“As you see from the model, this shows the optimal output for any specififiguration,” Lund poio the twisting hologram.

  True to her word, the woman had returned a few days ter with enough math to make Alexander’s head spin. It wasn’t until she verted it into the quad-helix model in front of him that he uood what she was getting at.

  “Where do the Omni and Sinorus engines sit on that model?”

  “How should I know? Do I look like I have the output specs of a specific model of engine handy?”

  He sighed. “If I have them, could you model them for me?”

  “Really? How did you get your hands oput specs? It’s not like those are included iandard repair and maintenance packages.”

  It was true. While the repair manuals gave you enough information to print or rebuild aire ehey didn’t provide detailed specifications other than the general effid output curve that the testing equipment was desigo look for. Alexander had figured this issue out halfway through his eesting.

  After his initial tests failed to produce the desired results, he knew he had been missing some critical piece of the puzzle. Once he figured out the issue and built additional testing equipment to provide more accurate data, he finally mahe engine design that was now on Shuttle 1. It just so happeo work out that the scaled-down engine was almost the perfect size for a shuttle. Some remodeling had to be doo get it to fit the airframe but it was minor.

  “I’ve built some scale models and rus on them.”

  “That’s good. The numbers won’t match their full-sized terparts perfectly, but we model those engines and pare them oimization model I developed.”

  Alexander let her take trol of the holo since she had desighe model and knew far more about how to operate it than he likely ever would. When she mapped the first eo the model, Alexander began to see how the math was desigo work. It was a bit like a 3D radar chart.

  “Alright, now we see all three engines on the model. No surprise that the Omni one is farther up the . But I am surprised that yours is below the Sinorus design sidering what you told me.”

  “How that be?” Alexander asked in fusion. “My design is way more effit thaher of those engines and it has a better output than the Sinorus design.”

  “It's too effit for its output,” she stated simply. “You see that the data point for your design is way outside the desired specification of the model. My model measures the ideal figuration for any given size of pulsed fusion engine. If you push beyond those boundaries, you give up something else. In this case power output. You may have a better overall output pared to the Sinorus thruster, but the math of my model shows that the Sinorus is more optimized. Trust me, the math is proven, otherwise you would see ehat were wildly more effit or accelerated much faster. Nothing is stopping you from doing so other than that it is extremely ineffit. I’m going to take an educated guess that the shuttle tends to shake?”

  “It does.”

  Nova nodded. “That’s because you’ve burned off the energy from the previous pulse before the pulse begin. This starting and stopping, while effit, will lead to much more wear and tear. My model shows the optimal point where effid wear and tear are optimized.”

  “I guess that makes sense. Why isn’t the Omni oimized then?” He could see its peak power output was toug the line, but the efficy was short.

  “You have to remember, these numbers are based on your tests, not their actual performaa. If the data you collected is accurate to the full-sized desigher some bottlene manufacturing is causing them not to hit the peak efficy at that scale, or they have deliberately decided to cap their efficy. My guess is oer. The reason I believe that to be the case is due to the Sinorus design. As you see, their model is not as powerful or effit as Omni. Whoever is doing their modeling probably hasn’t discovered the real truth of the optimization formu that I developed.”

  “And that is?” Alexander asked as he stared at the model.

  The woman smiled. “That the model isn’t just a ft p be tweaked slightly if you know what you’re doing.” She maniputed the model so it curved into a circle, sort of like a twisted four-sided torus. When the specs for the three engines reset to match the new model’s figuration, he could see a clear differeween the Omni model, the Sinorus one, and his.

  “You see it now?” Lund asked in delight.

  “I do, but I don’t uand what exactly I’m looking at.”

  “It’s a parametric curve. Do you see how Omni’s is a smooth curve and yours looks all jagged? Even the Sinorus one is sorta there but not quite. This is how Omni has kept ahead of its petition for decades. If they o meet some performance goal, they adjust a parameter up or down, so long as the power curve is kept within my data model’s parameters, they will outperform anything Sinorus could ever e up with. It also shows the upper limit for pulsed fusion.”

  “Is that what that fourth data point is?” He had been w about that since all of the eouched that point, but no past it.

  “Yes,” she said in annoyance, “And the bane of my theoretical existehe upper limit of acceleration is caused by a cascade osciltion ihe rea chamber. This osciltion caused the fuser to bee unaligned, halting the fusion process. Ever since Pulsed Fusion has been around, people have tried every bination of materials and processes to try and mitigate this issue to no avail. The most they’ve mao aplish is to push that osciltion a few thousand kilometers down the lihat’s not even a .01c improvement iwo hundred years. It's infuriating.”

  “Why not just switpressed psma eje then if the teology has hit its limit?”

  She gave him a pointed look. “Have you not been paying attention to my model? There are still ways to improve the teology. And if anyone ever figures out how to bypass the osciltion issue, that would make pulsed fusion viable for a long time to e. As for why people don’t switch? I’m sure you're aware of the issues when those types of thrusters enter an atmosphere?” Alexander nodded.

  “That’s only one issue. The other is the expense. Psma eje requires not just the thrusters to be sed out, you would have to remove the entire fuel system as well as the reactor and add ohat is patible, which isn’t alossible on smaller ships due to space. pressed psma eje is also much more expeo operate because it draws power from the reaass instead of a simple D2O and T2O reaost panies don’t want to shoulder that additional expense when pulsed fusion is good enough.”

  He sort of knew some of that from speaking with Matthews and Chief Engineer Sullivan. “Ok. Let's get ba track. How do I use this to pete with Omni?”

  She smirked, “That’s the easy part.” Lund shifted Alexander’s data so it overpped the Omni data. Theretched out the data points so they touched all four lines in the model. Instead of showing a rather jagged appearance, his set of data took on a smooth curve, much like Omni’s “You simply cheat.”

  “So maximize your model to my be, f them to do the same?”

  “Exactly. They will be forced to match you or move their model up to the peak.” She adjusted the Omni model so it was now ahead of Alexander’s on the model, in a se that sort of ballooned out.

  “Wouldn’t that just mean they have faster acceleration and less efficy if I’m reading this curve right?”

  She chuckled. “Exactly. But if you keep pushing them along this path,” she rotated the model until the area started to shrink again, “you hit the theoretical limit of the teology.”

  “Why don’t I just go for broke and hit the highest point I ?” He would prefer that over pying hopscotch with Omni for the decade.

  “First off, you don’t even have the infrastructure to pete with Omni right now. If you did,” she reset his inal sped pushed his design so the efficy curve was now toug the li was much further ahead on the model than Omni or even Sinorus. “you would be here. But your bottleneck is manufacturing. Omni will eventually run into the same bottleneck, resulting in them having to e up with new manufacturihods to tinue improving. But I doubt that will happen to them for some time.”

  Alexander was beginning to uand the challenge ahead of him. If Omni wao, they could simply bury his fgship design with a model so far past it that it would take him years if not decades to catch up. He somehow doubted they would do that though, because they khe end of that teology was on the horizon. The lohey could milk it, the better.

  “What about pressed psma eje drives?” He hadn’t bothered looking into them yet because of the teological straints to eveing started. Depending on her answer, he may o resider his approach.

  “Other than what we just spoke of, my model doesn’t include that teology because it came around after the Coalition war. As far as I know, the upper limit on those types of drives is .99c. Although the power requirements to do that would be absurd and beyond anything human teology is capable of. .6c is the fastest I’ve ever heard of anyone pushing them. And that was in a military application. At that point, you are hitting the bounds of what a static field is capable of defleg. Without major improvements in that field of sce, I doubt anyone will push past that limit in my lifetime.”

  “Isn’t that what you’re trying to do?”

  She shook her head. “I’m trying to find alternatives around the lightspeed issue. Something like the drive that’s capable of operating safely in gravity wells and doesn’t require increasingly higher amounts of energy to do so. But that’s enough questions for today. Unless you pn on building a zero-g manufacturier in the few months, you should focus on what you have now. I’ve included the tolerance specifications you o rea order to manufacture the engine pos capable of hitting all four peaks on the model. It’s up to you to design and build the equipment necessary to do it. It will also be a good test to see if you handle some of the things I might ask you to build iure for my theoretical work.”

  After Dr. Lu, Alexander looked over the information she gave him. He groaned when he read it. His printers would o see a tenfold increase in accuraeet the criteria she id out. Printing at the one hundred naer scale would certainly be an improvement over his current capabilities but he suspected he wouldn’t be getting there in one leap. The rge industrial printers capable of that were far outside his budget so he wouldn’t be buying them from STO space to save time especially since he earmarked all the credits from taking down the pirates for another project.

  He looked around the workshop. All of the maes were busily pumping out pos for repairs to the facility plex, as well as pos meant for the space station. That sed part had slowed siderably sihey had a backlog of items that o get to space after the attad only one shuttle to do it.

  Sihis space would be needed for his new maes, he what to do with the others. He had already traded a few to Damien and his security people so they could manufacture their own gear. After finding out about how resistant his body was and the defense field, he wasn’t nearly as worried about arming the locals anymore.

  That didn’t mean he was stupidly giving them free access to more powerful ons. The flechette guns that he had provided designs for were as far as he went small arms-wise. And the explosives he provided were very limited.

  He had only agreed to provide the new explosives for the grenade unchers because he knew he couldn’t be everywhere at once. If atack of that magnitude happened again, he wanted someone else with the ability to go toe to toe with an augmetacker. What he hadn’t bothered to tell Damien, is that the trigger meism for the grenades had a sort of deadman switside them.

  So far the angry little man and the people here – barring one asshole – had been accepting. But he preferred to take no ces.

  Since Damien’s brother, Lucas was so much better at programming than Alexander, he couldn’t add any sort of eleic override to the grenade uncher and hope it would remain ued. So he made a micro switside the proximity trigger. If that little switch got energized by a certain frequency, it would rehe grenades i.

  They could still be fired, and it would hurt like hell to get hit by one, but they wouldn’t explode. It was unfortuhe best he could do without exposing the deliberate vulnerability.

  When he had inally arrived at Eden’s End, his goal was to just work on his own stuff ahe locals do whatever. He now realized that was a rather look. Even if his goals hadn’t been as grand, he would have still o work closely with the locals, like he was doing already. At some point, Blue Star Enterprises would expand to enpass this entire plex simply for the sake of tinued growth. And everyone here, or the vast majority of them would work for him in some way, shape, or form. That meant taking a more proactive approach to running Eden’s End while not stripping away their autonomy ht.

  Some would always shun his presence, and that was fine. He wasn’t here to make friends with everyone.

  He suspected there would be some unhappy people when they realized he was slowly but surely abs everyoo Blue Star Enterprises but that was expected. Alexander khat would cause fri, so he was hedging his bets early. If it turned out to be pointless preparations, then there was no harm. If it wasn’t then he would be prepared.