InterCons Story Book I

2. Executive Team Meeting

(Well, kind of. Most of the actual executive leadership team is at the on-shore headquarters, likely having a similar meeting.) 

CEO: "Well, I'm assuming by now you all know why we're all here."

Devan certainly knew, recalling the events on the bridge a few hours earlier. It turned out that all communication systems for reaching anyone outside of the flotilla were down. Luckily, the VoIP phones and radios still worked for communicating on and between boats; we just had to remember or write down what IP addresses corresponded to each phone and make sure DHCP was off, at least for the phones. At least the radio channels were all still what they were used to. 

CEO: "We haven't been able to contact anyone outside our fleet here. Luckily, we are relatively self-sufficient. However, because our supplies will not last forever, I propose that we pick a direction and head that way. Save the questions on repairing the coms until later."

Devan: "Without GPS, sir, how will we know where we've already been?"

CEO: "We won't. Do you have a better idea? I suppose we could leave some sort of floating marker like empty barrels, but those would drift away too, right?" 

Officer 3: "We could weigh them down, but they would still drift some. Never mind, we'll just hope we end up somewhere, I guess." 

CEO: "I'd suggest celestial navigation, if that's what it's called, but if you haven't noticed, two extra moons have decided to appear." 

About half of the personnel present either laughed, gasped, and/or began questioning the CEO's sanity. The other half had already seen the anomaly themselves. 

Devan: "It's true. For some reason there's three moons." 

CEO: "Evidently, we aren't on Earth, at least as we know it, and that's probably why the coms won't work. I assume all questions about repairing them have been answered? Good. Now, with that said, we should probably all know what we currently have at our disposal. Devan, would you like to brief us?" 

Devan: Oh shit. "Do you want a rundown of all the ships we have?"

CEO: "Yes, and their cargo, if it's something I should know."

Devan: "We have the four retired cruise ships that are used for residential and office space, five container ships with vehicles and other cargo, currently no way to unload the containers from those ships because our ship-to-ship crane is broken, the three firearms and ammunition manufacturing ships, the general fabrication ship, one half-full LNG carrier, one nearly-full crude oil tanker, the floating storage and regassification unit, the supplementary turbine generator ship (which we also store most of our portable generators on), the ship we built a basic (and very limited) oil refinery on, the SMR generator ship we were going to install NuScale's reactors on, the general materials and replacement parts storage ship, the research lab ship, the desalination ship, the waste treatment ship, and the two 'data center' ships with our servers and crypto mining hardware. We also, as most of you know, have several helicopters and smaller boats for patrols, firefighting, ambulance services, etc."

CEO: "Thank you. Now, another thing, we shouldn't say too much publicly to the workforce. As you know, many of them are working for us on contract to support their families. I don't think they would react well to learning that there is a good chance they will never see them again. Understood?"

All: "Understood." 

CEO: "I believe that's all for this meeting, except I would like to speak with you afterwards, Mr. Shulman. I know it may seem strange given our current situation, but you finance guys may have some work to do. Y'all can go." 

//Author's note: I'm going to be using the "Person: 'Dialogue.'" format to write the dialogue from now on because I'm lazy...I mean because it's easier to tell what's happening, of course...

//(He's lazy.)

//SHUT UP OR YOU'RE FIRED!