NationStates Jolt Archive

It was a cold night on Triton. Of course, on one of the coldest bodies in the solar system, it was always cold, but tonight it felt somehow colder.
This may have been due to the sentients that dropped from interplanetary space, and actually came into contact with the cold, intensifying it through their disgust. Of course, that entire field of thought could be a load of rubbish served up by corrupt professors to cover lunch costs.

"What I don't see is why we don't have werms on the ground already making the tunnels for us," said a small, ugly Orc on the deck of the mining craft Sweet Mazola as it lowered itself to an icy volcano on the surface of the retrogade satellite. "They're made for that, and they could make the entire tunnel system in the time that we're warming up the equipment."

A larger Orc sighed. "The problem is that we would have no way to warm the werms up. They'd freeze out here. Plus they're banned in this 'vers. Imperial decree." His name was Nickret Mellowsword, and he, like six out of seven workers on the contractor vessel, was of the Eclipse clan of Orcs. As this was not a direct Imperial action and thus was not organized by clan leaders, segregation was not in place and they had to bear the presence of the pessimistic, lazy Illspirit Orc.

"I still say we don't have to be here," said the Illspirit, whose full, real name was not known to the other miners and who referred to himself as "Gog."

"And I still say you don't have to be payed, snaga," said another miner.

"Wret! Name-calling is beneath our dignity! The next time I hear you childishly insulting a companion you will be discharged with no honor!" scolded the commander, a huge Orc with the surname of Brawnshield.

Mellowsword turned away from the argument-in-feti and stared out of a window. It sure was cold out there, with only the dimly lit landscape and starry void giving color to the landscape. He could see the other two ships... one was the Wahooni and the other... he couldn't remember its name and it was turned away from him, so he shoved that to the back of his mind to mingle with his other unimportant thoughts.

Yes, very cold, but quite pretty, especially with the energy jets of the other ships splattering a blue-gold glimmer over the plains of nitrogen. Mellowsword felt a rumble as his own ship's jets kicked in, followed by a more overbearing rumble as Commander Brawnshield ordered all hands on shore.

He sighed again, donned a heavily insulated spacesuit, and complied.

Tag.

Hey, that's a nice first post there rose.

tag indeed, an interesting thread, I have the feeling I'll enjoy reading this very much.

"Last time we checked the diameter of Triton was around sixteen hundred and eighty-something miles, which makes it about eight hundred forty to the core, which they're gonna put a base at. That's a long way down, but fortunately for us we don't have to dig that far. We just have to build advanced platforms for the heavy stuff to land on. Why they didn't ship the minerals with us I don't think I'll ever know, but we're gonna have to find them ourselves. The scientists placed the deposits at exactly thirty-nine point five oh three miles from where I'm standing but they didn't give us a direction..."

Nickret half-listened to the team-leader's lecture while he looked around. Not really much to see, but a lot of that. As one of the most beautiful things he had ever seen loomed into view he fought himself trying to resist interrupting the leader, but he was doomed from the start and did not last long. "Look at that!" he shouted, the yell shrieking through the team's radios.

The Orc's gloved finger pointed towards the planet Neptune, framed by the icy Tritonic ripples in a way impossible to capture through mere photography, and even harder to describe through words. The blue, watery gas giant seemed a sapphire in the void, a massive orb hanging in nothingness and dwarfing the distant stars. It was a jewel among diamonds.

I think I might enjoy this job, if only for the view, he thought.

The Roseway expedition could doubtlessly see quite a few interesting things.

A little bit of debris around Triton and Neptune, a few shipwreckages... The Britmattians had succeeded in their battle against the insane parts of the Angstian fleet contingents at Neptune, thought the costs had been rather high.

On board of Scylla, nobody really cared about the new arrivals. The Britmattians were busy taking out the completely insane parts of the station's population, and the ones who were still (relatively) sane couldn't do too much.

The same was true for Poseidon. Floating inside Neptune's atmosphere, it had once been a beautiful place, having been finsihed a few months ago.

Now, it was a nightmare, with semi- sentient combat units being on the hunt.

The only one who really cared was Charybdis' core. Still being sane, and having the fighting inside her body under control, she watched... A few smaller vessels coming somewhat closer to the new arrivals, watching them a little.

Not too impressive. Poor designs.

Well, yes. But as long as it flies...

Heh, yes. Kinda like the Imperium.

Eventually, Charybdis reactivated the network, acting as temporary server for the local system. Annoyingly, a few things had changed, and warped creatures of imagination begun hunting her mind... Yet, she was a bit too strong for them.

Dear god... That will be an interesting future...

In any case, after a few more moments, she establsihed the connections, now waiting for other survivors to log in... Also intending to protect them from the newly found threats.

In any case, nobody really had a reason (Or the time) to care too much about the local change... well, they would learn, later.

Perhaps.

"Steady, mate..."

Beads of sweat trickled across Mellowsword's forehead as he shoved the drill deeper into the rock. His shift leader, an easygoing Sandstorm former soldier, placed a reassuring arm on his shoulder as the third Orc in the shift looked on.

One final shove and there... the hole made was exactly the length of a standard blast-rod. "Let's get out," called the shift leader, who pushed a rod in and tapped his wrist. "It's time to sleep."

They were thirty miles underground, drilling and blasting in a seemingly fruitless search for the alleged iron deposit. After a week of hurried digging the crews had slowed, taking their time as they found more and more places the iron wasn't. The shift leader, who wore a brand of denial and a behavior chip, grabbed his wrist with his other hand and put it on a thin metal strip running from the surface. With absolutely no sound in the horribly thin atmosphere of Triton he whooshed out of the range of the suit lights and off into the dark hole that led to the ships. The other Orc, who hadn't yet said a single word to any other miners, followed.

OOC: heeey whoa, I claimed Triton quite some time ago. I'm more than willing to share without fight, but please let us have our space, and don't just go claiming something that's been claimed :)

Ask any of my allies, I have a very powerful base and city of about 500 million at 45 North by 45 west, as well as a large mining facility and orbital shipyards at the same position.

Proof of Civilization on Triton:
http://forums2.jolt.co.uk/showthread.php?t=323841

beeyatch :)

Like I said, more than willing to share, just don't attack us, and respect our space.

Oh yeah, and if Der Angst hasn't mentioned it yet, I'm pretty sure he already has a mining facility here as well... somewhere... as well as TRSN if they're still around... I think I remember allocating some land to LRR a while back too, don't remember...

http://www.bateshome.com/jordan/zdf.jpg (http://www.bateshome.com/jordan/ccdex.htm)

((startOOC: Ah, krap. How about we just ignore each other for a while? I plan to dig to the core of Triton and hollow out a nice little place for my orcs to colonize, and also a place where I can zap in all but my largest awesome starships. I'll claim nothing more than fifty miles from the zero-g center of the moon or outside a mile around the hole diameter. Also I want to develop this guy. I mean, how many ordinary grunts are out there in NationStates? It's all Grand Admirals and SuperPresidents and Imperial Imperatorical Emperors, who are fun to threaten with but not, to me, fun to live with.
If you want to we can treaty this out.:endOOC))

He never could get over the lifts. Being dragged by your wrist through a long dark tunnel had never appealed to Nickret, and he always felt as if he were about to break free and smash into the wall.

A deep thump from the tunnel behind him failed to translate through the near-vacuum, though an indicator on his HUD told him cheerily that there was a big new hole where he had come from.

With a lurch he popped out of the tunnel and into the sky. Without the guiding magnet strip he flew high into the airless void straight in the direction the strip had stopped at. Nickret's stomach did the tango as an inertia-damper beam from the surface locked onto his suit and sucked the kinetic energy from it. The suit landed on the ground with a jarring thud, testament to the cheapness of the mission to Mellowsword as he turned around and jumped into his shift's buggy.

They were too tired to talk on the way back. The autopilot of the octopedic buggy kept them from most of the really bad jars on the unpaved dirt, combination wheels and pulsers driving it towards the base camp.

"Wouldja lookit that," said the Sandstorm. "The diggers are here."

"I guess they've found the iron," said Mellowsword.

Their budget-buggy rolled and thumped to the Sweet Mazola. Three tired Orcs stumbled their way to the airlock, shed their huge vacuum powersuits, and rested, biding their time until the next time anyone wanted them to do something.

((also, I don't like third-person writing. I feel like I'm solemnly outlining the major points of the Roman era...))

There were Four, and they were Big.

The Diggers were robots, lean insectoid shapes powered by fusion reactors located in near their hind end. They had molecular-disruption beams, a container-field, and a teleporter in their massive snouts, and four sets of tracks around their outside surfaces.

The only purpose of the Orcish miners was to create a large pad for them to land on, and while the pad was barely a quarter completed when the Diggers arrived by Charon Squadron brute-force FTL technology, the robots in command had completed the pad, set down the Diggers, and gotten to work in the time it took Nickret's shift to come from the tunnel end to the base camp. The Hole was already starting. Eventually it would be half a mile in diameter, but for now it was only half that size, the Diggers moving in a complicated dance, cutting huge holes, building tunnels and collapsing them, and working very, very fast. In less than a sday they had beaten the Orcs' three sweeks of work.

Nickret watched the Diggers in awe. Ten miles down and accelerating fast, they would soon be off the scope. When they had dug halfway to the native colony on the other side of the moon they would stop, turn sideways, and dig a sphere, while Imperial technicians were configuring the Gate.

It wouldn't be long, no, not very long at all...

OOC: Alright, but if you destablize the planet in any way, we're kicking you off :)

OOC: How can you hollow out the core of Triton large enough to warp in starships without destabilizing it somehow? All that mass has to go somewhere.

((OOC: It's not that much mass. Just a hole the volume, say, of Manhattan, and a tunnel to the surface from that.))

It had been almost a month, uncomfortably spent in the spaceships. Now the tunnel was finished, and while the Diggers were still hollowing out the central sphere, there was detail work to be done.

First there was the inner sphere. It would contain the Gate, on the far end from the tunnel. The Gate would be opened directly into the atmosphere of the planet Roseway, so the sphere itself would have atmosphere. The inside of the sphere would be plated with gravity generators giving nearly .75g to the jungle that would be planted there for atmosphere control. On the outside of the sphere there would be the levels where the affairs of the colony, such as food, administration and living, would be conducted.

Opposite the Gate was the tunnel. For the length of the levels it had the same atmosphere as the sphere, until it came to the atmosphere shield. The atmoshield would keep the right mix of gases in and let everything else out. Beyond the atmoshield was bare rock, which would be populated with sunken mining colonies for the benefit of the colony and with loveworms to create original bas-relief murals. The tunnel at least would not be ugly.

One quarter of the way from the sphere to the surface was the first gate. This gate was meant to be open most of the time, and for this purpose it was kept mostly in the rock. When it was given the signal it would slide a huge metal barrier over the tunnel. Halfway to the surface was the middle gate, which shared the specifications of the first gate. Three-quarters of the way to the surface was the weakest of the four gates, which folded out of the walls to link over the tunnel. And on the Tritonic surface was the main gate, which could iris open and shut again in less than five minutes. Around it would be the other colony, which for security purposes would not have a direct link to the sphere aside from the tunnel itself.

The surface colony would contain the bulk of the commercial shipyards in the Solar system, while the sphere colony would handle the warships. The jungle would be mostly a park, with some of the more psychic Imperial races using the biomass to attune their powers.
And Nickret Mellowsord would eventually be given an apartment on the sixth level, for his services in building the colony.

Eventually. For then, there was work to be done.

((OOC: anyone care if I skip the laborious gradual-building RP and just make a couple cities on Neptune? Say a year's gone by? It's been three decades year-a-day since I started anyway.))

((OOC: anyone care if I skip the laborious gradual-building RP and just make a couple cities on Neptune? Say a year's gone by? It's been three decades year-a-day since I started anyway.))

OOC: As far as I know, the nations that are already in and around Neptune tend to use a one NS month = one RL day ratio. Just popping up a couple of cities without showing how you built them and why is usually considered bad form.

I would mention the time by which the first complexes are built... Basic operational level. Visible to the locals, that is, and from there, simply assume that it continues, without extra posts. As long as it is gradual development, rather than a sudden change, I don't see a problem with one more post and done. Keeping in mind that most others use perhaps 1/10 the efford done here... No, no problem at all. And since I'm incapable of acting, anyway...

It was now nearly one hundredth done, which was good enough for them... The city on the surface, nameless and commonly known as either "the top" or "Fort Frost," was spreading like wildfire over the small area claimed for it, and there already was talk of expanding it further. Orcs, while they are given many, many worlds to live on, always can use extra space, and it wasn't just Orcs on the colony - almost all of the major races of the Empire were there.
The levels were not complete, not nearly, but they would be, eventually. For now our hero has a good job with good wages and hours and a permanent apartment in a nice part of town.
The Empire now has a stable colony operating in the Sol system, within telescopic distance of Jupiter, Saturn, Mars, Venus, and the Earth itself, glittering with promise and grandeur.

Thread ended. OOC discussion allowed.

That's cool, I finished something!