Archaea (22 page)

“Do you have a point, Dak” he groused, clearly annoyed to some sort of legendary amount.

“Yep, and if you'll stop jabber-jawing at me all day long, I will get right to it....” I paused for effect.

“Dak...” he trailed off, knowing this is a battle I will always win, now and forever, amen.

“Gene, can you scuttle the destroyer?” I asked.

“Well... not in the classic sense, Dak. I mean, the SD controls are in the bridge, which is right now swirling in clouds around that cratered hulk...”

“No, I mean more in terms of blowing a tokamak or something...”

“No, the tokamak wouldn't blow up like that, Dak – it's a fusion reaction, not a fission reaction. If it were to blow containment, it would burn the hell out of engineering, as there would essentially be a little sun burning inside the engineering space – but it wouldn't blow up.”

“Would that be enough to burn through the scuttle shielding at the aft end of engineering?”

“That's a good question... The scuttle nukes are heavily shielded and technically impossible to detonate without the correct coded signal, but it seems to me a runaway tokamak fire might be enough to burn through their cladding and light them off. The scuttle charges are big enough to do it, Dak – high-yield triple-F type nukes, and chemically ignited.”

“Triple-F?” I ask, knowing already I won't understand the answer.

“It stands for fission-fusion-fission, and it describes how the reactions are stacked to lens a bigger yield. This is not really my specialty, Dak – Shorty has probably forgotten more about nukes than I will ever know.”

“I am not studying for a test, Gene... I want it to go boom, and make a big shiny flash.”

“Well... I suppose that could be done... but I'd need to start their tokamak, and then make all sorts of bad things happen, remove all sorts of fail-safe and redundant systems...it wouldn't be easy to do. These systems are definitely over-engineered to prevent a runaway fusion reaction from happening.”

“But you can do it?”

“Well...I ought to be able to...are we just shooting the breeze here, or is this something you want me to do?”

“No, I don't want you to do it, Gene – I want you to already have done it. How much longer do we have to get to a safe distance?”

*****

I climbed into my EVA suit, grabbed an assortment of tools and high-tailed it for the upper lock. While I was waiting for it to cycle open, I rechecked my suit's connections – one can never be too sure.

“Dak, I am making entry now, and will make my way to engineering – I think the tokamak might still be operable though I may need to swap some parts around to bring it online. You may want to have Janis working on some simulations for this one, because the math is more than I can do in my head. It'll be a big boom.”

“Copy, Gene – I'll get her working on that, good call.”

The lock cycled open and I kicked on down the corridor, trying to sink my teeth into the task at hand and come up with some sort of plan. I was going to need to bypass a number of fail-over systems and sensors, but I think the key will be monkey-wrenching the coolant pumps.

A tokamak is essentially a fusion reaction contained in a toroidal shape, a type of magnetic bottle. Hydrogen plasma cycles around the torus, accelerated by stepper pumps through the windings, generating massive amounts of energy through the same Faraday effect your standard electrical motor might use.

Once the plasma reaches a high enough orbital velocity around the torus, it starts to run into and through itself, and that ignites a fusion reaction that forces it even faster. There are multiple stages to the reaction as the speed of the rotation increases, forcing the fusion reaction to exponentially accelerate and intensify, as the fusing plasma stream smashes through itself.

The enemy of the system is heat. The plasma is ionically charged, and contained via magnetic repulsion, but the heat generated from the fusion reaction has to be managed, or the containment, the tokamak windings, will be breached.

I had to overcome a series of engineering challenges in order for this to work. The first problem will be to come up with ways to overcome the redundant fail-safe systems that are designed to prevent a breach, and then I'll need to find some way to continually ramp up the fusion acceleration until a loss of containment occurs.

That's the real challenge, of course. Fusion reactors are intrinsically pretty safe – the reaction has to be maintained. If the plasma pumps and ring accelerators stop, the reaction also stops.

What I needed, was some sort of fuse, but I could only get that by engineering a mechanical failure of some sort. I needed to figure out how to make sure a sustained runaway reaction occurs, and that it breaches containment in the right direction so it burns out the scuttle cladding – but not before giving us enough time to get away.

I think the best point of failure is going to be the cooling pumps that circulate liquid helium through the radiator harness. They were the key to the process, and there were enough of them in a series around the torus that if they were taken down one at a time, the efficiency of the cooling would slowly decrease, and that could be all the fuse we need. All I need to do is time their failure, so the one that fails first, is the one pumping coolant around the area I want the breach. 

Luckily, we had already pulled many of the redundant safety systems, so if I could get the fire lit, all I really needed to do was come up with some bridges to close the gaps in the parts and pieces that were missing.

“Captain, I think I have a plan over here, but it's going to take me a little while. Do we have a few hours?”

“Impossible, Gene. How about an hour?”

“Dak, there's no way I can do it in an hour. I need at least that much time just to fabricate the bypass parts I need.”

“Alright Gene, how about 45 minutes?” The man was impossible. I could practically hear his blasted eyebrows at this point.

*****

I felt like I had been drumming my fingers on the console for hours upon hours, but it had only been about ten minutes. I think it was Einstein that said time is relative to the observer, but he forgot to add that it was relative to the amount of coffee the observer has had.

Janis and I had a wonderfully complex and frustrating conversation about minimum safe distances, high-order thermonuclear reactions, particle decay and attenuation, and other technical clicks and beeps that I hardly understood.

She simulated a number of different scenarios, none of which were very encouraging, and placed us somewhere between immolation in nuclear fire, and vaporization from nuclear fire, so I decided the minimum safe distance would just have to be wherever the hell we were when the damn thing blew up.

“Gene, how much time can you give us before that beast lights off?” I could just imagine the monkey-face he made at this.

“Dak, it’s not going to be an exact science – were you able to get a minimum safe distance from Janis?”

“Nah, she went on about this, that, and the other thing, and essentially said we're either extra-crispy or cajun-style, no matter what we do.” Of course, now I was hungry.

“Well that doesn't sound terribly encouraging, Dak...”, he said, understating the obvious.

“Yeah well, it is what it is, I guess. That's why I am approaching this from a slightly different angle. Rather than wonder what the minimum safe distance is, I'm planning to just boost right on out of here at maximum burn and...um... yeah...”

“Dak, that's insanely risky, even for you. Besides a shock wave that will be flinging hunks of destroyer that may be many times larger than the Archaea, we're going to have to outrun an incredible burst of particle radiation, alpha, beta, neutrons, all sorts of zoomies, hell, maybe even some neutrinos for all I know--”

“Gene, pretend for a moment, just for fun, that I don't know what you are talking about here--”

“That's a pretty fun game, Dak, one that I play pretty much all the time. In fact, I am the current reigning champion.”

“Ha ha, funny guy. Seriously though... what are you talking about?”

“I'm talking about bathing the Archaea in high-intensity radiation, moving outward at nearly the speed of light. I'm talking about significant risk to life, limb, and the continued pursuit of happiness.”

“So...ok, that doesn't sound way cool, Gene. Let's talk about time then. How much time do you think we'll need here?”

“Well hell, Dak – I don't know! That's why I wanted you to talk to Janis. Speaking of which...Janis, are you listening?”

“Yes Gene. I am always listening, though I do not reflect on the discussion or participate unless specifically requested to do so.”

“That's fine, Janis. Are you able to simulate an M-3 tokamak reactor accelerated to between the fifth and seventh phase of reaction.”

“Gene, that would be beyond the rated capacity for that model.”

I understand Janis. Can you extrapolate to that phase-amount please?”

“Certainly, Gene.”

“Excellent. Please simulate a catastrophic loss of cooling harness, resulting in a containment breach.”

“Gene, my simulation does not result in a containment breach, as that model of tokamak would shut down pumps and accelerators in the event of coolant failure.”

“See, Gene? Clickety beep, bloop-bleep.” He sighed, no doubt giving me another look that I skillfully ignored, as usual.

“Janis, please modify the simulation to include a scram failure.”

“Gene would you like me to include a failure in all redundant systems, or specific systems?”

“Specific systems, please. Simulate an interlock failure for the accelerator circuits, a total failure of temperature sensors throughout the cooling harness, and a direct short circuit from accumulators to the plasma pumps.”

She went silent for a few seconds – this was the first time I have ever seen her take any time to think, she must be really crunching numbers.

“Gene, I am afraid there are too many variables to present an accurate simulation. Allowing for a range variance in results, containment breach will occur between 923 and 936 seconds from the start of the fifth phase of reaction. I am afraid that I am not able to progress the simulation to a seventh phase reaction, unless the coolant pumps are disabled sequentially. Allowing that variance, containment breach of a seventh-phase reaction will occur between 1,132 and 1,149 seconds. I regret that I am unable to present a more accurate result.”

“Janis that is outstanding, definitely accurate enough for our needs”, Gene said, obviously admiring her capacity for math and analysis. “Let's start a new analysis. Given a thermonuclear explosion occurring in this location with a potential yield of 40 megatons, what would the safe distance be for attenuation of harmful high-energy x-ray and gamma wave radiation?”

Another pause. She was probably simulating the position of each particle as it moved through the gravity map of this sector.

“Gene, as best as I can simulate, based on material- and mass-analysis of the destroyer, adjusting the inverse square law according to the gravimetric data for this sector, radiation attenuation to nominal levels would require a distance of 51,230 kilometers from the point of origin.”

“Well, that's not going to work”, I added. “We can move pretty fast, but not that fast....there's an amazing amount of mass in the shape of billion-ton hunks of rock and iron hurtling around out there. We can't just firewall it for the far horizon.”

“I agree, that's just not possible”, Gene said. “So what sort of backup plan do you have for us, Dak?”

“Excuse me, Captain, Gene – why do you say this isn't possible?” asked Janis.

“Janis, we can't possibly burn that hot, dear. It's beyond our capability to do so in this system. Even if Gene could give us 30 minutes, we're not going to be clear.”

“Sir, I am afraid your assessment is at a significant variance.”

“Janis, are you saying I am wrong?”

I am not at all used to anyone, not even Gene, disagreeing with me. I am the Captain, and even if I am wrong, it's my prerogative, my sole right. If it were anyone else, even Gene, I'd have them on their hands and knees somewhere cleaning or painting something .

Not that I would actually do that, not even to Gene...but it sure was fun to think about.

“Janis, for the record,” Gene added, “our captain is absolutely infallible, he is not capable of being wrong by the very nature of his position and role aboard this vessel. Please make note of this.”

“Yes sir. I shall sir. Captain, I am sorry sir.” The poor dear, she's going to fall apart and cry if I didn't do something.

“Janis, please make another note, for the record.” I paused, for dramatic effect. “At no time is anyone on board this vessel to ever contradict, or disagree with a stated position of mine, unless they are you.” I could imagine Gene's face now, all screwed up and scowly.

“Yes sir”, she said smugly. Honest, it was smug.

“Janis, dear, please tell me why I am wrong”, I managed to say, the words strange and foreign in my mouth.

“Sir, you are correct that it would not be possible to shape a safe course from our current position to cover that distance within that time frame, without pseudomass enhancement.”