Chapter 144: Back to Work

Warning! Chapters 140-145 were all posted back-to-back! Returning readers, make sure you pick up the story in the right place!

Chapter 144: Back to Work

Izumi groaned as she planted headfirst into her Emotional Recharging Station. Momo’s glorious boobs, plus the hug that her girlfriend reflexively gave her, slowly restoring her will to live once more, just as they always did. They’d been away for just over a month, dealing with the issue in Australia. Coming back, they’d found a massive pile of home front problems waiting for them instead.

Pressure for more Androids was among the least of the issues, since they’d left another set of frames already under automated production and being periodically checked on by 21O. They could ‘wake up’ an additional half dozen Androids anytime. Two more Operator units and four more Combat Models. Dealing with them, getting them adjusted to humanity and so forth, would take time and effort. Though less with each batch, since 6O and 21O could now handle at least some of the process for helping orient their fellows.

A bigger issue was the sudden push to expand the space infrastructure even faster, due to the enemy finally managing to mount serious naval offensives. Given the way that could disrupt trade even farther, the push to get more critical infrastructure into orbit as a backup was understandable. But figuring out how to do it, even when given immense resources to work with, was a herculean task. Then, just to add more chaos on top of difficulty, they’d been alerted to the murder aboard Orbit 3. Jirou had thankfully managed to find the culprit and get them to confess before they’d even gotten back, but there were all sorts of legal ramifications to having dealt with that mess internally. Doing so had been the best of numerous bad options, but it was still going to be a thorny issue to sort out.

Then there were the meetings, requests, paperwork hell, and briefings to bring them back up to speed. It had already been an exhausting couple of days and they weren’t close to done yet. It was going to be a hell of a slog catching up to everything. Well, one thing at a time.

“So, Androids first? They’ll take the longest, technically, but a lot of it will be fire and forget. Doing our part will only take a few hours tomorrow, plus a few hours here and there helping the socialization along. Plus, once they get onboarded properly they’ll speed everything else up.”

Izumi, at least partially recharged, lifted her head out of Momo’s tits to respond to her girlfriend’s question.

“Sounds like a good plan, I think. Intelli can keep everything else running for a day longer while we handle that, then I think we tell the lawyers to fuck off. The legal grey areas can be figured out later, so long as we get a couple of WHA heroes up here for basic law enforcement. Getting the shipyard up and running is far more critical, doubly so since the Moon Mining team has prototypes ready. If those work, it will speed up the infrastructure work a lot…”

Momo nodded, then moved, dragging Izumi with her toward the bed. Neither of them had the energy for anything fun at the moment. They just wanted to collapse and turn off for a few hours before they were expected to keep solving all the world’s issues…

… … …

“Alright, nearly…there! Initiate boot up!”

Thankfully, 21O had found the time to go over their initial Android Transfer system, designed to allow Izumi to transfer the data for YoRHa units from their backups stored in her Quirk, into new bodies. 21O had actually worked properly with some of the hardware involved before, or at least versions of it, as their design had been based in part on the systems that transferred Black Box backups into new copies after an original body was lost. As a result, she’d been able to improve the system considerably. To the point they could even do two transfers at a time now.

In this case, it was Operator Unit 14O and Combat Model 4B. The pair had worked together and, just as importantly, 2B had known 4B. 4B had, in fact, been part of the regular squad she worked with during deployments. Part of her regular Descent Team for combat operations. They hadn’t been close, exactly, but 4B and 11B, the latter of who would be in the next pair, would recognize 2B as their superior officer. More or less, at least. The Operators were simpler, none of them likely to…react poorly…to waking up in a strange place and situation.

Speaking of, there was a clanging sound almost immediately as 4B woke up and reacted. Thankfully, before she could do more than break out of the harness holding her, 2B initiated a handshake protocol that caused her former teammate to stiffen, then relax as she got a burst transmission confirming 2B’s ID. Operator 14O, thankfully, had only reacted with confusion. To be expected, given that Operators virtually never actually ‘died,’ and thus she was likely taking in her first ever body transfer.

“Wait, you’re a human!”

4B, who was out of the charging station now, pointed at Momo with a dropped jaw. Given that Izumi was fully transformed into her ‘Android’ state and would mostly read like an unknown YoRHa Type, it was understandable that it was Momo who the new Android focused on. They’d been anticipating the reaction, thankfully, and Momo simply smiled.

“I am! Welcome to Forge 1! This isn’t your original Earth, but I think you’ll find the differences to your liking, since humanity is still going strong here. Even if we are under a bit of a threat that we hope you can help with. That is for later, though. I suggest you check through the rather large packet of data 2B will be sending you, before I answer any questions you might have. You and 14O both, of course.”

Still gaping, 4B hesitantly nodded, and started going through the dense packet of experience data that 2B had put together for revived Androids. A packet that had since been enhanced with input from 6O and 21O, though A2 had predictably declined. It would undoubtably be a long few hours to get the new pair settled a bit to their massive change in circumstances, and then they’d be doing it again twice more later today. Still, the extra help would be nice, once they adjusted properly to how their lives had abruptly changed…

… … …

Izumi rotated the holoscreen, looking over their progress, even as Momo half-floated in the low gravity of Inari 1’s construction bay. She’d taken one look at her stubborn girlfriend after the last set of components and called a halt, despite weak protests from Momo. Creation’s capacity, fueled mostly by One for All, had grown throughout the massive construction projects that were the five Orbit stations, Forge 1, and Refinery 1. That, however, was a mixed blessing. No matter how much of the energy was taken from One for All, Momo’s original Quirk still had to kickstart every creation. Ironically, that kickstart was little different between a 200-ton beam of exotic metals…and a simple matryoshka doll. It still existed, though, either way.

Which meant that sooner or later, if she made enough things consecutively, Momo would still start to visibly lose weight.

These days, it took an insane number of creations for that to happen, of course. With the only use of her fat stores being to kick-start a creation, she had to make thousands of things to start seeing a noticeable effect, size being relatively irrelevant. Unfortunately, the sprawling, 15-kilometer Shipyard 1 Complex was such a mind-boggling megastructure that thousands of parts were just a start. With the increased urgency, Momo had pushed herself hard for the last three weeks, pushing aside breaks even when Izumi and Jirou tried to reign her in.

The good news was that Shipyard 1’s framework was nearly complete now, and most of its internal components would be coming from Forge 1 or lifted from various ground facilities. All part of an intensified effort to push their space infrastructure development forward at an insane speed. Even now, Dock 1 was already working at partial capacity, building the first prototype of the far larger mining and transport ship design intended to help ramp up raw material collection. If things went to schedule, that ship would finish at roughly the time Dock 5, the last construction dock of the complex, came online.

The pace was staggering, and some part of Izumi knew that it was even necessary, to give humanity the best chance possible. That didn’t mean she liked seeing Momo wreck herself like this, though. Once this was done, she was going to make her girlfriend rest, even if it meant kidnapping her and taking her somewhere no one could find either of them…

… … …

Momo smiled, just a little bit incredulously, as she stepped out onto the beach, gloriously nude…and stared up at the Earth hanging in space far above them. The lack of atmosphere on the moon made the blue jewel of their home visible even in the ‘day’ of the moon. Yet, the fact that she could step out onto an artificial beach, naked as the day she was born, and bask in it?

That was entirely Izumi’s doing.

Her ridiculous, ridiculous love had, somehow, arranged the construction of a ‘testbed’ environmental shield system to enclose a small habitat area on the moon, then filled most of the space with sand to create an artificial beach. All behind Momo’s back, without the use of Creation at all. Just the space her ‘digital’ inventory gave her to work with and a lot of fast talking with engineers who really wanted to test their systems and ideas but were well down the list of priorities.

After all, much as the final fallback position was to move people into space, that would only happen if they started losing the war on Earth.

Which, thankfully, was not the case. Far from it, in fact. While the appearance of enemy naval units had disrupted things farther, a successful campaign in Africa had resulted in enough of a setback for the Empire that the general trend of the war was in favor of humanity. At least for the moment. Of course, in the greater scheme of things, humanity was still fighting purely on their own ground, which was not how you won a war. Yet, even with the naval issues, the combination of dozens of different efforts, not just their own, was getting them closer and closer to being able to launch a true counter offensive at last.

The fighting on Earth wouldn’t be done anytime soon. Yet, unless something went badly wrong, it was predicted that the first true assaults onto the Empire’s homeworld would begin within no more than another two months. The delay from the original plans wasn’t even being looked at as a bad thing at this point, as Melissa, Mei, and dozens of others working together had finally cracked a way to power and operate mech and power armor via pure QE methods. The results were currently being field tested by the Guild, and it was looking promising that they might be able to take them through the Gates as a force-equalizer when the time came.

All of that was for later, though. For now, Momo was going to enjoy the fruits of her ridiculous lover’s hard work to make sure Momo took a vacation. After all, how could she possibly resist being the first person to sunbathe nude on the moon? She wondered if anyone down there had a good enough telescope to sneak a peek? Warmed with a bit of arousal at that thought, she strolled out to the blankets that had already been laid out and created a bottle of suntan lotion.

Now, she just had to wait for Izumi to get out here and rub it into her body. Some things, one should always endeavor to do the fun way…

… … …

Izumi never thought returning to Earth from space would be a relief. Space was supposed to be an awesome adventure to look forward to! To be fair, it still was, in some ways. She’d loved their trip to the moon, for example. Doubly so when Jirou had been able to join them on their second and third days of their min-vacation there. She also still wanted to explore the rest of the solar system, some day. See incredible sights, view the universe from amazing vistas, etcetera.

Yet, in the day to day of their current existence, most of their time in space had become a horrible slog. A brutal rush and push to build an infrastructure that likely should have been created over the course of a decade at minimum, not in little more than ten months. Honestly, they’d been so hard pressed that they’d had less and less time to give input on the design side, too. Which had just made the whole thing worse, since it wasn’t even intellectually stimulating to offset the brutal pace.

So, yes, she was relieved to set foot back on Earth.

Even better was that they would be staying for a while.

At this point, the expansion of the orbital infrastructure had hit the point of being nearly self-sustaining. Yes, technically Momo could provide more materials or more pre-formed parts to build more stations, but it wasn’t critical that she do so any longer. The first true deep-space mining ship was underway, undergoing a shakedown test that would see it return with a fair bit of material. A pair of transports intended to help land mining equipment on the moon would finish in another two weeks, joining the stream of modified Inari vessels that had already been carting basic equipment and construction drones out that way.

Along with captures of Near-Earth asteroids that were already helping fuel Refinery 1 and Forge 1, the infrastructure they’d built was working away with part of its capacity constantly dedicated to expansion. The skeletal frames of Refinery 2 and Forge 2 were already in place, rapidly being constructed without any input from them at all. There were, to be blunt, now better things they could be spending their time on.

Which is why they were heading to the Aegis Inc Mech Facility. The military really wanted mass production of both the Operator Light Mech, so named since 21O had been the primary source of the initial concept, and the Shieldmaiden II – Mod Q, to get underway. Both had already been produced in limited numbers, with the Operator proving to be an extremely useful scouting, rapid response, and pursuit mech in various campaigns around the world. The Shieldmaiden II – Mod Q was more complicated, an overhaul of the original design that was fueled entirely by QE and could thus be taken through a Gate. Neither had been optimized for mass production yet, however, with every current model essentially being hand built.

That optimization for mass production, or rather creating facilities that were capable of handling mass production, was something that Momo and Izumi had developed more of a mind for than the design teams. In no small part, it had to be said, that was due to their work on all of the Orbital Infrastructure projects. The unique needs of low-gravity and zero-gravity manufacturing had forced them to get very good, very quickly, at out-of-the-box thinking when it came to manufacturing and assembly processes. Adding in the fact that they had been heavily involved in designing the original Shieldmaiden production facility and Izumi was still one of the foremost experts worldwide in Quirk Energy Theory? Well, they were the obvious people to tap for getting the job done.

Thankfully, this time, they’d be getting to do actual design and testing. Much more enjoyable than playing combination construction worker and professional 3D puzzle builder…

... ... ... .... ... ...

A/N 1: I'm seriously envious of Izumi's Emotional Recharge Station.

A/N 2: I did some research, trying to get a feel for now many YoRHa Androids there actually were. The only answer I could find with vague support was 'several hundred.' Eliminating the scanner units from that, maybe 200-300 total, I figure. In theory, they could seed new androids with enough study, but that would take time. So they have a bit of a hard limit on how many unique YoRHa androids they can bring back.

A/N 3: The 'Operator' Mech Armor is loosely based off the Locust from Battletech. It's sort of the quintessential 'light' mech from that franchise, which is where I pulled from for the Shieldmaiden as well. I don't quite remember off hand which mech I based the Shieldmaiden off of? I think it was either the Atlas or Marauder.