I mentally thanked the A.U. for ‘donating’ their ships to Rafar. Half of the wrecks Henry had discovered proved to be unfixable, but the other half still had a chance at life according to Grimar and his engineering team. It took about two days to set things up, but during that time the operation had already begun to bear fruit.
On the first day, I sent the construction drones to begin digging away at the piles of trash that covered up the wrecks. We discovered that Rafar's ever-mutating wildlife had taken an interest in the drones. Which meant we had to make guard stations to guard the drones. Whilst this was happening R&D made themselves useful by using the data collected from the drones during their work to improve their robotic shells to better endure under Rafar’s hostile environment.
On the second day, the A.V. chip repaired itself enough to unlock a new function.
[Chip Repair progress at 10%]
[Administartion Function - [ASSIGN TASK ROUTINES] - UNLOCKED]
R&D set up a metal sorting machine that in combination with the [Assign Task Routines] function allowed us to have the construction drones bring back any usable salvage which were then melted down into new materials to be used to construct new construction drones. This in turn meant that each day the operation went smoother and quicker.
The digging operation alone was estimated to take weeks, and that was with people working around the clock, but now we were done digging the wrecks out within four days. As thanks for their hard work, I entrusted Grimar, Henry, and some of the other engineers with command over their own Construction Drone groups, which they immediately set to work to help repair the wrecks. Henry however had a different idea. As he pointed out some weaponry or other technology might still be found and dug out from beneath the waste. So with my blessing he and a team set out to hopefully recover some armaments with which we could arm the ships.
I snapped out of my retrospection as the door to my father’s office opened.
“Ah Xander, how goes the hunt?”
“Badly my lord, they still elude us for the moment. The military faction is demanding additional resources to deal with the threat. They feel that they’ve been neglected for too long, and are saying that our planetary sovereignty is paying the price because of it.”
“What about General Thalia? Is she doing anything to stop this movement from growing out of hand?”
Xander sighed. “She’s both unable and unwilling to do anything about the military’s demand.”
“Has nobody informed the good general of our current retrofitting operations?”
“I don’t think so, my Lord. It was only a few days ago the project was still in the testing phases, it’s only now that one of the wrecks is getting to a functional state that the engineering team is willing to share the details with the other factions.”
“In that case, I will personally update the general, that should help lower some of the anger of her faction. This will be a good time to have her train additional crew for the new ships.”
Xander nodded.
“And who is that besides you?”
A man wearing a civic uniform with a puffy black afro stepped forward.
“Greetings my Lord, I am Orik head of domestic affairs.” the way his hair bobbed up and down was magnetic to look at.
“Ah your Orik, greetings to you too, please take a seat. My apologies for not meeting with you earlier. I saw the meeting requests you sent previously, but sadly I was preoccupied over the last few days with a project concerning our planetary security that required my full undivided attention.”
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“I have heard something to that effect. I would have liked to be able to handle this problem internally within domestic affairs, sadly the problems have been left to fester and we need your help.”
“Well let’s get to it then, what exactly is plaguing you and the people?”
Orik sent me some files through the network.
“So some of the shrimp farms had a malfunction in their water purification pumps. Tell me Orik how bad is it.”
Orik looked pained. “The consumption department estimates that we lost about forty percent of our food supply..”
“Will our emergency food supplies hold?”
“If luck is on our side we have four months of foodstuffs left.”
“And if it’s not?”
“Two or less months..”
“I see. Is there any way we could increase the food supply without external aid?”
Orik shook his head. “Your father mentioned something about finding potential trade partners, do you have any idea what he meant lord?”
“I do, sadly that is not an option as of this moment, though we are actively working on it. Right now we will have to cover this shortage ourselves. Recently we did manage to kill a lot of hostile wildlife, I know it’s a long shot, but can you ask the consumption department if they can turn some of those corpses we got into food?”
“I’ll ask but don’t expect much.”
“I won’t. Tell consumption that they can expect a batch of newly constructed construction drones?”
“You mean those metal crabs some citizens have been seeing over the last few days?”
“That’s right, I had commissioned R&D to look into ways to expand or upgrade our workforce, these crabs as you call them are the result.”
Can’t exactly let everyone know I’ve got an A.V. chip now, can I.
“Fascinating, if you don’t mind my asking could you share some of these Construction Drones with the other departments?”
“I’ll allow it, but only after rapport has been put together showing how each department plans to use them and the expected gains we can expect to receive from this investment.”
“Would you let us handle putting the report together my Lord?”
Can domestic affairs gain more bargaining power with the other departments. Sure, for the right price.
“Of course, and I’m sure you can use some resources to lessen the citizen's complaints in the meantime yes?”
“Your wisdom exceeds your age, my lord.” Said Orik with a smile that lacked warmth, while his hair bobbed from side to side.
How does he even fit that inside his helmet?
“And I can see why you're in charge of domestic affairs,” I said with an equally friendly smile.
I hate politics. Let’s just get this over with.
“Well, I would love to keep talking with you Orik, but I’m afraid time is always short, so what are the other pressing matters?”
“Recently more wildlife than usual have been running into our underground habitats, while we don’t know the cause, the people feel unsafe and threatened.”
Crap, the worksites must have disturbed whatever ecosystem was in place.
“I’ll increase the Planetary Defense Forces budget so they can hire more manpower. I’ll also ask General Thalia to temporarily send over some new recruits to help bolster the defenses as a training assignment. Will that do for now?”
Orik nodded.
“Good, what’s next?”
“The Industrial Resource Department is about to run out of metal ore to refine, soon the foundries will be out of work, putting a large part of our citizenry out of a job.”
“What measures have they taken so far?”
“Right now the IRD has shifted its focus on recycling more of the surrounding material waste, but they can’t fully be switched over due to the time it takes to identify and haul recyclable materials.”
“Tell them to steadily switch over to full recycling, in the meantime, I will have R&D modify some of the construction drones to better enable them to identify the resources that can be recycled. Have the IRD send me a rapport later on how things are going.”
After that, we kept talking about a lot of different topics for a bit longer, mostly about which department was going to have its budget lowered. Can’t exactly print money... Or at least not without ruining our own fragile economy. Once we were done I politely excused Orik from my office and told Xander to guard the outside of my office.
“Now to placate our dear general..”
I hope my parents get well soon. This is too much work for one person.