Alex had the Iron Maiden move towards Earth after his call with James at the maximum speed of the ship's boosters. As Alex was on the way to Earth. He went through the plans his father had for the company and its people, and how they would be placed in the space colony, to see if the colony had the capacity to take in everyone.
The list of the company employees under the Ashford group was as follows, with 1.4 million people in the regular companies such as the marts, TV stations, food production and processing, and daily electronic manufacturing factories. These people will be transferred after the war is over, as most people, if not all, in these companies are naturals.
500,000 + 2 million families of the veterans of the EA, who were filtered from the nearly three million people the Ashford family was employing under the veteran priority program, which used the priority employment option for the veteran family members who joined the Ashford group. Overall, among the veterans, fewer than 100,000 and their families were deemed unfit or dangerous to the space colony, who will still be working for the group till the sale of the group properties at the end of the war. All of these veteran employees and their families are working in logistics, administration, and the more important military manufacturing facilities, and the security group.
Finally, the 300,000 members, who are the medical and research personnel and their families, who are working under the Ashford group hospitals and research and development company. As for the people who received humanitarian aid from the Ashford group who might join the space colony, it would have to be until after the war, as most people would not dare to go to a space colony when the ZAFT forces were in war with Earth, as space is currently considered as the main base of the ZAFT because of their strong control in most regions.
So, from the above people, according to James, the first batch would be half of the veterans and their families who would be sent to the space colony, then the second batch would be all the personnel of the medical and research group, and finally, in the third batch, the remaining veterans and their families.
As for those veterans and their families who were deemed not fit to be in a space colony because of their hatred towards the coordinators or other problems will be moved to the military factories, which are rigged with back doors in the manufacturing machines for secretly stealing data later when necessary.
Although Alex said he would use them to steal the data of the Alliance second generation machines and the data for the mass production models of the Alliance, he thought it was to use them after the start of the second war. If James asks, he will just say keeping them dormant might be helpful later, so he decided not to use them as their MS already has the ability equal to the second generation MS once he can compare the MS data of the Stratos Gundam with the Raid, forbidden, and calamity during the Orb war.
According to James the first batch will be transferred to the space colony on the 2nd of May the day after the space colony is officially finished and operational, the second batch would be better arranged on the 6th of May when everyone of the first batch has settled and assigned to their jobs in the space colony as the member of defense, administration and space colony internal security services, and the final batch of the people will be sent to the space colony on the 7th of May to avoid contact with the ZAFT forces which will start operation spit break on the 8th of May.
After two and a half days of high speed journey, the Iron Maiden reached the space above Orb and finally confirmed with Emma to begin the launch of her shuttle. As for the Villa, Alex had cleared all the data related to weapons, MS, batteries, and the Battleship. Although Orb and EA weren't lacking the battleship data. But the battery data for different types, such as for the use of MS, for weapons pack, and beam weapons energy pack, were more advanced than the current ones in use, so they couldn't be allowed to be taken. So now the Villa only has some daily used items which are for Aisha, who is living there.
After waiting for half an hour, Alex finally received the shuttle in which Emma, Lily, and Stella had arrived. Alex, who was waiting for them in the hanger went to meet them, and after some talking, he arranged for them in the private cabin and went to the bridge to observe the journey. While the Iron Maiden was on a high speed journey most of the way it still had to slow down when they crossed the debris belt during which time Alex who was using the secondary monitoring console to use the visual camera to observe everything to see if he might stumble on anything good was lucky enough to notice a beam sub machine gun of the Eurasian prototype Gundam.
He immediately asked the ship to slow down and stop in a safe place. Once that was done. He took the Astray Black as he didn't want to reveal the Stratos Gundam. As he took off in the Astray, Alex was keenly observing the surroundings, since the beam sub machine gun was here, there might be other things or others involved in the fight nearby, but by the time he went to pick the beam sub machine gun and returned to the Iron Maiden, nothing happened.
When he returned, Eric and Steve asked why Alex had gone to such lengths for the beam sub machine gun, while the Ashford group had already made one on their own. To which Alex replied that our technology is ours, and others' technology is also ours to steal, and that having more data and knowledge is always better than having less.
If you want an example the battery technology of both is and the Orb is better than EA allowing for higher energy storage and longer battle time for the MS but after thorough analysis of the 3 battery technologies our R&D personal proposed a new type battery which is expected to be more than 4 times as effective as ours and you should understand that our current battery technology already provides 3 times more energy than the original G- Project prototypes Eric and Steve were surprised that their battery technology can still be improved because even Eric's MS which is an energy drain can fight as long as original G- Project MS except Strike which can fight longer by changing backpack's. This is not considering his MS has better thrusters, which make it highly mobile, and also has beam pistols for close to mid-range combat, while its beam cannons can be used for long range sniping.
When Eric and Steve who realized how effective the new battery would be and asked Alex when can they be equipped on their MS Alex said that the production and testing of the battery prototype would be completed by the end of August according to his guess the main reason is to ensure safety of the battery and to see if there are any changes in the estimated charge speed, battery cycle and other things.
After explaining things to them, Alex thinks their Stratos Gundam might actually be able to match a Nuclear powered MS by that time, even to the point that the weapons can be updated to use higher quality beam weapons while also adding more weapons to the MS, although it can only match the Nuclear powered MS for a limited battle time of 1 to 2 hours. You have to consider that the battles in the C.E Era are all battles within a small time frame were the MS retreats because of energy drain.
Once again, Alex went back to the bridge to observe if he would find anything good like now, but to his disappointment, there was nothing else important or useful found on the way to the space colony. After another two days of journey, they reached the space colony and docked at the public dock. The current space colony is almost complete and will be finished tomorrow, which is the 1st of May.
Alex thinks this will be iconic, as tomorrow is the day the Ashford family's first colony is finished. Of course, for plants, tomorrow is also an important day as Patrick Zala will officially take the oath as the supreme chairman of the plants. And the operation Spit Break is also his first major action against the EA as the supreme chairman.
This is also the reason that Patrick Zala arranged for long distance communication so that he could call back the ZAFT forces after the launch of the operation. Because he would rather lose the chance to take the EA headquarters than lose a large number of the ZAFT forces if the cyclops system is real.