Trampship Wars 2 Page 7
The English Captain waited about ten seconds then turned around holding out his hand out to grab the enlistment papers a lieutenant had bro ught him .
Through tight lips. “Fine Captain... Lieutenant Commander Collins is our permanent Bomber squadron Commanding Officer.”
Turning back around to face Captain Cook. “I will start running your pilots through the cockpits and see if I can find 20 that will make good torpedo bomber pilots. Make sure everyone that wants to, gets down here this afternoon for us to run through and cockpit sims test s .”
Captain Cook narrowed her eyes. “You already had my best pilots in one and they failed. What makes you think you will find anyone else?”
“I stacked the deck against you Captain. The best transport pilots make lousy fighter and bomber pilots and even then the auto pilot was left off.” Seeing Captain Cook start to boil. “Calm down Captain. We also left Commander Collins auto pilot off to make it fair. Which was why he was a little jerky at the beginning as he got the feel for the ship. Not to mention that half of the maneuvers he did , could not have been done with the auto pilot on. Fact is , few pilots could have done what he did with less than a couple thousand hours in the seat and thousands of hours of specialized training.” Smiling at the Tramp Captain. “We are looking for pilots with at least a thousand hours of fighter Sim game time, something few of your existing pilots will likely have. I can have anyone that qualifies through a boot camp type course in a few 26 hour days. Making them at least good enough to take on a few pirates as they continue to train using the built in Simms in each bomber, spending 4 to 8 hours a day in half hour lessons in the cockpits seats to start with as they become more proficient with the basics for the first few weeks .”
Captain Cook finally climbed up to the fighter ’ s cockpit peeking over the edge at a Mark that could not believe his eyes as his mouth dropped open.
Chapter 4; Recognizing junk when yo u see it
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Mark walked into the Engine room through the outside emergency hatch from the truck deck and immediately got strange looks from a few of the crew standing around what looked like a completed engine that simple refused to run. Mark could see the Chief through the windows in the Main Propulsion Control room. The Chief ’s voice coming out the partially open hatch was chewing out the number 4 engine room’s commander for letting th at damn kid Collins fuck up his engine. The Chief was not yelling or even talking that loud but thanks to Mickey , Mark could hear every word.
Going over to Engine #4’s control console, he sat down and started tapping icons as one of the ratings ran out .
A minute l ater t T he Chief came in from the main central control room with 3 of the engine room Commanders behind him.
“What the hell are you doing Lieutenant JG Collins? We are having enough problems around here as it is without you fucking things up even more than they are.”
Mark finished what he was typing and started studying the screen. “Sorry Chief. As of 60 minutes ago, I am a full Lt. Commander again and not temporary. You can’t shit on me anymore. I have orders from the Capta in to fix your fuck ups or I would never have stepped into engineering again. Now, just what the fuck did you guys do to this engine? All you had to do was put the damn thing together following my recorded orders and you couldn’t even do that right.” Turning to a rating standing a few feet away. “Go get 2nd Lieutenant Johnson. I want him here in 30 seconds. Go!”
The Chief watched the rating run out of the engine room. His face not believing the rating followed Mark’s orders. Finely turning to Mark. “I asked you a question Commander. What are you doing here? I kicked you out of the engine spaces yesterday.”
“Well, I know junk crap when I see it and this engine is full of it now thanks to you. Captain Cook ordered me to come down here and fix your fuck ups and get this engine running. Now if you can’t shut your fucking mouth and learn something while I have a few minutes, then you can just get the fuck out. Or do I have to call the Ships Patrol back down here to clean house again using Captain Cook’s Authority .” Staring at the Chief trying not to smile at his new red beedee looking eye implants that Mark was starting to be glad he did not get his eyes cut out for instead of Micke y y with his new new super smart AI glasses.
“Just what the hell do you think you can teach me about anything Commander?”
“Well, since I am the one that helped design the damn upgrade, I would think I could teach you a lot about what makes this engine run including why it runs which it is obvious you don’t have a fucking clue about Chief. ”
“You didn’t design anything b oy. You were just a fucking part time civilian grease monkey two weeks ago.”
Mark shook his head as he rolled his eyes. “ For a starter, you fucked up the fuel injector nozzle alignments to the fusion cores, not to mention the Combiner coils adjustment angles. Thank Godstar that most of everything else looks ok. But we won’t know that until we can light the fusion cores off and test the engine sending some plasma down its throat. Thank god most of the machining you had done after I left did not change from my specs except for the damn fusion core injectors, according to the records. Which is surprising since you obviously can’t get it through your head that this is new technology that is far above our old pieces of junk using new theories of fusion initiation and progression . The screwy fuel injector nozzle alignments is only part of it.”
“What do you mean fuel injector nozzle alignments? You did not even have their streams hitting each other. How the fuck are they supposed to ignite let alone fuse.”
“Well, you lined them up to hit perfectly. How did that work for you since the new cone shaped fusion Chambers will not even light now? Did you by chance notice that the fusion chambers are not circular like the old round ball chambers? The cones can’t even come close to the pressures you need for direct collision fusion as well . They rely on grav netic vortex magnetics to compress the fuel stream to pressures several times that possible in any ball core unless you make the walls 30 feet thick like they had to do thousands of years ago when they first discovered fusion . Thank Godstar you didn’t manage to initiate fusion using your fool attempts as the damn core would have blown half the ship up. God help us if you fucked with number 3 engine’s fusion nozzles while I was busy elsewhere. Tell me you haven’t touched them yet? Please? Shaking his head as he looked up at the beet red eyes staring at him. “The new system does not depend on fuel streams colliding and me ga pounds of confined pressure in the core . It is too damn wasteful of energy even though that was the only way they knew how to do it for the last thousand years.”
“That has been done that way for a thousand years because that is the only way it can be done moron.” The Commander for Engine room number One said sarcastically.
Shaking his head , Mark as he took a disgusted breath. “Damn you. Ramming the fuel streams in as fast as possible with enough mass to insure that some gets through the fusion plasma ball to collide with hit the opposite streams to provide half the energy to compress a small portion of the many fuel streams that collide into a super-hot core with the help of the old magnetic coils to create enough pressure to fuse some of the fuel into exploding is about as wasteful of fuel as you can get. ”
Shaking his head. “ The other problem is that the fuel only goes through one or two fusion isotope stages at most while much of it is wasted as it is blown back out of the plasma ball through a small hole in the bottom and down the throat of the engine. The fuel simply is not inside the core long enough to fuse into more than one or two isotope elements. Isotope element that are not only light but magnetically weak. ”
Looking at the Chief and the three Engine room Commanders getting the , bored so what look he expected. Smiling Mark continued , at least they were with him this far . “The new tech , more powerful gravity coils su pplied with the original upgrade kit for the ir new light weight fusion co re , had their frequencies slightly altered using coils we mad e from gr
avity wire we had in stock t o work in the Magnetic spectrum as well . The new fuel injector s aimed at the proper angle start the fuel spinning up around the fusion cone using the altered spectrum grav- magnetic coils provide the pressure that actually push es the injected fuel at an angle to twirl down th e mag cone for the coils only a fraction of an inch away from the fuel to inc rease the speed of the to spin ning fuel as it the streams faster and faster around the cone as the cone diameter gets smaller and smaller towards the cone point . Increasing the speed of the fuel ing the atoms up faster than any nozzle ever could as it spins faster and faster around the decreasing size of the cone into smaller and smaller atom thick sheets that grow smaller and smaller until individual atoms are entering the micro central fusion end of the cylindrical core at the center . The fuel atoms are now spi nning at million s of revelations a second c reating an unimaginable magnetic force . The light hydrogen atoms reach the needlepoint sized core were the first and hardest to achieve fusion detonation is created without most of half the fuel getting thrown back out before it fuses into the first isotope.”
Mark hesitated for a second hoping that this , the tenth yet another repeat of the new fusion process would finally sink in. But only seeing blank stares in most of their eyes again, he continued anyway. “Then the newly created heav ier isotope particles now spinning slightly slower are blown out of the primary needlepoint core to , move up the center micro sized tube core as the fast spinning fuel that did not fuse into the first stage isotope returns to the outer shell to be thrown back at the needle point fusion zone as new new fuel continues entering behind it spinning into the initial fusing point. The new isotope with the help of the Grave coils is pushed down the center of the cone , maintain ing enough pressure and energy and time to create the second isotope in another explosion which in turn feeds the next isotope creating stage down the center with the time it needs to expl ode osion and then the next and the next as it moves up the center back out of the cone toward the large end . With each stage creating larger and large atoms that are spinning slower and slower but have a greater and greater magnetic force than the isotope b efore them that the super grav- magnetic coils can easily identify and control through each of the stages. ”
Mark again let that sink into the blank faces. Though the Chief’s red faced stare was obviously thinking what bullshit. Taking a deep breath Mark continued. “T Until t he incredibly heavy slowly spin ning element isotope laden plasma , after dozens of isotope creating step up stages, flies out the big end through micro sized hole and down the engine. The multiple fusion step ped heavy isotopes have a magnetic force per unit many times that of the first and second stage lighter isotope s engine s before this are forced to use . These super heavy isotopes u se the energy of the acceleration coils lined down an engine a hundred times more efficiently than the original engine’s single stage magnetically weak isotopes . It is the super heavy isotopes that the cone shaped fusion core has time to create that give this engine its incredible power. ”
This whole time any unfused fuel or un fused isotopes from each fusion explosion is spun out of the core while the gravcoils tuned to each element for the maximum influence to recirculate the isotope element back through that stages core time after time until it fusions to the next stage , keep ing each isotope element in the narrow cone of the core as they make their way to the next fusion zone. The lighter unfused f uel and isotopes that the coils are not tuned to, spin back out into the spinning cyclone and are fed back into the lower zones as they hit that sections tuned coils to get fed back into the core for another try at fusing into whatever stage it needs . ”
Mark shook his head hoping that something was sinking in but most of their faces did not seem to be comprehending much. Looking up at the overhead Mark tr ied again. “By controlling the power and frequency of the coils, the isotopes spinning out of each fusion zone, get recycled back into the core tube again and again until they go through the fusion explosion to become the next element. We can force most of the fuel to repeatedly isotope up until it is so heavy, the grav -magnitic ity coils can no longer recycle them with the last stage actually creating iron that is a hell of a lot easier for the coils to power down the engine than the light benign helium plasma the engines normally have to accelerate.”
Smiling up at the Chief. “Actually in time , we may even be able to get the fusion process to create nuclear rare earth elements that will be thousands of time s more powerful to accelerate than iron. But then iron atoms are thousands of time more powerful and easier to accelerate already. Mickey and I are already working on the programming. ” Frowning. “That is when we have the time. But it looks like it will take another advance in coils again or a much larger engine. Something about 4 times the size we are using now. ” Mark thought about it a second. “Or we could just maybe reduce the number of cores to only two but then I can’t see how to lengthen the engine long enough to take advantage of the upgrade unless we extend the engine out our ass a couple hundred feet.”
The Chief stood fuming.
Looking at the faces only half comprehending what he was saying Mark took a breath. “ Well to make it a little simpler. With the new Gravity coils and the core formed into a long hair fine d tube with the cone around it recycling fuel and elements , we can now compress the fuel over a wider area into a mass under enough velocity and pressure and l ong enough to go through a hundred s tages into ever heavier isotope created elements . Getting as much energy out of every atom that is possible before allowing the plasma to escape under enough pressure with enough magnetic and gravitic mass to put a car from the damn exhaust shoot into orbit while digging a new trench into the bottom of the old plasticrete trench. But you can’t do that with the damn nozzles so damn far out of alignment using your old fucking fuel stream collision calculations . ”
Johnson smiled from off to one side the back of the group having come in early enough to catch most of Marks lecture though he had heard it before as had the others. But this time it was starting to make more sense to him . Stepping up next to Mark. “Reporting as ordered Commander.”
Mark turned around and smiled. “Oh, I see they have promoted you to Lt. Commander of engine room 3. Good going. Do you think you could give me a hand repairing this engine?”
Without looking at the Chief, Lt. Commander Johnson smiled. “Sure Commander, what do you need?”
“We need the fusion core crews to take out the damn injectors and supply lines, the old holes welded over and then the machine shop crew can drill some precise holes where they are supposed to be and at the right angle in the fusion core shell while they are still on the engine. Hopefully. I really don’t want to have to take it all out and waste another day while they make a new fusion core. We can start disassembling the central case and the Combining coil mounts as well. I will have a list of the rest of the crap for you as soon as I finish my inspection.”
“Been expecting you Commander. But we don’t need to weld up the old fusion core. I have had a new fusion core cone s made during the night with the proper nozzle s angles. I have everybody and the needed equipment already lined up and ready to go. Give me 15 and I will have my crew with the e xtra crews on the sight and working on the engine. The injectors properly installed in the new first fusion core s and on the engine in a couple hours after that Commander.” Then disappeared while whistling a n old Disney toon without waiting for anyone ’ s permission .
Mark turned to the Chief and engine number 4’s Commander as engine room 2’s Commander fidgeted. “Now since you can’t seem t o comprehend do you want to learn the advanced physics that makes these engines run . Let’s go and I will show and what you w hat you need to know to make all the redesigned equipment work and maintain it ? Or are you still going to insist on sticking your hard heads up each other’s ass’s again.”
Shaking his head. “I personally don’t give a flying fuck after repeating myself a half dozen times already while you put me down every chance you get . I h
ave had it with most of you. Once I get this engine running I am out of here and if you can’t finish upgrading the other two engines following my extremely detailed directions and maintain them. That is your fuckup and not mine. I am going to be flying a bomber with my friends and family getting a free ride from the English to the station when the ship launches so if you crash, I can laugh at you as your stupid fucking butts ass burn s . I will even drop flowers in the crater you creat e . I already have the English offering me a Commission as a full Commander when I get sick of your crap while you and yours head for the Tramp Camps. So don’t piss me off with your fucking crude comments. Believe it or not, I actually helped design th is e damn new fusion core core i ncluding coming up with the basic fusion theory . Even the Admiral thought I was cra zy but he paid attention and we worked it out. Though I have to admit he did most of the work. S s o for Godstar s sake, pay attention this time.”
Turning to head back for the engine. “You can follow me as I finish my inspection while I explain how this new technology works or stay there playing with each other’s dicks. I don’t care anymore.” Shaking his head. “I can’t believe I put up with all the crap from you ass holes for so many years. All because I had to wear those ugly damn plastic glasses.”
Mark Jack suddenly remembering all the strange bright colors they had made most of his glasses frames out of over the years until he had put his foot down and demanded to make them black since they refused to make them clear. Anything but bright orange or yellow or red or baby shit yellow and the many other colors that made sure everyone would notice them. The fact was, that he could not even stand to look at the school year books yearbooks over the years because of all the horrid colors the frames had been. Jack finely realizing that it had been done deliberately to make sure he was treated differently. He was going to have to think about that and even look into it when he had time. “ The fact that there were a small group of people aboard the ship that hated him simple because he was allowed to live when he had a certified handicap the year hundreds of babies and children below the age of 6 had been killed by Gronks when the ship was taken the day of his birth was just to wildly ridiculous for him to even think.