"Let’s start this with the basics. I will be making a distribution of tubers to the Arks today so that you don’t have to drink nutrient paste.
But we have greenhouses operating now, and with a bit of luck, we will have a wide variety of food available in the near future.
There are six large greenhouses in the city, as well as a smaller one on top of every apartment building, so that they are partially self-sustaining, and the plants can help with air quality."
"You went that far with the new buildings? We thought that they were just standard Hab blocks. You know, like college dorms, with a half dozen dorms around a central commons and shower area."
Kalli laughed. "None of them are quite that extreme, though perhaps I should have done some that way. There are a lot of bachelor apartments that are basically a hotel room with a kitchenette, though. Twenty Square metres, give or take. Just enough room for essential furniture for one person.
With so many single survivors in the group, I thought that it would be better than asking them to try to pair up to not waste rooms.
I suppose that the relevant question would be if any of you have objections to having people move off the Arks?
The Captains shrugged. "I see where you could be concerned, as the Arks are our personal power base, and Captains are not heroes, we’re so overcrowded that it will be a relief.
Not everyone is likely to want to move out, and I’m sure that won’t be a problem. There are a lot of buildings in the city now, but if I did the math, it’s still only enough for a fifth of the total residents on the Fleet’s Arks.
Sure, it’ll take everyone on the small Arks no problem, but the others are going to want to divest themselves of some people as well, and you only built the towers to a limited size.
Was there an architectural reason for that?"
Kalli shook her head. "No, it was mostly done for balance between commercial and industrial space that the residents will occupy. I have some hope that after the trials are over we will be able to expand the city out to at least cover the core area gain, extending down toward the ocean.
But for now, the uniform heights were chosen so that particularly tall buildings didn’t block the line of fire for the {Air Defence Battery} emplacements."
"Ah, so that’s how it was. The design had to account for the defensive weapons that were already in place, so that they monster swarms weren’t able to find an opening to cause havoc within the city.
Now I see why they weren’t built a hundred stories tall so that every survivor could be rehomed."
Kalli shrugged. "We can always alter the buildings later, and create taller towers. But I suspect that increasing the density even more would only give people nightmares. The other option for higher density was larger buildings, which would give a whole set of interior apartments that have no exterior windows.
While it’s great for space-saving, I am sure that you all, living on an Ark, understand that it’s not a great option."
The Captains nodded. "Indeed. It’s actually one of the worst parts. Even with artificial viewports, the brain still knows that what you’re looking at isn’t real."
"Well, if we can do well enough on this trial, I will expand the city by another wall, and put up a fresh ring of laser defence turrets.
That will let us increase the amount of city that we have available, which will impress the System. But for the third trial, I intend to send out teams to search the area, and perhaps leave markers, to see if it will credit us for holding more territory.
My guess is that everything within ten kilometres is likely to be declared ours.
But that’s not going to be enough to get a perfect score from the System. As the initial messages said, hold fifty kilometres from the core of your city, or eliminate eighty percent of the wave.
We did the second, but we do not have the range to do the first.
At least, not yet.
I’ve purchased some hovercraft and flying combat suits, which will help us hold air superiority. But patrolling an area might not be enough to call it ours, and we both know that the sea isn’t really ours, even if we fly over it."
The Captains couldn’t deny that. "There are things in the deep that we are no match for. But do you seriously think that we can actually score high enough on this trial to impress the System?
I know that we finished these waves early, but look at the firepower that we had.
It’s got to count the heroes a bit lower when they’re relying on futuristic heavy firepower, right?"
Kalli shrugged, "It’s from the System, and most of it is a reward for doing well on the previous trials, so I don’t see why it would object to us heavily utilizing it in this trial. It even let the monsters vote against Marimgar to increase the difficulty of the trials, so it should definitely allow us to shoot them."
That made the Captains chuckle. "You know, we didn’t get that message, I only heard about it secondhand, even though our people were in the city at that point.
Only the people who had been part of Marimgar at the end of the Second Trial got to vote, but from everything that I can tell, it counts us as part of Marimgar now. So, if it makes us vote again, you should have many more votes on your side."
"That’s a relief. Seeing that we were outvoted by over a million ballots was a bit disheartening, to say the least."
"Sadly, even with every member of the Marimgar Fleet voting, we still wouldn’t have won that vote.
That was a cruel prank that the System played on us.
Fortunately, it seems to have ended well enough. Did you lose many heroes during the battle? I know that none of the ones from our Arks were lost."
Kalli shook her head. "Many suffered a temporary death, and many of those lost a level along with a portion of their physical stats. But no permanent deaths. We had the ones who were reduced to level one retreat from the lines and work on the air defence guns."
That reminded her, she needed to make a proper hospital in the city as well.
One with healing pods as well as resurrection pods.
She had the points.
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