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“Yes, sir.”
Their elevator passed through the rotating section of the ship and Captain Keyes felt his weight ease anda flutter of vertigo. He grabbed hold of the rails.
The doors opened and they entered the cavernous engine room. The ceiling was four stories high,making this the largest compartment in the ship. Catwalks and platforms ringed the hexagonal chamber.
“Here’s the new reactor, sir,” Hikowa said.
The device perched within a lattice of nonferric ceramic and leaded crystal. The main reactor ring wasnestled in the center of what appeared to be two smaller reactor rings. Technicians floated nearby takingreadings and monitoring the output displays on the walls.
“I’m not familiar with this design, Lieutenant.”
“The latest reactor technology. ThePillar of Autumn is the first ship to get it. The two smaller fusionreactors come online to supercharge the main reactor. Their overlapping magnetic fields can temporallyboost power by three hundred percent.”
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Captain Keyes whistled appreciatively as he scrutinized the room. “I don’t see any coolant pipes.”
“There are none, sir. This reactor uses a laser-induced optical slurry of ions chilled to near-absolute zeroto neutralize the waste heat. The more we crank up the power, the more juice we have to cool thesystem. It is very efficient.”
The smaller reactors flickered to life and Captain Keyes felt the ambient heat in the room jump, thensuddenly cool again. He removed his pipe and tapped it in the palm of his hand. He would have torethink his old tactics. This new engine could give him new options in battle.
“There’s more, sir.”
Lieutenant Hikowa led him back into the lift. “We have forty fifty-millimeter cannons for point defense,with overlapping fields of fire covering all inbound vectors.”
“What is our least defended approach vector?”
“Bottom fore,” she said, “along the lay line of the MAC system. There are very few gunnery placementsthere. Transient magnetic bursts tend to magnetize the weapons.”
“Tell me about the MAC gun, Lieutenant. It looks under-powered.”
“It fires a special light round with a ferrous core, but an outer layer of tungsten carbide. The roundsplinters on impact—like an assault rifle’s shredder rounds.” She was talking so fast she had to pauseand take a deep breath. “This gun has magnetic field recyclers along the length that recapture the fieldenergy. Coupled with booster capacitors, we can firethree successive shots with one charge.”
That would be very effective against the Covenant energy shields. The first shot, maybe the first pair ofshots, would take down their shields. The last round would deliver a knockout punch.
“I take it you approve, Lieutenant?”
“To quote Ensign Lovell, sir, ‘I think I’m in love.’ ”
Captain Keyes nodded. “I notice we have several single ships and some Pelican dropships in the bay.”
“Yes, sir. One of the Longswords is equipped with a Shiva nuclear warhead. It can be remote-piloted.We also have three HAVOK warheads onboard.”