LOCATION: EDEN’S END

  SYSTEM: Y6X-3H2

  DATE: 2400

  Alexander couldn’t believe everything was going right for a ge. There hadn’t been any pirate activity since Fury left, which was something of a minor miracle. To add to that, Shall had finally finished patg up his ship and had left the system only a day prior.

  It had taken the smuggler a month to patch the holes caused by the defensive railguns, which was rather impressive sidering the man had refused any and all help. The old man’s tankerous attitude hadn’t stopped Damien from f his way aboard and helping anyway, so Alexander decided to thank the quick turnaround to the Chief of Security.

  The annoying man’s absence was just in time to celebrate Eden’s Resolve being pleted as well. Resolve was a slightly smaller ship than Fury, ating a ge in design. Lasers worked on Fury because the unneeded crew space had been verted to power ste and capacitor banks.

  He could have gohe same route with Resolve, but it would have meant removing more bunk areas or the hangar to make it happen. He didn’t want to do that for a few reasons.

  Alexander he ability to transport people without building a ship specifically for that purpose. That might ge iure but for now, all he had was warships so he o have them fill multiple roles until that happened. It wasn’t the most ideal situation, but it would have to work.

  Having a shuttle hangar aboard each ship also seemed like a good idea si allowed people to disembark without waiting for another shuttle to dock. That meant he couldn’t get rid of either of those spaces to make room for the batteries and capacitors.

  With that in mind, Alexander engineered railguns for the ship. He would have preferred Gauss ons for their maintenance simplicity, but he didn’t have pns for those so he would have to make do.

  Thanks to everything he learned while designing the surface ons and installing the ones oiny, Alexander had been able to improve upon his inal design quite a bit.

  He ran his hand along the two vertically stacked rails as he stood on the ship’s hull. It was one of three sets of double-stacked barrels on this turret. With the ship sp two main gun mounts, Alexander had effectively tripled the ship's firepower without increasing the on footprint. Each set of barrels could indepely adjust its a they were all locked on the same rotation.

  The ons were loaded by a tral tube that could feed and fire each barrel once every two seds. The ammo ste for each turret only held a thousand tungsterators, so whoever captaihis ship would o keep that in mind. A thousand rounds might seem like a lot until you realize each barrel stack could fire off sixty shots a minute.

  Alexander did keep PDC sers, although, he should call them PDLs. The defensive sers didn’t o be nearly as powerful as the main guns to shoot down ining missiles, and sers were much faster, had a longer range, and were quicker to aim than standard kiics.

  He ehe ship through the airlod walked the freshly painted corridors. The color scheme matched the Fury inside and out, but Resolve had a few more amehanks to the added spaot being taken up by energy ste systems.

  He stepped into the cavernous hangar. It was about the same width as the one on Fury, but it was longer. Just long enough to house two of the engines he promised Fletcher if he cared to load them inside.

  The Resolve’s hangar wouldn’t be relegated to hauling ehough, Alexander had another idea in mind for that. He walked to the bridge, waving to some of the engiesting the Resolve’s systems.

  Not all of the Engineers on Eden’s End had taken him up on his offer but some had, and it made this part of produg his own ship go much quicker.

  Alexander entered his and codes into the bridge terminal and brought up the holo dispy. It was the same tactical dispy that Fury had. He poked at one of the is and it zoomed in, showing a rge frame being assembled. The frame was nearly plete, having been designed with only one purpose in mind, and that was to hold three of the engines Alexander had promised Fletcher. There wasn’t any sort of c, engines, or power systems, it was simply a metal skeleton with attat points.

  That metal frame was desigo attach to the Resolve. He had specifically engi to fit within the bubble that the ship would create, ensuring easy transport. It was a quid dirty ao his shipping issue.

  There were only a few things holding up his delivery. The first was a crew. Na and his people had taken some time off, but they were already ba the outer belt, making good use of some of his bots that had been verted for mining. Besides, Alexander hadn’t been lying to Fletcher, he wasn’t going to ask Na to fly bad forth between systems for him. The man was much better suited to running the mining operation here.

  The other issue was the ck of a superputer for the Resolve. All of the ship’s systems could fun indepely without that, but he couldn’t fly the ship properly without a full crew instead of the five it would take to operate with the superputer core in pce.

  That was fine. In a little over a month, the Hawks and Jasper would be back. Then both of those issues would be resolved.

  Alexaook a quick look at his orbital printers and the six etached to the refueling station; ready to be delivered. pleting fifteen of them was going to be easy.

  He thahe Engineers for their work and headed back to the surface with Branston. The Engineers would stay up there for the week while they ras, but Alexander o finish work on his current projects. He also wao be home for Yulia.

  He was w on two projects currently with another handful started. The two major ones he was fog his time ohe space station design and the Css 8 thrusters for the Talon. Css 8 was just the military version of Css 5 but there were some key differences.

  Those differences made the job a bit more challenging. As if building a pressed psma eje thruster wasn’t already hard enough.

  Once he was ba his workshop, Alexander pulled up the schematics. He didn’t have the Talon’s yout, but he did have the space requirements and mounting locations thanks to Chief Engineer Sullivan. Alexander also didn’t have design specifications for a Css 8, since he wasn’t authorized to purchase military designs.

  He had spoken to Aria Sullivan at length about the engines, even though she hadn’t been able to provide him with the repair dotation. The biggest thing she kept bringing up was redundancy.

  So that’s what he tried to do with his first design, build redundant parts for the entire system. He was sure if he had built his first iteration, it would have been the most robust Css 8 engine around. The problem was it would never fit in the designated spad it would have been a nightmare to maintain.

  The first item he scrapped on the design was the redundaor. Fitting two reactors ihe engineering space, with his current level of uanding, simply wasn’t going to happen. Instead, he added multiple shunts for each of the fihat required additioromagic shielding which flicted with the other shunts.

  Rearranging the power delivery system into a circur pattern on the rear of the reactor took care of that issue, bringing him to iteration three of his design. Now he had to figure out how t those tubes back together so they wouldn’t flict but could also go into the same thrust chamber.

  He had to do this while avoiding all the tai systems and cooling pipes that o run through the eo keep it from melting into sg. His current design looked like a madman had built it, and he was certain Sullivan would have chewed him out if she saw it. Thankfully, this was only a proof of cept and it would never see the light of day.

  Alexander looked at how the Destiny’s engine was id out. It was a Sinorus design, but it was better than nothing. The Destiny’s propulsion system was a much simpler design because it cked the same types of redundancy Alexander was adding. Whe to the point where the main psma shu directly into the ter of the bustion chamber, he realized he had beehinking his design.

  He removed all the superfluous piping and tai systems in his design. Then he ran each set of pipes into a smaller tai vessel, equally spaced around the circumference of the chamber at a forty-five-degree angle. Getting the eleagitaio py ni the collector was a bit of a challenge, but he figured it out after a few tries. From there, it was a single flow to the thrust chamber.

  After those ges, Alexander was left with a much er-looking desig it run on his simution software while he switched his focus to the station.

  He had modeled the test design of the station a bit like Petrov if it had a single ring. This was a major departure from his initial design which looked like an enrged version of the fueling station.

  Alexander chose a ring design because he didn’t have the moo purchase the necessary gravity pting the station would require. The ring wasn’t very big, perhaps three times the size of the fuel depot. And it was shaped a bit like a top. Having to spiatioed a few new challenges for Alexander, mostly how to dock ships to it.

  He mahis by adding a sed ring that was attached to the station, and making the main ring spin instead of the eation. A rge circur stru hangar also sat at the end of the station opposite the thrusters.

  It wasn’t rge enough to fit something like the Talon, but he could fit a heavy destroyer like Dawn ihe space if it came down to it.

  The biggest issue with something se was figuring out weight distribution and power requirements. It would have to be built in orbit, so he wouldn’t o do all the logistics of how to unch parts from the surface. He did o provide the station with enough thrust to keep it in orbit or adjust its orbit as hat was going to be a challenge.

  Before he could begin to design those systems, he needed Dr. Lund’s help. He sighed and pulled up the schematic she gave him.

  She hadn’t specified when she would he device, but he figured if he was going to ask for help, he had best e with a gift.

  Alexander had only a vague idea of what the esoteric piece of sce equipment did. It was some sort of measurement or testing device, that much he could tell. He went over the entire design, finding it rather ineffit at whatever it was desigo measure. Using his engineering knowledge, Alexander ed up the design. The only thing he didn’t ge was the small circur chamber in the ter. Just to be safe, he printed his design and her inal one.

  The required tolerances meant his test geion of printers would take aire day to print both designs. That was the problem with making things more accurate, they took far more time.

  Shortly after sending them to the printers, he got a beep from the simution software, letting him know it was done. He looked at the issues it found but wasn’t deterred. It was an iing challenge, and he loved that. He quickly set about addressing the issues and designing the iteration of the Css 8 drive.