|Viraliv|[20-14]Sliue-Ececs|Ora’s Eye|Tebi|Tebi-3|
12,163,955,737cy
Terraformer Station ‘Favala’, On approach to Low Tebi-3 Orbit
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A dark cold room, dimly lit by floor lights guiding the way to places unknown. A room old enough to be covered by a fine layer of dust, though there seems to be none. Indeed, there’s nothing in this room, nor any of the rooms that are connected by vent to this one that could create dust. The only things moving on this station are mechanical in nature, toiling away endlessly at whatever task they were designed for. Though it would be incorrect to say that this station is abandoned or derelict. In fact, there are 27,389 living entities aboard the station. All cryogenically frozen, as they have been for the last 127 years. This station is built for terraforming valuable planets in the goldilocks zones of stars within the Tarmon Federated Systems area of influence. Being the 37th station of its class, it could be considered a megastructure of the Tarmon, and an extremely high priority target for its enemies. Not many exist and they are the only way to rapidly terraform various potential habitals, consuming an enormous amount of resources during their construction, deployment, and while working. To the Tarmon, its people and its government, they are the heart and soul of their nation.
Regardless of the material costs, they are a good investment for the Tarmon people, allowing them to retain their supremacy in the Ora’s Eye stargroup by way of simply having more colonies than anyone else. The locations of them are top-secret, even the transport ships designated to transfer them the various exotic resources needed to terraform are given complex orders that only a few specific people could translate. The final location, and actual location of the station is only given at the last moment and only a few people would know. Most of the time they use dead-drops after the first transport makes it to the station and confirms the mission. That dead-drop is gathered by the various ships that the TFS class is equipped to produce from its spaceyards capable of constructing ships of 30,000 tonnes. Being extremely large itself, the station has no way to actually move to potential planets, thus a fleet of specialized tug-ships is used. The station carries enough fuel for the journey. Not to mention the countless industrial centers aboard the station capable of creating many of the resources that will be needed for the journey there and the work that will begin once they reach their destination.
These stations are extremely self-sufficient and only need raw resources to conduct their work, essentially working like a miniature artificial world of some sort. Until the station gets to its destination it is basically frozen in time, only basic maintenance robots work to ensure that nothing goes wrong. All of its occupants spend the journey frozen in time. These occupants are obviously the Tarmon, humanoid like beings with noticeably large almond-shaped eyes that angle towards a felinid nose. The eyes are usually varying shades of deep blue, with silver-tipped lashes that stem from them; the base color of the lashes depends on the color of their fur. Fur that covers mostly only their appendages, of which they have two arms and two digitigrade legs. Their skin, hidden under the fur or in places where fur doesn’t exist, is slightly luminescent and exhibits a soft silver or gold. This in combination with their eye’s natural ability to see better in the dark, not to the level of night vision, is what allowed their primitive ancestors to survive even though they were physically weaker than other species their size, though intelligence certainly gave them an advantage as well..
On their head is not fur but rather thick strands of hair the width of rope, mainly has its use as decoration. The coloration varies from deep purples to dark blues, including jet black. When feeling strong emotions such as anger or shock the hair has a tendency to raise a bit. Similar in its working to how human goosebumps work, the kind the reader would have when cold. The body of a Tarmon is rather slender and tall, using their extremely efficient and tensile muscles allows them great agility, a tail is used to allow them greater balance as well allowing them to succeed at extremely complicated maneuvers. Physiologically they are more guarded and cautious to strangers and things different to them, though one can quickly gain friendship and curiosity from one if approaching them in the right way. Their history as predators and mainly carnivores still has vestigial effects on how they present themselves when they feel threatened or if the situation feels ‘off’ to them.
Though many other species are frozen in the station, and are present in the Tarmon Federated Systems as well. These will be introduced later and in total only represent a small percentage of the population that are the minority of races that willingly joined the Tarmon.
The Tarmon aboard the station are about to be woken up though, being thawed in order of importance to the station's primary work, terraforming. First would be the bridge crew, just in case anything is wrong with the station and they need to pause the thawing process. After that would be the engineers, and other professionals with the duty of keeping the station maintained. After that would be the secondary specialist, the ones who work in the industrial sections to convert raw materials into whatever the station needs at that moment. Finally it would be the settlers, this would be long into the terraforming process. Their job would be to set up domed cities on the planet and set up terraforming arrays to speed up the process. Not to mention making it easier for further colonists to colonize the planet by setting up infrastructure ahead of time. Speaking of, it’s time for TFS-037 ‘Favala’ to begin the awakening procedures.
The previously dim room is suddenly thrown into chaos by the blaring of alarms and bright flashing lights. A set of tubes begins to light up blue, allowing one to see a dark silhouette behind a thick frosted glass. Some slurry of liquid slowly starts to drain away to parts unknown in the ship. A few minutes after the liquid was completely drained away, and with much of the frost clearing up, a hatch gets released with a sharp hissing noise. The now apparent door of the tube begins to be lifted up into the ceiling and out stumbles a Tarmon. The captain of the ship, an older Tarmon who's beginning to show signs of age on its frame, a surely glorious past accompanies them if they are allowed to captain a TFS. However at this time their sad and weak looking form is hunched over, shivering while expelling more of that liquid slurry from his lungs. He groggily gets up, swiping his mouth with his arm before walking over to lockers in the room. He hears the other tubes start their awakening procedure before slipping into a form-fitting one-piece suit; the kind a reader would wear if going scuba-diving.
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Not wanting to help the others recover, everyone has their own way to deal with waking up, the captain just starts heading towards the nearest panel. Tapping at it for a while he brings up the information relevant to the mission. The station appears to be about 12 hours away from Tepi-3, about right for the awakening procedure. Contacting the crew aboard the tug fleet lead, he simply notifies them that they are starting to wake up now before cutting contact. A very brisk and disciplined communication, much like the captain himself. Those tug crews work for a few years before entering a cryo-pod themselves and then the next shift takes over. The captain looks over his shoulder to see that his officers are getting suited up by now. Waiting for a few moments until the finish, he then tells them that the situation looks good for now. He continues and tells them that they need to get to the bridge to get an actual picture of the situation but that they should get some food in their bodies beforehand. He then dismisses them and heads towards the bridge, a long ways away from where they are now but this station is equipped for efficient logistics so it doesn't take much time.
By the time the captain gets to the Favala’s bridge, everything is already turned on, as part of the wakeup procedure. Walking up to the main section of the bridge he starts trying to make sense of the information. The Tepi system was relatively mysterious, only a scout ship’s cursory sweep of the place was what they had information wise. Now that they are in the system they will have to do a more thorough sweep. However, the data that most interested the captain was about Tepi-3 itself, their destination. It’s the captain's duty to read the data about the planet and determine whether it’s still suitable for terraforming and if they should continue the wakeup procedure. Many things could change by the time the station reaches its destination, indeed once in the past a station had gotten to its destination only to find out that a nearby celestial body had crashed into it and pushed it more towards the sun. Outside of the Tarmon species habitable zone.
The captain taps a little glass bubble near the main console and says, “You awake Favala?”
“As awake as you are Captain Idris, my higher functions are being cycled up and tested for any errors, as expected.” A slightly feminine but overall robotic and monotone voice emits from the various speakers in the bridge. Favala is an ai, but not a true ai, that manages the ships functions. Just like the crew it was asleep for the journey, only its lower functions were active.
“Very good then.” A short pause and then, “Favala, give me a read-in on Tepi-3 when you’re ready.”
“Understood, in the meantime all systems seem nominal for now, though I’m not done booting all of them up right now.” A short pause and then, “A full basic scan of Tepi-3 will take almost twelve hours from here, might as well settle in for now.”
“Sounds about as good as we can expect. How long until the first transports get here.”
“The first convoy should arrive in one month, twenty-seven days, if all is right.”
“Plenty of time to complete a few basic scans of the nearby planets then.”
Almost as soon as the conversation ended, the large door to the bridge opened up to reveal the officers who, assumingly, had just finished eating. The communications lead saluted in a rather sarcastic way and then asked, “Any good news on Tepi-3, sir?”.
“Not yet, only basic telemetry data, but so far it looks like a prime target. Favala is still in bootup, we’ve got some time.”
This time it’s the engineering department’s head officer, “Great, so we get some time to rest then?”
“Not quite, I still need everyone to be doing their duties, who knows what’s out here. We don’t want to be the main characters in another Bizby-4XI incident, do we?”
The engineer again, “Haha, no sir. Well, you guys have fun up here, my place is deeper below.” He points towards the ground before starting to leave. A gruff man, larger than average and incredibly intelligent but with a long list of flaws towards work-ethic. At least he’s dependable when the situation turns for the worst.
A description that could be applied to most of the crew on this ship, promising individuals who got on some influential nobody’s bad side and ended up on a TFS. Even just taking the spotlight away from someone who thinks they deserve it can give you a one-way ticket to the newest terraforming project, even the unskilled can still work as a colonist. Regardless, some relish the chance to prove themselves and to have others depend on them. Though not all, some people have a feel for vengeance, though that’s not something that survives long when your target is so far away.
For the captain, his story is that he showed-up someone who had good connections, they were a good skilled captain too. They even had a healthy rivalry in school but, all it takes is for Idris to swoop in and win a once-in-a-lifetime victory and off to the void he goes. Not that he cares, getting away from the elite snobs and getting a chance to further prove himself was like winning two lotteries in one for him.
The captain and his officers start doing what they can, while waiting for the scanning of Tepi-3 to complete before deciding whether to start unfreezing the others. A decision not made lightly, even after the more important personnel get unfrozen they would have to do an in-depth survey of the planet in question. Including survey teams exploring the planet in person, mapping out any areas for potential colonies and looking out for the common materials and dangers that exist anywhere. Of course, those kinds of things would only happen if the planet is as good as the original report said it was. That will happen once Favala moves into a low orbit around Tepi-3, an incredibly harsh maneuver for the tug fleet to complete just considering the raw mass of the Favala. But for terraforming to work that’s just the risk that those who work on these expeditions are expected to take.