0915 hours November 1 2552(Military Calendar)UNSC Scorpia station F
Scorpia Orbit
Lieutenant George Roberts sood on the bridge of his new command it was still hard to believe a few weeks ago he had been in command of Artemis Manufacturing bay and now he was in command of an orbital shipyard station. It had taken nearly two weeks of round the clock work from engineers to repair the damage from the cylons attack and convert the shipyard to be capable of handling UNSC designs.
The Colonials were concerned when they saw the level of automation his people saw as standard for modern shipyards. The efficiency of the automation in the last week alone had made every Colonial engineer look as the two superstructures of Paris were growing daily and at the same time production continued to be made on the Super Mac.
His second in command Chief Warrant Officer Thomas Friday came in after a quick knock with the daily report.
"Thomas, how is everything looking?" Roberts asked his old friend.
"Right on schedule i'd say." he said glancing up "construction on the Paris frigates are coming along nicely estimated completion is the end of the month or the first week of next month "
"Not bad." Roberts said "once we hammer out the kinks I'd say we could match any of the shipyards around Reach. I've heard they can build and launch a Paris class in thirty days."
"Yeah my brother works at Epsilon Station…"Friday pauses "used to work there anyway and he told me that it's true as the war continued edging ever closer even building the defense platforms in orbit their ship construction never slowed."
Roberts places a hand on his friend's shoulder "I'm sure your brother was able to get out."
Friday blinked quickly and cleared his throat "Speaking of Defense Platforms it will still take about four months to finish."
George flinched "is there any way we can speed up that time table? What if we divert people to the platform work? There must be a few thousand extra engineers we can throw at it."
Friday shook his head "unfortunately it's not a matter of manpower its Material production. To resist the recoil of the cannon it has to be constructed completely out of a Titanium ferro-tungsten mix which is a bitch and a half to forge with what he has on hand. We are building the station complex using the armor forges of the Colonials who use a Chromium steel mix compound."
George looked over the notes "is there no way we can use that instead of the ferro mix? Surely it would be strong…."he trails off looking at the statistics they would be lucky to get three shots off before the more fragile metal would shatter.
"I was thinking the same but no wouldnt work and three shots is a favorable guess we might not even get two, it would most likely handle the first shot but the second." he shakes his head no.
"Worth the thought how about power systems?" George asked with a sigh.
Friday perked up at that "thats already completed and its thanks to the Colonials."
"Oh I didn't think their reactors were powerful enough to supply the energy needed for a MAC?" said George surprise in his voice.
"Well their not their best reactors on their battlestars could charge a platform MAC in about a minute but we have several." Friday says handing over a manifest
George looks at the list; eight Battlestar reactors, fourteen Berserk reactors, seventeen Firestar reactors, and a hundred and eighteen various civilian grade reactors. "The salvage work?" he asked.
Friday nodded "every warship that could be repaired was using parts from the ships too badly damaged which left a surplus of ship reactors that were being kept around for spares, and to supplement Scorpia's nearly decimated power generation." with a tap he pulled up what was unmistakable as a warship reactor sitting in the middle of a large warehouse on the surface "using the accumulated reactors not being used by planetside cities and ground based defenses we should manage a shot every eight seconds. Three seconds if we draw power from non critical civilian sources."
"Excellent." George said looking over the rest of the briefing on available UNSC and Colonial naval strength the UNSC ships drawing on the Artemis stockpiles of munitions had been brought back to full strength nearly cleaning out the carriers massive munitions bunkers as the ship swallowed several hundred tons of supplies each day to refill its own munitions stores and continue to build the more delicate superconducting coils for the MAC. Instead of using valuable tungsten for the MAC shells they had given the specifications to the four Colonial Foundry ships who had been able to make molds of the shells and produced them out of Chromium-Steel while not as dense as we can make more of them faster. Using Colonial recruits had brought the ships compliments to full strength after cannibalizing the Artemis massive crew; nearly three thousand were Colonial recruits.
The Colonial fleet was looking good though twelve Battlestars were in full active status. Forming the core for twelve defensive fleets around Scorpia since the news of the armada above Picon was discovered. Beyond the three more currently undergoing repairs it was doubtful anymore would be recovered. An even hundred thirty Berserk class carriers were scattered about the planet fourteen more were undergoing repairs. The smaller firestar frigates had suffered the most casualties leaving only forty seven in the fleet and another ten or so undergoing repairs.
As friday pointed out another topic "due to the shortage or Uranium up to our standards we have been seeding the outer areas of the local space with modified Moray mines with Colonial nuclear two megaton Black Arrow munitions as well as captured Cylon warheads we only have a dozen remaining nukes from our original armament i'm told Colonial uranium refinement is a few decades behind ours."
"How about that project with the engineers adapting slipspace probes to detect FTL drives?" Roberts asked "it would help if we had some kind of advanced warning."
Friday shook his head "unfortunately since the Colonial FTL drives work by folding space and poking a hole to travel through instantaneously rather than traveling through the space in between there's no real advance warning and any scouts we position would only jump back here a few seconds before the cylons." he tapped another slide on the report showing a IFF transponder "each mine has a IFF reader and all UNSC and Colonial ships have been given one anything that enters the minefield that doesn't have a transponder will activate the mines."
The minefields had been deployed over the last few days in clusters of a dozen along projected emergence points from where Cylons might emerge.
As a emergency scenario the four hundred civilian ships up to this point parked in orbit of the north and south poles were being loaded with civilians should the fleet fall the massive civilian fleet escorted by a dozen firestars and improvised pocket escort carriers based on the Colonial Heavy hulls armed with three Rampart point defense guns. The escort carriers were carrying four GA-TL1 longswords and parts to assemble four more of the massive fighters.
Also joining them were four Colonial Mover Freighters had three of their segmented cargo pods converted to carrier pods capable of housing thirty Vipers each while the other three pods would house Colonial pilots and maintenance personnel for the fighters.
Should they lose this fight the Civilians would run heading several jumps in a random direction before looking for a new place to call home.
—-
Hey jin thanks for the review dude and the way i figure it the Cylon resurrection process is like a continuous update. They send their memories up to the minute so if they die they know everything up to the moment they died. That transmission would be detectable however if they could turn it off like in old video games that had save points if you died you respawned at that last save.
Hey black thanks for the review if you look into the militarized Phoenix class ships their machine shops and foundries are stated to be filled with everything the UNSC has at its disposal in terms for making war be it MA5s to Longswords to base blueprints of orbital shipyards like Anchor9 around reach so i'm sure they have blueprints for the SuperMACs in their data same as with every ship design the UEG and UNSC has used in the as for days i never said they would be built in days only they were to be given top priority for materials and manpower.