Ghost Station (The Wandering Engineer) (24 page)

“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.

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.