Universe Online - Enter the Game: Complete Edition (16 page)

Wait... Agitated. Water. Air. Hydrogen, Oxygen, Carbon. Other gases required to breath. Air isn't 100% oxygen. At that level it’s too high, toxic to life. And damnably flammable. It requires nitrogen, oxygen, and a small mixture of other gases. Usually things provided in small quantities.

But the hardest part of scrubbing atmosphere is the removal of carbon dioxide from it. That, and breaking it down to replenish the oxygen content of the air. … Wait.

Oh fuck, I'm a freaking idiot!

The answer is staring me right in the face. I check my inventory and pull out the large package of seeds I'd received in the starting kit. Plant life naturally consumes carbon dioxide and produces oxygen!

It’s the entire reason I grabbed the Hydroponics Aptitude! Cause it’s possible to create a high degree of self-sustainability from it. Not just atmosphere renewal and filtering, but water filtration too. Tanks of algae and other larger plants that'll suck up unwanted impurities and the like.

It’s simple to remove oxygen gas from water. All you have to do is agitate it. You use alternating tanks of water, similar to how baker's yeast is produced. Let it grow, it turns the carbon dioxide in the oxygen then remove the plant life and the oxygen.

You get algae and other materials as a byproduct and oxygen as a primary. Food, air and water, all in one.

I know that isn't exactly correct, given that I have no real experience with it, but it is still a good idea. The idea of Generation Ships is based off it, after all...

And I didn't think of it before. Damn. It was part of my own plans.

Sadly, I cannot identify the seeds I have. There are too many, and I don't have the right skills to do so. But anything is better than nothing.

I leave the rest and replace the packet into my inventory before jumping back out to the tug. Gotta make a call.

It requires powering back on the small craft, but whatever.

Back in the seat, I dial the radio to the proper frequency and make my call.

“Site Prime, Archon Station, please respond.”

I get a reply almost immediately.

“Archon Station, Site Prime. What can I do for you, Allec? You aren't in orbit already, are you?”

It’s the same man on the other side of the line. Good. It would be a hassle to deal with others right now.

“Negative, Site Prime. I was going through... No, nevermind. What I need to know is how much water and tanks you guys have available down there. Also, how do you produce your food supplies? And do you have any unused space?”

“Ah, wait a moment, Archon Station. Why all the questions? I'm getting some people to bring me the data.”

“I don't have access to most of the materials or resources required to fix your life support, Site Prime. But I may have a solution that'll at least buy time if we jump on it right now. I'll also need to see either a biologist or a botanist when I get down there.”

“Oh, I see. Uh. At the moment we have access to a couple thousand gallons of fresh water, and another four thousand of wastewater that hasn't gone through the filtration system yet. As for tanks... Not many spare ones. Only half a dozen 1000 gallon tanks. The rest had been cut up for repairs of the ones in use.”

“As for space, the answer is yes. The shelter was built to support 50k individuals, but the original survivors were far less than that maximum. As for food, we basically grow everything in underground greenhouses. But we lost most of the native plant species when the planet was bombed. All we had stored was almost strictly food stock. We also have a small breeding facility for our livestock. That's where most of the wastewater comes from.”

Oooh, the information was good! Very good.

“That's good, Site Prime. Here's what I need you guys to do. Take the unused tanks and put them somewhere with a lot of space, then fill them with a roughly 50/50 mix of clean water and wastewater and make sure they're heated to ambient temperatures.

“They will also need internal lighting, as close to solar-normal as possible. I hope you guys have a decent power supply system down there.”

“Wait a moment, I'm taking notes! Ah... Wait... You aren't suggesting what I think you are, are you Allec?”

“Haha. Perhaps. I have a large packet of a variety of seeds up here with me, Site Prime. I plan on starting up a large-scale hydroponics operation. Starting with algae. There should be some of that, except I have no way of checking myself. That's what those tanks are for.

“The other plant life can grow in open tanks, but they'll take longer to grow and mature to productive levels. Get together any farmers, biologists and botanists to work out the system. I'm going to bring as much as I can for repairs to the life support system to help keep it going for a while yet.

“Hmm... Also, grab together a group of people you believe will work well in space. I can bring three people up here to Archon Station with me at the moment, or up to seven or eight if you have good working space suits down there. We'll mainly be building, salvaging, mining and repairing; so people with the proper skills would be a plus.”

“Ah! Allec, too fast! Hold on. Our equipment down here is basically cobbled together, so I cannot input that much all at once. Okay, there. I put the orders into the system. And seven or eight people, really?”

“Yep. I have a functional escape pod with cramped room for four, plus one if there's someone who doesn't mind living in a stripped down cockpit. An extra space here in my Mining Tug, and another partially dismantled tug we could fix up to get life support going with room for another two.

“I have access to plenty of rations, so there's no worry about that. But air, power, and water are things that'll be lacking until we can crack a couple of icy asteroids in the belt and get them processed. I want to use your shelter for that, unless we can find a way to do it up here. The manpower would go a long way to helping us all out.”

“Aaaah. I'll see what I can do, Archon Station. We've basically been sitting around dumb and stupid for the last five hundred years, since the surface is a major no-go. We use a thermopile drilled into Drune's mantle for power, so we have enough to spare, on that angle. As for water, we drain up ground water, but that's been slowly drying up over the last hundred years or so, and the decontamination process is extensive to make it usable.

“Personnel shouldn't be a problem. While no one down here is used to space anymore, we all desire to see the stars again. You bring us materials, and you'll have all the workers you want. Once you get down here, we'll register Archon Station as your own salvage, too. Just... get us out of this mess, okay?”

“Roger that, Site Prime. I'm not going to be able to do it all on my own; so it will have to be a group effort. But I'll be heading that way in a handful of hours. The trip from the station is going to take a while, rough estimation is fifteen hours.”

“ETA 15 hours, gotcha. I'll get things rolling down here, Archon Station. Let us know if anything else comes up.”

The radio goes off to static as the signal dies, and I give a soft sigh after turning it off. It seems things are getting bigger. But no one ever said that life was always fun or fair.

Still, it brings a grin to my lips. This is the sort of thing I enjoy. The burning need and desire! Putting everything I have into simply living! And it doesn't even involve combat. But it is still a war. A war against fate. Against the harshest of conditions imaginable.

This is war of survival of the fittest! And it doesn't even require all that much brawn to do it. There's a reason why our prehistoric ancestors spread out and conquered nature itself in order to survive. Not by being meaner or stronger or faster. But by being smarter.

By using tools, making things, and learning about the world.

Learning and understanding the enemy in order to control its reactions and eventually beat it into submission!

And space is the pentacle of that sort of war! The smart ones survive, and all others are pushed to the wayside.

It’s a war that every man, woman, and child has to face up to should they choose to live in space. There are no other options. A single wrong move can spell instant death for an individual in space. Even worse, a mistake can end up killing others as well. Friendly fire is definitely possible, in a variety of ways.

It’s the sort of thing I crave. To prove to myself and everyone else, to the Universe itself, that I have what it takes, regardless of the obstacles in my path.

To me, this is heaven. That's all there is to it.

I have work to do though, so shutting down the tug again, I get to it. I get out of the Tug's airlock and toss myself back into the hold. Now that I have a plan, I need to gather supplies.

That'll be a time consuming process by myself though, so I pull out the drones I'd grabbed earlier. Their footprint is small enough to be stashed inside my inventory, but their batteries are dead. I go to the capsule and plug them in inside, so as to not draw any more power from Bub.

I have to fiddle with them a bit though to figure out how to get them to open once they've started charging. They basically fold out into slim, thin droids.

Four and a half feet tall, they are curved and smooth; their outer shells painted a slight off-white. Their main components are in the chest, with all the sensors and the like mounted in the head. Their faces are a slightly convex monitor, and they have a drop-down keyboard in the chest cavity.

Complete with two arms and legs, they seem to be simple bots in a short human shape.

I start one of them up, and its face-screen starts scrolling through coding like a computer monitor. I pull out the keyboard and start browsing through its programming. It doesn't seem to have any sort of installed equipment, at least externally, so I don't have a clue as to what their purpose is.

I gotta look at it myself.

What I find makes me grin. They're autonomous worker bots. Hauling, scanning, storage and inventory work. The sort of simple, multi-purpose robots that any factory owner would drool about having in a busy warehouse.

I just got two of them, and in good condition too. They're built to work in all sorts of conditions, including zero-g. They have built-in positional thrusters and magnetic components in their arms and legs. They are perfect!

The only downside is that my cobbled-together infrastructure doesn't have what they require to operate as it stands. I browse through the coding and grimace. Yeah, it’s that bad.

Wireless connection to a controller mainframe and inventory systems. Recharge and maintenance bays. They require either direct supervision or automated orders. Damn!

I'll just have to work around it. I start by copying the command routines already in place within the bots and then move to the capsules computer. From there, I upload it and start editing the raw code. It’s a bit of a hassle. A whole bunch of if/then and if/then/else statements . Thousands and thousands of lines.

I do away with most of it, since it doesn't apply to this case. What I need it to do is move crates and supplies to and from designated points and sort and inventory newly found goods. Thankfully what is likely to be found on the station and mined from asteroids or gathered from the planet are already listed in the bots databases. So there's no need to put in all of that manually.

Then I have to basically write the maintenance and recharging commands by hand. I want them to plug into the external fueling hatch in the escape capsule when they start running low on power, interrupting the previous sequence of commands and then pick up right where they left off. I also go ahead and authorize myself as the sole user and owner, and give my voice commands priority after linking them to my suits comm unit.

I also code in a program and a database for the inventory, to be stored and updated in the capsule's computer with periodical updates. It should take only seconds, and once I get things going I'll be able to check the updated list wirelessly. Once I cobble together a Wi-Fi node, though. I don't bother with doing that now.