>>31261831***
“How many men can be housed in those barracks?”
The hotel’s room was warm and cozy despite the biting cold wind outside. Gaia, limber and refreshed from her time in the hot springs was standing in for Rear Admiral Magnus. With her was the admiral’s brother, as well as Doctor Niwa. Reviewing the latest revision of the Luna Arctic Base was proving more interesting than she expected. Looking at the map, images of the installations once it would be complete popped up in her head, and it was a glorious thing indeed.
“The initial building will have a capacity for 200 souls, with expansions planned in five and ten years, once the base grows.” Kenichi was in his element, completely. He’d drafted most of these floor plans, after all.
Gaia nodded, satisfied. Gelanora was a good few hours of hard horse riding away from the base, so having as much of the corps living on-site was ideal. “How long before we can get our first corvette on the water?”
The engineer rubbed his chin for a few seconds, grumbling. “A new shipyard can be functional within a year, another year to build the first ship. The seasoning process I’m less sure about, the cold will probably make it slower than we’re used to. Call it four or five years to get the first vessel, though we’ll begin work on many boats in parallel.”
“We could commission some boats from the Gelanora shipyard as well”, Niwa added.
Since arriving to Gelanora, the doctor had been a changed man. There had been an incident en-route to the Arctic city. He’d set a thief’s pink beard on fire with an improvised burning flask of Luushine, which had breathed some pride into his spine.
Kenichi looked to him. “Good point, doctor. I believe you spoke with one of the yardmasters yesterday?” Niwa looked out the window briefly. The manager was a gruff, hard man, fitting for an arctic shipbuilder. “Indeed. They had a few ships on the racks, almost ready. We can probably start maritime operations within the year.”
“Regarding on-base operations, what protocols will we follow regarding chuubanite applications?” Gaia, as a Black Fleet officer, was well-acquainted with Mori-type chuubanite procedures, but other types were a bit foreign to her.
Niwa had the answer to her question. “New protocols we’ll have to develop. Luna-type is fairly available, and the Lunaito can help us adapt our devices to it. Moreover, the vitubium density measurements from my previous expeditions suggest large sources of chuubanite of unknown type may exist in the Arctic. Prospecting and exploiting those resources should be one of our objectives. Might be related to the high schizo occurrence as well...”
“Sounds like a plan. Let’s go check out the construction site.” Gaia showed a rare smile. She was glad that the admiral couldn’t make it.
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