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System Lord News: Summit for 'Opening Thread' concluded... Personal story development time
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Irreverent Zealotry
Topic Started: Jan 17 2015, 10:03 AM (53 Views)
Ma'ahes
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Intel


Classroom A-118/H

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Ur'landgev stood at the front of the large classroom, looking sternly at the dozens of students as he paused before starting the lecture. Though he would never admit it, he enjoyed letting them anxiously await his first few words. As the head engineer and designer of the Thrasekion navy, his words were practically gospel when it came to anything and everything ship-related. His classes were already packed with the normal students--the best and brightest, hand-picked by Ur'langdev himself from the academies native to Kualpuch--but now they were practically overflowing with the addition of Sival and Varenum pupils. Both races took quickly to Thrasekion technology as they were eager to learn whatever could benefit their people. He often forgot about the myriad of applications a simple technology could have on a desperate people...and the Sival and Varenum were both desperate in their own ways.

"Can anyone tell me what that is," he asked and pointed out the window that lined an entire length of the room. All hands shot up. He moved his hand from toward the window and motioned to a young Sival woman, her bright-pink hair and eyebrows hastily pulled back across copper skin. Her horns were hardly even, the result of staying up too late to study and not enough effort spent on typical status objects. Oh, if her high-caste family could see her now, he thought with an inward grin. She blinked her stainless-steel eyes and shifted in her seat with excitement. "Yes, Faris."

"A Long-Range Resupply Dock, or Lird," she replied confidently. As with all Sival, their vocal cords were ingrained with various minerals that affected their voices. The more extreme examples sounds like someone grounding up stones, but Faris' voice was a soothing tone laced with a sound similar to sand pouring gently out of a bucket.

"What is it's purpose?"

"To provide a long-range sensor net for the cluster."

"Correct," he replied. She smiled nervously. Eyes still locked on her, he added, "And the structure beside it?"

"Um," she said, cocking her head in thought while staring at the white-covered pieces floating outside the Zealotry, held in place by clamps; so massive was the structure compared to the arms holding it that it looked like the pieces of a broken plate locked in place by the arms of ants. "Oh, a Long-Range Habitation Unit."

"Very good." Shifting his eyes away from the Sival girl--she outwardly sighed in relief--he asked another question. "Now, if you wanted to destroy any of these stations, how would you do it?" The class laughed nervously, thinking him joking. The destruction of Thrasekion military equipment was not a stable subject, considering the recent civil war and ongoing civil strife within the system. A few of the pupils bristled at the question, but none spoke up. "Anyone?"

"An asteroid," a Varenum in the class piped up, his translator echoing his voice oddly in the room. Ur'langdev raised an eyebrow.

"Clever--it would not appear to be a military attack initially, but both types of stations have a sizable drone force to protect it against threats such as that."

"Artillery," a young man said, his yellow-and-orange irises giving him away as goa'uld.

"Blunt, and would overwhelm the shielding of the station...it would work on a LIR HAB. However, every Lird is attached to a quag, so a support fleet is only minutes away. Not to mention any ship incoming will be detected minutes beforehand. Anyone else?"

"Explode a sun?" a woman jaffa asked hesitantly. The class laughed, but Ur'langdev raised his hands to quiet them down.

"Don't laugh, that's why the military was advised to move any support station into deep space, away from habitable planets," he said with a smile.

"Then why are we deploying them to the new colony?" the goa'uld retorted.

"I see nothing escapes you, Ih'kel," Ur'langdev replied. "A stop-gap method, as there are insufficient stations presently that are suited for a long-term support mission to a colony. But, it is not a Lird deploying to Behlro, but a Mobile Military Dock. Can anyone tell me why that would be the best choice for an initial colony overwatch?"

Faris' hand shot up again amidst a sea of tentative answers. Ur'langdev pointed to her.

"It can support a larger fleet long-term and offers survivability in the event of an invasion."

"It also houses enough drones to down the barge itself," Duchess Everith said, doors sliding open to the side of Ur'langdev. She flashed a wicked smile at Ur'langdev and tilted her head to the hallway. "We need to talk, mad scientist."

The class laughed at Ur'langdev's moniker, but a quick look from him died down the laughter. He cleared his throat.

"Class dismissed until tomorrow. I want a ten-page paper on my desk tomorrow outlining the best possible design for a long-term colony support mission. Assess the strengths and weaknesses of the station, and why it is better than current models. Dismissed."

Everith waited until the class had left before speaking. She was dressed in her admiral whites, the only insignia on it was her rank pips. Ur'langdev did not fail to notice she chose to wear the skirt instead of pants. Clearly, she wanted something from him.

"My, my, that little sival girl is delectable," she said. "Please tell me you've educated her on the privileges of authority."

"I think you missed your calling as a politician," Ur'langdev replied sharply as he gathered the papers on his desk together.

"Just saying, my dear, is all. Other races cannot possibly understand the joy of sex, stuck in only a single body, unable to maximize the pleasure of the activity. Just because our politicians naturally are inclined to indulge their appetites on a whim doesn't mean everyone who isn't puritanical about sex means they seek to rule."

"My apologies," he sat down at his desk , having cleared it of clutter. Everith sat down on the corner of the desk to his right, blocking his view of the door. She crossed her legs innocently, letting the skirt hike up a bit. Ur'langdev sighed to himself, knowing full-well what she was doing. Then again, his blood temperature was rising due to two things now.

"Accepted." She smiled and nodded her head at the door. "That little paper they're supposed to do...aren't they doing your work for you?"

"Think of it as mining talent for the future, Everith," he replied, learning back in his chair and looking dead in her eyes. "Don't tell me you cancelled my class because you wanted to tease or flirt with me."

"Well," she purred with a cocked head, eying him up and down. Though he had let himself go a bit in the past few months, he was still a tall--and incredibly eligible--bachelor. "As much as I would love to relive old memories of us rolling in the hay--"

"With me, or a couple hundred other young sailors at the time?" he interjected. Everith's eyes narrowed at the truth and ignored him.

"--I am here on military business."

"Could have fooled me."

"I wanted to know the status of the Atl frigate construction line and the design stage of the Jiril upgrade prototyping."

Ur'langdev hung his head and shook it in desperation. He was already working thirty-hour days, did she really expect him to have expedited her request--made a mere week ago--to such a degree? Honestly, he was amazed at the gall of civil and military leaders alike. They all wanted everything now, regardless of complexity or scale. He still couldn't believe they wanted the Wabena-class carriers to be produced every three months. Even with the Zealotry working on a vessel with every production facility it had, the bottleneck would still be at the electronics outfitting at Seiyo Station, never mind the fact that Zealotry only had two bays currently designed to handle such a craft. No matter how many times he told them, it was as if the leaders did not understand that a ship was not built in a vacuum: it needed a dedicated supply chain and manufacturing base to support it. And the fact of the matter was that Thrasekion was still rebuilding from the Diaspora, let alone the civil war.

"The Atl-class is on schedule to produce one per four months, as promised. I'm lengthening the construction to ensure maximum stability and because the Council refuses to expedite the production of another station comparable to Seiyo."

"The Council agrees that it is better to have an excess capacity of hulls that can do something, rather than having a backlog of construction so early into rebuilding the fleet," Everith replied. "I would love to have another Seiyo Station, but we need the bays to finish up our station net first."

"And yet the Council wants to expand to a new colony that is over fifteen thousand lightyears away," Ur'langdev gruffed.

"We all need to reach for something, Ur'langdev," Everith said in a rare moment of softness.

"Well, reach for something closer, I'm not going to speed up production if Seiyo can't keep up."

"Fine." She uncrossed her legs, letting them sway side-by-side beneath the desk. The seduction attempt had been abandoned. Score one, my team, Ur'langdev thought. "What about my prototype."

"No prototype needed."

"Oh?"

"It saves time to reduce the snub-nose on the current model and just outfit the electronics in the additional units equipped on either side of the vessel," he explained, grunting as he reached for a datapad in his desk. Pulling it out, he tapped a few times and brought up a schematic of the Jiril-class cruiser MK II "Everith" variant. Everith smiled as she saw the design's moniker, but he ignored her delight. He pointed to the sides. "I've made sure each of the bays can be equipped with the same modules we use for the Atl. It's the same boxes, just thrown into a different box, really."

"How soon until testing?"

"I've put in a request to the Varenum government asking for permission to use their asteroid belt for close-quarters combat and drone deployment already. Said they could make room in the testing site schedule for sometime next week. Still some logistics numbers to work out, if I go full production on the variant we'll fall behind a few months on the Atl and Kvasir lines, and I don't even want to think about the delay to the Ehuatl. We'll be lucky if we can even field a hull this time next year."

"And current models? Can they be upgraded?"

"Yes and no. Refits will take a month for the full overhaul to connect all the new power conduits, and each ship will push the entire line's production back." She looked puzzled at the delay to the line itself, so he added, "We need the final bays to conduct the refit."

"I see." She hopped off the desk and smiled at Ur'langdev. "Keep up the good work, mad scientist."

She walked out the door, making sure to wiggle her hips a bit just to spite the engineer. Ur'langdev laughed to himself. The sound echoed in the empty hall, and he let himself gaze out the window at the enormous stations being constructed just outside the classroom. He allowed himself to admire the craftsmanship of the workers as they tirelessly scrambled over the white constructs to install a new component being positioned into place. Despite popular belief, Ur'langdev did not design each and every part of the stations and vessels. He was the visionary for the overall components and provided key input to make sure everything worked or a unique feature could be installed, and otherwise stood back and let the engineers he trained over the years take the reigns and do him proud. The curved section on the LIR HAB was one student he was particularly proud of, a jaffa named Reish.

For the next few hours Ur'langdev worked on finishing up the logistics numbers, touching up the inner details of the MK II bays, and even allowed himself to fiddle with a new transport ship he had a dream about the last time he actually dreamed. That may have been two weeks ago, he surmised. Not much dreaming takes place in short cat naps, after all. He sent his finished work to his various assistants to double-check his work and add notes. They would repackage the entire series of data into a single report for him to view over the next day. Then, with any luck, the entire project would be finished and they could move onto other tasks. He allowed his feet to take over and he mindlessly walked from the classroom to his private quarters at the top of one of the station towers. From amidst the clutter of his room, he could peer out the windows at the moon below. Haevris never ceased to alight his mind, and it was the source of many a night staring down below for structural inspiration.

Ur'langdev shuffled through the clutter that should have been there, but had been carefully stacked and moved out of the way. He looked across the room from the door to his desk, also uncluttered and papers neatly stacked based on subject. He stepped forward and looked down at a small stack of papers bound together, titled A Better Station: Lessons Learned from The Fall. Memories of that day flooded back to him, the many friends lost and the scars still visible on the moon below. He looked further down the title page and saw the name. He smiled.

He heard rustling behind him, and it was then that his mind finally took over from his feet. He finally let the sight of clothes, neatly folded on his chair, register. He then realized the faint smell of metal. Not the polished, carbon-polymer-infused metal that made up most of Thrasekion construction. No, it was the faint smell of polished copper.

"I finished my paper, professor," the sounds of pouring sand said. Shivers ran down his spine again, but not for the reasons previous.

"I hope you spent time thinking deeply about the topic," he replied, not looking at the figure laying in his bed as he unbuttoned his shirt. He tossed it aside, landing in a sea of stacked paper.

"I hope you don't mind the subject, I find it morbidly fascinating." He kicked off his boots and left them leaning precariously against a leaning tower of pressed wood pulp. He looked to Haevris thoughtfully.

"Death is naturally fascinating," he replied. He tossed aside his pants and ignored the rustling of more papers. "To shy from death stemming from failure is to ignore the lessons taught by the Fates."

He slid into his bed and embraced Faris, slowly letting his senses become completely aware of the woman in his arms. She broke from the kiss and whispered to him. It was as if a person was spreading sand across a still pond.

"And what was the lesson?"

He ran a finger across her left horns, feeling each and every groove of them. A thought about a new type of TPL stabilizer popped into his mind, and he filed it away for later. She lay atop him, letting him to pull away the piece of fabric tying her hair back. Locks of metallic-pink hair fell forward, enveloping his head and leaving his face in shadow save for the strands of light that pierced the veil. He kissed her gently and replied.

"Multitudes. But the most important one...to enjoy the present." She matched his smile and they embraced again.

Lying in bed hours later next to the metallic woman, Ur'langdev thought back to Everith's insinuation about authority. But, running a hand along the form of the creature whose skin shimmered in the pale light, he knew he didn't give a damn. He thought back to how happy Jut'alei had been with Raev. He thought about the sheer energy and optimism Koren exuded. Life was too short to waste it on ifs and maybes. Faris' lifespan might be a fraction of his, but for now, in their tiny room in orbit above a tiny moon part of a tiny system in the endlessness of space, time stopped.

And he was happy.
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