The following morning arrived, with this Thursday being one day short of Friday, the day where I would get my suits, as well as the last day I would be dealing with boring administrative work. I took the work morning serious still. I wouldn’t want to leave a bad taste in anyone’s mouth who I worked with. I have a bit of a reputation to keep up, that of a Young Master who doesn’t hold the servants and lower ranked members of the Clan as beneath them. Even without that reputation, my parents did not raise a son who tossed people aside when they climbed up the ladder of success. I was always reminded to never wantonly burn bridges, as you never know when they may be useful in the future. As this was a close to having a job reference as you could get within a Clan, this definitely would qualify within my parent’s advice.

I stayed for my full shift, left none of my work incomplete , even stayed a bit late. Like with any administrative job, you have to make sure any notes on ongoing projects or other in process work has significant enough details so the next person doesn’t have to spend a bunch of extra time playing catch up. While I could have waiting until Friday to do it, I figured I would be too excited Friday with my suits to be focused enough. I ended up staying about an hour extra writing down notes on all the problem or unique projects, along with the different bookmarked resources I had needed to verify all of them. As a result, my Thursday work day was relatively easy, if slightly prolonged, however my afternoon would be both very prolonged and a fair bit complicated.

Opting for some delicious barbecue for lunch, I enjoyed a solid hour of peace and quiet in between ordering and eating the food. Shortly after I finished getting things underway, and as I was about to get in a little more formations reading done, Zhonglei came in with a couple other administrative servants. While his arrival would certainly have been an interesting occasion, to say the least, the servants following him brought in a couple heavy stacks of documents, the ones I wasn’t expected until later about the Flagship Project. On top of one of the sheets I saw a schematic of the ship, with the design formally labeled the “ Zhou Dragonship”.

“I see I have some homework for the next few days, and that someone finally decided to name the ship” I say to Zhonglei as he was directing where to place the stuff. I follow up my statement about why he needed to be here as well. Zhonglei said it was part of the operational security attached with the project. Some of the documents I was given had a high clearance level associated with them, and that while I was being given that level, any time the documents were in transit between two groups of people, someone with proper clearance was needed to be present to ensure espionage or theft didn’t happen. With this notice I facepalm before looking back at Zhonglei, “I’m going to be playing babysitter with these documents when I have to give them back won’t I?”

He just grins back at me before I groan a bit, thanking him for bringing the documents to me. After signing that the documents have been transferred to me, the chain of custody document just reinforcing how important some of these documents are, I begin the painstaking process of sorting through the documents. It didn’t take long to find the smallest tidbit of the ships design that warranted the extreme security. I found the three most important weapons of the ship.

In order to understand why the ship is armed the way it is, I had to reference the major military ship types first. First there are Destroyer class ships, the relatively fast and mobile war ship. These aren’t meant to be able to destroy big ships on their own. But an unescorted flag ship or other large ship could easily fall to a small fleet of these, as they would be too maneuverable to be hit. The next class of warships are the Carrier class war ships. These could be a variety of ships, but largely they were responsible for carrying troops and equipment, usually vehicles, to another war zone. In addition these would act as mobile command ships, pretty much always needing an escort. The last type of warship being the cruiser class war ship. These were the second largest, but most heavily armed war ship out there. Often times an advanced cruiser would be a fleet killer on their own. While the designs of these could vary anywhere from a hulking behemoth on their own, capable of destroying a city without support, others could be the sniper of the sea, putting out heavy fire from a distance, destroying fleets before they could get close.

As a result of these major ship types, any large offensive would have one carrier, one or two cruisers, and an escort of destroyers to ensure they couldn’t be flanked. At first I thought the flagship would be a carrier, considering it would be the command ship, but when I found out it was not only a cruiser, but a mega cruiser, I understood why. A flagship wouldn’t be brought along and just parked somewhere in an extended battle. It would be the line breaker, the fleet killer, the tip of the spear. This dragonship was designed to be sent out in the initial strike, so the opening for the troops and forward base could be established. After that, it would patrol for large unseen threats, while not caring about small assaults. As a result it would need big weapons to take down big threats, while also having some sort of area of attack weapon to take down large fleets of small threats. As a result the dragonship ended up having two large magic railguns and a linking device meant to connect multiple water Qi users together. The railguns would be used to decimate carriers with several shots , and even other cruisers with but one or two shots. But the big weapon that will make them feared in the sea? The linking device that allows the creation of super maelstroms. By channeling the Qi of dozens of Qi users into various formations, massive super whirlpools are created. These can sink all but the biggest cruisers and carriers, even then, putting those ships out of battle. The combination of the super maelstroms and fire from the railguns results in the smaller ships being destroyed near instantaneously as they get sunk or smashed together with other ships. The larger ships may survive the whirlpools themselves, but will be left defenseless against railgun fire.

This results in the niche usage of the Zhou Dragonship being best to take on larger stages battles, but so much loose collections of ships or to be bogged down in one position. While knowing a ships weapons may be important, and definitely confidential, the real reason knowing the weapons made it confidential is the associated Qi technology and lightning Qi source. While a couple other nations had variations of railguns, every instance of the weapons were heavily regulated, as no two nations had the exact same method used for their creation. As such, there were shadow wars over each other’s designs, marking the new step in their wars over intellectual property. As I was going through some of these documents, I noticed procedures for essentially vaulting many of these technical documents, where they would be placed in some near unreachable storage location, never to be looked at again, instead more simplified and censored versions of the blueprints would be created for the sake of maintenance. So now I have a lot of documents that would be put in a metaphorical black hole in a couple months.

It became even more complicated when I started reading through all the various security protocols and dress code. I knew about heavily enforced compartmentalization of the staff ahead of time thanks to My guards, but what I didn’t know about was the dress code assignments for the different types of staff. Different types of staff were expected to wear different color combinations, along with badges and generic clothing associations. As an administration member in a leadership position, my clothes had to be largely blue, to denote office staff, with something jade colored, such as a pendant or tie, to denote my status in management. In addition, only the relevant color combinations were given to people, making it hard for people to dress up in other departments colors. As a member of management I had a much larger knowledge of what people wore particular color combinations, but I could tell I still didn’t know everything. There were certain patterns of colors I would notice, but then it would occasionally skip over a combination, such as their being combinations that include jade, blue, black, and red pendant necklace combinations, but no white, whereas white is included in the colors for clothes, shoes, and headpieces.

Finishing up my cursory look through the documents, I notice a somewhat detailed explanation of a filing cabinet system similar to the one in my current job, albeit much more complicated due to a lot more places sending documents into the filing system. This results in multiple large filing cabinets being grouped together, forming a wall of filing cabinets, just like a wall to wall bookcase, each having labels detailing which departments and groups the specific cabinet is dedicated to. Taking a second to admire the lengths the system for receiving and delivering documents, taking a mail delivery like system where the filing cabinet acts like a mailbox, and the administrative room acting like a central mail room. After I’m done nerding out, I begin the slow process of separating the documents into several distinct groups so I can more easily use [Split Focus] when memorizing the documents.

After an hour of sorting through the documents, only really making sure I keep any of the extra secure documents, the ones I would need to keep a chain of custody on or otherwise be careful I don’t lose them, in their own pile, I managed to get them all sorted. Finally began the real grind, with the next few hours of my life being a blur of reading documents about security, the quality of different woods being used, and about the supply schedules of the different things the work site needs, among other things. By the time dinner came around, I managed to get through just under half the documents, which was over a hundred sheets of paper. Getting some meat buns for dinner, I worked through my dinner, knowing I wouldn’t have as much time tomorrow to get much reviewing of the documents done, as I would be getting my suits finished, which would end up taking a couple hours probably.

By the end of the night, about three fifths of the documents I reviewed and memorized, which should leave me enough time on Friday, if not a bit of spillover onto the weekend would be fine. Finishing up around nine that night, I get ready for bed, happy that I only have one more day left before I get to start something more fulfilling. Taking a bit longer to fall asleep, being too giddy to finally get my suits, I eventually fall asleep just before ten.