"Well, first things first, I think we should put more effort into building out some more habitats for the newcomers, aka the artificial humans. With twenty-one vats working simultaneously at this point in time, according to Ryan and Hopi, it should take around one month for them to become fully grown and tossed onto the base. As for the matter of naming things, to be honest, I don't think I would be a very good candidate for that; I'll just leave it to the two of you," Yayha started.
"I understand. I think that's a great idea; according to Ryan, it'll also take like half a month of time, as they essentially input into the brains of the newcomers the twelve mandatory years of education from the federation. Unlike computers, complicated data needs to be learned from the ground up in humans to understand how to do things, so for the most part I expect the new humans to be the equivalent of a newly graduated student with basic knowledge. Meaning we'll have to either open up specialized schools or just take the time to create a data packet with information on the respective fields we have within the remaining crew," Ridge replied. He also didn't mention the naming topic, afterall the artificial humans were much more important and intresting to discuss, not to mention if he had a name he wouldn't have asked them.
Caroline naturally picked up on this and knew it would be up to her to decide on names, "I say yes to the housing and the data packets. We don't have the capacity to leave engineers inside a classroom as teachers. Furthermore, experience is the best teacher, so we can just have groups of the newcomers follow specific people or groups, like me or Hopi as an example and we'll just teach as we go. As for naming things, honestly, we can just identify their species as fungiforms or something, pretty basic, but it gets the point across, in my opinion, and for their broader civilization, just have it be something like the fungiforms collective.
Realistically speaking, we still don't know enough about how they sort of live and if they have individual leaders like us humans, or something else entirely. But in general, I think those names should do for now," Caroline said extensively.
It was clear for all three of them to see that she used very minimal effort in naming the fungiforms, but Ridge honestly could care less, so long as they had a name.
"More than fine, to be honest," He said. Yayha also echoed this same sentiment by nodding his head. "How about for us as a crew now? Do you guys have any ideas?" Ridge asked.
The room fell into a slight lull of silence when this was brought up.
"What's the matter with just calling ourselves Corinians?" Yayha asked, eventually breaking the silence. Ridge, RIdge hearing this, replied quite quickly, "I guess that's not a problem, afterall we don't even know what happened to the federation as a whole anyways. Perhaps we're the last humans alive, so it would make sense to just keep the name, actually, now that I think about it," Ridge said. The more he thought about it, the more he agreed with Yayha.
There was an ominous message before they were even sent off into this new corner of the universe, so if they were truly all that was left of the Coro Federation, then in retrospect, Ridge felt it was their duty as soldiers to keep the name alive, however trivial it may seem; it's what the human race in its entirety decided to call themselves after unifying and venturing into the new frontier of space. That unifying spirit would be good to keep.
"I agree with Yayha here; we can just keep our current designations. I don't see a point in separating from the Coro Federation, even if it is just a different name. We are Corinians through and through. I'm a coronian engineer, you're a coronian commander of a battleship, and he's a coronian vice commander," Caroline added.
Nodding to both of them, he opted for no change, "Okay, understood, we'll just keep the designations for the fungiforms and their collective. On to the next point. Rather, our next project, I'm thinking of building a spaceport, a rather small one with just two berths, but enough to support the construction of new frigates at the very least and help with maintenance on our battleship. Even now, there's still outer damage to the exterior of the ship, since our engineers and crew members knowledgeable in ship repairs can only go on spacewalks with pieces of material little by little as they make repairs.
Having a spaceport would just make things so much more convenient. I also think it's appropriate to think about building anti-orbital cannons. We have the resources to build them now, and already have production lines set up to pivot to ammunition if need be. I also think within that same line of thinking it's appropriate to have some of the production lines produce guns for soldiers to use."
Caroline was the first to reply, "It's a good idea for sure to begin building up our defences and ammunition stocks. The kinetic rifles utilize electromagnetic rounds as well, which are much easier to manufacture than plasma rifles and their rounds, so for now I think we can pivot to kinetic rifles. As for the spaceport, to be honest, I would say it's better to just wait for the population to increase some more. There's no use in wasting so much time and effort on getting started on it now. With our current numbers, it would take well over ten years, and that's just a minimum estimate, doing some quick calculations in my head."
"I disagree with that," Yayha interjected. Caroline, hearing this, slightly furrowed her brows but waited for him to explain.
"While it's true, yes, that it's seemingly a waste of time for the spaceport, I think we just need to increase the number of vats, and in doing so we will be able to drastically bring that estimate of yours down. Not to mention we don't have to do all the heavy lifting right away. We can just make the modules of the spaceport and pretty much store the pieces of it so that when the time comes we could just take those pieces and, like a puzzle, bring it all together in orbit."
Rubbing his chin in thought, Ridge leaned more towards Yayha's mindset in this matter. "I also agree with him, Caroline, realistically, once we finish the housing and defences. We won't have much else to do in terms of major projects. Sure we can spend our time expanding the mining and refining capacity of our little settlement here, but once again with the production lines set up, that's something we were going to do anyways just at a less rapid pace."
"I just think that we can instead focus on, as an example, building out a larger building for the vats themselves. Or maybe even larger mining machines to burrow deeper into the ground and gather rarer minerals and metals. Overall, I think our effort for now, at least until we can teach more engineers, is better focused on the asteroid," Caroline replied, rebuking their idea.
"It's two to one, so while I value your opinion, I think the majority wins in the case," Yayha said with a straight face.
Turning to Ridge, Caroline merely shrugged, "I guess, but I do think it would be wiser to push back on dedicating so much effort to one thing this early on, Commander."
Tsking his tongue on the roof of his mouth in thought, Ridge simply said, "Noted, for now, just focus on building out the housing and defense of the base. And also build out another factory specifically for weaponry. I'll let you know about the spaceport plans. It's not something I plan on building right away anyway, so you don't need to worry about that."
Hearing him say this didn't necessarily reassure Caroline, but at the very least she was able to gauge from his reaction that he wasn't entirely against pushing the project back.
Her entire stance really was just that they didn't have enough engineers to dedicate a massive amount of energy and time to such a project. Their knowledge would be better put to use at this stage in just rolling out more mining equipment and directing some of the regular crew members to build out housing units and perhaps more artificial domes.
"That's all for now. You guys have your new directive, so get back to work and let me know if anything major pops up," Ridge said, waving both of them away as he waited at the table.
Caroline was the first to bid farewell and threw herself into work once more. Yayha was a little slower, but he left Ridge to think on things while he went to the cafeteria on the ship. After all, it was now 12:36, and he hadn't eaten yet.
Ridge, seeing them leave, remained in his seat for a good few more minutes in deep thought before eventually shaking his head and getting back to work himself, which mostly consisted of training some crew members on how to fight and transporting the metals and construction materials to different locations around the base.