Delphi Forge (Delphi in Space Book 13) by Bob Blanton

Author:Bob Blanton [Blanton, Bob]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Publisher: Delphi Publishing
Published: 2022-01-11T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter 11

Mission Start

“Are you ready to head out?” Morgan asked. She was standing in the hallway outside Catie’s room looking around. “Where are the tiny tots?”

“Jules is at home, and Allie is still asleep.”

“Want me to go get her?”

“No, I’ve got some last-minute things to take care of before we head out. I’ll say goodbye when we leave.”

Catie was a bit sad to leave Artemis but excited to finally be getting the mission underway. They had fifteen days of travel to reach the new system. It was longer than the usual twelve days of travel to the fringe since they had to arrive at zero velocity. Catie and Captain McAvoy had agreed on a mixed profile to cut the time. They would run the engines at 4Gs for sixteen hours and at 2Gs for eight hours. The majority of the crew would work their shift during the 2G period so that they could be horizontal for most of the 4G period. That would get them to the fringe in just over two weeks versus the eighteen days it would have taken under the normal military 1.5G profile.

◆ ◆ ◆

On day five, Catie got a message from Arlean saying they needed to discuss the barge design. Catie had sent in a request to increase the max load after she’d refined the economic model. Apparently, it wasn’t an easy change to make.

“Hi, Ajda, hi Arlean. So you didn’t like my change?”

“Oh, we loved it, but the engines didn’t like it,” Ajda explained.

“Okay, what are my choices?”

“You can slow the barges down to 1G of acceleration and save about twenty million dollars on each one, or you can stick with your spec and add fifty million?”

“Fifty million?!”

“And that’s not the worst news,” Arlean said. “You would have to add an antimatter reactor to each barge.”

“Oh, that explains the fifty million. Well, we can’t do that; Daddy and Uncle Blake would have kittens. Any other options?” Catie knew her father tried to avoid having the antimatter drives in anything that might be vulnerable to capture by other forces; having a drive on each barge crewed by a private company would never pass muster.

“Other than spending twenty million for a 1.3G profile, no. And if you scale them back, they’ll get to use the new fusion reactor. It’s a lot easier to maintain, which will put less pressure on the engineer. And, you do realize that this is the acceleration at the 5 AU equivalent. The engines won’t be able to generate much in the way of thrust out on the fringe.”

“Damn, I knew that,” Catie shook her head slightly. “I don’t know why I ignored it. That seals the deal on the station location, so adding more acceleration won’t make much of a difference.”

“So?” Ajda prompted.

“So, scale back the engines. But that brings up another problem.”

“What’s that?”

“Fiona asked me what we would do if the barge became disabled.”

“And?”

“Well, we’d have to send something to get it. Unfortunately, the Merlin isn’t exactly set up to tow a barge, so I think we need a few tugboats.

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