“You rang?” Yan asked as he wound his way through the last bits of the maze that was the ass-end of the engineering labs.
Moirrey was sitting on a stool like a long-term patron at her favorite bar, just waiting for the bartender to make it back to her. Yan had gotten used to eccentricities. Not counting Digger and his people, Yan figured he could read her better than anyone, except maybe Jessica.
She wasn’t off, per se, but this was a much-more-serious Moirrey than the world probably even knew existed. The look in her eyes when she turned to face him was something he might have expected in a ten-thousand-year-old mummy rising up from a crypt in a nightmare, coming for his soul.
“The information I am about to show you is not located in Auberon’s main memory core,” she said simply, reaching out one hand and pivoting the screen she had been studying, far enough around for him to see the complicated schematics.
Yan sucked in deep breath quietly, hearing her speak like this. Normally, Moirrey’s accent was so thick he felt like he had to parse it with an encyclopedia. When she got serious, when she got deadly, she suddenly sounded like a newscaster selected for eloquence.
Gonna be one of those days.
“I might not put it there. Ever,” Moirrey continued in a hard, level tone. “Or I might. There isn’t anyone else in the squadron who could even understand the technical implications, and my sister is one of the few who would understand the political ramifications.”
Yan knew which she Moirrey was referring to. He had gotten drunk enough with her and Marcelle over the last few years to have been admitted to that particular girls’ club.
Rather than answer, Yan walked close and began cycling the image. Pull back. Zoom in. Pivot. Spin. Snap up the power curve and requirements.
A long, quiet ten minutes passed. Yan wasn’t sure he had moved. Moirrey had been a statue.
Finally, he turned to her.
“Would you call that thing a Type-5 beam?” he asked, feeling his face scrunch up.
She thought about that for a second.
“Technically, it might ratchet up and become a Type-6, if we can through-put enough power without blowing the coolant system apart,” she replied in tight voice. “Five point six in this configuration.”
Yan nodded and pushed a button that projected the image into the air between them, so he could rotate it more easily and envision the harness that would hold it.
“This thing’s the size of a heavy cruiser, all by itself,” Yan observed.
“Which suggests a station-mounted posture, at least in the beginning,” Moirrey completed his thought. She had gotten good at that, too. “A battlestation of a scale comparable to a Starbase. And about as mobile.”
“And even less functional,” Yan continued the thought, completing hers. “Especially since you would have to move an entire station as a turret in order to aim it. I presume you want something else? I’ll point out that most of your need is going to be three or four rings of generators and capacitors, which are not in this design.”
“I woke up this last Tuesday with an itch,” Moirrey said. “Jessica doesn’t have me on a watch rotation, for the most part. Nor does Oz. Caught Nina and bounced ideas off her over breakfast, then came down here and been working pretty much non-stop since then. Ev’n Digger’s gettin’ antsy, n’stuff.”
Now she was grinning, like the normal Moirrey, and not the weird scientist that had apparently taken over the woman’s body.
“So what do you need from me?” Yan pivoted.
“You’n’Pops’r the best,” she replied, deadly serious with a goofy grin. Moirrey again. “But Iowerth’s too tr’dition’l fer some a’this. Too linear. We needs ta goes way outside th’box here.”
She paused to root around on the tabletop for a moment, picking up a piece of printout and handing it to him.
Yan noted only a handful of needs. Dimensions. Input, throughput, output. Cooling.
That was it.
“I needs ya ta builds me one somethin’ capable of using that,” she said. “Jessica will convince Fleet to build us one.”
“One?”
“Bucko, that’s St. George’s lance,” she said, that angry dragon of legend appearing in her eyes. “We needs ta slay one wyrm. N’I’m already tryin’t’figger hows to shield against it afterwards. No’ be easy. We kills Buran and hopes peace breaks out, like dandelions, but sure as hell not telling the old Red Admiral ’bouts this. New Red Admiral be twitchy ’nuff.”
“How soon?” Yan asked.
“Afore we gets home,” Moirrey said. She took a deep breath and transformed again. “That weapon might be the single most dangerous thing I ever design in my life, Bedrov. Guard the secrets with your soul.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Yan said, stuffing the paper into his pocket and turning to leave.
She had already tuned him out. Gone back to whatever place Moirrey the goofball had to hide herself when she had to do things like this. When she had to go build super-weapons capable of killing thousands or millions, instead of just making better glitter bombs.
Yan supposed that was how she stayed sane. More glitter.
But he had a few ideas. Now he just needed to kill a few electronic trees figuring out which one would work best.