“We are underway,” he replied with a raised eyebrow.
“But not under power. Now that you've rebuilt the bow emitters...”
“I didn't rebuild them. Just repaired them. They need to be replaced not rebuilt. They are old,” he growled. The whole damn ship was old. He was getting testy. Too much time on his feet again he realized.
“I think he knows that. So does O'Mallory,” Sprite replied. “But it's enough for them apparently.” O'Mallory had gone in a few minutes ago. Now he knew why.
He sighed and shook his head. She tisked tisked at him. “You can't expect everything to work out properly on the first go admiral. It's a work in progress. They are willing to accept things as is since it is progress.”
“It's a band aid,” Irons retorted.
“True. But it's better than what they've had in centuries. You do need to replace one of the port mid ships emitters though. The load isn't balanced.”
“I was planning on that,” Irons replied testily.
“I see that,” she said more cautiously. She accessed his notes and then the replicator list. He did indeed have a replacement emitter on the list. A work party was pulling it now.
“You won’t have enough material for the emitter though,” she cautioned.
“Talk to O'Mallory and Blur. We need that emitter up.”
“With that emitter I believe we can get to the sweet spot in alpha. The C octave I mean.”
“That's what I was thinking as well. And with functional emitters we are more than half way there for the hyperspace collectors as well,” Irons replied.
“Not much compression in alpha admiral. You won’t draw a lot of energy. Not enough to really make a difference,” Sprite cautioned.
“Something is better than nothing. If... If we can take the load off the reactor for even a short period its good. It gives me time to work on improving it.”
“Wow. Planning on being busy the entire trip?” she asked amused. She already knew the answer.
“Don't I know it,” Irons replied. “This will make up for being mostly idle on Destiny,” he replied.
“Idle. Yeah, right. Just repairing the ship, fighting off a clingy tyrant, and dodging an assassin,” Sprite replied dryly. Irons chuckled.
“Yeah, it was a light trip,” he said with a smile.
“If you say so,” she replied in mock disgust.
As the last pod was being replicated and put together piecemeal in the bay he talked with the crew helping him. With most of the hull repairs completed the EVA techs and those interested in what the admiral is doing next wander in. Pretty soon he has an impromptu class going. He kept it focused on shield and force emitter tech.
The discussions went from general emitter basics to how hover tech and inertial dampeners work. That leads to a side discussion on of all things floating buildings. He checked on the replicator progress then allowed the distraction to work itself out to its logical conclusion.
“Floating cities and buildings sound nice, I've seen plenty of paintings and the general concept is doable, but can anyone tell me why not?” he asked surveying the class. Most of the EVA techs with skin suits were lounging around. They had their tops off, tied around their waists. One was using a towel to mop at his face.
“Um...”
“Come on people. You're engineers, or at least you're supposed to be. Think it through,” he said as the guy with the towel tossed it to a passing tech. The tech caught it with a grimace and then looked around not knowing what to do with the thing. Another took the towel and dropped it into a brown sack tied near the hatch.
“Stability. Anything tall would be a pain to keep balanced.”
“Right. Go on,” Irons said encouraging them. Brows knit as the class thought.
“Balance. The emitters under the building would have to be counterbalanced by emitters in the floors of the building to give the people inside a one G field.”
“Right... but....”
“But...”
“You're all still missing the most important thing.”
A tech snapped his fingers. “Energy.”
“Exactly,” he said, pointing both fingers at the tech who said it. “Exactly right. Energy. It takes a tremendous amount to keep a mass in the air. The larger the mass the larger the amount of energy required to keep it up. The higher it goes and that exponential graph looks like a rocket taking off.”
“So why... I mean how can a shuttle you know um...”
“Use force emitters in gravity? Simple. Ground effect. See most shuttles at least most sensible shuttles have some form of wing. Sometimes it's the entire body of the craft. But the best ones have some sort of aerodynamic shape. The force emitters get the shuttle off the ground and propel it forward by pushing against the ground.”
“Okay...”
“So when the speed picks up there is a differential in air speed over and under the flight surfaces which results in lift. As long as the climb isn't too steep a shuttle can build up speed and altitude until the emitters are no longer needed or they are too far away from the planet for them to be effective. Then the shuttle kicks in its plasma engine or hydrogen drive to kick it the rest of the way to orbit.”
“Ah.”
“You said you've seen paintings and concepts... Have you seen the real thing?” the tech with the mohawk helmet asked. She swigged some water from a bottle and then wiped at her mouth with the back of her hand. She was a red head, freckled with gold piercings in both ears and her left eyebrow.
“Tests. A few cultures did use floating cities. But it's cheaper and wiser to build on the ground or in orbit.”
“Why?”
“Murphy, the bane of every engineer,” he replied. That had a few people wrinkling their noses. “If you're in the air and you lose power...” he snapped his fingers and made a whooshing sound and then a classic bomb whistle as he pointed to the ground. All eyes followed the indicated direction. Irons snorted at the pale look on the kid in the front row. He even gulped at the idea.
“Right. Also a floating building is buffeted by winds, weather, lightening... and it's vulnerable to air and ground attack. The energy budget is enormous. You've got to have an on board fusion or antimatter reactor. No one wanted that floating around in the air. Not when some terrorist or a storm or some other thing could pop that reactor and you've got a nice bomb going off overhead.” He shook his head. “You can't have the thing floating over occupied space either; the gravity emitters keeping the thing up in the air would wreak havoc with anything below it. Which also meant nothing could safely fly under it without getting tore up.”
“Ouch.”
“Yeah. And if another emitter came into the field...” he shook his head. “Watch out. Stick two emitters together that aren't synched and you are asking for trouble. They will tear each other apart.”
“Ouch.”
The admiral nodded. “I think the idea is interesting in theory, but it's one of those cases where reality and fantasy don't really mesh well if you know what I mean.” The group nodded all around.
“Now, we've got about two more days before we hit the jump point and it will take a shift to get this baby out and mounted,” he waved to the emitter. “Then another shift or two getting her and the other emitters tuned and in synch. But before we do any of that we need to get this baby finished. Morgan can you pull the electronics and plug them in like I showed you? I'll work with Jer'uk here on the plasma tap.”
The techs looked at the almost finished emitter and then nodded and then swung into action.
ñChapter 8
O'Mallory smiled tiredly as she entered the bridge. Irons had only a small hand in the repairs here. Sure they had rebuilt some of the bridge controls, but the captain hadn't been happy about the admiral's participation on that project so he'd been excluded. Which had suited her just fine, she'd put him to work on other more important projects. She'd sent a couple people up with some new screens and toys but not a lot had changed here.
/>
“You called captain?” she asked, looking around the room. He wasn't seated in his chair. Motion attracted her attention. Her lips pursed as she noted he was standing over the helmsman's couch with the exec.
“Thought we'd do a consult before we entered hyper. Any last minute issues we need to be aware of chief?” he asked formally as she strolled over.
“Well, I'd like a couple more hours to tune the emitters. The new emitter needs to settle in a bit more before I'm comfortable running it at full load. Same with some of the other nodes for that matter.”
“Full load?” The helmsman asked surprised.
O'Mallory frowned at Blackhawk. “Forty percent right now. Closer to forty five in some areas but that's negated by the net effect of the shield's surface area. Surface tension and all that,” she replied with a shrug as she wiped her bangs out of her hair. She really should get a damn hair cut.
“Forty huh? So he's not the miracle worker everyone thought he was,” the captain said clearly irritated.
Warner shot the captain a wary look and then a pleading look to O'Mallory. She caught it and tried hard to step on her temper. She gritted her teeth but kept her mouth shut.
“How are the emitters going chief. You said they're tuning? What does that entail?” Warner asked.
She glanced his way and throttled her temper. She was tired, that was why she was so defensive. It was the captain so he could take a few liberties. Irons technically wasn't crew either. But damn it she and her people had been right there alongside the man. What they had achieved in so short a time period was nothing less than remarkable. And who set the damn time limit in the first place??
“Chief?” Warner asked, sounding a bit worried.
“I will thank the captain kindly not to insult the efforts of my people,” she ground out, shooting dagger looks at the captain. “They like our passenger have busted their asses for this ship and deserve nothing but thanks,” she growled. To hell with it. The captain straightened eyes flashing. She turned to Warner.
“As to your question, we've got a pair of emitters currently being rebuilt but I understand that we are on a deadline for some asinine reason. My crews have been busting their asses to meet said deadline. Fortunately we haven't had any major accidents and only a few minor injuries. We've been damn lucky, I've got good people.”
“That you do chief,” Warner said, heading off the captain. The captain was turning colder by the minute. He was pretty sure the chief's rebuke wouldn't be forgotten anytime soon.
“So, anyway, the last emitter we put together and installed should balance the load for now. You should find it a lot easier now,” she said nodding to ops. The Veraxin bobbed a nod in return. So did Mister Blackhawk.
“We have. Thank you,” Hir'ruk chittered.
“Right. As I was saying, it's in place and is tuned roughly. We will do the fine tuning when we put it under load. All the emitters are being synched up now and final tuning is in progress. As an added bonus my crews had pulled the emitters that had been scavenged and tacked on patches.”
“Why?” Warner asked.
“We've brought them in to rebuild during transit. We have to have materials for the replicator remember?” she demanded. Warner nodded. “Since they weren't doing us any good on the hull we pulled them. I'm not happy about the patch but there shouldn't be any problems in hyper. We've also pulled some other things that weren't working and cleaned the hull a bit. Lines that were no longer needed have been pulled. We've phased out the jury rigged systems in everywhere but the aft section. We ran out of time there,” she said irritably. Warner nodded sympathetically.
“All the material had been stored in the cargo bay and we are standing down before we tear into them. Most of it will be used to feed the admiral's replicator.” There wasn't enough time for another emitter, but they would have plenty of time to make at least two from the material while in hyper. They could always install them in Antiguan space.
“Understood,” Warner said with a nod.
“We're entering hyper on time chief. Or I will find a new chief,” the captain said. She looked at him directly. His fist clenched. She knew it was wrong to rebuke the captain on his own bridge but damn it he had it coming. He still had it coming with the stuff he was still spouting. She was ready to quit now she realized as her temper soared out of control.
“Permission to enter the bridge?” Irons asked from the open hatch. The captain's head turned like a turret. He shot him a look. Warner waved him in.
“We don't normally stand on formality Admiral,” the exec said. “At least I don't.” He was glad of the interruption, things were getting ugly.
“This close to a hyper event I don't want to distract anyone and jog their elbow,” the admiral said coming over to them.
“Then why are you here?” The captain asked looking him up and down. He'd heard about Irons marathon sessions on the hull. The man was incredible. Not that he was going to admit it. He'd been sarcastic before with the chief. He took another look at her as the thought of Irons marathon ran through his head once more. The chief looked wiped out. Her eyes were bloodshot. She was pale and her hair was a limp sweaty tangled mess. He could smell the sweat. He realized she'd been defensive but had been too tired to hold her tongue. He'd overlook her little peccadillo now.
“Checking in captain. I heard the chief was here. I wanted to see if there was anything else that needed to be done,” Irons replied looking attentively her way. O'Mallory blew her cheeks in and out, glad of the distraction. It didn't stop the inevitable probably, but Irons distraction did take some of the heat off and let them retreat before anger got the best of either of them.
“Admiral, you realize the bridge crew hasn't run a sim right? This is new hardware. Well, some of it.” Sprite informed Irons from the overhead. The admiral turned to her projection on the plot and then to O'Mallory. The chief shrugged helplessly. Irons turned to the captain.
“Don't tell me how to run my ship Irons,” the captain growled, eyes flashing. “You or your damn AI.”
“I wouldn't dream of it sir. I do suggest that you consider a sim to see how well the hardware works together and if there are any bugs that you need to be aware of. Integration can be tricky. There are always teething issues to deal with. I have also come to understand that your crew has no experience with higher octaves let alone beta band. That's also an issue.”
The captain started to retort but O'Mallory glared at him. “It's actually a good idea. I had expected your people to be doing that already Captain,” she said with a slight bite in her tone. “Not sitting on their collective asses looking for something to do.” While people did real work was left hanging in the air. Some of the bridge crew simmered over that. She didn't care.
The captain turned away, trying to rein in his temper again. Irons and O'Mallory had a way of getting under his skin. O'Mallory was damn close to insubordination again. He'd can her if he could, but she knew the systems inside and out and her people worshiped her. She knew how to draw the best out of all of them. He caught Hir'ruk's look. The Veraxin turned to him and his upper arms showed consent and first level emphasis over commitment to action. He turned to the exec who was also nodding.
“Very well. Make it so,” he said with a grudging nod. The helmsman looked confused.
“Simulation loading now. Captain, can you please set the parameters of the exercise?” Sprite asked. The captain paused on his way to his chair and then continued. When he got to his chair he stopped.
The captain turned a look on Irons. He tried to hide his confusion but Irons had been prepared for it. “It's customary for you to guide the sim. You want to test the crew but you don't want to undermine their confidence either sir. Usually you work from a curve, starting with something simple then throwing harder tasked in as the team progresses.”
“Oh?”
Irons tried hard not to grit his teeth about the obvious cluelessness in that response. “Yes. You can also throw in disaster scen
arios to train the crew on how to respond to them as they get better, or if they get too cocky. It also serves to work out the procedures and even program them into the computer,” he said.
“Ah,” the captain said with a nod. He was clearly digesting that.
“It's a good idea. We could take the extra time to tune the emitters and feed the data into the simulation captain,” O'Mallory said. “As well as feed in simulations of the different octaves and how the system will respond. I understand it's different the higher you go.”
“Yes,” Irons said with a nod. “The compression ratio increases as you move up the octaves. That shortens your response time. It all comes at you faster and you have to react correctly or you will get into trouble quickly. You get patches of turbulence in between transitions and that can affect the nodes if you aren't careful. Since we've got the nodes up to forty percent on the bow and lower on other areas it will get interesting.”
“Okay, Chief,” the captain turned to O'Mallory. “Put your figures into the computer and sketch out a couple of scenarios. We'll try a basic one first. While we're running a few I'll think of some of my own twists. I want this done by mid-shift so we can enter hyper before we tire ourselves out.”
“Wise,” Irons said with a nod. The captain ignored him as he turned to his crew and settled into his chair.
“Let's be about it then,” the captain said.
“With your permission we'll watch from engineering captain,” O'Mallory murmured. The captain made a brushing motion but didn't look away from the main display as the sim came up. O'Mallory cocked her head to the door and caught Irons attention. Irons nodded and followed her out.
“That should buy you a couple more hours to tune things chief,” Irons said.
“Yeah think?” she asked amused. She looked back the way they had come and snorted. “I'm betting two hours before he loses patience and orders us into hyper.”
“That's a couple of more hours. Let's not waste them then.”
“Good point,” she said, picking up her stride.
Ghost Station (The Wandering Engineer) Page 17