Encountering the usual crew members, he made his way over to his room and quickly stripped down. Tossing the used and dirty suit into the robot basket. He turned the shower on and let his head rest while the water washed over him.
Pushing his hand through his hair, he noticed that it had grown much longer than when they first arrived. He usually kept it short, almost a buzzcut, but now it was getting close to shoulder length. Washing his body, he shook his head and finished up.
Dressed in one of his more casual outfits that was luckily undamaged, he got into bed and fell asleep immediately.
They had arrived at base mid-day, so unfortunately, to not mess up his sleep schedule, Ridge set up a timer for just a couple of hours. Once those beeps sounded out again, he got up, dressed in something generally presentable in terms of military outfits, and left to gather a small group for reports and plans.
Using his wrist panel, he directed Yayha and Caroline to meet up in one of the now empty dorm rooms where the crew had previously slept.
It was the same process as usual, so it didn't take long for the group to gather together. Ridge was the first to make it. The large room was relatively similar in size to the cafeteria, if not a little bigger due to the amount of people and stuff it needed to hold, but now it was just a large empty room with a few metal chairs that were built into the ground in the middle of the room. Luckily, it was a rather large circular table; the chairs themselves evenly surrounded it, seemingly raised from the ground, and they were also rather circular in shape.
Perfect for a meeting spot, though, looking around, he decided then and there they could more than likely use this room for conferences and meetings. May as well utilize the space was what he thought.
The others showed up eventually whilst he was browsing some data on his panel. Caroline had also brought in with her an extra person.
With the group sitting down, Ridge figured there was a good reason for Caroline to have one other person with her, so he got started.
"First and foremost, I'd like an introduction. If you could, Caroline, I recognize his face from your engineering team, but not his name," he said.
The man who had come in with Caroline had short brown hair with brown eyes and was rather short in stature. Nonetheless, he seemed to be rather brawny; he was quite recognizable. Despite this, unfortunately, Ridge had no idea what his name was.
"Stuart, sir, he is going to be my assistant chief engineer. With the base getting bigger and bigger, I figured I needed someone to help me organize things on my end, so I've been training him, so to speak, on my work," she answered.
Seeing nothing wrong with it, he nodded to Stuart and turned to Yayha, "Now that introductions are out of the way, then, Yayha, give me a progress report on how things have been after these last couple of days."
"Of course, sir, to begin with resources. Our daily production from the large ore deposit and refineries at the first outpost, as you know, is fourteen metal units per day and around four wiring units per day, though for the wiring units there is an added decimal point in that production since we always produce a little extra from each batch being manufactured. At any rate, within the two days that you have been gone, the base added twenty-eight metal units to its stockpile, and around nine wiring units.
On the other hand, because the newly planted starch plants still need time to grow, we lost around 116 units of food during this time; this includes the rations that you guys took for the scouting mission.
So the stockpile currently is- Ah, hold on, I just remembered, since it technically pertains to the resources portion of the report, we have also started construction on the updated outpost wall, so subtracting around 100 metal units and fifteen wiring units, the stockpile currently sits at 4,660 metal units, 2,414 wiring units, and 3,220 food units," he finished while letting out a slight breath.
Taking in this information, Ridge did some quick calculations within his own head and deemed the numbers to be fine.
"Got it, make sure to have the updated information within the base's network for easy access later," he replied, waiting for Yayha to move on to the next thing.
Clearing his throat, Yayha continued, "As for other information within the base. there are two things, or rather two directives I gave everyone while you were gone. The first is in regard to security. As I'm sure you're aware, having needed to pass through it yourself, I have directed the soldiers to set up more stringent requirements when someone attempts to enter the base through the gates.
The plan was to use the biological lock on the wrist panels; I figured the one-minute stops to verify things were better than just letting anyone in when they could have been parasitized or completely replaced like Becke, so the panels were perfect for this sort of thing.
The second directive was for our most capable members within the base- for example, Hopi, Ryan, and Caroline here- to take students or apprentices. This is also the reason why she has a new assistant, though with the workload increasing; I'm sure it also motivated her to get one herself anyways.
With the death of Lind, I realized then that out of sixty-one people within the crew, only nine, including Caroline, are engineers, and now only two are scientists with medical training. So although it might be more difficult on the science side to nurture newcomers, I figured that teaching a couple of the faster-learning crew members would be better than risking losing quite a bit of knowledge if we ever lost them as well.
Of course, the longer they stayed alive, the better," He chuckled before finishing up.
"Understood. It's good thinking on your part; I never really thought about it that way, but we do indeed lack specialists like engineers and researchers. Great job as always," Ridge praised before turning to Caroline, "Your turn. How are things on the engineering side of the base?"
"Well, in coordination with Yayha, I have been directing with Stuart the updating of the outpost wall. On top of that, I have finished design plans for the aetherite crystal generator with Hopi. Once constructed, it should continuously produce around fifty-five kilowatts of power, which more than covers the base's operations alongside the advanced solar panels.
The base currently requires forty kilowatts of power; the advanced solar panels produce forty-five during the day, and with this new generator it can store the excess in an updated battery system for the night, but as you know, the type-L greenhouses you want to build require forty kilowatts of power on their own. So although the base power grid will jump to producing 100 kilowatts of power, the consumption will also jump up to eighty kilowatts.
Once again, though, that twenty kilowatts of power can be stored and help power the base throughout the night alongside the crystal generator," she explained.
"No problem, start construction on that crystal generator as soon as possible. Now, what should we do about the two ore deposits in the south? Especially the veltrite ore deposit, which is quite important for the future development of the base," he inquired, turning to both Caroline and Yayha.
The group sat in silence before Yayha spoke first, "To be honest, Commander, I think the best thing we can do is just use the battleship to transport a team to those deposits and build up a second and third outpost first. In this way, we can also scan the deposits to see how large they are. It will be quite quick with the battleship. Not to mention, it might be best to perhaps ignore that metal ore deposit you found and instead just focus on the veltrite deposit. After all, with our current weekly production, I think the base has more than enough regular metals for now."
Rubbing his stubble, Ridge decided to also share his plans.
"That last point you made isn't a bad idea; by focusing on just one, we should also be able to ensure it gets set up much faster. Besides that, most of what you said is actually quite similar to my first plan, which was to simply set up an outpost and mine and refine there. Once the stockpile hits a certain amount, we can then use the battleship to go and grab it to bring back to base. Though I worried about the battleship being worn down through such menial labor, especially since it is still technically damaged from the ambush," he said.
"The second plan is basically the same, but while we are building up the outpost, we also slowly make our way over with the trailblazers, which will build a long road from the main base to the deposits. Once finished, we can use the four haulers within the battleship to travel that road back and forth, transporting resources," he concluded.