Dead Star Dockyards

Diana woke up sweating. She hadn't had a nightmare, nor had she been subjected to one of her saucier dreams in Donovan's absence. No, she was sweating because she realized this whole naming business was far harder than she initially thought it would be. A week in to her journey to name the months and there were what felt like a thousand different possibilities for each of them, all of which had just as many benefits as drawbacks. She was honestly starting to understand why a great many cultures went with the simple number plus month format.

She had done quite a bit to narrow down her naming convention, desiring an adherence to a Greco-Latin base with the possible exception of Hebrew here and there, but she was still at a loss for what month six should have as its theme. Month one was 'a vibrant beginning', two was 'the Moon', three was 'hope for the future', four was 'work towards the future', five was 'the Sun', seven was 'the future manifest', eight was 'the Earth', and nine was 'a restful end'.

In her mind, this was a beautiful if simple representation of the circle of life superimposed on the calendar. It started with birth and a bright future marked by a life of hard work which ultimately ended peacefully, leaving behind a world more prosperous than the cycle before it. She had put in too much effort to abandon this now, however she just couldn't figure out what concept to put in slot six. It was difficult to carry on without something there though, as a revision to the format might leave her efforts wasted.

That said, she did have a name for two of the months - or at least the beginning of a name. She nailed down the base word of 'Genesis' for the first month fairly early on - she simply couldn't find a better sounding synonym for 'beginning' - which helped her establish the Greco-Latin base for the calendar names. It also justified her decision to include some elements of Hebrew given the obvious connection to the Old Testament, which led her to the final month name of 'Noach'.

This was more than just the Hebrew word for peace or rest, it was the original form of 'Noah', which was the anglicized version of the name. As much as she wished to avoid a personal connection to these words to preserve a grander and deeper meaning, as well as not come off as having an inflated ego like the Caesars, 'Noah' was important on an existential level to her. It was the name of the ship on which they survived, the cache of knowledge their forebears provided them, the vessel by which the prosperity of the past was brought with them to a new beginning - a 'Genesis' if you will - and thereby completing the cycle she mapped out.

"Why don't you ask Donovan for help?" A groggy Titanyana poked her head out from beneath the covers. In Donovan's absence she had taken to sleeping with Diana. Shockingly, this was Petunia's suggestion, her justification being to familiarize herself with his lingering scent so as not to make a mess of herself in the future as well as keep herself from becoming depressed by a lack of contact. Supposedly she had employed a similar method during the period of time her love was unrequited to keep her emotions and desires in check, though this had taken the form of the occasional missing undershirt. It always found itself back in rotation eventually so as not to arouse suspicion, though Diana surmised this to be more a function of the odor fading from the fabric than any deliberate scheme on her part. "All this fidgeting and finicking is starting to stress me out."

"I just don't think he'd put the proper amount of thought into his response." Diana lowered a hand onto the head of her companion after propping herself up against the backrest, delivering a healthy stream of scritches as she faced the window illuminated by twilight. It hadn't even been a month since this fenced off facility of theirs once isolated amidst wavy sea of tall grasses had been surrounded by farmland and shanty towns in equal parts, yet in the dim light of the morning she could make out immense progress. Grain crops - still lime green stalks a few weeks away from harvest - now occupied a similar disposition to the grass they displaced, and where once 'facilities' had been little more than an accursed collection of flimsy tents there now stood proper wooden buildings.

Everything was still incredibly haphazard and devoid of the slightest bit of 'modernity' Diana so desperately wished to see implemented, but progress was progress, and there was no way this project was going to be completed quickly. This situation of theirs would take a lifetime to rectify, quite possibly longer, so there was no need for her to rush things at the moment. She couldn't stagnate or put things off without reason, nothing would ever improve if she did that, but she could afford to take things slow and deliberately. Avoiding potential pitfalls and crafting the best possible outcome was desirable even if that meant sluggish progress.

"It's not like you need to implement his advice, right?" Diana could only make out an outline, but the lazy rumbling originating from the covers suggested Titanyana might be a bit late to get out of bed. Not surprising given this was the 'weekend' for them, one Donovan had 'strongly suggested' upon them, so she had been up until midnight cramming as much as possible while Arc wasn't limiting her access. Was it healthy? Not particularly, however two days removed from the virtual classroom was more than enough time to recover. Even if she worked all day, her queenly duties would come to an end as soon as Ambrosia touched the horizon. "I'm sure he doesn't want to be left out of this decision."

Diana frowned. While it was true he possessed veto power on this matter, it wasn't exactly like him to put much effort into something like this. He was utilitarian to an absurd degree when it came to subjects related to organization and communication, preferring simple alphanumeric codes, shorthand designations, and literal translations over the flowery language with philosophical implications she was shooting for. That said, it wasn't like he was entirely devoid of artistry. Donovan could be jarringly poetic whenever he felt the situation demanded it, though her memory of this sort of behavior extended exclusively to interactions with her.

"Well . . . I guess it couldn't hurt."

- - - - -

"We might have to put Trawler production on the backburner for a month or two." He didn't see any way around it. Even if this upcoming winter was milder than normal, thousands were likely to die from exposure without adequate supporting infrastructure. That meant heat and housing, both of which were slated to consume wood in quantities their gathering operations could not support. "I can't justify bringing in another hundred thousand people just to have them freeze to death."

"Should I continue RSG production?"

"Without question. No point in exacerbating the bottleneck." Donovan had plans to utilize those generators as emergency power sources for residential heating if the situation demanded it, but they were reserved for the Trawlers until such a scenario manifested itself.

"Shall I switch focus to shelter manufacturing?"

"No." Donovan pulled up a photo of the map supplied by Seppard's prospecting expedition and overlaid in on an aerial image of the relevant geography. In all honesty the quality was terrible, horribly inaccurate in a great many ways, however the contents were promising. "Our priority should be scaling production to match increasing demand."

"Even if that is theoretically the best course of action, I don't think we will have enough time to establish production and construct enough housing before winter sets in."

"Then we can supplement the lack of production after the relevant industrial equipment has been prepared." Donovan put a mark down on the map for a magnetometric survey, a relatively hilly region about fifty miles from the settlement helpfully labeled 'Red Iron' - a direct translation of the Holifanian word that likely described the appearance of the mineral 'hematite'. "We can sacrifice an RSG to support an industrial cluster somewhere in the vicinity of this deposit while we work out an alternative power solution. If we play our cards right, we should be able to power the hematite mine, foundry, and cement plant with minimal additional infrastructure."

"I think it would be more efficient to locate our foundry closer to the settlement."

"We can make a new settlement on the other bank of the river here." Donovan placed a few more pins in the surrounding region. The locale wasn't nearly as much of a breadbasket as the present home base, however the aerial survey suggested a sizable flatland region on either side of the river. Sacrificing one side for the sake of industry would probably hurt their food production in the mid-term, however current projections suggested they would not be having a problem in that area. Arc was projecting two to four harvests a year from the current slate crops being tested. Considering these crops were harvested annually elsewhere, this was an obscene increase in efficiency. "We can't keep expanding up the river forever. Better to get a grip on expansion now than fumble with the process later."

"Shall we search for a reserve of coal or-"

"We'll do it the hard way. Hydrogen and oxygen can be secured through electrolysis and carbon by burning wood . . . though it might be better to simply collect the wood ash from fire pits and separate everything out for use in other industries." Donovan could only imagine the amount of wood burned to be insufficient for their needs, however a temporary solution was still a solution. "Do you think it would be worthwhile to invest in such a system?"

"I suspect it would be necessary without a source of limestone or coal. The calcium carbonate present would be a viable base for clinker in the cement plant and the potash extracts would be invaluable for fertilizers if deemed necessary. Minor levels of contamination from impurities present in the grain would be unavoidable, however it shouldn't affect the final products too much if processed correctly."

"Something to keep an eye on, I guess." Donovan racked his brain for anything else they might need along the process.

Cement clinker production would primarily require calcium silicates, supported by a few other chemical compounds in small enough quantities to justify importing them. One method of securing a steady supply of calcium silicates would be through blast furnace slag . . . however they had decided to go with electric arc furnaces and gaseous direct reduction for their steel production owing to a lack of coal nearby. This meant securing their calcium through wood ash and their silica by some other means. Considering the prevalence of silica in the crust this wasn't likely to be an insanely difficult process, in fact the byproducts from hematite processing might provide what they need.

Steel would require two things considering their selected production method - iron feed and an obscene amount of power. The power would be provided by an RSG of course, however there was going to be a lot of competition for that power supply. Without a source of coking coal to use for applications of industrial heating, induction would have to suffice. Though more energy efficient than burning coal on a purely technical level, most underestimates the amount of energy the black rocks hold within and how much tends to be lost when converting that energy to electricity - which doesn't even factor in the logistics of an induction vessel capable of handling the temperatures needed to calcinate clinker. As a matter of fact, there wasn't a material capable of reaching the temperature needed before reaching its Curie point and losing magnetism, so they would have to have a secondary method to supplement the required heat, probably a compression flume, oxyhydrogen burner, or a Cutter laser set to a wide area of effect - all of which had benefits and drawbacks.

The second component of steel, iron feed, was to be prepared by 'direct reduction' in the absence of coal for pig iron, a process by which a raw source of iron was subjected to hydrogen and carbon monoxide gasses to strip it of oxygen and prepare it for smelting. The production of either of these gasses would be incredibly energy intensive per unit, not to mention the pre-processing of grinding and separation the hematite would have to go through before reaching that point. The material would then be exposed to approximately one and a half gigajoules of electricity per ton to get it into a liquid form before casting. Shaping or forging would come later.

He'd also lies some form of secondary metal refinement to serve as an alloying agent in the production of steel, preferably chromium, nickel, or manganese. Manganese in particular would be a necessity when the time came for proper high strength railways, but he could live with a network of weaker utility rails until this colony of his left the danger zone. The rail plan would inevitably shift once a few major population and industrial centers were developed anyways, so anything constructed in the immediate was likely to be temporary arrangement. Regardless, this was a future problem, though power considerations would need to be kept in mind.

"When can we get across the mountains?" Donovan zoomed out on the map projection, settling on a limit displaying the western half of the continent. A consultation of simple logistics suggested expansion along the coast to be the easier option by far, less because transportation along ocean routes required less infrastructure and more because of the great big stone teeth to the east. This mountain range was taller than the Himalayas on average and twice as wide - insane considering this range was on the coast and the Himalayas were some hundred miles from it - but still nowhere close to the tallest collection of tectonic extrusions on the planet. As a matter of fact, they were on the smaller side for their locale, sort of like comparing the Olympics to the Rockies.

His impatience to get over this hump stemmed not from a desire to scale the unconquered, but to resolve the source of his frustrations on the coast here. Simply put, there wasn't any coal, and they weren't likely to find any given the geography. Coal forms in previously swampy locales with plenty of vegetation, so while it was possible to find veins in mountainous regions the vast majority of deposits were located in flatlands where water wouldn't drain. You were also unlikely to find much coal near the feet of coastal mountains as those regions are more prone to erosion, washing away any organic detritus that might build up there. The landward side of the mountain range though . . . Donovan could only imagine how much coal was hiding a few hundred feet underground.

"I would not begin to think of it until the evacuation phase is complete. Any serious rail line would require tunnels on a scale we haven't the time or resources for."

"What if we make another settlement and deliver coal by ship?"

"We'd need to sacrifice another generator for that. If current needs can be met without it-"

"Make a note to perform a scenario loss calculation for a coal tender versus another Trawler once we have winter weather data." Coal could be used in more than industrial applications. Having a supply available for commercial purposes and residential heating could save valuable wood for further buildings. "And consider the potential of a small coal powered fleet for cargo and personnel transport between coastal settlements. It might be old school, but we don't have much in the way of options."

"Understood." Two beeps and a long hum announced the dropping of the Pegasus from Split-space, Donovan immediately checking on the status of the Trawlers with the restored connection to the network. No anomalous events were detected by any of the deployed satellites, nothing on the incident logs for the vessels either. The crews were doing their work diligently and without problem besides the occasional and understandable nod-off during their shift. If anything, they were ahead of schedule. "It would appear Diana wishes to call. Shall we connect?"

"Of course. I'd appreciate the change of pace."