Zepplin Manufacturers
30-10-2006, 17:34
Far beneath glittering star scrapers and the shuffling feet of hundreds of millions, below sub transit ways and a warren of industrial sub levels that ate seemingly endlessly downwards, below waste pipes that could have accommodated 20th century ocean liners they sat in virtual communion.
The SI's had gone over it again and again, as for that matter had the human tacticians who while lacking there ability to model every situation could still to the SI's ire make leaps that very occasionally were more than a little useful. Having nearly half the fleet tied down was simply unacceptable and with the plans for more exo solar development quite unthinkable. Something had to be done to insure security on a world who's skies were racked with weapons fire even as they thought and debated.
The project would be clearly outside there internal ability to produce at the speed required. There were however more than a few others whom could be relied upon to obey the call of the almighty credit and after months of searching and speculating at last an answer had been found to a very important question indeed. Where?
Slantarax I was a godforsaken unimportant uninhabited little rock of a world orbiting in the godforsaken unimportant and uninhabited Slantarax system some 2300 light years from sol. Said system was almost utterly a void save for a few small rocky planets that lunged dangerously close around a somewhat glaring G type star. The system was unique in only two important ways, the density of micro meteors was remarkably low and the star had a reasonably sol like flare cycle.
Slantarax I was lifeless and always had been, well apart from what looked like the remains of a one hundred and sixteen million year old cargo container packed with what would (if it was ever excavated from its icy grave in a crater on Slantarax’s I dark side, the plant long ago having ceased rotation) be a substance remarkably like one hundred and sixteen million year old frozen soy milk. Far above the rather sad last existing remains of the great trading empire of the Gorvin Dominion several living breathing beings lay starring at the stars slowly approaching the planet on gentle ballistic arcs.
Her name was Carn Vi Norn and she was the exactly 2 meter tall produce of the cutting edge of SI based genome processing and her well meaning if occasionally some what befuddled mid level management parents. She therefore couldn’t be blamed for her perfect complexion or IQ that matched some older moly circuit based SI’s or the fact that her brain had an internal liquid cooling circuit that led down to a series of small ridges on her spine. Or the fact that all the DNA upgrades in the world had singularly failed to help her not feel awkward in gym class, brake her left ankle when she was nine or suffer a rather unpleasant post university brake up with her then finance. She was mostly and in most regards quite quite human. However her mind and body had been designed for thinking not action and it was precisely because of this that she threw herself into sports, driving herself from extreme cross Martian grav car racing to this event. Sun gliding. For once she required her mind and body to be stretched to the limit.
It was a rather odd space suit she was wearing. Originally it looked like it had started life as a long term exposure suit, the bulky back pack, helmet and armored hard suit sections around the torso and storage tanks clamped to the thighs attested to that as would have the unfolded wing like solar panels. However ordinarily said panels were not 40 meters wide, bright orange and with “HAPPY HAPPY FUN FOODS INC.” stenciled in lurid purple on them. Even in the most solitary of sports it pays to have sponsors. What would also be noted were the scraps of silver flash thermal shielding material drifting along with her. With the paper thin flash suit ripped off the suit lost a good 4 kilograms and given Car Vi’s fourth place position in the Poseidon Inc. Deep Space Challenge, her 23 kilogram laser heat pumps having been discarded hours ago, the thrust and cooling they provided no longer needed as she had left Slantarax's corona.
In front of her lay a simple disc shaped 25 kilometer wide solar sail, exactly identical to the standard sail requirements made by the 2201 standard deep space exposure emergency survival suit rules. This sail however had not relied simply on light pressure to work but the intense blasts of super heated plasma roaring off the stars surface. The suit itself could weigh no more than half a ton. Every now and again tiny adjustments to the discs reflective qualities and a set of 40 gram per hour thrust ion jets inset into the suits back pack major course adjustments could be made. It had survived a gravity slingshot around Slantarax at a height of no more than 300,000 kilometers. The suits had a few other kickers, no comp aids, no navigation comps aided the turn of the solar panels or the burn time of the ion jets or course changes or even the power and heat regulation. All of this had to be carefully balanced minute by minute hour by hour manually, with estimations on the suits quite limited supply and recycle capacities taken into account.
This was a game of survival, which in its more dangerous low solar transit stage could see the entire field wiped clear by a poorly timed solar flare. Given the odds and chances for some rather spectacular imagery the ratings tended to be on the high side.
The David Longbow had been a 3400 ton FTL equipped tug, it was now something else. It had been rather extremely converted for the purposes of supporting solar gliders, forward thermal shield generators tacked on over its once mighty grapnel generators, large habitat cylinders and extra FTL nodes roughly strung together on a bill board covered pillar of scaffolding all built around the tugs duo of massively overpowered thrusters and an 400 meter long FTL com spike under slung like some great bees stinger. It was also now furiously braking what had been standard protocol of the races and was signaling to Carn with something she thought she would never see. Disqualification. Disbelief, checking if it was an error first and foremost, but still the race control SI stubbornly displayed the wretched marker. Towed aboard by shuttle, her sail haphazardly stuffed into its deployment pod she fumed as those around her simply refused to speak to her, as her implants simply gave her empty responses and as the Longbows captain closed his door in her face and the race sponsors bounced her calls.
Four hours later aboard the reasons why where made entirely clear as the matte black teardrop of an INT-SEC pursuit frigate Pineapples are for People blipped into reality barely 20 meters offside and the grim almost brick like face of Major Frank T Mc Guigan over his stiff black bar coded uniform strode into her somewhat cramped personal space above her suit bay and dropped a thick wad of flimsies on her bunk that looked horribly familiar and a dull document bearing her signature. After not a little screaming, checking with her lawyers and to her shame throwing a bottle of the talcum powder she used to slip some of the more ..prominent parts of her anatomy into the suit at the Major Carn sullenly shoved her scant personal possessions not associated with sun gliding into a carry all and left.
Every citizen shareholder had to give national service, of course you had the option of simply opting not to serve it conventionally. This escape clause (3.4) for 99.9 percent of the populace meant never serving save for standard city civil block defense drills. For Carn it meant that for the moment she was now under military jurisdiction just as surely as if she had volunteered for the para shock division. It was she would later find out amongst those other people who had been ripped from there ordinary lives to serve the endevour make her and others known as code 4s.
The second familiar item was a document full of dense little calculations and speculations, of the actions of billions of tons of fusing plasma and how a very little energy applied at the right moment could without very much effort at all if one had the predictive capacity do a great deal more than a butterfly in a rain forest. It was how to sing stars. It wasn't new, the brute force applications of the more than a little expensive but most necessary thermostellar devices was somewhat old hat in the Luytens system. However this was a butterfly compared to a firestorm. It was a document that until now had been her rather unimportant thesis.
An hour later the Pineapples are for People vanished in a wash of transit drive for destinations that unless you really were very good at that sort of thing indeed where unknown to anybody but her captain, her SI, and the Major.
Data flashed through the link that had been established with the hypocrisies rather loosely defined military structure. It said “look at me” it more over said “money”. Its title amongst other things had the words “explosion justice” in them. Further afield certain messages and more importantly promissory notes neatly begin tapping on in boxes of firms and persons who within the territory had when the call gone out answered with proposals and designs of some detail.
Operational secrecy was one thing but on a project of this scale subtley was just not going to happen.
The SI's had gone over it again and again, as for that matter had the human tacticians who while lacking there ability to model every situation could still to the SI's ire make leaps that very occasionally were more than a little useful. Having nearly half the fleet tied down was simply unacceptable and with the plans for more exo solar development quite unthinkable. Something had to be done to insure security on a world who's skies were racked with weapons fire even as they thought and debated.
The project would be clearly outside there internal ability to produce at the speed required. There were however more than a few others whom could be relied upon to obey the call of the almighty credit and after months of searching and speculating at last an answer had been found to a very important question indeed. Where?
Slantarax I was a godforsaken unimportant uninhabited little rock of a world orbiting in the godforsaken unimportant and uninhabited Slantarax system some 2300 light years from sol. Said system was almost utterly a void save for a few small rocky planets that lunged dangerously close around a somewhat glaring G type star. The system was unique in only two important ways, the density of micro meteors was remarkably low and the star had a reasonably sol like flare cycle.
Slantarax I was lifeless and always had been, well apart from what looked like the remains of a one hundred and sixteen million year old cargo container packed with what would (if it was ever excavated from its icy grave in a crater on Slantarax’s I dark side, the plant long ago having ceased rotation) be a substance remarkably like one hundred and sixteen million year old frozen soy milk. Far above the rather sad last existing remains of the great trading empire of the Gorvin Dominion several living breathing beings lay starring at the stars slowly approaching the planet on gentle ballistic arcs.
Her name was Carn Vi Norn and she was the exactly 2 meter tall produce of the cutting edge of SI based genome processing and her well meaning if occasionally some what befuddled mid level management parents. She therefore couldn’t be blamed for her perfect complexion or IQ that matched some older moly circuit based SI’s or the fact that her brain had an internal liquid cooling circuit that led down to a series of small ridges on her spine. Or the fact that all the DNA upgrades in the world had singularly failed to help her not feel awkward in gym class, brake her left ankle when she was nine or suffer a rather unpleasant post university brake up with her then finance. She was mostly and in most regards quite quite human. However her mind and body had been designed for thinking not action and it was precisely because of this that she threw herself into sports, driving herself from extreme cross Martian grav car racing to this event. Sun gliding. For once she required her mind and body to be stretched to the limit.
It was a rather odd space suit she was wearing. Originally it looked like it had started life as a long term exposure suit, the bulky back pack, helmet and armored hard suit sections around the torso and storage tanks clamped to the thighs attested to that as would have the unfolded wing like solar panels. However ordinarily said panels were not 40 meters wide, bright orange and with “HAPPY HAPPY FUN FOODS INC.” stenciled in lurid purple on them. Even in the most solitary of sports it pays to have sponsors. What would also be noted were the scraps of silver flash thermal shielding material drifting along with her. With the paper thin flash suit ripped off the suit lost a good 4 kilograms and given Car Vi’s fourth place position in the Poseidon Inc. Deep Space Challenge, her 23 kilogram laser heat pumps having been discarded hours ago, the thrust and cooling they provided no longer needed as she had left Slantarax's corona.
In front of her lay a simple disc shaped 25 kilometer wide solar sail, exactly identical to the standard sail requirements made by the 2201 standard deep space exposure emergency survival suit rules. This sail however had not relied simply on light pressure to work but the intense blasts of super heated plasma roaring off the stars surface. The suit itself could weigh no more than half a ton. Every now and again tiny adjustments to the discs reflective qualities and a set of 40 gram per hour thrust ion jets inset into the suits back pack major course adjustments could be made. It had survived a gravity slingshot around Slantarax at a height of no more than 300,000 kilometers. The suits had a few other kickers, no comp aids, no navigation comps aided the turn of the solar panels or the burn time of the ion jets or course changes or even the power and heat regulation. All of this had to be carefully balanced minute by minute hour by hour manually, with estimations on the suits quite limited supply and recycle capacities taken into account.
This was a game of survival, which in its more dangerous low solar transit stage could see the entire field wiped clear by a poorly timed solar flare. Given the odds and chances for some rather spectacular imagery the ratings tended to be on the high side.
The David Longbow had been a 3400 ton FTL equipped tug, it was now something else. It had been rather extremely converted for the purposes of supporting solar gliders, forward thermal shield generators tacked on over its once mighty grapnel generators, large habitat cylinders and extra FTL nodes roughly strung together on a bill board covered pillar of scaffolding all built around the tugs duo of massively overpowered thrusters and an 400 meter long FTL com spike under slung like some great bees stinger. It was also now furiously braking what had been standard protocol of the races and was signaling to Carn with something she thought she would never see. Disqualification. Disbelief, checking if it was an error first and foremost, but still the race control SI stubbornly displayed the wretched marker. Towed aboard by shuttle, her sail haphazardly stuffed into its deployment pod she fumed as those around her simply refused to speak to her, as her implants simply gave her empty responses and as the Longbows captain closed his door in her face and the race sponsors bounced her calls.
Four hours later aboard the reasons why where made entirely clear as the matte black teardrop of an INT-SEC pursuit frigate Pineapples are for People blipped into reality barely 20 meters offside and the grim almost brick like face of Major Frank T Mc Guigan over his stiff black bar coded uniform strode into her somewhat cramped personal space above her suit bay and dropped a thick wad of flimsies on her bunk that looked horribly familiar and a dull document bearing her signature. After not a little screaming, checking with her lawyers and to her shame throwing a bottle of the talcum powder she used to slip some of the more ..prominent parts of her anatomy into the suit at the Major Carn sullenly shoved her scant personal possessions not associated with sun gliding into a carry all and left.
Every citizen shareholder had to give national service, of course you had the option of simply opting not to serve it conventionally. This escape clause (3.4) for 99.9 percent of the populace meant never serving save for standard city civil block defense drills. For Carn it meant that for the moment she was now under military jurisdiction just as surely as if she had volunteered for the para shock division. It was she would later find out amongst those other people who had been ripped from there ordinary lives to serve the endevour make her and others known as code 4s.
The second familiar item was a document full of dense little calculations and speculations, of the actions of billions of tons of fusing plasma and how a very little energy applied at the right moment could without very much effort at all if one had the predictive capacity do a great deal more than a butterfly in a rain forest. It was how to sing stars. It wasn't new, the brute force applications of the more than a little expensive but most necessary thermostellar devices was somewhat old hat in the Luytens system. However this was a butterfly compared to a firestorm. It was a document that until now had been her rather unimportant thesis.
An hour later the Pineapples are for People vanished in a wash of transit drive for destinations that unless you really were very good at that sort of thing indeed where unknown to anybody but her captain, her SI, and the Major.
Data flashed through the link that had been established with the hypocrisies rather loosely defined military structure. It said “look at me” it more over said “money”. Its title amongst other things had the words “explosion justice” in them. Further afield certain messages and more importantly promissory notes neatly begin tapping on in boxes of firms and persons who within the territory had when the call gone out answered with proposals and designs of some detail.
Operational secrecy was one thing but on a project of this scale subtley was just not going to happen.