[M:0]
Post by Onas Knox on Dec 21, 2012 15:14:31 GMT -5
Onas pulled the letters out of his pocket, as he and Nick walked down the street towards the docking bay that housed the impotent Athena. The were thickly filled, and he was more than a little excited to open them. Looking to his freind, he asked, "Shall we?"
"Fo' show." Nick answered and Onas took the thinner of the two envolopes sideways in his hand, and in a practised style, tore the outermost right side of it off, reveiling a letter, and cash. He removed the letter only and stopped just outside bay ninty two. The letter was a simple, old fashioned kind, it read;
Care of:
O.han
18 M. Dock Circle Road
Dear A. Deschain
I am pleased to announce that Mr. Grimm awaits your arrival at the same hospital you awoke in. I know he'll be very happy to receive your gift. Told you I'd come through, luv. In other news, I gave that little yellow pup with one eye to my sister. She was too much for me to handle. I'll be seeing you soon.
Condolences,
Jack
Onas smiled, Cypher was a very careful man. He handed the letter to Nick and began counting the money inside. Nick held the paper for a minute or two, as Onas opened the second letter and removed the cash from it and added it all up. Nick stopped him and asked,
"I don't follow all of this. Who's Mr Grimm?"
"You don't see the bridges?"
"It's a 'Reverse Robin', a 'two-on-one', and a 'third eye' right?" Nick asked re-reading it, "O. Han is the pub, I got that, Deschain is the guy were meeting? And... we're the sister?"
Onas smiled, Nick spent all his time at the office, Onas made the pickups. He'd spent more time with the cloak and dagger stuff. "Your getting better. Yes, no and yes. Cyph could teach you a thing or two about hiding your tracks. It's a 'two on two', and a 'tickler' also after the 'third eye'. See," Onas took the letter and held it before them, then he instructed, "O' Han is the bar we just came from yes, 18 m means military time, so.."
"Six in the evening, gotcha." Nick compleated it.
"Right, then Deschain, who is our contact, cause that's the 'Robin', is a woman. It's 'pup' for girl, 'mut' for guy. And the yellow is.."
Nick caught it again, and threw in, "Blonde hair, okay." He looked on and added, "One eye? So she's missing an eye?"
"I guess, I don't know her. Also, little yellow pup, little means young, so she's problebly our age or so. And yes, we are the sister, which is Jack or Cypher's way of saying this job was passed to us."
"So were ambasadors for them then, thats cool." Nick said.
"Right, and lastly, 'seeing you soon' means fairly simply to contact him when were done." Onas finished, concluding his lesson and returning to his counting.
"I know what a third eye is," Nick said sarcasticly, "What's the front?"
"Enough." Onas answered, ignoring Nicks jeer and handing him a bundle of cash, "Ok, lemme change, and we'll take a little ride. Call back J and Andre, tell 'em that we' gettin the magnetic coils an' fer' them to give us a hand. And let the rest of the crew know the changes, if they want her painted, we gotta do it now." he said turning towards the Athena to change his clothes, then he stopped and turned on his foot, and asked with one hand out at his waist level, "Who's got a better price, Andrew's or Rutger Inc?"
"Rutger would be better either way, they manufacture on Persephone Prime. And it's only about five hundred miles from here." Nick answered having taken the money from Onas and going to make the waves.
"I'm cool with that, your drivin."
The next day, Onas stood in the engine room watching the Athena's readout screen with some anxiety. It was a big day, Athena's shakedown was in progress, and so far things were running smoothly. The new coils were working perfectly, and while some might consider that a blessing, it was not an easy process to heat up this particular reactor. Andre came walking in and cheerfully anounced his greeting. Onas wasn't trying to be a prick, but he didn't turn to answer Dre regardless. Instead he continued to watch the screen. Holding up a wireless to his mouth, he spoke softly, as though even his very words might cause some dire complication. "Take it up a ten thousandth..." After a second he added, "Slowly this time."
Part of the data in the middle of the main screen read }2800 -F{. Andre stood for a moment wondering about that, as Onas was constantly looking at it. After a minute, he began to look around, wether he thought Onas was in a foul mood or not, he didn't really show it. Instead, he had a look around at what would pump the blood of the dutchess. Andre hadn't spent a great deal of time in the engine room before, this simply wasn't a system he was familiar with, and no one was allowed to tinker with it but Onas or Alice. The reactor itself was a huge sphere twelve feet in diameter, and spaning through three catwalks. It had four deticated coolant tanks, and another larger coolant system about seven feet away. Each of these large machiens were heavily shielded and bolted into place in a way that Andre could only describe as paranoid.
The reactor also had four more tubes coming out, that lead to four large capaciters. Larger than any he'd yet seen. Inbetween the reactor, and the lone coolant tank, was a small engine, mabey the size of a footlocker. It was some kind of engine he hadn't seen before. If he'd been around in the early 2000th century, he might have described it as a large harley davidson engine, but as it was, he didn't know how to adequately explain what he was looking at. It had armatures connecting to opposite ends of a pipe, that ran between the reactor and the stand alone coolant tank.
The small engine had a nine large disks on one one side, that connected to a drive shaft, which ran through the little engine. From the discs, large cables the width of Andre's forearm spanned to a bank of batteries. This one Andre knew, it was a common setup for storing electricity, and though the batteries were covered, the protective plate covering them was present on just about every commercial ship in the verse. Andre wasn't Onas, Nick or Alice, but he wasn't a simplton either. He surmised that whatever the engine was, it somehow produced electricity for the ship.
An impressive feat for something so small. But that didn't answer the question of why they needed a massive steel-gray ball in the engine room. Needless to say, it was odd for such an imposing thing to sit like it did with it's compatriot components under it's shadow.
Andre cleared his throat and Onas turned only breifly, nodding a welcome to him, then he turned back to his work. "What's the word boss?" He said, sticking his paint stained hands in his pockets.
Onas typed on a holographic keyboard, pulled two levers slightly, and spoke into his handheld again. "Okay, hold it there Alice. What's your tempit'ur?" His true accent came out in wisps from time to time when he was anxious.
"Tweenty eight hundread fourty seven. Go again?" The little handheld squaked with Alice's voice sounding tiny.
"Yeah, go again, just a sliver." Onas watched his number like it was the only thing that mattered, his eyes fixated one minute, then darting between the number and several scrolling gadges. At length, he finnaly spoke to Andre for the first time, "Wassup Dre... how's..." He pause and looked at something Andre didn't recognize, "the paint?"
Andre knelt beside him and looked over the guadges, they were all about magnetic levels, and tempatures, and ratios. "It's goin fine, I finished the rear patches, and was gonna start the engine deck if you think its good an safe."
"Ye..." Onas started to say, he put his hand back on one of his levers, hesitated, and then pulled it, "Yeah bud, it's safe." He said, the left side of his mouth curving with amusment. "Alice, wha' is it now?"
"Tweenty eight sixty three, that jump was too fast Onas, lemme have a minute here." the tiny voice said.
"Take your time." Onas replied to the handheld.
"So if you can think and work, what is this thing?" Andre asked Onas.
Onas wiped his mustache a second, and looked around the whole setup, then said proudly, "It's our drive core," He looked back to his screens and continued, "This is a Sterling engine design..." his eyebrows arched and his shoulders shrugged when he added, "basically."
"Oh yeah. A Sterling Engine of course." Andrea said with an air to his voice, "What is a sterling engine?"
Onas smiled and spoke striaght ahead, "It's an old design from earth that was, back in the 1800's. It convertes heat to raw mechanical movement."
"How?"
"Heat travels down this tube from the reactor," he pointed to the large steel gray tube coming from the sphere, "And forces an internal piston into the cold side where it becomes hypercooled. Then the piston releases, allowing the cold air from coolant tank 'Echo' to pour into the shaft, which compresses the hydrogen, and forces the piston to back to the hot side, here." As he said this, he pointed along the large pipe to the stand alone coolant tank, Presumably 'Echo', and then back to the hot side, or the reactor, "Then the process starts over."
"And those arms?" Andre asked.
"Those arms are connected to the engine, which spins as the piston shifts back and forth rapidly. It turns the driveshaft which rotates the copper spindles through the magnet base."
"Oh, and copper passing quickly through magnetism produces electrity." Andre said, he remembered that from school. "And it's fed into the batteries?"
"Some of it," Onas answered, "Most of it is direct feed to the Athena, the engine is always active and it produces more than we really need for auxilary, so we only divert a portion to storage."
"So the big thing here, whats this, a burner?" Andre asked looking up at the monalith.
"In short, but were not burning gasses, that wouldn't be efficient enough for our purposes. The turbine has to spin fast, so we need the piston to fluctuate rapidly. That's determined by a high tempature variable. Very hot," Onas said holding his left hand open, "to very cold." He held out his right hand in a fist. Then he pointed at 'Coolent Tank Echo' and said, "The liquid nitrogen in Echo is at four hundred degrees below fahrenheit, which is beyond cold." Then he pointed at the large greyish ball of metal, "This is a magnetic compression chamber, and were using hydrogen and helium."
Andre listened to Onas and it took a second to register what he'd just heard. "Wait Oj, helium and hydrogen... compressing? I'm no astronomer or scientist, but... isn't that the makeup of... a st... a star?" Dre concluded wincing. He suddenly wasn't sure he wanted to know the answer.
Onas smiled and held up a shushing finger as Alice radioed back and gave him the all clear, "Okay Alice, go again, a ten thousandth." He said into his handheld. He typed on his 'keyboard' again and said, "That's good, ok. Here we go, stand back." He turned a switch with a red key, and ran a black lever, that looked like a throttle control arm, up it's slider. It had hundreds of tiny marks, and it make a clicking noise as it slowly slid past each to almost the top of the slider. Now that Andre had a clearer understanding of what was in front of him, he leaned back as the noiseless machien somehow became more intimidating.
Onas smiled so big most of his front teeth could be seen, and his cheeks nearly touched his eyes. He nodded to the display, and was obviously very content with himself, as the tempature read steady at what Andre now understood to be three thousand degrees fahrenheit. Onas spoke into his handheld with delight, "Look at that Alice."
"It's a thing a' bueaty boss. Three on the money, Sam sure knows his la shi I'll give 'im that. Want me to lock it down and engadge the safties?" The tiny voice said.
"Absolutely Alice, then come on up, 'n we'll break out the champaine."
"On my way, 'm grabbin a bag of salt on my way up."
"Aight, see you soon. Not bad huh Dre," Onas asked as he locked the red key over and removed it from the board. As he did so, a bank of green lights pinged yellow, and several switches receded into the panel.
"So what is in there, that's three thousand degrees inside," Andre asked, touching the obviously cool metal ball.
"Yep," Onas replied somewhere between optimism and pride, "You pretty much had it right a minute ago, it's a miniture star. It's not exactly the same thing, I mean it wont produce nucleosynthesis, but for all intents and purposes, yes. It's plasmafied heilium and hydrogen in a self sustaining nuclear fusion."
Onas was an odd fellow, Andre decided as his "boss" stated something so insane in such a 'point of fact' manner. But as Andre turned back to his hand on the room tempature metal, he wondered at what secrets this universe still had left to tell.
"Why arn't we, you know, on fire? How is something so hot being contained by metal?" Andre asked.
"It's the cage, it's the strongest element accessible. That's the outermost layer of pure tungsten your touching, one of five layers surrounding the event. The coolent tankes are fed inbetween the layers, and they provide a buffer between the heat of the reactor and us. But even if they failed, the system has redudancies built on top of redundancies, honestly, that's the safest thing on this ship. Tungsten has a melting point of six thousand degrees. Above it to be honest. The biggest problem is actualy keeping it at that tempature.
"Natural stars are more than two simple gasses, and they have they're own gravity wells, a lot brings it to life, we are creating this artificially. If I left it alone it wouldn't burn out untill long after our lives were no longer counted as a speices. But we don't leave it alone do we? We're using the heat to run the sterling, which uses all three thousand degrees without waste, if were not careful, we could suck the life right out of her." Onas talked away while typing on his keyboard without worry. It was like he was explaining how cotton candy was made or something.
"There's a star in here? If the ship lost all power and the coolent tanks failed, would we cook alive," Andre asked pressing his point.
"Hah! We'd run out of air long before that happened. Besides, the heat it produces is how our ship is run, you are listening to me right?"
"Yeah I am," Andre answered solefully, "but what if we did what you said earlier, and killed the star, what would happen then?"
"First of all, if we bled all the heat from the event, and cooled the reaction untill it stalled, it would simply return to it's comprized gasses, but that's avoided by reheating the reactor with sodium chloride." Onas finished, looking between what was on his screens and what he was typing.
"Salt? Your talking bout tablesalt?"
Onas turned to face him, "That's right, salt naturally retains heat."
"I've heard of liquafied salt before, but I didn't know it could retain three thousand degrees." Andre pondered aloud. Liquid salt was used in special atmospheric prossesers to instantly cook gasses for something, he didn't remember everything from school. Onas apparently enjoyed those classes far more than he had.
"That's because it can't, salt melts at fourteen hundred seventy four degrees, we use salt plasma. You have to take it straight from the solid to a gas state by pouring it into the reactor, where it 'plasmafies.' Which is what that process is called, then we shift it into these four neodymium-alloy capacitors, where we can keep it at twenty five hundred 'n seventy five degrees. It ain't three on the money, but its enough to boost the event, keep from killin it. The capacitors can be kept at a solid temperature more easily since we don't vent heat off of them. That's pretty much the whole bag bro, hand me that drink will ya?" Onas said, lighting a cigerette.
"All right well," Andre answered after taking it all in for a second, and handing Onas his drink, "It sounds like you got it locked down boss, I'm onna head back a get ta paintin."
Andre passed Alice on his way out, and she walked in to Onas' laughter, "Whattid I miss," she asked dropping the bag of salt to Onas and sitting against a mag-rail.
"Nothin," Onas answered, "I was jus goin over the basics of how all this works with Dre, he's a bit nervouse bout it."
"Why," she asked taking Onas's cigarette and leaning back.
"Ah, same as nick, everyone thinks were gonna burn alive." Onas laughed, "I swear, everyone who see's it thinks the whole thing would fall apart if a stiff breeze hit it."
"Yeah right," Alice laughed, "If the ship crashed into a planet at full speed, and the core ripped through th' ship an imbeded its'lf into the planet, it'd still just sit there burnin."
Onas laughed agreeingly, "Yeah," he mused as he climbed the catwalk to the top of the reactor, two levels up, "And millions of years after the last ansestor of the witnesses of the crash died, no one would know it was there..." He opened a hatch at the top, and poured the bag of salt in. Then he took a small bit of it back out, and sealed the hatch shut. "Dump it," he called out, throwing the fistfull of salt down on Alice through the grating.
"Ni Ta Niang De Ci Muqin!" She hollored up at him, shielding herself as the salt rained down on her. Alice hit three switches, and turned a large handle that seemed only to spin ninty degrees. A large jolt and bang resounded through the room as the salt turned to a gas and was presumably lining the rim between the bee-bee sized star, and the magnetic field holding it in place.
"Heh heh," Onas chuckled, "Okay, that should do her, lets purge it into the capacitor. Whatta ya think, an hour or so before we can go again?"
"At least, want me to fire her up?" Alice asked as she opened the magneticly charged 'tunnel' that bridged the capacitor to the core, starting the slow process of draining plasmafied salt out of the reactor, and into the capacitor.
"Go ahead," Onas said, leaning against the rails.
Alice leaned over the sterling engine and fliped the rings closed, then she walked to the main console, and flooded the tungsten pipe with both heat and cold valves open. The piston immediately began pumping ferociously and the turbine hummed to life. In truth, it was rather ominous that such immense power could be so quiet, but its was the most impressive engine Onas could have imagined, and it was all Athena's. She would be tested soon, and then they would see if the turbines could pull off the boasting power that they were so well known for.
The turbines wern't turbines at all. Which of course was why this system of power was so useful on this ship. The 'turbines' on the side of the ship were actually type C. photonic laser propulsion beams. The laser beam is created in a circular patter around a cone inside of each of Athena's external turbine-like apperatus'. The interior of a normal fan based turbine is not much more than an fan which spins at high rpm's to ram air into a torch, I'm paraphrasing here, and then another fan behind it to create a vacume. The fire is funneled out the end, producing thrust.
The Athena boasted photonic turbines. Instead of air-ramed fire for thrust, a laser coats a mirror layden cone, that has a lip on the end which forces the laser around on itself, coliding the heat of its meeting to sustain an explotion of heat, which is aimed out the small end of the cone. Thus, thrust is produced. This is a purely electronic sequence of events, which is why the Aces of Eights Type B.23, the Athena's exact model, is advertised as a 'clean ship'.
It doesn't use a fuel source outside of the reactor.
There are drawbacks, and the most prevelent one was untill recently, the sheer amount of power it took to create a beam strong enough to lift a starship of commercial value. Obviously this problem has been overcome, but with the sterling engine, the theory is that they can produce unbelievable amounts of power and thus, unbelievible amounts of thrust.
In short, the Athena could now potentially be one of the fastest ships in the verse. That was the theory. Three more capacitors, and it might well be fact. Onas lit another cigarette and leaned back to wait.
"Fo' show." Nick answered and Onas took the thinner of the two envolopes sideways in his hand, and in a practised style, tore the outermost right side of it off, reveiling a letter, and cash. He removed the letter only and stopped just outside bay ninty two. The letter was a simple, old fashioned kind, it read;
Care of:
O.han
18 M. Dock Circle Road
Dear A. Deschain
I am pleased to announce that Mr. Grimm awaits your arrival at the same hospital you awoke in. I know he'll be very happy to receive your gift. Told you I'd come through, luv. In other news, I gave that little yellow pup with one eye to my sister. She was too much for me to handle. I'll be seeing you soon.
Condolences,
Jack
Onas smiled, Cypher was a very careful man. He handed the letter to Nick and began counting the money inside. Nick held the paper for a minute or two, as Onas opened the second letter and removed the cash from it and added it all up. Nick stopped him and asked,
"I don't follow all of this. Who's Mr Grimm?"
"You don't see the bridges?"
"It's a 'Reverse Robin', a 'two-on-one', and a 'third eye' right?" Nick asked re-reading it, "O. Han is the pub, I got that, Deschain is the guy were meeting? And... we're the sister?"
Onas smiled, Nick spent all his time at the office, Onas made the pickups. He'd spent more time with the cloak and dagger stuff. "Your getting better. Yes, no and yes. Cyph could teach you a thing or two about hiding your tracks. It's a 'two on two', and a 'tickler' also after the 'third eye'. See," Onas took the letter and held it before them, then he instructed, "O' Han is the bar we just came from yes, 18 m means military time, so.."
"Six in the evening, gotcha." Nick compleated it.
"Right, then Deschain, who is our contact, cause that's the 'Robin', is a woman. It's 'pup' for girl, 'mut' for guy. And the yellow is.."
Nick caught it again, and threw in, "Blonde hair, okay." He looked on and added, "One eye? So she's missing an eye?"
"I guess, I don't know her. Also, little yellow pup, little means young, so she's problebly our age or so. And yes, we are the sister, which is Jack or Cypher's way of saying this job was passed to us."
"So were ambasadors for them then, thats cool." Nick said.
"Right, and lastly, 'seeing you soon' means fairly simply to contact him when were done." Onas finished, concluding his lesson and returning to his counting.
"I know what a third eye is," Nick said sarcasticly, "What's the front?"
"Enough." Onas answered, ignoring Nicks jeer and handing him a bundle of cash, "Ok, lemme change, and we'll take a little ride. Call back J and Andre, tell 'em that we' gettin the magnetic coils an' fer' them to give us a hand. And let the rest of the crew know the changes, if they want her painted, we gotta do it now." he said turning towards the Athena to change his clothes, then he stopped and turned on his foot, and asked with one hand out at his waist level, "Who's got a better price, Andrew's or Rutger Inc?"
"Rutger would be better either way, they manufacture on Persephone Prime. And it's only about five hundred miles from here." Nick answered having taken the money from Onas and going to make the waves.
"I'm cool with that, your drivin."
The next day, Onas stood in the engine room watching the Athena's readout screen with some anxiety. It was a big day, Athena's shakedown was in progress, and so far things were running smoothly. The new coils were working perfectly, and while some might consider that a blessing, it was not an easy process to heat up this particular reactor. Andre came walking in and cheerfully anounced his greeting. Onas wasn't trying to be a prick, but he didn't turn to answer Dre regardless. Instead he continued to watch the screen. Holding up a wireless to his mouth, he spoke softly, as though even his very words might cause some dire complication. "Take it up a ten thousandth..." After a second he added, "Slowly this time."
Part of the data in the middle of the main screen read }2800 -F{. Andre stood for a moment wondering about that, as Onas was constantly looking at it. After a minute, he began to look around, wether he thought Onas was in a foul mood or not, he didn't really show it. Instead, he had a look around at what would pump the blood of the dutchess. Andre hadn't spent a great deal of time in the engine room before, this simply wasn't a system he was familiar with, and no one was allowed to tinker with it but Onas or Alice. The reactor itself was a huge sphere twelve feet in diameter, and spaning through three catwalks. It had four deticated coolant tanks, and another larger coolant system about seven feet away. Each of these large machiens were heavily shielded and bolted into place in a way that Andre could only describe as paranoid.
The reactor also had four more tubes coming out, that lead to four large capaciters. Larger than any he'd yet seen. Inbetween the reactor, and the lone coolant tank, was a small engine, mabey the size of a footlocker. It was some kind of engine he hadn't seen before. If he'd been around in the early 2000th century, he might have described it as a large harley davidson engine, but as it was, he didn't know how to adequately explain what he was looking at. It had armatures connecting to opposite ends of a pipe, that ran between the reactor and the stand alone coolant tank.
The small engine had a nine large disks on one one side, that connected to a drive shaft, which ran through the little engine. From the discs, large cables the width of Andre's forearm spanned to a bank of batteries. This one Andre knew, it was a common setup for storing electricity, and though the batteries were covered, the protective plate covering them was present on just about every commercial ship in the verse. Andre wasn't Onas, Nick or Alice, but he wasn't a simplton either. He surmised that whatever the engine was, it somehow produced electricity for the ship.
An impressive feat for something so small. But that didn't answer the question of why they needed a massive steel-gray ball in the engine room. Needless to say, it was odd for such an imposing thing to sit like it did with it's compatriot components under it's shadow.
Andre cleared his throat and Onas turned only breifly, nodding a welcome to him, then he turned back to his work. "What's the word boss?" He said, sticking his paint stained hands in his pockets.
Onas typed on a holographic keyboard, pulled two levers slightly, and spoke into his handheld again. "Okay, hold it there Alice. What's your tempit'ur?" His true accent came out in wisps from time to time when he was anxious.
"Tweenty eight hundread fourty seven. Go again?" The little handheld squaked with Alice's voice sounding tiny.
"Yeah, go again, just a sliver." Onas watched his number like it was the only thing that mattered, his eyes fixated one minute, then darting between the number and several scrolling gadges. At length, he finnaly spoke to Andre for the first time, "Wassup Dre... how's..." He pause and looked at something Andre didn't recognize, "the paint?"
Andre knelt beside him and looked over the guadges, they were all about magnetic levels, and tempatures, and ratios. "It's goin fine, I finished the rear patches, and was gonna start the engine deck if you think its good an safe."
"Ye..." Onas started to say, he put his hand back on one of his levers, hesitated, and then pulled it, "Yeah bud, it's safe." He said, the left side of his mouth curving with amusment. "Alice, wha' is it now?"
"Tweenty eight sixty three, that jump was too fast Onas, lemme have a minute here." the tiny voice said.
"Take your time." Onas replied to the handheld.
"So if you can think and work, what is this thing?" Andre asked Onas.
Onas wiped his mustache a second, and looked around the whole setup, then said proudly, "It's our drive core," He looked back to his screens and continued, "This is a Sterling engine design..." his eyebrows arched and his shoulders shrugged when he added, "basically."
"Oh yeah. A Sterling Engine of course." Andrea said with an air to his voice, "What is a sterling engine?"
Onas smiled and spoke striaght ahead, "It's an old design from earth that was, back in the 1800's. It convertes heat to raw mechanical movement."
"How?"
"Heat travels down this tube from the reactor," he pointed to the large steel gray tube coming from the sphere, "And forces an internal piston into the cold side where it becomes hypercooled. Then the piston releases, allowing the cold air from coolant tank 'Echo' to pour into the shaft, which compresses the hydrogen, and forces the piston to back to the hot side, here." As he said this, he pointed along the large pipe to the stand alone coolant tank, Presumably 'Echo', and then back to the hot side, or the reactor, "Then the process starts over."
"And those arms?" Andre asked.
"Those arms are connected to the engine, which spins as the piston shifts back and forth rapidly. It turns the driveshaft which rotates the copper spindles through the magnet base."
"Oh, and copper passing quickly through magnetism produces electrity." Andre said, he remembered that from school. "And it's fed into the batteries?"
"Some of it," Onas answered, "Most of it is direct feed to the Athena, the engine is always active and it produces more than we really need for auxilary, so we only divert a portion to storage."
"So the big thing here, whats this, a burner?" Andre asked looking up at the monalith.
"In short, but were not burning gasses, that wouldn't be efficient enough for our purposes. The turbine has to spin fast, so we need the piston to fluctuate rapidly. That's determined by a high tempature variable. Very hot," Onas said holding his left hand open, "to very cold." He held out his right hand in a fist. Then he pointed at 'Coolent Tank Echo' and said, "The liquid nitrogen in Echo is at four hundred degrees below fahrenheit, which is beyond cold." Then he pointed at the large greyish ball of metal, "This is a magnetic compression chamber, and were using hydrogen and helium."
Andre listened to Onas and it took a second to register what he'd just heard. "Wait Oj, helium and hydrogen... compressing? I'm no astronomer or scientist, but... isn't that the makeup of... a st... a star?" Dre concluded wincing. He suddenly wasn't sure he wanted to know the answer.
Onas smiled and held up a shushing finger as Alice radioed back and gave him the all clear, "Okay Alice, go again, a ten thousandth." He said into his handheld. He typed on his 'keyboard' again and said, "That's good, ok. Here we go, stand back." He turned a switch with a red key, and ran a black lever, that looked like a throttle control arm, up it's slider. It had hundreds of tiny marks, and it make a clicking noise as it slowly slid past each to almost the top of the slider. Now that Andre had a clearer understanding of what was in front of him, he leaned back as the noiseless machien somehow became more intimidating.
Onas smiled so big most of his front teeth could be seen, and his cheeks nearly touched his eyes. He nodded to the display, and was obviously very content with himself, as the tempature read steady at what Andre now understood to be three thousand degrees fahrenheit. Onas spoke into his handheld with delight, "Look at that Alice."
"It's a thing a' bueaty boss. Three on the money, Sam sure knows his la shi I'll give 'im that. Want me to lock it down and engadge the safties?" The tiny voice said.
"Absolutely Alice, then come on up, 'n we'll break out the champaine."
"On my way, 'm grabbin a bag of salt on my way up."
"Aight, see you soon. Not bad huh Dre," Onas asked as he locked the red key over and removed it from the board. As he did so, a bank of green lights pinged yellow, and several switches receded into the panel.
"So what is in there, that's three thousand degrees inside," Andre asked, touching the obviously cool metal ball.
"Yep," Onas replied somewhere between optimism and pride, "You pretty much had it right a minute ago, it's a miniture star. It's not exactly the same thing, I mean it wont produce nucleosynthesis, but for all intents and purposes, yes. It's plasmafied heilium and hydrogen in a self sustaining nuclear fusion."
Onas was an odd fellow, Andre decided as his "boss" stated something so insane in such a 'point of fact' manner. But as Andre turned back to his hand on the room tempature metal, he wondered at what secrets this universe still had left to tell.
"Why arn't we, you know, on fire? How is something so hot being contained by metal?" Andre asked.
"It's the cage, it's the strongest element accessible. That's the outermost layer of pure tungsten your touching, one of five layers surrounding the event. The coolent tankes are fed inbetween the layers, and they provide a buffer between the heat of the reactor and us. But even if they failed, the system has redudancies built on top of redundancies, honestly, that's the safest thing on this ship. Tungsten has a melting point of six thousand degrees. Above it to be honest. The biggest problem is actualy keeping it at that tempature.
"Natural stars are more than two simple gasses, and they have they're own gravity wells, a lot brings it to life, we are creating this artificially. If I left it alone it wouldn't burn out untill long after our lives were no longer counted as a speices. But we don't leave it alone do we? We're using the heat to run the sterling, which uses all three thousand degrees without waste, if were not careful, we could suck the life right out of her." Onas talked away while typing on his keyboard without worry. It was like he was explaining how cotton candy was made or something.
"There's a star in here? If the ship lost all power and the coolent tanks failed, would we cook alive," Andre asked pressing his point.
"Hah! We'd run out of air long before that happened. Besides, the heat it produces is how our ship is run, you are listening to me right?"
"Yeah I am," Andre answered solefully, "but what if we did what you said earlier, and killed the star, what would happen then?"
"First of all, if we bled all the heat from the event, and cooled the reaction untill it stalled, it would simply return to it's comprized gasses, but that's avoided by reheating the reactor with sodium chloride." Onas finished, looking between what was on his screens and what he was typing.
"Salt? Your talking bout tablesalt?"
Onas turned to face him, "That's right, salt naturally retains heat."
"I've heard of liquafied salt before, but I didn't know it could retain three thousand degrees." Andre pondered aloud. Liquid salt was used in special atmospheric prossesers to instantly cook gasses for something, he didn't remember everything from school. Onas apparently enjoyed those classes far more than he had.
"That's because it can't, salt melts at fourteen hundred seventy four degrees, we use salt plasma. You have to take it straight from the solid to a gas state by pouring it into the reactor, where it 'plasmafies.' Which is what that process is called, then we shift it into these four neodymium-alloy capacitors, where we can keep it at twenty five hundred 'n seventy five degrees. It ain't three on the money, but its enough to boost the event, keep from killin it. The capacitors can be kept at a solid temperature more easily since we don't vent heat off of them. That's pretty much the whole bag bro, hand me that drink will ya?" Onas said, lighting a cigerette.
"All right well," Andre answered after taking it all in for a second, and handing Onas his drink, "It sounds like you got it locked down boss, I'm onna head back a get ta paintin."
Andre passed Alice on his way out, and she walked in to Onas' laughter, "Whattid I miss," she asked dropping the bag of salt to Onas and sitting against a mag-rail.
"Nothin," Onas answered, "I was jus goin over the basics of how all this works with Dre, he's a bit nervouse bout it."
"Why," she asked taking Onas's cigarette and leaning back.
"Ah, same as nick, everyone thinks were gonna burn alive." Onas laughed, "I swear, everyone who see's it thinks the whole thing would fall apart if a stiff breeze hit it."
"Yeah right," Alice laughed, "If the ship crashed into a planet at full speed, and the core ripped through th' ship an imbeded its'lf into the planet, it'd still just sit there burnin."
Onas laughed agreeingly, "Yeah," he mused as he climbed the catwalk to the top of the reactor, two levels up, "And millions of years after the last ansestor of the witnesses of the crash died, no one would know it was there..." He opened a hatch at the top, and poured the bag of salt in. Then he took a small bit of it back out, and sealed the hatch shut. "Dump it," he called out, throwing the fistfull of salt down on Alice through the grating.
"Ni Ta Niang De Ci Muqin!" She hollored up at him, shielding herself as the salt rained down on her. Alice hit three switches, and turned a large handle that seemed only to spin ninty degrees. A large jolt and bang resounded through the room as the salt turned to a gas and was presumably lining the rim between the bee-bee sized star, and the magnetic field holding it in place.
"Heh heh," Onas chuckled, "Okay, that should do her, lets purge it into the capacitor. Whatta ya think, an hour or so before we can go again?"
"At least, want me to fire her up?" Alice asked as she opened the magneticly charged 'tunnel' that bridged the capacitor to the core, starting the slow process of draining plasmafied salt out of the reactor, and into the capacitor.
"Go ahead," Onas said, leaning against the rails.
Alice leaned over the sterling engine and fliped the rings closed, then she walked to the main console, and flooded the tungsten pipe with both heat and cold valves open. The piston immediately began pumping ferociously and the turbine hummed to life. In truth, it was rather ominous that such immense power could be so quiet, but its was the most impressive engine Onas could have imagined, and it was all Athena's. She would be tested soon, and then they would see if the turbines could pull off the boasting power that they were so well known for.
The turbines wern't turbines at all. Which of course was why this system of power was so useful on this ship. The 'turbines' on the side of the ship were actually type C. photonic laser propulsion beams. The laser beam is created in a circular patter around a cone inside of each of Athena's external turbine-like apperatus'. The interior of a normal fan based turbine is not much more than an fan which spins at high rpm's to ram air into a torch, I'm paraphrasing here, and then another fan behind it to create a vacume. The fire is funneled out the end, producing thrust.
The Athena boasted photonic turbines. Instead of air-ramed fire for thrust, a laser coats a mirror layden cone, that has a lip on the end which forces the laser around on itself, coliding the heat of its meeting to sustain an explotion of heat, which is aimed out the small end of the cone. Thus, thrust is produced. This is a purely electronic sequence of events, which is why the Aces of Eights Type B.23, the Athena's exact model, is advertised as a 'clean ship'.
It doesn't use a fuel source outside of the reactor.
There are drawbacks, and the most prevelent one was untill recently, the sheer amount of power it took to create a beam strong enough to lift a starship of commercial value. Obviously this problem has been overcome, but with the sterling engine, the theory is that they can produce unbelievable amounts of power and thus, unbelievible amounts of thrust.
In short, the Athena could now potentially be one of the fastest ships in the verse. That was the theory. Three more capacitors, and it might well be fact. Onas lit another cigarette and leaned back to wait.