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Conference room 2, Med Force Omega Hospital, Omega 3 System
The base was finally at its new position about 8 kilometers from Freeport 1 and just off the lanes. It was ideal and the staff was settling in. Much change was underway and there was a buzz of excitement. Recent positive correspondence with the Corsairs put people at ease and for the moment, Erie was on the back burner. Now, a new opportunity, a group from Bretonia was exploring a business opportunity with the Enterprise.
Finnean MacRory was visiting the station. There was no major preparations or cleaning for the guest but business as usual. Medical staffs taking care of the needs of patients and the base staff keeping things going. Billy Garand, the current base administrator, was running supplies. The bar had a few off duty personnel relaxing while a couple of people were involved in a game of Chess.
Doc himself was in his best robes in Conference room 2 preparing to meet his guest. His instructions were simple: just escort Mr. MacRory and his people to the room and keep waitstaff where they could be called upon. For the moment, Doc had a seltzer in his hand and on the table was a medium sized platter of cheeses, pepperoni and crackers. As he waited, he just looked out the window at the passing ships and watched a Corsair patrol skirmish with a bounty hunter.
"Doctor," called a voice over the intercom, "You guests have landed. I will escort them to you in about ten minutes."
"Excellent," he replied, "I will be waiting."
Some minutes passed, then the door opened and a tall man in his late thirties walked into the conference room. His dark hair was cut short, gradualy transitioning into a stubble of a beard. His face was still young, though there were signs of the creeping age, mostly subtle wrinkles around the corners of his eyes. He wore a flight overall with a synth-leather jacket on top of it, both worn, but well maintained. The jacket was decorated with a simple patch on the left shoulder, though the motif was almost bleached out, showing only a vague hint of former colour and shapes.
He quickly scanned the room, briefly but efficiently checking all the corners and then he turned his full attention to Doc. Smile formed on the man's face, showing yet another set of small wrinkles at the corners of his mouth. He approached Doc and extended his hand in greeting.
"Doctor!" he said, his voice deep and little raspy, "Nice to finally meet in person. I apologise for my attire, but the cargo must flow so I left my ship in my first mate's hands and took our freighter for this trip."
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He met Finnean half way to the door to give a handshake.
"Good to meet you as well," he said with a light smile, "and no apologies necessary. You are dressed just fine."
He released his hand. "May I offer a drink? We have just about everything here."
"I am thinking this meeting will be fairly simple," Doc stated. "Here at Med Force Enterprises, we do not deal in ships so I trust you have found someone for that. Now, medical equipment and training, THAT I can help you with. Are you looking for general training or something more specific?"
The drinks arrived. Already, Doc was comfortable in the presence of MacRory.
"I wouldn't mind some whisky if you have it." he said, while grabbing some cheese from the platter.
"And yes, the ship itself will hopefully be handled by someone else, I'd just like your input on the medical part. I'm hoping I'll be able to comission a new construction instead of buying already assembled ship, so if your people could eventually provide some input to the shipbuilders in regards of the medical facilities I would greatly appreciate it."
By then his whisky was ready, so he leaned on the table and took a sip.
"Not bad," he nodded in approval of the drink. "Though I'm not familliar with this blend, where is it from?"
He took another sip and then put the glass on the table.
"Now... where was I? Ah, right, the specifics of my conundrum," Finn stated, with a hint of a salesman theatrics in his voice and gestures. "As I imagine you'll agree, a state of the art medical facility is useless without a medical personel to run it. I mentioned in my message we do have volunteers to staff it, and they are all medical professionals, but I see at least three issues I'd like your help with, both with the facility and the staff."
"One," he raised his thumb, "they are all used to working on planet, where there are no risks like loosing gravity, atmospheric pressure, and other shenanigans the void is oh so happy to throw at an unfortunate spacer, so they'll need to learn how to handle all that."
"Two," he followed with his index finger, "according to my brother, they are all a bit... fresh and hotheaded. As you can imagine, the people who'd volunteer to go to space instead of sticking to their cushion of a job on planet are usually the young and adventurous types. I hope this can be... alleviated during the general spacer training we'll have to put them through, but I imagine they'll be much more prone to listen to someone from their own field of experise."
"And finally," he added the middle finger into the gesture, "the whole reason for comissioning the ship is we want to mount expeditions into the Earhart system and the Uncharted systems linked to it. In turn, that's the reason why I'd like a more robust medical facility than for example your run of the mill liner ship would have. I imagine operating in remote and isolated places has it's unique specifics in regards of medical care."
Finn took another slice of cheese, giving himself a little bit of time to think. When he was done with it, he took another sip of the whisky and smiled.
"I think I went over everything. Does this give you a good idea of what we need?"
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Doc listened carefully as MacRory explained what his needs were. He nodded as he explained. Fortunately, this was everyday stuff for his people so the answers came fairly easy.
"For what it is worth, we spend more of our time on a station somewhere than we do planetside," he explained "so that is nothing new for us. With the Bretonian Crown all but taking Gran Canaria and Liberty occupying Erie, much of our planetary services are quite limited. Two things will help you working in space. Once, respecting your neighbors. Right now the Corsair Empire is our biggest neighbor and it is not always easy but we have a healthy respect for each other. You do not have to approve of what they do or even like them but respect will help a lot with whoever you must work near."
"The other thing for working in space is having a good engineering team," he continued. "I am no engineer but I have a man on Med Force One that pretty much runs the ship. He and his crew are the best asset I have there. A good engineer will go unnoticed when everything is working right so be sure to give them props as much as possible."
He sipped his seltzer. "When it comes to medical crews themselves, that before mentioned engineer will either make or break them when it comes to the equipment. But what really helps us is that we have enough staff to where we can rotate crews off and on. For example, no one likes Freeport 5 with all the radiation so that is a thirty day tour. Tours on say, Freeport 1 are less stressful so that is a six month rotation. Keep them as fresh as possible with shore leave once a tour is done.
He again sipped his seltzer and put up a finger. "And give them the best food you can get. Little things like that help."
"Earhart," he said with some question. "I have only heard of it. I do not even know where it is. Is it possible to build a base there and have it last? Going back to ones neighbors, that is a question to consider. What kind of environment is there? Knowing that will help me make more sense."
Finn listens to Doc, occasionaly sipping on his whisky, a puzzled expression slowly creeping to his face.
When Doc finishes Finn is silent for a minute or so.
"While I aprreciate your advice - and it is good advice," he said eventualy, "I think there's been a slight misunderstanding, Doc. I blame my long winded and probably a bit convoluted explanation for that. We don't want to bulid a station, or put the medical facility on one. We're comissioning a large ship equiped with Jump Drive, so we're able to go to the Earhart systems to explore it and gather resources from there. Given the Earhat system and the systems linked to it are mostly unknown, and given we need the large ship just to get there, I figured we could get more use out of it by expanding it's medical facilities. That way, we can deal with with potential unforseen medical emergency on the spot, without the need to navigate back to Sirius, which could waste precious hours. I take the safety of my people very seriously and having top tier medical facility instead of your run-of-the-mill med bay seems like a realy good idea for a ship which plans to lead an expedition into pretty much unknown teritory."
He pauses and finishes his drink, then he resumes.
"I contacted you because if what I heard about you is correct, you operate a Nephilim equiped as a hospital ship. For that reason I hoped you could give us some advice and assistance when designing and equiping a smaller scale facility on the Bustard we comissioned and maybe provide some training for our potential medical personel, since they are used to working on planet, instead of a ship operating in remote teritories and so they lack the knowledge and skills which are specific to that environement. For example I doubt any of our volunteers could perform first aid in zero-g in the unfortunate event when the artifical gravity goes out, simply because they never expected they would need to. Their studies and training were focused on the 'dirt' side of things, so to speak."
Finn then sits down on a chair and pours himself another drink.
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"Yes, perhaps I misunderstood you," Doc replied. "The Nephilim of what you speak is Med Force One."
He smiled a moment. "I think rather than tell you about it, let me give you a tour of it."
He then called on his comm, "Commander Haddock, I will be giving a guest a tour. Stand by for a shuttle arrival."
"Mr. MacRory, do follow me, Sir and um, do bring your drink with you. It is a shame to waste good whiskey."
Within a few short minutes, the Nephilim de-cloaked before the hospital and received a shuttle with Doc and his guest. The docking bay was right near the main surgical area.
"This is the main reception area," Doc explained. "Docking bay 1 is our primary emergency reception. Patients come in here and head right for surgery."
He then escorted MacRory to a surgical ward. He also paged for Mr. Sloan, his chief engineer, to join him.
"This, Mr. MacRory, is where it all happens. It has been upgraded several times since we built it. Everything a medical team would need is here and since it is located more center of the ship itself, there is a lot of protection around it." He then gave MacRory time to look around the room to take it all in. As he did, Mr. Sloan arrived.
"Mr. MacRory, this is Eddie Sloan, my chief of engineering. If you have a question about anything, he can answer it."
Finn greeted the chief engineer and then let himself be shown around, whisky in hand. The nephilim was an impresive ship, thoroughly different from anything he was familliar with, and much larger than anything he ever commanded. The medical facility was impressive, though Finn lacked the background to truly appreciate it. He let them complete the tour, before he began asking the questions he had.
"Thank you for the tour, It certainly made an impression on me. I do have a few questions for you both, gentlemen. First, do you think that it's viable and practical, from both medical and technical standpoint, to scale this down a bit? We won't need a full scale hospital, more like a clinic able to take care of smaller expedition. If so, would Med Force be willing to help us with design and equipement of such clinic, if we provided you with the blueprints of the ship, or got you in touch with the shipbuilders? Would it be possible for you to give the medical personel who would crew it a bit of additional training, so they can batter adapt to working on ship instead of planet? And finaly, if the answer is 'yes' to all of my previous questions, what would you want in return?"
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"Of course THIS entire ship is nothing but a hospital and research center and not much for exploring so yes, we could definitely tailor make medical facilities to what your ship will need," Doc explained.
When Finn mentioned the blue prints, Doc just asked Eddie his thought on it.
"Not a problem," replied Eddie. "Just get the ship you want and we can take it from there."
"And providing training will not be an issue," Doc continued. "We can train them right on Med Force Academy or one of our Corvo cruisers that are also medical hospitals as they are of the scaled down version you seek. I can even have a crew work with your people on your own ship until they feel comfortable."
As to what he could use in return, Doc thought a moment. Credits weren't his motivator but keeping his people supplied and happy was. He just looked at MacRory with a look of wonderment.
"I do not remember if you said that you run supplies but if you do, we could always use some basic goods at our stations in Omega 3 and here in Theta. Is that possible? You know, food, oxygen, water and basic alloy?"
"I'm sorry Doc," he says eventualy, "but base supply isn't exactly our trade, and to be honest we will have our hands full in that regard with our own instalaltion we'll be putting up shortly. I don't want to get us tied to a regular supply of another base, since focus mostly on 'on demand' transportation. Let's say some group of Zoners really need weapons for self defence but the source of their preffered wepons is somewhere in Liberty where they currently can't really go to buy them. They can contact us instead and we'll get the otherwise inaccessible supplies for them. And it's not weapons, we have access to a lot of stuff. That's the sort of services we provide, and we'd be more than happy to do the same for you, free of charge, should you need it. We could perhaps agree on a price you'd ask us for your services and instead of money, You'd have credit in that amount for our services."
Finn rubs his chin a bit, a sort of subconscious habbit of his, while considering his next words.
"We are of course open to another ways of compensation, cash, information, or other, just not a regular long-term base supply."
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