Oh my gosh! I go away for a weekend and now we seem to be heartbeats away from waste materiel striking the rotary air mover!
This bodes does not bode well... for anyone.
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Is Septima trying to divide the coalition against her with these Kyaese hostages? "It was a mercy kill" is cold comfort if your family just got destroyed...
Unity as a Gaea world could be interesting. Would we see any of its transformation or be informed about the mechanics of the transition?
Unity as a Gaea world could be interesting. Would we see any of its transformation or be informed about the mechanics of the transition?
T-112 Hours
"T-112 Hours"
12th Daas, 10 (2189)
Rivkah Of Unity
12th Daas, 10 (2189)
Rivkah Of Unity
Tryykad looks at Appia. "I hate the consequences of the logic, but I can't see you being wrong... But what do you mean by stopping the freighters?"
Mum answers. "The freighters will take brachistochrone transfers, like we are doing now. Only instead of slowing down, they will hit Brigantia at the same kind of speed as we are travelling now. If they all hit..."
Appia trembles. "Billions will die."
The Holocron looks at her. "They won't all hit. Septima needs to position herself as the saviour afterwards. The freighters not used as kinetic weapons will arrive a week later, as the first food delivery."
Tryykad crumples. "This..." He slams into the table. "This isn't right... We are supposed to free my people, not kill them to save Olinbari..."
Appia puts an arm around him. Her mouth opens, but she doesn't have the words.
The Holocron does. "Tryykad, if nothing else, there's billions of freed Indentured Assets on Brigantia too. It's not just Olinbari who'll die."
Tryykad... Doesn't get up. "I... I... Damn her. Whatever we do, we lose."
I look at Ruki. "Is there any possibility of us getting the wrong end of the stick?"
Dad speaks. "Septima has a simple advantage. She doesn't care about others. We do care... To her, it is a transaction. I can't see a way through this that doesn't mean many billions of dead Kyaese."
Tryykad looks at him, shaking. "Billions?"
Dad... Waits for a long time before speaking. "She has a Ringworld full of Kyaese as bargaining chips."
Mum nods. "We need to consider that Septima is effectively gambling her existing economic base on being able to outmanoeuvre us and take over the far more profitable rest of MSI. If she's coming into this as having already written off the Kyaese as lost..."
Tryykad mumbles and murmurs, and although Appia tries to stop him falling out the chair, she's only a hologram. I wince as he thuds. I go and pick him up. "Tryykad."
His small black eyes look up at me. "Rivkah?"
"I wish I had a way to save your people. But she is relying on you, on all our Kyaese, to fold. To give up and resign. She's counting on making you give up and us all back down rather than fighting her and having to sacrifice them. She's counting on our mercy and our compassion, exploiting them like a parasite."
He sighs. "We're all on the board, as you say."
I look right into his eyes. "The only way to take the Kyaese off the board is by putting her down."
His head rolls. "I can't do this... I can't sentence billions of Kyaese to death."
"Then you accept trillions will live as slaves."
He is quiet for a long time. "Damn her."
I smile. "We'll do our best."
Leonardo leans over the table. "I cannot in good conscience order my fleet to fire on civilians, but I can't see any alternative to doing so. We're dealing with a terrorist with a trillion hostages, and there's no easy solution. For all we know, there are Kyaese hostages everywhere."
I put Tryykad back down. "We need something that affects Olinbari and not Kyaese. That way we can fight on Septima's terms."
Appia looks at the Holocron. "Mosquitoes."
He contemplates it. "No point. Unless it affects Septima personally, it's not going to change the amount of Kyaese she'll make us sacrifice or the lesser Olinbari she's already costed into her plans."
Appia reflects. "That's true... She cares for no one except herself."
I look at uncle Thando. "Maybe that's the key. Could we assassinate her?"
He thinks about it. "In theory, but setting up an assassination is going to take longer than a conventional battle. We'd still have to stop the freighters."
I sit back down. "So, the only way out, is through."
Tryykad whimpers.
That's... not a good trade, no matter what choice Appia, Life 2.0, and co make.
Also, she's planning on ramming Brigantia? That's... extreme.
Also, I hate to say it, but, if she's planning on ramming somewhere... why isn't it Unity? Life 2.0 is one of her biggest enemies right now. Does she not realize that?
Also, she's planning on ramming Brigantia? That's... extreme.
Also, I hate to say it, but, if she's planning on ramming somewhere... why isn't it Unity? Life 2.0 is one of her biggest enemies right now. Does she not realize that?
Heartbeats is a little far - it's still five days until they get through the wormhole, plus the transit through to Brigantia on top of that - but after this, Life2.0 and MSI's conflict is over.
~10^20J is a lot of energy to hit a planet with.
Absolutely. It costs her a small amount, but nowhere near as much as it costs Life2.0 or Appia.
The very early stages have already begun deep beneath the surface. How much will get done before the narrative reaches the end... Probably just further into construction of the planetary computer in the crust. That itself is an immense project.
Which is exactly why Septima chooses the battle to make them face that trade.
Yes. It is. But, it's the quickest means available to secure a sufficient threat to have Appia removed and Septima enthroned, or to make an example of Brigantia to keep the rest of the worlds in her new Empire in line.
She does realise that. But, when Gnaea organised the alignment of the wormholes they were aligned to be at the shortest distance between Brigantia (and it's Orbital Ring where the fleet was departing from) and the edge of it's system, and Unity and the edge of it's system, when his fleet arrived on the Unity side of the wormhole.
While the alignment isn't as direct as it was when it was set up because of the time that's passed, Septima still has to effectively go through Brigantia to get to Unity, or, take a vastly longer detour through the Hyperlanes. (the latter takes it from a quick war that decisively establishes her dominance in just over a month into a year long transit, during which time Life2.0 has a much longer preparation time and it costs her more to do in fuel and feed)
- 1
Interstellar Freight - A Conceptualisation
Time for a slight admission; I've been playing a bit fast and loose with the economic dynamics involved.
Let's put some numbers on interstellar trade within a Stellaris framework.
Assumption 1 - the 40ft shipping container, or a broadly similar block, will remain the standard unit of cargo shipping.
Assumption 2 - as the scale of trade extends between single planet to multiplanet, and multi-planet to multi-system, and multi-system to intra-stellar region, and intra-stellar region to intra-galactic, and intra-galactic to inter-galactic, additional magnitudes of freighter will be designed and built.
Assumption 3 - Freight will be allowed to use torchship propulsion systems, and indeed, interplanetary freight will be the driver of torchship propulsion development.
Examining Assumption 1:
There are quite reasonable factors that led containers to be standardised at what they are. The most important is ease of transport of goods, especially for international transport of goods. Containers are straight forward to load and unload; pop them on the back of the truck, park the truck in the loading area, open the doors, get a big ramp for a forklift or a big conveyor if you are the poor sod handballing it, then put the cargo on or off.
Truck drives off. It might go straight to it's destination and be unloaded, but if it's a container, the chances are it's going international, and also that it's changing the mode of transport - it might be put on a train, or it might be taken off the truck onto the container ship by a crane. (or from a truck to a train to a ship)
Imagine that process if containers weren't standardised, and you very quickly see why they were, and in the proportions that they are. Too tall, and they become unwieldy to load. Too wide and you have to start revising road and rail systems, as well as having unacceptably high frontal area causing losses to aerodynamic drag. Which means they get fairly long instead; but again, not too long as otherwise they become unwieldy on road and rail.
As technology advances, we see expansion into air and space freight. At our present stage we don't have a usage case for modularity between road, rail, sea, air and space, but as we transition from one planet to planet and moons and to interplanetary, we will develop that need. The most likely near-future link will be the space elevator or the orbital skyhook ring, both of which can carry 40ft containers all day long.
Although, just to see if it worked in principle, I have just put together a 10GW fission-nuclear reactor powered SSTO craft in Children of a Dead Earth that throws together a not-optimised atmospheric capable resistojet of 10GW output, some 5GW reactors that... aren't my most mass-minimised reactors, some overkill radiators that are several tonnes too big, a crew cabin, one lonely 40ft container, 160tons of cargo mass to represent running gear for the nuclear-electric turbines and all the normal aircraft bits and heat management systems for atmospheric operation, and a hefty 2kt of Methane for the resistojet.
I can't test that combination in Kerbal Space Program without making my own mod, and with my main laptop dead I can't run KSP anyway, so I don't know how fast nuclear-electric turbines could actually get the rocket while still in atmosphere, but it seems reasonable that 10GW is an extreme amount of power to run turbines and that might just make it a sub-orbital trajectory, in which case the resistojet only has to circularise, which means an awful lot of Methane can be swapped for 40ft containers.
Or, that much smaller shuttles can be built.
Getting back to the point, once we are dealing with $ to $$$ per kg (as opposed to $$$$ to $$$$$ per kg that we pay now) more and more goods become economically viable to export to space, and on advanced stellaris technologies, it becomes reasonable to consider adding air and space transit to our road, rail and sea container operations.
These containers being built to aerospace specs will be more expensive than traditional containers naturally, especially at first, however a reasonable goal is to have total modularity between planetary and space-fairing containers.
This Leads Naturally To 2:
The ability to load up a container on Earth, chuck it in a nuclear-powered SSTO, load it onto a Gateway-bound mega-container ship, and send the produce anywhere in the galaxy opens up an incredible economic opportunity. This is where we re-introduce Septima Severus.
Septima has her ringworld with an arbitarily high population of Kyaese that has been put at a trillion in the narrative. Now, the numbers on the previous page were completely made up to sound suitably big - most especially the 196 trillion tons of freight - and I will be going back and tweaking them once this bit of maths is done unless I'm... passably close. We'll see.
The Kyaese are modelled on battery farmed chickens, and Septima initially begins trading with the luxury angle of eating a sapient life form's eggs; begin with a trillion pullets laying one egg a month, on standard battery farm average yields that gives roughly 650 billion eggs a month. That is again roughly 21 billion eggs a day.
Someone else has already worked out the number of eggs in a 40ft container. Combining the numbers means Septima gets somewhere between 30k and 210k 40ft containers a day to begin with.
So... I picked 35k truck-sized freighters to haul these 30-210k containers to the central distribution starbase. 210k/35k is... Six. So yes, I got my original idea wrong. Is there any way to save face?
Well... I can either have the trucks meet the train-sized freighters and the train sized freighters go to the distribution starbase, which works as I have a feeling I've over-guessed on the number of those, or wonder if there's a reasonably low cost propulsion system - these are eggs after all - capable of going from Earth orbit to inwards of Mercury in under four hours. Frankly, the moment I ask the question I know the answer is no, as that's a multi-g brachistochrone.
So, the trucks are delivering the eggs to the trains, and the trains are taking them to the starbase. Heck, with maglev vactrains, they might actually be trains... At 1g, this is two and a bit days. The trains can be fairly well loaded of course; commercial freight trains load up well over a hundred containers, with the biggest going to 300 containers. At the 100 containers a train, the 210k containers need 21k trains.
I guessed 28k. I'll take that!
This leaves the twenty type four freighters guess, as we've already stated the type five is not on eggs. The type fours are equivalents to container ships we use, so, this gives between 600 to 20k containers a ship. Gut is telling me I screwed up here. Let's see:
210k containers per day between 20 ships at 20k containers per ship means I've got less than two days worth of production. These ships are the actual distribution ships for major export routes, which means - at a little over 1g - fifteen days to the Gateway then fifteen days to the planet ( I am glad Stellaris does not use anything like real star system sizes, otherwise this bit gets REALLY complicated) then a day to unload, then a month back to base, then a day to load, which means I under-estimated these ships by a factor of 30. So 600 ships, not 20.
30 days to market is a little bit longer than ideal, but we've established these are vaccinated pullets, so that's fine from an edibility perspective. Slightly faster wouldn't go amiss of course.
Are these freighters too big?
20k containers at 100k eggs per container gives 2 billion eggs per ship. Which have to be consumed in a week or two. Not ideal, but that's potentially economically viable - global egg demand on Earth is roughly half an egg per person per day, so two ships would meet all of present day Humanity's egg consumption. But it is still a lot of eggs in one go, and not everyone will want to eat imported eggs from a sapient being.
Say I was out by a factor of 300, and go 200 million eggs per ship, and that means my original 20 container ships estimate actually becomes 6000.
As we can reasonably say there are usage cases for 20k ships, 2k container ships and 200-500 container ships, and we have a few of those hanging around from my earlier slightly high estimate, and I think we can make a case for picking say 4000 type fours and assigning the left over 7000 type threes on export duties.
So, the revised figures put Septima at 10k type ones (largely used for waste disposal, not evaluated as they can't move containers) 35k type twos, 28k type threes, 4k type fours.
Can I salvage the 196 trillion tons figure?
Cheating answer is to point out I didn't have Ruki quote a timeframe. Lets do better:
Standard 40ft refrigerated containers mass just under 4 tonnes. 100k eggs is roughly 6 tonnes. Packaging... I don't know, never weighed the packaging, it's only carefully shaped cardboard... Let's call it 6 tonnes too for the sake of argument. That gives 16 tonnes per container, and we're shipping 210k on a daily basis, which gives 3.3 million tons a day. Over a Stellaris year, that's 1.2 billion tonnes.
Short answer? No. Not from eggs anyway...
We could double it by loading them with food and goods for the return journeys. But there's no reasonable way to save the 196 trillion tonnes figure without a massive fleet expansion - even if the single type five is loaded with megatons, it still wouldn't plug the factor of over a hundred thousand I'm out by. So, I screwed up there.
Edit To Add - Of course, it does need to be remembered these are the daily ship movements, and we can safely say a two month return journey to any Stellaris system with a Gateway. So, actually, I'm talking about 1/60th of the ships of all kinds.
So, what about the type five?
Well, Septima definitely doesn't need something that big for eggs, so no good considering her anymore. Let's look even bigger than her.
There are roughly 43 million shipping containers on Earth. How big a ship would you need to load all of them? Its 172 million tons, just in containers. the cubic root is just over 350, so, round up to 351 containers in all three dimensions gives 4.278km long, 0.884km wide, and 0.920km tall.
The main candidates are reactionless drives or extremely powerful - even by their standards - monopole or antimatter rockets. But there would be a usage case for moving the industrial output of a planet on a single ship for a Stellaris civilisation interested in constructing Megastructures.
In Conclusion, 3:
Obviously, none of this works without torchships - Septima requires a fleet of 1-2g capable freighters to accomplish the internal and export travel times she needs to do, otherwise her business model is simply impossible even before you start costing it - and whether she gets the customers outside of a fairly depraved MSI to buy eggs that have costs driven upwards by the interstellar transit is a big question. It's kind of difficult to cost as once the first solar-powered giga-electron volt particle accelerators come online, production of antimatter and monopoles become straightforward. The long-term trend as such vast accelerators become common enough that Appia can consider them an off the shelf item to construct for Life2.0, dropping the cost low enough to support the export of something as basic as eggs becomes possible.
I hypothesise such structures are why starbases and outposts are as close to the star as they are, in an effort to maximise solar power available.
Of course, Cybrex Beta having a Gateway* helps her a lot.
* Obviously, it doesn't in gameplay. But my expectation is that after the Cybrex abandon it following the defeat of the Contingency, someone else did.
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For A Princess
"For A Princess"
2942, 10, 4, a.d. Kalendas Octobribus (12th Daas, 10)
Scipio Flavonius
2942, 10, 4, a.d. Kalendas Octobribus (12th Daas, 10)
Scipio Flavonius
"Aunt Appia, may I ask a favour?"
She smiles wryly. "Go on?"
"Are we doing the traditional eldest children's dance?"
She laughs. "Are you telling me you want to dance with Rivkah Of Unity?"
"She is a flawless blend of beauty and power, strength and grace-"
"No, stop, you've said enough. I'll ask, but I can't make any promises."
I hug her. "Thank you."
"Are you infatuated with a beast who's a head taller than you without including her horns?"
"I thought you would approve."
"I know her mother and father will eat you alive if anything happens to her." She pauses. "And that's predator and prey type eating, not anything sexual." She ruffles my uniform. "And I don't want you to get eaten."
"Well... I won't get eaten."
"Rivkah is a Xenayan, Scipio. They mate frantically, but only for a few weeks a year. And you'll have to fight her and win to get her to let you mate with her."
I run a hand over the hilt of my sabre. "There's more than mating. And I'm not bad."
"Niether is she. She's been tutored by Titius Marius."
"You beat him though."
"Yes, but he's a better teacher than me. Plus, she's been taught by her mother. And she's good."
I make a mental note never to imagine Appia fencing with a Companionship Asset again. "We would make a good couple to celebrate the merger."
"Yes. Naomi would agree, her father... Will probably listen to Naomi."
"So, will you ask?"
"Yes. I did say so."
I tap the emitters beside my eyes. "I was recording this time."
"Any advice?"
She smiles. "Oh, you'll figure it out. Or she'll eat you." She flicks her hands at me. "Now shoo. I'm not hailing Naomi with you in her."
"In her?"
"In here! I meant in here. Go. Shoo!"
She pushes me out the door. I stand outside, let the memory of Rivkah speaking at the conference capture me again.
Oh, this'll be good...
Why hasn't this Scipio character come up before now? I didn't know Appia had a nephew...
Why hasn't this Scipio character come up before now? I didn't know Appia had a nephew...
In universe, because Scipio is a 16 year old navy cadet; Naomi and friends don't know about him either, and without his aunt's position he is just another young Olinbar tearing through the dueling circuit to establish himself.
Out of universe, because he didn't exist until last week; Rivkah needs a dancing partner, and Scipio - who's acting more like his aunt than he naturally is to get her approval here - is the Olinbari counterpart.
- 1
It is good to see new characters who could be counted in Rivkah's rough "age group/generation." Helps give a better sense of the people she's growing up with.
T-99 Hours
"T-99 Hours"
14th Daas, 10 (2189)
Ruqayya bint Rahil Amah al-Masih
14th Daas, 10 (2189)
Ruqayya bint Rahil Amah al-Masih
I'm still getting used to my friend's new appearance. I think she's worried. "What's on your mind?"
Naomi sighs. "A problem."
I sit beside her. "What kind of problem?"
"Septima Severus. We have reason to believe her attack will take the form of a hundred freighters filled to overflowing with Kyaese civilians used as mass drivers."
"And your conscience is pointing out that destroying the freighters is immoral."
"It is the quickest and safest solution. And if we don't stop them, each one will hit Brigantia with a blast ten times stronger than any weapon Humanity has yet made. Billions would die. But it condemns ten milion Kyaese to death for someone else's crimes."
"What alternatives are there?"
She bites her lip. "Ruthlessly pragmatic is destroying the freighters. But again, ten million dead Kyaese, plus Leonardo has already said he cannot order his ships to conduct that order as it is immoral. We could arrange to intercept at the Gateway and destroy their engines before they accelerate, but me, Buri, Ruki and the Holocron have all been crunching the numbers trying to get the fleet there fast enough - our plan was to defend Brigantia stationary to high orbits, and the Gateway is another three weeks away from Brigantia. We can't evacuate Brigantia, there's not enough food or vessels to house more than twenty billion people. Appia told me redirected freighters entered the system from the Hyperlanes this morning, so the planet gets a food delivery in three weeks. We could try boarding, but even if only 1% of the Kyaese survive, it's a hundred thousand people who we have no way to feed and house for at least a week. Plus we'd have to intercept within ten days, otherwise there's not enough time to even change course before impact. The Holocron has sent Appia plans and genomes for aeroponic farms for lettuce but even with Appia's manufacturing base they won't be ready within weeks. And he's designed a bugcatcher."
"A bugcatcher?"
"Several thousand layers of whipple shield on top of a kilometre thick layer of foam, followed by a hull of steel. But, Appia can't manufacture it, not in the time available..."
"It sounds like the most moral - no, least immoral - option is boarding."
"Yes. But, Septima has much more of a ground security detail composed of millions of fanatically loyal to her Sirzusians; if they are on the freighters, which we don't know as they are just as disposable to Septima as the Kyaese and she knows we'd consider boarding as that's how we beat Gaius and Gnaea, we're potentially facing a hundred CQC actions where she has her own marines. Not very good ones of course, we'd inevitably win, but it's not a quick fight; we could lose days, and we're very marginal on time just getting to a fly-by intercept... Our original plan included collecting the Praetorian equipment Appia no longer needs now she has purged the unit and started manufacturing it in Xenayan and Kyaese sizes for us, but the only chance of boarding in time is to collect at the wormhole when we arrive in the system and then accelerate straight to intercept, which gives equipment that only fits Humans and Olinbari. Which is still good, just not as ideal..."
She sighs.
I take her hand. "It sounds like you are resigned to killing these Kyaese."
"They're dying anyway Ruqayya. We know that Septima has already cut the food supply for these Kyaese off."
"She's trapped you between the ruthless choice to win, and your compassion."
"And revolt from the Kyaese; Tryykad has explained the situation to our Kyaese, and the only thing they are agreed on is Septima must face justice. There were riots when he said the only feasible option was to destroy the freighters; very few people are dead because the Holocron has brought his vats with him and the most severely injured are being treated through reconstruction. But it's a powder keg over there."
"A fair few of our people would let the Olinbari be attacked."
She nods. "Yep. But, people do listen when you point out how many now free Indentured Assets are still on Brigantia, and our Olinbari have helped massively on making peace possible. But its... All a nightmare."
I hug her.
Forcing Life 2.0 into a no-win scenario like this is a high-risk, high reward strategy. It seems like the ideal outcome would be for Unity to be paralyzed by internal division over what course to take... but I get the impression an internal revolt might take a little longer to cripple Life 2.0 than it would for MSI itself. The leadership structure Naomi and Rivkah have surrounded themselves with is resilient and a somewhat decentralized. Triggering a Kyaese uprising is a smart move by the enemy, but I feel like it's come too late to have an effect on this conflict. Maybe the next war, but not this time around.
Well, from Septima's perspective, the ideal outcome is the threat of freighters hitting Brigantia at 2-3% of the speed of light is enough to cause capitulation, as that way she gets MSI intact. The secondary goal is to make Life2.0 do nothing through indecision. The Kyaese revolt is much more complex, as well...
Septima thought she crushed all resistance out of them.
T-98 Hours
"T-98 Hours"
14th Daas, 10 (2189)
Tryykad
14th Daas, 10 (2189)
Tryykad
I walk in front of the instigators of the revolt. If I was Naomi, I'd have Xenaya in the background and no clothes on. Inwardly, I sigh, as the first would be useful. All the Kyaese are watching me. I halt.
"Let us remind ourselves of our history. Ours is a tale defined by two women from other species. The first is the hateful abomination, Septima Severus. Lifetimes ago, she was a little girl when her parents bought The Infinite Wheel. Now she is old, and they are gone. In her youth, she claimed to be an uplifter. As her years advanced, the mask hid her true nature less and less. The endless skies in which we flew were slammed inside hovels so cramped we could not even flap our wings for how close together we were. Genocide. Her monstrous brutality was in one hand, and relentless greed in the other. When so few were left, cowering at what had been witnessed and terrified for the end of our race, she shackled us. She sells our children, recycles our elderly, slaughters the sick. She is the enemy. And so complete was her victory that even free we missed the safety of the cages she put us in on the day we were sold to Hortensus Dexcius. We feared what was to come, feared the end."
I look around. So many people look at me. Many are afraid.
"Thankfully, our story has two non-Kyaese women. That second woman came to us later. Naomi Of Unity risked everything to kill the man who kept her tied to a wall so that he could abuse her. She came to us naked, with, looted weapons, blood on her hands and ideas to reshape the stars. At first my father feared her, terrified of her defiance, horrified at the wrath she risked. But then she gave him the most dangerous thing of all."
I pause for effect. Much like she would. "Hope."
Eyes in the audience start to get flickers. "Naomi put a gun in my hand on the day I met her to listen to what she had to say. That night, I had a dream. I stood on the bridge of an MSI battleship as we approached The Infinite Wheel to liberate it. That vision pushes me on, because until Septima is made to relieve what she did to us and her empire broken, no Kyaese is safe. This riot about the ten million Kyaese on the freighters - don't you see that such a reaction is exactly the kind of thing she wants? She wants us to be afraid. She wants us to think we can't possibly win. She wants us to give up in a desperate bid to save the hostages, to hate Appia for having to defend her people by shooting down those freighters no matter about the hostages. Septima wants that to tear us apart. That's how she wins. I hate having to order our forces to go into battle against freighters carrying tens of thousands of hostages each. Possibly worse if she has really crammed Kyaese into every last possible space. But we will. We are in a war of liberation of our people. To fail to fight is to condemn them to slavery and culling, as she trades their children for the life extension medication she uses to retain her youth. I grieve for the ten million. I grieve for the hundreds of billions she'll hold to ransom once these freighters are dealt with while we break her empire. But I will meet her in battle none the less."
I look around them all. "And we are not alone. Among the other slaves on Hortensus' ship, we have allies who will fight by our sides against any odds, who believe in us. Septima stands alone. Not even her people are with her - Appia has declared her a enemy of the state and a criminal. And she has given me the battleship I want to use to liberate our people."
I pause. That's news to them. Heads rise. I think of Naomi as I do what she'd do; use a one liner. "I am Tryykad, son of Qutrok. And I am no longer afraid."
Brigantia Orbital Ring - An Evaluation
This is kind of a follow-up post to the previous interstellar freight post, made necessary by the fact that I've realised I did the calculations for a day's worth of eggs, when I actually needed to factor for 2 months worth, as that's the average return journey time with Stellaris star system sizes and Gateways.
Now, there are major ramifications to interstellar trade if a single MSI subsidiary can have more than two hundred thousand container ships. For a start, that is a lot of ships. (for context, Earth has 5.6k equivalent container ships)
Is it possible to work out upper bounds for the amount of ships the Orbital Ring can dock and process? And how does this inform our understanding of Olinbari society?
Essentially, we have a loading area in orbit which has transport links to the surface, and all the supporting infrastructure and habitation. There are two megastructural possibilites that we can in principle build today that lead to the Stellaris Orbital Ring:
First is the Space Elevator, repeated an arbitrarily high number of times to yield a continious ring of docks at Brigantia beyond stationary orbit as the counterweight. An important factor to keep in mind is that a space elevator has to have the counterweight's average position at beyond stationary orbit; the anchor itself, while usually taken as on the equator because it is the most feasible placement band, can actually be anywhere subject to longer transit times or higher energy requirements to move payloads, stronger material requirements for the elevator, and/or a lower payload mass flow rate. At the moment, we don't have materials capable of being used for space elevators from Earth, but we do have choices for elevators from asteroids and moons. (ones for the Moon would have to be directed to Earth-Moon L1 and L2 however, which isn't ideal, but, we can work with that) MSI are presumably far past that being a problem. The numbers Edwards worked out put one 20t climber per cable taking five days to reach geostationary orbit at an average speed of 190mph. This is... Well, neither number is enough to meet our requirements.
The second concept is the orbital ring, which is the one I'd pick, as we have the materials technology to build ones for Earth and you could set up a whole network of them at whatever altitudes and orbits you like, which in the long term could create a passenger network allowing you to go from any country to any country in four hours or less (two hours, if on the same ring) for about the same cost as long-haul international flights. Paul Birch did the maths on them in the 80's in three parts and published them in the Journal of the British Interplanetary Society. (Links here: 1 2 3) And the numbers work out to be hundreds of tons of cargo to low orbit a day per ring.
The base for the Stellaris Orbital Ring could be either, as while the second is obviously already a ring, supporting the processing facilities massively eats the payload capacity of the orbital rings, which isn't ideal; by contrast, the space elevator requires a large mass in space at above stationary orbit height to function, and it doesn't care what that mass actually is. (you could even just extend the cable if you wanted to)
Use the space elevator model then. As these climbers are fairly comparable to nuclear powered trucks and CoaDE, which is again canon to the Life2.0 universe and hopefully representative of ours, has 10MW reactors that could be used successfully in such climbers or trucks, I'm happy to say the limit point is how hot you can get the wheels and cable through friction rather than the power you can put in the climber itself. How much time you could shave... Well, if you make them supersonic, that drops the transit to two days.
But even I have my limits, and I'm not going to suggest a supersonic truck with a physically touching friction surface as a good idea as the forces involved are far greater than anything a land vehicle undergoes. 190mph for five days straight is a lot easier than 700mph for even just an hour.
Climber payload is an issue, but going with the nuclear truck analogy, we can probably get a 70% payload fraction. If we assume the requisite improvements in materials to support higher payload elevators to get to containers as a payload on a climber... I'd need to do a lot of mathematics. Easy way is to use the 20ft containers instead of 40ft containers, as those could possibly be put on a climber.
How long does it take to unload one ship?
A 20k container ship as proposed in previous posts in these circumstances means 40k climbers, which means 40k elevators. Which sounds bad at first, but, the critical limit is the facilities at the anchor end... how much space would it take? That is... Probably going to be made larger as a matter of safety concerns than actual space requirements. Assuming Brigantia is Earth-like and therefore isn't far off the Earth's 40,075km equator, then one square km per elevator just about works. Which gives servicing one type four freighter every five days... Not ideal.
Still, we can stack elevators up further and end up with millions of elevators reaching out from equatorial regions like whiskers to service five type four freighters a day. And by making them multi-elevator sites that pool several cables together to carry the same climber, we can have a more stable system that could support slightly higher payloads together than they could individually.
But... Millions of space elevators isn't what I had in mind. And nor is how few ships there are; I've been expecting an busy international airport at least, with thousands of vehicles being processed a day. What about a hybrid model, where instead of suspending the space elevators from stationary orbit, we suspend the orbital ring at a 600km low orbit from anchors above stationary orbit, and have it link to a network of orbital rings between 300km and 600km?
The anchors would themselves offer utility of course, as if we go back to the cable holding itself up approach, then interplanetary transfers can be launched trivially just be going further up the cable. And anchors that are simple masses of stuff can become fortified emplacments for siting asteroid artillery make the perfect bases for stationary to high orbit defence platforms.
Plus, we've already seen materials advances since Paul Birch wrote on orbital rings; we have massive improvements in superconductors in the last fourty years for example, with superconductivity observed as high as 250K, rather than the low-temperature super-conductors he assumed would be used. MSI reasonably can be allowed room temperature superconductors, too. Add to that improvements in strength for materials and we can carry a lot more payload mass, even if the precise amount of improvement depends on how much MSI are allowed to exceed what we have today.
By moving the space dock to low orbit, there are a huge number of improvements; transit time is reduced to only hours enabling an extreme increase in freight traffic, there is no radiation hazard from crossing the Van Allen belts at <100m/s, the network of lesser orbital rings can have single transfers to the main Orbital Ring rather than a highly complex network of transfers as per the 'nucleus and electron shell model' of a pure orbital ring setup...
It does mean ships need to find a few km/s more delta-v, however, MSI is in the opposite situation to us; we would take more time for less delta-v. They can do the opposite. Time taken to offload cargo drops from five days to four hours, which improves the mass throughput by 30x on it's own.
If we are starting to look at three hundred type four freighters a day, plus habitation, dockyards, other military infrastructure on the Orbital Ring as a whole system, then Brigantia Orbital Ring is beginning to look like what I have had in mind since the thread started. I still want more though; ideally, I think from a sense of thematic nature, that thousands of ships a day would be better...
But, at least 300 type fours is a workable amount, and well, the bottleneck is stuff going between the surface and orbit; if the Orbital Ring is a destination in it's own right, then it becomes much easier to handle the logistics involved. Is it out of the question that MSI would artificially manipulate aspects like shipping costs and housing costs to make living on Brigantia itself a matter of prestige and therefore subject to vastly increased expense as a means of solving this issue? It doesn't sound that out of character, frankly.
So, what comes to mind is that the most affluent live on Brigantia themselves, with many more living off-world on the up-market parts of the Orbital Ring, such as the accomodation with Brigantia-side views. Indentured Assets could have slums planetside and in orbit. It is a subject that needs more thought, but...
Overall, I've got a workable rationale for the Orbital Ring, it's structure, logistics, power generation/consumption (all those orbital rings add up to a lot of gigawatts of consumption, which could be solar or zero-point reactor) housing and grades of housing and strategic considerations, which it has lots of, in both positives and negatives. Plus, we can put whatever Stellaris starbase buildings and modules on it that we want, which also adds possibilities.
We'll probably visit it; it would be quite interesting to see what happens when Naomi finds her old pimp still on the Orbital Ring.
T-87 Hours
"T-87 Hours"
15th Daas, 10 (2189)
Duxanek
15th Daas, 10 (2189)
Duxanek
I take the incoming hail. I look at the Olinbari woman. She wears a medical gown, but there's an admiralty parazonium on her otherwise immaculate desk. "Hello, are you Duxanek?"
"Yes."
"I am Quaestor Caelia Oppodius. Appia has appointed me to revamp MSI's medical services to be fit for purpose. Put simply, my predecessors had very little interest in Indentured Asset welfare and medical care, a failure which it is now my duty to rectify. I figured that Life2.0 would be the best people to ask in order to reduce testing treatments twice over for effectiveness and safety, as well as obtain immediately useful medical data."
"Where do you want to start with?"
"Our ugly friend. War. Appia has told me that Humans, Kyaese and Xenaya are the bulk of your servicemen and women. We have passable data on Humans, minimal data on Kyaese, nothing on Xenaya. I've reviewed the discussions on the battle ahead and while I'm aware final combat policy has not been decided, it's likely to involve substantial casualties to all of us."
"Surely you need general medical assistance too?"
"Of course, right now I have a medical service that's only fit for a quarter of the population it serves. But, if Septima succeeds, then everything is ruined. It's triage."
I see her point. "What are you're assumptions on casualties?"
She lays out four tablets. "I have assessed the possible strategems we might employ against possible strategems Septima might employ and grouped them into four categories. Of note is the presumption of boarding actions, as I consider it very likely that Naomi will choose a boarding action over the destruction of Kyaese civilians in a straight-forward battle. This is the primary cause of the requirement for medical data for Xenaya. I am of the understanding that your navy relies on very few Xenaya that are extremely highly trained?"
"After putting both in battle gear, we can put ten Kyaese into orbit for the resources it takes for one Xenaya."
Left eyebrow rises. "Then why have Xenaya at all?"
"With Kyaese, we've found more than five to ten kilograms of equipment and they can barely fly. A Human has a maximum combat load of thirty kilograms before they start suffering adverse medical effects, preferably lower. Xenaya however, you can put a hundred kilograms of armour and equipment on an average untrained Xenaya and they carry on unhindered. One who's fit and trained, and well, our elite Xenaya are wearing inches of Osmium as bulk armour. Buri, Naomi's husband, trains at four times standard gravity by weighing himself down under more than a tonne of high density metals. If we were fighting a ground war, we'd reverse the Xenaya to Kyaese ratio."
Both eyebrows. "I see. Very well. Am I to infer Xenaya will be breaching?"
"If it comes to a boarding action, Xenaya and Scarlets will go first. What Humans lack in strength, they make up for in stamina; Xenaya are ambush predators, not persistence predators. When Naomi was pregnant with Ruki and faced having to fight a duel with a Xenaya, she intended to exploit that by tiring out her opponent. Xenaya are ferocious, but they aren't invincible, especially under high heat when their insulating fur exhausts them. They also tend not to evaluate ranged combat very well, which means Humans are vastly more effective at it. Kyaese follow as skirmishers and mobile artillery."
"Mobile artillery?"
"Wearable harnesses that mount recoiless rockets."
She looks at my attire. "No wonder everyone wears spacesuits then. All noted. Space crew are dominantly Kyaese?"
"Yes, with some Humans in command roles, and Bevkirans as sapient combat computers."
"Sounds reasonable. Am I correct in understanding your kinetics are non-superconducting?"
"Non-superconducting, yes. We've not been able to make a superconducting alloy that stands the materials demands we need yet."
"Lasers are what efficiency?"
"28.7%, from memory, near-UV wavelengths. Up to GW input."
"But the bulk of the plan is the casaba howlitzers?"
"Yes."
"What exactly are they? It isn't a weapon I'm familiar with."
"Detonate nuclear or thermonuclear bomb, harness the energy into a low density material plate to create a focused stream of extremely high temperature and high velocity particles."
"Nuclear or thermonuclear... High radiation weapons?"
"Naomi would rather die free from radiation poisoning than live in health in shackles."
She hesitates. "Presumably you have radiation medication and treatments formulated?"
"Yes. After the battle with Gnaea, the dominant types of sickness on Unity stem from radiation exposure."
"Could I have the applicable products for mass production?"
"I'll send via comms."
"Thank you. Are you likely to require medical aid for your own people, or should I focus my resources on treating recovered Kyaese from Septima's fleet?"
"Naomi would say to focus on them, so we'll prioritise the Kyaese. This an area outside of my expertise, but I feel I must ask; is there anything in MSI law that allows the requisition of freighters for military purposes?"
"Yes. Why do you ask?"
"By our projections, the only ships that can make a boarding action in time are ones that use reactionless drives; the ability to accelerate they have is unmatched. But we don't have enough of them to use them as marine carriers. Appia doesn't think she has the morale among the Olinbari to pull off a nationalisation of any reactionless drive freighters as they are expensive to purchase-"
"Very."
"-but, if there's a chance Naomi can save the Kyaese, she will want to. Her... chaplain, has advised me that Naomi is suffering for having to make the decision to destroy the Kyaese civilians."
She taps her parazonium. "I remain a Praetor. I will make inquiries."
It's nice to know the battle plan... why do I feel like it's going to go horribly wrong?
It's good that MSI is trying to improve the health of their Indentured Assets...
It's good that MSI is trying to improve the health of their Indentured Assets...
Well... Because it will, and Naomi knows that even if she didn't vocalise that fear to Ruqayya. Naomi knows that Septima knows Gaius and Gnaea lost because on both occasions space battles became boarding actions. Naomi's past means she is known to the upper echelons of Olinbari society, and after recent events, no one would underestimate her. Naomi doesn't know what Septima has, but she does know Septima would be insane not to plan contingencies as an absolute minimum for a boarding attack.
Now, Naomi knows Septima is packing ten million Kyaese like sardines onto freighters. The only way to save them all is to ambush the freighters before they accelerate away from the Gateway, and Life2.0 doesn't have enough ships that can complete the acceleration required in time. Even less ships that can make the journey, decelerate, then reaccelerate to match the freighter's trajectories to make a boarding action possible - as trying one at a closing speed of 4-5% lightspeed is completely impossible.
But, without a boarding action, Naomi can't rescue the Kyaese.
Which means either Naomi bites her conscience and allows ten million Kyaese to die, or, launches a boarding plan that Septima knows must be a strategic plan to capture bridges, vent fuel tanks or destroy engines in a bid to disable the freighters with no option to evacuate the Kyaese because there are simply so many.
Which means one question keeps Naomi awake at night - why does Septima want Naomi to attempt a boarding plan?
Well, Appia has just given Indentured Assets equal rights to Olinbari. That has major implications for so many areas of MSI's operations, and I'm hinting here at Appia's solutions - she's appointing naval staff she trusts to civilian positions. It's another hint at the dying republic.
Writing these two theory-crafting posts on trade has helped to inform the application of the dependency of Republican and Imperial Rome on foreign imports, food especially.
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T-59 Hours
"T-59 Hours"
17th Daas, 10 (2189)
Buri Of Unity
17th Daas, 10 (2189)
Buri Of Unity
There are many perks to being telepathically connected to your wife.
But...
When she can't sleep...
I hold her. Enter her mind. What's wrong?
She looks at me. I think we are heading into a trap.
How?
What keeps going over in my mind is why would Septima want us to board her ships?
What makes you think so? To me, she's looking like she's set the bar so high that we couldn't even try. Too many freighters.
It isn't that there's too many, if the extrapolation from Ruki and Appia's information is right it's less ships than when we beat Gnaea.
Too many Kyaese to rescue then. But equally, Gnaea was coming to us, we have only got a fraction of the fleet who can make the intercept. To me, it looks like Septima is gambling on trying to make MSI defend themselves and kill ten million Kyaese in the process in an attempt to shatter our alliance. All it costs her is a hundred freighters. It's an exchange you know is affordable for her and puts us in a crisis.
I know.
I nuzzle her. Naomi, you are a woman of deep love. It's one of the most beautiful pieces of the tapestry of you. But you are trying to think of a way to get around the harsh reality that our enemy has made sure we have but one choice. Her gamble is that you will not make that decision, that you will try a desperate action to save lives and end up with Life2.0 forces on the freighters when Appia has to protect her people and planet. She's playing you. If she was facing the Holocron or Appia her strategy would be completely different, because ultimately neither of them would baulk at the deaths of ten million Kyaese. Appia would rationalise it, and the Holocron would add ten million Kyaese to the statues of those who died after the battle with Gnaea. But she knows that she isn't fighting them.
I watch her process my thoughts. Then her eyes go wide. Monica.