Bend Around the Wind by Scyllaya

Chapter 20: Juyu and Bee [1]

Chapter Twenty

Juyu and Bee Part I

Andromeda Galaxy

Filipima System

Wobb-Lar's Orbit

Loki walked into the workshop to find Stark sitting with his forehead down on the workbench, practically oozing misery.

'I'm almost afraid to ask,' Loki said.

'My wires suck,' Stark replied. His voice was muffled a little bit, because he did not raise his head to speak.

'Want to elaborate?' Loki asked. Stark finally straightened up and gestured at the mess on his workbench.

'That's one thing that we finally managed to make armour out of the alyndor, but my suit needs more than just that,' he started.

Loki was more than satisfied by the blade he forged for himself and while Stark's craftsmanship was a little crude, it was more than suitable. Loki spent quite some time engraving runes after his chest-plate and vambraces were done, then he made some random patterns as well. Stark was not one for decorative armour, so his design was plain and simple. No sense for finery. At least the laser chisel Stark insisted was better than a traditional one, truly turned out to be better. Loki was quite satisfied with the serpent-pattern he engraved on his vambarces. The chest plate still needed work, but it was also ready for use. It was just tight enough and comfortable and while it was not a colour he was used to wear, the deep dark red metal looked fine enough. Stark did not work on anything else for Loki so far, he was busy with his own armour.

'Yes, I am well aware,' Loki nodded.

'The alien tech on the ship is clashing with my original design. The alyndor is awesome, so I could start out with the Mark V design without having to worry about losing strength, which is great, but the power in the generators is messing everything up.'

Loki understood no real information from that explanation. He looked at all the tech on the workbench.

'Explain the problem,' he said.

'You wanna help?' Stark asked.

'Just explain it, in terms I can understand. Lose the technicalities.'

So Stark did. How he needed to power up the suit without having to rely on his reactor completely, because he could not make a replacement for it, since he lacked the resources to recreate the element powering it, so he had to add a second power source to the suit. Then he explained how the energy in the generators, that he successfully tapped into to power their forge and the rest of the workshop, was behaving slightly differently from normal electricity and thus his wiring - the conductors - were not suitable. They were not able to conduct energy without burning up. The ones he used to bring power to the workshop were thick large cables and could handle it, but his suit required thin wires and cables, it was a lot more delicate technology after all. His original design clashed with this type of energy and he could not think of a way to incorporate a transformer in the suit, nor did he know what material could be used as a better conductor or how to strengthen the cables without making them considerably thicker.

Loki looked at the small device Stark used to experiment with the energy coming from the generators. How the glow was a deeper, but brighter colour than the lightning blue in Stark's chest. It felt different as well. Loki managed to move forward with his exploration of the cosmic energies, not enough to harness them, but enough to be able to sense them properly. The energy coming from Stark's reactor felt different than the one coming from the generator. So the problem was fairly obvious. Conductor, something that transferred energy... He looked at the burnt wires Stark was clearly experimenting on before and the new ones he didn't fry just yet. Obviously he needed something better, more suitable to transfer or ever store...