethik would approve of that, but now that he was out, at least some reason could be added to their political agenda.
He coughed, sputtering bubbles of methane as he adjusted his breather. Usually the methane air was clean, even towards the center where the gravity was weaker and loose chemicals tended to gather. But the yards had been disconnected for too long from the world around which they orbited. The methane wasn't recycled as often and was now thick with a brown gel-paste of dredge and exhaust. It was clogging up the yard power cores. To make it worse, the blackwater tanks had been leaking constantly for the last month and the water, spilling around their feet, was thick with floating swill.
"This shit will give you cancer," Rald muttered to his crew of underphid labourers. No-one laughed.
They needed to make replacements, not repairs. That required contact with the homeworld. They'd been running on fumes ever since the shields went up. Rald hadn't spoken to his wife in almost half a year.
No one had heard from the surface, even the sole off-world councilmember, Lewiddyion. He was supposedly wandering space, trying to manage negotiations with the other species, the rest of the council was hunkered deep in under the shields of Verdantis Prime and hadn't opened the shield for anything, in constant fear of attack by the fleet, still in range of the world half a year later.
There were no windows, but Rald could sense the fleet out there, waiting in the black distance, brooding. Fucking snakes, he thought. If they would just go home already.
Rald shook his head and gestured to the workers. "You three, check on those ion drives we rigged to our core, trace why they are not improving filtration rates." Without contact with Verdantis, they had been forced to make repairs with whatever was handy. Ship-scraps were handy.
They'd had a hard time getting rid of the orbital debris after the yards were razed and now Rald wished he'd spent more time collecting, rather than incinerating those ion cores. Radioactives were in short supply.
The yard overseers had grouped together their entire scavenged supply of radioactives and minerals to push out a mobile shipyard four months ago, it was off building orbital extractors. Even that supply, now trickling in, barely kept them above critical. What little they kept collecting was being funneled back into more extraction.
The overseers had talked about doing some retrofitting, junking the older model yards and repairing the existing ones, but Rald didn't agree with that path. It might look as though they were gearing up for wartime activities and give the snakes a reason to attack. Maybe the cursed Brethik would approve of that, but now that he was out, at least some reason could be added to their political agenda.