Chapter 10 - Something Fishy
- Location
- Ontario, Canada, Earth
Chapter 10 - Something Fishy
27 May, 3025
'Okay, lessons learned,' Rowan thought to himself. He had just recombined the nanites from the mech and the dropship in order to pass on important information.
'Number one. High temperature nanites are not the same as extreme heat nanites.' It turned out that his nanites on the mech had been perfectly happy with normal mech operating temperatures, but still ran into issues if the mech started significantly overheating.
'Number two. Nanites that are just outside of their maximum temperature tolerances can still operate for several seconds before they die, and even dead nanites can be consumed by recyclers to produce fresh feedstock.' Learning that had been costly, but he had been able to operate on half measures until he finally got a few extreme heat nanites up and running.
'And finally, number three. ROB is a bastard.' The one who had sent him to this universe was clearly in that category, since having his nanites destroyed hurt, which should not be possible.
Altogether he had learned some extremely valuable information from riding aboard a damaged mech, but he would need to rebuild and rethink before he could do that again.
The pain of dying nanites as he filled in the cracks in the fusion core with cubic boron-nitride had been like grabbing a hot pan and being forced to not let it go as you had to navigate a house with it. It was distracting, and painful, and there wasn't really an alternative if you wanted to get things done. He had managed to patch the core eventually, with a combination of extreme heat tolerant heat-dissipation nanites, some freshly replicated extreme heat fabricators, and a steady cycling of controllers that he didn't have time to properly replace with their extreme heat versions. It had burned out more than half of his controllers simply getting the basic patch in place, but he had, and had gained the ability to retreat to the mech's cockpit in relative safety without the mech melting down or detonating it's ammo reserves, which he counted as a win.
Moving forward, he was going to have to have a thin coat of extreme heat nanites around the mech's fusion core, and probably the other primary heat producers on the mech as well, like the weapons' heat blocks and the mech coolant system's primary exchanger. The extreme heat nanites couldn't actually operate at faster than a snail's pace under normal circumstances, but he really didn't like not having options if things started getting that hot again. Rowan got the feeling that he had been lucky that none of the ammo had cooked off this time, since that would have cost him all the nanites in the mech without the ability to pass on information about how they had died. It also bumped up the importance of being able to remote-connect to different parts of his swarm.
Idly, he consumed more of the old fusion reactor in the junkpile to produce a few extreme heat rated controller nanites. Hopefully he would be more ready for next time.
—
El Colegio, Weldry, 28 May, 3025
Badr was working on getting the replacement 300 rated fusion core bolted in place inside the splayed open Orion, when he heard his name being called and took his head out of the access hatch. "Yes?"
"Come take a look at this," came the voice of Rena, their newest full mech-tech. She had just recently graduated from being one of the League of Brass' permanent general astechs as she had proven to have a good head on her shoulders.
He wiped his hands on a rag and walked over to where Rena was examining the old fusion core. "Oh? Is it finally cool enough to examine properly?"
Rena was hesitant in answering. "Yes? But that's not… why I called you over. Look."
She was pointing to the crack in the fusion core's shielding, where she had already removed the damaged casing around it.
A crack that was visibly sealed with an off-white plug of material with a very familiar sheen. Badr shared a confused look with Rena. "Is that… ceramic armor insert? How did it manage to get in the crack?"
Rena gave a helpless shrug. "Mabe it melted and flowed in there?"
Badr was already shaking his head. "Impossible. At atmospheric pressure, it evaporates to dump heat before it melts. You can't melt it without extreme pressures."
Rena looked even more confused at his answer. "So… maybe it condensed there after evaporating?"
Their eyes were both drawn to the casing that she had already removed. "None on the casing," Badr noted. "-so either it condensed in exactly the right location without touching the casing and without penetrating the fusion chamber itself, or… what? It was constructed in place?"
Rena scratched her head. "I guess so. I can't think of any other way it got in there like that."
Badr grabbed a grease pencil out of his rear pocket before outlining the perfectly plugged crack. "Can you please cut this section out for me? If nothing else, I'd like to keep it. Nobody would ever believe us otherwise."
She nodded, already searching their racks of tools for an appropriate cutter.
Badr was still thinking though. "-at least this explains why the core started cooling down on its own. Don't know how in the hell it happened, but it explains the whys at least."
Out of morbid curiosity, he grabbed a small flashlight and peered in the other cracked casing, only to get a shimmering reflection from the bottom of the hole. "-grab this section too, will you, Rena? Looks like it got corked as well."
—
2 June, 3025
Rowan was working on decrypting some of the human radio chatter while absentmindedly applying his signal processors to reduce the background noise when he noticed that half of the noise was actually adjacent radio channels providing some crosstalk interference. It wouldn't have been as obvious, except for the fact that he was recording each channel simultaneously, and noticed an uptick in noise when multiple adjacent channels were engaged at the same time.
He was half way through the process of recreating a radio broadcast from the noise on the two adjacent channels when he realized that his idle use of excess processing power might have actually given him an idea.
Sticking to tight beam broadcasts for his testing, Rowan replayed some of the human's radio chatter from earlier, but overlaid his own data on top of the signal as quiet noise. While it barely affected the quality of the channel, he could get the majority of the additional data out of the carrier wave if he applied signal processing to the received signal on the far end.
Admittedly, it wasn't a very broad channel, so he would be strictly limited to passing messages rather than a full uplink between groups, but he would be able to pass simple messages between different blobs of nanites so long as the radio channels remained open.
It would be fairly limited in scope, and he would need to intercept the human's broadcasts at both ends in order to inject his signal, but he now had a way to keep various blobs in touch without alerting anyone to his presence.
—
El Colegio, Weldry, 3 June, 3025
Ozer knocked on the door to the meck-tech breakroom off to the side of the mechbay. He spotted Badr and walked over to him. "You wanted to see me, Badr?"
Badr looked up from the chunk of metal he was staring at. "Yeah. Just wanted to let you know that with the spare fusion core installed in your Orion, I've cleared it for operations again. We're still swapping out one last laser driver on Hector's Blackjack, but other than that, your lance is ready to go again. I've cleared you for missions with the boss, once your burns heal up."
Ozer nodded happily. "That is good news. Thanks Badr. My burns are pretty much over the worst too, so I'll let Alona know we're ready to rock and roll again. Was there anything else?"
Badr looked like he was about to dismiss him, when he had an idea. "Yes, actually. Could you keep an eye out for anything… odd with your mech? Just uh… making sure that the spare fusion core is up to scratch, you know?"
"Odd how?"
Badr looked at the piece of metal in his hands again before answering. "Just… anything out of the ordinary, like your fusion reactor cooling down on it's own towards the end of the excitement last week."
Ozer nodded. "Sure. I'll keep you posted."
"That's all I ask."
27 May, 3025
'Okay, lessons learned,' Rowan thought to himself. He had just recombined the nanites from the mech and the dropship in order to pass on important information.
'Number one. High temperature nanites are not the same as extreme heat nanites.' It turned out that his nanites on the mech had been perfectly happy with normal mech operating temperatures, but still ran into issues if the mech started significantly overheating.
'Number two. Nanites that are just outside of their maximum temperature tolerances can still operate for several seconds before they die, and even dead nanites can be consumed by recyclers to produce fresh feedstock.' Learning that had been costly, but he had been able to operate on half measures until he finally got a few extreme heat nanites up and running.
'And finally, number three. ROB is a bastard.' The one who had sent him to this universe was clearly in that category, since having his nanites destroyed hurt, which should not be possible.
Altogether he had learned some extremely valuable information from riding aboard a damaged mech, but he would need to rebuild and rethink before he could do that again.
The pain of dying nanites as he filled in the cracks in the fusion core with cubic boron-nitride had been like grabbing a hot pan and being forced to not let it go as you had to navigate a house with it. It was distracting, and painful, and there wasn't really an alternative if you wanted to get things done. He had managed to patch the core eventually, with a combination of extreme heat tolerant heat-dissipation nanites, some freshly replicated extreme heat fabricators, and a steady cycling of controllers that he didn't have time to properly replace with their extreme heat versions. It had burned out more than half of his controllers simply getting the basic patch in place, but he had, and had gained the ability to retreat to the mech's cockpit in relative safety without the mech melting down or detonating it's ammo reserves, which he counted as a win.
Moving forward, he was going to have to have a thin coat of extreme heat nanites around the mech's fusion core, and probably the other primary heat producers on the mech as well, like the weapons' heat blocks and the mech coolant system's primary exchanger. The extreme heat nanites couldn't actually operate at faster than a snail's pace under normal circumstances, but he really didn't like not having options if things started getting that hot again. Rowan got the feeling that he had been lucky that none of the ammo had cooked off this time, since that would have cost him all the nanites in the mech without the ability to pass on information about how they had died. It also bumped up the importance of being able to remote-connect to different parts of his swarm.
Idly, he consumed more of the old fusion reactor in the junkpile to produce a few extreme heat rated controller nanites. Hopefully he would be more ready for next time.
—
El Colegio, Weldry, 28 May, 3025
Badr was working on getting the replacement 300 rated fusion core bolted in place inside the splayed open Orion, when he heard his name being called and took his head out of the access hatch. "Yes?"
"Come take a look at this," came the voice of Rena, their newest full mech-tech. She had just recently graduated from being one of the League of Brass' permanent general astechs as she had proven to have a good head on her shoulders.
He wiped his hands on a rag and walked over to where Rena was examining the old fusion core. "Oh? Is it finally cool enough to examine properly?"
Rena was hesitant in answering. "Yes? But that's not… why I called you over. Look."
She was pointing to the crack in the fusion core's shielding, where she had already removed the damaged casing around it.
A crack that was visibly sealed with an off-white plug of material with a very familiar sheen. Badr shared a confused look with Rena. "Is that… ceramic armor insert? How did it manage to get in the crack?"
Rena gave a helpless shrug. "Mabe it melted and flowed in there?"
Badr was already shaking his head. "Impossible. At atmospheric pressure, it evaporates to dump heat before it melts. You can't melt it without extreme pressures."
Rena looked even more confused at his answer. "So… maybe it condensed there after evaporating?"
Their eyes were both drawn to the casing that she had already removed. "None on the casing," Badr noted. "-so either it condensed in exactly the right location without touching the casing and without penetrating the fusion chamber itself, or… what? It was constructed in place?"
Rena scratched her head. "I guess so. I can't think of any other way it got in there like that."
Badr grabbed a grease pencil out of his rear pocket before outlining the perfectly plugged crack. "Can you please cut this section out for me? If nothing else, I'd like to keep it. Nobody would ever believe us otherwise."
She nodded, already searching their racks of tools for an appropriate cutter.
Badr was still thinking though. "-at least this explains why the core started cooling down on its own. Don't know how in the hell it happened, but it explains the whys at least."
Out of morbid curiosity, he grabbed a small flashlight and peered in the other cracked casing, only to get a shimmering reflection from the bottom of the hole. "-grab this section too, will you, Rena? Looks like it got corked as well."
—
2 June, 3025
Rowan was working on decrypting some of the human radio chatter while absentmindedly applying his signal processors to reduce the background noise when he noticed that half of the noise was actually adjacent radio channels providing some crosstalk interference. It wouldn't have been as obvious, except for the fact that he was recording each channel simultaneously, and noticed an uptick in noise when multiple adjacent channels were engaged at the same time.
He was half way through the process of recreating a radio broadcast from the noise on the two adjacent channels when he realized that his idle use of excess processing power might have actually given him an idea.
Sticking to tight beam broadcasts for his testing, Rowan replayed some of the human's radio chatter from earlier, but overlaid his own data on top of the signal as quiet noise. While it barely affected the quality of the channel, he could get the majority of the additional data out of the carrier wave if he applied signal processing to the received signal on the far end.
Admittedly, it wasn't a very broad channel, so he would be strictly limited to passing messages rather than a full uplink between groups, but he would be able to pass simple messages between different blobs of nanites so long as the radio channels remained open.
It would be fairly limited in scope, and he would need to intercept the human's broadcasts at both ends in order to inject his signal, but he now had a way to keep various blobs in touch without alerting anyone to his presence.
—
El Colegio, Weldry, 3 June, 3025
Ozer knocked on the door to the meck-tech breakroom off to the side of the mechbay. He spotted Badr and walked over to him. "You wanted to see me, Badr?"
Badr looked up from the chunk of metal he was staring at. "Yeah. Just wanted to let you know that with the spare fusion core installed in your Orion, I've cleared it for operations again. We're still swapping out one last laser driver on Hector's Blackjack, but other than that, your lance is ready to go again. I've cleared you for missions with the boss, once your burns heal up."
Ozer nodded happily. "That is good news. Thanks Badr. My burns are pretty much over the worst too, so I'll let Alona know we're ready to rock and roll again. Was there anything else?"
Badr looked like he was about to dismiss him, when he had an idea. "Yes, actually. Could you keep an eye out for anything… odd with your mech? Just uh… making sure that the spare fusion core is up to scratch, you know?"
"Odd how?"
Badr looked at the piece of metal in his hands again before answering. "Just… anything out of the ordinary, like your fusion reactor cooling down on it's own towards the end of the excitement last week."
Ozer nodded. "Sure. I'll keep you posted."
"That's all I ask."
