Chapter Twenty Five

Praesidium (Year 6, Day 67, 1710 hours)

Production reports and maintenance requests took up most of her day, Dera Kirik realized as she ended another long day. Glancing over the figures for the refinery ships and current stocks of various raw materials, she realized production of required items would soon be cut short due to lack of certain metals. Ten refinery ships was not enough, it seemed. Then again, they had used far more materials than originally planned or the planetary defenses and fleet. As a result, the most ore rich asteroids had been plucked from one asteroid belt already, and the remaining rock was not as mineral laden as they needed. Thinking back on what she had heard in council meetings over the years, an idea began to form.

She keyed her comlink. "Dera Kirik to Feth Te'vos. Do you have some free time? I have a couple ideas I need some input on."

After a few moments, Feth's response was heard. "Twenty minutes and I will be done for the day. Where should I meet you?"

"The data center would likely be best, it should have access to all of the information we may need" Dera responded.

"Alright then. Meet me in research room forty six. It is unused for a while, and we can work on larger projects there if needed."

"I appreciate it. Dera out." Ending the call, she quickly put away the items on her desk before exiting through the door. Leaving the building her office was located in near the three planetary based factories, she went to her speeder and headed off. It was only five minutes later when she reduced her speed before maneuvering her speeder to a parking area next to a kilometer high metal dome. The dome was defensive in nature, to protect the Loches Acies Data Center from weather, as well as attack.

Leaving her speeder behind, she approached the exterior door designated for non-visitors. The security measures were nearly invisible, yet she still felt nervous knowing she was being scanned for anything that could be a threat. Within moments, the door opened and she proceeded through the remaining checkpoints before entering one of the turbolifts that would take her down into the data center itself. She was alone in the lift, as the Data Center was quite large, and most people had already left for the day. Entering the room, a few minutes earlier than she had expected, she found Feth already at the research terminal, typing in a few commands. Within a few seconds, he finished his task and turned to her.

"What's on your mind Dera? I assume you need information of some kinda, or you wouldn't have asked to meet me this late."

"How much data do you have on nearby systems concerning mineral composition? Preferably systems with no native population."

"Depends on what you are looking for. We have detailed scans of over three thousand uninhabited systems with planets or asteroid belts that we received from the AutEx fleet before they were refocused entirely on inhabited systems. As for rough scans, we have close to three hundred thousand systems currently in the database of which about a quarter have orbital objects."

"The problem we are fast approaching is one of a shortage of raw materials. Some of the most common elements we have sufficient overage of we are just storing it on the moons, but when it comes to some of the heavier elements, they are becoming scarcer in the asteroid belt we are currently mining."

"Hrm. Well, Dera, we do have a problem. You mentioned an idea you wanted some input on, so I assume you also have a possible solution."

"First question is rather simple. Have you been able to repair the Ring of the Ancients we have?"

"Actually, yes. We were able to repair it using the parts from another Ring we found on a planet near the edge of explored space. Also picked up some very interesting salvage there as well."

"Ok, that is one part solved. I know it has been mentioned in some of the survey reports that many planets have the Ring in orbit around a planet instead of on a planet's surface?"

Feth nodded. "If the system is habitable or at least was once, then it is only in space about ten percent of the time. The uninhabitable systems always have it in space. Fairly interesting design, modified to remain in orbit next to the planet or moon it was positioned near. Self stabilizing, but lacking a pedestal to open the ring. We have been working on an adaptable program that would allow us to open any ring anywhere we find it, however, it is taking time."

"That would be useful. Next question, is the Ring we have able to be moved into a more secure facility here on the surface?"

Feth chuckled. "Easily. No cables or physical connection is needed between the Ring and the pedestal. They work as long as they are in close proximity. I am not seeing where you are going with this."

Dera pulled out her data pad and passed it to Feth. "Using the list of non-habitable worlds only, and ones with a Ring available, can you find sources for the raw materials listed? If we can get refinery ships to those locations, we can keep our production goals, and likely boost current stockpiles of the heavier elements by removing the transit time currently plaguing our mining efforts. Plus planets or moons tend to have a higher concentration of heavier elements than asteroid belts."

"I see what you are thinking now. Use the Ring to transport the materials directly here instead of it having the refinery ships make deliveries. Interesting. That would make the refinery ships more productive, cut transit time, and allow us to focus on the needed materials instead of having to spend most of the time dealing with unneeded waste."

"That is what I was hoping to do. We will need a secure facility that could handle cargo as well as humanoid traffic. Probably would be best to put it near the spaceport. We also have the warehouses already there, we can store the materials there for when they are needed. It would also allow us the ability to move materials from the Ring directly to the spaceport if they are needed on Toy Maker." Dera concluded.

Feth finished looking over the list Dera had given him. "I like the idea. It is contingent on if we can finish the interface program for the Ring though. Even if we cannot use it, we still need the materials. So it is either this, or radically boost our refinery ship and freighter fleets, which also would need those same materials to build in the first place. Actually, with your idea, the refinery ships be much smaller, no longer needing the cargo bays they currently have. Probably will have to verify that with Tonin first, but I think your idea has a great deal of potential."

"Then lets work this out before we present it to the rest of the council. I want to make sure we don't miss anything."

Atlantis (Year 6, Day 67, 1710 hours)

"That planet was definitely not on the tourist brochure." Maj Sheppard said as he lay in the infirmary. "Remind me next time to pack bug spray, at least several cases of it."

"At least we were able to get the Iratus bug off of you. The samples we were able to collect show some surprising similarities to the Wraith. It may help us come up with easier ways to deal with the Wraith." Dr Beckett replied. "In the mean time, you get some rest. I don't want you running around until we can confirm there are no negative side effects to you having a Klingon."

" Ha. Ha. That joke wasn't funny the first time you said it." Said Dr McKay. "We found references to the Iratus bug in the Atlantis database, seems the Ancients ran experiments on them before the Wraith arrived."

Praesidium (Year 6, Day 68, 0700 hours)

The study at Kaden's house had four seats filled. Normally only Kaden's family occupied the room, with occasional visits from one or two guests, however, today was different. With his children already at school for the day, Kaden sat with his guests discussing the problem Dera had been working with Feth on for most of the previous evening. Tonin had even made one of his rare trips to the surface.

"So if I understand this correctly, raw materials shortfalls will cause us to be at less than ten percent production capacity on Toy Maker as well as nearly halted unless we can acquire these six minerals." Kaden asked.

"That would be the likely result. We need heavier elements. We have already mined the asteroids in the inner asteroid belt that had those materials. We spent a much higher amount of the materials on fleet production than we anticipated. I am not saying it was wasted. Those ships are necessary considering what threat the Wraith pose, and we haven't even explored ninety five percent of this galaxy at all. There could be worse out there." Dera confirmed.

"This idea you have for collecting what we need and sending it through the Ring, you think it will work?" Kaden continued his questions. "You are talking about strip mining entire planets."

"True. It is rather drastic, but we do not have the luxury of purchasing materials from another source at this time. It was not uncommon for mining companies to move from system to system completely processing entire asteroid belts, moons, or dead planets. The sheer volume of resources needed during the Old Republic, Empire, and New Republic would have been staggering. They had to get the resources from somewhere. Habitable worlds may be better prospects for finding what we need, but it would be better in the long term to avoid those entirely." Dera replied.

Feth took over. "Using the criteria Dera provided, I was able to locate nearly five hundred planets or moons that are completely barren. Each system has a space based Ring capable of sending processed ore through in great quantity nearly instantly. She even has the logistics of how to deal with moving the ore as it comes out of the Ring on this end. Three meter square by twenty feet long blocks of each material can be sent through the Ring fairly rapidly, and transported to either the ground factories, warehouses, or to the spaceport for use on Toy Maker."

Tonin spoke up. "That would be helpful. Currently, about sixty percent of what is being processed for ship production is materials we don't need. Between refining the waste into blocks, and storing them on one of the moons, half my tugs are being used just keeping the unneeded materials out of the way. At this point, we have enough materials stored on the moon to build permacrete skyscrapers to house fifty million people. Those materials aren't what is needed for building ships. We have nearly twenty million tons of excess materials being stored near the hypermatter refinery."

"Silicates and lighter materials we have an overabundance of are going to take up space unless they get used for something or we find a way to dispose of them. I would rather not waste them though, we could start using them for building material down here for any new construction instead of building everything out of alloys we have been since we arrived." Dera continued. "That might actually be better in some ways. We no longer have the need to live in prefab buildings, we can actually begin building real homes and lasting structures. The prefab buildings we have been using for housing and most other purposes do not last more than ten or fifteen years. It would give us the chance to use the skills we have had no use for, like carpenters, painters, and sculptors."

Kaden thought a moment. "I can understand the reasoning. It would be nice to build a city that would last. Considering the climate here, the architecture of Alderan or Naboo would fit in nicely. Lets work out a layout for the permanent city, making sure we have room for expansion. Once we have that, we need to stagger the new buildings to make sure no one is left behind."

"I have some ideas on that." Dera interjected. "The first buildings that should be made would be outside the city proper, the spaceport and warehouse district. That would allow us to begin using the Ring for transporting the heavier elements here to keep ship production at capacity. We need some massive warehouses to handle what will be coming in and going out. It may work better to put most of the warehouse storage underground similar to what was done with the Data Center. It would allow us to cut down on the profile above ground to not interfere with speeder traffic or ships at the spaceport. The area near the spaceport has bedrock about three kilometers down, and would make an extremely stable foundation for storage of the condensed blocks of each material. It would also reduce the resources needed for the warehouses."

Feth continued where Dera left off. "Considering the amount of material that would need to be removed to make the warehouses, we can use most of it in building the warehouses themselves. It would be extremely efficient, and delay the production shortfalls if we recover needed materials above what is used on the warehouses."

Dera nodded. "I completely forgot about that. I was thinking the storage would need to be massive, and we could use it for far more than refined materials. We have several warehouses currently storing nothing but flash frozen foods. We nearly have enough to feed everyone here for five years without any further farming. We can trade it to other human civilizations for information, or resources we want here that we cannot make or find ourselves."

Tonin added his thoughts. "That would reduce the need for using half my tugs taking care of excess materials. A couple freighters could make round trips instead of over two hundred tugs. I am all for it."

Kaden agreed. "Lets get this plan worked out before the next council meeting then."