Down in engineering, Alarci has forced himself into a pedestrian mechanic's jumpsuit, an outfit largely unchanged from that worn by spacers and sailors for untold thousands of years, and is carefully applying a few grease stains to make himself fit the appearance of the redecorated engine room when the ship quivers. He frowns at the unexpected vibration, not sure of the source. It was too long and drawn out to be from the docking collar, and the wrong direction besides, but it also wasn't from anything else he recognizes. He eyes the false bulkhead separating the engine room and the moth chamber, then pressed one ear against it.
The noises inside have changed; subtly, yes, but there is a distinctly different pitch to the familiar rhythms. Every ship, and every engine of those ships, have their own sounds, no two alike. Even ships of the same class, produced by the same yards or churned out by the thousand in automated factories, grew swiftly unique from different stresses and maintenance patterns. Like any engineer worthy of the title, he had quickly learned to recognize those of the Wasp. So often the first sign of a problem would be a minor change in background noise long before alarms started.
Alaric checks all the readouts, flicking a switch the show the real es rather than invariant-only version he'd cooked up. Nothing seems to be amiss, despite the change between the present to past calendrical zones, but still.
"I'm a scientist, damn it," he mutters to himself, "not a veterinarian."
The moth drive is one of the most intriguing bits of technology the hexarchate has, in his opinion, even if the idea of a living ship is a bit dubious. There were ingenious weapons, yes, but ultimately dead was dead. (Usually, unless you were unlucky.) The bigger-on-the-inside wasn't unique; difficult to implement unless you got your calendar right but so useful many people tried it anyway. But harnessing whatever that was at the heart of the moth and using it as a stardrive - now there was something interesting. So much to potentially learn and write about!
Such as, for example, whether the hexarchate calendar allowed the thing to live, or merely allowed keeping it bound and not eating people. Maybe best to run another diagnostic just to make sure everything is working order...
[I wasn't sure if I should be up with polite society, so for now I'll tug on that plot thread with the engines.]
Engineering
The noises inside have changed; subtly, yes, but there is a distinctly different pitch to the familiar rhythms. Every ship, and every engine of those ships, have their own sounds, no two alike. Even ships of the same class, produced by the same yards or churned out by the thousand in automated factories, grew swiftly unique from different stresses and maintenance patterns. Like any engineer worthy of the title, he had quickly learned to recognize those of the Wasp. So often the first sign of a problem would be a minor change in background noise long before alarms started.
Alaric checks all the readouts, flicking a switch the show the real es rather than invariant-only version he'd cooked up. Nothing seems to be amiss, despite the change between the present to past calendrical zones, but still.
"I'm a scientist, damn it," he mutters to himself, "not a veterinarian."
The moth drive is one of the most intriguing bits of technology the hexarchate has, in his opinion, even if the idea of a living ship is a bit dubious. There were ingenious weapons, yes, but ultimately dead was dead. (Usually, unless you were unlucky.) The bigger-on-the-inside wasn't unique; difficult to implement unless you got your calendar right but so useful many people tried it anyway. But harnessing whatever that was at the heart of the moth and using it as a stardrive - now there was something interesting. So much to potentially learn and write about!
Such as, for example, whether the hexarchate calendar allowed the thing to live, or merely allowed keeping it bound and not eating people. Maybe best to run another diagnostic just to make sure everything is working order...
[I wasn't sure if I should be up with polite society, so for now I'll tug on that plot thread with the engines.]