A new day dawns
26 Dec 2020Teafox
Shifnalport is just starting to come alive again after the Christmas celebrations. It's nice that some traditions persist even to this day. In the case of Christmas, I think culturally, it's just a nice excuse for everyone to relax and take a day or two to appreciate their friends and family.That said, there are a lot of hung over people on the flight deck. Traffic control are struggling to process the pending docking requests when there are so many pilots taking up landing pads. Since we're held in a queue, we decide to get nosy and drift around the construction platform. Is this going to be ours? Kid's excited, he doesn't care about the nitty gritty. He's got the right idea, pretty much every ship out there is pieced together from old parts. Hell, if the ship we're in is any indication, it's the old parts you want to keep. If a power distributor hasn't worn out in four hundred years and has survived being in six other ships, that's not going to be the part that suddenly fails on you when you need it.
The kid wants to think up a name for her, but I already have something in mind. Still, he's put in work to this project too, so I can't just pull rank on him. He gets until we buy it to think up a better name. I tell him the name I have in mind and he gets pouty... Turns out he really likes that name, but -he- wanted to think up the name. I couldn't think of a good way to talk around that one, but he's got until we sign over the cash, and even if he can't think up something, sometime he'll have a ship or three of his own to name. Normally, that kind of talk would get him thinking up ideas, it didn't. He's been thinking about this and is clearly nervous I won't like it.
I'm not going to try and tease it out of him, either it'll come up of it's own accord or he'll change his mind and it won't be an issue.
The Brewer's corp rep isn't our first port of call, however. We've set up a meeting with a team from Supratech. We're not looking for a set of alternative vacuum suits, we're looking to set up a facility run by them and we need to know whether that will cause problems from Brewers, or the major governments. None of it will help at all if they can't, or won't provide some kind of secure imprint facility for the kid. If the tech lead has figured out what we're not telling her about the kid, she's not letting on. Seems to think that there's no reason that the technology won't work for the kid. At least it won't work any worse than the Remlok system, given that supratech's version was basically a product of industrial espionage. Supratech is having a rough time finding places that are willing to help them set up. Remlok is paying Brewer corp to install their tech as standard. The deal we strike is a simple one though, we provide the carrier, Supratech is going to fund getting their kit and people set up on board. We pay the standard imprinting fees that we would with Remlok, but they'll keep our data under lock and key and entirely in our control.
The rep from Brewers isn't entirely happy to receive our list of specifications for the carrier, but for the amount of money exchanging hands he can't put up too much of a fight. We're going to wait to start replacing the rest of the crew until we're safely out of system. The kid actually did come up with a better name too.
It's interesting watching an Alliance run corp assemble a ship of this size. Obviously, it's mostly a mechanical process, at least for the macro level of moving hull plates into place. Once the basics are in place, though? A veritable army of technicians goes aboard. Removing the Remlok suite from the docking area really seems to have thrown a spanner into the works. Machinery that should otherwise be installed is left on the assembly docks, in the way of other materials that needs to be installed. It doesn't take the team long to adjust the process, but there is disruption, and the corp doesn't like that.
The Rings of Aster launches without an imprint suite and with a skeleton crew, given that we are keeping most of the facilities in mothballs for now. We draw glares from some of the Remlok people as they notice a half dozen type-9s lift off and head for the new vessel, all owned by Supratech. Too late now. Our ship, our rules... Assuming Supratech doesn't screw us, at least.
It'll take them a few hours to install everything and set up, that's alright, we'll need some time to get our crew together.
I have to admit, I like the name better. One of my favorite tall tales involve some of the wild theories that involve the 'missing rings of Aster' back in my home system of Ross 154. Seems the kid liked that story too.