Long Shot Engineering Inspection/Test Flight
Darrel already knew how the Maneuver Drive supposedly worked, but he was interested in just how it did that. The fact that the ship could get twice as much thrust from a system was mind-blowing.
It uses some sort of gravitic capacitance... each engine loads the capacitor which is then released in micro-second bursts. By alternating these bursts, neither engine is actually being used at full capacity continually.
He can find no schematic in the computer that shows just how this is done, but he does learn that the two M-drives can be used normally at half-power so that they function as M-1.5 drives. Or just one engine can be used at a time.
He can't say with certainty that this is Imperial design, but it is certainly advanced technology (TL14). He's also pretty sure that the engines aren't more than 20 years old.
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Walter already knew one of the 'secrets' of the Jump Drive, namely that it was more efficient. It actually required less energy than a normal system. Unfortunately, the way it was able to do that was buried within the device. Short of dismantling it completely, he has no way to know how it works.
He does discover that there is no schematic for it in the computer, only for how it is installed. When he runs a standard diagnostic on the system, however, he does discover that the lanthanum grid on the hull has a denser placement and a redundancy factor. What that means is that the ship can still jump with 20% of the grid disabled as damaged systems can be bypassed.
The design appears to be Imperial, and the parts that he can see are clearly advanced technology (TL 14).
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Khea and Kaengarr tackle the Power Plant. It appears to be in working order, had its last purge just under 60 days ago. The design is Imperial, but something that was manufactured within the last 10 years. It's 10% more compact, and actually has a 12% reserve!
This reserve doesn't show up on the ship's displays until the main level drops to 1%. It isn't normally displayed in engineering either, but she notices the 'secret' slide bar on the monitor because it is labeled in Throk.