Chronicles of Sol: The Fall

Countryman waved a hand in front of Richard’s face. It seemed she froze up when she noticed that Ruri had torn her skinsuit while moving around inside the warp engine, and doing her inspection. Even now her one breast was rather poorly covered. Countryman had been ignoring it, he had seen more of her before. She wasn’t the most guarded afterall, and he had seen her in more badly torn clothing before. It was a talent of hers. He never met anyone else more skilled at ruining a good set of clothes, and she didn’t even try either.

After a moment, Richards finally said, “How did you know?”

Countryman sighed, “I’ve known her for years, and I have yet to see her not ruin an outfit. It doesn’t help that she is kind of careless, and well you saw.”

She did, that she did. That was very blunt and forward of her. This wasn’t even the place for it, and she wanted to do it right here. Richards doubted her presence even mattered to Ruri. “I guess I did see.”

At that moment Ruri came over, and waved the scanner she was holding. “I think its about time we head back. The other team should be done by now, and we will have plenty of data to study.”

“We do, and it would be best we get onto that. Let's hope whatever caused this will be easy to correct.”

That was a sentiment they all shared. With that in mind the trio hurried along. They would then send in teams to start repairs. Nothing major would be done however until they finished analyzing the data they had collected. Afterall they needed to look into whatever problems allowed both the primary and backup drives to fail. While this had only happened on the port side, it may be a possible indicator of future problems to come if they don’t find what the cause of these failures was.

Ruri stretched as she stepped away from the console. Richards and Countryman were both working on nearby consoles with her. The three of them had been busy in this room working for the last few hours. Analysis of the damage had long since been completed. Now they needed to figure out what changes to make to not only fix it but prevent it from happening again.

They had found two problems the first in the primary spatial coils. The materials simply couldn’t handle the stress of prolonged operation. Changing the material wasn’t an option. The other options capable of producing the desired effect were either weaker or were not on hand. They had chosen the material they did because it had the best results in initial testing, and was easily procured. The coils in Cathamari engines had a very similar composition. So there was another solution. They had to reinforce the coils.

The other problem was in the coolant lines. This time it was a structural defect, that had gone undetected. It allowed a line to rupture and led to a catastrophic failure of the whole system. That single point of failure honestly shouldn’t have caused the whole system to fail, and it wouldn’t have if things had gone as planned. Unfortunately, while they did have redundancies in the system those proved meaningless since the line ruptured just right. That rupture released destructive superheated coolant into the surroundings and damaged a second line, which released more. The emergency systems meant to contain this kind of damage couldn’t react fast enough, and the backup drive was damaged. While the emergency systems did correctly disengage the drive it wasn’t before damage to the drive was incurred.

What this ended up revealing were limitations in the cooling system. At the moment she was using this chance to improve it. They needed to reinforce the whole system. It needed to be more robust, and they needed to improve redundancy. Not to mention increase the reaction time of the emergency systems. They needed to be able to respond to and contain damage before it could spread like this.

As for the spatial coils, they were looking into using structural fields to actively reinforce the coils. A dynamic SIF for the coils might just be what they need. In fact that was what Countryman was working on with Richards, while she focused on the cooling systems. At the moment she had the computer testing her latest revised configuration for the system. The last couple of them fell short, but she had a good feeling about this one. They had already been stuck moving at sublight speeds for the last two weeks, she didn’t want to be here for another two weeks. The sooner they were back at warp the better.

Looking over she notice a smile on Countryman’s face, and Richards also seemed happy leaning over the same console. She moved over and glanced at the console. It was a stress simulation involving an unusual coil configuration. Then she noted the speed, warp 3.5, and the day on the monitor day 247. There was another one next to it same day, but the stress test was showing a speed of warp four. Glancing at Countryman she inquired about the results.

Countryman glanced at her, ‘Yes we are getting some rather promising results. At least in simulation.” he brought up a diagram of a warp engine, and pointed to a new addition, “this is our design for a dynamic structural field generator. We placed it here just behind the primary coils, and we modified the coils slightly introducing a point zero one percent mass of Rydium to the composition.” he tapped the console and brought up another simulation, showing a simulated test at warp five, that was a thousand times the speed of light. Well beyond what they thought they could reach with their current engine design.

She commented, “Warp five? Why run a simulation at that speed?”

“Curiosity mostly. This test however shows that at least in theory the coils can handle the stresses of prolonged use at those speeds. Of course, the real challenge will be keeping them at optimal temperatures, and besides these are based on the limited figures we have now.”

She was intrigued, and asked, “True. How high did you take the simulations?”

Richards answered, “We ran stress simulations up to warp seven. So far our fix seems to work, but the energy draw for it increases with speed. Thankfully the cost for it is negligible, in fact, we can draw all the power for it from the hull plating during warp. This is especially so at higher speeds where the frequency and energy of translight impacts increase.”

Countryman interjected, “How about on your end? Things going well with augmenting the cooling system?”

She sighed, “The last simulation fell short, but it was a step in the right direction. I’ve made a few changes, and am running a new one. It should be finished in a few minutes.”

Countryman gave her a look, “define fell short.”

“I managed to solve the single point of failure issue, but the new design can’t handle heat any better than the old one. I’m running a simulation on a modification that I feel can handle the heat better.”

“I see.”

Richards stepped away from the console and stretched. “I could use a walk, and I know the teams are itching to get to work on fixing the nacelles.”

Elsewhere, Operations officer Misaki was staring out the viewports of one of the starboard observation lounges. There wasn’t much to see with the ship crawling along at .8C. The ship could be going faster, but not by much more. Not until the warp engines are fixed. So they were now effectively months out from Earth, and years away from their destination.

Behind her she could hear a couple of crewman grumbling about the failure. They were trying to be quiet about it, but she could hear them quite clearly. Then again she had a good set of ears.

Misaki didn’t blame them for being upset. She didn’t like being stuck moving at a crawl in the middle of nowhere. On the other hand, it was welcome change to the constant threat of Cathamari attack. Since they left the system they had seen no sign of those genocidal lizards. She cursed their black little hearts, and thanked their luck on not seeing them out here.

The door opened, and she looked over to note that it was Williams walking into the room. She didn’t like her, and had half an urge to shove the arrogant older officer out an airlock. Misaki pushed that urge down again, and focused on the starscape slowly crawling by outside the viewports. She knew she could have changed what was being shown. The viewports could be closed, and a series of projection screens activated. Screens that were controlled from a neighboring room that had access to the sensors, but she could also pull imagery from the ship’s database. That was mainly since these observation lounges weren’t just for looking at the stars, they were also designed to serve as theaters. Hell if need be a few of the local weapon banks could be controlled from those stations. Although there are small control rooms nearby dedicated to that purpose as well. Ships like this had quite a bit of redundancy.

Behind her she could hear Williams inquiring, “How do you two feel about the captain and this situation he got us into?”

She sighed. This wasn’t the first time she had overheard that woman talking to a disgruntled crewman. Misaki knew full well what she was doing. Trying to undermine the captain. They were nearly extinct and here this woman was trying to foment a rebellion just because she didn’t approve of the captain. It was sickening to her. Misaki headed for the door hoping for somewhere more peaceful. This room had lost its appeal. Not to mention if she stayed there was a chance she might do something... unfortunate.

The trio leaned over the console, the one that was running Ruri’s latest cooling system simulation. One advantage of modern computers were how fast they were. Humanity was really good with computers, especially micro computers. It helped that Humanity had already moved past electronic computing. It had limitations, ones that had quickly become apparent when computing hit a wall in the early twenty-first century. They solved that wall, but did eventually hit a second in the mid-twenty-first century. One that required alternate solutions to solve. Quantum computing was looked at but ultimately rejected. It worked quite well for certain types of specialized computers but for the general computing needs of humanity it was not what they needed. They had tried quite a few replacements in the years since and for decades they had been employing optical computers. Optical computers were superior to quantum computing in many respects, but they were harder to program. At least that used to be the case. They had solved that issue years ago. Although they had hit a wall recently with Optical computers, and had started looking into Positronic computing.

The simulation they had been running on the ship’s optical computer network had only recently been completed. The results made Ruri smile. “Looks like my improvements did the trick. Its not much but if the simulation is right we will be able to cruise as warp 3.1 without much issue.”

Warp 3.1 would represent a doubling of their top cruising speed, a significant improvement. Well not exactly a doubling, that translated to 19 C, compared to the previous ten C that was a very good improvement, but still a long way from their goal of warp four which equals 100 C.

Countryman nodded, “it does. Although I would prefer to hold off on testing that.”

Richards overlooking the modified specs, “I can have this done in about three days. Five at the most. I’ll go get started. I already have teams ready to work on both nacelles.”

Countryman replied, “I’ll go ahead and send the specs to the Coto, and Umikaze.”

They both left the room. Ruri watched them go, and considered the simulation. It showed promise, and she was looking forward to seeing the data from their use. It would be invaluable to her own projects. By the time they reach Proxima she just might have enough data to take these modifications further. Perhaps even to the coveted goal of warp four. If the simulations were believed they greatest limitation to their current drive design was heat dissipation, but she knew there was one more not addressed. The spatial generators were based off the Cathamari engines, and could in theory breach warp five, but they would need to be redesigned to produce a spatial field powerful enough to generate the needed spatial folding for anything greater than warp five point two. Although most were of the belief that warp five would be plenty, and it probably would be. At 1000 times the speed of light they would be faster than any Cathamari ship, and it would dramatically expand the number of stars they could visit in her lifetime.

There might be other problems with their design to iron out, but she had no doubt she could solve them as they cropped up. Instead of joining them she headed off to her other lab, she had more simulations she wanted to run, and she had left the computer working on her compression problem. She wanted to review the data on that.

As it would turn out, it would take the fleet another week to make all the needed modifications to their engines. They had run into a few hiccups, but nothing major. As soon as the warp engines were ready all three ships went to warp, resuming their heading for Proxima. Thankfully they would suffer no further problems on the way to Proxima, not with the Engines anyway.