Chronicles of Sol: The Fall

Captain’s Log July 19th, 003 SDE:

It’s been almost three weeks since the raid at the Telgros IV colony. So far we seem to have evaded contact with the main Valorian battlefleets, but avoiding battle has forced us to go slow. We haven’t made much progress out of the sector, and over the last few days we have seen a substantial increase in Valorian contacts. Our spy ship has revealed a general increase in military activity across several sectors. Perhaps a side effect of our raid, but generally unavoidable. In terms of the raid we profited immensely, already we have teams of scientists working on the recently acquired tungari. It shows much promise as a material for more advanced armor forms. Along with being potentially useful in a number of other applications as well.

Fuel wise we are doing alright, the raid was profitable in that regard as well, just not as much as it could be given the choice to bombard the colony. We expended almost half our gains in deuterium reducing the planet to an inhospitable state. I just hope it wasn’t too much.

Countryman stepped through the blast door and approached his chair. Greyman turned to greet him, “Good morning, sir. Sleep well?”

“Well enough, what do we got?”

“Our scouts are just returning from a search of the system. It’s not much of a system, there is a local gas giant, with several moons inside the habitable zone. Not anywhere I would like to settle, the most promising moon has an average surface temperature of minus forty.”

“Should have packed a coat,” replied Countryman.

Greyman laughed, “I’m not sure that would have helped much.”

“Maybe not, anything other than gas giants and frozen moons in this system?”

“That one gas giant is honestly the most interesting part of the system, little surprise no one seems to have planted a flag here, there is a fair amount of stellar debris in the system, a few ice balls, three asteroid belts, and about halfway between the lone gas giant and the local star is what looks to be a planetary debris field. The amount of mass involved, would have equated to a world about four times the size of earth, possibly habitable.”

“Interesting, what does the mineral survey show?”

“Mostly rock and ice, we did detect trace deposits of nickel and iron. Nothing substantial though. Mineral readings are typically poor across the board, if there was anything here, it was picked clean ages ago.”

“What about the gas giant? What does the composition look like...”

“It's a bust sir, only trace amounts of deuterium. In other words a dry well.”

Countryman sighed, “Figures, the Valorians might have been here waiting for us, if there was anything there.”

“Agreed, but the system is fairly quiet. We can sit here for a while, I think Ruri had some more tests for her various weapon projects lined up.”

“Some items came up,” replied Countryman, “Williams is still pushing for us to go forward with developing the super resonant particle beams Ruri created in simulation.”

“I’m aware, but I don’t see much merit in that.”

“Well as a weapon it leaves something to be desired, it does have value as a mining tool, it’s not one we need. I see more merit focusing on improving our techniques for locating and extracting key deposits from orbit. Not breaking up entire planets, that kind of mining would require...”

“A degree of infrastructure we don’t have. Might not for a long time, if ever.”

Countryman took his chair and nodded, “Quite so. I’m keeping a closer eye on her other projects, her pulsar torpedoes are pretty much ready for service. Aside from some potential for optimization, they are basically ready for production. “

“I guess that leaves the next gen laser projects, I think she already started a project to improve the new sega-based laser systems.”

“Oh she did, but they are actually not yet ready for testing. Actually, the most pressing tests are for a new type of energy shield. Atmospheric forcefields to be precise. Last I heard, she and Vera were working on them and having an issue with field stability. Something about vulnerability to high energy bursts, such as weapons fire, or our standard shipboard catapults.”

Greyman blinked, “We are that close?”

“They have some prototypes that are about ready for testing. If they work, we would be able to launch fighters without having to decompress the launch bay.”

“Useful, definitely something worth stopping to work on for a bit. Hopefully a couple months of laying low would also help reduce the heat.”

“We will see.”

Greyman turned to the starcharts and then tapped on the debris field, “If we are testing new systems, this area might be good. All those rocks could serve to dampen the high energy bursts and keep curious eyes away.”

Countryman leaned forward and looked over the survey reports. That debris field was large, with some rocks measuring over 150 kilometers across. These weren’t small chunks of rock at all, they were fragments from a failed planet and that added up to a fair amount of mass. Something that would certainly shield any project they conduct from potential prying eyes. Of course he knew methods to improve that protection, strategically placed sensor dampers, and monitoring satellites would help. Certain types of radiation were known to interfere with sensors as well, of course not all detection systems were vulnerable in the same way. Too much radiation might also draw attention, so sticking with satellites and dampers would be best. He turned to the crew, it was time to get moving.

Vera watched the gauges on the console, as they measured the new generator core. With Ruri’s help the project had gone surprisingly well. Working out the stability and power issues had been half the problem, but now that they were getting closer to a working system she was feeling rather happy with what they had.

The triphasic shield core behind the new atmospheric shield they had been working on, created an energy barrier that was actually remarkably strong. Using the traditional generator system the humans had, however presented issues. Their shield systems were often configured to ignore solid mass and weapons fire in general, something Vera could clearly see why. The generators just couldn’t handle the resulting strain. However, the system could still in theory deflect or block one incoming round, but doing so came with a serious risk of system burnout. It gave the shields an odd juxtaposition of weakness and strength rolled into one package.

With their more recent work on forcefields, she was pretty sure their new core could be better and with a few modifications be adapted to the ship’s main shields. Making them stronger and more flexible. Although perhaps not as impressive as the ship’s armor, and there were some questions on the energy draw. Vera understood well how that could play out, a ship’s reactors can only produce so much energy at any given time. Right now the Enterprise was like most ships perfectly capable of supplying all of its energy requirements during battle without difficulty, but when you start upgrading things you run the risk of overtaxing the reactors, forcing commanders to choose.

Without even running a simulation she knew it would be a consideration. By nature, energy shields were power hungry systems. During battle, the Enterprise already had her hull plating, weapons and engines demanding power, all of which were energy intensive systems with high power draw requirements. The ship had a number of high density capacitor cells that served to store power and compensate for spikes in energy draw. Firing weapons, deploying defensive webs, and regenerating the AIF were all good examples of draw spikes. Adding shields on top of that might just push things too far.

Yet on a smaller scale the new force fields would certainly be useful. Her current readings were promising. Looking up, she turned to Ruri, “I like what I am seeing, how about you?”

“Field integrity is stable, power draw nominal, I agree. Now lets see how she holds up to a high energy burst.”

Vera tapped a few keys, and a cannon began to whine slightly as her capacitors prepared to discharge. A second later, a blue energy bolt zipped across the lab and slammed into an energy barrier. Causing the force field to flare up with blue light, revealing the previously invisible wall, as the barrier radiated away the energy it just absorbed.

“Field strength down 59.23901 percent, generator core stable. No anomalies in field integrity, I think we are good.”

Ruri nodded, “Field loss is quite a bit higher than I would have liked for a 2 gigajoule discharge, but the field is recovering quickly.”

“Agreed, we could try reinforcing the field with gravitons. Now that I have a feel for your shield systems, I think we can do it.”

Ruri stepped away from the console and stretched a little. Vera sighed as she noticed the smaller girl had torn her outfit again. It was amazing how often she ended up with holes in her lab coats and clothes. “You’ve had that idea on the brain for awhile, I presume you have a plan for this?”

She nodded, “Yup!” before rushing to the nearby office. Ruri followed and soon leaned over her shoulder as Vera pulled up her earlier work. “I’ve been looking into it during my free time. Given our drive cores produce the particle in abundance as a byproduct of their operation we have plenty of it to work with. The armor is already using it as part of the AIF field, incorporating the particle into a Triphasic forcefield isn’t that different.”

A diagram was shown on the screen, along with her math and several computer simulations. “Hmm interesting, I see what you are doing here. Shouldn’t be too hard to test either. Main issue would be adjusting the core to make use of the gravitons. Once done though, it looks like the gravitons will bind to the energy field, making it more resilient.”

“In theory, yes, gravitons are supposed to do what Sega or Omicron particles do in modern shields. However they do it better at a lower energy cost, presuming you could produce them in high enough amounts, like we do here. We have no shortage of them.”

Looking over the data, she nodded, “If I understand this right, they work for forcefields for the same reason they are good for reinforcing an AIF. Gravitons are highly organized particles that bond equally well with both energy and matter, acting to bind it together into a solid lattice structure, one that can be modulated by the careful application of certain waveforms. The way they naturally bind with each other is also important, their natural properties of responding to force by emitting gravitic waves can also be exploited through precise adjustments of the energy barrier. Like the AIF, the ship’s sensors can feed the required variables into the computer, which can perform such adjustments on the fly.”

Vera nodded, “Yes exactly right, compared to a traditional barrier, these forcefields will require a fraction of the energy and will stop just about anything you can throw at them.”

Suddenly the door opened, Vera looked up to see the Captain coming in, “Good evening ladies.”

“Um, Good evening, is it really that late?”

Ruri was still looking at the data and after a moment said, “It’s been a productive one, we finally managed to get a barrier that can withstand a high-energy burst. The current prototype was able to stop a 2-gigajoule particle bolt albeit with an unacceptably high loss of field strength.”

“Interesting, so I take it we are getting close to having viable air shields for our hangers?”

Vera smiled, “They will be good for more than just that, security barriers and emergency forcefields that can seal off hull breaches would be possible as well.”

Countryman came around the desk and looked at the diagram, “Portables? One of the most difficult tasks is rescuing trapped personnel in areas that have been breached. Bunker sections may have air, but getting them out may involve passing through sections without.”

“I think we can work something out, it’s a good thought, very useful for a number of tasks.”

“Well getting the current version working properly will be important first and I have good news for you, we found some nice lifeless space rocks that we can use for off-ship testing.”

Ruri practically beamed, it seemed she was happy to hear about that, “Excellent, I have a number of projects that could use off-ship testing.”

The trio soon turned to discussing further the projects in question.