Slowly coming up on Ibiza station, the Nechtan eased it's engines down to a crawl before finally coming to a halt. Stationing within 5 clicks of the station, a woman in a blue uniform nodded to a job well done to the bridge crew. Making her way to the hanger bay, so quickly scanned her datapad and the information given by Finn regarding Project Lightspear. Nodding and looking up, she continued to the hanger.
Upon arriving, she welcomed the 4 other scientists and staff that would be accompanying her to Ibiza. Settling into the shuttle, she waiting for clearance from the Nechtan, and slowly maneuvered the shuttle out of the hanger and towards Docking Bay A as instructed.
Ibiza control, this Jennifer Byrne of the Ingenuus Research Group, requesting clearance to dock in Bay A.
Receiving clearance confirmation, she waited for the Ibiza tower to tractor her in for final approach and docking. As soon as they touched down, her and the team began gathering their bags and equipment, and stepped out into Bay A, where 2 guards and what Jennifer assumed was an officer aboard the station.
Hello there. Jennifer Byrne, here by request from Inquisitor Erikasaria Espinosa. Please inform her of our arrival, so that we may begin...
The hum of fusion engines powering down drowned out all other noise but the odd slamming of compartment hatches and the crackling of welding torches in the rear of the open hangar. Standing on a raised platform above the recently landed shuttle, a pair of figures stood beaming down at the new arrivals bearing the blue and emerald colors of The Ingenuus Research Group.
Below, a guard escorted the research team to an alcove in the side of the hangar compartment to a staging room with a window overlooking the landing bay, just below where the catwalks that crowned the room met the wall. Back on the platform, the pair began to slowly work their way to the staging room.
The shorter of the two figures spoke first: " As little as possible. They're here to sort us out and accelerate the production process. Nothing more. "
"Oh come now, you have so little faith in me as to even mention it?"
"I've enough problems to deal with. I don't need classified tech getting it's way around the rest of Sirius because you got a little too liberal. Keep it minimal but be polite"
"I should be insulted that you'd think I'd be on anything but my best behaivour, m'am" The second figure bowed, and made his way towards the staging room.
-[+]-
A brief exchange with a guard led the sharply-dressed man into the room; a lone technician in yellow cover-alls in tow, brandishing a datapad remained back while the man approached the Research Team, extending a hand to the one identified as the head of the team in greeting.
I take it you're Jennifer Byrne? I'm Inquisitor Harry Callahan, I've been asked to show you and your associates around and get you a little more familiar with our project." He stated calmly, offering a slight smile.
[ sci·am·ach ]
/sīˈamək/
A simple, angry man casually working his way through life on a personal quest to acquire copious amounts of street cred.
Eyeing the Inquisitor, she remarked his calm and almost cheerful demeanor. Obviously he was more of a PR man, someone experienced in the art of diplomacy and speech. Extending her hand, she returned his slight smile.
That is correct Inquisitor Callahan. A pleasure to meet you. We would be delighted to gain more familiarity with the project and what we are tasked with assisting on.
Receiving a nod from the Inquisitor, she followed suit as he turned and started walking, approaching the doorway leading out of the hanger. Ibiza was of interesting design. The hanger, standard in it's look, but venturing into the heart of the station revealed a much more different landscape. Banners hung periodically from the walls, adorned with Maltese symbols. For the reputation given to most "Outcasts", Jennifer was pleasantly surprised at how civilized they appeared.
What more can you tell us about this project, and what the current status is? We would hate to duplicate any work done previous, so as much information as you are allowed to provide would be most beneficial.
" It's current status you ask? Oh trust me dear, you'll learn more than that today. Come. "
Callahan stepped in front of the group before a large door in the far wall, guiding them through and down a myriad of internal corridors, passing a number of personnel in various uniforms, all of which either came to a halt and let the group pass, or came to a full salute at the sight of the Inquisitor.
" I assume you were clued into the specifics Espinosa spoke of with your superiors, but suffer me this moment of time to summarize it for you: Lightspear is as much an idea as it is a weapon. The concept has long been one eyeballed by a number of Malta's greatest minds as a potentiality, but was never explored in full as there were always more pressing matters. Since the Armando brother's rise to power they've seen fit to bring in the Inquisidores de la Sabiduría; a sub-branch of the Inquisition of which I personally am a founding member, to assess and improve the technological status of Malta in any way we could, and to expand our already potent arsenal.
Put simply: we were to use information gathered from the rest of the Inquisition and discoveries made elsewhere within the Nation to find an edge against our enemies based upon the foundation of those that came before us. Eventually, we had a breakthrough: one of my Solicitantes was perusing Corsica's archives and found the scribbled-up notes of a physicist whose name has since been lost for a weapon concept based on the very same singularity core design now being implemented in Malta's ship-of-the-line Storta Destroyers. After some consideration and a few choice careful recommendations, the idea became itself a project, and was granted approval. Since then we've been working almost around the clock to bring it to fruition, with some help from the lads at Atlantis Manufacturing to get us started. "
He paused as the group came to a large set of blast-doors, a number of equipment racks and pallets of materials were stacked next to the group, apparently awaiting for something on the other side to be moved to allow their ingress.
" In essence; a gamma-ray burst cannon has been theorized, and a prototype built years ahead of the projected development cycle with the only testing being some rather complex simulations. The Cross wastes no time, however we've hit a number of roadblocks spurred on by our... 'eagerness' lets call it, hence your presence here. "
Almost punctuating his words, the flashing orange lights surrounding the door flared to life as the hiss of pressure equalization from the door assaulted the senses of all standing on the platform. A few moments later, the doors parted as blinding light and sound began to flood in from the bustling crews beyond.
Before them perched on several scaffolds, was the infantile husk of what appeared to be a vessel's skeletal superstructure; the frame strewn from wall-to-wall of what was once a fighter hangar in various stages of construction. Centered in the mangled shell was a large opening that seemed to have tubes and equipment all connected to a massive housing unit. Rising slowly from an opening in the floor was a massive spherical shaped piece of hull, gradually sliding into it's berthing as countless engineers and crewmen gathered around it and operated the nearby machinery.
Callahan spoke up, having to yell to overcome the thunderous noise of the assembly before them: " Mrs. Byrne, Lightspear is by no means a mere concept anymore, it is very much underway. "
He gestured for the others to follow him again to a service lift to some of the upper catwalks, ascending to the ceiling of the cylindrical-shaped hangar and guiding the team to a room embedded in the side bulkhead.
[img float=right]http://i.imgur.com/4f6tSkO.jpg?1[/img]
Once the group was inside and the hatch shut, the noise was reduced to a mere hum. The room the Inquisitor had brought the team to was what appeared to be a lab with a view overlooking the build below through a window that ran the length of the room. Opposite the window was a series of consoles and lab tables flanking a walkway to another large containment room, wherein an identical sphere to the one the team had seen before was perched on a mounting in the recessed floor.
Harry paused for a moment, re-gaining his composure and straightening out his suit before addressing Jennifer again: " Now, Miss Byrne, before I continue, do you have any questions?"
[ sci·am·ach ]
/sīˈamək/
A simple, angry man casually working his way through life on a personal quest to acquire copious amounts of street cred.
"Right now, as it would happen." Callahan offered with a smirk.
"The lab is fully equipped with everything you should need-- with a requisition system in place on the consoles should anything be missing, and my office is on the other side of the catwalk we came over on. We have a briefing with the High Inquisitor lined up in about half an hour so until then, familiarize yourself with the lab and feel free to voice any questions; technical or non."
[ sci·am·ach ]
/sīˈamək/
A simple, angry man casually working his way through life on a personal quest to acquire copious amounts of street cred.
Shaking Callahan's hand, she glanced around and nodded.
Thank you again. I'll be sure to let you know if any questions do come up.
As she watched him leave, she turned her attention to the console in front of her. Typing in some commands, she reviewed what was available to her and her team. To ascertain what would be needed, she typed in some commands into console to review any logs surrounding work done already. Many of the logs were blocked, and she was unable to access to her irritation. What she did find was intriguing, though not enough to make any calculated decisions on where to start. It seemed that the involvement of the IRG would have to wait until the meeting with this "High Inquisitor"
Time seemed to breeze by as the Ingenuus crew began to look around and get acclimated to the room. Callahan merely stood back, observing and idly flipping through files on a datapad.
Eventually, the booming noise of the production bay outside once again assaulted the ears of everyone present; the hatch opening and a quartet of figures worked their way in before sealing the door again. At their front was a woman, clad in what appeared to be a gray dress uniform, with silver hair framing her face and tied behind her head. Upon entry, she nodded to Callahan who, and along with the entourage that followed, made their way to the back of the lab.
Callahan gestured for the IRG personnel to follow the group as they made their way into a briefing room with a single large table in the center; it's surface printed with a hexagonal pattern that began to light up and hum as the embedded projector activated. He stood beside Jennifer, whispering to her while the staff that entered the room filed in, some holding datapads and listening intently - others merely standing guard by the door with hands on the holsters at their hips.
" That, is High Inquisitor Espinosa. " He said, pointing to the silver-haired figure scribbling a signature into a datapad at the front of the room and talking briefly with one of the others who came in with her, likely an aide. Finally, she turned to address Jennifer directly.
"Mrs. Byrne, welcome to Maltese space and Ibiza proper. I would offer you the full tour and maybe a quick run by the giftshop but sadly I'm on a schedule today. So, since we're short on time, lets begin shall we? As you can imagine, everything said here is to remain confidential in absolutely every way possible. Nothing I'm about to say or show you is to go beyond this room except to your fellows aboard the Ingenuus. Failure to keep this confidential would be an... unfortunate choice, to put it frankly.
Now, with that unpleasantness out of the way lets get started! Today's topic of discussion: the Primrose-Design Heavy Artillery Charged Gamma-Ray Burst Lance Cannon - or for the sake of everyone's vocal cords: 'Project Lightspear' "
Before anyone could get a word in, the projector whirred to life and began displaying a number of icons at the front of the table before the Inquisitor who casually flipped through a number of them as she spoke. " Conceived by some of Malta's greatest minds of their time, and altered and made reality by the weapon-crafting genius at the back of the room--" she proclaimed, gesturing to Callahan -- " Lightspear is a phased Gamma-Ray Singularity generator and accelerator setup that relies on the principals of the miniaturized black-hole reactor systems put into practice with Malta's own RM-2A Storta, and one planned to be implemented the rest of Malta's capital designs in the coming years. All of the fun stuff involving the weapon itself will come later- for now we'll stick to basics. Now, Lightspear relies on the presence of two of these contained and miniaturized singularities within the same frame and interlinked in a shielded environment, however the first problem we began running into and the first one we'll address here; was a basic problem with our containment. "
She paused for a moment, flipping through a series of holograms before arriving at one depicting a cross-sectioned singularity core resembling the one the team saw on their way in.
" Containment of a quantum singularity requires an enormous amount of power, structural integrity and near constant maintenance of dedicated engineering staff in order to prevent the singularity from "flashing out" - which does exactly what you'd expect: the singularity bursting outward slightly before collapsing in on itself and blinking out of existence, leaving it's parent ship without a primary power source. This is obviously not something we want, so specifically trained techs are brought aboard every vessel that has one of these reactors installed with the sole purpose of maintaining cyclonic shielding levels. Said shielding is not too dissimilar from your average Graviton shield generators used in most Sirian ships; which more or less generates a spherical 'bubble' around said ship - or in our case - coating the interior of the containment unit. The shield itself is Layer 1 of containment. Layer 2 is the containment housing itself; essentially a titanium-osmium shell interlocked with another series of graviton emitters that hold the whole thing together and prevent it from imploding. The Layer 2 emitters also act as a pushing force to counteract the singularity's natural desire to want to drift towards other gravity wells by essentially drenching it an equilibrium of gravitons. With the same force applied in all directions, the singularity itself has nowhere to go except stay in the absolute center of the shell. "
She paused again, swiping one of the holograms above the table briefly to switch to a view of a series of rotating gyroscopic rings.
" Layer 3 is the tricky part. What you're seeing here a conceptualization of the rotating rings that hold the core in place. These use a third series of both graviton emitters and high-power magnets to suspend the core in a fixed location at the center of the ship. The rings all operate at different speeds of rotation and power of their emitters. A complex chain of interlinked computers monitor the gravitational field output by the rings and observe any signs of weakness in the fields the rings are projecting. Bear in mind, that even the slightest amount of irregularity in the field can send the core hurtling in one direction so a constant of force needs to be in place and maintained to keep the whole core operating.
Layer 3 is also where power transfer comes into play. Matter, in this case an inert gas are injected into the central chamber of the core to be subjected to the intense effects of spaghettification inherent in exposure to intense gravitic forces. Once subjected they form a miniature accretion disk around the singularity and are excited and irradiated heavily until they are eventually jetted out at the north and south poles of the singularity. They are then recollected by a series of Bussard ramscoops aligned with the poles of the singularity that then re-cycle what survived of the gas, and absorbing the energy imparted by the singularity. This charge is then run along the exterior hull of the shell where it arcs in a wireless power transfer to the inner-most grav-ring. It continues like this until it reaches the outer-ring, which physically connects to the hull whereupon it can be harvested for use around the rest of the ship. "
Another pause, Espinosa placed down the datapad and recollected herself for a moment, nodding to Callahan and stepping aside. The man took her place at the front of the table flicking through some of the controls while simultaneously removing his coat-jacket and beginning.
" That was more or less the functioning capacity of all of our singularity cores. Some parts were omitted and others altered slightly not only for confidentiality, but also for your own safety, Mrs Byrne. Trust me when I say: the less you know about how one of these cores are made to begin with, the better. We'll get to the crux of the problem here in a moment but before we go on, do you have any questions?
[ sci·am·ach ]
/sīˈamək/
A simple, angry man casually working his way through life on a personal quest to acquire copious amounts of street cred.
Watching as the High Inquisitor walked in, she immediately noticed the air of authority she carried with her. Even Callahan's body movements showed signs of intense respect and fear it seemed.
Good day High Inquisitor. A pleasure to finally meet your acquaintance.
Listening to her speak, Jennifer was impressed by what they Cross were working with. Having seen the shielding and containment units of the Ingenuus power core, she knew that a project like this wouldn't prove entirely impossible. The tricky part she noticed was that there was no room for error. Not even the tiniest of fluctuations would be allowed, otherwise the result could be catastrophic. Which in itself made the project that much more thrilling to Jennifer.
I must say, impressive thusfar. Though you mentioned how the containment works. Where though lies the problem, considering you know what needs or rather has been done?
An aide came into the room and approached the High Inquisitor as Callahan finished speaking, whispering to her while the exchange continued before taking a deep breath and sternly making for the door without a word, aide in tow. Callahan paid them no mind, simply glancing at the datapad in his hand, flicking up a chat messenger and typing off a quick message before returning his attention forward.
" The first of the many herculean problems we now face comes into effect when the Cores are aligned and their containment intentionally breached. "
He paused, smirking at the absurdity of the words that came out of his own mouth.
" This is why we tried to break this presentation into two parts: because some of what you were just informed about contradicts what I'm about to say. Regardless of that little issue, the main weapon of this little project is, put simply: an intentional failure.
Black Holes are actually more common than you think: it's just that the ones that you never hear about die before they even have much of a chance to exist. Localized singularities emit massive amounts of gravitation waves in fractions of a nano-second, essentially they're trying to draw in matter to sustain themselves in the split-seconds before they blink out of existence. Given enough graviton exposure, these can exist for longer and longer. In the firing chamber of the prototype you passed on the way here is a specialized set of emitters solely focused on doing exactly that: breeding and nurturing localized black holes. Such a setup is not dissimilar to how our cores are generated to begin with- the difference here is location.
In the firing chamber, both of the primary power cores have their containment shells breached and some of the gravitic energy from both cores is siphoned off into the chamber. This, in conjunction with the lining of the chamber walls allow of temporary creation of a third present singularity aboard the vessel. This one is continually fed gravimetric energy, where it will grow and grow until a point at which it cannot be sustained, and the singularity collapses back in on itself. As we're dealing with literal tears in reality and the densest objects in existence in our universe here, such action spews out a massive amount of radiation, essentially forming a miniaturized gamma-ray burst.
Said burst is bottled within the shielded environment of the firing chamber, and is then shunted out using a set of accelerator rails affixed to either side of the chamber: essentially directing this destructive force of nature at whomever we deem un-worthy of continued existence. Rough estimates of the destructive power at play here greatly surpass that of the high-density plasma of a Cerberus weapon, and even the magnetically-sealed antimatter charges of a Mortar cannon. "
Callahan flicked up a basic image on the holographic display of the containment core and firing-chamber assembly. The polygonal shapes seemed to be enacting that which he just went over before stopping, a number of flashing red alerts popping up near the power cores.
" The major problem were having here, is that the braces we use to hold the cores assemblies in place aren't up to the task. They're spec'd to merely contain the cores, not to also bear the additional strain of the firing-process. Every simulation we've run has come up with the same problem, and everything else has so far been ruled out, save the braces. At present they're merely beryllium-aluminum Super-Alloy supports mounted to the superstructure and connecting to the core containment units. No other alloy we have on hand or alternate design to take the stress of the weapon elsewhere has worked, and to research it further and more extensively would draw away more resources from our main operations than we're willing to spare. "
His gaze turned back to Jennifer
" And thus, we thought of Ingenuus. An organization with the talent and ability to manufacture a vessel as... unique in form and function as your flagship must have a few tricks up their sleeve, and so we figured reaching out in your direction may lend a hand in our own endeavour.
So, in you and your people's opinion, how should we proceed?"
[ sci·am·ach ]
/sīˈamək/
A simple, angry man casually working his way through life on a personal quest to acquire copious amounts of street cred.
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