Too crazy to be true?

[Dunames Lopez]

Star Tours' outbound services from One Sith space were booked solid for months at a time; each time a service becomes available for booking, tickets are sold out in a matter of hours. Their current fleet of Pullmans and Bowsers were far from enough to ensure that the needs were met, and the outbound business from One Sith space was by far the most profitable aspect of their business thanks to dynamic pricing, and the Deluxe Action-Adventure Package did nothing to help. She has even considered terminating the Deluxe Action-Adventure Package service from Coruscant, while still honoring what slots there were. She had Ringovinda StarYards on speed dial and she had Merrily contact them:

"Greetings, Ringovinda StarYards. I am Dunames Lopez from Star Tours. I hope you still have a straight face after what I have to say, but I hereby request a feasibility study for a ship capable of whisking away one million refugees in a single flight in our bid to Operation Noah's Ark"

"With Star Tours, we know the drill. If you want us to build a ship that can somehow whisk away a million refugees in one go, what the Factory Judges will allow us to do is to build a ship for a fraction of that number. For the time being, we can still build Tofolk-class ships, or even Novroskis, and see what happens" Marcia told Dunames in the headquarters' waiting room while waiting for Charzon on the comm. She thought Dunames was crazy in asking for such a thing.

 

[Jessica Med-Beq]

"Crazy? Star Tours may have mystified the Factory Judges in the past, but that is no reason to think even we can accommodate such a request! I understand Kuat Drive Yards is in One Sith territory, and that other shipbuilders in Mandalorian, Silver Sanctum or Galactic Alliance territory may be slow to respond. I hope the stakeholders are patient because we are in no position to help build a ship that meets the primary specification - capable of whisking away a million refugees in one go from Coruscant's surface - just yet. Before you drive me crazy, are there other requirements that you feel are necessary for that ship?"

Charzon was, simply put, incredulous. She never heard of any ship being explicitly designed to carry one million passengers on an evacuation cruise, even if it was officially designed for far less. That was going to be carried in rather putrid conditions. Conestoga-class ships were too big for any corporation to have more than one, and it was obvious, based on Star Tours' past behaviors, that they, or the stakeholders in the operation, needed more than one unit so as to not to be too tied to any one route for evacuating this many refugees. But she knew that any extravagant requests and it may end up being unfeasible.

 

[Dunames Lopez]

"Apart from the basic necessities of such ships, the ability to land on planets. I know that some of the largest ships known to land on planets are Star Destroyer-sized, but this one is not SD-sized. If the Factory Judges won't let us get away with a ship that can carry a million passengers on evacuation flights, let's say that, officially, a quarter of that capacity in a commuter service would be required, even though after Operation Noah's Ark ends, we can't realistically operate a ship that big as a commuter shuttle ship because then the economies of scale will become expenditures of scale; a luxury cruise configuration will then be necessary"

While Operation Noah's Ark is underway, it will essentially amount to one-way service, but even a half-filled roundtrip service was still profitable under these conditions. There won't be anywhere near a million passengers to go back to Coruscant on any of the receiving planets, or perhaps even 200k passengers. At economy rates, a million passengers flown one-way is better than 200k roundtrips... assuming the same ship is used on both segments.

 

[Jessica Med-Beq]

"Phew... a bulk freighter capable of landing on a planet, that I hope you or the stakeholders in Operation Noah's Ark are comfortable with hyperdrive being slow, lightly armed and the ship making Star Destroyers out as if they were as maneuverable as Twi'lek or Togruta acrobats. Because landing gears, life support systems, weapons, reactors and other critical systems are taking up a lot of space"

They would still possibly get as many as 20 million cubic meters of pay-space in which to store passengers and whatnot in pretty cramped conditions. If used as a bulk freighter, they could get away with loading 3.5 million tons onboard, or the best bet would be to do as they always did afterward: partial cargo use and partial passenger use. Plus the ability to land on a planet would prove invaluable for hauling. But how much would that kind of super-bulk freighters possibly cost? Charzon hopes that Star Tours would have financing enough to pay for the whole thing; Operation Noah's Ark won't last forever.

 

[Dunames Lopez]

"Oh, for sure, an otherwise slow-as-molasses bulk freighter would not otherwise appear out of the ordinary so long as we - or other operators - remain neutral at least until the Operation is actually carried out. That said, with our current fleet we just can't serve the routes we currently have with any measure of appropriateness; how can you serve a route like Coruscant-Eriadu, or Coruscant-JanFathal with just one daily Bowser flight? if it was JanFathal-Nar Shaddaa, a Bowser would be just fine, but the Coruscant services to all four planets we currently serve Coruscant to will fill Tofolks on a daily basis, and Onderon would no longer be served from Coruscant"

Charzon would probably ask why Onderon would no longer be served from Coruscant, but Tofolks have much longer range than Bowsers. But Charzon was probably not one to wonder what is being done with the ships once they arrive in clients' hands, her responsibility for a ship's configuration ceased when the ship left the yard. On the other hand, Marcia was. Marcia was closer to the maintenance side of things, such as when a targeting computer or a navicomputer malfunctions or something to this effect. She knew better than Charzon did that how a ship was used would affect how it would be maintained.

 

[Jessica Med-Beq]

"Star Tours definitely is growing, I can see that. But how many ships are necessary to grow out of your mess, and which class of ships?" Charzon told Dunames before Marcia had the courage to pull out a brochure that Dunames would surely add to her collection of such brochures on the wall of her office in THX1138 on JanFathal one way or another. The brochure talked about how clients used Ringovinda StarYards products to exceed the specifications listed in the Factory without having to circumvent the volume of pay-space available on a ship.

"Since you mentioned Tofolk-class ships, I can tell you the launch customer is planning to do the same to these ships as you will. 4,000 passengers on bucket seats. Acanthus plans on running some services whereby smuggling panels can cover a cabin segment as small as two or three passengers. Star Tours uses what they call smuggling panels to maintain privacy in-flight, do you not?"

Officially at least, Star Tours seemed to be using smuggling panels at a customer's request for privacy. Star Tours may as well publicize and run columns in their internal magazines about how to circumvent the judgments of Factory Judges about how to load and outfit a ship, using the brochures as material in said columns, with the first of these starting with how they managed to mystify the Factory Judges (either Star Tours or Ringovinda StarYards, whoever did that is not clear) without the need for mind tricks. But how interesting would that be to passengers?

 

[Dunames Lopez]

"Let's see. Twenty Tofolk-class ships, twenty-two Bowser-class ships and sixty Pullman-class ships, all of which are to be paid upon delivery of each individual ship"

That was to be a massive increase in fleet size, and a big bulk order. Perhaps the bulk discount will be larger than the cost of privacy panels, perhaps a feasibility study would be included into the list prices, but 40 million credits was not insignificant. Yet she knew that Coruscant alone harbors a lot of refugees looking for a way out, and that larger doses of refugees at a time would perhaps cut into their profit margins on a per-seat basis, but Star Tours had enough cashflow to pay for the ships as they are built. Thanks to dynamic pricing, they could charge high prices for outbound flights from One Sith space, but how long will those inflated prices last, once they will operate 4,000-seat Tofolks? They will have eight times as much capacity on Coruscant routes even without increase in frequencies, but how does that affect non-Coruscant services?

But Charzon knew that, with Star Tours, they mean business and the demand is quite high for transportation from and to One Sith space (especially from) so that even the current inflated prices did not hold, they may be sufficiently high to be capable of sustaining growth and even, perhaps, a stake in Operation Noah's Ark, which was rumored to be the Silver Sanctum's brainchild. After all, Star Tours was still a relatively minor spaceline, but one among the fastest growth in the galaxy.

 

[Jessica Med-Beq]

"I can offer you the feasibility study for free, in exchange of which any bulk discount would be negated on the current order. Normally, if a client wanted a feasibility study without ordering the resulting ship at the same time, they would pay for the study, and the study fees would be applied towards the cost of the construction of the first ship if the client goes ahead and have the ship built"

"My role in a feasibility study is merely that of weaponry and how does that relate to targeting computers, whether a given protocol for weapon-targeting computer interface and busing is a better choice vs. another. The main question is: are you, or the stakeholders in Operation Noah's Ark comfortable operating a Maximum Battleship-sized ship with a somewhat subpar weapons suite?" Marcia asked.

That seems... surprising, given what is publicly known about Marcia; then again, perhaps Marcia's memories of graduate school were of endless readings about obscure books, fiction or non-fiction, about computer-device interfacing/busing, or even her proposed dissertation topic. But Marcia had nothing more to say about what she would do in such a feasibility study, and Charzon issued a warning to Dunames.

"In a new class of ships, it's always the lead ship that costs the most. Keep that in mind, and a Maximum Battleship-sized ship usually costs about 100-150 million credits each"

 

[Dunames Lopez]

"I am hereby ordering 20 Tofolk-class ships, as well as exercising all my options on Bowser-class and Pullman-class freighters, without maintenance options. Now, just draft the contract for us to sign"

One hundred million credits was not a trivial sum for a spaceline, and, as Merrily would say, it is likely that, if she was to somehow make use of financing once the construction of that behemoth ends, Star Tours would be paying its role in Operation Noah's Ark for decades if it was to take part. It was a highly risky business move. And that's if the ship was even feasible in the first place; to Dunames, if it was feasible, Star Tours would certainly be an operator of the Operation. Whether one among many or the primary one remains to be seen. Landing gears are driving up the costs, that's for sure. Certainly Star Tours had planned for the post-Noah's Ark service of the resulting ship: a cruise, rather than just flying a ship from point Aurek to point Besh as is currently the case; no way a ship this massive would be able to be operated with loading and unloading all the passengers at once.

"Sorry if I digress, Marcia, but what was the topic of your aborted dissertation? There seems to be a mismatch between your background and your skills... I understand that Ringovinda StarYards hired you initially for something that didn't have anything to do with engineering, but it seems that you have an uncanny talent for something as oddly specific as weapon-computer interfacing/busing, as if your aborted dissertation was about a topic of that variety"

Dunames knew that Marcia was a failed prodigy of literature scholarship, that she started a PhD in literature and had to let go of it while in ABD status due to some traumatizing event. But seeing her getting involved in engineering decisions is something that baffled her at that stage. But while she is waiting on Charzon to draft the contract for her to sign, Dunames needed to go to the bottom of the truth about her, because it seems suspicious. But failed literature PhDs were, unfortunately, shunned on most job markets and hence they can spend years being unemployed and a lucky few get underemployed. Once the contract arrives in Dunames' hands...

 

[Jessica Med-Beq]

"You should never have inquired about it" Marcia responds, in tears. "It reminds me of painful aspects of my own past that I'd rather not revisit. But since no one asked me about it before outside of my family or other Ringovinda StarYards staff, I'll forgive you. That aborted dissertation was to be called The Image of Capital Ship Tactical Systems Maintenance in the works of Carmen Rajaion and the first four chapters of the dissertation were already written..."

As far as Ringo Vinda is concerned, the first chapter of a dissertation is the introduction, the second, literature review, the third is about methodology. And there is usually as many chapters for findings as there are sub-topics on which there are findings, unlike some planets where all the findings are in one chapter, knowing that the last chapter is reserved for the conclusions and avenues for future research. Carmen Rajaion loved to talk about topics that other novelists of the Gulag era, and heck of all eras, would avoid at all costs, in her novels. Marcia wanted to talk about topics such as weapon-targeting computer interfacing/busing, weapons maintenance, shield generator maintenance, power conduits in her dissertation. The end result would have looked almost like a technical manual covering these topics, more than any real literary dissertation, had she completed it.

"Oh, yes, the contract. In a few weeks we will have the answer as to whether the ship is feasible given the specification you just gave, or not. But in the meantime, ships wll be built and then Star Tours can expand along more routes, relieving pressure on the ships currently in service. See you in a few weeks, Dunames!"

Dunames sighs in relief upon receiving the answer from the head honcho of the company she purchased all of the Star Tours ships in service from. And the bulb lightened in her head, now knowing how Marcia could know so much about starship weapons-targeting computer interfaces. Charzon knew it all along, however. She now posts the new contract with Star Tours on the wall of her office on Ringo Vinda.