LIGHTNOVELONLINE 263 Rooms and (Linoleum) Boards
"Hm." Donovan returned to a small crowd, his chore of refilling the soda bottles having required two trips. "I suppose now is as good a time as any to get this over with."
"Get what over with?" Rashtvice didn't seem to understand.
"A tour of the Pegasus, of course." Diana smiled, beckoning them towards the back of the cargo bay. "Did you think we wouldn't show you the inside?"
"Kind of." Hlapven's response was honest, if nothing else. "I thought that even showing us this monster was beyond the bounds of acceptability."
"Why would that be?" Diana placed a finger on her lips. "I mean, do you honestly think you could glean something of use just from looking at it?"
It was a challenge, one issued to both parties in attendance. Donovan, who held the more reasonable position that their capabilities shouldn't be revealed so readily, wasn't able to see the benefits of doing so like Diana was. This was, in her mind, no mark against him. His arena was that of war - 'violent' diplomacy - the hoarding of secrets and information being a core component of the work he did, while she operated in the realm of 'peaceful' diplomacy.
Where Donovan derived power from keeping secrets, preserving it by keeping those secrets a secret, Diana could leverage power by letting people know they had secrets, capabilities beyond foreign powers. Of course, she could also play around with those 'secrets', fabricating capabilities where there were none through implication and other such schemes, essentially manifesting political power from nothing, but the success or failure of such plots hinged on the target of the scheme understanding you have the capability to have those secrets. Nobody would believe a child could build a nuclear bomb in his basement, but an entire nation? The mere suspicion of such a plan coming to fruition had been used as a justification for war in the past. In this way, Diana's game was like that of a snake's, be it a cobra or rattlesnake. The hissing, hood, and rattling might not present a threat in an of themselves, but coupled with the understanding of a very real threat in the form of the fangs they could give a challenger pause.
The circumstances of this challenge essentially mirrored that of the rattlesnake or cobra to a person who knew little about the species, but understood what a snake was. They knew about the fangs, both parties had been present at the arms demonstration in some capacity, but they had yet to encounter the hood and rattle of 'everything else'. Now was Diana's opportunity to let them try to figure those aspects out, 'exposing' their capabilities without revealing secrets. For the moment, this snake wasn't going to attack them.
"I take it you wish to intimidate us?" Merndil raised an eyebrow. He would have been a fool to miss Diana's objective here. "Was the arms demonstration not enough?"
"I can do little to alter your interpretation of my words and actions, but I consider it to be a friendly gesture. After all, an ally deserves to know the full extents of what we can do." Diana left off the 'for them' at the end.
"Regardless, we should probably get this started sooner rather than later." Much to Diana's displeasure, Donovan cut their exchange short. "She isn't the biggest ship, but she's larger than any ship you've probably seen. I wouldn't want to leave Morizo waiting too long when he shows up."
"I doubt he would mind at this point." Diana knew that whatever was delaying Morizo must have been important, but every minute that passed without him here made her a little bit more irritated. Casual though this party was intended to be, she still had objectives to complete. "Should we start at the bottom and work our way up? Or should we save the more interesting stuff for last?"
"Top down. If we get the short rooms and housing out of the way first, the rest of the tour can be devoted to the more exciting things." Donovan swept his arm, gesturing to the massive room they were currently in. "This is the cargo bay, for carrying any and all cargo we could possibly need. It has four vehicle bays that can hold 4 small, 2 medium, or a single large vehicle each, and the maintenance bay at the back there can fix them up should something happen."
Diana felt Donovan's explanation to be lacking, but didn't exactly know how he could spice it up. It was a storage space, not exactly the most interesting or complicated concept to grasp, and the vehicle bays didn't warrant much attention either.
"We also have a bathroom and decontamination shower over on that side of the bay door, easily accessible to people working outside when the Pegasus is landed, though they aren't fully furnished and shouldn't be used until we get enough water into the system to keep the entire system pressurized. Questions?"
"How much cargo can this ship hold?" A characteristically pragmatic question from Trebar, wanting to know a specific capability.
"It depends. Anything that might topple can't be stacked, and there is a certain weight we need to stay under if we want to take off, but the gantry crane up there can move in a rectangle that is 28 meters wide and 56.5 meters long. The bay limits themselves are 30 by 57.5, and the crane can stack things to about 6 and a half meters in height before clearance becomes a concern. In reality not all of that space is going to be used at a given time, and some clearance needs to be provided around the cargo to allow movement, so I would say the real cargo space is somewhere in the range of four to five thousand cubic meters as opposed to around nine thousand that could be used in theory."
"Mind you gentlemen, this is still quite a bit smaller than what we would have liked." Diana decided to chip in, pushing Donovan to include a bit more detail in his explanation.
"The real cargo space is less than five percent of the total internal volume using a rectangular approximation - which excludes the bulges on either side. If I'm being completely honest, this would be considered to be an incredibly inefficient cargo volume ratio for a purpose built cargo vessel. The goal was at least ten percent on the theoretical capacity, and I couldn't even get close while conforming to the other design requirements we decided upon."
Diana felt it clear from their entourage's reactions that they were curious about what would qualify as an 'efficient' use of space.
"Just to give you a point of reference, the ship pattern that will be dedicated to evacuating Titanyana's people is a modified version of a ship with a theoretical cargo ratio of around 55 percent, and is a little bit bigger than the Pegasus in terms of pure volume."
"You make it sound as though they are cargo." Merndil clearly meant to crack a joke, but Donovan's response was dead serious.
"They are. Call me cruel, but their comfort isn't exactly the top priority." Donovan began to walk towards the elevator opposite the bathrooms, gesturing them all to follow along in the process. "They'll be crammed like sardines and be uncomfortable for an extended period of time, but they'll be alive at the end of it. In a situation like theirs, I think that's the best they could ask for."
Diana grimaced. She wanted this tour to be something a bit more light-hearted, a polite demonstration of their capabilities, but it delved into a grim topic right off the bat.
"How many people will it transport?" Fortunately, Diana seemed to be the only person under the delusion that this tour would be less than serious.
"The Mark 1 will carry 35 thousand people, not counting free space left created by an empty cargo bay. The plan is to build three or four of those to get an idea of where problem points in the design might be and see if we can get away with a denser arrangement. Four meter ceilings might ensure they don't suffocate, overheat, or devolve into a claustrophobic panic, but it isn't exactly efficient. I could increase the number of floors for seating from four to six - maybe even seven - should we figure out a way to handle the increased burden on the life support systems and food supply."
"I take it you have a few ideas?" Kayes this time. Diana could find solace knowing Donovan would be having a conversation rather than listing off information to everyone.
"The air circulation problem can probably be solved by a pipe running underneath every few rows of seats, which may also be used to control cabin temperature, but Arc has identified that a persistent hissing from one of the pipes might pose a serious threat to the mental health of those nearby." Donovan's eyes flicked to Titanyana's ears as everyone entered the elevator. "Now that we have some assured help from the theocracy we can start shopping for preserved foods, and we already have a solution for excrement."
"Ah, speaking of, how is that handled? I had questioned Diana about this earlier, but how do you handle the waste left over from the water reclamation process?" Trebar continued the conversation as the elevator hummed, those unfamiliar with the system curious as to why they had been led into a dead end room but trusting the process.
"The starboard bulge, that being the one opposite to where we are now, is responsible for water and wastewater management as well as a few other miscellaneous tasks like material synthesis and internal repair management, both of which have some level of overlap with the waste system. For the interests of simplicity, human excrement is either processed as fertilizer for the green room or as a chemical component necessary for the repair or production of something else. Trash will just be recycled at Arc's leisure."
ding
"And here we are, the fourth floor."
"The residential zone!" Diana chimed in, hoping to add some flavor to what surely would have been a bland description on Donovan's end.
"This floor is primarily devoted to bedrooms with a large commons area closer to the front."
- - - - -
The top floor was, as Donovan had warned, not the most exciting of spaces. The walls and ceiling were all the same steely gray of . . . steel, while the floor assumed a color slightly lighter than wood, which Diana informed them was called 'linoleum'. Apparently, it had been manufactured from a variety of substances provided by the Great Csillacra, and was water resistant to boot. Aside from that little bit of 'flavor', the rest of the rooms were shockingly devoid of furnishings. The only real exception to this was Donovan and Diana's room, which was full of Diana's belongings and had a basic coat of white paint on their walls.
On the subject of rooms, bedrooms at least, they had been divided into four types.
Short rooms, the smallest of those designed, could house up to nine people. Donovan insisted that only six would be able to live inside of it with any real degree of comfort, but it wasn't much different than the crew hammocks of the average galley. If anything, the stable sleeping platform and mattress (whenever they were placed inside) would be more comfortable. The little platforms on the floor beneath the bunks, ever so slightly elevated off the ground and made of steel to indicate that they weren't just more floor, were intended to be where two more people could sleep if ever it was necessary. Otherwise, that space was intended to be used storage space, complementing the rather modest closet and locker that were provided.
Long rooms, of which there were eleven, were little more than large Short rooms, and could support twice as many people. The only substantive difference between them aside from the magnitude was the inclusion of a small bathroom and shower at the back. One bathroom for twelve to eighteen people probably wouldn't be enough to handle a bathroom rush before bed, but it wasn't unmanageable.
The Couple's rooms immediately reminded some of the more mature or devious individuals of a 'Love' room, a private room for naughty acts that often precipitate new life. Of course this impression primarily arose from the disparity between the size of the bed and the rest of the room, but wasn't entirely unfounded. Each of them sported a bathroom and shower combination complete with a sink and mirror - a luxury which partially surprised the Bulsarzian contingent. They had been situated along the port and starboard edges of the floor.
The final room type were the Family rooms, though this felt like a bit of a misnomer. They had a large center room with a bed for two adults with four 'closet' rooms, one being the bathroom and the other three being small bedrooms. The beds in those rooms were similar to those found in the short and long rooms, however they only had a single 'rung', meaning each could fit two people at most instead of three. Was there enough vertical space for another person? Probably, but Donovan mentioned a reluctance to stuff too many children into too small a space.
"And this is the communal lounge." Diana spread her arms out to gestured to the wide open space before them, situated between the rows of Long rooms. "I know, I know. It's a little empty right now, but once we get some furniture sorted out and the walls painted it will look a lot nicer!"
"I take it this is where people can go to relax and conversate after a long day of work?" Merndil made a show of looking around the recessed floor, imagining what could be done with the place.
"Yes. The wall over here has a plethora of utility connections, not to mention those hidden in the floor, so there is quite a bit of variety with regards to a potential set up. I would like to install some form of coffee or tea station somewhere along the wall, but we don't exactly have the time for it at the moment. Besides, I don't think I've found something that adequately mimics the properties of coffee quite yet, though I have asked Morizo about it."
"Coffee?"
"A staple morning beverage for many Terrans. Don't worry about it too much." Donovan wasn't the biggest fan of the stuff. It just didn't taste right. "Would we like to move downstairs now? Or is there something else up here that has grabbed your interest?"
