Chronicles of Sol: The Fall

February 2nd, 007 SDE:

Countryman watched Rika playing with her blocks, while he sat on his sofa. She was barely paying attention to the children's anime playing on the monitor. It was a relatively new one that came out recently. It was about some young girl's adventures in a world of magical creatures. Honestly, it was not completely original, but nothing ever was. Rika seemed to like it though and that was all that really mattered.

Rose came over from the kitchen, a spatula in hand. "It's about time you got going, Jac."

He smiled. "So it is, but it's nice seeing her looking better."

"I think she's happier that you don't look like death walking anymore."

He chuckled, as he was reminded of that. That silver fluid certainly worked, Robins had put him near the front of the list, and over the last month he'd been recovering nicely. The last round of distributions had finished just a couple of days ago. Yet all across the ship he'd noted the moods of the crew had generally improved. People were generally happier, health was improving and things were just looking up.

In fact, with the health crisis no longer looming over their heads. They had moved on to discussing other matters. Sali's postponed review had been set for discussion in council in a few weeks. More immediately, they were now looking to explore the storm. With less reason to worry about the radiation, the Council had moved on to discussing other concerns. They had fixed the ship over the last two years, but they'd also used up a good chunk of their material reserve.

Countryman had a list of notable shortages and there were some repairs they weren't able to make. Most significant on that list was the loss of two out of four warp engines. Megumi had been able to restore warp capability, but that had involved the transfer of the backup starboard engine into the primary port engine housing. This balanced the engines, and would allow them to produce a warp field large enough for the Enterprise. But it also meant they had no redundancy for that particular system.

However, perhaps most important was their fuel supply. At present expenditures, they had a few years left before they ran out, but they had no means to resupply. This asteroid made a good harbor, but its lack of key resources was problematic. The labs were clamoring for supplies they just didn't have. There were also projections indicating that the sensor arrays they were developing would be energy-intensive. Now that the shield project was of lesser priority, that same sensor project was getting more resources. Development efforts would be increasing in other areas as well, which would likely mean an increasing drain on resources.

Perhaps most important was that they needed to start studying the storm itself. They'd lost two years of potential study time due to the radiation crisis. Now that things looked to be on the mend, he wanted to get out there and study the perimeter.

Stepping out of his quarters he headed for the lift. It was time to get moving again, and see what was out there.

The young woman cursed the stupid hardware as it groaned. Then she looked over her shoulder at one of her few companions in this rusting piece of junk. "No good, engines are shot, we ain't going anywhere."

He sighed, "At least we got the raider scum. Just get me the comms back. I'm sure someone back home will be able to pick us up."

"I'm sure they will."

A hatch opened, "Um, sir? There is something out there."

"Define something?"

"I don't know, it just showed up on sensors. Moving fast, and it's huge."

"Huge? Show me."

The girl followed her captain out into the main crew cabin, where their little bridge was located. On the monitors was a sensor shadow, moving at over five hundred times the speed of light. That was a decent clip, but it could have been a space rock. Only space rocks didn't usually move on a track like that.

The captain looked at the shadow, "A capital ship maybe?"

The girl frowned, "Whose? We don't have any in this area, and I know the raiders don't."

The other guy commented, "That's why I said something. Think it's the space monster I've heard is out here eating ships?"

She gave him a look, "Ain't no space monster. Trust me I've been out here more than once. The storm is dangerous enough without space monsters."

Captain nodded, "Agreed, worst thing out here is the storm itself. I've seen it tear ships apart when they weren't careful."

"You mean like at the rim?"

They all laughed, "Worse, at least the rim you know it's coming. Just count yourself lucky that you haven't seen one, they have a dozen different names depending on who you ask. They come from below, all suddenly too, and manifest as a rippling vertex of energy that rips a ship apart."

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The man balked, "You're joking right?"

"Oh, no, trust me we aren't. Right now the storm is in a calm period. When it gets active, that's when we go to ground."

She stretched and looked at the shadow moving out of range. "Well, whoever they are, they seem to be leaving us alone."

"Yes but who has capital ships out here?"

The man frowned, "A newcomer like me?"

She scoffed, "Unlikely, it's been almost two years since the storm surfaced. Remember how we found you? Well imagine what would have happened if we hadn't?"

The man shuddered, as the captain sat down at the helm. "Right, you have a point there." then he gestured at the shadow heading out toward the rim, but it doesn't explain who they are."

"Unfortunately that is a mystery that will have to wait. Now if you will excuse me, I'm going to see about fixing the comm array, see if Hy'lix has anyone he can send to tow us back to The Lodge."

Countryman watched the outer shell of the Storm come into view. It was as violent as always, wracked by energy discharges, heavy turbulence, and charged plasma. It was a mesmerizing sight, but it was interesting to think they'd passed through that.

Getting back out here to the rim had been pretty uneventful. The only thing he noted was how excited Eri looked at the helm, she was like a kid in a candy store. Still it was nice to see her happy again, she'd been so glum just a short while ago. Turned out all she really needed was a chance to fly again. Not that Countryman was entirely surprised. The girl was a born pilot, she loved to fly and enjoyed flying just about everything that could fly. That love and dedication to the craft of flying was a core part of who she was, and why she'd gotten to where she is today.

There was more to her than that, but it was what really stuck with him about her over the years since he met her. It seemed that had been a real damper for her when they decided to hunker down on Anchorage while the science types looked for a solution to their problem. As it was, they'd lost far too many people, mostly older folk like himself had perished, particularly those least able to adapt and recover from the radiation.

Naturally, it had also harmed their food supplies, but with the need for extensive cloning of tissues going down, they could compensate for that while their farms recovered. Even better, the science team was adapting what they had learned to better protect the crops and fish they relied on for food. A process that was already well underway. It was even easier than with humans since the plants had proven hardier to begin with, at least certain strains anyway.

None of that really mattered at the moment. He glanced at Misaki, the young woman had certainly grown, not in size but in skill and confidence since she had gotten here. She seemed to be getting back into the groove, she looked up, "Initial readings are pretty similar to what we saw last time."

"Noted, start a cycle of active scans, I want as much data as we can get." He turned to Eri, "Chart us a course around the perimeter."

"Aye, sir!"

Countryman watched the two work. Now that they could start exploring the storm, there were a few things to do, and returning to the rim was a logical move. It was the best place to start, since charting the rim would give them a lot of information on the size of the storm and would reveal patterns in the storm. They didn't know much about the storm, but something like this would require a source of energy to sustain it.

With the two working to study the storm he turned to Greyman, "So what's your thoughts on this?"

"It's as good a place to start as anywhere else. I just hope we find a source of fuel sooner or later. Now that we are actually flying around again, we are going to be using our reserves a little faster than we did over the last two years."

"Oh I have similar worries, but I do have a few ideas for that."

"I figured you would, I've had a couple of thoughts on conserving fuel use, but what do you have in mind?"

Countryman slipped from his seat and signaled Greyman to follow him. Taking him straight to the Engineering station, he pointed at the diagram of the Enterprise. "What do you see?"

Greyman frowned, "A status display for the ship. What are you getting at?"

Countryman tapped on the part referring to the hull plating.

Greyman gave him a look, "I don't think we can really afford to run the plating at a lower level. It's what stands between us, and," he pointed at the screens, "That!"

Countryman sighed, "I had a feeling you missed it. Think what do the plating systems involve, how do they protect the ship?"

Greyman gave him a look, "Okay, I'll humor you. Our standard overlord hull plating is a combination of systems designed to work together to protect the ship. Against energy rounds the first system to act would be a dispersion field which is used to break up incoming shots. This has the effect of forcing energy rounds to hit a much wider area, it's like being hit with an HE round rather than an armor-piercing shell. Armor penetration of incoming energy rounds is greatly reduced, which makes it easier for the armor to absorb the hits. As the rounds hit, the second system kicks in, the Armor Integrity Field, this is the main thing we measure. It keeps the plating together, making it tougher, but also absorbs energy from every shot that hits it. This causes it to weaken slightly, but the field regenerates fairly quickly as new energy enters the system. What energy isn't absorbed by the AIF, is absorbed by a series of Rydium-based energy converters built directly into the plating that convert it into safe energy and then shunt it into capacitors which then shunt that energy back..."

Greyman trailed off and blinked. "Don't tell me, you want to use the energy absorbers in the plating!?"

Countryman grinned, "Now you got it, they were already designed to harness energy from hostile sources, namely weapons fire. Normally we use them to either recharge our own weapons or the AIF, but all the connections are already there. It wouldn't be hard to modify them to draw energy from the storm itself. The storm is certainly energetic enough."

"I should have thought of that." He glanced back at the storm raging outside the ship. One they could see on the upper monitors no matter which way they looked. "Any idea how much fuel this would save us?"

"I have a few guesses, but nothing concrete. Part of this little charting expedition is determining how much energy our plating absorbs as we travel. We simply monitor the capacitors and see how stable the energy levels are. From there we can calculate how much we could siphon off to power other systems without compromising the armor."

Greyman nodded and took another look at the display as he considered the thought. Countryman left him there for a moment and went to check in with Misaki only for an alarm to suddenly sound.