Star Resistance

by D. R. Rosier

  I paused for a moment and let that sink in.

  “That tall but skinny case is what holds the balls, umm, cores. It is part of a reactor scheme that is entirely modular.”

  I changed the holograms, making the balls go away, and then there were ten skinny cases, in two rows of five, connected together.

  “This is what will be in the engine room in a destroyer, to power the ship. It’s ten, not twenty, and I’m sure your wondering why. I’ll get to that later. These ten though, have the capability to create enough energy to run all the systems on the ship, minus the stronger shields, the extra plasma weapons, and wormhole drive. If for some reason, it ever became isolated it would be fine and have the capabilities of an old destroyer.”

  I brought up another hologram, with ten more power cores in two rows of five, in what was obviously an underground room.

  “These additional ten reactors will be in a power plant, and connected to the ship with dimensional technology. The reason I showed you the cores in the beginning, was to make the point that the surface area and amount of element needed to run these twenty reactors, is exactly the same amount of element needed in just the one core on this ship.

  “This setup is far more efficient, why? All twenty reactors will be idling at an equal output level to power the ship, which will be exactly one twentieth of what our reactor is idling at. We all know when drawing from a reactor, the power has a geometric relationship to the amount of element used in its creation. To make it simple, I’m going to use the power hog of a wormhole drive as the example.

  “With our one core, we’d have to put out about a thousand times as much energy as the reactor at idle. Given that, and the horrible efficiency at high power draws, the element would be consumed a million times as much for those ten seconds, and cause greater leaks of dark energy which would degrade parts of the reactor and weaken molecular bonds.

  “What twenty reactors gives us, is adding a linear component to the equation. Each of the twenty would only have to output a twentieth of the amount, or fifty times the idle of this cruisers reactor. Each one, at just fifty times instead of a thousand, would make it consume the element at twenty-five hundred times normal. And that’s where the linear part comes in, because twenty-five hundred each only comes out to a total of fifty thousand times more element consumed than at idle, which is a hell of a lot better than a million.

  “The more reactors we have, the more linear the cost. I thought twenty a good number. Not only does it save on element, but it will also reduce the amount of stray radiation and limit the weakening of bonds to the core itself, which means when it’s time to replace the core, that’s the only part that needs replacing.”

  Vic said, “Holy shit.”

  I laughed, and said in a cheesy infomercial voice, “But wait, there’s more.”

  No one got it, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. No Isyth late night infomercials.

  Rilok said, “Why not put all twenty on the ship?”

  I smiled, “Because there’s more. In that example I gave you, that would only apply if all five hundred ships in our fleet opened a wormhole at the same time. So forget what I just said, because it will never cost you that much element, unless you do for some reason have every single ship take a wormhole at once. That example was to easily illustrate the savings and implications of this design, but I designed it better than that.”

  I changed the hologram again, this time it showed a cavernous room with five thousand of those towers strung together. Ten for each of five hundred ships.

  “The power plant which supplements the ships is dynamic. So, while when all ships are in combat that won’t make much of an impact, anytime else the difference will be stark. All five thousand of those are linked and in perfect sync, and will balance out so they’re all idling at the same power rate, all the time. So, say you want to send a squadron of five destroyers to another system through a wormhole. They’ll be pulling energy from the power plant, not ten specifically assigned reactors as I’d led you to believe in the example. So, five ships would be using energy from five thousand reactors, which means the power will simply double in those five thousand reactors. That means five ships just went through a wormhole, for only four times element consumption compared to idle.

  “At this point, the power cost is almost entirely linear, because none of the reactors will be strained or used at the high-power levels where inefficiencies come in. So suddenly, you’ve only used about four times the element instead of fifty thousand from my example, or in our current setup, one million times. There’s also as I said, much less degradation, and only the power cores will have to be replaced.

  “That’s why not on the ship, to make it more efficient, and actually share all those reactors between the five hundred ships. As I said, the only time they’ll really be strained, is in a large battle where all five hundred are running with fully powered shields, and firing all twenty-four plasma weapons, or of course, wormholes to another system. But yeah, I just made wormholes cheaper than current FTL.”

  Telidur said, “Current?”

  I nodded, “The savings in power cost translates to every system, not just wormholes. I made wormholes cheaper, and used it as an example because of the stark difference in cost, but the new reactor system means FTL travel, gravity, life support, weapons, and inertial dampening will be much cheaper as well. Another plus to the system is we don’t have to power down the ship to replace a core, just take down one reactor at a time. They’ll last longer, and will be easy for the bots to replace.

  “The one bad downside, is if someone finds where we have those five thousand reactors, and destroys them. The ships will still work of course, but in a highly-degraded manner. As such, I suggest we put a lot of plasma weapons on the surface of the asteroid or moon we use, and protective shields. I also suggest it be top secret, and the location be hidden from anyone except us five and the artificial assistants. In fact, it might be better to just have Jillintara build it, and only her and her replacement assistant, the one that will maintain and watch over it, will know where it is.”

  Vik sighed, “How about a compromise. Put all twenty reactors on the ships, it will still be a lot cheaper from what you outlined. Then make a power plant of say a thousand more reactors, to share energy as needed based on the ships that have the highest current demand.”

  “We could do that, but that’s an extra thousand reactors. Which will eat into the savings as they’ll all be idling. How about we put fifteen on the ships, and twenty-five hundred in the power plant. That’s ten thousand reactors, the same amount as my original proposal. Fifteen on the ship means we can run the enhanced shielding and the plasma weapons, the only thing that would be offline if we lost the plant, would be the wormhole drive. Even then, we could probably work out some kind of ship to ship exchange system, but that’s a lot more problematical than having a common power plant.”

  Vik grunted, “Better. I like the idea of the power plant to make it all cheaper, but I don’t want the ships to be degraded if we lose it. Losing the wormhole drive isn’t that bad, but losing the shields and extra plasma weapons could get our people killed. I think we have a plan, and once you make the changes submit the designs for the ships and power plant. Unless someone else has a suggestion?”

  I asked, “I still need to know about defenses, and if we should make the location of the plant a secret between only us, no evidence of the location on any data files accessible by others.”

  Vik nodded, “Let’s keep it a secret, and put in shields only. I imagine those shields would be virtually impregnable if it was powered by twenty-five hundred reactors. We can hardly keep it a secret if the asteroid is bristling with plasma weapon emplacements. I assume these reactors are the same you’re using in the probe ship?”

  “Yes, except it only needs ten, and even that’s overkill. Without life support, FTL, or artificial gravity the only system that comes even close to using a lot of energy is the impulse drive. When at res
t, the six thousand probes won’t be much of a draw either. The small wormhole generator is even cheaper than the impulse drive on that ship.”

  Vik said, “I can’t believe being more efficient is so simple. Damned greedy bastards were shooting themselves in the foot. Anyone have any more suggestions?”

  Jillintara said, “We should upgrade our ship sir, with twenty of the reactors, and tie ourselves into the system. I assume this more powerful ship is and will remain your flagship, so we should save credits too. I already plan to have the missile launcher and two plasma weapons replaced. That work will take a few days, once I have the equipment aboard. We can temporarily move to one of the new ships when the first one is built. I also believe we’ll need the new reactor system to be compatible with the new missiles?”

  I nodded, “Good point, the new missiles require that dimensional power connection with the main reactors on the ship that fired it, the current reactor isn’t set up for that.”

  Vik said, “Sounds good, I’m already liking the money saved when we use our stealth systems on our trip to Earth. We’ll put that off until the probe ship has seeded at least the five main planets of the empire and Earth, so we can sort of keep an eye on things. The first batch of ships will be done, and we can repair this one before we go. That will give us about nine months at Earth to work out some kind of deal, while the assistants build our fleet, test them, build a power plant, and while they seed the stars in the empire with probes.”

  Rilok shook his head, “You are one scary person Lori.”

  I laughed, “I just made energy cheaper by spreading out the load and impact, I didn’t invent one thing that’s new. Your companies are just too greedy, and probably thought of and then immediately discarded most of my ideas as damaging to their bottom line, or too high a risk.”

  Rilok asked, “What are you doing now?”

  I shrugged, I didn’t really have anything, I wouldn’t be involved in the actual building of anything, that was mostly being handled by Jillintara.

  “I guess I’ll go back to simulations.”

  Rilok shook his head, “You should do that, but you’re already good enough at it to where once or twice a week would be enough to improve. How about designing a new ship suit, powered like our palm weapons instead. It could have microscopic connections to feed us oxygen, and the shields could be stronger against plasma hand weapons, and not depend on our body heat for power. While you’re at it, add stealth systems so we can make ourselves invisible to visual and life form scans. You could upgrade our palm weapons too, I don’t like having nothing but a deadly option, and sometimes it’s impossible to take an external weapon along.”

  Did he just compliment me, and then ask for a favor?

  I wasn’t sure what to make of that, except I wanted a ship suit like that as well, without a limited life support, not to mention a less than deadly option in my palm weapon. Protecting from visual, heat, and life sign scanners would be easy enough, as well as sound dampening, nothing new there. Shields would be easy as well. The palm weapon too, sound was just a form of energy, and sonic weapons were just as mature. A whole bunch of stuff with nothing new, just applied with the new dimensional technology, which meant it would work with a palm implant and ship suit, instead of a bulky suit of armor.

  I smirked, “I suppose I could do that, after I fix the ship and power plant designs and get them to Jillintara. I’ll even wait to submit the designs for resale in the empire until we’re done with our counter-revolution, to give us an edge if we need to get planet side. I can do sound and plasma on the palm weapons.”

  Vik said, “Submit designs?”

  I grinned, “Sure. We’re not just stealing from the companies by creating our own element, we’re stealing my lucrative royalties from selling to the military. Once we win, from then on, I expect my share of the money.”

  Telidur laughed.

  I winked at him.

  Vik looked amused, “Anything else?”

  No one had anything.

  The rest of the day, I revamped the plans. It wasn’t that difficult to add five more reactors to the ships, and cut back the power plant design by half.

  The hand implant was easy as well, all I had to do was add a second control option, and add sending sound through the power from the base station, along with the plasma option. That only took me about an hour. We could even keep the same implants, all it needed was a software update, and a new base station where the plasma and sonic weapon was generated.

  The suit was a problem. The power part not so much, that was easy, and the shield emitters were already there. Oxygen wasn’t hard either, as simple as the power, it would excrete oxygen through the dimensional ports if we found ourselves without atmosphere. The hard part was adding the stealth system. The technology already existed in hard outer suits, ones like the soldier Stolavii had worn, but it didn’t exist small enough. The emitters to create the fields to block body heat, life signs, and to camouflage from sight, were small enough to fit in that kind of armor, but not small enough to be added to the thin material of a ship suit without causing unsightly bumps.

  I spent most of the rest of that day on it, without any luck. First I tried to create it smaller, but that didn’t work. Then I tried to make a belt of sorts that was part of the uniform. It both looked dorky, and with all the emitters in the center of the body there were coverage issues. Finally, I gave up on it, for the moment. I submitted the rest of my designs to Jillintara, but held back the suit. I wanted to take another crack at it before I gave up, and just accepted the better shields and oxygen supply option, but no stealth.

  It wasn’t until I started walking off the bridge, that it hit me in the face, and I started to giggle and laugh.

  Vik said, “What?”

  I snickered, “I’m an idiot and I totally missed the obvious. Give me an hour, and then dinner at your place?”

  Vik smiled and I heated under his gaze, “I’ll be waiting.”

  I turned around and went onto the bridge, and back into the design program. The emitters didn’t have to go into the suit at all. I was just being an idiot. I was using the microscopic dimensional ports for the power and oxygen, why they hell not for the stealth emitters? I felt foolish that I didn’t think of it earlier. They can go on the base station, and just transmit the field through the dimensional ports. Sure, it made the power requirements of the base rather high, but most of the time the stealth fields wouldn’t be on.

  When I finished, I submitted that design too. I felt a bit like a kid in a candy store, Jillintara would deliver our personal toys in a day or so. Then I left the bridge and headed toward the captain’s quarters. I was hungry, and for more than just food…

  Chapter Five

  When I walked in, Vik said, “There you are. You’ve exceeded expectations, mine at least, I wanted to take you over your console earlier. I don’t know why, but your hot when you geek out, probably because I know your also devastating on the battlefield. If I didn’t seem overly enthused about what you just made, it’s because I overcompensated.”

  I laughed, “Good to know, want me to talk smart during sex? I could whisper all about quarks while you’re taking me.”

  He chuckled, “That won’t be necessary. You know, you could have taken your time on that stuff Rilok asked for. What will you work on now?”

  I snickered, “I wanted those toys too, I’m glad he asked and gave me the idea. In addition to simulations, I’d like to focus on pure research now, which means long payouts, if I can even figure it out, and I’ll need permissions and resources for testing.”

  He looked curious, “On what?”

  I said, “Did you know, when opening a wormhole with this ship, at the ratio between power and the cost of the element used, the reactor is working at less than one percent efficiency? It’s efficiency sucks at idle, and drops like a stone the greater the power demand. Technically, the reactor in the old destroyers with an efficiency of just seventy percent, would provide enoug
h power to run a battleship, open wormholes, and have energy left over? It’s like someone deliberately half-assed it, and stopped researching, either to make more money, or because they couldn’t solve the issue. My solution does work, but it’s a workaround at best, and it’s cluttered infrastructure that violates the KISS principle at worst. We should be able to get the same efficiency from just one reactor.”

  At least, we should be able to. I just didn’t know if I could figure it out. The solution wouldn’t be just using what is already in use, it would be a breakthrough. I was smart, technically a genius, but I’d been working on that chemical analysis for the drug for two long years back when I was on Earth, and I knew I hadn’t even come close to the right way to synthesize the formulae. Of course, at least in this case I had a badly working reactor as a jump off point to figuring out the problem, and then fixing it. It appeared to be a converter issue, converting the power from raw energy to electricity, at least in part. Part of it might have been the interference caused by the concentration of dark energy, to generate more energy, we siphoned more dark energy, which led to those violent side reactions and the decay of reactor parts. Or, maybe it was a combination of both, who knew if I could fix it?

  Fortunately, with my solution we weren’t depending on it, we had cheap power, it was just ridiculous though to need twenty reactors for every ship, where one should do the job. But… it was enough to make the difference, to lower the cost, and it was what we had for now. I was definitely calling that a win.

  He sighed, “You’re doing it again, if you keep it up we won’t make it to the bedroom, and dinner will get cold.”

  Doing what? Oh, talking smart.

  I tilted my head, bit my lip seductively, then whispered in a breathless voice, “Power equals voltage squared,” and then licked my lips and said sultrily, “divided by resistance.”