Repairs & Resources

The Ardent is built to be able to repair, refit and sustain herself and her crew indefinitely. From the thoracic agricultural biome that provides food and life support to the rest of the ship to the drone fleet managed by T/OM-Cardea, the Ardent is well-equipped for unassisted voyages into deep space – and whatever she cannot provide for herself, she can direct her crew to find: cutting-edge Sweeper imaging allows for the identification of vital and unreproducible materials within a distant system before the ship makes the jump.

What allows for this flexible self-sufficiency is FABREP technology, which allows for common materials and objects to be printed from energy and base matter – in practical terms, from thin air. Fabricator/replicator terminals can be found everywhere aboard the ship, from habitation pods to entertainment venues. All of these individual terminals are threaded together into a central authorization system; while food and sundries can be created by any crew member, certain hazardous compounds are restricted to staff with a certain clearance level or role.

FABREP is quick and simple, from the end-user’s perspective; materials can be located in seconds and delivered within minutes. Behind the screen, the system is incredibly complex and sensitive, and it takes the combined effort of the automated repair drones and the onboard Taskminders division to keep delays at a minimum. Crew are reminded to be mindful of each other and the system as a whole, and to think before they FABREP.

With much of its equipment (including clothing and tools) produced on-demand via FABREP and recycled back into the system once it is no longer required, the Ardent was not built with redundant cargo space in mind. Each division module has a limited amount of storage space for critical and irreproducible materials related to its mission – for example, the cryo-containment unit for biological samples aboard the Kenolab, or the isolation brig built into the Mattock module – but, in general, the Ardent depends on its ability to FABREP what it needs when it needs it.