Orbital 4 (Patreon)

Orbital

Chapter 4

-VB-

Twenty-four hours stood as the standard amount of time for one day across three universes we’ve had the chance to visit and stay at.

To a normal person, those hours were often times never enough or too much, depending on their circumstances. A dictator living lavishly off the blood and sweat of his lessers might think that a day was too short for him to enjoy all of his wealth. A slave might think toiling in the fields for an entire day was too long.

To us, twenty-four hours was nothing more than an allotted time for each of us to finish our task.

At the lowest level, one of our mining clones inside a Venture-class frigate could harvest 388 cubic meters of materials per minute. Within 11 minutes, its 5,000 cubic meters of ore hold would be filled up and it would spend anywhere from 5 minutes to 8 minutes hauling, unloading, and returning to the mining site, which would normally be an asteroid field or asteroid ring. Assuming 20 minutes for a full round trip for conservative measures on top of an additional one minute for possible unforeseen events, a single lowest level of mining capable clone could procure 15,000 cubic meters every hour. At a high end, this could be 21,600 per minute using capital class industrial ships, whose ore hold topped off at 150,000 cubic meters.

This calculation also did not count using dedicated haulers to move the ores so that no time would be wasted for the miners or using other non-standard ships that boosted mining operations in tiny but noticeable ways.

On top of that, sleep was not a work-stopping part of our life. Thanks to our linked gestalt consciousness and linked systems, we could move each other's ships and parts without issue.

Over the course of twenty-four hours, one of our mining clones could harvest upwards of 31 million cubic meters worth of materials by himself. With a dedicated crew of one hundred miners, ten haulers, and twenty scouts/patrol, we chomped away at the asteroid fields and belt and have been doing so for better part of four days since the end of the Invasion of Naboo.

A significant chunk of this industrial output went directly to Naboo.

-VB-

“When you said you had a place in mind, I did not think you were referring to Naboo’s royal foundries…” Padme muttered.

The clone before her froze, realizing the kind of faux pas that he and the rest of him(?) had just committed. “W-Well, I guess it isn’t exactly romantic…” he muttered. “But in my defense!” he quickly added. “I thought that you would appreciate solving both the question of the dating location and your own work together. You know, so that you have more time later for other work you need to do.”

She smiled. She couldn’t say that this man(men?) wasn’t thoughtful. Maybe he lacked a bit of tact, but he seemed to be a good sort (if very mercenary in his dealings).

Standing before the two of them and their guards was the Naboo Royal Foundry. This foundry - and factory-built into one - was the only spacecraft production capable factory in all of Naboo. Due to both its people’s lack of numbers and pacifist majority, there never had been a need for Naboo to develop its own space asset.

Well, now they did.

The foundry ran without stop since her public declaration to build a planetary defense force for Naboo, and the Hive Mind Alliance have been providing the raw materials since the start.

It still awed and horrified her in equal measure at the quantity and speed at which the Hive Mind Alliance operated. She’s already received report after report of the HMA activities in the Naboo System alone, of their mining fleets that chose to harvest ice and asteroids at a heart-clenching pace and the new space stations being built up around their moon.

If that wasn’t all, then they broke parts of the moon and pulled it up to space to better harvest it.

Still, it also made her feel better about aligning herself with a powerful force like the HMA, if only because it will keep other opportunistic parasites like the Trade Federation away from Naboo.

“Well, should we go somewhere else then? The inspection of the facility is over anyways.”

“Somewhere romantic?” she asked with a raised eyebrow.

He chuckled. “Yes, let’s try somewhere far more romantic.”

---

To her surprise, he brought her to a open field next to a lake deep within Naboo’s wilderness. It was a … beautiful place.

“Well, you certainly know how to pick a spot,” she snipped as she followed him out of his golden shuttle. “Did you do this on purpose?”

She was referring to how he first brought her to a dreary work-related place and then to a place like this for the surprise impact.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he hummed. Then he paused. “Oh, I didn’t notice the deers over there.”

She looked up and saw a herd of deers, and a few new foals tagging along next to their mothers. She cooed at the sight of it and how cute they looked.

She heard a snap-crack behind her, and turned to look. Alan stood behind her with some kind of device.

“Photo,” he grinned. “For you to keep.”

He walked back into his shuttle briefly before coming back out with a slip of filmed paper, and showed it to her.

Padme blushed at the sight of herself smiling so widely and girly.

“T-thank you,” she stuttered as she took the “photo” from him.

Contrary to what she thought at the start, this date seemed like a good idea!

Then she froze as figures rose up from the nearby lake.

"Gungans…" she whispered.

"Who?" Alan asked her.

"They're the indigenous species of Naboo," she whispered as she watched the Gungans collect some shellfish from the riverbed. "I didn't know there was a settlement close to here."

"Hmm," he hummed. "Do they pay you taxes?"

She looked at him. "What?"

"Taxes. They live on your planet, right?"

"Yes, but they don't live under Our authority. We leave each other alone."

"Right, just like how they left you and your people to die alone when you were in trouble even though you two are neighbors."

She frowned at that tidbit. It was true that no Gungan helped her people… well, except one, but he had apparently been an exile.

"..."

"Are they as peaceful as you?" he asked.

"Not quite…"

He stared intently at them before shrugging. "Call us if you need help, alright?"

She nodded and that was that. Still, it made her feel better about having his support should something happen.

-VB-

Normally, Palpatine would not appear frustrated to others.

But that was his mask.

Darth Sidious showed his frustration, annoyance, and wrath in private.

The Invasion of Naboo had burned off more than a dozen favors and threats to get it into motion, and it had been defeated!

Sure, he never wanted Naboo to be threatened more than necessary and the vote of no confidence on the Chancellor had come to pass as he had desired, but it had also shown him that he did not have eyes everywhere.

Because how badly must his information network be that it missed a goddamn fleet of over a hundred cruisers, never mind that blasted Monster of a battleship?!

It irked him so much, and he knew that he would have to revise his plan from the ground up to take into account this new threat!

Thank the Force that he had managed to “convince” the queen to sell herself out, but that was a slow-going process.

Oh, he could sense the slowly growing infatuation even from the other side of the palace, but those two were taking their sweet, sweet time with their romance!

He would have to hold off on executing the fourth step of his plan until the queen had full control over the hormone-addled fleetmaster of this “Hive Mind Alliance.” In the mean time, he needed to know the strength of this Alliance. Otherwise, he would be making plans while waiting for a joker to come and upturn it all!

…As much as it galled him to admit it, he needed help.

Once again, he checked his quarter and beyond for any bugs before turning on a simple communication device with only one contact.

“Master.”

Because unlike him, his master had more than a few pirate fleets at beck and call.