Chronicles of Sol: The Fall

Reia watched the frenzy on the bridge. The crew were carrying out his orders. Readying the ship for a faster pace to Cantra. She had a few questions, but one seemed far more pressing. “Um how exactly do you intend to get us there faster?”

“If you are worried that I am going to leave your sister’s ship behind. Don’t be, I plan to take them along.”

She shook her head, “I was listening, but I don’t see how you plan to...”

“Ah, I see.” he turned to look at her, “well there are a few technologies I can employ easily enough. Getting her hull to hold together for the trip will be simple enough, we simply need to overhaul the structural integrity grid. Shore it up, and switch it over to a dynamic load configuration. Getting that cruiser to a point where it is able to sustain a velocity above warp four long enough to reach Cantra would be the real trick. Given the ship just wasn’t designed with high warp in mind.”

“Not for anything more than short bursts. Otherwise the drive would burn out. I guess we might be able to get up to warp four point two if you can get the SI grid strong enough to handle the strain that would put on her damaged hull.”

He chuckled, “Well we have some experience reconfiguring ships to go faster than they were originally designed. That includes ships of alien origin. Although it helped that Cathamari engines are with only minor modifications easily able to sustain warp six. Their ships, not so much.”

She frowned, “Cathamari engines can sustain warp six? That doesn’t sound right. Why...”

“Why are they stuck at warp four like you are? Well that has a lot to do with their sublight engines and limitations in their radiator-based cooling system. Thanks to those issues, their drives tend to slag themselves when pushed to higher warp factors, and even if you got them up a factor or two they would burn through all their fuel in the blink of an eye. Lot of brute power, not very efficient.”

“Yeah, I’ve seen some of their tech on the market. That covers most of their stuff, including weapons. Although I do have to wonder, why were you messing with Cathamari engines?”

Countryman chuckled, “Well, our own warp program was behind that of the Cathamari when we made first contact with them roughly four years ago. Our ships could outrun them easily on sublight, but when it came to interstellar travel they had an edge. Particularly in speed. Studying their drive technology accelerated our own program.”

She blinked, “You mean you cracked warp five by reverse engineering Cathamari tech?”

“To a degree, we had help.”

“Help?”

“We learned a few things from the Krall. None of which will apply to what we are doing right now.”

“I um see,” replied Reia.

Countryman stood up, “Anyway, I have a few things to do.” he sighed, “Ruri why don’t you keep our guest busy for a bit?”

Reia stepped off the lift with Ruri and looked around. She had not been in this part of the ship before. There were a few people around, but the place wasn’t too crowded. Ahead of her a couple of young women pushed a giant cart down the hall, and into a wide doorway. The process made seemingly effortless by the anti-gravs the cart was using.

“So what part of the ship are we in?”

“The labs, its here that we conduct research, and numerous projects are being run at any given moment.”

She frowned, “So why did your bring me here?”

“Its the best place on the ship, and I thought you might enjoy helping me with a little project.”

“Project? What kind of project?”

“Just a little side projects that is more for fun, than anything else. I have been working on an old XM-10 Gauss Rifle. They aren’t exactly in common use today, so I had to replicate the template in a fabricator. As for what I am trying to do with it, I’ve been modifying it to use more powerful modern powercells, and added a micro-fabricator, and feed assembly to the rifle.”

“A fabricator? What for?”

“The idea of combining a fabricator with projectile weapons isn’t new. I’m just building a proof of concept for a miniaturized fabricator design. Won’t bring Gauss rifles back into common use, but there are other weapons that would benefit.”

“I see, so what did you want me to do?”

“Practice fire with the weapon, and tell me what you think. I’ll have the computer fabricate an unaltered model so you have something to compare it to.”

This did sound like a bit of fun. “Might be interesting, sure we can do that.”

Ruri led her to a nearby lab, and led her inside. Where she noted something that resembled a satellite stuffed into a corner. “So whats with the junk in the corner?”

Ruri sighed, “Ah, that? Nothing much, just a modified particle cannon. Just a word of warning, I wouldn’t use that if I were you.”

“Why not?”

“It was one of several designs I worked out months ago, but rejected. That particular cannon produces lethal quantities of epsilon radiation when it fires. As a result, it rather fails as a weapon. Can’t very well use a weapon if it hurts the user, as well as the enemy now can you?”

Reia gave it another hard look, and asked, “And you just have it sitting there?”

“Well, I did mount it into a satellite, figured it might be useful on an unmanned weapons platform. If not, the components are perfectly good. We can put it to some use, elsewhere.

“I see,” she puased, “on a different note, what else can you tell me about this XM-10 Gauss Rifle?”

As Ruri opened a side door in the lab, she began, “It was originally designed as a counter to first-generation powered assault armor designs. As the first generation armors became increasingly prevalent among the infantry, a lack of effective infantry weapons to counter armored troops became problematic. The XM-10 was one of several weapons put forth to fill this role, and while effective she was eventually supplanted by portable infantry energy weapon solutions.

“The weapon features a ten-round portable magazine or can be belt-fed. It fires hyper-velocity armor piercing fifty-caliber slugs...”

“Fifty caliber?” interuppted Reia the term meaning very little to her.

Ruri didn’t say a word merely stepped into the side room, and came out holding what was clearly a kinetic penetrator round. “This is a fifty caliber armor penetrating slug designed for use in the XM-10, it features a standard iron-nickle core encased in a triploymer-titanium alloy casing designed to withstand the extreme stresses of hypervelocity. As otherwise the round would simply distintergrate before reaching the target.

“That is fairly big round,” commented Reia.

“Well you would need something like this against first-generation powered assualt armor, anything smaller would not be able to penetrate the armor. Not in practice anyway, in theory if you could get enough velocity yes, but there is the whole problem with round disintergration. Achieving the velocity needed? Doable, ensuring the round doesn’t disintergrate before reaching the target not so much. The fifty caliber round being larger can pierce the armor at a lower velicity, and therefore won’t disintergrate before it strikes the target.”

Reia scratched her check, and then said, “You know my people also moved away from supplying ground troops with kinetics, but for a different reason. The proliferation of personel shielding significantly improved the life expectancy of troops on the ground. Kinetics aren’t known to really fair well against shields, and while personal shields have atmospheres to contend with that doesn’t really change things, in fact it makes things harder for kinetic weapons.”

Ruri blinked, “Haven’t really seen any personal shields myself. The Cathamari don’t use them, and with the exception of a few actions against pirates we haven’t fought any ground campaigns with anyone but the Cathamari. Although, I think I recall some footage our marines brought back detailing Krall personall shields in action.”

Reia frowned deeply, “Um, how do you have footage of Krall shielding, if you haven’t...”

“Fought them? We were docked at one of their outposts, when a Cathamari raiding force attacked. Naturally a few of our marines ended up in the battle, aiding the Krall.”

Reia note that down. She figured it might prove important later.

Ruri slipped back into the small side room, and came out a moment later carrying what was clearly an alien rifle. It was almost comical watching her carry the thing, given her tiny frame. The weapon was bigger than she was, but she surprisingly had little difficulty with it. “Ready to play?”

Reai looked around, “Where are we going to shoot this thing anyway? All the walls around here look the same as everywhere else.”

Ruri giggled, “Right here. The walls here like everywhere else benefit from internal overlord plating, which is rated to stop small arms. In fact they are rated to stop quite bit more than small arms. We could set a nuke off in here, and most of the ship wouldn’t notice, and the damage would largely be contained to this compartment. Might damage the neighboring labs if the warhead was big enough, but not much more. Internal armor serves quite well to contain the effects of armor penetrating hits, and greatly improves ship survivability.”

Reia gave the walls a second look, they did seem quite sturdy and rugged in terms of construction. The idea of internal plating wasn’t one she had often come across though. It was just so expensive, yes it did increase ship survivability, but internal force field generators were much cheaper and could accomplish much the same thing. Not only that, but they could replace emergency bulkheads as well. She had to wonder how much did the Enterprise cost.

“A little over six billion credits, another thirty if you count the development costs, and another twenty if you factor in labor.”

Reia blinked, not realizing she had asked aloud. For a moment she just stared, “...um,... isn’t that number... a little low?”

“Well, we don’t exactly use traditional labor techniques like you and the Cathamari do. If we did, ships like the Enterprise would be prohibitively expensive. Overlord armor alone is notoriously difficult to produce with traditional techniques. Modern fabricitors on the other hand can produce it at roughly a tenth of the cost it would normally require, and in a fraction of the time.” she puased and gestured into the room. “I can show you with that rifle, right now in fact.

Countryman glanced out the view screen. The storm was starting to fade. The shields had done their job, and held. The hull was as he suspected perfectly fine, even with the Cathamari shooting at them. In fact thanks to the storm, those plasma weapons had done even less than they would normally have done. It was a shame they had escaped, but prepartions to get underway were going well.

The report he was holding right now, was a progress report. The Guilded Heart had been shored up, and a few minor modifications to the warp drive were in place. They could travel at warp four point four six. Not quite a match for the Enterprise, but it would allow the fleet to reach Cantra faster. Hopefully it would prove fast enough, but he had a feeling it might not be enough speed. He just hoped he was wrong.