Book 5: Chapter 7: Political Comeback
Herschel
January 2330
En route to Omicron2 Eridani
Iwas floating in the section of the Bellerophon that held the SURGE drive. The unit was recognizable as such—after all, there are only so many ways to build a SURGE drive—but the Others had, of course, put their own spin on a lot of the design decisions. In particular, the drive seemed to lean very heavily on the main computer system for control and adjustment—unlike human SURGE drives, where that was handled by an independent subsystem. The SURGE controller accepted high-level commands and converted them to the detailed field adjustments necessary to make it happen. I wondered if there was something that could be learned about the Others from that.
We were on our way from New Pav to Omicron2 Eridani, and we were taking the opportunity to finally complete the Bellerophon repairs. The Others’ derelict had been holed in the Delta Pavonis attack, and although we’d repaired the hull breach, we’d never bothered to do anything about the drive and central computer damage. Instead, we’d built a set of pusher plates to transport the transport, so to speak.
But it was ungainly at best, having a ten-kilometer-long ship dragged along by a bunch of orbiting drive plates, all controlled by a completely separate system.
The raw materials we’d picked up at New Pav were invaluable in this regard. While we weren’t building a drive from scratch, we still had to replace major sections of the original. And the drive system necessary to move a ship this massive was literally bigger than a battleship.
“How’s it going?” Neil messaged.
I made a face, even though Neil couldn’t see me. “No problems, as such. Everything’s on track. Component tests have all passed. But once we drop in the main field coils, you know what comes next, right?”