Upgrades from the 6th Millennium
21 Oct 2016Tristan Pacheco
Finally, command got what they were after. All of this skulking around in Imperial space can be done. And that's not all the good news: Admiral Eickert has agreed to allow all of us to receive experimental upgrades, although he said the time frame was still up for debate. My own ship will be even further upgraded. It's now known as Testbed X-7823 in the Federal Test Log, although my information is, curiously, absent from said log. That being said, it's already been christened, so it is still called FNS Last Horse of the Apocalypse to the people that matter. And it's really about to deserve that name. Everything from the lateral thrusters to the FSD Interdictor has gotten an upgrade, in addition to ALL the rest of my hardpoints being replaced by experimental tech. I've already reviewed my new lasers positively, so they're due to go live within the next decade. In addition to the new tech, I'll be getting the hangar bay cleared out and remodeled so it can do what it was actually meant for: holding fighters. In preparation, Admiral Eickert is promoting a few soldiers in order to join our squadron as fighter pilots. I'll be meeting them at Mars High some time next week. Right now I'm in Eta Cassiopeia for all the upgrades. Since the planet itself is mostly training ground, without much in the way of entertainment, I'll be personally overseeing the remainder of the refit. Really...that's too grand a term. Watching is better, since I haven't a clue how any of this stuff works, with the exception of the new multi-cannons. They are simply being modified to fire two new types of ammunition, incendiary rounds and rounds coated with fluoroantimonic acid. They also have a new oxidizer that in a nutshell allows the weapon to fire faster and harder. The new FSD is the most exotic of my upgrades, and to be honest, I'm extremely nervous about it. The Alcubierre ring is supposedly able to spin 60% faster, and its link to the foredrive is now cooled with a Bose-Einstein condensate, allowing for frictionless transfer of energy. The downside is that the ring is made of an ultra-lightweight alloy, and any introduction of energy into the BEC destroys it, meaning the FSD as a whole is now extremely fragile. The cooling device for the BEC also has a lot of moving parts, so my chance for a misjump has more than doubled. On the upside, my jump range has gone from 12 to 17-ish light years, and I can now use more fuel per jump, which means less jumps overall, which hopefully will counteract the higher chance of failure....hopefully. I'll also be receiving a new shield generator along with boosters, but they said there's a delay. Apparently, the new generator they want to install uses shield cells that are ovular for some reason, so my shield cell banks will literally try to put a square into a circular slot to recharge the shields. So either they will have to first modify my shield cell banks, or modify the shield generator to use square cells, which according to them decreases the energy storage by 43%, so I guess it'll be the former, which puts an even further delay on it. Fascinating stuff when you start to understand it. I think I'll be here for a few more days than planned, but it'll be worth it after I get it done, get the crew aboard, get the fighter bay renovated, and test the whole deal in combat. I really can't wait.