[i]“I also want Engineering to prepare both the Jump Drive and the Nyx so we are ready for anything the moment we jump out of hyperspace if they haven't already.”[/i] The order was relayed through the central holoterminal’s speakers by some member of the command crew. 

Slowly, one after another, hands were raised among the engineering staff and index fingers were gently pressed to tips of noses. It wasn’t long before Lt. Rorq found she was the only member of engineering who had not followed the practice once used by even the chief himself to assign difficult or tedious tasks. 

“Real mature, people,” Lt. Rorq barked, and grabbed the maintenance duty roster as SCF Calhound strode in.


“Cancel that,” the Chief said in reference to the ‘Nose Goes’ popular vote. “I’ll be handling JDF personally. The lieutenant will be tasked with the Nyx.” In a moment of delegation he turned to Lt. Rorq directly and added, “Take whomever you’d like.”


Arguably one of the least glamorous tasks on schedule for the engineering staff today was a coolant flush, but such an assignment allowed the Chief of Engineering to really get inside and “tinker”. Tinkering was a term that Engineering’s CPC found quite objectionable, but was nevertheless an apt description. “Rorq,” Calhound added, “Do add our findings to the Nyx’s databanks in case the unthinkable happens.”


With a very punishing ‘you, you, and you’ style declaration from Lt. Rorq a maintenance team was selected and sent down to the hanger in which the Nyx was lie in wait. Likewise Xaith began to disengage the Jump Drive per operational procedure, whilst reporting a projected completion time to N04h and operations. 


With the drive offline and the coolant system being flushed, Xaith took the opportunity to run some secondary diagnostics on the device. There was no question that it was state of the art and would perform exceptionally with Rorq’s optimizations, but there was another question on the chief’s mind. A question that had burdened him for the last three days that he intended to find an answer to. 

During the Devastator attack the ARK had been virtually powerless and survived alone on the judgement and quick wit of those operating it. While it wasn’t his nature personally to stand his ground and fight, such an edict was often issued by his superiors in the Army. He looked now to this machine for answers as that was something he now demanded of it.

Schematics for the ARK’s entire power management system had been routed through his EEGARD over the course of the last 72 hours, and he had a firm grasp on just how taxing this drive’s priming and operation was on the rest of the systems. In combat it was a cynosure of squandered potential he intended to correct. Over that same time period the Engineering staff had been divided into two camps to tackle either this problem, or the problem assigned to Lt. Rorq, and it had now come to a head.


“Siege drive?” he could still remember one of the senior members of his staff questioning the idea. 

[hider=OOC: CPC][url=http://www.public.navy.mil/bupers-npc/support/paypers/cpcresources/Pages/default2.aspx]Command PASS Coordinator[/url] (CPC) is [url=http://www.roleplayerguild.com/topics/141802-no-turning-back-into-the-abyss/ooc?page=26#post-3951491]Lt. Rorq[/url]'s official title. Her rank is Lieutenant (Lt).[/hider]
[hr]
[color=gray]Yesterday[/color]
“You want to make our ship… not move? With respect sir, that’s fucking dumb.” the senior diagnostics officer objected, “Like, potentially humanity-ending dumb.”

“On the contrary,” the Chief of Engineering countered, “Not fully utilizing every system we have to ensure our survival is ‘humanity-endingly dumb’.” He drew up the device’s schematics on the central hollow projector so that his staff could see it clearly while Lt. Rorq’s staff worked individually on a collection of monitors elsewhere. “The core principle behind the our [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcubierre_drive]FTL Technology[/url] is surprisingly simple: we’re manipulating space around us.” The hologram played out a simulation of the Jump Drive’s activation with corresponding details that were not actually seen by the naked eye, or felt by man’s body. 

He then pointed to the Jump Drive that was still carrying them through space. “This device consumes a considerable amount of power to do what it does. If we were to harness that power, and feed it into other systems, I am confident we can push them above and beyond their limits while still generating a distortion field to give us a combat advantage.”

Over the murmur of engineers the project’s lead scoffed. “That’d blow out every system on this ship, if the Vitae doesn’t just explode outright.”

The Chief Engineer shrugged. “You’re not wrong,” he admitted, “At least, with the systems we currently have in place. For now, all we need is to see if the drive is capable of being modified in this way and then worry about upgrading the rest of the systems later. Such a tactical reconfiguration would need to be modular in either event.”

There was no further objecting on the matter as the Chief Engineer wouldn’t allow it.


[hr]
[color=gray]Today[/color]
Obviously one does not simply open an engine up and look under the hood while it’s running, and with coolant coursing through its veins, there was little else Xaith could do but wait. He poked and prodded at subsystems of the Jump Drive he could access while waiting for the remainder to become available.


Meanwhile, Lt. Rorq gathered the compilation of her notes on drives formatted specifically for use in the Nyx, with her team in lock-step behind her they marched down to the main hanger where the Nyx was docked. Once there she was met with a regular, albeit unpleasant experience: a confrontation with Lieutenant Leandra who had been awaiting their arival.

“Lieutenant,” Lt. Rorq initiated.

“Lieutenant,” Lt. Leandra reciprocated.

“Permission to come aboard,” Lt. Rorq stated not as a request, but as an acknowledgement of the orders both were aware of. Orders that Lt. Leandra had no authority to interfere with.

“Permission granted,” was all Lt. Leandra was allowed to respond, as she accepted the request on behalf of the Colonel who was not available to welcome the engineering staff personally.

With that the engineering crew was shown to the Nyx's Main Engineering, and they begun work, wile the presiding lieutenant stood at full military attention by the door. It was the military's version of hovering over an engineer and Rorq knew that Leandra knew exactly what she was doing. “Alright people,” Lt. Rorq said to her team that had her complete confidence, in a manner that made that confidence painfully clear to Lt. Leandra. “Let's get started.”

The lieutenant from the Vitae's main engineering plugged in the drives to the central imaging unit and dumped a tremendous amount of combat and metallurgical analysis into the system. She pulled up a few charts to ensure all was in working order, but also to lord them over her rival. 

[center][img]http://www.nature.com/article-assets/npg/srep/2015/150617/srep11473/images_hires/m685/srep11473-f3.jpg[/img][/center]

With perfect timing only achievable by an Overclocked Engineer did Rorq turn her head to catch a moment's loss of composure from Lt. Leandra. She tilted her head in the manner one tilts at windmills, and her piercing stare ripped through Lt. Leandra who, as she approach, demanded “How... How the [i]fuck[/i] did you get these?”

“The Sargent,” Lieutenant Rorq said with emphasis on the massive difference in rank between they and their commanding officer, as well as to underscore the nature of betray Lt. Leandra's betrayal. “He can be quite resourceful when he puts his mind to it.” Rorq made it a point to explain not only the data that required no explanation, but also how SFC Calhound acquired it, as to further reinforce the importance of ability to the woman who only saw rank. 

“The Sargent redirected the Vitae's planetary environmental survey sensors at the battle-space. While not as refined as our combat sensors the whole of the combat was observed.” Lt. Rorq indicated the first image and the holographic display focused on it and presented a three-dimensional model of the multi-spectrum castoff. “The weapons fire was registered as weather patterns, and the Sargent himself reverse engineered the data. While we already knew our weapons were largely ineffective against the Devastators, we now have some insight into why.” 

She signaled to the holoterminal to switch from static view to the video view. The projection of the blue waves began moving about the hollow echo of the Devastator's hull. “While we initially thought it was due to some unknown materials or design practice, which is in part true, but a bulk of their resistance to our weapons is the geometry of their hull-plating.” 

Lt. Rorq pulled up a comparison of the projected modeling of the Devastator Ship, and compared it to that of the Vitae and the Nyx. Human armor was largely smooth compared to the projected modeling that was designed to displace and disrupt waves. In the projection it was made quite clear that Devastator armor refracts energy that strikes it, breaking it up into different trajectories, while human armor doesn't. The advantage of human armor is that it is easy to manufacture, but at the same time, lacks the complexity to deal with the level of stress and force weapons cause and as such is considerably easier to damage. 

Determined to not be impressed Lt. Leandra pressed back. “So what? What good does this do us?"

With a smug sense of satisfaction Lt. Rorq added “We can replicate this technology. More specifically, this is a a highly sophisticated form of technology that has existed for hundreds of years in earth's past but rarely has been applied to armor design.” With the press of a button a new video was displayed in ten-times magnification, one found by S.A.S.H.A. and correlated to the data at hand, and explained the topology of the matter.  

[center][youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LvVuuaqCC7A[/youtube][/center]

As they watched the explanation it was a trivial note that all human weapons relied on violent energy transference. Kinetic weapons such as rails and gauss canons relied of course on kinetic impact. While nuclear weapons relied on many forms of energy, from the initial EM pulse, to the thermal explosion and kinetic shock-wave, to the long-term radiation after the fact. Everything they had was energy and the Devastator's hulls were designed to adapt to and displace that energy as easily as a golf-ball displaces air around it. 

Which brought her to her why she specifically was chosen to oversee the Nyx's prep-work today. Just as SFC Calhound was assessing the potential to modify the Vitae's jump drive, Lt. Rorq was tasked with assessing the Nyx's capabilities for battle modification. That is, after running it through all manner of simulations and optimizations. 

“Now,” Lt. Rorq finished as she dismissively dismissed her Nyx-ian counterpart, “We have work to do. I suggest you coordinate with the Robotics Lab to get some new plating machined.”