The Artifact by W. Michael Gear

Author:W. Michael Gear
Format: epub

* * *

Sol started into the lounge, but caught sight of Elvina making a beeline for him. He ducked back into the corridor. He skipped a couple of steps to a security hatch and slipped past into a restricted portion of the ship.

What was it about that woman? She insisted on pressing up against him. Not only that, she didn’t take no for an answer—and that crazy Joseph was blind to the whole thing!

Sol dropped down to the gun deck, walking along the brightly-lit gallery. Along the hull the heavy blasters sat squat and deadly, gray casings gleaming. Heavy element rod feeds protruded from the backs of the weapons.

An unlikely snarl of powerlead twisted up to one of the guns; the casing had been folded open to expose various bits of human anatomy poked out at angles like chicks from an eggshell.

“Is that gun inoperative?” Sol recognized Cal Fujiki by the battered test scope clipped to the back of his wear-shiny belt.

A hollow thunk sounded as Fujiki straightened— banged his head—and grunted. He backed out of the gun-mount slowly, rubbing his sagittal area and wincing. “Jeez, Cap. Ya gotta sneak up on a guy like that?”

Sally O’Hara poked her head up, trying to smother a smile.

“Who’s sneaking? I asked about the gun, Cal. Is it inoperable?”

“Not yet.” Fujiki grinned wryly. “But it will be the moment we jump outside. I’ll have each of the guns down for about twenty minutes. Come on up and I’ll show you something.” Cal dived into the big battery again, butt wiggling back and forth like a target as he wormed into the battery’s guts.

Sol scowled, grabbing a handhold and climbing up the side of the maintenance ladder. The rungs echoed hollowly under his feet. Sol stared over the heavy casing into a mass of coiled number twenty powerlead that seemed to be engulfing Sally like some monster constrictor. Cal’s busy fingers traced a yellow-red number ten powerlead up to the activator.

“Okay, now what am I supposed to see?”

Cal reached up to scratch the side of his neck, a frown on his placid face. “Well, those boys on Frontier aren’t as hot as they want you to think. Here, if I put a double lead—two twenties into the inducer—we get another twenty-five percent out of the field generator. That strips particles off the main heavy element core at a higher rate. By running another number thirty to the plasma bottle, we can contain the reaction and refine it to current specs.”

“At the expense of how much power to the shields?” Sol rubbed the side of his nose, frowning.

“If we’re running one hundred percent, I’d take another five out of the system. I talked it over with Happy and Kralachek. Given the performance parameters available, I doubt you’d ever notice the difference. We’ve already got more acceleration than the grav plates can handle, so that’s an easy steal. I’d say swiping that five percent of the total—that you can’t use anyway—makes a great payoff for twenty percent higher efficiency out of weapons.

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