It took the Hawks’ engineers less time than he would have imagined to reroute power from a working area to the blast door that led to the Low Orbit Launcher.
Once power was restored, the facility codes worked to bypass the security lockout that had been triggered by some fault in the launcher system.
The thick heavy blast doors gave an audible click and a strobing light along with a siren alerted anyone within the area that they were opening. Alexander watched silently as the door ponderously slid aside. At least it didn’t appear that rust had any effect on the mechanism. If they had been rusted, he would have been in trouble. He had nothing big enough to remove blast doors this heavy.
Once the door was fully open, the lights and siren shut off. Alexander waited for the mercenaries to clear the room before he entered along with the other engineers.
The first thing Alexander noticed was the dome above the launcher. It seems part of it had collapsed onto the device. Not enough to expose it to the outside elements, but enough to trigger a safety lockout.
The launcher wasn’t much to look at if he was honest. It was a wide rectangle that seemed to be attached to a curved dish underneath it that allowed it to angle upward. There didn’t appear to be any way to traverse the launcher from side to side either. Going by the retractable portion of the overhead dome, it could probably only fire from a certain position as well.
He had expected something to this extent after talking with the Captain and Lucas about the device, so it wasn’t much of a surprise.
The thing was huge, big enough that his entire body could fit inside the launch rails. He expected it to be big considering the size of the launch capsules but it was still surprising to see up close.
The launch capsules looked like those clamshell storage racks that people stuck on the top of their cars for road trips. Only these were about twice the size and with a metal strip running along the entire circumference. He lifted one of the lids and found the inside empty. He was a bit bummed about that. Not that he expected to find anything inside it but it would have been neat if there was. With the launch capsule open, he got a good idea of how much space he had to work with; if and when he got the thing operational.
The answer was, not a lot. About half of the area inside was taken up by foam padding. Probably to protect the contents as much as possible when they were launched into orbit. Depending on what he launched, he could probably remove the padding. He would have to print new launch capsules anyway since the ones in this room had seen better days. They were as likely to disintegrate on launch as they were to make it into orbit.
The capsules seemed to be mostly some sort of plastic, so that was good. He had limited materials left after replacing the robotics for his lab and the few simple mining drones he had going were not very capable.
He was hoping to alleviate some of the pressure on the locals to farm, so they would be more inclined to mine for him, but so far only three people had taken him up on the offer. That was still three more than zero though. Despite the rather crude mining equipment Alexander was able to provide them, they were much more adept at gathering useful material for his smelter than the drones he had.
“Alex, it stinks in here!” Yulia complained.
“Put your mask on then.” Yulia had asked to accompany him today since it was her day off from school. She was slowly picking up English but she kept defaulting to her old language when speaking to him. He was tempted to not answer her unless she used English, but that seemed extremely petty. She was also trying to fit in by not wearing her mask, but she liked to complain about the smell. He would always need to remind her to put the mask back on. To which she would complain that she didn’t like wearing it as she was doing right now.
“We talked about this. I am working on fixing the air purifiers, but you will need to get used to the smell or wear the mask.”
“I don’t like wearing the mask, everyone makes fun of me when I do.”
Alexander made his avatar nod. “I’m sorry to hear that. But those are the only two options at the moment.”
The little girl grumbled for a bit before finally putting on the mask. The smell really must be awful in this room, usually she just tried to put up with it. That probably meant air was leaking into this room from outside. Once he got the facility sealed back up, positive pressure would fix that issue.
While his schedule was quite busy, Alexander made sure to spend as much time as he could with her so she didn’t feel lonely. Yulia had struggled the first few weeks to make friends, kids being kids. Some were nice, some were mean, and some didn’t want to play with the outsider. Yulia was an outgoing girl though. Even without speaking the language, she managed to make a few friends.
Alexander got a kick out of watching them communicate through laughter and hand gestures. But Yulia and her two new friends, Sarah and Claire got along fantastically. Minus a little road bump with the whole 'trying to go places' she wasn’t supposed to. But the parents of the two girls got over it and let them play together again. Alexander got the distinct impression that the girls’ parents blamed him for the whole thing. That was fine with him, so long as they didn’t shun Yulia for doing something stupid that she genuinely felt bad about afterward.
Some other kids hung around occasionally, but he hadn’t gotten their names yet. Either because Yulia didn’t know them, or she just forgot to mention what they were. He was glad she had made the transition without much trouble. It took her mind off the lack of response from her old friends.
With the pirate threat on the same side of STO space as Petrov station, he wasn’t sure if the messages that were being transferred by the Hawks’ ships would arrive. There hadn’t been any reply to them yet which wasn’t a good sign.
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As much as Alexander would like to sit and hang out with his daughter all day, he had to refocus on the current task. He walked over to one of the engineers who was inspecting the railgun.
“How bad is it?”
“Not good,” the man replied as he pulled his head out of the barrel. “Both rails need to be replaced. Seems like they were due for replacement even before they shut it down though. We would also like to go through the entire electrical system. You don’t want an electrical short in a railgun. That much energy dumped into the body could damage the metal casing, and then you are looking at replacing the entire thing instead of just the rails. You already saw the launch capsules. Might as well just recycle them, there’s no point fixing them up.”
Alexander nodded. “I planned to.”
“Good. Other than that, you will need to rebuild the control room. Probably for the best anyway. I saw those ancient terminals, one holo terminal could replace that whole setup. Assuming you have the means to build one.”
“I’ll see what I can do.”
The man continued. “Then there is the ceiling. Your best bet is to just tear it all down and build fresh. Who knows what structural defects are present? It obviously wasn’t built very well if part of it collapsed like this,” he gestured to the broken concrete lying around the room.
Alexander sighed. “Please tell me that’s all?”
“For now. Until we can get power to the loading system, we won’t know if that works or if the gears that raise and lower the launcher will need replacing. We will also need to inspect the barrel for deflection since part of the roof collapsed on top of it.”
“And if it is damaged?”
“Then we will need to pull the entire barrel instead of just the rails. Luckily the outer casing and barrel are two separate parts on this unit. That isn’t always the case with launchers.”
“You have experience with Low Orbit Launchers?” Alexander asked in surprise. From his conversation with Matthews, he figured they weren’t very popular.
The man shook his head. “No, but some missile systems use a similar launch platform to eject missiles far from ships before they light off their drives. Doing it that way means they need less propellant to home in on their target which means you can pack more explosives into a smaller form factor.”
“Ah,” was all Alexander could say to that.
He gathered up the information he needed along with some rough measurements of the rails and headed back to his workshop. On the way there, Yulia spotted her friends.
“Alex, can I play with Sarah and Claire?”
He figured she would ask as soon as he saw the slightly older girls. He nodded. Before she could rush off, he added. “I’ll be in the workshop. Make sure to return before the evening meal.”
She nodded and waved at him as she sped off. He watched the three girls giggle conspiratorially to each other before running down a side hallway. A female mercenary stepped up next to him.
“I’ll keep an eye on her like always.”
“Thank you for doing this for me, Zorina. It means a lot that I don’t have to worry about her constantly.”
The woman snorted. “You’ll have to learn to let her be by herself soon. I don’t plan on sticking around when our deployment ends.”
He sighed and nodded. “I know.”
The woman smiled and fast-walked to catch up to the screaming children as they raced down the hallway.
He knew he was being overly protective. He couldn’t help it. The sad fact is he was better than he was before leaving Petrov. He had an actual reason for his overprotectiveness back on Petrov Station, but he couldn’t lean on that excuse here. Other than a few kids picking on Yulia, nobody had bothered her much since their arrival. He had purposefully told Zorina to keep a low profile and only intervene if she was in real danger or doing something she shouldn’t be doing. Kids being jerks didn’t count, even though Alexander had the urge to go talk to those children’s parents to set them straight.
Alexander entered the manufacturing bay. The place was still in full motion cranking out new beams for the collapsed sections. He didn’t interrupt that process. Instead, he went over to the printer terminal and began building a model of the parts for the launcher.
It didn’t take long, they were essentially a U-shaped piece of metal. He didn’t waste any of his precious metal though. Instead, he created an extrusion tip and extruded the forty-foot-long rails out of a cheap and recyclable plastic material. He wanted to make sure the dimensions were correct and they fit before he bothered wasting good material.
While that was going on, he took what he knew of the launcher and the railgun he had built back on Petrov and came up with a few designs for orbital defense guns. Of course, he had two arms and could split his attention, so with the other hand, he designed battery and capacitor banks.
Alexander had worked with over a dozen types of battery systems and probably close to a hundred types of capacitors during his time at Petrov. Now all that knowledge was going into designing the most energy-dense system he could come up with given what he knew. He was sure there were better designs out there, the stuff he had worked on was usually decades old by the time he saw it. But it was a significant step up to what existed on Eden’s End, so he wouldn’t complain.
Once the designs were complete, he sent them to the printers. The first railgun would take six hours to print and it was only at the scale of a slightly large handheld rifle. Alexander wanted to test the device before he went and printed a full-scale model that would be nearly as long as the launcher.
He looked at the finished model. As far as designs went, it was not very inspired. The gun was a rectangular block with a hole in the center of the square end about the width of a thick pencil. It sat on a simple weighted and recoil-absorbing tripod. He had thought about adding the dish and loading mechanism like the launcher had, but decided against it for the test. Those systems were easy to replicate and he knew they would work. He wanted to ensure his weapon design functioned correctly. Manual aiming and reloading would have to be done for now. As for the design, he did that for ease of manufacture.
He would likely carry over the blocky design for any defense turrets made using the flechette rifles that Travers had mentioned as well. He didn’t have the luxury of multiple processes for building weapons. He could print whatever, but he only had a few printers. And he couldn’t tie them all up with printing weapons that may or may not get used. Once one of the manufacturing lines became free, he would set that to building the weapons.
After he inspected the gun to ensure it was functional, he printed out a dozen tungsten sabots. Using his limited supply of tungsten like this hurt, but it was the hardest material he had available. It would get replaced eventually by the workers mining the surface. The planet was rich in metals, along with other rare earth materials. Trace amounts of tungsten and those harder-to-come-by minerals were already coming in with each load.
Alexander loaded everything up on a little robotic cart that looked like a topless golf cart. He had built the small vehicle to haul heavy loads around the station. It was mostly used to carry the replacement beams to the work sites where some of the engineers and locals were clearing up rubble and removing rusted beams to replace them with new ones.
As he was doing this, his door opened and Travers walked in. The man whistled as he saw what Alexander was loading on the cart. “Now ain’t that the ugliest little duckling you ever did see. I always preferred function over form though. You going out to test it?”
Alexander nodded.
“Mind if me and my team tag along? It isn’t every day we get to see a railgun getting fired.”
“I don’t see why not.”