Battleship Destroyer (32 page)

T
hey dropped down past more point defense turrets and then below the stern of the transport and came in sight of the lower end of the big engines hanging down below the fuselage. Jack tried to take in all the details of the point defense guns clustered around the stern and on the cooling landing fins, having seen engines before. 

The Chief slapped his shoulder again. "We are damn lucky you figured out what was wrong with the gravcoils in the tanks freeing up the thousan
ds of coils we had stocked up to replace them as they burned out. Or should I thank the yard pukes to busy or stupid to do the proper tune up job on all the FWCs to begin with or the ship building engineers too busy to look at the problem in the first place no matter how many forms we sent in.  We would not have the coils we need. It just better work boy."

Jack could not help staring at the name of the ship written in huge lett
ers across the stern. He could not believe anyone would name a ship what he was seeing.

The Commander saw where Jack was looking and smiled slapping him on the shoulder. "I know it is hard to believe but someone back
at the Rock decided that since these were Shuttle Supply ships permanently attached to the individual Supply  Dwarf's and were too important to just have numbers, but not important enough for normal ship names,  they named them after Food Condiments. Strange but once you get used to it, you know which ships belong to the Dwarfs. "   

They walked off the platform
onto the Airdock's deck with the ship towering two thousand feet above them.  It took several minutes to walk the 75 yards under the ship. While Jack was definitely getting a kink in his neck looking up at everything including the point defense guns with some of their barrels sticking down almost touching the lock's deck. But finally he took a look at the engine exhaust tubes some 30 feet above him. Walking under the closest of the engines, Jack stopped as he looked straight up, shinning his small belt light up into the engine and the hollow core going up the center where the reactant mass with the help of a thousand drive coils, was hurled out to drive the ship. The big 8 foot wide hole was needed to keep the mass of ultra-compressed (million+ degree) reaction mass from melting the ceramic coated tube even with active cooling strait to the cooling fins.

Jack smiled
as he caught sight of the large feed nozzles at the top of the engine 200 feet up. Recalling the hundreds he had welded up for his brother and the Turner Joy. Wondering if the Navy bothered to weld theirs up or just replaced them. Finding out after he had joined that it was his brother that had been told to weld them up and not Jack and then taken credit for them pissing him off again. He suddenly did not want to wait until the next day to get started. "Chief, I am sorry but I think it will be easier than I thought. Now that I am up close, I think all we will have to do is slide the gravcoils up the ass of these engines, anchor them down to the main ceramic cooling tube and hook them up. The hard part is producing the nozzle system to feed ions instead of molecules down the rows of black holes. Wait no! I was wrong about that too. I think I can set up several different sized small gravity coils at the feed end to break the normal reactant down into atoms and then crush them down into sub atomic particles and then Ions.  Godstar, I wish Pop was here, he would be a big help. He knows this feed shit better than I do. He has forgotten more than I ever will know. "

Jack turned
to the Chief. "I know we just got done with dinner and thanks for letting me eat in the officers mess, they have some good food but if you are willing to use this ship as a test bed, you can start getting the coils and crews assembled, I can have the basic coil installation plans ready in a couple hours and the ion feed system by midnight. I know it is late but I will keep things simple so it should not take the machine shops long to make the few parts we will need. I think we can have this baby ready to test the drive by noon tomorrow if not reveille. Save us a lot of time, since we have a dead line. If you will show me that design compartment you told me about, I will get started sir."  Jack turned toward the only hatch he had seen next to the lift platform they had ridden down in and ran straight into the Ensign as she tried to move out of his way but was too late.

Jack
hit her hard in his excitement to get to work, bumping heads as he wrapped his arms around her. Bulling her over as he fell on top of her to the deck. Knocking her breath out of her for a few seconds. Jack tried to turn so he would not land on top of her but was only partially successful. He did manage to protect her head, bringing his hand up in time to cradle her head as his hand hit the deck. Holding her in his arms laying on the deck beside her, he tried to apologize before he started squirming, trying to free himself but she was laying on his arm tight against him. He finally reached over to push her away while pulling his arm out only to grab a hold of a big hard not quite flattened mound compressed close to her chest for a second until he realized what he had ahold of and let go speechless and gave up. He cringed shying away as he turned his head, waiting for a scream and beating from a panicking disgusted female. But none came.

The ensign
finally got her breath and pushed herself up off of his arm using his chest to push against as he had started to do to her. Her shocked look turned into snarling disgust as she rolled away and climbed to her feet with her hand automatically grabbing the stun gun. She looked down at him as she started to snarl trying to make up her mind what names to call him knocking her to the ground just to cop a feel and saw him cringing away from her waiting to get hit. Shaking her head as she shut her mouth without saying anything. She wanted to hit him and would have used her Taser if she had had time to reach it before she rolled away and got up, but now. Seeing his reaction, all she could think about was all the times she had seen his brother pummel him years before for no reason that made any sense to her. Her snarling sneer softened into a grimace as she shook her head. Not believing what she was thinking. How could she ever feel pity for him? She could not believe it when she held out her hand to him and said. "Come on Turner, you have work to do." Feeling like someone else had control of her and was powerless to stop.

Jack opened his eyes and looked up at the Ensign baffled for several seconds
before holding out his hand to take hers. Surprised when a spark leaped between their hands, just as she took his hand into hers and gripped it tight. His head seemed to swim as he stood for a second trying to get his balance and walk at the same time. Trying to figure out why her body seemed to shimmer to him.

Dragging him off the deck she turned around and headed for the hatch trying to keep Jack from falling as she looking over her shoulder. "Chief; I will take Mr. Turner to the Virtual Testing and Design compartment, I will get the first design sheet to you as soon as he has it."
Then turned around looking at Jack wondering if he had hit his head while protecting hers. She started to think, "She hoped so." Then bit her lip to keep from completing the thought. Suddenly ashamed of herself. Then noticing she still had a firm grip on Jack's hand with her arm tightly around him and pushed him away, hard. His body seemed to shimmer in her eyes before she let go but she knew that was impossible. She speeded up ahead of him toward the hatch. Briefly afraid he would fall as he staggered around for a second but refusing to slow down as she started to panic at the thought of him falling and hurting himself. Her mind racing around confusing thoughts she never ever thought she would ever think again. Tears coming to her eyes as she raged at herself for thinking the thoughts she was thinking.

The Chief had not noticed as he was already on his comm asking the Captain for permission to convert the transport as Jack had asked.  The transport would be twice as easy to convert as the heavily armored and cramped Battleship would be. Especially for testing.
His opinion and confidence in the boy took an immediate jump. Waving a hand to acknowledge the Ensigns statement.

---------

Jack finally finished about 3 in the morning. He sat back sliding the chair away from the design table and surveyed his work hovering over the table and around the compartment. Not really knowing what to do now. Too tired to do anything anyway but his mind was still racing without a hint of slowing down. The Engine had been running for a good 10 minutes at full power and four times the thrust of the ship's original Reaction Mass engine.  After blowing up on most of his attempts over the last hour, the fact that it was running now was good enough for the night. It was bugging him that it was running a little rough, with slight power fluctuations but it was running.  The fact that a couple of nasty flaming burps had come out the back when he started it up until he had slammed it up to full power, was bothering him to, but with his head and eyes hurting beyond belief, he was ready to call it quits. "Well that is that, I think." Slapping the off switch and missing, Jack stretched in the seat then turned as he started to get up to leave catching sight of the Ensign, surprised. "You still here? Thought you had hit your rack hours ago." Jack settled back into the chair.

"No
, just checking on how things were going out in the lock. She looked at the engine still hovering above the design table. The Chief decided to do only one engine. Each engines is angled in slightly with their thrust through the center of the ship's mass allowing it to run and maneuver on only one engine without any problems.  The Starboard engine was left untouched just in case the conversion does not work."

"I have been worrying about the same thing
in the back of my mind for hours know." Leaning his head back and closing his eyes. "I just feel like I have forgotten or was missing something but my mind is turning to mush."

"You said that the engines would be a lot more
powerful, but I did not believe it would be this much more powerful." Shaking her head as she studied the readings on the data sheet. "Did you reinforce the engine mounts and structure? I have been busy straightening out bottlenecks and misunderstandings about your plans back in the machine and fabrication shops. Then how to install them. So I have not been able to follow your recent work as closely as I would have liked. A lot of steel has gone into the ship but I do not know what all of it was for."

Jack smiled. "Ya. At
two times the thrust of the unconverted engines it would not need reinforcing but I added a lot just in case it will do what the numbers say it could do. The battle ships won't have that problem since their armor will act as plenty of support and we will know for sure by then." Jack stretched again and yawned. "No, there is something else I am forgetting. A problem drifting around the back of my mind. It is just outside my vision like a ghost that I know is there, but I just can't put my finger on it. Has to be something important but I just can't see or grab it." Jack yawned again rubbing his head and eyes. "Godstar my head hurts." Rubbing his eyes. “Oh shit! My watch! I missed my watch! Crap I am screwed!” Jack jumped up tripping as he did and fell to the deck flat on his face.

Looking down at him she frowned. “About time you remembered but I already reported you off watch duty a long time ago. You are safe.”
Continuing to frown down at him not allowing herself to laugh at his predicament as she shook her head still trying to get things strait in her head about him. She was surprised at what he had accomplished in such a short time. Forcing herself not to be impressed. "Now then get your ass up and come with me. A little walk will do you good. Get your blood flowing and you can see what you have labored so hard at designing." Jack followed her back to the number One repair and docking lock and was surprised to see large pieces of equipment under one of the ship's engines shoving the huge tank deck gravcoils up the tube. They did not look like they would fit but he had checked that first off hours ago after panicking when he realized the whole conversion depended on them fitting. The Ensign weaved her way through the equipment to an elevator's platform hanging down from the center of the ship between the two propulsion engines. Jack followed her onto the huge 20 by 50 foot platform as equipment was loaded onto it.

They rod up and got off with
the equipment and construction materials on what looked like a mostly vacant multi story deck the size of a football stadium with a large dome placed to one side of the elevator and a hole on the other.  What looked like miles of pipes and cables stretching down from the overhead to the dome while the hole on the other side had been stripped. Most of it was the Mass feed systems for the engines. Huge sections of pipes were being dragged out of and away from the hole to make it easier to work. Masses of people and machinery crawled over and in it. Long strait tubes where stacked off to one side of the hole for creating a large reinforcement structure to the upper deck that was already reinforced for the gun turrets that were there and would provide added support for the increased thrust from the engines.

Jack walked over
and peered down into the hole at the top of the first set of complete coils of the engine. The 7.5 foot wide deck gravity coils looked puny inside the 30 foot round massive engine drive coil. The conglomeration of several deferent sized gravity coils used for other purposes around the ship he had designed into a feed system to crush standard ship's reaction mass into Ions to feed down the engine was taking shape off to one side. The Complicated but simple racks and coil tubes made in the Red Dwarf’s machine and fabrication shops would replace the mass feed pumps and controllers originally used to force feed tons of reaction mass a second down the engines throat. He looked around and found the old feed system laying across the deck out of the way.  Relieved that they had not thrown them away or junked them. They looked like they could be thrown back in, in only a few hours if his design did not work.