The Ringed Quest for the Legend, part 2 - The ship
01 Dec 2024Claude Lecardunoie
...continued from The Decision.
One week before the 30th of November, date of the departure of the expedition I enrolled in. Not much, but enough, as everything seemed clear in my mind.
First, my squadron. I'll be off grid for them in the next 4 to 6 weeks. The least I could do, was to drop some containers of tritium on one of the squadron fleet carrier before leaving. I began by mining some, with the Coby, a fine little Cobra Mk III, outfitted as an asteroid surface mining ship.
36 tons, not enough.
I decided to buy an additional 70 tons of tritium on the market, and then set course to Hyades Sector EG-N b7-5, where the Zoscia Angelika Holmes was anchored. I couldn't meet the squadron commander then, but I partially replenish the ship tritium reserve.
Landing on the Zoscia Angelika Holmes, to drop some containers of tritium, as little gift before leaving for several weeks
It was time, then, to work on my exploration ship: the Steve Zissou, an Asp Explorer that I already used a while ago for a solo expedition back in 3308 (read Aborovi Causeway 1 expedition logs). It had then a 45ly year jump range. It is okay when you are on your own, but in an expedition party, may be not if you don't want to trail behind.
Step 1: Stripping off
So, I began by stripping it from everything I wouldn't use: pulse lasers, multi-cannons, the shield booster, the chaff launcher and the collector limpet controller. Of course, I kept the SRV hangar, the heatsink launcher, and the DSS module, all of them, mandatory on an exploration ship. I added a class 3 auto-field maintenance. And since these don't affect jump range, I added a class 1 AFMU, just in case the main one needs reparation. While I had this setup on my ship by the local shipyard's crew, I prepared the long trek I would have to do accross the Bubble from one Engineer to the other.
Step 2: Engineering
Indeed, the second phase of the preparation was "ship optimisation". I started by flying to Giryak, Juri Ishmaak's home system. I already met Juri. The guy is really charming, always smiling and I like to think he's a friend. Among his many talents, Juri's team is expert in DSS probes and sensors upgrade. I stayed on the gallery above the hangar, barely watching at the engineers coming and going around my ship, pulling tool carts, uploading optimised firmwares into the DSS computing unit, when I caught Juri giving me an anxious look. Two hours of a stressfull wait later, not knowing what was going round, he came up to meet me. Like someone waiting for a doctor to give a bad diagnostic, I was expecting the worse.
"Hey Claude. The sensors, no problem. They're now much lighter, less robust, though. So beware. No, my concern is about the DSS probes. I don't really know what happened, may be the niobium or the radiolic alloys you brought were not top quality, may be my guys made some mistake, but we couldn't improve the scanning radius as much as I would have liked to. A little more than a 30% increase. That is way below the max we can do. It happens sometime. Would you have another DSS? We can try again."
"No, I'll have to do with that", I answered, a bit disappointed, "I don't have the ressources for you to process another DSS".
"Ok. Let me know when you do. You're welcome anytime. Listen, not sure it will help you to prepare this exploration, but I recommended you to some friends of mine, two former Federal Navy officer and specialist: the colonel Bris Dekker and The Sarge. They both have pretty interesting tricks that even I don't really understand".
"Thanks, Juri. Don't worry you're still the best", I told him to confort, giving him a kiss on his cheek, him before leaving his installation.
Next on my list, was Long Sight Base, in Khun, home of another reputed engineer, Elvira Martuuk. I never met her before, but I contacted her, and she answered that after checking my pilot's records she would gladly receive me to see if she could be of some help for my ship.
Actually, I already knew why I was going there for. Elvira Martuuk's techs are kind of public knowledge in the Galaxy. I wanted her to implement her experimental mass manager module on my already upgraded Frame Ship Drive and to strip my thrusters to the bone, again at the expanse of robustness. But that should again help me gain some light years for The Steve Zissou jump range.
As much as Juri Ishmaak is warm and friendly, Elvira looks cold and distant. Nonetheless, she took care of everything on her own in no longer than a day, during which I thought about one last improvment: Shield Generator optimisation.
The technology is out there, but to my knowledge only two people in the whole Galaxy are really able to fully implement it and actually, only one in the Bubble.
Which technology? Enhanced Low Power Shield Generators. Which person am I talking about? Lei Chung, a self made engineer: he didn't really followed any technical cursus, but just learned on his own, working on the ships of the family owned commercial fleet.
But first, I would have to wander in the remote corridors of Cassidy Orbital, in Wulganda, to get an extremly rare component required for top notch Enhanced Low Power shields: military grade alloys. There, in a dark hangar, I met with the kind of person you need when searching for very specific materials, Anton Winters:
"No relation with the new Federation President...", he said almost laughing.
His humor was welcome and in stark contast with the surroundings: behind Anton, two armed guards, obviously guns for hire or mobsters.
"Yeah, pretty expensive stuff are stored here", he explained, "and in this business, everything is not always legal, so it's easy to make jealous or ennemies. But don't worry, they don't bite. Right guys?".
The two gunmen didn't even react. Actually, you couldn't really sense any bit of intelligence in their eyes. But I just kept this tought for myself.
The hangar itself was a mess: containers, full and empty, boxes filled with balls of precious metalic and composite alloys, lines of shelves with stacks of hard drives, most likely stolen, and further in the back a dozen of software technicians working on extracting data from them.
"So, I don't have all day! What can I do for you, Lady?", asked Anton, back to business.
"I would need samples of military grade alloys to go to..."
"To pay visit to Lei Chung. See, I know what one uses this type of alloys for. What do you have for me in exchange?"
After the transaction was completed, he suggested me to show up in Lei Chung's installation with something to trade, otherwise he would probably turned me down.
"Silver", said Anton, "he buys it for a hefty price these days. Oh, and good luck on your expedition. See, I know what people uses Lei Chung's Enhanced shields generators for".
I arrived one day later, in Trader's Rest, Lei Chung's base, with the Jacques Coeur, my Lakon Type-9, with 720 tons of silvers. Landing there, on 1.3g planet, with such a heavy and fully loaded cargo, damn it, that was a challenge and didn't go without any damages. I could hear the traffic operators laughing on the comms as I missed the landing pad twice.
"No wonder why you want a better shield generator if you always have such epic landings", said Lei Chung as I was disembarking, "Ok, joke aside, I'll see what I can do for you".
I didn' really like his initial joke, but I must say that Lei Chung is one dedicated guy. I saw him carefully handling the various components I brought, urging his crew to be careful but always motivating them to do their best. I give him that.
With my shield generator enhanced and stripped down, I had finished the engineering step. The rest, I could do it myself.
Step 3: Downgrading
With my ship stripped from non necessary modules and the remaining ones enhanced and optimised in both weight and power consumption, I could know think of downgrading the Steve Zissou's power plant. Indeed, my 5A power generator was delivering now way too much power, meaning that I was flying with useless mass.
I ran some performance tests on various ship fitting simulation softwares, and yes, after cross checking the results, I could switch the 5A power plant to a 5D or even 4A. That wouldn't affect any module alimentation.
A couple of hours running simulation tools
5D or 4A, then? The simulations I did gave the same jump range. Although it always feel a bit weird to install a smaller module than your ship configuration allows, I chose the smaller one. All things equals, a 4A power plant offers a better integrity, and I thougth that might turned to be useful on a long range expedition.
So, the last stage of this long trip across the Bubble ended in Galilei Ring, 6 Andromedae, where they sell power plants with a nice discount. This time, I did the installation myself with the help of the local shipyard personel. I guess that I just wanted to give myself the last touch of all these modifications on my exploration ship.
Stripping down - enginneering - downgrading.
By thoroughly following these steps, the Steve Zissou Explorer's jump range went from 45ly to nearly 55ly. A guardian FSD booster would have been great, but don't have the ressources to acquire one, nor the time to collect them. I also could have installed an even smaller power plant, but that would mean deactivating some module, auto-field maintenance unit for instance, but I am familiar with these, and don't know how much time they need to be powered on to complete a reparation.
So, let's to fly to Algorab. I'll still have some days to complete personal equipment from there. Now that the ship was ready, time to prepare the pilot himself!
... to be continued in The Pilot