With the fifth week of their effort, the stardrive section of their city on Edora was mostly complete. Though they had yet to pick a name for the city-ship. The power reactors and stardrive had been installed. The design had been made with growth in mind rather than the meager population currently they had. One of the crew had commented on the early design that it looked almost like the saucer section from a star trek ship, only bigger. Which kicked off a competition among the designers for the internal design to see who could get as close to star trek as possible without being obvious.
In the end the final estimate was room for at least a million total, though if people doubled up they could probably go over two million.
And without all the room used up by the stardrive and the multiple redundant systems they'd added for safety, they probably could have fit five million.
General Patchkirk had finally stepped in on the discussion when the designers had abandoned the pretense and started aiming for things straight from star trek, ordering them to keep in mind while they were free to take good ideas from the show they should make it their own, and doing so make sure that it worked.
Vital systems where placed in the center, with everything moving out from there. They tried to keep from just doing decks throughout the whole ship instead opting to have a star shaped engineering section that held the star drive extending towards the points of a five pointed star. The bottom hull would gradually and gently slope towards the edge slightly until it reached the outer edge of the city where they'd opted to stack five superconducting coils for a supercollider which would enclose the circumference of the city, and give them an easy way to fire proton particle beams if needed.
From there on up the design changed as the gently sloped metal dome the monotony of the metal broken up by large transparent crystalline metal alloys provided by the Asgard database. Underneath the dome would be five triangular park like areas using the open area not used for engineering, and where the city could store an open water reservoir if needed.
On each pylon of the engineering deck, there would be towers rising towards the dome overhead, quite a few of them connecting to it in places both to support the dome and provide structural integrity.
The recovered pulse cannon technology once finished would be added in as many places on the outer hull as they could both above and below the city. Along with any other weapons they thought of.
One of the modifications made during their earlier contest had managed to tweak the Asgard designed particle beam weapons to the same orange color as federation phaser banks from the show.
The slowest part of the construction process was moving the resources. While they did have their mining operation on the planet; the process of removing the material from the ground was slower than bringing it from the derelict belt in orbit. So they were doing both.
** No Paradoxes **
General Patchkirk pushed the report aside and sipped at his coffee. He'd been rationing the supply but it was starting to get low. At least he remembered to have them bring a few of the plants along with them which they could grow in hothouses. Hopefully they be able to start their own supply of the bean soon.
The general finished the last few drops in the cup and locked his computer before entering the transport booth and heading to the infirmary.
A brief flash and the doors opened revealing the change in location. General Patchkirk stepped out of the booth walking towards his Chief Medical Officer deliberately making sure his movements were loud enough to be heard but not loud enough to distract.
Allison looked up from her work. "General, it's wonderful to see you," she said smiling in surprise. "Did you come early for your checkup for once?"
Patchkirk frowned, "Let's not be hasty Doctor Keller, I just let you poke and prod me a few weeks ago. I should still be good for a few months."
Allison's laugh was light and brightened the room. "No worries James, you're safe from my evil penlight for today."
Patchkirk mock shivered. "That thing is evil I tell ye' woman," he muttered before letting the expression fade. "No, I'm actually here to ask how our guest is doing."
Patchkirk nodded towards the stasis chamber, stuck behind a solid metal door within a vacuum sealed room.
Dr. Keller's expression soured.
"That bad huh?" James Patchkirk said with a raised eyebrow.
Allison tapped a few keys on her computer and pulled up the file. "The bloody bubonic plague would be easier to stamp out than this virus."
"The mechanism goes dormant in a vacuum and dies after a week in atmosphere, but if just one particle of the thing survives and manages to infect a mammal, that's all it takes to set the whole thing off again. It remains mostly dormant in non-human tissue. But in humans it causes massive organ failure as it disrupts the molecular structure," Dr. Keller explained.
"As we know from earlier ascensions, the ancients use less of their advanced physiology the closer they get to ascension, it's the only thing I can think of that's keeping her alive. Unfortunately for her, she seems stuck on the edge, if she steps back from the process of ascending she loses the necessary control over her body to fight the infection, but at the same time she can't stop fighting the infection long enough to ascend without the plague killing her first," Allison was pacing as she said this part.
"Also unfortunate for her, due to her being frozen, her memories are probably gone. But probably fortunate for us, if we can cure her she can back down from her attempt to ascend and help us instead," Dr. Keller finished.
