Life2.0 - An "Of Unity" Narrative (Completed)

[CBR JGWRR]

"Operation Starfall - Deadbeats To Kidnap, 4"
Gillian Veres​

The flight is... Really boring. Rocket fires, Hohmann transfer to rendezvous and we step out in a captured hangar looking fabulous. Well, except for Clarissa, she's heading to the Companionship Asset quarters.

The scene in front of us...

Debris everywhere. Lots of dead bozos, which is good. An impromptu funeral pyre tells me a lot of Kyaese didn't make it.

At least they won't be feeling pain any more.

"Fly free little Kyaese."

Tina lets me have a little memorial moment, then slaps my butt. "Come on Gill."

I pull my automatic shotgun out the holster. "In and out, ladies."

Lyria laughs. "Just like old times."

"Nope. This time they're bent over and we're in control. And we're going to make them cry."

We advance out the hangar, maps on our spacesuit HUDs. There's a luxurious security bunker where Shareholders go during battles from where they can monitor and manage the whole ship. We have a mile to walk to get there. I turn as I ping them the route. "Light aerobics ladies, let's go."

We advance carefully, following the way Valerius briefed us to. We're wearing ex-MSI spacesuits that should mean we look like a patrol once we are back in sectors with monitoring - all the cameras round here have been shot or fried - and get us past any guards.

And in the general chaos of a shipboard battle, it works; two checkpoints let us through. Lyria bends down to check her boots at each one, and leave a little lipstick canister present of pressurised nerve gas for the exit.

Pretty soon, we casually arrive at the bunker.

I look at my girls. "Now we use a little tongue."

I empty my extremely corrosive acid lipstick on the door locks, then kick it wide.

 

[CBR JGWRR]

"Operation Starfall - Deadbeats To Kidnap, 5"
Gillian Veres​

The Shareholders - a man who needs to stop emptying cake shops and a woman who's dress sense is so out of date - turn towards us completely surprised. They stay very still with us pointing guns at them.

I walk in. "Hands out where I can see them, unless you want to do this the hard way."

She leaps with a knife, but I put her down with one shot. She's hurt, but breathing, cursing us.

The man is seething with impotent rage. As quickly as he can, he flips the self-destruct panel open. "I'll take you all with me."

Tina shoots him with a taser. "We don't have time for this."

He manages to hit one of the buttons as he convulses. "Scarlet Leader to Central, we've secured the package plus one, but they managed to activate one of the self-destruct systems in the action."

"Is it labelled?"

Tina uses chloroform on the woman as I look for labels. "No labels."

"Understood, Central is monitoring."

Lyria returns with a trolley. We load the fatty and dump his wife on top, then get out as quickly as possible.

Nerve agent was a complete success - one checkpoint even had them be dumb enough to pick it up.

"Scarlet Leader to Prostitute-in-chief, we have the package on the way."

 

[CBR JGWRR]

"Operation Starfall - Prozzies To Rescue, 1"
Clarissa​

My job should be the easiest - break into the Companionship Asset quarters, get everyone out. Us Scarlets and the Prostitute-in-chief have a soft-spot for rescuing our fellows.

Missions like this, MSI use conscripts for almost everything - Olinbar who get into too much debt or commit crimes get sent on missions like this where they need menial functions done but for obvious reasons they can't bring slaves.

They then propagandise it as Olinbar volunteering to help unfortunate colonies.

But, they don't make Olinbar women do this. Never heard of it even.

The battle is still raging, but I get to the quarters fine. Why wouldn't I? What Olinbar would die to protect sex slaves?

I knock on the first barracks. "Stand back ladies."

I open the door.

Dozens of women.

Naked.

Afraid.

Cold.

I place the suitcases in front of them. "Pick a dress each girls, I'm getting you out of here."

The process repeats barracks by barracks until I run out of dresses. By the time I get to the last barracks, two hundred women are free.

The last barracks though, has nine Humans. One Olinbar. I look at her, pistol in hand. I take aim. "You've hired your last woman."

Finger on the trigger.

Something's wrong.

She looks at me, the same fear as everyone else. One of the other women takes her hand.

She's nude.

Not even the mask.

Her skin is bruised.

One of the other women pushes my gun down. I look at her.

She looks right into my eyes. "She's one of us."

I look back at her. Her eyes are closed. I holster my gun. She talks softly. "I'm Sophia Dexcius. I believe that you knew my brother."

 

[CBR JGWRR]

Well, this is quite an interesting group of femme fatales. Companionship assets are uniquely qualified for doing that, though, so Naomi isn’t being stupid.

Yes, they are. Quite interesting to write too, as I'm having to use language that I would literally never use in any other context as I've decided that Gillian won't swear or reuse any slang or euphemism with the exception of her "Dresses on, floozies." line.

As a result, if I do use something too derogatory, please point it out, as I exhausted my existing vocabulary before the end of Gillian's second sentence in the first "Deadbeats To Kidnap", and I've been consulting urban dictionary et al since...

 

[Macavity116]

I exhausted my existing vocabulary before the end of Gillian's second sentence in the first "Deadbeats To Kidnap"

I went back to re-read the whole section after I read this. You've definitely done well keeping Gillian's dialogue consistent.

And I'm not really surprised to see the Olinbar were enslaving their own people along with women from the younger species. They took that particular genie out of the bottle long ago, I'm sure.

 

[CBR JGWRR]

There's something a bit different about this particular Olinbar woman though; there's a reason she's on Servitude living standards like the other Companionship Assets, and not the standard issue for Olinbar of Social Welfare.

And I'm glad the dialogue is working well, it's quite a challenge to work with. I've also been back and revised Naomi's remeeting Gaius to take into account the differences.

 

[CBR JGWRR]

"Operation Starfall - Prozzies To Rescue, 2"
Clarissa​

Her brother.

Goryhell.

What will Naomi think. "That's..."

"She's your boss."

"Yeah. Yes she is."

"Hortensus told me all about her. She killed him, didn't she?"

"Yes. She did. Wears his officer's dagger."

She turns to sit down, letting go of the one who held her hand. They gather round her. She looks at them. "How can they trust me?"

The one who held her hand kneels beside her. "We'll vouch for you."

She looks at me. "Just take the others, I know that you can't trust me."

I take her hand and pull her up. "We're all sisters now. I'm sorry I pointed my pistol at you, but right now we're deep in an enemy vessel and I've got to get you ladies out of here." I turn on my comms. "Scarlet Three to Prostitute-in-chief, friendly Olinbar co-worker for evac."

"Prostitute-in-chief copies, we debrief her planetside."

I look at her tilted head. "She trusts you." I look at the room just before I kick the door open again. I quote Scarlet Leader. "Dresses on, floozies. Let's get off this ship."

I drop my other bag, and start handing out guns.

 

[HistoryDude]

Well, that was interesting. I’m laughing at them calling Naomi “prostitute-in-chief”.

This certainly looks like a situation. It could be useful for anti-Olinbar propaganda later, though.

 

[CBR JGWRR]

"Operation Starfall - Prozzies To Rescue, 3"
Clarissa​

The ladies follow me out. "Scarlet Three to Central, I have co-workers for evac, need an airtight hangar."

"Location sent to HUD."

I look at my temporary Scarlets. "Good news is that there is a hangar under our control with air still. Bad news is it's two decks up. We've got distance to pound girls." I dial up Gillian. "Three reporting successful contact with two hundred co-workers."

"Great, we gagged and bagged our pie-eating contest winner too. Rendezvous is cancelled, they slagged the ship somehow."

"What do you mean?"

"Two popped a taser in his arse and he set off a self-destruct. Central is monitoring to figure out what it is. Get out the ship double-time."

I look at Sophia. "Just been told that they have activated a self-destruct but we aren't sure which one yet. Any ideas?"

She shakes her head. "I'm glad it's not a very quick one."

"Me too." I start walking. "I've got the map, so follow me."

We've covered some distance by the time Naomi updates. "Imperatrix-Actual to all; enemy have sabotaged their vessel by emptying the coolant. Critical ship functions will melt in minutes, and the ship as a whole will be scrap metal in a matter of hours. We are disengaging. Confirm, disengaging. Update to follow."

I look at Sophia, again. "A self-destruct that takes hours?"

"They must have picked one that leaves nothing but highly radioactive molten slag for you guys to reverse engineer. If they opted to just blow up the ship, you guys would have a much better chance of finding something useful, and with Gaius captured or killed, preventing that will be the priority now." Her shoulders lose tension as she contemplates him being out of action. Interesting.

"Imperatrix-Actual to all, follow operational protocol regarding Olinbar prisoners."

Sophia looks at me. "What does that mean?"

"Prostitute-in-chief wants captive Olinbar recovered in the evacuation."

"Am I a prisoner?"

I hold her hand. "Nope. You're one of us." I look at the walkers behind us. "Come on ladies, we need to get out of here!"

 

[CBR JGWRR]

"Operation Starfall - Prozzies To Rescue, 4"
Clarissa​

We get to the hangar. Central has five shuttles waiting for us. I look at my ladies. "Right girls, these will take half of us and then come back for the rest. I need volunteers to be in the second group with me."

Only Sophia volunteers. "Ok, I'll have to start picking then, so if you've got a gun you're staying for the second group." I probably should have counted the pistols in the bag. I do a head count. Turns out I brought forty two pistols. A few more volunteer. I start picking other girls until I have two groups, then get the first group on board. "Scarlet Three to Central, ETA of second shuttles?"

A slight pause. "Shuttles dispatched, ETA ten minutes. Send your first group now."

I signal the pilots, and the first hundred rescued are going home. I look at my girls. Two thirds are nude, less than half are armed. Obviously I'm the only one armoured. "Ok girls, we've got to hold this hangar for ten minutes. I want a firing line covering the airlock doors to the rest of the ship." I flick back to comms. "Scarlet Three to Central, are others evacuating through this hangar?"

"One combat formation is on the way to provide you cover, should be with you in four minutes."

"Advise them I have a firing line covering the doors."

"Will do."

"Ok girls, good news is we have friendly soldiers coming in minutes." I start scanning for RFID tags.

One Olinbar soldier enters the hangar by a side door. He stops. I yell. "Get on the floor arms outstretched now."

To his credit, he does. I've got no rope, no cuffs... Damn.

I wasn't expecting prisoners.

I take his weapons; three more girls have something to defend themselves with.

Some Kyaese fly in now, very cautiously. Their leader calls to me. "Scarlet Three, you may stand down your ladies."

My girls are very relieved as actual military types start setting up proper defences.

Almost safely through this. The wait for the shuttles is tense. More Olinbar come and surrender.

Eleven minutes after Valerius dispatch order, the first shuttle lands. Unarmed girls go first. The other shuttles start landing; Sophia joins me on the last one out.

 

[CBR JGWRR]

"Woman To Woman"
Sophia Dexcius​

I'm wearing the clothes of the Companionship Asset who killed my brother; she's given me underwear and a dress that she wore before she got married and started dressing to catch her husband's eyes. It almost feels strange to be wearing things now.

She joins me. We sit under a tree in broad sunlight.

She looks conflicted.

I reach out and hold her hands. "I know you must be worried, but I want you to know I forgive you."

"For killing your brother?"

"Yes. I'm sorry Hortensus abused you."

"Sophia... Thank you. What I don't understand is how you ended up on the Flagship?"

I pause before replying. "They were going to find out if Hortensus lived, and if he didn't, execute me in his place."

"I'm sorry. But why?"

I look around, weighing up my words. "Hortensus left a lot of debt behind when he charted the Indentured Asset collection voyage. A lot of debt, and to Shareholders. Gaius being the most important man he owed to. As a security, they made me liable, and told him if he didn't get back with enough to pay off in full, he wouldn't see me again. And obviously you did what you had to do."

"He never got back."

"So Gaius took me. And I couldn't afford to pay."

"Gaius was one of my regulars when I was in a high society establishment."

"I could tell."

"Oh?"

"I asked Gillian about Gaius, what happened to him."

"He told me that he'd let me be his whore again, and I killed him for it. I've got to interview his wife soon."

"Yeah... Gaius poured a lot of his resources into the Flagship and operation to recover the Indentured Assets. Him, his wife, his brother-"

"Marcus?"

"Yes. Military man."

"My husband shot his head off."

I relax. "Oh good, I'm glad he's gone. He used to beat me." I think about what she just said. "Shot his head off?"

"He and his Praetorians were gloating over their beating me and my people. Retracted their helmets so that we could see them gloat, and he monologued. My husband led the counter-attack, put a railgun round through his skull."

"Naomi, are you worried that I resent you?"

"Yes."

"Please don't."

"Sophia, may I explain from my perspective?"

"Sure."

She pauses. Her eyes go strange as she puts her thoughts in order. "So, I killed your brother. During sex; I crushed his testicles while massaging them, and then strangled him, and used his blade to cut his throat..."

"You did what you had to do." She looks at me, worried. I try to reassure her. "Naomi, we've both been horrifically abused. I don't want to drag up the past; I want to put an end to the system that sees women like us as tools. I'm on your side here, and I'm so sorry my brother treated you like that. But I need a little time to recover before I can help - you know how they treated me because you know exactly what they do to disposable women."

She nods. "If anything, you might have even got it worse because they could do to you what they really wanted to do to other Olinbar women, but couldn't."

"Yeah." I start crying. She puts her arms around me.

 

[CBR JGWRR]

So, an out of character update.

As posted on the TerraGen Dominion thread, I've been working on replicating Orion drives in CoaDE.

And honestly, they... Don't fit TerraGen Dominion. At least, not yet. I'm working on narrative opportunities.

But they do fit here for Life2.0; the economic case and political case make them a much more reasonable option than sticking with conventional rockets as Life2.0 is built around enabling cheap access to U-233 and Pu-239 and the mass production of low kiloton nuclear weapons, and there is a highly pressing need for torchship capability; there's nothing else available to them that matches the potential of Orion drives.

Chemical reaction and nuclear thermal rockets are better on thrust to weight, but they don't have the delta-v that enables access to the stars. Orion does. Fusion and antimatter both require technology they don't have.

The only feasible alternative is Bobrick-Matire drives, and while I do believe they are possible, the mathematics and physics is a little bit out of my reach.

Anyway, because they didn't capture a flagship, they need to make their own.

I'm still working on it though:

Most likely it will switch to a pure-carrier and missile/Geoffrey-Daas NDEW launcher, as that railgun, which it looks freaking awesome, is kind of useless on a ship this big; it can be much more effectively mounted on a much smaller ship.

I'm having some difficulties giving said smaller ship the range though.

 

[HistoryDude]

It’s interesting that the self-destruct cared more about preventing reverse engineering than killing the invaders. Does that represent Olinbar policy? The tech is more valuable than people?

Poor Sophia. Also, this just proves how bad MSI is as a whole… and it proves the dangers of an ultra-capitalist society.

The colony will need to get prisons running soon - that was a huge oversight.

The most recent update isn’t threadmarked, by the way.

 

[Macavity116]

All I can think about is doing EPW searches on all of those rescued captives once the battle was over. The logistics alone would be a nightmare.

 

[CBR JGWRR]

It’s interesting that the self-destruct cared more about preventing reverse engineering than killing the invaders. Does that represent Olinbar policy? The tech is more valuable than people?

Poor Sophia. Also, this just proves how bad MSI is as a whole… and it proves the dangers of an ultra-capitalist society.

The colony will need to get prisons running soon - that was a huge oversight.

The most recent update isn’t threadmarked, by the way.

This particular self-destruct method; there are options. The guy was convulsing from electric shock.

That said, that's definitely an insight into MSI that on the face of it looks very applicable to them, that technology would be more important than people. They are Authoritarian and Materialist in ethics, and technology over people is a standard authoritarian-materialist tendency.

For them in particular, where their entire business model revolves around the management of technology, it would be extremely important to ensure no advanced technologies can fall into enemy hands.

Yes, she is. But she's safe now. Ultra-monopolistic society would be more accurate; it's difficult to get away with such extremely exploitative measures when you have to compete for employees and customers.

Naomi has two options; either she trusts them, or she kills them. Prisons are a luxury that A. wouldn't be allowed to her side by MSI, and especially not to her, and B. she can't spare the resources for anyway, and C. can't secure strongly enough to stop people from outside the prison breaking in to kill them. The only place she can put them that meets the requirements is converted fuel tanks in space, and conduct the vetting there.

Fixed.

All I can think about is doing EPW searches on all of those rescued captives once the battle was over. The logistics alone would be a nightmare.

Yes, it would be a possibly weeks long process to vet them thoroughly enough to trust the ones they let loose.

 

[CBR JGWRR]

What We Are Looking For In Prospective Olinbar Residents

Part 1 - Explaining why I think what I think:
My original plan relied on interrogating captured/surrendered Olinbar on the Flagship. This has necessarily been scrapped.

Further, due to MSI deploying much more people than originally planned for, the amount of captured/surrendered Olinbar is far higher than planned for.

This puts me, as Arch-Imperatrix, in an extremely difficult position. We took more than ten thousand Olinbar prisoners in the recent battle. Many of them - my expectation is 99% - remember that I knew the enemy commanding Shareholder extremely intimately as I was his Companionship Asset from mid-childhood until early twenties, and he would have stacked the crew with people he trusted over how effective they were at their jobs - are going to be unsafe to release. We can either imprison them, execute them, or release them. The first we don't really have the capability to do to a sufficient standard of security now the Flagship is emitting blackbody radiation at 500K or more. The latter is obviously an unacceptably high risk. Which leaves the middle.

On the other side however, is our extremely pressing need to not be an existential threat to Olinbar existence.

I am the great-granddaughter of a man who burned the country he built to ash in nuclear fire because he would not bow. I am more than capable of ordering a Base Delta Zero on every Olinbar world; I even have the amount of nuclear weapons it would take calculated.

But, if that is the threat MSI face, they will bring force not because they are trying to control slaves, but because they are fighting annihilation. We cannot fight that war.

Instead, we must show that there is a place as equals in the new civilisation that we build. That far from being the end of the Olinbar people, it can be a new beginning that they can believe in too.

I know that is an extremely controversial position, but it is ultimately the correct position.

I don't want to condemn every Olinbar prisoner to death. It would be the easiest option of course, and they wouldn't notice because they would assume a total loss of everything and everyone from the battle. But it's not the right decision.

We need to find the people like Valerius and Sophia among them.

Part 2 - what I want you to do:

First. You must be comfortable with sentencing most of your cases with death penalties. If you are not comfortable with this, then you are unfortunately unsuitable for the position.

Second. This does not mean that you execute every one. We know that MSI is suffering extreme unpopularity thanks to Valerius information; protests are rising, and he has given us details for several secret organisations within MSI who are working against MSI. It is feasible to find genuine dissidents - it's entirely possible that much like Valerius knew about us, these Reformer parties might also seek to make contact with us and would try to put their people aboard the ship in the hope of us winning.

It is also likely that some will try to bluff you that they are members of such organisations in a bid to save their lives. This is expected, and therefore your job therefore is to record everything. And not by only asking each question once - a critical piece of contextual information is how they respond to the same, or very similar, questions; it is much harder to remember the same lies each time. Our intelligence staff will cross-reference the data and analyse it; you are allowed to document any pet theories you get.

The other component of your job is why we have people doing this, and not putting in speakers that broadcast questions and record answers. I need you to be thinking "Would I trust this person to join us?" as a representative of Unity. You are my man on the Clapham Omnibus (This is an extremely old legal term from my world from one of it's former nations, which describes a hypothetical person who reasonably represents the normal everyday person of good character, behaviour and repute) If you feel that you cannot trust them, then they do not merit staying among us. The bar must be this high, as anything lesser will negatively impact us all.

I'm aware this policy may well lead to examples where someone we should have executed goes free, and someone we executed should have lived. I'm hoping that the simple majority vote system with one representative from each Race here on Unity will reduce that factor, but I am aware of that risk, and I believe the risk is worth it.

We have more than ten thousand Olinbar to interview. I hope we manage one Olinbar per team each day. the more teams we have, the better.

Safeguards:
No Olinbar is to be interviewed without being handcuffed and subjected to invasive strip search with armed guard present.

No Olinbar is to be debriefed on Unity without my expressed approval.

No Olinbar is allowed to be unescorted without having been allowed freedom.

No one is to go into Olinbar quarters without a full combat squad armed with lethal ammunition. Further, these quarters will be in disused propellant tanks (being the safest option)

You are not to accept any gift from an unapproved Olinbar without radiation checks, poison checks, toxicity checks, weaponisation checks etc.

Known Intel On Dissident Groups:

Regrettably, we have practically no intel on potential partnership organisations - Valerius informs that MSI brutally represses dissidence as an effort to curb rising crime rates and social upheaval sentiment. Because of the personal danger this represents to individual Reformers, the Reformers are NOT an organised group. They are an ideological faction of those Olinbar who would like to reform Indentured Asset living conditions and wider MSI society, people like Valerius. No consensus on what this is or how to achieve it exists.

Declaring Officer - Arch-Imperatrix Naomi Of Unity

 

[CBR JGWRR]

Little bit rushed that one, probably will add more details later.

Been working on this:

The latest concept for a 150m diameter Orion propelled carrier, with a spinal 80MW laser (that's actual energy on target, it uses 1.8GW) and 6 smaller escorts. And nukes. I've abstracted the fuel to be Xenon based on space/cost equivalency and 80% efficient Orion pulses; each of those 1000 150m Orion tanks represents a thousand 225TJ nuclear bombs.

And there's a thousand megaton-yield warheads in the launch bays. And five thousand kiloton-yield bomblet launching drones.



Its a hell of a lot of Plutonium-239...

 

[Macavity116]

A carrier? This thing will have a wing of strike craft?


Also broader question, how did you come up with your characterization of the Olinbar and MSI in this story? I've started writing a new Stellaris story that involves the Payback origin, and this AAR is becoming something like a "reference work" for me.

 

[CBR JGWRR]

The great thing about Orion drives are they scale much better with increasing size, so there's no point in going small the way you would be forced to with conventional rockets; just pile on the tonnes and use slightly bigger nukes.

There's two sets involved. The first are strike-drones that act as range extenders for the five one kiloton nuclear weapons on each one - this are for ship to ship combat, by swarming the enemy and hoping enough smaller missiles make it. (With 1500 drones carrying five warheads each, I'd hope some get through the defences)

There's also 400 one megaton-yield warhead drones for orbital bombardment capability.

Lastly, this ship is a freaking massive target. Like, it's such a big target that I'm debating taking off the 1.8GW laser because it's better being deployed on a smaller corvette that can be carried on board. And there are six of those.

I'm debating the merits of going even bigger; this ship uses 5.5kg of P-239 per propulsion shot, and frankly the logical choice of size is to work out the optimal delta-v/kg P-239, and build it to that point.

---

On MSI and the Olinbar:

There's been a few bits and pieces on the envisioning of MSI society so far in the thread, but I haven't yet laid out everything.

Stellaris itself gives us some insights. We're given that they are a Roman cultural derivative thanks to their use of the Latin namelist for example.

This leads to picking a source in Roman history to offshoot the Olinbar from. Simplifying:

Extremely early kingship
Early Republic prior to the Punic wars
Punic-wars Republic
Late-Republic
1st Triumvirate
2nd Triumvirate
Princeps
Dominate
Western collapse
--
I don't believe the Eastern Roman Empire is a good source for the Olinbar/MSI.

Between these, I chose the late-Republic option as the source Roman period as the best candidate to map the development into MSI from, as there are the most parallels between MSI and the late-republic, and the social structure of a megacorporation is most closely formable from the late-republic; later in history has Imperial Rome, while earlier in history the Republic has yet to become the Great Power that defines the zeitgeist that MSI draws on.

Having selected the source Roman culture, I then extrapolate the changes; a population of Romans are taken, uplifted, and they become the proto-Olinbar, who then become separated from their uplifters; there are a lot of options here, and none of our characters know the real story - Valerius and Sophia know the old tales, but they are not sure if those are just myths put out by MSI to legitimise itself.

At some point, genetic engineering consistent with a Stellaris civilisation taking the Engineered Evolution Ascension perk and related traditions is applied to turn the Proto-Olinbar into modern-Olinbar in appearance, while the toga becomes an inspiration-point for the MSI robes.

Given the opportunity to define a new society, the proto-Olinbar select a leadership like how the first kings and senators of Rome were originally meritocratically selected. This proto-Olinbar society was far more Egalitarian than modern-Olinbar, yet retained traditional Roman views on foreigners and barbarians. Slavery is soon reintroduced for the new foreigners and barbarians; aliens.

Stuff happens for the intervening centuries; history becomes legend, legend becomes myth. MSI become a major corporate power, and their society transitions into a multi-tiered society with the top of the pyramid being Shareholders in MSI, which has long supplanted an early new republic era. (extrapolate a Roman Republic which never had the return of Pompey and the spending of his wealth accquired through conquest destablising the Rome-specific socio-economic strata) Beneath the Shareholders are wealthy Olinbar trying to become Shareholders (Valerius' social strata) or a middle class of overseers of the non-Olinbar Indentured Assets. (Sophia's social strata) Indentured Assets are at the bottom, but there are tiers within the Indentured Assets as MSI designed a social structure that tries to encourage Indentured Assets to aspire within their tier to greater material wealth. (which obviously is all based on ever greater debts to MSI)

By the present day - Claudia Licenius' argument with Naomi was deliberately written to express the default perspective common to Olinbar Shareholders and high society.

List of previous posts:
Claudia's Perspective
A Similar Previous Post
Vopisca's Perspective 1, Vopisca's Perspective 2
Limited Statistics On MSI Instability
Valerius' Perspective, 1, Valerius' Perspective 2
Synthesiser, plus insight on MSI's outook on the lease of technology
Initial Thoughts

There is more weaved into the narrative, but to include them all would make the list harder to use.

 

[CBR JGWRR]

Damn it, now I've got started, I want to absolutely get this sorted out rather than just wing it. Proper mathematics to come.

Ok, after an hour of fiddling with Children Of A Dead Earth, it's calculations put a 2 million crew section at 12,000m long by 76m radius.

This is a rather odd on length to width ratio, so instead work on a 4x5 arrangement that gives 3000m by 300m by 300m before radiators, fuel, shielding, reactor and engines, which on COADE's numbers means the ship is easily twice as long again to get anywhere because the rockets it allows are fairly primitive next to Stellaris technology. Estimated cost according to the game of 40 billion credits before propulsion.

On Stellaris tech however, the bulk of the ship is the living space as we have impulse thrusters that are presumably some sort of Bobrick-Martire drive. (sublight solution to the Alcubierre metric that avoids the dangerous radiation build up and only uses normal mass/energy)

Basically, a freighter twice the size of an ISD.

If the colony was to build their own, it would look a bit more like this, on the basis of one ship each: (with more engines; I can't get COADE to operate multiple engines right...)

View attachment 995953

I'm also working on an Orion drive version of this ship. It's going well so far.