Waiting and more waiting, that's how Ridge would describe the current circumstances that they found themselves in nowadays. On the first day of their arrival at the veltrite deposit, they had been relatively busy setting everything up, but once those things were finished, Ridge found he had nothing else to do but wait.
It was a period of silence, so to speak, where he simply waited on the bridge hoping to receive a message from more survivors. Of course, it wasn't all silence, at least not enough to induce craziness within him; there were occasionally messages passed to them by the trailblazer crew, who were slowly inching their way towards the outpost. Soon enough, they would hit the rocky terrain and would arrive much quicker, but for now Ridge could only keep track of their progress through the messages.
Most of them were just general updates like their current food and water supply, but some were more interesting, like when one of the messages received reported that they managed to find some animals. Unfortunately, with no weapons, they had to simply let them go; apparently they looked like the carcass he and the scouts first brought in.
Besides the waiting, their focus was entirely on mining what they could before leaving; they had managed to gather a relatively abundant amount of veltrite ore, but mostly in its raw form, not yet refined. The first refinery that was being constructed at the outpost had been completed, and the second was already up and running, so soon enough Ridge believed they would have more than they needed. Just a matter of time, which they had more than enough of, for now.
There were no updates on the movements of the fungi approaching or even heading towards them. So Ridge decided to stay put and rely on the ship's sensors. When speaking of sensors, it was also worth noting that the scanners they put down were actually still transmitting data to the ship. Of course it wasn't an automatic process, but one of the engineers on Caroline's team had extensive knowledge in data and computer networks and was able to essentially redirect the signal to weakly flow towards the ship's own databases.
What this meant was everything they had scanned previously was still being scanned. Because of this, the intel they got was actually quite valuable.
Naturally, being so far away, the signal scattered occasionally, but it was good enough to tell that the fungi had begun expanding their numbers and presumably occupying their former main base.
Noting this intelligence, Ridge decided that once their wait was over, he would have the crew go one more time over the base and essentially rain down fire. This way, before leaving, they would cripple any progress and cull their numbers.
Whether or not it would be helpful in the long term was something for the future to show them.
On the ground now near the gate of the outpost, Ridge was training ten men that he had picked out from the crew on combat techniques and how to shoot. Of course they didn't really have the guns to shoot, so it was more theoretical, but Ridge figured they should start recouping some of their soldiers now since they lost all but four, and even theoretical knowledge was better than none.
Yet another day passed quickly; after training the men, Ridge simply helped with transporting materials and went to bed.
The next morning, the first thing he checked was messages; still no signs from George and the others. The Trailblazers at least had finally made their way over and were loaded up onto the ship using a large ramp that led into a separate compartment of the ship from everything else. Solely used to store large vehicles like the Trailblazers, though its current capacity was only able to hold two. Of course, they also had to disassemble some of the front pieces of the Trailblazer just to save some space.
Another four joined them, meaning the entire crew stood roughly around thirty-four people. It was safe to say they had been through quite a lot, and Ridge at this point had no plans to hold funerals or anything else like it. He believed at this point that as much as he would miss the others and mourn their deaths, it was just a waste of time, especially during such a critical period of time.
Neither Caroline nor Yayha, who were the only other leadership on the base, disagreed with him on this matter.
On the bridge, late afternoon..
"Commander, you called for me," Caroline said, walking into the bridge. She apparently didn't have many extra clothes on the ship itself, as she was still wearing the black uniform she escaped in.
With the back of the chair facing her, he waited for her to walk in front of him before speaking, "I did. I want to ask about the progress on the refining of ore and the large-scale scanner."
Nodding, she responded quickly, "The refining process is fast, but in my opinion not fast enough to fully repair the large scanner. We will need another day, maybe even two; it all depends. As for the scanner itself, its only problem really is that its exterior was pretty torn up, but the insides or the components that make it so effective are still relatively intact and usable. My suggestion would be to simply use the metal units we currently have to manufacture a new shell, so to speak, and then we can insert the old components with some veltrite if need be."
"Got it, what's the time looking for full repair of the scanner?" He asked while raising a brow.
"Uh, that'll depend mostly on the rate we can get refined veltrite, as I said. The actual shell can just be created through a very basic machine I put in one of the cargo rooms," she replied.
Hearing of this new machine, Ridge only had more questions. "When did you build such a machine, and why didn't you tell me about it?" he said, with a rather even tone.
Hearing him say this, she could almost predict what he was gonna say next. "No, it can't exactly manufacture usable guns or drones; it simply takes the metal units I feed into it, melts them, shapes the molten metal using molds, and prints out what I designed. Rather, it prints out the shell of what I want designed. So if I were to input a blueprint into it for, say, a kinetic rifle, it would certainly create the exterior of the gun, but everything on the inside would just be empty and unusable."
Hearing this, Ridge swallowed his own words and smiled wryly. "Well okay, it still sounds useful enough; perhaps at some point we can create another machine that specifically creates the components that we can then combine with said shell," he said.
"Of course, that was my plan all along; otherwise, it would just be a waste of my time and resources if the machine wasn't gonna be more useful than what it can currently do," She smiled.
Nodding at her, he chuckled, then spoke once more, "Okay, I'll give you two more days to figure out the specifics and get that large-scale scanner completed. Once we have that done, we're gonna leave this planet and hope for another one to settle on and gather resources."
She saluted before leaving and got right back to work. Ridge lifted his panel and began typing out another mass message.
' Commander Ridge: Plan
We will wait another two days before leaving; please focus all your efforts on helping gather resources and anything that could be of use.
If you aren't sure what to do, then ask Yayha, Caroline, or even the science team if they need help. Before we leave this planet, I will also direct the battleship over to the old base to once again commence bombings on the enemy, so look forward to that day. Stay safe and keep an eye out for fungi at all times.'
Ending the message, he re-read it before sending it out. The main point he wanted to come across was that no one should be idle doing nothing. Even if they were retreating, he didn't want it to be seen as a pessimistic thing where the only thing that awaited them now was death. By giving them goals and jobs, like resource gathering, it gives the image of wanting to eventually rebuild. At least he hoped they saw it that way.
With nothing else on the agenda, he greeted Berkay before leaving the bridge and going down to the surface to patrol alongside the four other soldiers.
The routine for them now was essentially train during the day, patrol at night. For the engineers, it was repairs and supervising mining machines during the day and making blueprints and small components with the veltreite at night.
For regular crew, it was laboring to mine ore faster alongside the machines, and also transporting said ore into the refineries to then transport to the engineers. At night they simply slept or ate their rationed meals.
Another day passed, and this time there was news, not from George or the others, but rather from the small laboratory within the ship. Ridge was in the middle of training when he got disturbed by Ryan, who had frazzled-out hair and dark bags under his eyes. Clearly indicating he hadn't been cleaning himself up or sleeping well during their time here.
"Commander," He greeted as Ridge walked up to him, to which Ridge nodded. "You doing alright there, Ryan? You seem a bit more beat up than usual," he smiled.
"Yes, yes, I'm fine. I have a progress report on the artificial project we talked about a while ago. I think it will finally be possible to solve the food issue, allowing the population to expand with artificial humans," he replied.