Drifting Dark

Chapter 5: Critical Hardware

"It's the dark generator," Cassie whispered, her hands resting on top of the railing.

Aqeel kept going, taking the rickety steel stairs down a level to the shuttle bay floor. He made his way over to the computer terminal attached to the giant metal cylinder. He left Cassie leaning over the metal bar, with her mouth hanging wide open.

But she couldn't help staring at it.

The thing was huge, nearly reaching the ceiling of the bay, and even wider than the room she'd be bunking in. It made the shuttle in the adjacent bay look small by comparison. As if it wasn't already imposing enough, the entire generator was glowing purple, giving the whole area a surreal atmosphere.

She hadn't been certain about what to expect, information on dark generators was highly classified, but it wasn't this. At the same time, she could hardly believe that she was finally here, about to get first hand experience with equipment that others could only dream of.

It was even newer than she'd hoped, definitely newer than anything else she'd seen on the ship so far. Plain steel panels covered most of the structure, hiding almost all of the internals. Plain except for the rivets along the edges and the air vents dotting the surface. Despite the internal temperature regulation system, this place probably got a little chilly when it was up and running.

Because dark generators didn't only consume Ellidium. They also consumed heat.

She didn't pretend to understand the physics of it all.

She just needed to know what kept it running, what might cause it to break down. Her eyes fell on the heavy-duty oval-shaped door, the maintenance access portal, with it's big red locking wheel. Like the thick metal exterior, it wasn't just there for aesthetics.

Earlier dark generators had been known for their tendency to implode.

Nowadays, that was a rare occurrence. Newer designs, with improved safety protocols, had resulted a huge drop in accidents. People still tended to feel uneasy around them anyways.

Partially because of the propaganda surrounding the restricted technology.

Both planetary governments argued that they were still too dangerous to be used on passenger vessels, but everyone knew that was just an excuse to keep the technology secret and under their control. It was one major advantage the planets held over the independent stations, their ability to develop new technology. The cloaks the rebel ships used were less effective and much less efficient. Not that the stations were concerned about efficiency, considering their fuel surplus since all trade had come to a halt.

The dark generators from Earth were supposed to be better, safer. She didn't buy that either.

Putting an inch of steel around the thing made everyone feel better, but that was it. There was no physical shielding that could protect you from an implosion. The real keystone was the automatic shutdown protocol, which could react much faster than any human, was way more reliable, and would turn the whole thing off before a runaway reaction could even begin.

That was what she'd bet her life on, not the shiny metal shell, a very planetborn design choice.

This was their style, hide all the dirt underneath a fancy exterior, no matter how impractical it was. Knowing them, any minor repair to this thing would probably require crawling around tiny tunnels while trying to interpret overly complicated schematics. Even something as simple as swapping out a busted valve probably had a hundred different, very detailed steps, making a job that should take ten minutes into an hours-long endeavor.