Countryman watched the last few students leave before joining Samantha in her office, "So what did you want to talk about?"
"I'd had some time on my hands, so I started going through the old boxes of research that were brought aboard in haste before our departure from Earth. Well I found some files related to Project Deathhawk, I presume you are familiar?"
"Naturally, it was the project that gave us the 1204, the Admiralty wanted a successor to the Nighthawk, and the chosen codename was Deathhawk. What about it?"
She reached into her drawer, "I found this, it's a schematic for an alternate design. It largely draws from the same basic design, but whoever designed it had some interesting ideas."
Countryman looked it over and blinked, "Ambitious, this would have been difficult to build even in small numbers." he paused as he looked over the pages. "Ah, yes of course Kentoth would have been involved, he'd always had a special insight into antimatter."
"Kentoth?"
"He was something of a rival of mine," said Countryman as he awkwardly scratched his left ear, "and... rather responsible for me being a cyborg."
Samantha gave him a second look, "Wait really?"
"The thing about geniuses is that they all have their quirks, Kentoth had a mind that rivaled Ruri's but he wasn't... exactly restrained. He would get an idea and just have to test it without any regard for safety or precautions. I used his work as a basis for designing the Enterprise's Antimatter reactor." Countryman paused and tapped the page, "And from the look of it, he used my refinements to design one small enough to fit on a fighter. The implications are groundbreaking."
"And to think, if I hadn't decided to go through those old boxes it might have sat in the cargo bay gathering dust for another seven years."
"Perhaps," replied Countryman, his attention more on Kentoth's last insights.
"Out of curiosity whatever happened to this Kentoth?"
"He blew himself up about six months before we left, one of his more dangerous experiments going just a tad more wrong than he expected. At least this time the collateral was a good deal smaller than usual. I guess his luck just finally ran out, since he finally paid the price for the error."
"I've never heard so casual a description of a death, it's like you don't feel anything over it."
"Well I don't, Kentoth wasn't family nor was he a friend. I didn't hate him either, sure one of his experiments nearly killed me, but that was decades ago, I've long gotten over that. By the time it happened, it was just yet another death, they happen all the time."
'Ah I think I understand." she replied as Countryman moved to leave.
He paused at the door, "Thanks for bringing this to my attention, if you find anything else bring it to me right away, now if you'll excuse me I need to go find Ruri."
She watched him go, and commented to herself, "I didn't even get to show him the other item..."
Countryman found Ruri in her lab. The numerous displays in the room were filled with data and active readings about the storm. Given the current research focus was largely on the storm, he wasn't that surprised. They'd left their port in the storm for the purpose of charting the storm. With the new data they'd taken from Raider vessels, they had enough to start seriously studying the storm, and for the moment they were heading back towards their port in the storm. His current plan was to hunker down for a few weeks, time enough to inspect the hull, do any repairs that might need doing and finish their study on the Raider data. After that he was going to look up one of the other factions, they would do well to make contact with the locals. Sure the Raiders were quite hostile, but there was a chance the other factions would be more cooperative.
Ruri smiled when she saw him, "Jac! What brings you here?"
He looked around, "No Vera today?"
Ruri gestured towards the door, "She's across the hall working on that shield generator."
"Still having no luck turning it on?"
"Actually making progress there, she managed to get it to power on for a few seconds before it shut down. We think the main issue really is a power incompatibility, but we think the local radiation is complicating things as well. Vera is testing out some new ideas to get it working."
"Ah I see, well I brought you something."
She took it and frowned, "Huh, looks like old Deathhawk documents. What's..." her eyebrows raised, "Wait? This is Kentoth's work isn't it?"
"Sure is, the crazy fool left us quite the parting gift. Based on the dates, he made these about a week before he blew himself up."
"Can't say I didn't see it coming. I told him..."
"I'm aware, but what do you think?"
"Getting an antimatter reactor that small to work reliably would be tricky, but the potential is certainly there. I wouldn't want to test it on the ship though, and getting the materials might be tricky." she turned the page, "Huh, well he had a few interesting ideas about electro cannons, too."
Countryman nodded, Kentoth's version of the 1204 would have had largely similar capabilities but it would have been more agile and better armed. He'd proposed fitting two more particle cannons on it, and a pair of electro cannons. Even included blueprints for a miniaturized design, one that looked quite intriguing to him. "I thought much the same."
"I disagree with mounting a pair of electro cannons on the 1204, but his idea isn't entirely without merit, certainly at the time it looked attractive. With some work, I can apply his designs to our current pulsar torpedo launchers, maybe even look into fitting a pulsar launcher onto the 1204."
"Agreed and those pulsars proved quite useful on the Sparrow and if we can add them to the 1204 as well? That would be a nice force improvement, it would give us a few more options."
"No reason we can't already. Main reason we don't is due to space constraints, Kentoth's design takes advantage of the higher output of an antimatter reactor to justify removing two capacitor banks to fit his miniaturized electro cannons. Hmm, now that I think about it, we've made a few improvements in energy storage over the last few years..."
"So we have. I think I know where you are going, and it would be a good excuse to finalize the 1204, we could put forth a new 'production version'. Get rid of the X, moniker and all that."
"I do have plenty of pilot feedback, they generally love the ship, but there are a few things I can do. Give me a couple of weeks, and I should have something for you." said Ruri as she turned to the comms, "I'll need Richards though, oh and I'm sure Eri would love to help."
"Don't count me out. I might be busy these days, but I'm sure I can find the time. Besides, I've had some ideas about our engines that I've wanted to try out."
Ruri turned to look at him, her eyes wide, "Wait you do?! Why didn't you share them?"
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He shrugged, "Never really had the time to discuss it."
"So what are you thinking?"
Countryman walked over to the console, his mind already working over what he would say. Pulse Wave engines worked by bombarding a Rydium core with high-energy particles, although they could also work with lasers. The modern use of high-energy particles however had certain benefits that lasers didn't provide. Within the core chamber of the engine, exotic particles were produced, including gravitons in large quantities. The engine chamber used special systems to manipulate and modulate the particle stream to produce an energetic pulse wave to produce a form of reactionless thrust. It was why human vessels didn't have thruster ports, they didn't need them.
They'd long figured out that increasing the number of cores in an engine had a positive scaling effect on the pulse wave reaction but this also resulted in increased energy draw. However adding too many cores to an engine could also have an advert effect on system stability, potentially leading to a catastrophic engine overload.
Bringing up his files, he began, "The current system uses modulated high-energy particle bursts to excite a Rydium core, to produce an exotic particle wave, which is then modulated into controlled pulses to produce thrust. Recent thinking for improving drive output has all been related to increasing core counts, and while this does increase the power of the drive, it comes with costs to efficiency and stability. So far we haven't found a stable configuration for engines with more than five cores, and such core-heavy engines have proven to be real power hogs. I don't think more cores is the answer, instead, I reexamined our particle beam system and how we modulate the energy matrix."
Ruri blinked as she looked over the modified blueprints he'd pulled up, "Seems you've been working on this for awhile."
"Over a year, I needed something to focus on to avoid thinking about the radiation that was slowly killing us all."
"Have you tested it?"
"Only in simulation, I can't go any further without prototyping the design but based on those simulations? I was seeing a significant fifty percent increase in thrust generated per megawatt of energy spent, the improvement in energy efficiency was staggering."
"Impressive if true, but what about overall thrust?"
He sighed, "Those numbers aren't as impressive, the modification is more about fuel efficiency than anything else, but overall thrust did increase by roughly five percent. I'd say the numbers look better when you consider the shift on core and size metrics."
She drew closer, "Got a chart on that in this file?"
Countryman shifted the screen to display a chart that compared engine sizes, and core counts. "As you can see efficiency metrics really improved but the shift was more dramatic in multi-core engines with Quintuple core engines seeing the most dramatic shift. The new modification is more stable which might play into it, but if single-core engines were a hundred percent efficient, dual-core are now 98 percent and triple-core are 90 percent. Quad-core's lag behind at 80 percent, and as mentioned Quintuple cores have jumped all the way to sixty-five percent efficiency. Considering they'd previously been well below fifty percent, that's a huge improvement."
Ruri nodded, "Agreed, the fuel savings are tempting too, we are burning fuel out here and don't really have a means to replace it."
"Aside from what we can take from Raider vessels, I know what you mean. I've seen the data too and they don't have a stable source of fuel either."
"I'm aware, I've been looking into ideas about drawing power from the Storm itself, I even put a team on it, but better, more efficient engines will help just as much."
Sali took a moment to conduct a quick system's check of her fighter. Sure enough as Instructor White had said, she was in a stock configuration bird and so were her two wingmates. Her weapons console looked good, all four cannons were fully charged and in standby mode. All four missile launchers looked good and had one missile ready to go with a second in reserve, while her torpedo bay read full with six warheads.
Armor readings were good with all related systems being marked blue and the AIF reading fully charged. The Energy Web was also fully charged and in standby mode. Her other countermeasures passed the quick diagnostic as well and were on standby. The 1204 had a few like an ECM system and decoy projectors, along with a signature damper. Those other countermeasures were meant to confuse enemy targeting systems and missiles, while the Energy Web served to absorb any missile hits the other systems failed to send off course.
On the tactical plot, both of her wingmates were in formation marked as Sylvia and Arthur, she could hear the two chatting, as they made a lazy orbit around mining outpost 14. It was a mid-sized asteroid where several satellites had been deployed around the area and a platform erected. As she was watching it, energy beams were slamming into the metal-rich surface of the asteroid and breaking it up. The resulting ore was soon lifted to the platform, where it was being loaded onto shuttles to be carried back to the Enterprise.
In the area, she could see several smashed asteroids and broken chunks of rocks that had been larger. Clearly the Enterprise had been here for a while, and they'd been doing some rather extensive mining.
White hadn't mentioned what was being mined here but she didn't really have time to look around. Already she could see the transport they were to escort leaving the platform. The Artic class vessel was marked Kerri on her plot. She was about to hail the shuttle, when her computer reported, "Incoming transmission from the Enterprise."
She tapped the comms control to listen, as a woman's voice spoke "Enterprise to all pilots, be advised we have received reports of increased Pirate activity in the area. All pilots are advised to be on alert for enemy ships."
Sali barely had time to process the message before her group was hailed by the shuttle, "I am ready to get back to the ship, you three ready to escort me?"
"As ready as we'll ever be," replied Sali, "Defensive formation, be alert for enemy ships." She started as she began organizing the pilot into a better formation and set course for the Enterprise. Just because this was a simulation didn't mean she wasn't going to take this seriously. Her life rather depended on how she did so, she was going to take this very seriously.
The first few minutes passed without incident, filled with the background chatter of her pilots. It was dull and familiar to her, she'd been through escorts like this before but the dull knife of boredom was always preferable to action. You never wanted action since that was where things could go wrong, but of course no good test would be without action.
"Cut the chatter," she commented as she spotted something, "Contact! Unknown fighter, bearing two one two mark six eight, she's on an intercept course."
"Got it! Contact confirmed," promptly replied Sylvia.
Arthur attempted to hail the fighter with an order to identify, but there was no response. Sali hadn't expected one and the lack of response just confirmed her gut, she flicked the safety switch on her weapons console, "All ships weapon's hot, Arthur take her out."
"Yes ma'am" replied Arthur, "Missile's locked!"
A second later two missiles fired from his port wing, and sailed towards the contact, which immediately attempted evasive maneuvers and deployed decoys. It wasn't enough, the photon missiles weren't fooled and they were too locked in. One missile missed seemingly by centimeters before shooting past, but the other struck the fighter with deadly force. A bright flare filled her screen, just as a second contact on the same vector appeared on sensors.
Arthur's second missile acquired on the new contact, just as it fired a payload of ion missiles. "Incoming!"
Sali took only a moment to assess the missiles, six warheads had been fired at the shuttle. The Energy web might be able to take them all out, but she didn't think it was a good idea to rely on that. Thankfully they weren't that fast, she turned and fired several quick bursts towards the missiles and seconds later she was rewarded with a few ionic flashes as the warheads were flash vaporized. Elsewhere she spotted a fireball from Aurther's second missile; he'd scored two kills. That was lucky, but things weren't over.
"More contacts! Two squadrons and a corvette are now entering the AO."
Those were more serious numbers, either the pirates had a base in the region or there was a pirate carrier somewhere in the system. Perhaps several; pirate clans would often amass a few light carriers, they were particularly useful for raiding and often had good cargo capacities to help make off with the loot. Briefly she wondered about the mining outpost, but they should be okay. The platform itself had a few cannon emplacements and was armored, there were also a few fighters on station. In addition, she'd managed to scan the satellites in the area, they weren't for decoration, those were proper defensive weapon platforms, albeit of unusual design.
Like all Human military designs they were unshielded, relying instead on a sturdy armored shell and energy web projectors. Each satellite came with a missile pod consisting of six launchers and carrying an impressive sixty missiles. She'd also noted the presence of four dual particle cannon turrets, but unlike most defensive satellite designs she didn't see a torpedo launcher. It also featured an unusually large fusion reactor for its size, one that fed directly into a large capacitor array and particle accumulator matrix, which fed directly into a massive pair of linked particle accelerators, along the length of which she'd noted large heatsinks and cooling arrays.
Sali was pretty sure the satellite itself was a weapon, with additional weapons mounted onto it. A weapon the size of a small ship, which left her somewhat unsure of the exact yield but somehow she suspected it wasn't a weak beam. It wouldn't surprise her if that particle cannon it was built around was capable of inflicting serious damage to a capital ship. The large onboard reactors would certainly be able to provide enough power. Still she figured she'd ask White about them later, in the meantime she had other concerns to focus on.
As the new contacts entered combat range, she gave her orders, the mission was clear the shuttle had to be protected, which meant she'd have to deal with those fighters. Neither squadron nor the corvette should be allowed to fire on it, but she still had to keep an eye out for additional threats, this wasn't going to be easy, but she'd done similar missions before.