LOCATION: EDEN’S END

  SYSTEM: Y6X-3H2

  DATE: 2399

  “Test forty-three,” Alexander called out. Everyone in the uncher trol room let out a collective groan at that.

  Getting the Low Orbit Lauo even fun had taken far lohan it took to install the rest of the orbital railguns around the facility. Had Alexander realized this before they attempted repairs, he would have stripped the ehing out and started from scratch. That would have been far less work. It was too te to go bad do that now though.

  The previous test, test forty-two, had resulted in the payload being shot out of the railgun like fetti. If he were trying to design a rail shotgun, he would have succeeded wonderfully. But he was trying to unch materials into orbit, so keeping it intact was sort of important.

  He didn’t even want to talk about the tests before that. Most of those involved trag down system faults. Eventually, he got so sick to hunt them down that he disected the uncher from the station power to elimihe broken power flow problems entirely. This required him to print a new power cell for the uncher, but that robably a good thing. His battery ssh capacitor bank was far more stable and allowed for a much more repeatable power draw pared to the a systems in pce before anyway.

  That elimihe power issue.

  He wished he could say that was the only problem. It wasn’t. The rails he had manufactured to repce the old worn-out ourned out to produce a far stronger eleagic current for the same amount of power draw. Normally that would be a good thing. It meant less power was o unch the payload. If they had realized that issue ahead of time, they might have been able to stop what happehe first live test blew the eop half of the uncher apart. There had been an undiscovered structural weakness in the frame.

  Thank god for the and room being situated behind a thick reinforced crete wall. That little act set their testing ba entire week. And he was running short of time. Jasper was due to return any day now, assuming he wasn’t deyed in STO space. But more importantly, they o have materials in orbit for the Hawks to start assembling a w refueling and refining station before their tract ran out in five months.

  That seemed like a lot of time, but it really wasn’t. He had uimated the difficulty of building a station in zero gravity. The Hawks’ engineers were the ones who spped some perspective into him. They estimated the station would take a full year to build, assuming materials were avaible and onsite. Alexander couldn’t even guarantee he would have any materials in orbit at the moment.

  The Hawks had given an all-clear for Na and his crew to return to their ship. But they were still rexing after their ordeal. It would take them months to gather materials anyway. That meant the initial materials to build the station o e from the phat was fihough because without the smelter ihe station, any ore they brought would be useless.

  Alexander had tried talking Matthews into using his shuttles to lift materials into orbit, but the man deed. Not because they couldn’t do it, but because the wear and tear on the drop shuttles to carry stuff into orbit would require them to be down for maintenance a week. That was far too often to make them an acceptable alternative.

  He supposed he could uand that. He was lucky he got the man to agree t the smelter into orbit when it was time.

  Losing the smelter was going to be a pretty big blow to his manufacturing capability pside, but he had the designs to build a refinery. While not as good as a smelter, the material produced by the refinery would be plenty strong enough for rebuilding the facility. And to be ho, he wasn’t utilizing even a tenth of the smelter's capacity with the mining being done pside.

  But he was getting ahead of himself. The smelter was still in pd turning out the material that would eventually turn into scaffolding that would go into orbit. The initial station pns were just a loose colle of exposed scaffolds along with some ion thrusters that would keep it from falling bato the atmosphere. The hollow regle design reminded Alexander of the types of stations built back when he was still human. All bare bones and utilitarian.

  Before he got there, he o fix this stupid issue with the transport capsules. Having them e apart as they exited the uncher was not ducive to orbital manufacturing. The pstics that made up the majority of the capsules should have been more than enough to withstand the G-forces applied during unch. They were even strohan what should have been avaible back when the inal capsules were built. But something about his design was obviously nht.

  Alexander walked out of the room and over to a nearby ste area where they had pced the old capsules until they could be recycled. He found the ohat looked to be in the best dition and awkwardly carried it dowairs and into the unch chamber.

  The few local engihat the Hawks had deemed passable were iing the uncher for damage from the previous test. The Hawks’ engineers were busy repairing Na’s ship and he he people livio get familiar with the work anyway. If the rails were ed or damaged, they would o repce them before tinuing. That would set them back at least four hours.

  He shoved the newly manufactured capsule off the loading ptform ahe old-style one in its pce. A few of the people looked at him as he did this, but nobody ented on the ge. They were probably as sick of these tests as he was.

  “Launcher is in w order, Alexander,” one of the engineers called.

  Alexander o the man. He waited at the door to ensure everyone was clear before closing the bst door. Now that he had seen what happens when the uncher has a critical failure, he was gd the bst doors were there.

  Everyouro the unch ter. He o Lucas – who had taken an active role as head of testing – and the man started the activation sequence for the uncher. A rge holograph showing the inside of the chamber appeared on the bnk crete wall, almost making it look like it was see-through.

  Everyoched as the loader arm pushed the payload into the barrel along a set of rollers. Unlike his railguns, the uncher only had a set of log lugs that prevehe payload from falling out the back as it raised its elevation.

  O was loaded, it slowly started to rise. The gear-driveion system on the uncher was slow but it was accurate. Eventually, it stopped and the dome door slid open on the newly repced crete roof. Turns out the acid rain had severely weakehe crete, which had caused it to break apart. The new crete should be much more resistant to that, but it did make Alexander wonder about the structural iy of the rest of the crete eng the facility.

  With the door open, a bred through the room. Lucas pressed the unch button, and a five-sed tdown began. He didn’t know why the tdown was necessary, but it arently part of the inal system g. Probably a failsafe in case they o abort the unch.

  After five seds, the uncher fired the capsule out of the barrel. The fact that it didn’t explode into tiny bits right away, both irked Alexander and made him extremely happy. The dispy immediately shifted to aernal camera that watched the payload rapidly disappear into the distahe zoom on the camera tried to keep up, but it wasn’t quite fast enough. After ten seds of flight, the capsule colpsed upon itself and the drag of the air pulled it down.

  “Follow the dest,” Alexaated. Whoever was trolling the camera, did their best until the thing vanished below the curvature of the p.

  “What was different about that capsule versus the new ones?” he asked, not expeg an answer.

  “Did you see how it crumpled?” one man asked.

  Alexander pyed back the video in his mind space. The man was right, it crumpled very strangely. “Does anyone have a saw or cutting tool handy?”

  “Should be one down by the bst doors, why?” anineer asked.

  Instead of answering the man, Alexarode out of the room and dowairs to retrieve the power saw. Then he walked into the room where they were currently st the old capsules. He took the saw and cut the capsule in half, then into quarters.

  The group from the un, who had followed him, watched in silence.

  Once Alexander had it cut apart, he separated the thick pstic parts, exposing a reinf mesh of metal hidden ihe thick pstic.

  “Well,” he said, spinning the piece around so everyone could see. “That expins why our capsules are falling apart. I’ll print up a new oake a break, we will e back for test forty-four in the m.”

  He walked out of the ste room, annoyed with himself. He should have sidered the possibility that the capsules were reinforced. His ht had cost them a full day.

  Alexander knew he shouldn’t be so harsh on himself, it wasn’t like he had ever built a uncher or these capsules before, but he couldn’t help it. A rge portion of the success or failure of this project relied on him. One good thing to e out of this discovery was the fact he wao redesign the capsules anyway.

  Their inal design was meant to be picked up by a ship heading in the same orbital path as the capsule was on. That was fine for a ship leaving orbit. It was not fine for a station that was being built in orbit.

  The ideal orbit for a station was signifitly higher than the orbital unch capabilities of the uhat meaher a shuttle would o be io rendezvous with the capsule, or for the capsule to mao the correct location. sidering he couldn’t rely on the Hawks to be here to move the capsules after five months, he had decided to design ones with small maneuvering thrusters built into them.

  This requirement reduced the usable space within the capsule by an additional ten pert, but it also allowed the capsules to be much more useful. So it was a fair trade-off in his mind.

  After entering his workshop, Alexander pulled up the schematic of the capsule he had been w on. The eerior surface was covered by a flexible weave desigo collect sor energy. Over that weave was a thin abtive yer desigo fke away in the vacuum of space. It was added to protect the sensitive nature of the sor weave from the harsh passage through the atmosphere.

  Alexander hadn’t desighe weave or abtive pos. He had simply pulled them from other items he had worked on in the past. The abtive coating was a sort of hardened gel used ihat saw high temperatures for prolonged periods of time. The material isters used by most printers utilized this gel to keep the isters from melting as it turhe material inside malleable for printing. He just happeo remember the warning that this gel would break down if exposed to a vacuum and used that to his advantage.

  The sor weave came from the few armor designs he had experieh. It was also used quite extensively in most vac-suits to e least a trickle charge during spacewalks or emergencies. He exploded the view of the capsule on his program and added a metal mesh. Then he ed the pstic back around it. He did have to redesign a few pos and move stuff around a bit to get everything to fit again but it all came together. When he was dohe design looked mostly the same oside. Eight tiny ion thrusters were molded into the top and bottom half of the design allowing the capsule to maneuver. As far as thrust went, the back of the capsule had two ion thrusters. One oop half, one otom half.

  It wouldn’t be fast, but it would be enough to get the capsule where it o be eventually.

  His ges did require additional space. But instead of further redug the interior size by adding more padding, Alexander reduced the padding. It would mean he would have to reduce the size of aive pos he po unch. While not ideal, he couldn’t add more padding because his scaffolding was already desigo take up the entire space avaible to maximize each.

  He sent it to the printer and groaned internally at the projected time it would take. Six hours per capsule wasn’t that bad, but the previous ones had only taken an hour each. He activated the rest of the prihat were rge enough to print them and walked out of the room. There was nothing else he o do in the workshop as all the other maes were busy king out pos for the facility, the station, or the automated defehat were all still being worked on.

  Alexander looked at his clod realized it was almost time for the evening meal. He headed toward their apartment to make some food for Yulia. He hadn’t seen much of his daughter since her friends had arrived from Petrov. But what he did see warmed him. She was ughing and smiling much more now. And she seemed to really enjoy showing her friends around Eden’s End from what Zorina told him.

  That was excellent news.

  He had also heard a few families had expressed i in adopting some of the children. Alexander left that to Headmaster Wong and Damien to figure out though.

  There was a lot of work to plete before he could start building engines or ships, but things were starting to e together.