The week went by rather quickly for Alexahe station was starting to take shape with his new stru robots being run through their initial tests.

  He did have to make some desigions and unch those rept parts into orbit, but overall they were w out well. Then engineers would tio monitor their work for the remaining time they were in the system, but they said they didn’t expey major issues.

  Alexander hoped that was true. While the robots had some ability to repair each other, they wouldn’t be able to do much if the tral processors died on them or if the track wheels broke off and the maes floated away. The g system should prevent that sed sario from happening, but it was still a possibility.

  With the station well in hand and the final railgun turrets going up outside the facility, Alexander was able to finally free up produ time for his eeically, he was manufacturing three different engines, all scaled down to oh the size. That was still quite a rge eo build. The engine es alone measured two feet across.

  It was a testament to the ridiculous amount of power these engines produced that a mere three of them could push something the size of the Zephyr along at nearly 3.6g with the ship's average cruising speed being 1g.

  One g of acceleration didn’t seem like much, but when it was stant, it added up fast. Then again, fast was retive when you were speaking about space. Depending on the size of the parent star and the ps in a system, it could take anywhere from a few days to over a week to cross a system from the closest stable jump points. The smaller the star, the weaker the gravity well and the closer you could get in system without the field destabalizing.

  This travel time was also limited by the most on propulsion teology, which ulsed fusion. The engineering course, he was learning from, stated pulsed fusion wasn’t able to accelerate past .4c, which made no seo Alexander based on what he uood of physics. He khat weird limitation couldn’t be based on material siderations because the part of the course discussed psma eje and how early models mao get to .6c before fusion instability and inefficy caused the drives to go offline.

  At least that issue he could uand.

  From speaking with the Hawks’, specifically, Chief Engineer Aria Sullivan, he learhat psma eje teology was still in its infancy. Alexahought it had been around for some time, but apparently, it was only ied after the Coalition war ended. So the issues they were having were uandable. Fusioors were delicate things at the best of times. The fact that someone figured out a way to pull out psma from the reactor without destabilizing the rea was a moal achievement in and of itself. Eaew geion of engines would slowly reduce these issues and improve efficy. With enough time and effort, reag near light speed shouldn’t be a problem for the teology.

  With that being said, he o know why pulsed fusion was restricted. It wasn’t until much ter in the module that he learned why pulsed fusion had this stratleneck. The fusion process for pulsed fusion took p a bustion chamber, but this chamber en to space through the exhaust nozzle. Wheypes of engines neared .4c, a resonant hum started to form ihe bustion chamber. It wasn’t enough to damage the chamber, but it was enough to disrupt the delicate fusion process.

  That didn’t mean people had given up on the older teology. He knew people were looking into the issue thanks to his exges with Dr. Lund.

  Still, .4c was nothing to scoff at. It meant those three engines could push the Zephyr from jump point to jump point in a system the size of Sol in a little over twelve days. And that was at a standard cruising speed of 1g assuming you jumped iween the orbits of Jupiter and Saturn, which was as close as you could get, assuming both gas giants were on the opposite side of the system at the time. If they had to push it to the ship’s maximum acceleration of 3.6g, they could do the crossing in a little over six days. However, that sort of acceleration for that long would have some serious drawbacks on anyone aboard the ship, assuming they survived.

  As far as he knew, humanity hadn’t discovered iial dampeners or anything that could reduce the effects of gravity on a person. Then again, Alexander had assumed artificial gravity pting wasn’t real until he saw it. So maybe some of the fancier ships had it or it was a military secret and he just wasn’t aware of it.

  He realized he was getting off track again. The engines were powerful, so powerful that he couldn’t test a full-sized version on the p without a specialized test facility. The scaled-down engines he printed sisted of an Omni, a Sinorus, and his new design. All of the designs he chose were from Css 4 eo ehe numbers were parable.

  Alexander had phese tests weeks in advahere it, much like the railgun pits, outside the facility specifically designed and built for these tests. In a perfect world, these engines would be tested in a vacuum, but Alexander didn't have the time or patieo build a vacuum chamber long enough to keep the exhaust gasses from melting the lining. He thought about coating a chamber in that heat-abs gel, but it was only rated for 3500 degrees Celsius. That was nowhere near enough to keep the psma from melting everything around it. The pulsed fusion drive bur nearly twice that temperature.

  He suspected his pit would probably be rather worse off after these tests but that was fine. He had pns to incorporate liquid cooling into the walls as well as eleagitaio keep the psma from getting too close to the walls on future tests. He figured if it was good enough to keep ship thrust es from melting from the obse temperatures involved it should be good enough to keep his pit intact.

  Right now the pit sisted of a simple steel liner with fire-protective matting stuck to the inside of it. The test rig had a mounting ptform that allowed the eo face straight up and a sensor pte that measured thrust. This design ehe engine wouldn’t go flying off if there was some catastrophic failure with the mounting.

  It was also the most simple and straightforward design he could e up with. Alexander didn’t want to waste a whole lot of time and resources on these first tests especially since he didn’t need exaumbers. With the engines being scaled down, he wouldn’t be getting those anyway. The only thing he cared about for this initial test was a side-by-side parison of the three engines.

  Before he could do that, he was running the parts that he could through the testing station he had built. It was a scaled-down version of the one he used orov Station. While he couldn’t afford to take a testing station with him when he left, due to space s, he did purchase the pns to build one. He just hadn’t until now.

  As the parts were running through the diagnostic tests, he moved over to the printer and pulled off another set of finished power banks. Ideally, Alexander would build a fusion power pnt to supply the needed power to operate these engines. But he still didn’t have the capabilities o do that. So he resorted to printing out dozens of power banks.

  The tests wouldn’t run very long, so he didn’t o sustain the fusioion that turhe fuel into thrust. It would probably still take the power supply’s plete charge to run each test though. So long as it worked, he was fih that. The power banks were rather quid cheap to manufacture.

  That left the st issue he o overe, fuel.

  Matthews had stated he would provide fuel if Alexander , but he wao do this on his own. Finding water was easy. The facility had twenty-four wells that went down to a buried aquifer.

  verting this water into rocket fuel was a bit more challenging. He already had the designs for a processing pnt thanks to Na though.

  Turns out it was a bit plicated to make D2O and T2O. Both elemeed in small amounts on Eden’s End, but mining them would be far too bor-inte the moment. He didn’t o do that though, because he already had the design for a processing mae that would do that all for him.

  That meant more power banks. And a secure ste tank for the rocket fuel after it was ready. As a bonus, the fuel would e in handy when he finally built a fusion power pnt for the facility. It wouldn’t be as good as what ships used for their reactors, but it would get the job done.

  Building the insuted and lead-lianks was taking lohan printing aing the individual parts for his scaled-down rockets. The tank wasn’t something Alexander was willing to rush though. He knew D2O wasn’t radioactive, but T2O was slightly radioactive. Given the quantities he rodug, he didn’t want to worry about the radioactive liquid causing issues around the facility or making people sick down the lihen again he robably overthinking it. The people of Eden’s End were likely getting a higher dose of radiation just by living here.

  He looked over at the robotic arm that was welding two of the taions together. It was nearly plete and he would have to take the e and remove it from the work area soon. The ste tank diameter was se that it barely fit through the closest opening to the outside. He would have to roll it out himself sihere were no delivery vehicles low enough to hold it without hitting the top of the door.

  It did highlight another problem he was going to have to resolve at some point. Mainly, how was he going to build full-scale engines without them getting stu his workshop?

  He khe far wall of his workshop faced away from the facility. The easiest option would be to cut out that wall and put in a rge door with an overhead e. It went on his to-do list.

  It seemed like every time he marked something off that list, two or three more things got added.

  The mae beeped to let him know it was plete and Alexander rolled the dual-yer riion out of his workshop and down the hall to the transport path. It made quite the racket as he went, but there were few people in his seost having decided to move to the quieter areas after he restarted produ. He couldn’t bme them. If he needed sleep, a noisy assembly lihat ran all day every day a few hundred feet away would be extremely annoying.

  The walls and doors were sound dampened, but with so much produ going on, the rge entry was left open most of the time as the transport carts retrieved items and zipped down to where the parts were needed.

  Oside, Alexander filtered out most of the gre from the star. He was gd he figured that nifty feature out after arriving here, otherwise it was often tht to work outside during the peak hours of the day.

  It took him ten mio roll the rio the sedary pit he eest site. A simple overhead e with a hand-operated ran on rails that passed alongside both pits. He didn’t want to expend a lot of resources for what was likely to be a temporary site.

  After hooking the e to the lifting points on the ring, Alexander pushed the unit into pce over the pit. This was the st riion going oe tank. The part to e off of the assembly line would be the top. He lowered it almost in pce before he headed down the spiral stairs that ran along the outside of the pit. Each level had a nding and he looked down at the one below where one of his automated robots was welding the outside yer together. He was already gd he had desighe robots for multiple applications.

  Before putting in the guide pins, he examihe inner weld. There were no issues as far as he could see, but he did hat the robot was almost empty of i gas for the welder. That was one major downside of welding in an atmosphere.

  He pulled out his tablet a an order to his ste. Soon one of his carts would be along with a fresh supply of gas. He was starting to run low on the supply Jasper brought him o trip. Alexander hadn’t expected to gh it so fast, he would likely have to build a mae to harvest the gas from the atmosphere sooner rather than ter.

  Aem got added to his list.

  Alexander didn’t have any pns for a mae like that, but he could probably figure it out. It wasn’t like they could be too plex, people were filtering atmospheric gasses back when he was human.

  As he was adding the alig pins, he saw the e fshing light overhead that indicated his delivery had arrived. He finished putting the st pin in before heading back up. On the back of the cart were two seventy-five-pound ders full on. Since he didn’t want to have to e back out here until the top was pleted, he grabbed both tanks and lifted them as he walked back dowairs. He didn’t eveo stop the robot, he simply set one ister down, removed the empty one from the cart attached to the back of the robot, put a full one in its pce, and then did the same for the nearly empty one.

  There was no pause in the welding and no sign that it had lost shielding. Alexander went back up with the empty bottles and put them ba the cart. It drove away and he finished l the new se into pce.

  ***

  It was finally time to test his model ehree days had passed since he fihe fuel ste and checked it for leaks. The processing pnt had been pumping out fuel ever since, so he had more than enough to do his initial tests.

  The first ehe Omni design, was already in pd ready to go. Uhe time Alexaood outside the railgun pit to watch the tests, he was well secure in a bunker a few hundred yards away for these.

  Today he was everyone else work and taking Jasper's words to heart by delegating tasks. The group of people who had signed up and trained for this were going through the st-minute checks. Alexander could have dohis all himself, but if he ever wao pete with panies like Omni or Sinorus, he needed skilled and capable people behind him.

  Of course, Lucas, and Gabriel had shown up for this important milestone. Damien was busy with the Hawks, ensuring the st-miraining was pleted with his new security teams. It would be up to that rather dour man to tihe training ohe meraries were gone. Alexander had no issue with the man taking on that role, while Damien wasn’t very likable he was focused.

  Alexander knew why Lucas was here, the man was curious about anything teological, even to the point of staring at him sometimes. However, he never did ask about the robot body. But why was Gabriel here? He didn’t have a good read on the woman as he had only met her a handful of times. But she didn’t e off as all that ied in teology or him in general.

  It's possible she was just here to report baien. He didn’t mind, it wasn’t like these tests could be hidden.

  “Green across the board,” someone said.

  Lucas looked to him for the steps, but Alexander simply smiled back. He had given the man an itinerary. If Lucas wao be the head of testing – which it sure seemed like he did – the man would o figure some things out himself.

  Seeing that Alexander wasn’t going to give him a hint, the younger man sighed and dug around in his pockets until he produced a crumpled sheet. Alexander wao frown at the abuse Lucas put that poor sheet of paper through. Did the man not realize how hard it is to find suitable material in an alien world to make paper?

  …Now that he thought about it, probably not. It wasn’t like anyone used paper in this day and age. Alexander just liked the nostalgia factor of it. Plus it was way easier to make paper than it was to make a ablet.

  After smoothing out the paper and gng at what was written, the man tucked it away again. “Shunt fuel to the ee tank.”

  One of the operators pressed a few spots on a tablet and a red bar appeared on the holo dispy against the wall. Ohe bar was full, the man disected and purged the li retracted behind an armored pte. Alexander had desig this way to prevent any sort of explosion from back-feeding into the ste tank and bursting it apart.

  Any explosion would be bad, but the small amount of fuel in the engine would only spread the radioactive liquid in a small area. If the ste tank bursts, the entire area could bee slightly more radioactive. At least the fuel wasn’t explosive or fmmable in its uate. That would be a nightmare.

  “Test fire in five!” Lucas called.

  After the tdown, Lucas pressed the ignition button. He could see people look around as a tingliion crawled along their skin. Even he could feel it.

  “It’s just the energy discharging into the fusion igniter,” he stated calmly. True to his word, a few moments ter, a ghostly blue fme shot from the open pit where the engine was resting. Less than a sed after that, the sound of the engine firing rolled over their bunker, causing a bit of dust to rain down.

  He made a o have the trol ter moved a lot farther away whe around to testing full-size models.

  The blue fme sted fifteen seds before it burhrough the tiny amount of fuel it had been provided.

  Alexander recorded the results, and the wo tests were prepped and ruhe eight hours.

  The results were not what he expected, auro his shop a bit ahe Omni eproduced the Sinorus ehere was no surprise there. But he thought his design ges would have had him way above either of the engine manufacturers or at least close. Turns out he wasn’t nearly as profit as he thought he was.

  His engine performed so poorly that it failed halfway through the test. And the time it did run for, it produced only a third of the thurst of the Sinorus engine.

  Alexander had skipped over his first three designs aed the fourth iteration, and the first that the simution software said would work. It did work if you could call that poor showing ‘work’. After arriving ba his shop, he marked that design as non-funal and began printing the other five. If none of them worked, he would o step bad reassess what he was doing wrong.