Fool's Gold (The Wandering Engineer) (59 page)

"We
could work out a computer control, maybe a whisker laser?" Harris asked.
Irons shook his head.

"For
it to work we'd have to be on a different vector, That would put us here."
He picked up a tablet and quickly sketched out the plan. The table's
holographic projector changed to show a plot.

"We'd
have to be either here or here, and if we were too close we could be caught by
the spray or seen by the enemy. If we're behind or on opposition vectors, above
or below, then we'd have problems with possible signal interception."

"Also
trying to coordinate that scheme over several light minutes invites defeat in
detail lieutenant," Firefly interjected. Harris looked deflated.

"Still,
it is something to keep in mind. We might figure something out. Try gaming it
out and give me a report in the morning." He looked over to Harris who
nodded.

“I
wonder if you could do a water mine or missile?” Janice asked sounding amused.
Harris and Dan looked at her. “You know, toss it out in front of the enemy and
blow it up on command. Spray the contents toward their flight path.” She used
her hands to pantomime what she was trying to explain.

“It'd
have to be a lot of water. Otherwise all it would do would be make for a pretty
light show, maybe blind some of their passives for a couple minutes,” Dan said
dismissing the idea.

“Lidar
attenuates in water right? The shift is caused cause the water acts as a prism.
Could we use that? Or maybe add a chemical dye to help with that?” Harris
asked, rubbing his chin.

"Another
late night session," Dan muttered looking over to Harris then he grinned.
"You know, I really shouldn't complain, as tired as I am, I'm having the
time of my life." He grinned.

Harris
nodded looking up. "I wouldn't swap with anyone in the universe," he
grinned as well then chuckled.

"Me
neither" Janice said as she looked thoughtful. “Despite the impending
potential of doom hanging over our collective heads.”

“You
would bring that up.”

"How
is Doc doing?" Irons asked.

"See
for yourself," Sprite replied pulling up the feed. "She's got an
assembly line going with doctor Standish and her staff." He studied the
image. The sickbay was arranged with a series of beds. At each station a doctor
or RN and or robot with assistant nursing staff were there working on a
different body part or implant. He smiled as he saw a pair of elves working on
the eye implants.

"She's
good. She recognized that they are better at micro manipulation and she
delegated it," Sprite reported. He nodded. An elf was working on audio
implants while a robot prepped a tray of materials.

"We've
got enough for the remaining crew of each ship and the salvage teams. She's
actually running the salvage teams through now since they will have to be back
on their feet tomorrow," Sprite reported. He nodded. “The crew that
volunteer for naval duty are getting the full treatment. Otherwise they get the
basics. Clean them up, flush out the junk, add a civilian grade implant and
make any repairs needed.”

"Right.
They can use Forth's method, lock the implants down and start training with
them later. After the swelling goes down." He nodded and signed off.

"The
lounge is a hit," Sprite informed him as he showered the next morning.

"It
is?" he asked. “It took them long enough to discover it.”

“What
can I say?” Sprite asked amused. “You fleshies take way too much time
processing data.”

“Cute.”

"I've
even visited it. Nice," Sprite said. After a moment of quiet as he
scrubbed she gave in. "All right, I know you’re not into the whole
socializing thing, but it is not bad. The basic lounge is set up as a clubhouse
bar," Sprite started to send him still images but he waved them off.

"That's
fine. Let them get used to it. Any problems?" he asked.

"A
few, believe it or not, we had a virtual fight. I was rather amused by
it," Sprite reported. "Shelby and the Bosun are on it," she
admitted.

“Okay.”

"Right.
I still think it's funny that you organics drink a holographic drink, or eat a
virtual meal and think it is real," Sprite teased.

He
chuckled. "Just goes to show, tech isn't all it's cracked up to be.
Setting that up was a neat thing, but probably one of the more stupid things to
do," he laughed as he dried off.

"How
so?" Sprite asked curious.

"Well,
history shows that it made some people dependent on it. You go into a VR
situation and it alters your brain chemistry, endorphins, etc. A direct feed on
the nervous system is just asking for trouble with a dependent personality.
Throw in problems in the real world and the fantasy world becomes more and more
appealing," he sighed.

"Understood.
Something else for use to watch out for. You’re not the most chipper guy in the
morning you know that?" Sprite said. He smirked.

"That's
what you get for rubbing my nose into the idea of a VR pub before I've had my
coffee," he shot back.

"I'll
try to remember that," Sprite said dryly. He smiled.

"Admiral do you have anything that could help?" Logan
asked. Maya was docked and taking on supplies. Logan had stopped by for a face
to face report. He'd been focused on training the salvage team and coordinating
the logistic efforts so he hadn't had the time for a face to face until now.

"What do you mean?" Irons asked.

"Well, you did point out that you were on the weapons
development board and did the specs for the Resolution class... did you work on
anything else we might be able to use?" Logan asked.

Shelby sat there giving each man a curious look. Her sculpted
eyebrow rose in amused query as she propped her head up with her hand, index
finger pointing up to the eyebrow. "Well Admiral?" she asked.

"Careful," Defender and Sprite both said. He grimaced.

"No miracle weapons. We don't have the time or tech to do
anything useful," he shrugged. "The Resolution class is one of the
simpler things I oversaw, the whole modular design initiative."

He shrugged at Shelby's look. "Back in the early days, we
were building each ship class so it could only use parts built specifically for
it. The MDI initiative was set to change that. To make it so we can use parts
and weapons for any ship." He waved her concerned look away.

"Oh general stuff really, gravity plates, life support and
many other systems are standard across the board. Having a different special
design for each ship class was silly and wasteful," he said distastefully
then shrugged.

"Some things are class specific, but we focused on general
purpose things and designed them to be plug and play adaptable. That way you
could plug them in and they would adapt to the system they were in from their
firmware, cutting down on the teething stages of building a ship and testing
it," he smiled.

"It also let us play with logistics a bit, allowing us to
siphon off parts for various projects if one was swamped, or pull parts from a
scrapped ship for another. The theory was sound, getting it through the
politicians and lobby firms was a nightmare." He shook his head.

"I remember when they tried to push matter transmission. Do
you remember that Admiral?" Logan asked amused. The Admiral gave him a
mock glower.

"You would bring that up," he chuckled then gave Shelby
and his audience a sheepish smile.

"One of our more prominent board members, an Admiral on his
last tour with a cozy job lined up at a weapons research firm tried to force
the board to accept matter transmitters." He shook his head as some of the
class oohed and ahed. "It sounds great in theory, transmit a person across
a system, or a bomb right onto a planet right?" He looked around then
shook his head. "Okay for you to understand the problems I'm going to have
to lecture a bit," he smiled

"There are three known ways to transmit data through
subspace. The first is passive, receiving force emissions through detectors. By
using antigrav or a wedge emitter you light off a signal that can be detected
in a star system. With me so far?" Several nodded. "Right, well if
you have an artificial field then you can manipulate it to transmit data in
pulses. On, off on, off." Sprite pulled up a holo and projected the on,
off pulses. "It's good in theory, but if the transmitter is in a cluttered
system with objects between the transmitter and receiver then forget it. The
signals wash out. I'm afraid force detection is a bit overrated." He shook
his head.

"Now the next is tachyons. Fusion and for that matter fission
and antimatter plants emit tachyons and neutrinos. Also when an object travels
with its wedge and shields up, it bounces tachyons off it and into the
void."

"The problem with tachyons is that they degrade, and they are
unreliable. They are difficult to form into a stream of data, and artificial
tachyons degrade quickly when loaded with data." He gave the holo
demonstration a look then sighed.

"The last is the ansible. I believe some of you have heard of
that right?" He looked around.

"Why did they put it on the planet?" Shelby asked. He
grimaced.  "If the enemy wanted only to destroy it, perhaps the planet
would have been spared..." He shook his head and she stopped.

"Don't believe it. The Xenos would have flattened the planet
or shattered it either way. The ansible just made it simpler." He scowled
bleakly for a moment then shook it off with difficulty. "An ansible uses
split muon particles. One particle on either side." He held his hands
apart. The holo behind him projected the split, then separated.

"Now a force change on one's spin direction instantly effects
the other no matter how far apart they are." One particle vibrated and the
other instantly did as well. "Now the tricky part was getting them from
one place to another," he sighed

"We would leave one half of a pair on one side, then
transport the other half to another location. The problem is you had to make
sure it couldn't touch anything or it would rapidly degrade or self destruct...
or bond to the other material."

He motioned to the holo as each scenario played out... "So
getting it to another world was imperative. A planet has only three motions to
worry about, orbital, spin, and quakes. We can compensate for all of them. In a
moving craft it's, well, let's just say it's a lot harder." He shrugged as
several chuckled.

"Now back to the matter transmission idea, see they had this
idea to set up a receiver on planets, or use the existing ansible linkage then
transmit people or goods from one point to another." He shook his head.
"There are several problems with this, technical, moral, and legal. Let’s
look at the basic theory." He turned to the projector.

"The idea was to copy a person, then send them to another
receiver where a replicator would then take the data and make a new body. Now
in making the copy you run into three problems. Two are the Heisenberg
uncertainty principle. In layman's terms it states you can know an atoms
precise location, or it's relevant data, not both." A few looked confused
at that then shrugged it off. “Now that alone makes it a show stopper." He
explained. "The other problem is in making the copy you destroy the
original." Several people sucked in their breaths. He nodded.

"Right, so you destroy your body then send its data to
another replicator that makes you a new one right? Well that opens up a legal
cans of worms. First you're now a clone. So that violates the Federation
Constitution on several points." He shook his head. "Then there is
the whole degradation problem of clones, they copy the original at that
specific time period. It's biological clock is set to that time and it degrades
at the same rate as the original or faster. If there is an error in copying...
then it gets nasty fast." He shook his head again.

"One of the ideas was to take tissue samples from a person
and use that to clone a body, and just transmit their neural pathways from one
body to another." He tapped his head. “Another would be to transmit the
mind but put it into a android body.” He shook his head.

"Fortunately congress got wind of this and they banned the
technology," he smiled. "The Admiral tried to get a military use
exemption, using the tech to transmit bombs or nanites." He shook his
head. Shelby laughed suddenly.

"I see where this is going. If you have to set up a receiver
why not just set the bomb up in the first place right?" she asked.

He nodded. "Got it. It's silly to spend nearly a billion fed
credits to set up a receiver just to send a bomb." He shook his head.
"The silly idea was the last nail in the Admiral's coffin. He was forcibly
retired after he tried to force the issue," he shook his head.

"Now we digressed a bit but did get a glimpse at FTL tech. We
had a couple of other methods like hyper relay com buoys and dispatch boats,
but I won’t get into them now, they aren't relevant. Let's take another looks
at Firefly's communications net and see if we can cover any questions you may
have..."