60mi W of Greenton, Auctus. February 14, 449 UE. Kage Desert: 252 hrs A.M.S.T.
Five minutes after Dad left I realized he was gone. Dreq? Where is Dad?
He said don't come home till after school because Mom lied for you, Print your food from the kitchen, which is over there, and… That's it. I wish I could lie, it would make these moments so much more fun. Besides why don't you just look it up in your head, you have one of those eidetic memories. And I know you remember everything you hear.
Everyone has an eidetic memory, even you, don't act like you go back and replay everything you did not hear the first time.
You’re right, I just listen the first time!
That is another thing, because of nanites, no one gets sick, and everyone has eidetic memory, the nanites code that gene, along with many other beneficial attributes. From first grade through with grade we sit at school with Wikipedia pages flashing in front of us to a second each. On Wikipedia’s 200 year anniversary, it hired experts to approve all of their pages. Now, after absorbing all the other Wikis, and Wookie, it is the official databank and collection of knowledge for the human race. Primary School consists of Math, History, Language(almost all of them), and Science(Pre 2500 AD). Middle school is Science, after 2500 AD, and all of the 8431 years during G.E. or Galactic Expansion, the 6004 years of the Space Age and the 1839 of the Conflict Age. All new science since the Unified Era, U.E. are either studied in Colleges or Classified. High School consists of knowledge application, writing, logic, and psychology, oh and historical analyzing, or anthropology. As you can probably tell school is so boring! At least until high school.
Whatever, since I’ve got all day I am gonna start on the ship.
You do realize you still can not pay for all the parts?
Yes, but I can afford the titun, to make the framework, and I bet I can conjure up some of the internal systems.
But you can't buy the outer hull plates, or the ion drives.
Dreq, one day I will, besides I have to start, just because all the energy gained from digging this paid for its construction does not mean Dad did not work hard on it. It would be a shame if I was not even going to try to use this space.
Okay, you are right, what do we need.
First we need tools, I’ll print them right…
We have tools, both human and dashad.
Really! Where?
Literally, there is a neon sign…
Looking around, I get a real look at the place, the first thing I realize is how large the place really is. At four football{soccer} fields across and two and a half wide, there was enough space for a fighter squadron. I need to figure out how I am gonna build one ship, let alone eight fighters. The hanger was tall enough, for any ship that was not too long or wide would not be too tall.
To my left was the neon sign that said tools. Yeah, it really was neon. Inside were all the tools I would ever need. Some of them were for spaceships, like the vac-welders and VGC or vacuum gel coolant.
The gel was first discovered in a hidden heat vent in Mariana’s Trench and was thought to be a living organism that fed off heat. After further study it was found that the gel was an excretion of a small krill like fish that fed off the minerals of molten rock. Not only that but it had its own genetic structure, it was the only known instance where a creature produced an entirely different species. The gel would react to the temperature, sucking in heat and putting out cold, or if the temperature were cold it would put out heat. The gel was so interesting because it seemed to “hate” the cold, and would “die” if it got too cold, so the heat it had stored would be released to warm the surrounding waters. After they were discovered scientists bred the krill, and soon the VGC well at that time it was just GC would replace all forms of air conditioning.
It was not until space travel that the gel was confirmed biotic. An accident on a space walk caused an astronaut to rupture his suit the GC in his suit was exposed to a vacuum, but it did not break apart, and it pulsed heat keeping the astronaut warm. This saved the astronaut’s life and gave the gel an extra initial.
“Well Dreq, It looks like we got everything we need!” I yelled. I still have not gotten the hang of “yelling” with my mind.
Stop shouting, I’m right here.
Oh. Well, I think I’ll start on the titun frame.
Titun refers to a specific titanium tungsten alloy that is used in most framework, from buildings, hoverbikes, and cars to spaceships, and spacestations. The first thing I did is start printing the struts. I already knew what I needed because I already had my blueprints. This has been a dream of mine for almost a year now, I have put a lot of time into researching technologies.
As I set the printer, I went to grab the vac-welder and the armbots. Armbots are used in industrial manufacturing and shipwrighting they are used to hold things in place. All they consist of is a robotic arm with seven degrees of motion. They are kind of like a really precise crane, or since I am building a ship, gantry.
I tasked the robots to get the pieces from the printer and arrange them according to my blueprint. Having eight armbots, I never had to wait, but the process was still slow going, unlike a normal welder, a vac-welder removes oxidation layers from the metal, this allows the atoms to bond creating a seamless connection. Kind of like how two drops of water will combine to make one.
In space metals that collide fuse together creating one piece of metal. Of course there are exceptions, like water and oil some liquids will not combine, but water and juice will. In the same capacity metals will do the same thing. For example platinum group metals, like platinum, gold, iridium, and palladium would combine. But those metals would not fuse with iron perhaps.
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The only other exception are pieces of iron with the same polarities, and other metals that are magnetic. Obviously magnetic material with the same polarity will push away from each other.
Using a vac-welder I get a seamless frame to work with. “But James,” you say, “ are not welds stronger for joints then the actual metal?” Well you are right, but have you ever tried to weld over a broken weld? It is really hard, you often don't get it right the first time and it looks like crap. Also welds are not known to be flexible so making hard turns in space would break them.
It took me straight till dinner just to get the cockpit frame done, Dreq would help, dashad can use telekinesis, in a similar way that they communicate but it takes a lot of effort. It is strange to see a four foot long hundred-fifty pound dashad lift a 200 pound strut, but weight does not matter, mass matters, I see a lot of puns there. Because dashad manipulate preons, the weight of an object they are lifting is irrelevant, the amount of preons is.
With Dreq and I exhausted, we called it quits and headed home.
Outer Ring, Sector six, Greenton, Auctus, February 14, 449 UE. Sabol Residence: 2212hrs A.M.S.T.
Back home I excitedly go over all the stuff I have planned. Over dinner Mom gives me a contract that allocates farmed produce to an account in my name, for now it was small. Just the amount of food I would eat regularly, but Mom said that the amount could grow if I contributed more to the chores. Then I started talking about the spaceship.
“...The problem is, so many parts are huge, and regulated. And since the regulated parts cost a fortune! That is why not everyone and their dog has a ship.”
“That's why we set up the account, so you could pay for these things. It will take a bit of will, and patience, I hope you did not expect to have a space ship by tomorrow.”
“Of course not Dad, but I ran the calculations and even if I sold double I would not have one till I was twenty. It’s alright though, I have other projects I can work on.”
“That is a good attitude to have about it, maybe you should think a little smaller for now, after all you’re so young…”
“That's it Mom! You’re a GENIUS!” I lept from the table and gave her a hug. “Oh, can I be excused?” I asked bouncing.
“Yes but first, how is she the genius, when I built you a hanger?”
“That’s because I am a woman Richard, and I don’t put my heel in my mouth.”
“Also she said I need to think smaller, plenty of the parts that are regulated have smaller versions that aren’t. Maybe I can build the ship using multiple smaller pieces, the only exception would be the gravplate and the core! Oh and mom, your gender has nothing to do with it, don’t be ridiculous”
“That-a-boy.” My father said to my retreating back as I hurried out of the house.
Over the next four years I built the majority of the ship the titun frame was easiest, then obviously came as much of the wiring and inner pieces. After finally purchasing the core, the rest of the power systems came easily.
The first notable issue came from the engines. I decided to use probe drives, with a hundred strapped to the back, distribution of power became a hassle. In order to compensate I had to alter the core, which turns out is not illegal. All you have to do is buy the core. Then you get a shipwrights license, and a permit for a ship for each core you purchase.
I basically tore the whole thing apart and made a new one that worked for my ship. It turns out there were hundreds of improvements that could be made and I spent six months on for refab.
Instead of large expensive adamantium hull plates, I bought thindrives, thousands of them. Since they have an adamantium hull, with two, two inch thick, 4 foot by 4 foot plates on the top and bottom. Thindrives are now about the size of a hand, their precursor was a large thin supercomputer that would fit in a wall or floor they were black boxes for starships of all sizes which means they are cheap, but the hulls are thick and ridiculously strong. The blueSheet is still in the PDB or Printer Databank, many old blueSheets were still logged in the PDB and would be forever. they were simply forgotten. The best part is they are not regulated. I ended up purchasing all I needed for a quarter of the price of one normal hull plate.
Of course two inches was way too thin for a hull. I laminated two plates with Atwood's inch layer of E-gel in the center. E-gel was originally used as a radiation barrier, eventually the tech had become obsolete, especially because it was power hungry. I used the gel to modify the genetic structure of VCG. The idea came from drew pointing out their similarities. The finished product was a gel that created an energy barrier of its own, and, fed off of focused energy too. Thus making it an effective defense against both projectile and energy weapons. I each laminate square, in an evenly spaced pattern to allow for more of the laminate squares fit in the spaces and overlapped like scales.
I finished the ship by my fourteenth birthday, all I had to worry about were armaments and defense systems. Turns out my parents had ship defense covered for my ship, one of dad’s friends from the navy is a researcher for ship defense. Dad bought all of her top gear. Apparently this was Mom’s idea. She wanted to make sure I was protected while I “flew across the Universe.”
I obtained the best Point Defense system in the galaxy, for my size ship, and a prototype barrier. I had to complete rebuild the engine core in order to produce a better distribution of power. Everything came together nicely, all I had was one more step
Arming my ship came with a few complications, CYNERS were easy enough to build and the parts were not regulated. Cyners stands for, Controlled Yield Nuclear Engagement RocketS. These things were the size of a newborn's arm but the yield of a half a kiloton. I installed six jettison tubes, four bow facing, and two toward the stern.
I wasn't able to get energy cannons or railguns. Apparently these weapon systems were illegal for anyone under 16. So I built model ones, for practice. Interestingly enough, after the age of 16, the Cyners became illegal. I found out later that Cyners are sold to young kids as toys, like model rockets. They had no CPU, so they could only blind fire. Also, they lacked a, you know, nuclear payload.
The last order of business was the gravplate. I spent days trying to find a way to use multiple small gravplates, but having multiple gravplates within the same system canceled the gravitons rendering the plates inert. Two explosions and a dark matter accident later I discovered dark matter plates which allow the chaining of regular gravplates. This was good news until I applied it a larger structure and found that the plates did not generate an inertia field. Since I don't want to be pulverized whenever I accelerate to lightspeed, I need a regular gravplate.
Let's just say I acquired one, don't worry I got it from a bully, and a noble bully at that.
Said bully was the same one who would one day spark the laughter that embarrassed Sarah after her accurate answer to a difficult question on one of the last days of Axiom. Said bully happened to also be the son of the Duke of Auctus. It was this Duke who promised his son a system bound starship for his 14th birthday. Said bully had seen me working with a three dimensional blueSheet of my gravplate lacking spaceship, and vituperatively pestered his father for one just to spite me.
Graveplates gain a unique signature when turned on, it can be measured easily. This makes stealing on virtually impossible. Fortunately, said bully was an idiot. He insisted on seeing the ship come online himself. All I had to do was sneak into the foolishly unguarded hanger and retrieve the gravplate. I know it was dishonest, but, I, really, hate, bullies.
With the gravplate installed I christened my ship the M.S.S. Atlanta. Atlanta was the Greek goddess of adventure and M.S.S. was a TLA for My Starship. I was worried that the bully that I stole the gravplate from, would recognize my ship when he saw the blueSheet. Now, a smart person would have used their idetic memory to look take the image and mentaly reconstruct the ship, but the bully was never really good at putting the pieces together.
For the next three years, I mined unmarked asteroids for chits and credits, and used them to make different things for myself. I also took my parents up a couple times, after I got the hang of landing.