An Unexpected Hitch in the Plan

{The second-to-last item on today’s schedule is the military,} Nova said. {With the designation of Mars as ARES Command, Lab City is in the middle of the final push in materials science to develop a new alloy that’ll turn the entire planet into a fortress. The design is finished and will include surface domes and a tunnel network that delves all the way to the solidified core, where we’ll house the necessary reactors and quantum superclusters. Work on that front has already begun and the mobile atomic printers we deployed reached the halfway point two days ago.}

“How long will it take for the necessary advances to be completed?” Aron asked. “If necessary, I can join in on the research and cut the time down by quite a lot.”