Moon Militarization

The Great War presented a great deal of challenges for the Revolutionary Government. Although France’s aetherfleet was one of the most impressive in the world, the spread-out nature of the Communiste Internationale made it increasingly difficult to maintain air superiority on all of its fronts. This problem was true of all of the Great Powers, and much like the rest France sought to meet this issue with a massive upscaling of its fleet. The construction of these ships was slow, costly, and incredibly difficult due to the technological complexity of these modern marvels. Manufacturers across France were strained enough producing goods for the war effort at large, and the repurposing of these already critical industries for the production of an ever-growing navy could lead to disastrous consequences for French logistics, which were already struggling to meet the current demands of the war. The French found an unlikely solution to their aethership problem, utilizing one of the Napoleonic government's biggest failures, the moon colony.

The decision to revisit Project Cassini was met with skepticism, but thanks to the repurposing of French Lunar tractors as military equipment at the start of the war, the projects leads were able to sway the most obstinate in the upper brass that such an endeavor was worth the effort. It also helped that most of the Lunar infrastructure needed to begin was mostly intact. Work on the Cassini Station began in secret on May 6th, 1939, which progressed quickly as engineers and technicians arrived at the apparent ‘ruins’ to breathe new life into them. The issues the colony faced prior to the French gate’s construction were still present, but less intense, as Cavorite and hermetic sealing technology had progressed quite a lot in the last few decades. That said, life on the colony was certainly uncomfortable compared with life on Earth, and even most of the gates. The workers in the colony were almost completely reliant on consistent shipments of food and equipment from Earth, which could be ferried to and from the lunar colony pretty quickly, but did expose them to undue risk from enemy aetherships.

Despite the risks though, by December 12th, the first civilian class aethership glided off the factory floor, proving that the low gravity of the Lunar environment could be used to the advantage of the workers in the production of French warships. This early success led to the Communiste Internationale pouring money and resources into the project, making the escort of recently manufactured supplies from Paris to the Lunar Colony the top priority of the aetherfleet. The defense of the moon colony burgeoned as the French intentions became clear to their adversaries, with air defense systems and a constant aethership presence in orbit over the moon by the new year. The failures of the past monarchical regime had become a strategic advantage that now only the Communists possessed, and would help them sustain their aethership production for the foreseeable future.