The Shattered Empire (The Shadow Space Chronicles Book 2) (48 page)

“I would say that's good news...” Lucius said.  “But the fact that you haven't told anyone yet means there's something you're not telling us now.  So either there's substantial risk or cost or both.”

Rory couldn't meat his gaze.  He gave a nervous laugh, “Well, risk is such a broad word, I think that if you were to
weigh
the costs and benefits against one another, you really would find–”

“What are the potential costs?” Matthew Nogita asked sharply.  “We've already given you this entire section for your research and repair efforts.  For that matter, we're providing you a lot of power from our auxiliary generator for your repair efforts, as well.”

“Yes, well,” Rory looked uncomfortable.  “We actually completed the repairs on the fighter and the destroyer already.”

“You did, then where is all that power...” Matthew Nogita trailed off.  “You're
storing
it?”

“We can't get access to the array, so we came up with an alternative,” Rory said.   He had a hunched posture, almost as if he expected a blow.

“I told him it was a terrible idea,” Feliks said in a low mutter.

“Thank you
so
much for that support,” Rory snapped.  “Look, Baron Giovanni, I know we don't have approval to do this, but we think–”

“You think,” Feliks muttered.

“
I
think that this is vital to the war effort,” Rory said, his face concentrated and utterly confident.  “Imagine if we could use these ships against the Balor or the Chxor, maybe even build some of our own!  We'd be able to eliminate their advantages overnight.  Humanity hasn't had a chance like this since the Agathan Fleet!”

Lucius sighed, “Before I even think about giving you the go-ahead, how about you explain to me and Mister Nogita, who you are supposed to keep informed, exactly what it is you are doing.”

Rory gave a relieved sigh, “Excellent, that's just the opportunity I needed!”  He waved his hands at Feliks and the tall, skinny engineer scurried over to a platform which contained a huge assembly.  From the angle, Lucius wasn't certain, but he thought it was the power coil from a weapon system, though it was huge, if that was what it really was.

“We borrowed a main battery power coil from the salvage from the Chxor wrecks,” Rory said, confirming Lucius's initial impression.  “Now these things are hugely inefficient, clearly the Chxor just go for something big to do the job.  Well, we modified it, a lot, so that it can store a lot more energy than it was originally designed for.

“How much more energy?” Matthew Nogita demanded.  “I've seen the Chxor specs, those coils are rated for petawatts.”

Rory smiled nervously, “Well... we got it up into a discharge of exawatts.”

“You realize if that crystalline matrix were to fail you could easily destroy this entire section, right?” Matthew demanded.

“We ran simulations before we did it,” Rory said.

“It would be almost impossible for that to happen,” Feliks said.  “There would have to be some kind of external impact to the matrix itself...”

“Such as battle damage?” Lucius asked.  “You do realize that we've been attacked once, already.  For that matter, there's enough debris in this system that impact with that is a possibility.”

“Yes, well,” Rory said with a nervous glance at Feliks.  “We didn't quite take that into consideration.”  He ran a hand through his thinning brown hair, “I assure you that it is stable and we think we have enough power set aside to jump start the Balor Bane Sidhe.”

“I thought you said it would take the entire output of the array?” Lucius asked.

“It might,” Rory admitted, “For the destroyer, almost definitely, but we think we can do a short, modulated burst from this, instead.  One heavy discharge to kick start the reactor.”  He shrugged, “Also, I might have been wrong about the reason the reactor is cold.”

“Oh?” Lucius asked.

“I think–”

“
We
think,” Feliks interrupted.

“Fine,
we
think that there was some kind of power-down code, that the Balor have built into their ships.  When they took a certain level of damage or when their crews realized they couldn't hold out against the boarding parties, they sent the power-down code so that we couldn't use the ships.”

Feliks hurried over, his heavily accented voice excited, “Sort of like a safety mechanism, so that their enemies cannot use their weapons against them!”

“So... basically what I said before?” Matthew Nogita asked dryly.

“Yes, well,” Rory said, “Sometimes even someone without the appropriate expertise can get lucky and guess correctly.”

“What about the possibility of other safeguards?” Lucius asked.  He remembered his earlier discussion with Matthew Nogita and the possibility of some kind of self destruct or scuttling charge.

“We think that it would be possible to override any such safeguards, with the use of the controls we have already installed,” Feliks said.

“Unless it happens before you could react,” Matthew Nogita said.  Yet, Lucius could tell, the engineer was torn.  He had already had a chance to handle Ghornath technology when Lucius had first come to Faraday.  Clearly the idea of taking apart new technology excited him, especially with the potential applications.

“I'm entirely certain I can stay on top of it,” Rory said.

Lucius gave the engineer a level look, but the other man didn't so much as flinch.  “This is alien technology.  Something all of us have very little experience with.”

“I may not look like it, but I have a wealth of experience with this,” Rory said fiercely.  His back straightened and he stood tall, “I've studied Ben-Yam-Gar ruins, Illuari technology, even an Zarakassakaraz ship.  I have three doctorate degrees, two of them in advanced alien technology.  When I tell you I can do this, I mean that I can
do
this.”

Lucius nodded slowly, “Alright.  If this works, you get the fighter operational.  Then what?”

“We can go to a larger scale,” Feliks said eagerly.  “Use the fighter to jump start one of the larger vessels, then go larger still.  We could, potentially, get all of the vessels operational with just this one fighter.”

“Risks?” Lucius asked.

Feliks didn't answer immediately.  Lucius looked over at Rory.

“There's the possibility that we'll cause the fighter's reactor to overload when we apply that much power all at once,” Rory said softly.  “But we are ninety–”

“Fifty,” Feliks said.

“
Seventy
percent confident that we can prevent that with proper safeguards,” Rory said confidently.

“And if you can't, what's the yield from one of these reactors?” Lucius asked.  He didn't like the thought of losing a fighter, much less whatever personnel assisted Rory and Feliks in their attempt.

“We are still uncertain as to the total energy output,” Feliks said.  “From the models we've run, we estimate that an overload on the fighter would be in excess of one gigaton.”

“In
excess
of a gigaton?” Lucius demanded.  “That's mounted in a fighter that you have setting in the station next to a power coil that could go off like a bomb?”

“We are being
very, very
safe, I assure you,” Rory said quickly.  “The reactor core cannot be opened by anything short of a large explosion and even then it's likely just to be destroyed rather than overloaded.  It would require a very particular set of circumstances to
accidentally
overload it.”

“What about if a Balor infiltrator were to sneak aboard with that express purpose?” Lucius asked sharply.

The two scientists looked at each other with expressions of surprise.  “We hadn't really thought about that,” Rory said.  “I suppose a Balor would have the necessary expertise, probably one could just turn everything on... and from there they could do whatever they wanted.  But there are security guards and Marines and whatnot for that kind of thing, right?”

Lucius sighed.  He glanced at Matthew.  “I'm going to make sure there's a team assigned to guard their work.  I'd like you to arrange for an external site for them to do their work, preferably someplace or something that we don't mind losing.”  He turned his gaze back to the pair.  “In the meantime, you two will pause your experimentation or at least avoid doing anything drastic or with even the slightest possibility of catastrophic failure.  Am I understood?”

“Yes, of course,” Rory nodded quickly.

“Good.” Lucius sighed.  “And on that note, I'm going to attach one more member to your little group.  Someone with a few degrees of his own and a lot of real world experience as well.  He's not there to override you, but he's going to be there to check your numbers and prove to me that this whole thing could work.  He's a pain in the ass and he'll search over everything you do looking for the slightest mistake.”

He saw Matthew Nogita wince as he realized who Lucius was talking about.  “His name is James Harbach and I'll send him down here soon, so prepare yourselves.”

***

“Well, that was interesting,” Lucius said as he finally stepped into the control room.

“I'm sorry about that, Baron,” Matthew said.  “I should have had some more supervision on those two.  There's just been so much going on of late...”

“Not your fault,” Lucius said.  “I'm not unhappy with their efforts, just a little surprised.”  He shook his head, “It would be wonderful if they could get those ships operational.”

“Dangerous, too,” Matthew grunted, “At least until we could figure those ships out.  Basic operations is one thing, but it takes years of working with equipment to really become familiar.”

Lucius nodded.  He remembered the first generation of ships after the looting of the Ghornath technology base.  Those first ships had not functioned as designed, as often as not, and the crews hadn't really known how to take care of the equipment, so things broke down quickly.  Most of those ships had been scrapped after only a decade of use, the ones that had lasted that long.  “We can afford to take it a little slow, but we need every advantage we can muster against the threats we face.”  He thought, suddenly of the conspiracy within the Fleet, of the two men who claimed to be his father, and of their respective masters. 
That doesn't even consider the Balor or the Chxor,
he thought,
our true enemies.

“Well, boss,” Matthew said, “here is our new control room.”  He waved at the larger room.   “As you can see, we have more personnel manning the sensors, but we have also taken over local traffic control from ground-side, and we are even tied into the Nova Roma elements, both their picket ships and their main fleet.  Also, we have a work station over there for military traffic control.”

Lucius nodded, “Excellent.  I assume when the defense stations are online they'll take over the military traffic control?”

“Yes, boss,” Matthew answered.  “But even then I think we'll act as the overall relay for transmissions and sensor data, especially from the outer sets of sensor arrays.  The orbital defense stations communications arrays aren't really designed for the level of traffic we are.”

“Hmm,” Lucius said.  They planned to install an overall command bunker either buried deep under the surface of one of the nearer planets or possibly in an undersea location on Faraday itself.  The issue with putting one on Faraday was making a large military target on the planet itself.  The issue with the near planets were their orbits were different, and that would potentially place the system military command light minutes away from Faraday itself.  The other issue was both time and resources.  Deep buried bases provided an edge of security and protection against surprise attacks.  Several of the old mining companies had put asteroids in orbit around Faraday, but the largest was only five hundred meters in length and wouldn't be secure against large yield warheads or kinetic strikes, not without giving it the ability to maneuver.

Lucius walked up to the sensor display.  “Anything on the screens?” Lucius asked.  He saw a number of vector tracks, both civilian and military.

“Just the standard milk runs, sir,” the civilian tech said.  “A couple mining ships headed out after resupplying, an ore freighter headed to the Apex asteroid mine, and two of the Nova Roma vessels on patrol.”

“Excellent,” Lucius said.  He could see that the sensors were not only being fed planet-side where they'd be scanned, but also to the Nova Roma picket ships, who were sending their sensor feeds as well.  In theory, with three sets of eyes examining the data, there shouldn't be any issue with missing anything. 
That's the theory anyway,
Lucius thought absently.

Of course, just as he thought that, alarms started to wail.

“What the hell,” Matthew Nogita snapped, “That's the
collision
alarm!”

Lucius winced, anything close enough to sound that was only a few hundred meters from their hull at most.  “What is it?”  For all he knew, they had no time, but it was best to act as calm as possible.  The worst thing in this kind of situation would be panic.

The sensor tech's face went pale and his voice lost the edge of confidence as he spoke.  “I've got a huge sensor contact, right on top of us!”