Uncharted System, Velosa Cluster; EFS Enterprise:
Sali blinked as she noticed the lights. At the moment she was walking with a guard down to hydroponics to start her day, but it seemed she wasn’t the only one looking at the lights. The twin blue strips of light that ran the corridor had just shifted to the color purple of all things. For a moment she drew a blank on what that meant. On a Valorian ship that was battlestations, but this was a human ship. Then she recalled a conversation she had years ago. Her eyes widened, “We’re landing!?”
Just as she blurted that out, the intercom buzzed just before the captain started speaking, “All hands report to code purple stations, repeat code purple. Secure all loose objects and prepare for potential turbulence. Further announcements will be made soon.”
For a moment she just stood there, she’d never thought she’d encounter a code purple. Then the guard turned to her, and pulled her close. “I doubt you know what to do.”
She shook her head, “It never came up.”
“Figured,” he brought her to a panel, tapped it and a pair of chairs dropped from the wall. He helped her into one and strapped her in. As he did so she noticed others were strapping in. He took the chair next to her and activated the webbing it had.
“So what’s with the webs?”
He chuckled, “They're for in case we crash. Landing a capital ship is a tricky prospect at the best of times, launching one is actually the easy part.”
That wasn’t very reassuring. Not at all, “You’re, um, joking right?”
“Nope, but don’t worry, ship’s built like a brick. Chances are we’ll be fine, even if we crash.”
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Countryman leaned back as he switched off the intercom. Focusing instead on the task of actually landing the ship. They’d arrived over the second planet of this largely uncharted system. Scans found it habitable, if rather cold, they’d located a suitable landing site and now they were going to put down. There were a few advantages to landing, notably they’d be able to shut down the engines which would do two things. It would let Richards do the overhaul she said they needed for both sublight and warp systems, but it would also cut their graviton wake to zero. They knew the Valorians were currently tracking that and without a graviton wake they didn’t have much else for emissions.
From orbit they’d likely register as a large titanium signature but he doubted the Valorians would realize they’d landed, so chances were they wouldn’t look too closely. He’d gathered the Valorians would never imagine they were able to land.
Still this wasn’t going to be easy, the Enterprise was effectively a flying city with a population to match. Landing this much mass was tricky under ideal conditions and they’d taken a lot of battle damage.
At the helm, Eri adjusted a few things and declared, “Taking her in, Sir.”
Countryman acknowledged as the ship drew closer to the planet. He held his breath for a moment, a tension was there on the bridge and he could see tense looks on the familiar faces of his crew. Not that he blamed them, landing a capital ship was never a common move. Not to mention this was their first attempt doing so with the Enterprise.
Finally they hit the air, as Eri took them into the atmosphere. At first they barely noticed, on screen the hull began to glow, the plating heating up a bit as they went in. Vibrations followed, muted but there, as Eri carefully corrected their course. Keeping them on track for the target.
“Alert power failure, engine two has failed,” reported the computer.
“Richards? What’s going on? We need those engines.”
She answered immediately on the intercom, “Some of that damage we took at New Valoria is showing its head. We’ll be fine, but expect a little more turbulence. I’m transferring power from the dampers to compensate.”
Suddenly the ship shook, just as Eri reported, “Touch down in five minutes. Deploying landing struts.”
“Computer is reporting a mechanical failure for port side landing struts two, four and eight.”
Richards reported, “On it!”
Countryman waited for a moment, and then Richards came back, “Repaired, try them now.”
Eri pressed the controls, “Struts deployed. Computer reports we are good across the board. Touch down in thirty seconds.”
A huge jolt suddenly shook him in his seat, and then Eri smugly declared, “We are down.”
“Excellent work, stand down condition purple. Then shut down all engines, I have a few announcements to make.”
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Sali adjusted the outfit she’d been given. It felt weird and constricting, but she figured that was due to her not being used to a thermal skin suit. She’d been assigned to the work crews setting up camps outside the ship. With all the damage to the ship some sections were apparently being evacuated for renovations. In her mind that explained a great deal for why they were landed, sure they could do much of the repairs in space, but obviously having a place to put the displaced people while sections were closed for repair and renovation would be important.
Stepping out of the changing room, she found Robert and twirled in front of him, “So how do I look?”
He blushed, “Um... cute?”
She gave him a look, “Why is that a question?”
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“Your... nipples are showing.”
She looked down, this alien fabric was a little thin and they were. Yet she felt warmer and it seemed to breathe fairly well. “So? I’m sure you’ve seen my bare pussy more than once, it’s not any different.”
Sali turned around, “So let’s get going, those camps aren’t going to build themselves.”
He chuckled, grabbed a tool kit and followed along. While taking a glance at some of the other girls, who were wearing an overcoat in addition to the thermal skin suit. “Right they won’t, but you sure that suit will be enough?”
She smiled, “Never been to Valoria have you? Our homeworld gets rather cold.”
That felt like an excuse, but it seemed he didn’t get it, “Oh, I see.”
They chatted idly as they joined the groups heading down the ramp. Sali looked around, above her was the thickly plated underside of the Enterprise’s main saucer, below was an icy plain with a thick layer of snow on the ground. The ship was settled upon a series of massive landing struts, she marveled at them. They were easily bigger than her old house and there were eighteen of them.
From here one of the first things she saw were the nacelles resting on the ground, it seemed they were part of the support structure for the ship now that she was landed. Something that seemed strange to her, but looking at the struts that linked them to the primary and secondary hulls that didn’t seem so strange. Those struts were thicker than the landing struts and heavily plated in armor.
Standing here on the ground, she couldn’t help looking at the ship in awe. She was huge, her shadow cast upon the ground for kilometers. Which was perhaps not that surprising, given she was five kilometers long. Her nacelles alone were over a kilometer long at 1600 meters in length, and she had two of those massive cylindrical structures, both of which were heavily armored.
Robert poked her in the side, and she jumped, “Right, right, building some camps.”
Turning, she joined the growing work crew, as others were rolling grav-carts laden with prefab structures off the ship. According to the brief, they’d be building the camps here under the ship. There was plenty of room for it, and the bulk of the ship looked like it would protect anyone here from the worst of the local winds. Only downside was that it was going to be rather dark even during the day. People were going to need lights and there weren’t any from the ship to provide that. At least none that she saw.
Already a few buildings could be seen going up. Sali and Robert found themselves erecting a house. Prefabricated panels and thermal insulation, with a basic layout. Central living and bunk area, attached bathroom, and a small kitchenette. It really wasn’t much and it was intended to provide temporary residence for six people. Naturally they were building a number of them, while other people were clearing snow to create some temporary roads for the populace to use. She did notice the military vehicles going down the ramp and out into the wider world, for tasks unknown to her. They seemed light and fast though, so she figured she was looking at a recon vehicle.
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June 25th, Frozen Oasis:
Countryman made his way down the ramp, already a bustling camp town could be seen under the ship. It had only been a few days since the landing, but they were hard at work. There was some debate on staying here, it was cold but the system was certainly rich in materials. Still there was the risk of the Valorians finding them.
They’d been tracking Valorian movements and communications. There were hundreds of ships out there, with several battlegroups sweeping the sector. It was only a matter of time before they entered this system. The only open question was whether or not the Third Fleet found them.
Passing the people and throngs of work crews, he soon reached a waiting vehicle. Speaking briefly with the driver before they left, he took a look around. The camp town had sprung up quite quickly, and was providing shelter for a good chunk of their people.
Elsewhere, recon teams had found key mineral deposits, and by now they were actively mining materials. Processing them here on the ship and producing new spare parts to fuel ongoing repairs and renovations. There was a lot of work to be done, entire gun mounts had been destroyed, they had a huge stockpile of warheads to replace and large sections of dorsal plating were gone. For now most of the work done was removing damaged sections of the ship. They’d get to replacing those modules and sections of plating later. In the meantime, they just had to clean up the battle damage, and make new parts.
The engine repairs however were going to be started later today. Richards and her crew had exposed and gone over the entire set of sublight engines and all four warp engines. There was a fair degree of wear that needed to be addressed.
As for what he was doing now? Ruri and Vera had set up a large-scale weapons test to the east. There were some lowlands out that way, through which a wide river ran. As usual for this land snow was everywhere, and even the river had chunks of ice in it.
They passed a few outlying camps, as they drove down the road, if you wanted to call it that. It was really little more than a path cleared of snow, and debris. Not even paved, but given no one else was here, you couldn’t really expect better infrastructure after just a few days.
Before he knew it, Ruri’s camp came into view. There was some fencing, and a few prefab structures that had been put together for Ruri to conduct her weapons research. Being off ship had allowed them to accelerate the prototyping phase of the project.
His driver took him to the motor pool, a prefab garage with space for several vehicles like the APC he’d taken to get here. There were also a few ARVs secured in the building. The Sentry was a useful scouting vehicle, noted for being fast with a fully protected crew cabin. Many of the survey and scouting teams had requisitioned the vehicle, but it was also being used here at the test range to ferry people around.
Thanking the driver, he dismounted the vehicle and made his way towards the lab. He was halfway to the main building, when Ruri stepped out of a side building. Countryman was happy to see that for once she was in an intact outfit, albeit not wearing the overcoat most people would be wearing in combination with the thermal suit. They were great, but they didn’t do much for modesty.
She smiled, “Jac, it's a lovely day, don’t you think?”
“The weather looks pretty mild, yes. I came to see the camp and I heard you were getting ready to conduct your first test?”
Ruri grinned, “Yes, we built two full sized cannons, and mounted them into a turret.” She pointed to the left, “We have it set up down that way and hooked up to a portable fusion generator. The cannons themselves are modified XDPC-128-B particle cannons, the same type we use...”
“So they’d replace our secondary battery, noted. I presume it’s merely a scaled up version of the cannon you showed me in the lab?”
“Effectively yes Jac, they feature the modified compression chamber Vera developed, and the new spatial projectors I was working on. I’ve also increased the size of the cooling array, and added a second particle accumulator. If our math is right, we expect a fire rate of 2650 bolts per minute.”
He blinked. That would be a higher rate of fire than the original mark one they launched with. “Impressive, this might be something significant. Supercharger?”
“I was able to maintain the feature, allowing for more powerful bolts at a slightly higher rate of fire for a short period. Exactly how long? Well, I plan to determine that today.”
“Knowing you, you already have a good idea.”
She grinned, “Of course I do.” Ruri gestured, “The best seats to watch are this way.”