Confirming Carter Bk. 03 Changes Ch. 06

* * * * *

Tammy was laid out across the bed, her legs spread wide, her ass perched on the edge of the mattress as she stroked her fingers lazily up and down over the clean shaven lips of her pussy. She purred softly as she dipped her fingers between the fleshy lips of her pussy, dragging them slowly up the length of soft, damp flesh.

Sam stood in the doorway watching her as she opened the button on her slacks and let them fall to the floor.

Interior-Conference Room, North Tower

1430 Hours

"We have the forests cleared for two hundred meters around the perimeter of the city." Pharris said as she gestured toward a slide show on the monitor at the end of the table. "Now that we're safely away from the city, we'll be able to pick up the pace, and we're projecting that we'll be able to clear seventy acres a day with the equipment we have on hand."

"How are your settlements going?" Sheppard asked. "Based on the last figures I saw, you appear to be behind schedule."

"We are behind schedule, and I have to admit, my original estimates were overly optimistic." Pharris said, flushing slightly. "I misjudged just how much lumber was going to be required, so we currently only have three settlements built, but only one of those is actually inhabited. We currently have thirty thousand of our people in Anchorage, but only three thousand in the settlement."

"How long before you can move people into the other two settlements?" Samuels asked, pausing the slide show to look at an image of the city. "More importantly, what can we do to help you get back on schedule? I can divert production to get you more logging equipment, but it will be at least a week before you see any of it."

"Equipment isn't the problem." Pharris said, tapping at her laptop. The screens around the table changed showing a spreadsheet with production on it. "Right now, the problem is mills to cut the lumber, and skilled labor to do the actual building. Neither of our peoples have the manpower with the skills required for the scope of the project we're undertaking. We just don't have what we need to get the job done in the time I originally proposed."

"We can adjust the schedule..." Samuels began.

"I think we need to look at where we can get you the manpower with the skills you need, or at least teach your people the skills they'll need." Sheppard said. "We can go through the database, but I think we're going to have to talk to people to see who has experience with carpentry, plumbing, masonry...even if it was just a summer job, or helping a friend..."

"That sounds like the beginning of a plan, John." Samuels said, scrolling through screens on her tablet. "I can start a database search..."

"How many of your people have been tested for the ancient gene, and treated with the therapy, Pharris?" Chuck asked, not looking up from his laptop.

"I don't have exact numbers, but it is less than five thousand all together." She replied. "Most of those have been given training on operating and maintaining the ships in our fleet."

Chuck nodded as he typed for a moment, then looked over at her.

"Can you give me five hundred, in groups of one hundred spread over a week or so?" He asked. "If you can't spare the ones you have, can we get the people already in Anchorage tested for the gene? I can put them on the teaching machines and solve your labor problem for you."

He smiled as he looked around the table.

"I think I can reduce your build time too once we have the labor pool established." He said. "Both Atlantis and Anchorage have facilities to manufacture prefabricated buildings, along with the supporting infrastructure. We have more than enough wood, stone and copper on hand for at least a dozen settlements, but we'll need two hundred thousand barrels of oil to make the plastics we'll need."

"Plastics? What the hell do you need plastics for?" Caldwell asked, sounding irritated. "You're talking about making two million pounds of it with that much oil."

"Eighty thousand pounds actually, but we can use the leftovers for lubricants and fuels." Chuck said. "There are refinery systems in both cities, so we don't have to worry about building one, just getting the oil to them. And we need the plastics for the settlements electrical and plumbing systems. If we're going to build them, we might as well build them right, and not have to upgrade later. It will be cheaper in the long run."

"Can you send me the plans on these buildings yo..." Samuels began.

"I guess I'm going to have to start telling you people when I send you something." Chuck muttered as he brought up a screen on his laptop. He typed for a moment, then looked over at her. "I just resent a mail I sent you two weeks ago that has detailed plans for the buildings, infrastructure, and a variety of layouts for the settlements. If you follow the plans, you can throw up a settlement for fifteen thousand people every two weeks."

"Did you send that to me?" Pharris asked. "I don't recall reading anything like that."

"Yes ma'am. All the senior staff was copied." Chuck smiled. "But I just copied you on what I resent to Dr. Samuels."

"Thank you." She said as she opened the mail. "I meant to ask you, when were you planning on beginning excavation on the city, or is that a low priority item."

"That's a very high priority item actually." Chuck said, tapping at his keyboard for a moment. A graphic of the city appeared on the monitors.

"Right now, we have the forest cleared to here." He told them, putting a solid red line around the city. "I need another fifty meters cleared, or right about here." He put a dotted red line outside the first.

"Marks and I have been doing scans, and we know just how deep the city is in each area. We can go ahead and start excavating, but we'd lose several million tons of usable lumber. I think we should go ahead and harvest it. I'm taking it for granted that it's going to be several weeks before we can start on the settlements, since I haven't heard of an oil source on either world, but I don't know if anyone has actually been looking for oil."

"We have been looking for oil." Samuels said. "And we've found two large oil fields on the southern continent. I haven't sent anything out because I didn't realize we'd need it so soon. I mean, we don't need it for fuel, so..."

Chuck nodded as he tapped on the keys of his laptop. "While it's true that we don't need oil for fuel, we do need it for lubricants and as I mentioned earlier, plastics." He said as he brought a series of images up on the monitors. "The ancients had a quick and easy way of extracting oil that's actually fairly environmentally friendly. This is one of the plans for it."

"The first step is drilling a shaft about twenty meters deep over the oil pool, preferably at the point where it's closest to the surface. The container for a drillhead, which we can build in one of the cities and transport to the site, is lowered into the hole, and secured in place. The container is a cylinder about ten feet across, and the drillhead with its pumping system is installed later, after the pool has been tapped."

"If the drillhead is installed later, how do we get the oil out?" Caldwell asked, moving around the table to get a better look at the diagrams.

"We erect a twenty foot high berm around the wellshaft, thirty to fifty meters out, then blast our way down to the pool with the Asgard beams, and just let it spill out into the catch basin." Chuck grinned. "Once the pressure is relieved, we lower pipes and the drillhead into the container, connect everything, cap it off and start pumping it out. In the meantime, we just siphon what we need out of the catch basin."

"And you're calling this environmentally friendly?" Caldwell laughed, going back over and taking his seat. "It sounds likes we're going to make a godawful mess."

"At first glance, I can see how you would think that, colonel." Chuck said. "But there's alot of details I've left out. The catch basin will be lined with a material that reacts with the oil, and over time, will harden into something harder than steel, but a third the weight. I think of it as plasteel, and I'm trying to figure out whether we could find other uses for it."

"As far a transporting the oil to the refineries, I have plans for a modified jumper, a flying tanker if you will." Chuck went on, bringing another image up on the screens. "They're quite a bit bigger than the standard jumper, but we'll only need about a dozen of them, so it won't interfere with production that much."

"I'll have someone get with you on oil production, Chuck." Samuels said, making notes of her tablet. "I'd like you to get with Pharris and work out the details on getting the labor pool trained, then work up a material list so we can make sure we have everything we need in the inventory."

She smiled as she looked up at him.

"I think you just put us in the city building business, Chuck." She said lightly.

(-)

So ends Chapter Six of Book Three, Changes. Read Chapter Seven to see what happens next.

Please leave a comment on whether you like the story or not...getting feedback helps in the writing process...