Helt shrugged, “In the end, it was easier to just tie everything together and let the Silverman Integrator see everything as one power source. If any of them have a problem, they can be taken out of the loop and things go on normally.” He nodded toward the massive reactors, “Every reactor has a backup cooling system, and the deck beneath our feet has a full load-balancing accumulator bank for each reactor. It may not be the classiest and most intellectual way to have done it, but it guarantees simplicity and dependability.”
They walked a little further around the core to an enclosed structure that had been built between two of the Berlin reactors. Wills recognized it as a modified version of the original engineering station. Helt pressed the lock plate to open the door and they went in.
The small room contained a “U” shaped console covered with input panels below a wall covered with two rows of screens. Only one of the three chairs was occupied, but all of the screens were operating; some showed system readings and others showed views inside and outside of the ship.
Helt indicated the man sitting in the center chair, “This is Chief Alesson; when we completed the reactor work we dropped the external power line and have had one of the reactors supplying all needed power. Of course, since then we have had someone on watch whenever a reactor was operating; which has been, pretty much, 26/7 for the last year. The Chief here had the honor of being the first to bring all reactors up to idle/stand-by when we heard your announcement.
“How did it go Chief? I assume there were no problems as the Weasel is still here, you’re still alive, and I don’t smell smoke.”
Chief Alesson pivoted his chair to face the trio, “Actually, Captain, I’ve been waiting to talk to you about that. I’ve done a thousand reactor start-ups over the years, but never anything like this. Normally, I would have expected a system this large to be about halfway through the sequence now instead of long-since finished. It should have been a series of cross-lights and primary pinch over-temp warnings. I was half expecting to shut it down and go manual. The Silverman AI has only done single starts as we tested each installation; I think it learns things far faster than we expected.”
Helt looked at Wills with his eyebrows raised, “I guess we knew it would work, just not how well.”
Wills scanned the screens and found the two at the center of the cluster that showed the operational status of the eighteen reactors; all of them showed a dead smooth green line at the lowest level. The accompanying accumulator screens showed perfect balance.
Wills nodded and spread his hands to indicate everything around them, “Very nice, Captain; my compliments to you and your crew. Which way to the bridge?”
Helt smiled broadly at the praise and indicated the elevator across from the engineering station.
#
The ride upward until they entered the crew decks was like climbing past tall buildings; the view was impressive to say the least. They passed the five decks that were for the crew and came to the last stop on the elevator’s panel.
Even though the highest button indicated it was for the bridge, the elevator actually stopped one level short of it. This deck was for the primary computers and electronic control systems. The structural support core had stopped at the deck below, and the ten elevators were the only part that rose to this level. At this level, the back doors of the elevator now opened so that the riders stepped into a room directly above the core. This level and several others would be off limits to passengers during normal operations.
They faced a stairway that went up to the bridge; all of the elevators ended at an identical stairway. Wills stepped out and stopped; he turned, went around the side of the stairway, and down a short hallway to a heavy, armored door. As the door opened, all three of them noticed a slight ozone smell of electrical equipment.
The large room would normally have been jammed with multiple computer systems and other electronics that controlled everything from the plumbing to the Isolator Drive. A lot of it had been removed and replaced with the Silverman Integrator that now sat at the center of the room with a short cable of hair-thin optic fibers connecting it to a Director Gate system mounted just above it.
Wills had last seen the silver, forty centimeter diameter, one meter tall cylinder ten years ago when it had been removed from the vault in the HQ building. It had been the primary cargo item on the Berlin and had been damaged in the crash. It was supposed to take over as a planetary and system integrator and coordinate operations. Its molecular circuitry had been put together by the latest experimental form of nano manufacturing and its cost was unbelievable. The damage that destroyed most of its connectivity ability and the discovery of Forest had turned it into a gold-plated brick.
For years it sat in the vault until someone got the bright idea of turning it into a ship controller to replace the Weasel’s worn out system that wouldn’t have been able to handle the Berlin’s reactors anyway; it still had more than enough connectivity for the systems in a starship. The idea was a good one, but Wills smiled as he remembered his panic at the thought of turning something that cost more than the entire payroll of Archer into a tool to drive nails.
He turned and saw the smiles on the faces of Helt and CeCe; they remembered.
“Alright, so I was hard to convince; it was useless and this was a good idea. But it still bothers me that this thing cost more than this entire ship.”
As they turned back to the door, CeCe said, “Actually, sir, about fourteen times more than this entire
