chapter 59
Getting onto the last train that will take me back to the hangar my ship is in, after drinking quite heavily with a new friend, is not something I expected to do.
It seems that the dwarves were a society quite similar to humans, and this wasn’t the only system that the dwarves owned. Although each place had its own government, they didn’t have an overarching power structure.
That meant that in this galaxy, there were more places similar to Earth, and that made some sort of knot deep inside me unravel. Hopefully, humans in the future will be able to do similar things to these dwarves, and I would have even more places that would remind me of how Earth used to be.
I wonder how similar the places elves ruled would be to Earth. I guess I could find that out in the future.
As I got back to our hangar, I just spent some time looking at the ship that brought me here. In all honesty, I can’t believe that it actually managed to bring us all the way here. It managed to survive multiple battles and traveled tens of thousands of light-years.
“Thank you.”
Like this, I continued to just memorize every line of the ship, because soon enough, it was going to be time to start dismantling it. But before that, I needed to make a lot more drones and droids and, of course, test out that engine design of mine to see if it could work.
Sam and Dean seemed to be in their rest states, with a card game between the two halfway finished. They really enjoyed playing card games. That’s what I like about free AIs. They develop these sorts of quirks. And soon, as they like to say, they would have many more brothers and sisters.
Lola had been quiet for quite a while. I knew that she had been listening to everything that had been going on, especially in the tavern.
“You seem a bit quiet,” I asked her when I was lying in my bed, which felt so amazing because I was once again feeling proper strong gravity.
“I have some memories of the time before you made me, but I think this is the first time I have been able to truly see what Earth might have been like. Would you want to restore Earth someday?”
"That's perhaps a bit too big of a goal for now. Whatever the case, Earth isn’t too badly damaged. With enough effort, it could be fixed. So perhaps in the future... or perhaps we could lend some support to others who would like to do it. I would one day want to walk on the soft grass of Earth and look up towards the blue sky."
It was still weird to be able to feel the AI I was bonded with. It allowed me to get more insight into their feelings and personality. Right now, Lola was feeling a bit sad, but also hopeful for the future. Sleep came quite quickly after that.
A few hours later, I woke up fully refreshed and ready to get things started. The nano printers were still making nano machines, as we weren’t even close to reaching the numbers we needed. As for the 3D printer, there I had started to print out some components I would need for a test version of a new engine I was designing.
"What are you currently printing?" Lola asked me, a bit confused, as she didn’t exactly know what I was making.
"It’s a bit of a secret. But you should be designing the next version of the droids. We need quite a few for Sam and Dean to be able to walk around without any problems. And of course, we would need their help to start building our future home."
"As you wish," she replied.
It took only a few moments before I saw our ship’s processing capabilities being almost fully utilized by her. That brought a small smile to my face.
Then, exactly at 7:00 AM, Thoron contacted me. They really were incredibly punctual. The first machines would be installed later today, and some of the materials would also be delivered.
What he also did was finally give me access to the shipyard’s shop, which would allow me to buy everything it had listed and even order some things if I needed something specific made.
Lola immediately stopped what she was doing to start going through everything listed. Every so often, she sent me updates. Basically, everything here—especially the armor pieces—were about three to five times cheaper than if we were to try to build our ship in the Haver station or near it.
Yet this isn’t the only advantage this place has. The more important thing is the ability to order specific structural pieces that are made exactly to order, using all kinds of different materials and combinations of them, so I could get the exact results I was looking for.
The main structure of the Mark II that would hopefully bind everything together was going to cost a lot, but that price was going to fluctuate quite a bit depending on whether I got this engine design of mine working or not.
The main engines of which there were going to be four, were all going to be bought fully built out. The fusion engines were just something I didn’t have to waste time building, especially after the design was already incredibly efficient and well-suited for long-term use.
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There were plenty of options available to be purchased, but it was a bit too soon to clutter up the hangar with stuff like that. First, we would need to build out the overall structure of the Mark II.
The problem with fusion engines—and basically every other engine—is that they need energy and something to propel, which meant you needed to bring along a lot of fuel. In space, that was the only thing you could use. At least, that was the case until I saw a different option.
The Mark II was going to be able to bring along enough fuel so that we should be able to travel a few months without refueling using the main engines.
In the new design I currently had, there were also side engines, but these were my own design, and hopefully would resolve the problem of traveling in FTL and using up too much fuel just to stay there and continue to move.
This galaxy does have a solution to this. There are materials out there that can interact with the very fabric of space itself. It’s kind of similar to how a gravity generator works, but not really. With them, technically, you would only need power to travel through space, and no extra propellant.
So, my current idea was to make the side engines use propellers made of this material, like the airplanes of old.
The current designs available in the galaxy basically use regular electric engines, which made sense. You wouldn’t want to bring along the extra fuel that more traditional engines would use. Yet electric engines like this have their own problems.
One of the problems is the mass of the electric engine. Even if I mounted them where the current main engines would go it would still be bad. Moving them where the side engine would go makes the problem exponentially bigger.
The rotational forces would always be a problem, but there are ways of mitigating it. What would help a lot would be to make both side engines work in opposite rotation, but the traditional electric engine would be a lot harder to manage, as they are a lot stronger in torque.
None of those are true problems and would mostly come with any propeller engine. The true problem is maintenance and battle damage. The maintenance is basically non-existent unless something bigger goes wrong, then you need to rebuild the engine, and in this galaxy, things go wrong all the time. Also, I would need proper facilities to fix an electrical engine of that size.
This problem stumped me for quite a while until I remembered some older engine designs.
It took me half a day to finish building out the small prototype that could fit in my hand. It looked like a classic radial engine used in old propeller aircraft, but instead of using combustion to move the pistons, I used electromagnets.
Normally, this wouldn’t work, at least not with the materials available on Earth. But here, there were strong enough materials, and their properties were special enough that I was confident I could build an electromagnetic radial engine that only used electricity to power it, with propellers that would move the ship along by interacting with the very fabric of space itself.
If I can get this to work. My God, it would be amazing.
The small-scale test worked. The propeller started to spin as the electromagnets cycled between pulling and repelling, which made the pistons move up and down.
“So that’s what you’ve been working on?” Lola commented.
“Yeah. What do you think about the design? The numbers seem to work. The simulations also worked and seem to indicate that I could scale this up, although we need better materials than we currently have. But the shipyard should have everything we need.”
“What are the end results you’re looking for?” she asked.
“At minimum, 2.5 G acceleration, so these engines could keep us comfortably in FTL. But I would like it to be able to hit 5 G acceleration if possible.”
“Now, I don’t know if it’s possible, but if the available materials here are good enough, then technically, I think we should have the capability of making the engines rotate—this time fully vertical—to give this beast of a ship the capability of hovering on a planet's surface. That should allow us to accept a lot more quests.” I finished explaining to Lola.
“From the quick numbers I’ve currently run, reaching acceleration milestones shouldn’t be too hard, but hovering? That would mean the wings and engine mounts would need to vertically hold when the ship is fully loaded, most likely in excess of 1,000 tons. Now, I don’t know if that’s possible to achieve.”
“Well, technically each engine would need to only support half of that under ideal conditions. But yes, it would be really hard to achieve. The key would be the ship’s main structure. It would need to be made quite strong yet achieve enough flex for it not to snap. But I think with the available materials, it might actually be possible.”
“But would it be wise to spend so much on trying to achieve this functionality?”
“The reason why I want to push this is because of you and your research. Not many spaceships are capable of landing on a planet, which means that cargo delivery, especially as much as we would be able to fit, is in high demand.”
“How many quests did you show me were planetary deliveries, especially in the red zones, that would pay out in excess of 100 million? We could easily make our investment back.”
“But even without that hovering feature, we should be able to deliver to the planets.”
“You are somewhat correct, but a lot of places don’t have proper runways. They’re just outposts where people are trying to build a colony. They are far from building proper runways or other structures to help with the delivery of large amounts of goods. Now, none of this might work out, but why not try?”
“I remember having a similar conversation when you were explaining the idea of getting off Earth. Before you actually did it, I didn’t believe it was possible. But as always, I will help any way I can,” Lola said, and I could feel the support she was giving.
“Never change. It’s important to have not just yes-sayers but also someone to poke holes in my plans.”
“Acknowledged,” she said, and I could feel the happiness over our bond.
Now that the small-scale version worked, it was time to build a bigger one for even more testing. As I started to print out a larger version of this new engine, the fabrication equipment finally started to arrive. Many dwarves and large moving machines brought in the fabrication equipment, mostly more 3D printers.
There was also more specialized equipment, even a 3D printer that had a heavy press to fabricate stronger materials than I could make myself. This I was going to use to make the frames and outer shells of my droids and drones. This would give them a lot more structural integrity and defense against damage of all kinds.
My current philosophy was that every droid and drone would also be capable of fighting if needed, even if some would not really be designed for it. There would be some that I was going to specifically design for battle, but even they would have some capability to do other tasks. We were going to be a team—a proper crew for the ship—and everyone needed to pull their weight.
Thoron, after they had installed everything and brought the first shipment of materials, invited me, after his work hours ended, to the tavern once again. Apparently, basically every dwarf went to a tavern or some other place where you could drink and socialize after work.
Not wanting to be rude, I accepted, but I would only be spending a small amount of time there, getting a few drinks and eating before getting back, as there was simply too much to do.
The next day, I focused more on getting the old fabrication equipment working, building out the new droids. Lola had pulled an all-nighter so we could start making an upgraded version of the current droids Sam and Dean were using.
The rest of the equipment was installed later that day, and the final shipment of the first order of materials arrived.
Lola had already ordered a lot of processors, as that was the next goal once the first set of droids was built. We needed a lot more processing power to be able to figure out what and how we needed to build the Mark II.
What I also figured out was that it was really easy for me to bond with equipment that was brought in. It was a shallow bond that I could always break, but it should safeguard it from mana.
The interesting thing was that the mana density wasn’t actually that high. Of course, it was a lot higher when compared to Earth or even Haver Station, where ambient mana was barely present. Yet this system barely had any compared to the red zones. There, the only cheap way you could have technology was if you were bonded to it to protect it.
Lola also found an interesting way that many safeguard their colonies in red zones. The reason why the high amount of mana didn’t affect electronics in FTL was because the mana in the side dimension wasn’t raw mana or purposeless mana. Only that type of mana was dangerous, especially to technology that used electricity.
So what many red zone colonies use is someone who can exert control over a large area, like a wind mage that takes control of that purposeless mana and gives it purpose, making it safe. Not everyone could do that, and the extent of it would depend on the person who is controlling that area.
So there were ways of countering purposeless mana that can cause damage, but it’s something that takes effort.