Sins and Fortunes

[Sombs]

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October 11th, 826 A.S. - New York

The Catport had left Cortez and took the lanes to Manhattan. Arriving there, the transport moved close to Trenton Outpost. This was something that caused confusion among the passangers. All four of them were on bridge. Sombra and Noel at the consoles, Sherry on the bunk, reading something on her PDA while Leon had made it himself comfy in Sombra's memory foam beanbag chair, listening to music via earbuds. When Sherry however realized they were not moving anymore, she looked around the angle over to the cockpit.

"Why are we not moving?" the Commander asked, watching Sombra moving off her seat slowly.

"Erh, there is some kind of battle going on at Fort Bush. So we'll wait here for a bigger convoy and tag along. I really hate this corridor, to be honest. New York and Colorado are the places where I get taxed the most," she explained and stepped over to Noel, who looked up at her. "While we're waiting here, you could take a look at the machines."

The boy nodded and stood up as well, following Sombra to the back corridor. Leon looked over to them for a moment, but figured he wasn't required. Shrugging, Sherry continued reading her PDA.

Noel was always rather concerned when he saw the long thin corridor connecting the bridge with the rest of the ship. Whales were practically just an exoskeleton with modular containers attached, forming the main bulk below the ship. After being used to the Apahanta's heavy armor and deadly weaponry, being here on a ship this fragile was slightly intimidating. Luckily Sombra's usually lightheaded nature was enough of a distraction. Once they had left the bridge, she took Noel's hand and they moved down the corridor together.

The Catport's engineering section was rather big compared to the rest of the ship, given the ship's nature. Big, and yet the innards of the ship were stuffed together, leaving only so much space to manouver in between. "Why so quiet?" she asked him as they moved through a jungle of cables and machines.

"I'm not quiet."

"You weren't saying anything. That's sort of what quiet means."

"Well, what am I supposed to say, then?" the boy asked her.

They stopped at a wide pillar of technology. There was a small vent, allowing to climb inside to a tube-like cavety. Sombra pointed at it. "You could tell me about what you and Leon are currently working on? I heard it's something big and important and everyone is excited about it."

The slim boy crouched into the vent. It was bright enough in there, and claustrophobia was not his issue. It smelled weird in there, though. "It's a recharger module for the jump drive batteries. Say, did you spill a peppermint milkshake in here?"

She nodded, which was something he couldn't see. So she felt stupid for a moment while looking at his feet disappearing in the machine. "I just nodded. Eh, well, not in there but somewhere here when I did some repairs."

"Why are you doing the repairs? That's something you should leave to people who know what they do." His voice sounded slightly muffled from where he was.

"Uh, I do know what I do, Noel. I'm not a mechanic but I know my shippie. She's still flying, after all."

Noel sighed, more inwardly. It was definitely heated in there and he started to sweat already. "Oh, okay, so you made an attempt to fix it, then spilled your peppermint milkshake here, it burnt slightly and then you left, leaving things as they were. You daft nut."

"Daft nut," she replied quietly, chuckling. "Tell me more about the recharger module."

She heard him opening the tool case as he needed to get something to fix what she could not. "Erh, well, it's meant to recharge the jump drive batteries. The Apahanta doesn't have the space to reliably store the energy for more than two jumps without recharging at a station. That means just one jump for going somewhere and one jump for returning. Each jump costs, according to Ezrael, about four point five million credits. Two jumps equalling nine millions already." He dropped a tool, which made Sombra cringe for a moment in surprise. She exhaled and made a few steps back and forth, listening to his explanation.

"For a billionaire like Ezrael, that's peanuts, of course, but still a whole lot of money in the long run. That and we are also dependant on third parties to refuel the jump drive batteries. So Leon came up with an idea a while ago, before I joined. So, when the Apahanta was stranded in the void, he invented a way of harnessing the radiation-based energy of a black hole, or a black hole-looking like anomaly to be more precise, to get some juice for the jump drive batteries while also fueling a shield that negated the gravitational pull of the black hole-looking like anomaly."

"Just say black hole, I don't care if it did have characteristics not matching those of a black hole," she said, sitting down next to the vent.

"Anyway," Noel began, followed by a few loud sounds coming from inside the pillar. They stopped a few seconds later. "Leon then tried to optimize this to, you know, enable the Apahanta to do that again without all the compromises. The Apahanta has something that is unique to it. No other ship has this experimental power core with this configuration of nomad technology parts. The Core altered the design of the current Mako to use a more streamlined power core with less questionable aspects."

"... yeah." This kind of technobabble was a bit too much for her. Nevertheless, she knew Noel was pretty happy about knowing these kinds of things, so she let him continue, smirking while peeking at his legs through the vent.

"The nomadic parts of the ship are super sensitive when it comes to radiation. This is something APM made use of in their stuff. But instead of taking the energy of the energy core to refuel the jump drive batteries, which is a pretty big alteration to the energy relay system of the ship and could fuck up the balance of the flow, so to say. I'm sure you don't want to know the details, anyway. So Lean came up with a passive recharging system instead, because space is full of radiation and the closer we get to stars and some other stellar bodies, the more radiation is present. Usually the amount of radiation is so incredibly tiny that you can't really do much with it, but if the Apahanta was to get close to a sun or other source of intense radiation, it would charge the batteries, in comparison, pretty fast. Not as fast as taking the energy from a station, but fast enough to allow us to jump around happily without needing to be worried about running out of jump juice."

"Like deployable solar panels!" Sombra exclaimed and smiled at Noel, who was on his knees for a moment to get another tool out of the case.

He smirked back at her, sweat dripping from his nose. "Yes, something like that. We thought about that for a while as well, but solar panels need a lot of maintenance and are quite inefficient, in comparison to the nomadic parts. They say the Nomads are fully reliant on radiation-based energy. Ezrael said that is only half of the truth, as a certain amount of energy comes from the entity that controls the ship. Mind juice, so to say."

"Wow. So you two are actually inventing new technologies. How are you going to name it? Isley-Baker Recharging System?" she proposed.

Noel closed the tool case and crawled through the vent over to her. She stood up with him. "Most of it was his idea, I didn't do much. If anything, this is his invention. Also, I fixed that thing, you connected the wrong wires. Your luck the ship didn't blow apart from that."

She squeezed him. "N'awww, thank you." Letting go for a moment, her hands moved up to his face and held his cheeks. "I have a reward that might blow you apart. Want it now?"

There was a moment of hesitation as he looked into her eyes. A drip of sweat running down to his chin. "I don't think Simone would allow me to receive the gift."

Sombra chuckled and pecked his nose. "Your loss, then..." Letting go of him, she made a few steps in the direction of the bridge corridor, then looked back to him. "Are you coming?"

"Ja. Yes, I mean." Exhaling audibly while she moved ahead, he remained where he was. The smell of burnt peppermint milkshake was still in the rather heated air. Reminded him slightly of Curacao. No wonder she was barely sweating. "... an entire week of that..."

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Templates: Character | Transmissions

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