Katrina had seen many factories in her life, both on the ground and in orbit. Some were highly automated, while others relied almost entirely on human workers —worth less than the robot they stood in for— and cheap, simple machinery.
The ANS Blacksmith’s Bane was different. Efficient like nothing nothing else, even to a layman’s eyes like her own. There wasn’t an extra lightbulb in the entire fabrication floor, one of several that spanned the majority of the cruiser-sized factory ship.
“Like what you see, Governor?” A familiar voice called out to her.
Turning around, she came face-to-face with the defacto ruler of the system, and one of the strangest people she had ever met. Duke James Akrites was a hard man to describe, save for his skill at delegating away nearly every task and looking far too young to be running a self-sufficient state.
As in their previous meetings, he was dressed in a laconic naval uniform: from far away he looked much like any other officer. Instead of a bumbling retinue, only a single man accompanied him; an even younger man that served as his ‘flag lieutenant’. She’d never heard of the title before, though she understood the lieutenant served as some kind of aide.
‘Maybe…something more?’ The thought surfaced, but quickly dissipated as Katrina focused on the present.
“You run a tight ship, Your Grace.” She said, careful as she pronounced the title —which she had only learned of by listening to other members of the dynasty refer to him—.
The man hadn’t been bothered by her wrong way of addressing him during their first meeting, but she’d still lost sleep over it. Nobles were infamous for their strict adherence to protocol and ceremony, even if this particular duke seemed different in every respect to the feudal elites of the sector.
“I’m but prow on a very big ship, Governor. My chief engineer and his staff are the true heroes on this hull.” Duke Akrites chuckled lightly, walking slowly through the least-busy areas of the fab floor. Workers and technicians passed them by the dozen, barely glancing at them as they went about their shift.
Katrina was quick to move along with him, splitting her attention between the massive multi-axis CNC machines just ten meters away and the words of her supposed equal.
“And where might this chief be, Your Grace? I assume that he ought to be present on such a tour.”
The duke shook his head lightly. “Chief Hund is far too busy doing actual work to entertain us, Governor. I, on the other hand, can afford to spend a few hours away from my office. Showing my face around the fleet is an important part of the job, and I’m more than happy to admire the work of my people.”
The two walked side-by-side for a few more minutes, engaging in light conversation as they looked at the massive machines at the heart of akritan industry. Floor Three was dedicated entirely to precision machining, which translated into massive lathes, grinders and mills. Dozens of technicians nursed each machine at all times, with hundreds more moving around the factory with tools, materials and even small carts carrying spare parts, lubricants and machining equipment.
By the five minute mark, the silence had gotten so awkward that Katrina didn’t know how to reignite the conversation. She clenched her fists and sighed in frustration, only to see the Duke smile at her.
“So why are you here, Governor? I doubt you spent ten hours in a transorbital shuttle just to have a look around the machines.”
“I…” Katrina gathered her words. “My people need training, Your Grace.”
The duke raised an eyebrow at her. “I think it’s a little early if you want military assistance, Governor…”
“No, not that.” She shook her head. “Civilian training. Industrial training.” She waved around the factory.
“Please elaborate.”
Katrina took a deep breath. “A few weeks ago, when RSSC’s merchant convoy was in orbit, we traded a lot of our export goods for tools —like your own—. We are no great superpower, Your Grace, but my people are proud of their independence. Buying spare parts and such from merchant convoys and wandering factory ships is both expensive and…tiring.”
“So you want your own industrial base, outside of the mineral industry?” He surmised.
“Quite.” Katrina nodded. “Unfortunately, in our rush to get the best machinery we could buy…we forgot about the human component. My people can make most of what the colony needs, but electronics and advanced mechanical components are out of our league. It appears, however, that you do not have that problem.” She chuckled, gesturing to the bustling factory floor.
The duke nodded, his face forming into a thoughtful expression. After a few moments, he spoke.
“You understand that there’s going to be a price, yes?”
She winced, having expected those terrible words. “I do. What do you want?”
+++
“What do you think, Olaf?” James asked his long-time engineering expert over a cup of delicious matcha tea.
Olaf Hund was an old man who, under normal circumstances, should’ve been promoted to a flag rank years ago. Promotion had been proposed to him many times, but each time he’d rejected the prestige and safety of a cushy job in the dynasty’s main military shipyards over field command. The man wasn’t a bureaucrat, but an engineer, and James was certain he’d throw himself in a plasma smelter before becoming part of the chair force.
“It’s a good deal.” The man nodded, taking a shallow sip off his own mug. Like most high-ranking officers, the veteran engineer had his own stash of chai from special and unique varieties.
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
Continuing, he said. “We’re practically overflowing with experienced machinists and industrial engineers, but we are dangerously low on manual labor —especially if you want the valley turned into a proper city in the near term.”
The harsh reality of construction was that robots were expensive. No matter the circumstances, a half-trained human worker was more capable and hardier than the automata that was designed to replace him. Specialized roles did benefit from specialized robots, but many jobs needed human workers capable of critical and out-of-the-box thinking that programmed robots were physically incapable of.
Maintaining the fleet was more than easy with the presence of factory ships and mobile shipyards, and even building new ships —like the Reliance-class PCBs— was possible, because of the high degree of automation and low efficiency.
Building a colonial city was an entirely different ball game.
James and his staff had been mulling over the construction plans, which showed high costs in time, people and resources for mediocre results. There simply weren’t enough hands to lay the bricks, concrete and rebar, even though humanity had gotten civil engineering down to an exact science long before man had left the solar system.
The latest deal with Governor Polk had changed that.
“That’s what I thought.” James nodded. “Do you have any idea who to send?”
“I’ve got just the woman.”
+++
The akritan crownworld had been a diverse planet with a variety of ecosystems. Most people lived in the temperate zones between the southern tropic and the south pole, yet many people had chosen to live elsewhere.
Deputy chief engineer Laura Watson was one such person. Her complexion had been snow-white even before she joined the navy, as her hometown had seen more snow than sun for the entirety of her youth.
Life in the northern tundras meant she was more than ready when the shuttle’s hatch dropped into the spaceport’s tarmac, letting in a gust of cold air. The same couldn’t be said for all her staff, though the squad of marines acting as her security detail were more than comfortable in their sealed exo-suits.
“Let’s get moving, people! Let’s not let the welcoming commitee bear the wind much longer.” She shouted to the rest of the shuttle’s passenger’s. Dozens of trained technicians and engineers rushed out at her words, while the ten marines walked out with the casual pace only temperature-controlled carapace armor could afford.
Twenty meters, away, standing next to a convoy of ground vehicles, the polarisians looked at them with obvious curiosity.
“Deputy Chief Watson?” A female voice came from the center of a group. A svelte woman in a fur coat walked out of the crowd.
Laura walked forward to meet her half way, where they shook hands. “That’s me. And you are?”
“Deputy Chief Paula Styles, State Engineering Corps. I’m going to be your liaison for the duration of your people’s stay on our planet.”
“Nice to meet you, Deputy Styles. I’d be happy to introduce my people to yours, but how about we get out of the cold and inside a place with four walls and a roof. Some of my people are…less adapted to the chilly winds.”
The colonial engineer looked at her for a moment before smirking. “Of course. The convoy is ready to depart at a moment’s notice, and we’ve got more than enough room for all of you and your tools. The governor has reserved an apartment complex for your group, and we have organized a small buffet in the ground floor’s common room.”
+++
Nikolai Johnson lived and breathed civil engineering. Born to two engineers managing their own construction firm, he’d spent his entire life touring construction sites and learning about the family craft. He’d had a bright future ahead of him, until the Republican Stock Market experienced a ‘hiccup’. While most businesses struggled, his crashed. Nearly all his investors went bankrupt, leaving the firm high on debt and low on income.
Packing his bags and grabbing those of his family and company that were willing to move away from their home-world, Nikolai was one of the first to join Katrina Polk’s colonial expedition to Pollux. In the years since, he planned the construction of entire city blocks, industrial districts and their underlying infrastructure, and his service had earned the trust of the executive council and the governor’s office.
That usually meant a more elastic budget and minimal oversight as he went about his work…but there were exceptions. When the governor said jump, he was expected to ask ‘how high’. When she said “pack your bags and build a city on another planet”, Nikolai accepted immediately. Not that he didn’t want to: he lived to build. Planning an entire new city? Just the thought made him hard.
Of course, there were a few pesky details. Such as the fact he wouldn’t be afforded the usual lack of oversight and ample reserves of trust, because he wasn’t working for the State of Polaris. The Akritan Duchy had earned a lot of goodwill among the people of his new home, but they were still an unknown entity…save for their military prowess.
Take, for example, the matte black armor worn by the Akritan Marine Corps trooper sitting next to him in the shuttle. It added almost half a meter to the marine’s height, and though bulky it was flexible. No place in the armor was exposed; even the joints were covered by a strange leather-like mesh that contained ballistic-thermal protective jell —according to the all-too-eager marine that had answered his question at the behest of his superior—.
‘What?!’ Nikolai thought, shocked at the announcer’s words.
He’d seen the shuttle land on the spaceport -in Polaris-, and it had taken off without refueling. To think that it had arrived at Pollux, no, Domusec, and was now descending to the surface without refueling was insane. This was either the most fuel-efficient shuttle he’d ever seen, or it was hiding an extra tank of reaction mass somewhere.
The descent maneuvers passed like a breeze. The shuttle’s inertial compensators were obviously military-grade; he didn’t feel a thing until it switched to atmospheric flight. Within a short fifteen minutes they had landed on the freshly-paved tarmac.
The transparent re-breather, meant to concentrate the oxygen in Domusec’s air to the levels needed by a human, had been on Nikolai’s face for the last two minutes.
By the time Nikolai had gathered his belongings and gotten up from his seat, his marine escorts had streamed out of the shuttle while the sergeant in charge spoke with another marine, dressed in the very same armor.
As he and his retinue walked out, they were welcomed by an impressive sight. The valley was enormous, likely the result of extremely intense tectonic activity tens of millions of years ago. The valley’s surface looked almost…pristine, for lack of a better word. Without native bioforms to turn them into soil, the gravel, sand and limestone that made up most of the planet’s surface remained neat and clean.
The flatness also helped. He’d been provided with the valley’s topographic data, which was in some ways stellar and in others terrible. For now, however, both bad and good worked in their favor. The mountains surrounding them were all at least five kilometers deep, with some peaks reaching ten or twelve.
While this would make for an extremely isolated enviroment in a normal evolutionary process -a quarantine zone, so to speak-, it also meant the oxygen that would soon be pumped from the hydrolysis plant would be contrated within the valley instead of escaping.
But Nikolai was more interested in the terrain of the valley itself.
Close to eighty-five percent of the area was entirely flat, with the difference between the deepest lake and the tallest hill being a measly thirty meters. With solid rock under his feet and construction materials in abundance, Nikolai was left grinning ear to ear.
“Time to built a city.”