Chapter 160

Athena

The flagship of the Tauri fleet sat in empty space, fifteen light years from the nearest solar system. Part of the duties of the Athena as the lead ship in her class was the validation of new systems before their addition to the other Athena class vessels of the Tauri fleet. This was a function she was once again performing. Standing in the engineering section of the vessel was Colonel Eckhart and Doctor Bill Lee. Before the two men, mounted in the zpm hub identical to that found on city sh.i.p.s, was the newest system to find its way to the fleet systems validation vessel.

This device was triangular in shape, and four feet in height, and six feet in width. On its bottom, also arraigned in triangular placement, were three crystal prongs identical to the size and shape of a zpm. Inside of this device was a piece of technology like no other of its size. During the testing in Pegasus of the newly perfected Arcturus device, Janus had multitasked in the extreme. The fruit of his labor, penned under Eli's name, was a miniaturized yet fully functional Arcturus device.

"This thing isn't going to break my ship, is it Doctor Lee?" Colonel Eckhart asked.

"Well, we hope not. Mr. Wallace, our resident boy genius designed this with an ascended being, so I would rate the chance of catastrophic failure as minimal at best." Lee replied.

"Minimal? Doc, we're in empty space with the nearest stargate fifteen light years away. Minimal doesn't make me comfortable. Maybe it did in my test pilot days, but that was a very long time ago." Eckhart stated in a displeased tone.

"The gamer is a smart kid, and the larger version of this device works as advertised. In fact we just installed a full scale Arcturus at Shambhala. Nothing to worry about, I think." Lee stated with an uncertain air to his voice.

"I really hate it when you do this, but you already know that right? Ok, so we might explode but chances are its minimal. Moving on; what kind of performance increase can we expect from this thing?" Eckhart asked.

"We've done a fair bit of computer modeling on that question, but it's all hypothetical for the most part. Are you fine with hypothetical answers that may or may not be accurate?" Lee responded, with a question of his own.

"Yeah, fine, give me the straight poop." Eckhart suggested.

"Let's start with propulsion. The hyper drives installed currently are a hybrid of Asgard and Ancient technology. Ever drive a Mazda with a rotary engine? It's the same concept with these hyper drives. They will simply attain higher and higher speeds with an increase in power, until they finally redline and fail. The Arkos AI's simulations suggest that hyperspace velocities will be comparable to that of a fully powered and functional city ship, that is to say incredibly fast." Lee explained.

"I owned a rotary powered Mazda when I was stationed at the fighter weapons school, so I can understand the comparison. So we're talking incredible speeds. Continue on." Eckhart ordered.

"For the increase in sensor capability we used past events as the baseline for comparison. If you'll recall the zpm powered Hive that attacked Earth, you'll recall how they intercepted a message from an alternate reality that provided them the location of our planet. The sensors aboard the Daedalus had that ability without the advantage of a zpm. We're assuming sensor sensitivity levels in the ballpark of those found on Atlantis and Borealis, but that is just supposition. To be entirely honest, we're not really sure." Lee stated apologetically.

"Ok, so we'll be able to find out where in the galaxy Carmen Sandiego is. Got it." Eckhart replied in jest, with a smile.

"Next we've got the Shields. On that one, your guess is as good as mine. Based on a number of simulations we've ran, they could be on par or stronger with a city ship. The flip side of that is the shield emitters could burn out and melt entirely. We're not really sure." Lee stated with a shrug of the shoulders.

"Really not giving me a warm fuzzy Doc. The thought of not having any shields really makes me want to not turn this thing on." Eckhart stated bluntly.

"I doubt it will come to that, but you asked for the good and the bad. Don't shoot the messenger." Lee said awkwardly.

"Next." Eckhart ordered in a deadpan tone of voice.

"Ok, you're making me nervous now." Lee backpedaled nervously.

"Deep breathes Doc. Keep going." Eckhart more ordered than suggested.

"The last area you'll see a difference is weapons. The drone weapons draw an exact amount of power, so no difference will be seen there. The galaxy class lasers will see a marked level of power throughput, but the amount of power fed into them should be limited to prevent irreparable damage to the lasing exciter chambers. The plasma beams will see a greatly enhanced duration of continuous fire, along with a range increase. The exact amount is again hypothetical at best, so I don't want to speculate. Anti-fighter energy turrets will lay down a similar amount of fire as they do now, but the individual bolts will be stronger. That's what Arkos theorizes anyway, though I'm not so certain. Finally, we have the Grodin and that's the wild card of the bunch. If the weapons power conduits can even cope with the amount of energy flowing through them at low power settings on the Arcturus device, you will have an incredibly powerful weapon. The down side to that is you might only have one shot before burning out the weapon entirely." Lee said apologetically.

"Give me a ball park on your idea of low power settings." Eckhart somewhat demanded.

"In the area of twenty five percent, but that's just a guess." Lee replied.

"Is there anything on the ship this thing won't break?" Eckhart asked exhaustedly.

"I'm going to say the power conduits. Remember how they were damaged during your trip to and from Destiny? When we repaired them, we upgraded them extensively." Lee answered enthusiastically.

"The power conduits? That's it? You've got to be kidding me! Ok, last question; why am I under orders to only power this thing up in empty space?" Eckhart asked.

"Should the device malfunction or go critical, the resulting explosion would be more destructive than anything you can imagine. That's why we didn't power it up on Arkos. It's bad form to destroy your own solar system." Lee replied in a goofy tone.

"Isn't that nice? Not that I haven't enjoyed our little conversation, but I've got other things to do. We'll talk later." Eckhart said before leaving the engineering space.