Not all work in the Atlesian military was glamorous. The military needed analysts, too, the sort of people whose work was more obscure than the screen-grabbing Specialists, military Huntsmen, airships, Mantas, and so on and so forth.
Not that anyone was bitter, Major Babbage thought to himself. Other work was necessary, too, work he happened to be good at.
Was it truly "necessary", though? Did they really need people to answer questions as absurd as this? Some questions seemed to contain their own answers, or at least have such obvious answers that dedicating time and effort to writing those answers down seemed like a waste of taxpayer lien.
Oh well. "Ours is not to reason why", and all that jazz. The tasker had come down and was legitimate, to be delivered to the General himself to satisfy his curiosity in the matter, so Babbage had done his job and done his research and done his writing.
Time to give the paper one more round of polish before he submitted it. He took a breath, tucked the end of a pen between his teeth, and started reading.
FEASIBILITY STUDY: HIGH-ATMOSPHERE LIFT OF ATLAS METROPOLITAN AREA UNDER COMBAT CONDITIONS AND THE PROSPECT OF LONG-TERM SURVIVAL
Bottom Line Up-Front: Assuming that the means of lifting Atlas to a high altitude are available, then it is evaluated as FEASIBLE that Atlas and its citizens could survive a short-term emergency lift. However, the logistical strain of supporting the city on its own, the loss of Mantle manufacturing and, more critically, Dust supplies, and the dramatic weakening of the city's defense posture means that this by no means assures survival even in the short-term. All long-term siege scenarios result in significant, even total, losses of life. Therefore, this course of action is emphatically NOT RECOMMENDED.
(Babbage hesitated a moment, staring at that word, 'emphatically'. "Not recommended" by itself didn't seem strong enough, even in all-caps. At the same time, an essential element of style for this kind of writing was cutting adverbs and adjectives and letting nouns and verbs do the talking. With reluctance, he removed "emphatically".)
ASSUMPTIONS
-Lifting Atlas to its new altitude, and maintaining it there, is possible with current resources. This paper will not speculate on the quantities of Gravity Dust this would require.
-Only the Atlas population will be onboard when Atlas lifts. Any amount of the Mantle population that is brought along will increase the logistical requirements of long-term survival.
-Lifting Atlas would only be done in a combat scenario, and that the danger persists such that Atlas can neither return to the surface nor trade with surface-level entities, e.g. Argus, Port Solitas, etc. This is akin to a siege scenario.
-Horizontal movement of Atlas is not worth considering. There is no building on Remnant built to withstand sustained lateral acceleration. Lateral movement would demolish every structure in Atlas, and is thus not considered.
OVERVIEW
Atlas' existence as "the city in the sky" raises the possibility of the city being even higher in the sky. Some may speculate as to the defensive utility of such a move. Could Atlas not escape whatever enemies threaten it by soaring over their heads? Could the city not achieve permanent safety, or at least retain the option to do so in emergencies?
This question may seem to have a superficially satisfying answer. It is FEASIBLE with Atlas' existing systems for the city and its population to survive a shift to a high-altitude position. However, that answer ignores several formidable obstacles. The most significant is that Atlas was never built as an independent city. Atlas was built as an extension of Mantle, an addition to Mantle. As the cities grew together, Atlas became more important and more prominent, but at no point did it cease to be codependent with the First City.
Losing contact with Mantle, and the surface world generally, would create dire logistical problems, several of which will be addressed in the following sections. Atlas would face shortfalls of increasing severity in food, water, spare parts, ammunition, and Dust, any one of which would pose an existential threat to life in an elevated Atlas. This course of action also creates significant defensive vulnerabilities, such that the reason for raising Atlas—safety—is defeated by that very action. Overall, this course of action is NOT RECOMMENDED.
(Babbage itched to put "emphatically" back in there. He refrained.)
FOOD
Environmental controls for Atlas permit farming inside the perimeter of the city. Those same controls would permit farming to continue in an Atlas lift. That said, such farming is inadequate for the population's long-term needs. The focus of local farming is on calorie-dense staples, e.g. wheat and potatoes, that help meet minimum calorie needs. This is the most efficient use of the limited land available inside the Atlas perimeter. Specializing like this was possible because of the assumed ability to trade. Fish from the coastal waters of Solitas is estimated to account for about 40% of the average Atlesian's protein intake. Other nutritional necessities, including many fruits and vegetables, were obtained from lands outside of Atlas' perimeter, either from Atlas colonies/partnerships or other kingdoms.
An Atlas lift would permanently remove those sources of food. Even if it is assumed that strict rationing and starvation diets are imposed on the population, such that the farmland available is enough to meet minimum calorie needs, the long-term result of an Atlas lift would be a dramatic rise in malnutrition, diseases of scarcity like scurvy, and follow-on effects like sickliness and failed pregnancies. That is to say nothing of the inflationary effects of food shortages, which, as we have seen from the effects of the closed borders on the economy of Mantle, would lead to the rapid impoverishment of all but the wealthiest Atlesians.
(Babbage paused to consider that last sentence. It was true, and it made the point. Yet Babbage had heard on the grapevine that the General was perfectly aware of the results of his orders. He'd heard from many people that they were bankrupting Mantle, and he had pressed on regardless. In that case, it was not Babbage's place to point this out to him one more time. He deleted the sentence mentioning Mantle.)
While it is conceivable that Atlas could diversify its farming practices to alleviate this, a diversification program would take time and resources to implement, neither of which are available in an Atlas lift.
In addition, Atlas imports many farming supplies, particularly fertilizer and to a lesser extent equipment. Loss of imports would rapidly degrade the available farmland, resulting in soil exhaustion and failed harvests.
In summary, food shortages would result in famine conditions in a timespan of weeks to months, with collapse of the food supply in a matter of years.
WATER AND SANITATION
(Babbage almost regretted typing this section. It had proved almost impossible to get through it without writing something that seemed like a poop joke. It had to be said, though. Someone had to think about it. Might as well be him.)
Atlas' sewage treatment facilities allow for the treatment of sewage and wastewater locally. Disposal in an Atlas lift would be similar to current practices. However, this will not last long. Although the equipment is in good order, chemicals and supplies to keep the treatment plants running are available solely through Mantle. The company that builds and operates municipal sanitation equipment was founded there, as Mantle was the first city needing such equipment, and retains its operations there. In an Atlas lift, there are no resupplies of sewage treatment chemicals or parts, which will inevitably result in the failure of the system.
Water availability is more limiting. At present, fresh water is piped in from the mountain lakes outside Mantle, with most going to Mantle and some being piped up to Atlas. This would be lost in an Atlas lift, as would the ability to supplement with Water Dust. With Atlas at a high altitude as well as a high latitude, replenishment from precipitation would be zero.
Even the strictest conservation regimes would be unable to compensate for a zeroing of input for long. Water losses from sewage are the most significant, but groundwater loss from irrigation and air losses to evaporation are important as well. Even with immediate and strict water rationing, water shortages would be critical within weeks.
(Babbage smiled to himself. He'd made it through the section with his dignity intact. Small victories.)
SPARE PARTS
The example of sanitation equipment speaks to a larger problem with the Atlas lift. Atlas is an industrial city, as is Mantle. All that industry, all that technology, requires parts to run. For many, those parts are made or stored in Mantle. Even for those produced in Atlas proper, that production would cease in an Atlas lift that cuts off deliveries of raw materials. Atlas would have the parts it has at the moment of lift, and no more unless logistics with the surface world are restored.
The example of the Air Fleet is instructive. During peacetime operations, the ships of the Air Fleet have an average operations tempo of thirty percent. They are available for missions for thirty percent of the year, with the other seventy percent spent in varying states of repair and preparation.
(Babbage considered whether he needed to define "op-tempo" for a military readership, but decided to leave it there in the name of thoroughness.)
That thirty percent op tempo is achievable only with logistics and spare parts as they exist today, i.e. in a non-spares-limited world. If there are no spares, the only source of repair parts are the other ships in the fleet. This would necessitate cannibalization of some ships to permit the remainder to continue operating.
In an Atlas lift, maintaining the current op-tempo of thirty percent would require the cannibalization of three-quarters of the Fleet within six months. This is an optimistic projection because all Atlas lift scenarios are wartime scenarios, and the parts requirements of ships in combat are vastly higher. This is doubly so because the Fleet has been in a wartime posture for almost a year now, with major repairs being continuously deferred, such that overall readiness is degraded. The majority of the Fleet is overdue for repairs, and would thus be a poor source of cannibalized parts.
(Babbage sat back in his chair, wondering about the last few sentences. Ironwood knew all that, right? He had to know. He had to know that keeping the Fleet in a wartime posture all the time would wear it down. He was certainly getting reports that every day the Fleet stayed deployed made it less ready for war.)
(He knew, and obviously didn't care… so, did Babbage really have to repeat it at him?)
(Why was the Fleet in that posture, anyway? No other Kingdom had anything like an Air Fleet to throw at Atlas, and Atlas was in no position to invade anyone, not with the economic depression that had set in since the Fall of Beacon. So why…?)
(Shaking his head, Babbage deleted the last two sentences and moved on.)
This phenomenon is not limited to the Fleet, but the Fleet is the most dramatic example of it. The lack of parts and supplies will become limiting for the military within weeks and for civilian systems within months, depending upon the system.
AMMUNITION
Similar to parts, but more acute given that this is a wartime scenario. Being cut off from sources of resupply means that every round fired is irreplaceable. Projections of expenditures form the basis of Atlas' military-industrial policy for ammunition manufacturing. Those graphs are appended to this report as a resource. In the worst case, with continuous expenditures in the "high intensity" category and the complete zeroing of ammunition production, Atlas would run out of ammunition in seven-to-ten days.
DUST
Everything said in previous sections about the irreplaceability of resources applies here, but with much higher severity. Atlas is built with the assumption that Dust is available continuously in great quantities. As an extreme example, Dust deliveries continue to Atlas Military Headquarters even during intruder scenarios.
(Babbage remembered being part of that drill and scowled in disgust. Had no one gotten around to figuring out how to continue deliveries while maintaining security? Or was Dust that overwhelmingly vital? It made him sick, to know of a weakness and be unable to fix it.)
Dust directly or indirectly powers every piece of technology in the City of Progress and its military. Beyond that, specific types of Dust are necessary for their particular effects, beyond just providing energy. Gravity Dust supports the Air Fleet and most Atlesian vehicles. Hard Light Dust is the key to the shields that protect Atlas and contain its atmosphere. Even if the power problem were solved, a lack of Dust would be swiftly fatal to the city.
How swiftly is difficult to tell, as rationing and the shutdown of non-essential systems could stretch supplies far beyond normal peacetime consumption. That said, the appetites of essential systems would be high in an Atlas lift. Environmental control systems in particular would have to work harder in an Atlas lift than they do at present.
The most limiting system would be the shields. The shields are necessary in an Atlas lift to maintain air pressure, meaning they must run continuously without fail. The shields require the rarest, most expensive to synthesize type of Dust, Hard Light, which cannot be replaced or substituted. That means Hard Light Dust is the limiting form of Dust.
With the shields running continuously and no Dust resupplies of Hard Light, they would run out…
(Babbage stared at the ominous number before him. It was a hard thing to accept, that so little was available, that life could be so fleeting. Such a small number.)
(He couldn't face it.)
…in very short order.
(It was a weasel move. He knew it. He hated doing it. Normally, he'd be the first person pounding the table to say that specificity mattered, that numbers brought credibility with them, deserved or not. This time he felt differently. He felt that putting a number would invite someone to quibble with the number, and miss the point: that there was a number, and it was small. Did it really matter, in the end, what the exact number was if it was a death sentence either way? If just being able to put a number to it at all meant this whole exercise was pointless?)
To summarize: abandoning the surface world is logistically untenable. Atlas on its own would face shortages of food, water, parts, ammunition, and Dust, most of which would manifest very quickly, all of which are certain to manifest eventually, and any of which would be fatal.
IMPACT ON DEFENSE POSTURE
It may be argued that long-term survival is impractical for an Atlas lift, but at least it would result in a short-term defensive gain. A tactical lift, rather than a strategic lift, may still be viable.
This claim seems highly dubious, for three reasons.
First, Atlas and Mantle both have military and Huntsmen resources. While having Atlas and Mantle together increases the surface area that must be defended, it also increases the resources available to do the defending. Abandoning Mantle means abandoning those resources along with the city.
Second, it cannot be demonstrated that grimm cannot survive at high altitudes. Grimm do not need to eat; it is unclear if they need to breathe. While most airborne grimm use wings to fly and are altitude-limited, others such as Tempests use gravity dust, the same method the Air Fleet uses; they could likely achieve equivalent altitudes. Moreover, even if the grimm could not reach Atlas immediately after a lift, it might not stay that way. A century ago, grimm were rare in Solitas as they could not survive the cold; today, they're as common in Solitas as in Anima.
Finally, an Atlas lift makes Atlas brittle. A breach of the shield at Atlas' current altitude is not catastrophic. It would expose Atlas to invasion and lead to depletion of environmental conditions, but any invaders would still have to contend with the Army and Air Fleet, and a worsening environment is not immediately fatal.
At high altitudes, the shield becomes necessary for maintaining atmospheric pressure in the breathable range. A single breach in the shield would lead to depressurization, oxygen depletion, hypoxia, and death for everyone in Atlas.
(It was a mental image Babbage could have lived without. He couldn't seem to avoid it now. He'd seen it in a few nightmares: had seen himself walking through a frost-rimed Atlas, surrounded by frozen, curled-up, pale bodies, each with mouths and eyes alike wide open, who'd all died trying in vain to gasp down breaths that wouldn't stay in their lungs…)
(He bit down hard on the end of his pen.)
(Ghastly.)
Atlas lift, therefore, would increase the consequences of a defense breach, while taking away some of the tools needed to prevent such a breach. It would be a gamble on the inability of the grimm to reach the city, made in ignorance of the grimm's true capabilities. It must be determined that Atlas' defensive posture would be weakened by Atlas lift rather than strengthened.
CONCLUSION
There is no tactical or strategic argument for Atlas lift. It offers only the briefest illusion of safety at the sure cost of the destruction of Mantle, and with the destruction of Atlas to follow, whether by resource depletion or enemy action. The logistical problems are insuperable and the defensive benefits questionable at best. Regardless of the fact it is FEASIBLE, this course of action is NOT RECOMMENDED.
(Last chance to include "emphatically".)
(No.)
(Babbage saved the document to his scroll and checked the clock. Plenty of time to make it to the General's offices and deliver his report.)
After fifteen minutes waiting in the anteroom, Babbage was at the front of the line to see the General.
General Ironwood was in his office at Atlas Academy, with a stream of people waiting their turn or leaving their audiences. Some were clearly military, others were just as clearly Huntsmen, while still others could be either or neither.
It was all too much for Babbage, and he wasn't even the person having to manage it all. He had no idea how the General juggled two highly demanding, more-than-full-time jobs.
(In his less loyal moments, he wondered whether or not the General should be juggling two highly demanding, more-than-full-time jobs.)
"Next."
Babbage started, and walked into the General's office. He'd been there before on rare occasions, but the sheer open space of it and the grand vista beyond always got to him.
"Major Babbage, sir," he introduced himself. "I received the tasker for the feasibility study of an Atlas lift. My report is ready."
"Good. Drop it here." The General gestured to a portion of his desk, on top of two other reports. He was looking at something else; he never made eye contact with Babbage.
Babbage stepped forward and placed the report where the General had pointed. Then, thinking quickly, he turned it around so it was facing the General, so he could read it without picking it up.
The General craned his neck to look at the report, and Babbage congratulated himself on his foresight. After about five seconds, Ironwood nodded once. "Feasible," he said. "Good."
And then he looked away.
Babbage panicked. "But not recommended!" he blurted.
The General huffed. "We all have to do things we don't want to do," he said. "You're dismissed."
It all happened so fast. Babbage blinked, and he was back out in the anteroom. Two more soldiers went in behind him. That was that.
Babbage felt his heart sink into despair.
He should have said "emphatically".
