chapter 80
Having my own configurable pressure forge was something I never dreamed of having. It allowed me to manufacture my own high-grade parts from high-end materials.
This one was on loan from the shipyard, although I did redesign the business end of it so I would have a way to make a lot of different designs without having to constantly remake casts.
The material science currently available to us was amazing, and I knew that there were even more steps beyond this one. I couldn’t wait to learn them. So many things were already possible, a perfect example being this pressure forge.
It’s bulky, and it would never fit on my ship, but already I have either made or ordered the correct parts to build this type of machine inside the Mark II that would fit. Of course, I would not be putting this together now, and all the parts were separate so no one would figure out what I was trying to make.
This meant that with a few more machines of the same grade as this pressure forge—and I already had plans to make those as well—I would have a factory on board that could manufacture basically 99% of the Mark II.
The two things that I still couldn’t make myself were the mana locator and the material that interacted with space fabric. The latter I think I was close to, although it was only theoretical, as I wasn’t crazy enough to start experimenting with those materials just yet, and not just because they were so expensive.
Watching the forge work was satisfying, but what was even more satisfying was watching how the drones operated it. All of them were quite simplistic in their AI complexity, but each of them was developed in a very specific way to make them even better at this type of factory work.
Currently they were making the pieces needed to build the engine block for the last side engine. This machine wasn’t big enough to make the block entirely in one go. Normally, that would mean there was no way of making the block strong enough to handle all the forces, not to mention actually surviving battle conditions.
Over the months, Lola and I had found a way to fix that problem. It was also the reason why the Mark II was so incredibly tough. We had developed a specialized nano machine paste, purposely designed to bond different pieces together as if they were never apart.
We had a crude version of this at the start, but now it was refined. This nano machine paste needed to be specifically made for each type of material, and it worked best if you bonded together materials that were exactly the same composition. We no longer even needed the stitcher, as this paste did that tool’s job as well.
The bonding wasn’t instant, it took time to cure, but in 10 minutes or so it would be impossible to separate the pieces, as they would break in other places first. The bond was simply that strong.
This type of assembly was so needed, as the engine block for the side engines was incredibly huge. The main reason for that was that not everything was as compact as it could be. The cylinder rows were spaced far apart from each other.
Altogether, there were seven rows of seven cylinders, all of them with huge displacement. If this thing ran on fuel, the tanks would be empty before we reached one-tenth of the speed needed to enter FTL.
Fortunately, the cylinders only ran on power. They used electromagnetics for the pushing force instead of combustion. They still needed coolant and lubricant, but the available products on the market were way beyond my expectations. Especially the coolant. It was a nice discovery, as it would help so much with keeping the generated heat in check.
At first, I had hoped that I could run the cylinders in vacuum, but the efficiency gain wasn’t worth the headache of trying to manage heat buildup in those parts. Just moving air through them was so much better for long-term running.
Normally, radial engines didn’t have such a good lifespan, but this engine of mine wasn’t ever designed to be so compact and powerful. I had plenty of space to make everything as durable and long-lasting as possible.
The entire engine would also be covered in armor, and we had quite a few shield generators that were going to be embedded into this armor and even into the center of the propeller.
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The side engines were obviously going to be one of the targets of anyone who started attacking us, so the plan was to make the protections around the wings incredibly tough. If they were going to be targets, then why not take advantage of that?
At the front of the ship, there was also going to be a fake bridge, so to sensors and visual observation it looked like a weak spot, but instead, it was one of the strongest spots on the ship.
Overall, the defensiveness was way above what is normal for these types of ships, even for adventurers, although that’s only taking into account new adventurers, as the ones who have operated for decades would most likely be able to easily match the Mark II’s defensiveness.
Hopefully, it would take less than decades for me to continue upgrading this ship into something truly terrifying. With my innate ability it should be possible, but the first priority is to keep that a secret.
Building an engine I designed myself has been one of the most satisfying things I have done in my life. It’s kind of funny that even being half cybernetic, I was currently feeling more alive than ever.
As I was working on the side engine’s outside, inside the Mark II an army of drones worked on the smaller details. The big things were already finished; now everything just needed to be connected, and all the emergency systems and smaller components installed. Already, some of the finishing touches were also being added.
One thing we had all overlooked, which was quite embarrassing, was a proper medical bay. We now had two such locations. One was inside the command bridge, the other took up some of Lola’s workshop area, as she found the prospect of working on biological problems just as interesting as cybernetic ones.
She had also taken over the maintenance of the drones. That’s also the reason why I’ve been helping her a little bit in designing proper maintenance drones, not for the ship, but for the drones themselves. Everyone correctly pointed out that I had more important things to do than fix issues that popped up with the constant use of our drones.
“Captain, I have made an interesting discovery that I think we might want to implement on the ship,” FH explained after contacting me.
“Go ahead.” Whenever she said something like that, I knew it was going to be something I’d end up adding to the ship. My only hope was that it wouldn’t require too much rework of the current design, as we were quite far along in finishing the ship.
“Take a look at these designs and tell me what you think.”
At first, I was a bit confused, but then I started to see what she meant. Why hadn’t I thought of that?
The designs she showed me kind of looked like air brakes, but for spaceships. They used the same material the propellers were made of, but not to propel through space, instead, to brake. They would be incredibly dangerous. If you energized them too much, you could rip them easily from your ship, which would cause a lot of other damage as well.
It took me a while to run the numbers, but I realized this could be so useful, especially during fights. Normally, to decelerate you would need to turn around, and that would expose our backside which, while quite well defended, wasn’t as defended as the front.
But if we were to make a sort of ring around the back support that we could extend if needed, like an air brake, we could slow the ship drastically without having to use our engines.
We started to run a few simulations. It would work kind of like a parachute in the location I was thinking. It would add so much to our capabilities, and we could even use them to hold a certain location in space without having to worry too much about orbital mechanics.
Then I looked at how much we needed to make a full ring and winced. It would be nearly 900 million. That was a bit more than the credits I currently had left.
Already, we had spent all the credits we got from giving away the pirate fleet location. We had also almost sold the entirety of the high-end materials we got from Baron Vir Kir.
Of course, we could have kept most of it as we haven’t spent everything on the ship, but the Mark II was partly a cargo ship, so it would have been stupid to just keep currency materials. Instead, what we have been doing is buying stuff that’s incredibly cheap here and that would fetch a high price at our destination.
If we were to spend too much of that capital on improving the ship, then the profits we would be making were going to be too low, and I really didn’t want to go back to not having enough credits to make more credits. It was going to be important for us to keep a large nest egg on board to take advantage of opportunities like this.
FH, however, didn’t disappoint. “Can’t we just lower the amount we need? Do we really need the whole thing?” she proposed and showed me the numbers she ran.
It would lower our stopping power to about 20G instead of the nearly 50G our ship could handle. It would also be a lot lower than our engines could manage, but it would also lower the cost from 900 million to about 130, and that I could accept.
“The back end needs a bit of an adjustment. Can you handle the redesign?” I asked FH.
She hesitated for just a bit before answering. “I will try, but can I still ask you questions if I run into problems?”
“Of course, I didn’t mean that you needed to do it alone. We are a crew after all, we look out for each other.”
What I got back was a happy feeling through our bond. Our bond was also quite interesting. At the start, she was a separate AI, but I also had a bond to the Mark II. Over time, as the Mark II was getting closer and closer to being finished, those bonds moved closer and are now twisted together, and I think they are slowly starting to merge.
Pretty sure when we get to a certain point with the Mark II, FH and the ship itself, that I currently have separate bonds to, will merge together, becoming one entity. My thoughts were interrupted when I heard the finished side engine roar to life.
Dean and Sam had become the testers of basically everything, so right now they were putting the finished side engine—that was going to be the left-side engine—through its paces.
We also had the propeller attached, although it wasn't energised, so the only pull the engine had was from the air that surrounded it, which was still quite a lot but that was manageable.
It was a timer in my vision that was counting down the estimated time for the completion of the Mark II. As FH was doing her own thing with the redesign, about 3 days were added to that timer. Now it was almost 4 weeks until the completion, which was still 3 weeks ahead of our last day in this shipyard.
Almost a year and a half spent here constantly working on the ship, with a few breaks in between of doing some other things. How has the time gone by so quickly? When I looked toward the Mark II and how complete it looked, I was amazed that it actually took so little time to get to this point.
It had taken me nearly 8 years to finish the Mark I, yet the Mark II is so much more impressive. It does from the side kinda look like a box, but this is space after all, and if you squint a bit it kinda look like an old-fashioned sailing ship without the sails, but of course the wings kinda messed up that aesthetic.
I wonder if it could float. “FH, can you run some calculations for me?”