The JHC Drive

[Zeppy]

The Graf Zeppelin’s core room has changed dramatically since the day the ship had first been delivered. The old core had been a pitiful thing, barely enough to power the cruise engines to full capacity; the core that had replaced it was superior in every way, more powerful, more ports and a complicated control system to allow for customised power redirection. The core stood in the middle of the room, a massive cylinder made of some translucent but solid material that Jack can not name. Behind the material Jack can barely make out the sphere of the reactor itself through the bright redish-orange glow that emanates from within.

“How long Joel?” Jack asks the man beside him.

Joel looks up from his data pad, “not long now, a minute or two at most”. A minute passes before Joel speaks again, “all critical systems have been switched to backup power, shutting down main core”, he announces as he pulls a large lever on the control panel. The glow of the core slowly dims to a small red ember before disappearing altogether; the lights in the room, and probably the entire ship, dim noticeably.

“Beginning crystal integration”, George announces from his control panel; a circular section on the top of George’s control panel slides upwards to reveal a glass cylinder identical to the ones the crystals were stored in in the lab. George pushes a button and the cylinder is released with a hiss; Jack takes the cylinder and replaces it with another glass cylinder, this one containing one of the three crystals. It fits into place with a hiss and George pushes the control to lower it back into the control panel, “link established, zero-point-energy extraction operational, ready to initialize link with main reactor.”

Joel signals a group of his men on the other side of the room and they begin to pull levers and push buttons on the large control panel controlling the main core. Suddenly the core flares to life, flooding the room in an orange glow, “link successful”, George announces calmly, “beginning zero-point-energy extraction, activating JHC Drive gravitational shielding at five percent power, rate of entropic decay is holding steady at point zero one percent of initial per second.”

“Bring gravitational shielding to one-hundred percent.”

“Gravitational shielding is at 20%... 40%...60%...80%...gravitational shielding is operating at maximum capacity; entropic decay is holding at two point five two percent of initial per second; time before failsafe activation and crystal deactivation… thirty-seven seconds. Ready for JHC Drive activation.”

“Begin shutdown sequence, it’s too early to rush into this.”

“Gravitational shielding deactivated, JHC Drive deactivated; begin energy transfer?”

Jack nods, “Reroute power to the Daam K’Vosh crystal.”

George begins pushing buttons on his control panel, “redirecting power from non-critical systems to Daam K’Vosh crystal... entropic reversal has begun, the estimated time until artificial space/time is at maximum safe capacity is eleven to thirteen hours.”

Jack turns to George, “restore power to non-critical systems and divert only excess power to the crystal.”
George nods, “new estimated time is fifteen to eighteen hours.”

Jack turns to Joel, “run a full diagnostic, make sure we didn’t miss anything.”

Joel simply turns to stride towards the other engineers, already barking orders, “Rand, you have the engines! Mat, take the Sensor Arrays! Perrin, stop being so useless and get to work on the shields and inertial dampeners! Lan…!”

Jack tunes Joel’s shouting out and moves over to help George with monitoring the core.

---

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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