Time for Tinkering

Posted on Mon Mar 1st, 2021 @ 5:54pm by Lieutenant Mila Lynn & Lieutenant Rehana t'Shaan

1,116 words; about a 6 minute read

Mission: Chapter III: The Hunt is On
Location: Science Lab, I.R.W. Ourainavassa
Timeline: 238702.04

A Mission Post by Sublieutenant Mila Lynn & Lieutenant Rehana t'Shaan
Mission: Chapter III: The Hunt is On
Location: Science Lab, I.R.W. Ourainavassa
Timeline: 238702.04

Mila looked at the pile of parts in front of her, and cursed. She had finally gotten Raven to let her have a look at the firing mechanism of the gun part of the Blazefire Sabre and try to reverse-engineer it, but so far, she had only managed to figure out how to take it apart and put it back together again. The original weapon was leaning against the side of the table she was sitting at. Having personal weaponry that was able to fire physical projectiles could well give the crew a vital edge, especially considering the beginning spread of personal shielding among more resourceful pirates. Sure, even these shields could usually only absorb a single blast of a high-powered energy weapon, but that second shot needed to take them out would give an opponent vital opportunity for a counter-attack.

Increasingly frustrated, Mila looked at the parts again. There was a small block of metal, from which a fabricator would slice off tiny shards to use as projectiles, that much was clear. She had even been able to reconstruct that component of the weapon fairly easily, once she realised how it went together. The fact that the metal used in the original weapon seemed to be laced with latinum, or a similar unreplicable material, had only made her task more difficult.

Right,, she signed to herself with one hand. We have the projectile. But how is that then propelled through the barrel and accelerated to almost twice the speed of sound? She looked at the other part she had painstakingly copied from the original. There was a trick she was missing here. Maybe she just needed a second pair of eyes. An engineer.

With a sigh, Mila touched the side of her ear to turn on her hearing, before tapping the button for the intercom. "Lieutenant Rehana, could you come up to the science lab if you have a moment? I have a conundrum here and would like an engineer's opinion."

Rehana popped in eagerly. "So, Mila, what shiny, shiny new toy do you have for me to play with?"

Mila groaned. "I wish it was a toy. I can't figure out how to make this work." She pointed at the assortment of parts on her desk. "I got the projectile fabrication bit figured out, but how in the galaxy it actually fires them is beyond me. See, this is what it should be doing."

She picked up the weapon leaning against her table, aimed at an empty specimen jar, and pulled the trigger. The gun made a fairly silent noise, and the jar exploded into shards.

"See, it slices off a shard of metal from a block inside of it, and propels it to about Mach two." She put the gun back down, and picked up the completed fabricator unit. "The slicing is done in here, and I've got that working." She pressed a button on the bottom of the little box, and a shard of metal fell into her hand. "See? But then what?"

Rehana frowns. “Well…I might be able to find an answer. But there’s a decent chance I’d have to take this thing apart to do it.”

Mila shrugged. “Fine by me. Careful, the folding blade part is ridiculously sharp. I’ve seen it in action.”

Rehana cracked her knuckles and got down to work. She carefully detached the blade and laid it aside, then opened the barrel and ran a tricorder over it. “Well, I’m reading some electromagnets and a power source. Might indicate that this thing uses a maglev system to accelerate the projectile. I’d have to run the numbers to make sure there’s nothing else involved, though.”

“Yeah, that’s about as much as I’ve figured out. I haven’t found a power source yet, though.” She looked at the disassembled weapon. “It seems the fabricator is run by a small power cell, but that wouldn’t provide enough power for a railgun system, would it?”

Rehana shrugged. “Remember how confused the Federation was when they realized we use singularity cores? I think I remember one report saying that one physicist spluttered something about how “THAT’S NOT HOW GRAVITY WORKS!” We could be dealing with some weird new power source that breaks physics just as badly.”

Mila sighed. “Yeah, which would be making reverse-engineering this thing and building a copy of it nearly impossible. Raven told me that the people who built this thing are extremely protective of their tech. They don’t even allow outsiders to land on their planet. Any interstellar trade is done through a space station. And they don’t even do much of that. Crazy, right?”

Rehana frowned again. “What’s that human saying? More than one way to skin a frog? We don’t have to replicate that stuff. We just have to figure out how fast a maglev barrel and conventional firing system hooked up to that power cell could accelerate a projectile, then come up with something to bridge the gap.”

“Well, we know the exit speed of the projectile. 690 metres per second. And since the projectile itself is tiny, only, what, a millimetre thick and three long, it shouldn’t need that much kinetic energy to be put into it.” She looked up and Rehana and smiled. “I knew getting a second brain onto this would make it a simple job!”

Rehana laughed. “Don’t break out the alcohol just yet, Mila. We still have to build the darn thing!”

“Well, yes, but at least we are getting closer to figuring this out. Ash is going to love it when we give her a new toy to go pew pew with.” She brought up some schematics on her holographic console. “I modified a few rifle and pistol designs, the mechanism should be fairly easy to fit into them. We should do what the original inventors did and use non-replicable materials. Don’t want any unauthorised copies around, do we!” Mila’s voice was bubbling with excitement.

Rehana gasped in mock offense. “Perish the thought!”

Mila handed Rehana the parts. “Here you go. Let me know once you have something put together, and I’ll make a casing for it. I need to go and give the boss her weapon back, she was reluctant to give it to me in the first place. It must mean quite a lot to her.”

Rehana grinned. “Well, then, we’ll just have to make extra sure to get it right.”

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