Star Hawk Rises

94: CHAPTER 13: Down to the wire!


I giggled madly as I finished the code and placed it onto the computer chip, checking and double-checking to make sure it worked as intended. I had worked on it for hours and felt drained and tired as I glanced over to the cot that had come out of the wall some time in the last hour. Making me think something was monitoring my sleep deprivation. I glanced back at the table, making sure it was perfect, then saved it and closed it down, turning the table off before stumbling over to the cot and falling into it. I let out a sigh of content and was soon snoring.

I don't know how long exactly I slept for, but when I woke up and stumbled back over to the table feeling refreshed and in need of a serious cup of coffee. Booting the table back up and login in didn't take love, but the timer that showed I had 23 hours left made me a little nervous about getting the life support and cabin built in time. I decided to start with the life support system so I could build the cabin around it.

I stopped a few hours later, realising that I had started building the cabin covering the sections that were already complete, pausing when I needed to build a bit of the life support systems that interacted with the cabin. Twenty minutes later I found myself scrapping a section of it so I could rebuild it, sleeker and stealthier, wanting the vents hidden, so people wouldn't easily notice where the fresh air was coming from. About an hour later, I was halfway through building the maintenance access door to the life support systems when a thought about the door to the chair under the weapons room crossed my mind. A smile quickly appeared on my face, as I looked over all the maintenance doors throughout the ship, and then I looked at the rooms behind them. Moments later, a new plan slowly formed in my mind and I began scrapping a few of the doors.

The doors into maintenance areas throughout the ship soon became hidden panels that you had to push against to open. I had carefully worked them into the walls, so that if you didn't know they were there, you most likely wouldn't notice them. I slowly moved on building the life support systems again. I was almost done when a new thought crossed my mind and I glanced at the hidden panels thinking I could make it better but wasn't sure how. I saved the blueprint and started to pace around the room, keeping the problem in view as I thought about it. I felt like I was missing something, but I wasn't sure what it was.

I glanced at the clock, noting that I had roughly 12 hours left, and the next glance confirmed the ship was almost complete. I just needed to add the final touches and run it through the test. A moment later, I made a decision and saved the design and logged out of the table. Quickly leaving the room, I ran across the deck to the door out of the engineering department and using the map on the wall a few times made my way back to the builders emporium.

As I entered the shop, the gentleman behind the counter started his greeting only to glance up at me halfway through it and stop mid-sentence as his eyes narrowed at me.

"what?" I asked nervously as I slowed my pace now inching towards the kiosk instead of walking.

"You caused me a lot of trouble the last time you were in here… are you here to take up an entire day's worth of kiosk time again?"

"uh, no sir, I'm just here for an access panel licence." I stated, as I inched a little closer to the kiosk, as I glanced at a hologram that looked like a Citation jet. It caused me to blink in confusion a few times after I read 'atmosphere entry rated' when I glanced back at the man who was pointing to a kiosk near him.

"use that one so I can keep an eye on you" he stated simply before looking back down at his computer.

I nodded my head and quickly rushed over to it as I gave the jet's hologram another glance as ideas popped into my head on how I could make my design more streamlined, sexy, less like a box with wings. It didn't take me long to find what I was after on the kiosk, but there were options, and they slowed me down as I tried to decide what one would work best for what I wanted. After a few moments of indecision, I decided to go with three options that I could then combine and build my own with. I quickly completed the purchase and another glare from the shopkeeper as a request for payment was sent off to the core elder in charge of me, was sent and paid. I was on my way back to the blueprint table with my new licences.

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I almost burst through the door back into the blueprint table room, but I did manage to close the door behind myself to insure my privacy before lunging at the table. Once logged in and had noted I was down to 7 hours left, I quickly brought up my design and then added the three new access panel licences to the blueprint. I began to slowly go over them, pulling what I wanted and tossing the rest into the trash. Once I was done, I had a mess of features and pieces that I was slowly putting together, slowly adding new things. Once it was complete and attached to the first maintenance door that hid the life support, I started to giggle softly as it slowly built into a laugh of evil glee.

It took me a bit to calm back down, so I could go over the software to ensure the owner of the ship would be properly registered and able to add people to the authorised list. Then I got to work adding the sleek holographic design to the other hidden doors. Enjoying the fact that the owner would have to place their palm in the spot that a palm print scanner was located. If the palm did not match the one on file, then nothing would happen, you wouldn't even know your palm had been scanned. However, if the palm was on file then a green hand would appear just under your own and the scanner then would request a mental authorisation code to ensure the hand on the scanner was not from a dead guy.

I then moved on to reshaping the cabin and fixing the ship's design to make it look more like a fighter plane, crossed with the skiff I had flown around the solar system. I glanced up at the clock, noting I had 4 hours left, and grimaced as I forced myself to keep calm and work slowly. I didn't want to rush and make a mistake. I made sure not to sacrifice anything from the design just to fit into the aesthetics of the hull, but some of it did get smaller and a couple of times I had to rebuild a piece so it would still be functional as intended only from a smaller piece.

When I was finally done, I took a few steps back from the table to stare at what I had built, and I couldn't keep the grin off my face, it was beautiful. When I glanced up at the clock, noticing I had 68 minutes left, I quickly rushed forwards, saving the blueprint and opening the menus and submitting the design for testing. A moment later, I stepped back and watched the little guy board the ship and begin its testing. The countdown paused the moment the ship left the hangar to begin its test flights, and I let out a breath that I hadn't known I had been holding. The previous flight tests that Liu Runchu had done, had taken more than an hour, so I was glad to see that time was not included in the time I had to use the table.

He slowly worked through the flight manoeuvring in space, going faster and faster as he went through them repeatedly, before moving onto atmospheric entries. I was glad to see him still alive after the first few entries when he started playing with new angles and speeds. I didn't get worried until the last one when he shot through the atmosphere at 14 Gs. I noticed the artificial gravity plates in the ship straining to keep the pilot from feeling all of it.

The ship landed, and the pilot hopped out running around completing some sort of task that involved moving a bucket of water from one well to another before getting back into the ship and taking off. He then flew around, running the ship through more manoeuvring tests before landing and doing the bucket run again. After he was done, he flew the ship as fast as he could back up into space, doing some barrel rolls as he passed through the atmosphere. This caused me to question the little guy's sanity before he docked with the space station. The test completed, declaring the ship an atmospheric entry rated ship with a rating of upper inner sect design certified.

I let out a long sigh of relief and glanced at the clock seeing it had started ticking down again causing me to let out a soft laugh. I was about to get to work on fixing the gravity plates to make them stronger and able to take the strain better when I paused.

"Why should I fix it?" I asked myself slowly as I began to consider what would happen to this design in the future.

Tapping the side of the blueprint table as I glanced at the submit design for review button that would apparently send the blueprint to be licensed under my name. If it was purchased by anyone, then I would get paid. However, that led me to wonder how important that was if I went back to the federation, which I knew I would since my entire clan was there. On the other hand, I really didn't like leaving something unfinished when I knew I could fix it. I let out a groan of frustration, knowing full well I would not be able to resist fixing it.

I had quickly gotten back to work strengthening the gravity plates and building more around the ship to ensure no matter what direction the gravity was coming from, there would be a plate there to help compensate. This reduced the stress on the pilot. I was down to thirty-one minutes when I submitted the ship for testing again. I watched as the same little guy boarded the ship and began running it through the tests again. However, the only tests I cared about were the atmospheric entry ones. It did not take long for him to reach them, and I watched while holding my breath as he went through it repeatedly, slowly getting faster as he smashed into the atmosphere at differing angles. I smiled, letting out my breath in relief when the system registered he had passed 15 Gs. I was about to nod my head in satisfaction when a part of the ship exploded, sending the pilot hurtling out of the ship to his death.

The simulation ended a few seconds later with a failure to complete and a warning that the design had caused a catastrophic failure in the hull due to stress caused by the gravity plating. Glancing at the clock, I quickly got to work, knowing I needed to either reverse what I had done or strengthen the hull so it could take the stress. However, if I did that and something else failed, I'd be out of time and screwed.

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