Wandering around and mapping out what buildings could be built took no time at all, and Ridge found himself with nothing to do. The base had essentially become a working machine that no longer needed to be assembled piece by piece meticulously by its creator.
A good thing for sure, but it left Ridge bored out of his mind. Interrogating Becke would garner no results, he suspected, and waiting on Caroline to finish the expansion plans was the next best thing after that. Although waiting on Caroline actually wasn't the next best thing, he thought to himself.
Finished with his planning, he went on over to the designated training area where the soldiers being led by George were training and running drills.
"Commander," George saluted as he walked up.
"At ease, Captain," he replied, "how goes the training?"
"Good; it could be better, of course, but we need a more designated training facility to be built for what I have in mind," He said while keeping an eye on the soldiers who were doing push-ups led by an officer that Ridge wasn't very familiar with.
"I understand; eventually we will get to it, my friend, eventually. We just have to ensure that our capabilities for production are enhanced first." Ridge patted his shoulder. "Enough of that, though. I'm gonna join in on the training; I have to make sure my body is conditioned at all times, after all."
Nodding to him, George watched as Ridge joined the soldiers in exercising. Before the officer could say anything, Ridge waved him off. The other soldiers who were exercising seemed to have their morale bolstered somehow by his presence, and so they all began to work extra hard alongside Ridge. He usually trained alone, so it was a surprise he was here joining them.
The training finally took Ridge's boredom away, and instead sweat took its place; at least it was something to do.
Alas, it's not something that can last forever. After a few hours of training, everyone had eventually become exhausted, himself included, and so they called it a day. Ridge, now sweaty, quickly made his way over to his room and washed up. The clothes he was using were tossed into a basket that automatically moved to the laundry room, so to speak, in the building. To be more precise, it was just outside of the main building. It had been constructed alongside the wall, and with the water supply more than abundant, they quickly built it to wash everyone's clothes.
The scientists even managed to extract something from the trees surrounding them and created a soap with it. Desperate times call for desperate measures.
The robot-like baskets were also quite rare on the base despite being quite basic. They were supposed to be delivered to their original objective before all of this, but since they obviously didn't make it there, one of them was being used by him for his laundry, a luxury he greatly enjoyed.
While watching the robot assistant drive away on its four wheels, Ridge's thoughts wandered off to back home, on the planet of Eserus where his family lived for many years now. They were well off enough that they could afford quite a few robot assistants that typically took care of the family's needs. He could almost feel his heart aching from not being able to see them anymore. Frowning, he shook his head and let out a sigh.
With training done, there was once again nothing else to do, and unfortunately there were twenty-four hours in a day even on this planet, meaning he still had some time to kill.
Deep in thought, he walked outside once again, then made his way up the wall and leaned forward against the metal battlements or indentations used for shooting down at enemies. He didn't really do much for a few minutes but look out into the tall tree forest. Perhaps there were enemies there watching, perhaps not; either way, Ridge figured this would be a better use of his time than just sitting around doing nothing.
Hearing footsteps, Ridge still didn't move; a voice called him.
"I imagine you're bored out of your mind, huh, Commander?" the voice said.
Ridge glanced over with his left eye and saw Hopi, who was, for once, out of the laboratory.
"Look who's outside for once," he joked, ignoring her question.
Smiling, she joined him, leaning against the wall and looking out toward tall trees. "Left to go grab some food, but then saw a man brooding on the wall and decided to keep him company."
Slightly chuckling, he continued staring out into the distance, "You know, sometimes I wonder what I can even do to get us out of the situation we're in."
"I don't think I have the answers either, but personally the way we're going about it now isn't too bad in my opinion. As the base grows and we mine and refine more materials, our standard of living will slowly return to how it was even back home. Only this time we're free to do as we like, so to speak, without the government restricting us," she paused as if hesitant to share more.
"What do you mean? Kind of sounds like you don't have strong feelings about getting back?" Ridge asked with furrowed brows.
"That's not quite the reason why, not far off, though. Every single research project back "home" that I wanted to invest my time in has either been rejected or allocated to someone else. My contributions were essentially attributed entirely to my mentor, who didn't do it intentionally, mind you, so I didn't hold it against him; however, for some reason the higher-ups and investors within the lab I was learning and working in seemed to have a grudge against me; they quite literally ignored my efforts and always compared me to the literal definition of nothing.
Cliché to feel this way, I guess, yet being here gives me a sense of purpose. Although not exactly with this situation in mind, I joined the crew for that exact reason. Purpose, People needed me here, and I was able to research whatever I liked within my own means. Small scale and not expensive, but fulfilling," Hopi shared.
"I see. What about your family back home?" He asked.
"There's no one. My mother died during childbirth, and my father, a soldier, managed to raise me by himself up to adulthood, until eventually he died in action when I was twenty-four. Twenty-seven now, so I kind of got over that loss, but there's no one and nothing left for me there," She answered quietly.
"Sorry for prying, I-" he was interrupted. "Don't worry about it, I'm more surprised you didn't already know about this stuff. Don't vice commanders need to read up about their crew to understand them or something," She cheekily joked, trying to lighten the mood.
Ridge said nothing, merely smiling at her and shaking his head.
The two sat in silence before Ridge straightened up and let out a breath of air. "Okay, time to get back; surely there are some important things I need to attend to," he said somewhat sarcastically.
Chuckling, she stopped leaning as well. "You better tell me some of your story one day as well, Commander, otherwise I'll be inclined to bother you more and more."
"Of course, one of these days when you're bored I'll tell you on my own time; now get back to work," he joked, pretending to turn serious.
Holding her hands up, she smiled and left the wall to go grab food and return to her lab.
Watching her leave, Ridge took another look around before returning. The training and talk with Hopi managed to use up four hours of the day. Two suns were shining brightly, though he obviously couldn't look directly at them.
Were there always two suns? He questioned himself. Either way, it wasn't something serious to think about, so he just returned to the main building.
For everyone else, time seemed to pass quickly with their daily routines simply repeating themselves, with the occasional mishap that Ridge would provide a solution for, until a full four days later Caroline had finally found him patrolling the walls with some soldiers making small talk.
"Commander!" she shouted out, grabbing his attention, though compared to everyone else's brown and black hair, her red hair did enough of that on its own. Watching as she quickly walked up the stairs and to him, he dismissed the soldiers who were with him and waited for her to speak.
"The plans are complete; sending you the data now," she said after letting out a small huff.
Looking at the data sent, he saw the plans. "Explain them to me as I look through them."
"The first thing you'll see is that each housing unit holds up to four people; we're using the Coro Federations Type-4 Haven designs due to their relatively simple need for resources. Giving them enough personal space instead of being crowded with everyone, but also not wasting resources by building out single housing units for every single soldier or person in the base.
Besides the engineers and a couple of laborers living out at the mining outposts, you, and the scientists who essentially live in the laboratory, we currently have fifty-five people in need of better places to sleep. Meaning we will need to build approximately fourteen houses," she said as he scrolled through their designs.
"It's also a relatively compact design, rectangular in shape, and 8 meters long, 5 meters wide, and 3 meters high. The inside features two alcoves for bunk beds separated by a privacy partition. A basic hygiene nook and a small storage area under the bunks for personal items," she continued.
Ridge nodded and moved on to the next designs.