Blue Star Enterprises-Chapter 218 - 4-34

Alexander would like to say he had been able to refine the field generator uninterrupted, but that wasn't the case.

A few days after his initial testing had been completed, one of the STO people had asked to speak with him.

"Captain Rhys," Alexander said, standing to greet the STO captain. Unlike Willard, he had nothing against Rhys, so there was no point in being antagonistic toward him. "I was surprised to get a request from you, not Willard."

"Vice Admiral Willard," the man stated, doing a poor job of hiding his disdain for the man, "is currently occupied. He has asked me to look into why the retrofit is taking so long. I reminded the Vice Admiral that replacing engines can take time, especially on older ships, but he was insistent that I check in."

"I see. There were a few minor complications that we ran into, but we were able to resolve those, and the Blueridge retrofit should be done by the end of this week." While it was true that they had run into a few snags while installing the new thrusters, apart from the sabotage, the work had actually been completed three weeks ago. The captain didn't need to know that, though.

Alexander didn't want the STO to be aware of just how quickly he could complete certain work.

When the man didn't immediately thank Alexander and leave, he quirked an eyebrow on his avatar. "Is there something else, Captain Rhys?"

"There is, I'm afraid. Willard would like to know when you would be ready to depart."

Alexander had been expecting Willard to ask that question as soon as the man was made aware that the Blueridge was operational again. He was surprised someone as controlling as Willard would send Rhys to ask on his behalf.

"You can tell the Vice Admiral that my diplomatic vessel will be ready in the next month, but we won't be leaving until a month later. I wish to remain here to attend my daughter's birthday."

"He won't be thrilled by that answer, but I understand," the captain replied. "I have a daughter of my own. She will be fifteen shortly."

Alexander wasn't sure what to say about that. He felt like shit now that he knew he was keeping someone else from their child's birthday. "I'm sorry you'll miss it. I know there are only so many of those occasions you get to attend, my daughter is already turning thirteen this year."

"Thank you for your concern, Mr. Kane, but I wouldn't have been able to attend her birthday even if I were back in Varlen. My family lives on the far side of STO space, and getting leave from my duties to travel for three months wouldn't have been possible. A conversation over Qcomm will have to be acceptable. The fact that Unokane has a Qcomm does make me appreciative, though. And thank you for giving me a firm date. I believe once the Vice Admiral gets over the fact that he will be stuck here for another few months, he will be less confrontational."

Alexander hadn't spoken to Willard since the day he told him the engines would be ready to go early. Ever since then, Theo had been running interference with the man. It was nearly a full-time job, but it had worked at keeping the Vice Admiral occupied and unable to interrupt Alexander's other work.

Captain Rhys left Alexander's office shortly after.

Alexander would have headed to his workshop immediately, but it was time to finally contact Katalynn and call in his favor.

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The person who answered the video call looked familiar, but Alexander couldn't quite place the face. It was one of the Lokis, but the man had a shaved head and a bearded face. He didn't recall meeting any Lokis like that during his visit. They tended toward standard Asgardian customs of braided hair and beards. Alexander assumed it was homage toward their old roots or a bastardization of it. The only knowledge he had of old Norse culture came from a few snippets of movies he remembered.

"Greetings, Jarl Kane," the man stated, his accent also differing from Asgardian norms. "Do you wish to speak with the Lagertha?"

Shaking off the oddity of the encounter, Alexander spoke up. "Yes, is she available?"

"She should be, one moment."

The video cut out and when it returned, it was from inside the Lagertha's office.

A much healthier-looking Katalynn stepped in front of the camera and sat down. She was covered in sweat, so he had a pretty good idea of what she had been up to before he called.

"Sorry for interrupting your training, Lagertha, but I needed to discuss something with you."

"It's fine. I was nearly done anyway. My body is still too weak for a full session," she gestured to herself. "This is just from ten minutes of sparring. What would you like to discuss?"

"I would like to call in that favor."

The woman quirked an eyebrow. "So soon? I assume this has to do with the STO ship parked around Eden's End and your upcoming trip to Earth?"

Damn Lokis, he cursed internally. "I see you're as well-informed as always. Yes. I would like you to go with me to work on repairing the Asgardian Union's image."

"Very well," she stated a moment later.

Alexander had his avatar blink in surprise. "That simple?"

"Did you expect me to decline the offer?" she asked with a smirk.

"Maybe. I expected a bit of pushback at least considering the Asgardians' feelings toward the STO."

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Katalynn laughed. "It's understandable that you might think that, but even if I didn't owe you this favor, I would have agreed to come. Now that the Asgardian Union can stand on its own, one of my goals is to open up communications with the STO. We don't need to like each other to do that. I would have done this at some point, but there always seemed to be some fire that needed to be put out. With the ships you repaired for us and the new ones based on Asgardian designs that we contracted you to build, I have less concern about leaving Union space, and I can hardly turn down your request."

It was true that Alexander had built three more cruisers for the Lagertha. They were all based on the Valkyrie's original design and took less time to manufacture than his other designs. The only change was to the engines. They got a full BSE engine package.

Because Katalynn had asked for the ships as quickly as possible, she had declined the other upgrades that made the Valkyrie so much deadlier. A cruiser was still a very dangerous ship, though, and Alexander had included a few minor upgrades like the tac-display, which took no extra time to install.

"What about the war with Xin?" he asked. That was the only real sticking point that had kept him from reaching out sooner.

"Thanks to your ships, we can rotate crews in and out to keep our frontline people fresh. If you can keep them coming, I don't see any problem with my absence."

"That shouldn't be an issue," Alexander confirmed. "I guess that covers any concerns I might have had. As long as you're not worried about anything else, we should be good. I plan on leaving in a little over two months. Is that enough time?"

"Asgardian ships are always ready to go at a moment's notice. Two months is more than enough time."

Alexander nodded his avatar. "I will need to install a transponder aboard Valkyrie, assuming that is the ship you are taking." He knew Katalynn well enough to know she probably wasn't willing to enter STO space aboard anything other than her flagship.

She confirmed that a moment later. "You are correct. As you are well aware, the Valkyrie already has the transmitter for a transponder; it was just never needed in our space, and it was never intended to enter STO space, so we saw no reason to acquire one."

They finished up their conversation, and Katalynn confirmed they would be arriving in a little over a month and a half.

That was good. He wanted them to arrive as close to their departure date as possible to limit any friction that might occur between the Vice Admiral and Char. Not that the outdated destroyer that was Blueridge could do anything against a heavy cruiser like the Valkyrie, but it was best to err on the side of caution.

Now that he was done with that, it was time to get back to work. He had just over two months to finish up any improvements he wanted to include before they left.

***

The second prototype generator was half the size of the original, making it about the size of a pool ball instead of a softball.

It worked fine, but the testing concluded the generator was also half as effective. Considering he wasn't even close to the size he wanted for the end result, he needed to fix that issue before moving forward, or the finished product wouldn't even be strong enough to stop subsonic rounds.

The first thing Alexander tried was adding a second ring to each layer, ninety degrees apart from the original ring. That did increase the charge strength slightly, but not enough to make up for the loss from reducing the generator size. What it did do was extend the field duration by a full second. While not what he was originally going for, he made a note of the improvement.

He spent the next week refining and tweaking the field emitters so they were much thinner. Then he stacked four inside the sphere instead of two, alternating them.

That proved to be the right move. The new generator was able to produce the same output as the original prototype that he and Lucas had tested. It also had the added benefit of the extended duration without adding the second portion to the rings.

Four seconds still wasn't much, but it was an improvement.

Alexander repeated that process for the third prototype, shrinking it down to the size of a mandarin. The field was once again weaker, so Alexander thinned the field emitters even more, and now the sphere held four pairs in alternating order.

The purple plasma bouncing around inside was mesmerizing to watch, but Alexander quickly realized another new issue. By reducing the size of the sphere, he was reducing the overall capacity of the nanotube supercapacitor.

As a result, the field strength was much weaker, even with the four pairs of emitters, even if the field duration had ticked up to nearly five seconds now.

Even with the accuracy of his printers, there was probably a considerable amount of empty space within the supercapacitor structure, so Alexander came up with an idea to fix that. He developed a machine similar to a diamond press to compress the structure of the nanotubes and reduce as much wasted space as possible. His hope was that it would turn the loose collection of tubes into a solid mass without losing the properties he needed from the substrate.

Getting that result without crushing the nanotubes was turning out to be a challenge. It all came down to heat.

Keeping the material cool while the machine did the work was paramount, otherwise, the carbon structure would change too much. With the change to the capacitor, he also needed to readdress the trigger mechanism since that empty space was now taken up by additional nanotubes. Fixing that was simple enough.

When the process was done, Alexander had managed to compress the grape-sized supercapacitor down to the size of a pea. He should be proud of discovering such an effective way to condense nanotubes, as it was sure to have advantages for energy storage, but it was such a slow process that he wasn't sure how it could be mass-manufactured. It took two weeks just to complete a single storage device.

Setting that compressed core into the nano-assembler and aligning the print was also proving extremely difficult. He did manage it in the end, but he would need to figure out a better method in the future, or simply stick with the larger generators.

The end result was a sphere about the size of a ping-pong ball. Alexander changed the exterior as well, it was no longer made entirely of clear diamond. Instead, it was now made from black diamond, with clear diamond speckled throughout to make it look like a starfield, lit from within.

Looking closely, you would be able to see the palladium-coated rings slowly rotating inside to produce the plasma arcs. Their precise movements reminded Alexander of expensive watches from back in his time.

The orb was attached to the end of a platinum chain that hid hair-thin wires along its length.

At first glance, it looked like a very expensive necklace, which was the entire point. It was all theater, so the necklace would not look out of place around the neck of a little girl.

Alexander created an entire wardrobe of clothes, with motion sensors littered throughout, to go along with the necklace.

Yulia's bodyguards would also be getting upgraded augment gear, which included the tangerine-sized generators as well as an upgrade to the armor as a whole. It was now much more discreet. The armor plates were replaced with a composite mesh of his own design. Alexander also used the integrated systems he picked up from the corporate ship to condense the power systems of the armor, giving them twice the run time.

Last but not least was Dog, which got yet another upgrade. Alexander enlarged the robot by about ten percent, which was just enough to shove a pseudo-computronic core inside. Then he transferred Dog to the new chassis, which was made entirely from the corporate composite and integrated systems.

Dog could now roam autonomously for a full week before needing a recharge, and it also had a field generator inside, along with a laser and pulse module.

With the redundant security and upgrades, Yulia would now be as safe as possible. If anyone was dumb enough to try and harm her during their visit, they were going to be in for a really nasty surprise.