Sampling the Warp Core

Posted on 09 Apr 2018 @ 10:14am by Staff Warrant Officer William Griffin & Lieutenant Reginald Hawthorn

2,798 words; about a 14 minute read

Mission: Crossing Over
Location: Talons
Timeline: MD2, 1900 Hrs

"Ya bunch of hammer-bangin', stem-bolt sealin', hard chargin' nut busters! Go the hell home!" Griffin roared across the room, his deep bass voice booming above the cacophony of sound that was being made by thirty or so fighter maintenance technicians in various states of inebriation. He was stood atop a table with a terrified-looking server hovering around it, hopelessly encouraging him to get down. His left hand was wrapped around a pint-glass and his right was gesticulating towards the door. "Duty shift starts at 0530 Hours, bright an' early!"

He and his flight engineers had been tearing it up, as one crewman put it, since near the middle of the day and most of his men and women were fairly deep into their cups. There had been speeches, there had been songs and there had been jokes that'd make a Vulcan blush.

As the crew trickled out of the bar bit by bit, arm in arm and making a hellacious noise all the while, Griffin climbed down from the table and settled himself down in a chair. He was only slightly drunk, despite his performance. He'd been careful, joining in the toasts and not much else. One had to keep up appearances and he had a reputation to uphold, but he was also an NCO, now, and that responsibility kept him somewhat in check.

"Thank god, finally." The server that had been hovering looked haggard, "your boys certainly know how to party. chief. I was worried they weren't going to leave before the regular crowd come in. Thanks for sending them off."

"Sure thing, Bob." Griffin grinned at the young man. "Sorry for keepin' ya'll on your toes all day."

"No worries, Chief. Let me know if you need another drink." Bob the server smiled and turned, heading over to help clean up the various glasses and dishes his people had left behind.

"My pa always told me to treat your ranch hands like the kin you never knew you had, but always dock their pay after they wreck the joint on a festival night," came the drawling twang of Reginald 'Madison' Hawthorn. He looked around Talons, nodding his approval. "Gotta say when someone told me the name of this watering hole I imagined something a little more...themed. But this is downright hospitable. Need's a pok deng table, but that's not so much a breaker of deals in my opinion."

He indicated to a chair with one hand holding a thermally insulated flask marked with an alarming set of warning labels. Danger Chemical Burns.Danger Radiation Hazard. Warning Nanoscale Replicator Hazard. Warning Unknown. Okay well, the last one looked funny, being a skull and cross bones with a question mark over the face.

Griffin reached out with his foot under the table and pushed the chair out. "It was a hell of a blow-out, the kiddos will be talkin' about it for weeks. It's jus' what they needed, been a hell of a month." Then gestured to the empty seat, "make yourself comfortable, Ell-tee."

"I think we can we dispense with the Lute when off duty. Besides, I come bearing gifts," Reggie said holding up the flask, one of the other warning labels coming into view. According to the solid A and the shadowed A there was antimatter in that flask. "Thought it only fitting if I was going to ask for something I should do it on the cusp of divine intervention. Hey, two glasses over here please?!"

One of the servers dutifully walked over with a pair of empty tumblers.

He settled into the chair

Griffin grinned, up-ending his beer glass and setting it down on the table with a thump. "Beware the man who comes bearing gifts," he rumbled, "what the hell is that, anyway?"

"This here is the culmination of my lives work in the engine room of starships," Reggie said, stroking the flask almost lovingly. "Triple tritanium distilled Montanan sipping whisky. Ya start off with a mix of barleys and malts, with secret ingredients handed down through the Hawthorn line. Then you let it form a mash, basically just short beer. Then you distil it through the tertiary condenser lines of the secondary RCS thrusters. You know that balky thruster quad on the aft quarters that's been doin' nothing but giving us a manly swagger when the captain points left? That is the Reginald Madison Hawthorn the Second memorial still. Named it after my grandpa, who legend has it drowned in the stuff. Course legends also says he got out of the vat a few times to relieve himself."

He opened the flask and poured a measure into each of the glass.

"This should be served at room temperature, unmingled by the additives of seltzer water, tonic or fruity substrate," he said, securing the cap. "And I can tell you it should not be exposed to an oscillating EM field of greater than 68 terahertz. Learnt the hard way on the Armstrong what happens when Montana sipping whisky takes a ride through a Van Allen Belt," he chuckled. "Never did find that nacelle."

Griffin was never one to turn down a drink, and he'd heard about Hawthorn's infamous warp-core whisky. He wasn't sure which parts Reggie was making up and which parts were true, but he was intrigued, none the less. "Only a cretin," he grumbled a reply, "dilutes sippin' whisky with anythin' but water, if anythin' at all. This stuff ain't gonna make me go blind, is it?"

“I am going to try my damnedest not to take offence at that insinuation. Warp Core distilled whisky has yet, to date, caused nothing but a sublime state of mind and one case of spontanious unfortunate insight. You aint’ Betazoid so that shouldn’t happen,” Reggie said picking up his glass and Griffin’s on one hand, offering it to him. “Of course if you want to insist that the Flight Deck wrench wranglers wear yella’ uniform vest to work...”

"You'd have a helluva fight makin' my boys wear any other color, they're engineers, same as you and your boys," Griffin grumbled, taking the offered glass and holding it up to examine the contents, the liquid was clear and golden-hued. He looked past the glass and fixed Hawthorn with one eye. "The scale's a bit different, but not much else. They've every right to wear those yellow vests."

"I said yella, not yellow. Do folks round here not speak the common tongue?" Reggie smiled broadly, an easy countenance to his words and manner. "See, where I'm from folks are a little more wise in the way of words. Some ain't so much for their numbers, but can't hold that to'em. Now if I walked into a tea room in Landing City, my home town, and called someone out for being yella in a frightful fashion...well. Time and place, as they say. I was refering in jest that a man who plays with itty bitty warp cores that make metal move fast is worried about a itty bitty glass of liquid courage, then he might be yella."

He grinned, and held up a finger.

"Case in point," he said, tipping his own glass back in a single pull. His face didn't screw up, his eyes didn't bulge out comically either. "Ahhh...like mothers milk."

Griffin relaxed, visibly relaxed, the tension came off his shoulders like a weight being lifted and he shifted his position from leaning forward with his hands on the edge of the table to settle back into the chair. The insinuation that he was a coward, rather than the idea that his mechanics were not real engineers, an insinuation they'd had to deal with on more than one occasion, was one that he could accept. It was a friendly challenge, rather than an insult.

He watched Reggie knock back the whisky, then raised his own glass and followed suit, knocking the dram back in a single swallow. The drink was surprisingly smooth, but powerful. It had a flavor different from any other whisky he'd had before, and he'd had a lot of different whisky. He felt the liquid burn a hot path through his chest and he breathed out, savoring the aftertaste that was oddly similar to the smell that a hot reactor put off - burning deuterium and hydrogen plasma. "Damn, that's good" He told the chief engineer, "I ain't never had a better whisky, an' that's sayin' somethin'."

"Better than that synthahol crap. Montana does a roaring trade in prime beef and grain alcohol, nearly as much as belt mining. So imagine my surprise when I come to the Federation, to the Starfleet itself, and I see before me a barren and dry existence," Reggie shook his head like he'd just felt a ghost trample over his grave. "Fortunately a still and some thoughtful application of engineering equipment can produce that which feeds the souls."

Reggie took the flask, unscrewing it again and poured another couple of fingers of the amber fluid into their glasses.

"Besides, thought it best to liquor you up to ask to borrow one of the fine Gryphon's in your stable."

"Most cargo ships have their own production, boomer booze." Griffin grinned at the memory, "every ship had it's own particular poison, we used to trade it around, ship-to-ship. Lemmie tell ya, some'a that stuff would turn a Klingon cross-eyed. As for the Gryphon, 'fraid that's not up to me, Chief. You gotta talk to Walsh for that kinda joy ride." He shook his head, "but as far as I'm concerned, long as ya bring it back in one piece I've got no problem with it."

"Ehh...y'all best get a few more in you 'fore I tell you more. See," Reggie said, pushing the refilled glass towards Griffin. "I'm not interested in the fighter as a working space frame. What is my goal is the Lockheed Utopia pinch stabilised micro event core, that itty bitty warp core of its. That there represents the most compact field portable antimatter reactor outside of Utopia Planitia. 1.5 giga watts of juice."

Reggie took his own glass, and emptied in a sharp knock back pull.

"If the right attention and care, I know I could get it to 1.9, maybe even 2GW's. Done it once, and this time I ain't gonna forget the breaks."

Now Reggie had Griffin's attention. "Well well, that is interestin'." He grumbled, taking the glass and this time sipping at the contents. "I reckon ya could push a Utopia up there, but it'd be no good for a fighter. Fighters need durability an' stability more'n power, no use having a finely tuned core that's gonna go critical when a pilot pulls ten gees, or takes a hit."

Griffin pulled the rest of the whisky before continuing. "Now if'n ya wanted to use it for somethin' else, it'd be great. What did ya have in mind?"

“Let me asnswer you with a question: why are most of the ships systems running on a trio of fusion reactors? The Warp Core generates enough power running in Mode 1 to bend the very fabric of space and time so that we can travel faster than .C without incurring relativistic consequences. That’s all the Warp Core does, its a massive antimatter reactor doing one job. Occasionally we plug other systems into it, but sparingly,” Reggie said. “Now...imagine putting a warp core, even a 2GW core, into the same power run as say the main shield generator? Or the primary phaser array? Hell plug that sucker into the deflector dish and we could sweep a path from here to Montana just by turning the ship around.”

"Damn sure the ship would have a lot more power to play with, more power'n than she'd ever need. Downsides are the danger, it's hard enough to keep one warp core stable when the feces hits the turbine, let alone a bunch of 'em, and we'd need a helluva lot of deuterium to run all those warp cores. Beauty of fusion reactors is they're free, scoop up some hydrogen from space with the Bussard collectors an' boom, you got power."

Reggie made a dismissive gesture as he knocked back his glass again.

Griffin slid the glass back towards Reggie, "a'course, the Lockheed Utopia cores're stable as hell when they're runnin' at 1.5 gigawatts, an' they're pretty damn efficient. It's a damn excitin' idea and I reckon it could work. Mind you it'd be a helluvalot of work, refitting all the hydrogen storage tanks for deuterium an' upgradin' all the power conduits to handle the extra load. That's a pretty damn major overhaul you're talkin' about."

"Which is why, during these trying times of repairing systems blown apart by improper hands working with no memories, I've been doing some upgradin'," Reggie grinned. "Took a little longer to replace the ODN and EPS feeds to handle the extra juice, but I've had the big old industrial replicator spooling out reels of superconductive cabling for a solid week. Had half the Impulse Drive team fretting I was going to rig sails to the Black Hawk and make'm redundant."

Reggie grinned.

"As it stands main sensors, deflector control and the shields have been upgraded to Block 2 status. And," he generously refilled Griffin's glass. "Got me an idea as to how to avoid unpleasantness if the Secondary Core goes sideways. Either fit it into an escape pod launcher or set it up in a small cargo bay on a maglev track. First sign of instability beyond control, it's heading out the side of the ship at a few hundred gravities. More'en enough to get it past the shield boundary. When playing with the Maker's own fire, it pays to be prepared."

"Well shit-fire, I've got five reactors in cold storage, I reckon ya could have one of 'em to play with." Griffin slid the full glass back towards him, "I know that damn reactor inside'n'out, if'n ya want some help. Kinda sounds like fun." He one-pulled the whisky, which on top of the several shots he'd had throughout the day, was beginning to have an effect, and grinned at Reggie.

"See? Last fella I had this chat with wasn't nearly so pleasant a conversationalist. Then again he was the humourless sort, lot of brass on his collar weighing him down some," Reggie groused. To be fair Senior Designer Ransible Tam, whose three brass pips made him a commander, had been angrier Reggie had not asked to borrow the supplies needed to retrofit the Runabout with twin warp cores. (In Reggie's defense the Commander had not not forbidden him access to them.)

Or maybe it was the expense of manning a rescue mission to chase down said Runabout with two engineers trapped on board before it accelerated into the upper acceleration bands of warp speed that not even a Vesta could reach. Reggie's theory was there was a load bearing strut inserted somewhere south of his personality. Fortunately, Commander Tam was some hundred or so light years away.

"Well, way I see it we're doing this right. So tomorrow I'll come find you and we'll go through the technical guts of this undertaking. If an idea sounds good drunk, and good sober, it's a good idea. Its how Montan got back into space after the Unsettlement, and it'll be how we get our names written in the history book. Hell they gave this one engineer a whole park and statue treatment on Earth, fella by the name of Zephram Cochrane? You heard of him?" Reggie asked, sipping from his glass. "Plaque on that statue said he was from Montana, but I ain't ever heard of the fella. Must be a Kipsi islander."

"I'd be happy with a couple'a kegs of beer an' a nice long leave somewhere warm, statues an' parks ain't gonna help me none." Griffin shook his head, "I've never been to Montana, neither. I'm a boomer, born an' bred out here in the dark, planets don't suit me none. Don't feel right if I can't feel the deck plates vibratin' under my feet."

Griffin recalled his time on Earth, while he was attending the technical school. It seemed like another life, so long ago, but he remembered the constant feeling of uneasiness, of lifelessness that the planet's ground gave him. It wasn't alive, like a ship was, it didn't speak to him like a ship did.

"I reckon," he mused, "tomorrow is a good idea. I'll haul one of the cores outta storage an' get it set up on a test bed."

"Reckon so," Reggie said and tilted the flask over Griffin's glass, but didn't pour. "One more for the road?"

Griffin grinned at Reggie, "why the hell not."

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