Chapter 133: Expansion

Summary: Growing capacity

Warning! Chapters 132-134 were all posted back-to-back, make sure you don't miss any of them!

Chapter 133: Expansion

Saiko had to admit she was impressed with how well the various crews for Orbit 1 were working out. Already, only a week and a half after the hand off from Midoriya and Yaoyorozu, the station was nearing sixty-five percent functionality. The habitation decks and Drone Fleet Servicing Bays were already fully operational, with the labs and other secondary areas rapidly coming together. Given the wild hodgepodge of people she'd been directing the entire time, she was legitimately very pleased she'd gotten things ahead of schedule. Managing to do so would hopefully mean there wouldn't be any resistance to her remaining in charge of Orbit 1, despite her age.

At least initially, that was all she could hope for. One of the major concessions their nascent space program had made to keep the political backlash down had been for each of the Orbit stations to technically be run by a specific country. Orbit 1 was Japan's, as was only right, given the bulk of the needed tech was coming from the UA think-tank and the Aegis/UA/Yaoyorozu Industries partnership. Yet, trying to keep all of them under a single country would have been…politically problematic, even now.

Half of the techs working on Orbit 1 were actually being supplied from the United States and a few of the larger European countries who had retained at least limited space programs. Those techs would take the experience and use it to help build up each successive Orbit station. Orbit 2 was going to officially be run by the United States, who were honestly being a big help with construction of additional Inari-series craft and training of the pilots and mechanics needed to keep them flying. Orbit 3 was going to officially belong to the United Kingdom, Orbit 4 to France, and Orbit 5 to the New Republic of China.

Thankfully, sanity had prevailed over politics, and Forge 1, Refinery 1, and Yard 1 were all going to belong to a new offshoot of the United Nations. The Sol Industrial Coalition was a group of those countries with sufficient spare manpower and resources who were slowly coming together as the idea of an orbital infrastructure was sold to them. Currently, only about a dozen countries had joined fully, as there was a demanded price tag to hop on board. Not necessarily in monetary commitment, exactly, but in commitment of experts, personnel, and needed industrial might.

Currently, it was being formed as a sub-organization under the United Nations. Thankfully, the Quirk Wars had given the UN far more in the way of actual teeth, so it would likely be able to force neutrality for the time being. Particularly in the currently existing conditions, where Earth as a whole was under continuous assault. That was all to the good, really. For all that Yaoyorozu could produce the materials for the initial stations, even her absurd Quirk couldn't produce enough material for the entire planet to use in its industrial processes. It could only give the process of creating the needed infrastructure a desperately needed jumpstart, rather than being capable of providing a full solution.

The UN and the newly forming Sol Industrial Coalition gearing up to really push the idea of exponential growth of a spaceborne industrial complex was good. Great even. It did mean, however, that Saiko's ambition to be the one directing everything was going to take some time and effort to reach. A lot of the old power blocs weren't going to take the idea of a nineteen-year-old college student running everything well. Not even with her Quirk being perfect for helping manage everything.

That just made the challenge more exciting, though, as she knew that in this specific area experience and proof of competence was going to rule the day. By getting Orbit 1 online in full, ahead of schedule, she had one hell of a feather in her cap. One that she could build on by coming up with ways to optimize everything else…as well as possibly managing to contribute to the research on gravity plating. That was rapidly proving to be a must, as virtually all of the issues she'd had to solve to keep things on schedule were related to unanticipated issues working in zero gravity. The planners had tried their best to anticipate that sort of thing, but the simple truth was that there weren't a lot of experts in thinking in zero-g terms around. Not to mention they would still need long-term solutions for long-term habitation up here.

Hey, getting to practically write the SOP for how to do everything in Zero-G would also be a feather in her cap, come to think of it…

… … …

"Fuccccckkkk, can we please just go raid another Bubble? That's way less of a pain in the ass than all of these interviews!"

Setsuna really wanted to agree with her top minion. Neither she nor anyone else had managed to call that said second-in-command would end up being Ashido Mina, of all people. It had quickly proven that the top positions of the guild were more about the ability to manage people than anything else, though. With the way that Set herself had set up the teams with their own sub-leaders, battlefield command wasn't the most critical role for her second. She and Lieutenant Commander Hamada, the leader of the JDSF forces attached to their effort, were more than able to exercise tactical command.

No, what Setsuna had found herself needing most was someone that could lead, certainly. But who was, ultimately, the sort of person who acted as social glue for groups and personalities that wouldn't normally intermix well. She could do it to a certain extent herself, but was ultimately far too busy to keep on top of all the personnel management details needed to keep bunches of Elites with Egos from butting heads in the wrong ways. For that? Mina was an absolute treasure that Set wasn't going to give up. Not like she'd reluctantly let go of Intelli, recognizing that the woman had put their logistics pipeline in such good shape that it could easily be managed by others now.

"Sorry, Mina, but we are suffering for our success. No good deed goes unpunished and competence is rewarded with more work. So on and so on. Pick your demotivational poster saying that fits the situation, really."

That wrenched an unwilling snort out of the tired-looking pinkette sitting a meter or so to her left.

"Really, Set? Couldn't come up with an actual pep talk? Are Garfield poster quotes next?"

Wow, that was enough sarcasm that Mina almost sounded like that Jirou girl. It might be time for an intervention, or at least some positive news.

"Hey, we've gotten through the entire initial set of three groups, now. Pretty sure we have enough to hit the minimum expansion numbers from those groups, too."

Mina perked up at that, then flattened out again on her desk with a groan.

"The minimum! Minimum, Set! We'll end up going through at least another full two group if we want to hit the max, and the closer we get to the max the better. We're talking about trying to train enough people in our methods for an entire second Raid Group!"

Setsuna winced but nodded. With their recent string of successes against larger Rift Bubbles, the UA Guild had been given an official seal of approval…and orders to expand as fast as humanely possible. A few of their own from other schools had already broken off to return with heads full of ideas about how the Guild System could work. Replacing those hadn't been hard, as they'd been doing a little recruiting from the new first years, as well as from the third and fourth years. But when orders for expansion came in? Well, that was a different kettle of fish entirely.

A lot of brainstorming had resulted in pre-filtered groups of promising hopefuls to expand with. Militia, students from now-defunct Hero schools that had crashed and burned during the early Invasion days, and washouts from various schools whose reason for washing out had been purely academic. They even had a handful of ex-vigilantes, brought in by the promise of a blanket pardon for anyone who made the cut as part of the new Guild system.

Setsuna, as the now-official Guildmaster of the UA Guild, had final say on who they did and didn't take, leaving Mina and her to sort through the hopefuls. The goal was to expand the Guild size by at least fifty percent, with the new members then spending several Raids getting direct mentorship from the original team. Ideally, they'd recruit a full additional twenty-hero Raid Group, though. The goal, after all, was to create a second UA Guild Raid Team.

Shiketsu would soon be fielding their own Raid Group too, with the five students that had been part of the UA experiment now working with a team that had already been training together at their 'rival' school. Shiketsu had always been better at team tactics than UA, so with the infusion of Raid Veterans from the pilot program, Setsuna was confident that Shiketsu's Guild would field a solid team within the next two to three months. Meanwhile, UA would hopefully be able to field two teams instead of the current single team, within the same general period.

Three active Raid Teams would start making a serious difference to the amount of Bubbles that the big name agencies had to take on alone, taking some of the pressure off. Better, a couple of independent Hero groups had already been working with them to get a feel for Raid tactics, and intended to form up their own Guilds. Within another year, two at the outside, there would be at least six or seven 20-30 man Raid Groups from at least four guilds in Japan alone. Enough to shoulder the majority of the larger Rift Bubbles, leaving the various Hero Teams to handle just the smaller Bubbles. Meanwhile, the freed-up Heroes and JSDF units could be shifted to other fronts. Hopefully even to the efforts to form up a proper offensive, instead of the small time hit and runs that were all that had manifested out of the hopes for a chance to strike back so far.

Those hit and runs were always against high-value Empire targets, and they'd done a moderately good job of slowing the Empire down at times. But, like everyone else, Setsuna longed for the chance to hit back in a more solid way. To force the other bastards to fight on their homeworld, instead of fighting over Earth. For now, she'd just have to settle for taking up as much slack as she could, to help that future come about.

"Right! Well, I'd say we can at least call it a day for today, Mina. How about you and I get some food, maybe find a place for you to burn off some energy with dancing?"

Mina instantly brightened at that idea.

"Fuck yes! I need to dance girl! And I'm not letting you wiggle out of joining me!"

Setsuna nodded, deciding she could at least humor her most critical minion that far. Besides, it's not like she didn't know how to dance, and she certainly enjoyed Mina's grinding if said dancing took place in a club. There were other benefits to having Mina as her second, even if their fun was mostly just casually blowing off steam together…along with Kirishima from time-to-time.

… … …

Momo groaned as she flopped back onto the floor of the cargo bay. It might have been uncomfortable, if not for the fact she was basically floating above it, with the only reason she'd made contact having been her use of 'Float' to guide her through the Zero-G environment. She had discovered, to her mild annoyance, that whatever property Float worked on required an atmosphere to push against. Underwater usage was fine, for whatever reason. Something that had initially made her think she might be using the Earth's magnetic field in some fashion. That much, at least, had been disproven by the fact it didn't work up in orbit, even within the magnetic field still. Not unless she had an pressurized environment of some sort around.

Frankly, fuck if she had any idea at this point what it was actually doing.

Whatever it was, the limitation was only mildly irritating. Out in space, it was easy enough to add micro thrusters to her EVA suit that were just as easy to control as her original Power Armor thrusters had been, a feature she'd mostly done away with the use of once she'd gotten Float. The previous training with her power armor had, at least, made the EVA suit thrusters easy enough to adapt to. Meanwhile, inside the ship or a sealed orbital station, Float still worked well enough to make Zero-G movement negligible for her. It was still better to use a physical anchor while she was creating things, since anchoring herself with Float would have been an unnecessary mental distraction, but it was nice to not really need to worry about Zero-G maneuvering the rest of the time.

Now, if only one of the previous holders had possessed a 'Super Computer Brain' Quirk.

Sadly, her own mutations to help with Creation were the closest any holder of One for All had ever gotten to that. Which meant that the work she'd been doing for the past month was draining as fuck. Hell, she was pretty sure she'd have cracked by now if not for Uraraka smacking them both upside the head and applying some common sense to their work orders. She'd pointed out, rightly, that once Orbit 1 was up and running there wasn't a critical need to get the next station running to contribute. They could very easily filter new crews through Orbit 1 for initial training on how to run one of the Orbit series stations. In fact, doing so would dramatically decrease the odds of a serious accident or incident coming from pure inexperience.

What it had meant for them was that they'd been able to reshuffle the construction queue so that Momo could make the same part repeatedly. A huge chunk of the mental strain for her was in needing to jump from one part to another, then another, then another, for hours. With almost all the parts having tight tolerances, too. By letting the pragmatic Uraraka reorder the queue more like a construction or manufacturing queue, Momo had been able to make all of the major backbone parts for Orbits 2-5 in a day, with each repeat getting easier because she'd just done one exactly like it.

After the big bits, which the Drones would be plenty busy with assembling, she'd done the same thing with a carefully arranged mix of complex and simple parts. She'd do an hour of the same complex part, building up a mental toll, then switch to an hour of mind numbingly simple parts she could practically sleep through the creation of. In this way managing the mental strain far more easily than she had for Orbit 1. It did mean that Orbit 2 was going to come online slower than the original schedule. In fact, Orbits 2 and 3 would be finished almost at the same time. But Momo was fairly sure she would have mentally crashed before finishing the original schedule for all five. So the result was superior with this plan.

Didn't mean she wasn't mentally tired as fuck at the end of each day, though…

… … …

Melissa was pleased as she took in the view of the second floor of the Mech Armor Manufacturing Facility. The Ground Floor was entirely dedicated to final testing and shipping the Mechs out, so this floor and the one above it were where the Assembly Bays for Mech Armors were. Floor three was entirely quiet at the moment, as they lacked enough people to run any of the bays there, but the reason she was pleased was that just over half of the Assembly Bays here on the second floor were fully up and running.

That meant that they were now assembling twenty-six new Shieldmaidens roughly every 80 hours. Seventy-two for actual assembly, eight for reset, recalibration, and cleaning of the Bay for the next unit. The sheer speed of assembling something so complex had been a hell of an ask when they designed this facility, but the man standing with her had been a major part of making it possible. He was tired looking, but a little smug, and Melissa was more than happy to allow him that smugness, considering the results he'd delivered.

"Alright, Jaune, I'm impressed as heck. But break it down for me. The good, then the bad."

Jaune Rochefort, who didn't look or sound very French at all despite the name, grinned and waved at the Assembly Bays that were going full tilt. The two of them were overlooking the floor from a glass Overseer's station that cut the noise to something reasonable, which was the only thing keeping them from needing to shout as they spoke.

"First, let me just say that those Assembly Bays are a marvel. I take no credit at all, there. Misses Midoriya and Yaoyorozu did a fantastic job on designing a system that can maximize automation. There is a bit of a downsize in that the four people it does require need a bit of a high skill level, true. But it's still far faster than any conventional system would have allowed for. Something like ninety-three percent of the job is full automated, with minimal inputs needed from the crew. Simply spectacular, frankly speaking."

Melissa nodded, smirking and refraining from mentioning how many times she, Nikolai, or Professor Aiko, when she'd been brought in to look at the Assembly Bay project, had sent the pair back to make it more practical. The current versions were something like their twenty second attempt, and the whole exercise had been used as a fairly brutal lesson in designing for other people to use an end design. One that had paid off handsomely in other areas, as they were able to take the lessons learned and apply it to things like the Orbital Construction Drone fleet.

For that matter, it was paying off here, too. Melissa had to admit that she wouldn't have managed as good of a result, even if she'd done a decent job playing Devil's Advocate. She'd just refrained from mentioning that little detail when she poked new holes in their designs each time. The result had been a lesson for everyone else in just how far efficient automation can be taken when you push a pair of world-class geniuses hard enough. A trio, really, given 2B. Though 2B lacked the creative flair at problem solving that the other two possessed. She'd still put in a lot of hours crunching numbers to help them along, though. Something which deserved a mention all on its own, given just how much number crunching 2B was handling for a wide range of projects.

"Of course, as efficient and amazing as those Assembly Bays are…the real problem was feeding them enough parts. Particularly with how badly logistics connections have broken down. Thankfully, you had the equally amazing yours truly that you sniped nearly from my retirement at Yaoyorozu Industries!"

Melissa snorted at that, to which Jaune only grinned. The man might be well into his sixties, but he had a lot of energy. Enough that picturing him retiring was hard. He'd go crazy in a week, ten days tops, if he retired into the typical 'slow life' most people in Asia held as their ideal.

"What your nearly-limitless funding and willingness to ignore the economic bottom line let me do here, Miss Shield, is a project I'd long wished to attempt. The next best thing to entirely self-contained manufacturing. Ten floors of heavily automated production, each floor designed to make explicitly the parts needed for your new Mech Armors. We did our best to future-proof, of course, so that it's not only the Shieldmaiden that can be made here, but all of the specialty parts for the Mech Armor are manufactured on-site."

Melissa nodded. She already knew what he was waxing poetic about, of course. But she also knew that Jaune positively loved to gush about this sort of thing to new people. Given just how amazing a job he'd done, she wasn't going to begrudge him his chance to give his spiel.

"Of course, there are limits, sadly. We can't condense the sort of operation required for advanced microchip manufacturing into the building, much as I'd like to. It takes years to build those facilities under normal conditions, and even Miss Yaoyorozu can't be everywhere. Thus, we still bring in some basics. Microchips are the big ones, but bolts and screws, other general standardized hardware. That sort of thing. Still, anything complex is made right here, straight from raw materials and those basic components. Everything from armor to targeting systems, all made on the top seven floors, funneled down onto the two assembly floors, then down to basic stress testing and ship out."

Of course, there was only so far she was going to let the speechifying go on. So she took Jaune's brief pause there as a segue.

"And the bad? The facility, from what you're saying, is working out great. I take it the bad is still mostly the personnel issue?"

Jaune deflated a bit, nodding with a weary sigh.

"It is, Miss Shield. Though it's not nearly so bad as you might think. We've managed to push through the initial rough spot, for the most part. The twenty-six bays we have working could, in fact, be thirty-two if we had an emergency need. Doing that would chop our ability to train new crews, though, and we've worked right though the best, most experienced of the newbies. We're training people with only minimal relevant experience now, which means we need more people on top of them and for longer."

Jaune shrugged, waving out at the working teams.

"Not a single one of the crews out there are actually our more experienced people. Those are all saved for the classroom…sort of. Given the rush everything is under, what we've actually settled on is having the crews that have been here the longest help train the newbies and then put at least one of the vets on every shift of a new Bay when it opens. That thins our experienced people out, but it minimizes the problems by making sure every shift has at least one person with real experience, even in brand new crews."

Melissa hummed. She wanted to protest, in some ways, to insist that there had to be a way to do it faster. Thinning out their crews was one thing, but limiting new trainee classes to few enough people that they could even do what Jaune was describing was something else. It meant the total cap for each new 'class' wasn't honestly that high, limiting expansion speed. Unfortunately, much as she wanted to, she couldn't really object. The skill level needed for the Assemblers was high. Which didn't even count the fact that they had several more entire floors of mass parts production that also needed competent people to watch over them.

Frankly, if not for the fact that they were being given what amounted to second call on all skilled workers, behind only the orbital projects where fucking up was an even worse idea, they wouldn't be expanding even as fast as they were. As it was, it would have to be enough. Of course, it did help to remind herself that the military could only train so many people to properly pilot the Mech Armors so fast too. Even if the early results of the program meant they were throwing all the talent they could spare into the pool and hoping for the best.

Eventually, their growth here would become a bit more exponential, at least as far as people went. For now, what they had would just have to be enough. She at least didn't think the military was going to be complaining about getting a few dozen more Mech Armors, given the reports she'd been getting back about them. Making all of this effort ultimately worth while…