Kalli sent out the message warning the smaller Arks that changes were being made so that they weren’t on the ground when the bunker appeared. There was no telling when the door would be installed, after all.
However, she held off on installing the elevator, so she could save the points for now.
If the larger Arks could lower themselves into the bunker, and then shift into position, she wouldn’t install it at all. A hundred thousand points for a lift was a huge expenditure, and it wasn’t like they were a repair bay that was working with broken vessels.
However, when the small Arks lifted off, she realized it would not be optional. The thrusters caused a massive disturbance in the city, and having the larger Arks try to lower themselves into the ground with thruster power would be incredibly destructive.
It was always a shame when a big ticket purchase was not optional, but Elevators were already a somewhat pricey addition if you weren’t doing a whole building at a time, and this one was enormous.
However, it did form exactly as Kalli wanted it to, with the folding doors above it to seal the area once the Arks were inside.
The doors were two metres of alloy, large enough to put a sports stadium, or multiple apartment blocks on. But as they needed to open, the best that Kalli could think of was to make them a city park of some sort.
A skate park?
The surface didn’t have to be flat, there could be benches, ramps and such on top without causing any issues when the doors opened. As long as they were solidly attached anyhow. So, a bicycle and skateboard park, with a bunch of benches on the other side, so people could sit and rest or have a picnic.
[ I know that as the city ages, this is definitely going to become the default hangout for every homeless addict and kid who doesn’t want to go home. It’s just too perfect as a free hangout spot, and too open to be preferred by anyone else when the towers all have green spaces in them. ] Kalli thought as she put the finishing touches on the doors.
But for now, it would be somewhere that the kids could go to burn off energy without causing trouble for anyone.
While the smaller Arks hovered, the bedrock under the city was reformed, creating a massive cavern reinforced with thick plascrete and alloy walls, including gravity plating on the floor, so that the Arks could be moved about with minimal use of the thrusters.
That was unexpected, but Kalli welcomed the upgrade.
"Alright, let’s get the Arks in motion. The smaller ones are more likely to be used for scouting missions, or to hold territory further from the base, so we will load them last, near the ramp.
That means the big guys are up first, and there’s no need to wait."
"The bunker is ready so quickly?" The Fleet Admiral asked.
"Yep, the system doesn’t waste time. I burned a massive number of points on this, and it remade a whole warehousing and repair facility for the Arks. Well, most of a repair facility. I’ve added the upgrade for a repair unit, but I’m not sure what it has."
Technically, she hadn’t yet, but ten thousand more points added a mobile repair rig to the hangar. If the issue didn’t exist when someone came to check, it never existed, right?
A small price to pay for the extra surety.
If they could find someone who had the skills to repair the Arks, they could fix some of the damage that had been done to them by the ocean monsters, even though it was mostly cosmetic damage.
That ability to repair the damage to the Arks was small in practice, huge in theory.
It meant that they could repair many more types of advanced vehicles, and even if Kalli purchased them from the shop, they would not be a disposable item, but something that could be patched, maintained, and become a permanent part of the fleet.
That was her largest concern with the Assault Speeders.
If they didn’t have someone to repair them when they inevitably got damaged, they might as well be disposable, kept for spare parts when the next one was damaged, or sitting in storage until someone who could fix them came along.
The assault speeders would be laughably small in the hangar, and Kalli hadn’t thought of adding a smaller door for smaller vehicles, but she could always add another repair facility at surface level, now that she knew what was available.
The issue was, to upgrade a store, someone needed to claim it, or she needed to know its purpose.
And she wasn’t certain what exact sort of shop would repair assault speeders, since they didn’t really fit any of the other categories, except maybe off-road vehicles, like the motorcycles.
But sending them to a motorcycle shop felt odd. Unless the shop also did hoverbikes.
If that was the case, she could see the connection, but the technology jump between a common motorcycle and a flying all terrain vehicle was simply too large to picture them in the same workshop.
That could be a problem for later.
For now, they were not in danger of losing any of the vehicles for at least an afternoon, and the Arks were already beginning to move, lifting from the open fields between the city and the ocean to shift their massive hulls into the new bunker.
The whole city watched with rapt attention as the Arks flew one by one into the newly formed hole in the ground, finishing with the three smaller Arks that had been hovering overhead.
Then, one person flew back out in an armoured flight suit, and the massive doors of the landing pad closed behind her.
{Thank you all for your cooperation.
The Arks are now settled into storage, and we will begin arranging surface housing for level 0 and higher residents. More housing will become available soon, but the current capacity is enough to hold the entire level 0 and higher population from the Arks, while the rest of their residents will remain on board pending additional housing construction.}
Her message went out to every device in town, and the heroes quickly grasped what Kalli had done.
The only thing that they didn’t know was that the bunker’s automated securement functions had already attached the shore power lines to the Arks, and they were feeding the city’s grid, as well as balancing loads between themselves.
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