M.J. Markgraf
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BSE Chapter 4-32
🕑 Added 2025-03-06 13:00:15 +0000 UTCAlexander was in his workshop, overseeing Yulia while she worked on her buggy design.
Occasionally she would glance over and he would nod or shake his head slightly at a change she made. That was becoming less and less as she grew more familiar with the design software and gained some much-needed confidence in her choices.
At the rate she was putting the vehicle together, it would be ready for her thirteenth birthday which was a few months away. The new heavy assault frigate would be completed a month prior to that, and he could leave as soon as it was, but he had decided to postpone his trip to let Yulia have one more birthday with her friends before she went with him for an extended time.
It was hard to believe that eight months had passed since Harlow’s attack and defeat. During that time, Alexander’s fleet had ballooned in size from six surviving combat vessels to almost eighty ships. Most of that number consisted of Stingray gunships and almost all were automated vessels, but he still counted those.
He also increased his control ship count to twenty, almost tripling his mining output.
The only downgrade to his fleet was the fact he was down to one cruiser and one destroyer that was currently under construction.
Tempest would be complete in a few days and then it would be time for Vanguard to go under the knife for its upgrades.
If Alexander’s timing was accurate, Vanguard would be completed a few weeks after the new Orca heavy assault frigate. Having the ship completed before he left would be a huge weight off his mind. With most of the new ships going toward the frontlines to fight off Xin, Unokane would be short of a full fleet for the time being.
He was already earmarking one out of every three Shark class corvettes, one out of every ten Stingrays, and one out of five Swordfish corvettes to system defense to help mitigate that problem.
The Swordfish corvettes were a low-priority ship at the moment since they wouldn’t be going to the frontline with his other automated vessels. Thanks to Krieger’s suggestion, Alexander planned on using them exclusively as picket ships between Unokane and Varlen until those systems were all covered. After that, they would discuss further uses for the stealth corvette.
Most of Alexander’s reason for excluding them from the war effort had to do with the time and cost of manufacturing the vessels.
Now that Alexander was paying more people to bring in materials, he had to be more mindful of his cash flow. It was still well in the red and he was relying on all the money made from the pirate bounties as well as the few sales from the Jarls and Char to keep his current rate of progress. Once that money ran out, he would be forced to consider options to make BSE profitable. That would probably come in the form of selling some of his inventions to the Asgardians.
Alexander glanced up as Yulia stifled a curse. He could see why, she had hit some button in the program, and her entire model had shifted.
“Use the undo command,” he stated calmly when the girl looked back at him in a panic.
“Thanks, Alex!” Yulia stated happily as she found the button and undid her mistake.
He smiled and turned his attention back to the item that was coming off the printer. It was another bearingless motor, but it didn’t have the seals like the previous designs did.
Alexander was hoping that by making the gap between the shaft and static field generator small enough, he could prevent atmospheric infiltration from collapsing the field.
He placed the half-horsepower motor in a small vacuum chamber nearby and pumped the air out.
Sensors inside and outside the motor would determine if air got inside once he started slowly adding pressure back into the chamber.
It was a simple test, which is why he was conducting it while Yulia was working.
The motor started up in the vacuum without issue. No surprise there. Air started to be pumped back in slowly and Alexander kept a part of his concentration on the test while he kept most of it on Yulia.
When the chamber was nearly half of the planet’s air pressure, the sensors started showing odd readings, pulling Alexander’s attention back to the test.
He glanced into the chamber and saw small sparks jumping from the motor casing to the sensors.
“You’ve got to be kidding,” he stated.
Yulia paused in her work. “Did I do something wrong, Alex?”
He shook his head. “No, you’re fine.”
She smiled and returned to her work while Alexander focused nearly his entire attention on the static field being generated outside of the motor.
It was weak, but that wasn’t what got him excited. The field shouldn’t be there at all.
Had he really made a breakthrough in how to generate static electricity with the field generators by working on what essentially amounted to a children's toy?
It sure seemed that way.
Alexander increased the power to the little electric motor until he heard a popping sound and the unit ground to a halt inside the chamber, which now stood at standard atmospheric pressure.
The static field had kept getting stronger, he could tell by how it was sparking against the sensors and pushing them outward.
Stronger was very subjective when referring to the field the motor produced. He would need to figure out how to make it many times stronger if he wanted to protect Yulia with it, but now he at least had a starting point.
“I think it’s done, Alex,” Yulia stated as she stepped back from the holo.
Alexander returned his attention to his daughter. “You think?”
The girl paused and chewed on her lip while she looked over her design. “Umm. I believe it’s done. Can you look it over?”
Alexander shook his head. “Not this time, sweetheart. This is your design, you must have faith in what you build. If you think it’s done, let's print it and find out.”
“What if it breaks or doesn’t work?” she asked with worry.
“Then you will have learned something important,” he stated. Alexander wasn’t worried about the vehicle breaking apart or Yulia getting hurt. The tweaks he made ensured she would be safe. The only real worry was that some of her changes might not be the most optimal for the buggy’s design. That wasn’t the end of the world though.
Yulia seemed to waffle in indecision for a bit before nodding. “It’s done, for now.”
Alexander put a smile on his avatar. “That is a good answer. Things you design can always be changed later. Sometimes it’s more important to get your design built and tested than it is to make sure it’s perfect on the first try.”
Yulia perked up at that. “It’s a prototype!” she said in excitement.
Alexander nodded.
While Alexander would have liked to explore the breakthrough with the static field, that could wait. He spent the next few hours printing the parts for Yulia’s buggy. He could have printed it all at once, but part of Yulia’s learning was the ability to assemble what she created.
Once the parts were complete, everything got moved to the secured section of the parking garage. He wasn’t worried about anyone stealing the parts, moving them to that room was more to keep them out of the way. It also gave Yulia a convenient place to work on assembling the vehicle, which would take far longer than designing it had.
Yulia helped carry the smaller parts, but most of the buggy was moved over by his auto carts. The one exception was the mono-piece frame, he carried that.
Yulia’s eyes widened when they entered the garage. “Is this all for me?”
“Mostly,” he admitted.
He realized when Yulia first started the buggy project, that she was going to need a place to work, and proper tools to do that work. Instead of having her come to him constantly to borrow tools, he outfitted a part of the garage as a workshop. It also helped him if he needed to work on repairs to the auto carts, so it was worth the effort.
Yulia squealed in delight and ran over to examine all the tools, completely forgetting about everything else.
“Careful around the service pit!” he admonished.
She slowed, which was good enough for him.
The pit opened to the floor below, but there was a walkway that led up and a platform that could adjust its height to allow her to more easily reach the underside of the vehicle above, while also allowing Alexander to use the same pit space without having to crouch.
He would have used a lift instead of a pit, but the pit was much safer, assuming she used it properly.
There was a sliding plate that could cover the pit, but it was situated on the ceiling of the floor below, which left a two-foot drop if you got careless.
Unlike a normal mechanic’s shop from back in his day, the one he built sported all sorts of engineering marvels.
There was an overhead crane, and four articulating robotic arms hanging from the ceiling. It was all operated by a pseudo-computronic core, ensuring Yulia couldn’t hurt herself while using them.
Not that she would get access to those right off the bat. She would start with the hand tools and work her way up as Alexander familiarized her with the other items.
With a quick command to the system, two sets of short lifts rose from either side of the pit. Alexander set the frame he had been carrying on those four lifts where he had specifically added the jacking points to prevent the frame from sliding, tipping, or falling once it was in place.
The frame was composed of aluminum, so the magnetic feature on the lifts wouldn’t work. The material choice had been Yulia’s. She had taken a liking to aluminum when she realized it was lighter than the steel he had originally built their go-carts from.
One day she would figure out that there were even lighter and stronger metals, but he left that discovery for her to make.
Alexander spent the rest of Yulia’s off day from classes helping his daughter arrange the parts in the space and showing her where the tools and emergency kit were. She wasn’t allowed down here without him, but that didn’t mean she wouldn’t sneak down here on her own, he knew her well enough to realize at some point she would probably convince someone with access that she was allowed down there unsupervised.
When that happened, Dog would be there to hopefully keep her safe, but ensuring she knew where the medical kit was located was cheap insurance if she somehow managed to injure herself.
After a few years of being a father, Alexander had come to realize that you sometimes had to let children make mistakes and choices on their own, even if those choices were bad ones.
Once the parts were laid out, Yulia insisted they couldn’t simply leave without doing any work on the buggy.
Speaking of bad choices. Even though it was half an hour past her bedtime and she had school in the morning, Alexander agreed that she could spend no more than an hour putting parts on the buggy.
Yulia tried arguing for more time, but Alexander put his foot down. She was going to regret the lack of sleep in the morning already, but Alexander wasn’t going to send her to class completely dead on her feet.
Comments
Zachary Patterson
Thank you for the chapter!
Cosmic Cat
I couldn't help, but think think of the separatists from star wars. Specifically why they automated warfare with droids. Still, cool stuff!
