The JHC Drive

[Zeppy]

A long trip later the Icarus emerges from a Jump hole in the system that they had originally departed from; Jack pulls his helmet’s microphone down in front of his face, “Icarus to Graf Zeppelin, do you read? Requesting rendezvous coordinates”.

His helmet’s speakers crackle to life, “welcome back sir, asteroid movements were interfering with our attempts to install the JHC Drive so the head of engineering decided to move us to a clearer position”, replies a woman’s voice. “We are currently in sector H3 and thirty kilometres above the system’s Z-plane”, there is a short pause and Jack can hear muffled conversation through his helmet’s speakers, “err…the Head of Engineering would like to know if there is an chance of…implosion…when you come aboard sir.”

Jack chuckles, “tell Joel that implosion should not be a problem… although electrocution is a concern. Please ask him to scrounge up any insulation he can find on the ship and move it to the labs.”

“…Yes sir.”

The speakers once again go silent in his ears and he pushes the microphone up away from his mouth again. The cockpit’s door hisses as it slides open and George stumbles inside, looking slightly green; he walks over to the co-pilot’s chair and site down hastily. “I can’t wait to get off of this ship”, George mutters.

“Not long now George, a five minute trip in a straight line. Have the crystals lost any charge since we first retrieved them?”

“If they have then it must be an incomprehensibly miniscule amount, scans aren’t showing any difference at all. I’m a bit worried about them though, how can we… they aren’t like anything we’ve come across before! The DGMs and Daam K’Vosh trade lanes had recognizable similarities with Sirian technology; there were power conduits and resistors, power supplies, computers and things we could understand or at least emulate the functions of! These crystals… I don’t think they were made, I think they were grown.” George pauses for a moment and calms down, “how can we possibly replicate them? How can we even begin to understand how they work without any similar Sirian technology, technology we understand, to compare it to?”

Jack frowned at that, “why do you think they were grown?”

“There are minute differences between the crystals, slight density differences in different areas, differences in diameter and length, and if you look closely enough each one is a slightly different colour.”

“It’s possible that those discrepancies were caused during their construction, or maybe there were slight differences in the raw materials used in their creation?”

George shakes his head, “no, the Daam K’Vosh were a race of perfectionists from what I have seen. There was not a single difference between the Daam K’Vosh trade lanes, or the DGM’s; they went through a lot of trouble to set up the Privas cluster and I think they would have been very thorough in checking their equipment.”

Jack nods, “that does make sense; but it’s also a possibility that the differences in the crystals were deemed to be of no consequence. I think we should reserve judgment for now, we can figure out how to replicate them later, for now let’s concentrate on getting the drive working.”

George nods slowly, “yes that’s a good idea”, suddenly he smiles, “after all, a hard thing is nothing but many easy things, each one performed so closely after its predecessor that they appear to be a single action.”

Jack stares at him for a while before shaking his head and moving his attention back to the controls, “one day I will catch you without a quote or saying at hand… I can’t say I look forward to that day though, it will be truly unnerving.”

George chuckles, “I can’t say that I look forward to it either”.

---

Reseach into the Kansas sector

Research into the Privas Planetary Cluster

Research into Alien "Trade Lanes"

A new ship, Jack Denton's time on Freeport 11

The JHC Drive

An Unscheduled Vacation of Sorts

The above are meant to be read in order, if you jump in at "A new ship" you are going to be lost.

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