Progenitor
Chapter 17
The next morning the two of them took a shower together before going to breakfast. After everyone had finished breakfast, Amy explained the changes she had made the night before to the rest of the crew. She also explained that whoever was on duty would either be walking around the base or be in the conference room off the control center. Amy also asked that Jake split his workers up to cover all three shifts. Amy then told everyone there would be a base-wide meeting at 10am here in the dinning area, and she hoped that all personnel would attend.
At 10:00 everyone was gathered in the dinning area when Amy entered, dressed in an uniform, followed by Sam, also in uniform. Sam stepped to the front of the room and called out "All personnel ATTEND HUT". As everyone got to their feet Amy came to the front of the room.
"Please be seated. Would Kate come forward and stand to my left; Sally come forward and stand to my right facing the room" Amy said very officially.
When both girls were standing where Amy wanted them, Amy once again spoke "We are gathered here today to award these two ladies their wings. I have been notified that both Kate and Sally have passed Ground School and their Flight Practical Exam. Pilot Kate, front and center".
Once Kate was standing in front of her, Amy received a pair of gold wings and a light-blue jumpsuit from Sam. Amy pinned the wings on above Kate's left breast, stepped back one step and presented Kate with the jumpsuit with one hand and took Kate's hand with the other hand. After the handshake Amy and Kate saluted each other. Then Amy repeated the ceremony with Sally, except her wings were silver. After both girls were once again standing in front of and to the side of Amy, Amy made this announcement "As I said both these ladies have graduated and are now full fledged pilots, Kate as a fighter pilot and Sally as a shuttle pilot. Congratulations to both of you for a job well done. Now if John, Ted, and Jake would come forward."
Once all three were lined up to Amy's left, she presented each with a new jumpsuit; red over black for Ted and John, and brown over black for Jake. Each jumpsuit had one to two small silver discs on the collar. After presenting each with their new jumpsuit, Amy announced that all personnel would need to start wearing their uniforms when on duty. Also, that uniforms would be given to each member of the crew as soon as they were ready.
"I know that this seems a little strange, especially to those of us who were the first to come here, but I thought that he accomplishments of our two new pilots deserved a little prompt and ceremony. Since we are growing in numbers, I also felt that we needed more organization and a visible chain of command. I know that I welcomed you all before but I wanted to do it again but in an official way. As all of you are now aware, this is a base somewhere out in space. This base was abandoned over 2000 years ago by the people that built it, our Progenitors. We are all descendants of that race, or races. It is only now that we have evolved enough to make use of the facilities here." with that said, Amy suggested that they all return to work.
Just about everyone noticed that for the first time Sam was carrying a sidearm of some sort. As soon as the ones on duty in Engineering return they found a stack of uniforms waiting, and each had a name on it. Jake distributed the uniforms and told them to change one at a time please.
It was around 1pm when John came to Jake and asked a favor. He wanted Jake to expose a crystal to the radiation of the core for about 30 seconds to see if there was any change in the structure of the crystal afterwards. Jake had no sooner placed the crystal than there was strong power surge throughout the base. Alarms went off, lights flickered, and in general there was chaos. After everything returned to normal Jake asked just what the crystal was composed of. John told him that AL had asked that a memory crystal that had become unstable be placed in the core to reformat it's structure. Jake called AL and asked him why this had happened. AL was at a loss to explain it also. But did say that the power was now at three times the output than before the insertion of the crystal. Jake asked AL if there were any more of this type crystal that he and John could analyze so as to see what had caused the power increase. AL said there were about 30 of the extra crystals available in the computer section, they were replacements in case one was damaged.
After obtaining another crystal, a small one, Jake and John analyzed it's composition. It was supposed to be pure Silicon, but it showed to have some type of contamination in it. Jake and John examine each of the remaining crystals and found each had the same contamination. When AL looked at the results he too was not familiar with the contamination that was found. But was still very interested in the reaction caused by the radiation. John suggested that they reclaim some of the solar panels that had quit working due to micro-meteor strikes and see if the contaminate was present there also. After having a droid collect a few of the panels they analyzed them and found the same contaminate present.
John got an idea. He asked that the panels be stripped of all the silicon and the Silicon be used to produce more of the crystals but this time make them not more than 1/2 inch in diameter. After AL had produced several crystal rods varying in diameter from 1/32 to 1/2 inch in diameter, John had AL construct a small chamber with a very small amount of the nuclear material inside. John, with Jake's help, connected the chamber to a dead-end circuit so as not to over load the base again. As John placed each rod into the chamber they recorded the amount of increase, or decrease, in power output. The results were amazing; with a crystal rod only 3/8's inches in diameter the power went from 1 kilowatt to 1 gigwatt if 90% of the rod was inside the chamber. By experimenting with several rods they found that with just the 1 kilogram of nuclear material and four rods they could produce 2 terawatts of power. John had AL run the computations several times and when AL told them that with the amount of material they had in the reactor at that time they could power the whole world of Earth for about 1000 years before having to add more nuclear material if they used 30 of the rods 1 inch in diameter! And that the power output increased greatly depending on how close the rods were to the nuclear material.
It was at supper that night that Jake and John told the others about what had happened and their findings. John also told them that the contaminate they had found was unknown even to AL. From what AL could determine, the contaminate seemed to come from some of the micro-meteors that were always striking the surface outside. If they collected all of the panels they should have enough "contaminated" Silicon to last for a very very long time. They had solved their power problem! And found a new source of energy that was clean. Amy was very impressed with this discovery, as were the rest of the crew that knew about it.
Now with just a few modifications they could change the power source for all the ships on base and provide even more power than had been available before. Also with the increased power, the ships would be faster and have an almost unlimited range. In a private message to Amy, AL told her that now the ship could be re-launched into space after the rest of the repairs were completed and the engines were recalibrated for the new energy source. Amy relayed this information to the original crew of five. Amy then told them that she wanted to meet with the original five plus Sam and Tom tomorrow morning, but it was not to be common knowledge.
Jake spent a very busy night getting as many of the modifications done as possible. He only had two helpers on this shift and had them to make minor modifications in Engineering while he made the modifications to Kate's Fighter and Sally's shuttle, which for now was the Captain's Gig. After the modifications were completed on both craft, Jake asked AL to remotely pilot the craft and test them out so as not to endanger either of the girls in case he had made a mistake. AL reported that both craft were performing as they should with an increase of 90% over the pre-modified state. Also, AL noted that the weapons had an increase of 50% in power now.
Jake barely was able to drag himself to breakfast, after setting out the modifications that needed to be completed by the other two shifts. After everyone else, namely the Russians, had left the area Amy asked that they all follow her to her Ready Room for a short conference. Once everyone was in place, and AL had sealed the door, Amy started the meeting.
"With the discovery made yesterday by John, Jake, and AL in regards to the power situation we now need to find a way to increase the crew to at least minimal staffing for operations in space. Sam has completed her part of the removal of records of each of us on Earth. There is no record of any of those present at this time. Ted, I would like for you and John to work on finding more crew that have a high enough percentage of Progenitor DNA to be helpful. The people you find should have at least 60% DNA. Compile a list of them, no matter what nationality they are, along with as much information on them as you can safely get. Unless someone objects, I feel we should concentrate on the following areas first:
Engineering
Security
Flight
Navigation
Research and Science
Medical
In that order. Jake, I know you are tired but I would like for you to get some more of the flight-craft modified tonight. I don't know that we will need them any time soon but feel they will be important soon. Kate and Sally, please become more familiar with the operation of the newly modified craft and the differences in how they perform. I think for the time being we need to keep the information about the weapons very close in among ourselves. I would also like each of you to talk with those under you, or assisting you, about anyone that they know that would be helpful to our cause and might be approachable to moving in here. Any comments that you have would be welcome." Amy explained.
"I must agree that we need more people in Engineering, especially with the modifications that need to be done. But as we get more people we will need more to watch over them and take care of any problems that arise with the increase in personnel." Jake added.
"It would help if we could find either policemen or military personnel for Security, as they will already have some training and be used to handling weapons. I know a few I would love to have up here and a couple of them would have no problem with relocating. With your permission, Amy, I would like to contact them" Sam added.
"Submit their names and all the information you can to Ted for them to follow-up on" Amy replied.
"It would also be good if we could find some pilots, already trained. That would shorten the time needed to get them up to speed in our craft. " Ted injected, and Kate nodded in agreement.
"If nobody else has anything, then I think we need to get to it. Jake go to bed and get some sleep, you will be busy again tonight." Amy said as she dismissed the meeting.