[oom] Project Delivery

[dejah_thoris]

Dejah lowered the bike down from the lift, and rag in hand, wiped away the last few bits of dust.  She'd finished the radium drive housing in a fetching shade of cobalt blue, but other than that, the bike was black as soot.  The majority ot the modifications she'd made were activated by the onboard computational engine hidden behind a very simple cockpit control interface.  Inertial dampeners, aerodynamic stabilizers, cloak, and force shield were all activated by the driver and being pure energy, they were invisible until deployed.  However, the adaptable suspension did interfere with the original lines of the Buell RS1200.  Turns out repulsor technology looks absolutely nothing like wheels.

But she was fairly certain he'd be pleased with the final product.  Hell, she was even tempted to take it for a spin herself.  She stood back, wiped a bit of sweat from her eyes and beamed down at the thing.

It was always so satisfying to complete a project.

Comments

[hecu_marine]

There's been more than enough going on back home to keep Shephard busy for a long, long time. Which naturally means that he's coming here. Yeah, he needs to set a good example for his people by not pushing himself to a degree that they can't emulate, but... oh, hell, some days you just want to get your recreation the hell away from people, examples or no. Today's just one of those days.

Might as well go see how the bike's coming along.

[dejah_thoris]

Dejah sees him coming down the aisle and waves a hand. "Your timing is impeccable."

[hecu_marine]

"Hey there." Shephard waves back and picks up his pace to a jog. "That sounds mighty promising. What've you got for me?"

[dejah_thoris]

Dejah takes a step back and opens her arms wide, gesturing down to the Buell.

"Your steed awaits."

[hecu_marine]

Shephard lets out the kind of long, sharp whistle you ordinarily only hear from people who have just been presented with a check that has about four or five extra zeroes on the end. "Well, now," he murmurs as he moves forward to circle slowly around the machine. "Ain't that somethin'. Ain't that just some hell of a somethin'."

[dejah_thoris]

"The radium drive is push-to-start. The readout here should be fairly self-explanatory."

She beckons him over, urging him to take a seat.

"I tried to make it as intuitive as possible."

[hecu_marine]

He nods, takes hold of the handlebars, and swings a leg over. "Still feels right from this angle," he says. "Balance's pretty promising, too."

[dejah_thoris]

"I made note of the kinesthetic properties of the original, so you should experience a similar center of gravity as well." She pointed to the row of sensors across the bottom of the screen.

"You'll see your rear quadrants illuminated here, your fore quadrants here. The shielding is automatic, but you can control it here manually. In case you miss getting the bugs between your teeth."

[hecu_marine]

Shephard snickers. "Works for me," he says. "Anything else I ought t'know about before I push the button?"

[dejah_thoris]

"Braking is the same, propulsion is the same, steering is -- well, far more sensitive. Hence the inertial dampeners. You should be able to make extreme angle turns at speed, now. And you'll probably want to try that out at slower speeds, just to get a feel for it."

[hecu_marine]

"Good to know," says Shephard. "All righty, then. Let's do this thing."

He leans over and pushes the button.

[dejah_thoris]

The radium drive is near silent, but the other systems on board hum to life. It's not as loud as the original combustion motor, but it's easy to tell when the bike is powered up. A holographic head's up display appears behind the windscreen, with all the usual gauges and a few more to boot. Fuel levels are replaced with sensor arrays, long and short range. And there's a navigational system that was definitely outside the specs she'd shown him.

"I had room in the computational engines, so I added this. It's a self-taught cartographic algorithm. You can give it fixed points to navigate from and it'll build a map for you as you cross the terrain."

[hecu_marine]

"Fuckin' hell," says Shephard. "That is sweet. It ain't likely to up and wake up on me, is it? That ain't a thing that happens with y'all's computers back on Barsoom, right?"

[dejah_thoris]

"Oh sweet Issus, no. No, there's nowhere near enough room on board for that level of algorithmic expansion. No, it simply takes your anchor points and builds your map from that. I was hoping we could actually test it out on the garage here. I've run into a few patrons who keep getting lost down here. And it doesn't seem to be reconfiguring itself the same way the library does, so I figured, what the hell, let's give it a shot."

[hecu_marine]

"Hey, you git a ship like mine handed to you, you learn to ask these questions," says Shephard. "All righty. Let's go about checkin' out this whole deal."

Tempting as it might be to crank what used to be the throttle, this is a whole new beast he's dealing with here. He's just gonna roll it up far enough to feel the bike vibrating and let it start moving forward some before he accelerates to any great degree.

(Shephard refuses to die as a redneck joke. Sorry.)

[dejah_thoris]

The ride is smooth, but not completely disconnected from the road surface. He can feel a strange new set of forces at work, a gentle push or pull to his whole body, in three hundred and sixty degrees.

At twenty miles an hour, it doesn't feel much different to the original, save the absence of engine noise. At thirty miles an hour, he'll notice his hair isn't even ruffling in the breeze.

[hecu_marine]

Hm.

Iiiiiinteresting.

So if he cranks it up to forty, say, or fifty, or...

(He's wearing a helmet; the hair thing was, naturally, purely metaphorical. It's a habit of his, and one he used to take a certain amount of shit for. However, all it really takes is one black headcrab chomping down on your skull for you to develop a previously unknown appreciation for helmets of all kinds. Thus-)

Seventy-five. Let's see seventy-five.

[dejah_thoris]

He continues to accelerate, helmet unruffled, and the head's up displays his velocity alongside the navigational readout. The sensor array is picking up and cataloguing all the heat signatures, all the energy signatures, of every vehicle and of the garage itself.

The ride remains smooth but not entirely without road feedback. The lack of inertial resistance might seem a bit strange to him. Not to mention how quiet the engine is at this speed.

[hecu_marine]

Yeah, that's a little unnerving. If it weren't for the feel of the road underneath it'd be seriously fucking weird all around, but at least there's that. Dejah might be used to traveling on floating vehicles, but some people need the ground (or water) under them to feel right.

Now the question is, how well can he corner on this thing...

[dejah_thoris]

He begins the lean in anticipation of the turn and the bike responds as if it's an extension of his own body. The head's up display remains oriented to the bike, but he can see another band of color, a healthy green, around the outer edge of the display, this time on the side he's leaning into. A quick glance reveals that yes, that's the shield. If he's willing to read the specs, he can find out just how much the field can take before it begins to break down.

It might actually be strong enough to deflect a projectile of a certain size and velocity.

[hecu_marine]

It'll take him a few minutes to get used to the display. He'll check the exact numbers once he's upright- he's not really looking to wind up distracted during the turns. Not until he knows exactly what he's supposed to be feeling at each angle he can manage, because he's starting off with shallow turns and getting sharper and sharper each time he has the opportunity to whip around a corner.

Envelopes exist to be pushed.

[dejah_thoris]

The bike can corner on a dime. He can feel the forces of inertia at work, but it's only enough to let him continue to feel the road surface and where the bike is beneath him. He asks and it answers without complaint. The sight of the front repulsors shifting from a torus to a sphere might be a bit odd, but wherever he points the thing, it goes, with bells on.

[hecu_marine]

Weird looking is as weird looking does. He'll deal.

And he'll be cackling like a man who should not be in command of a nuclear-powered vessel when he finally rolls back into Dejah's sight.

[dejah_thoris]

Dejah's standing at the end of her bay, arms crossed over her chest, bouncing on the balls of her feet. She beams when she hears his laughter, a huge grin splitting her face.

"Well? What's the final verdict?"

[hecu_marine]

"Ma'am," says Shephard as he brings the bike to a stop, "whatever the hell it is your people do for saluting, I have to ask you to teach me, because fuckin' shit do I ever salute your work on this. Damn fine job."

[dejah_thoris]

She laughed, bright and clear. "I am pleased that you are pleased, Sergeant Major. And you need not give reverence. I am equally happy with sharing a bottle of champagne. Did the shields give you any problem? They felt a bit sluggish to me."

[hecu_marine]

"Only shielding I've ever had to work with was a li'l bit of basic absorption and kinetic dissipation built into my combat vest," says Shephard. "Your shields felt a good deal better'n that, I c'n tell you that much."

[dejah_thoris]

"Oh good. Good good good." She leaned over the bike and peered at the readouts scrolling across the bottom of the display. She tapped a few buttons on the screen and half of the data melted into the background, invisible behind the gauges.

"Diagnostics. The computational engine will synchronize with my work station, so I can see the raw data and make adjustments if necessary. Which -- after today, is no longer necessary!"

She actually patted the center console, a look of pride on her face.

[hecu_marine]

"How often'll I want to bring it back around for checkups'n tuneups?" Shephard asks. "Reckon you'd want to see how well it was doin' in the field, regardless."

[dejah_thoris]

"It should be fine for a few years at least. I know you have limited resources where you are, so I designed it to be fairly self-contained. The best advice I can give you is to keep these ports and sensors here, here, and here, clear of dirt and debris. It won't be a catastrophic failure if they get blocked, but she'll be much happier if you do."

[hecu_marine]

"Will do," Shephard promises. "There a manual I ought to keep to hand, just in case?"

[dejah_thoris]

"Oh. Yes!" She leaned over the console again and tapped an icon that looked like a scroll. It expanded and filled the head's up display.

"This will walk you through the sensors, and the read outs for the shields and other key systems. And this is about the cloak."

[hecu_marine]

"Oh, that sounds promising," Shephard says. "That sounds mighty promising. I ain't had one of those to work with before."

[dejah_thoris]

"It's not complete invisibility, and it won't shield the physical evidence of your passing, because you insist on remaining in contact with the ground, but it should suffice for most threats."

[hecu_marine]

"I ever git to the point where I'm willin' to let go of the ground, you'll be the first to know," Shephard promises. "This'll do me just fine in the meantime, I reckon. I can't thank you enough, Dejah."

[dejah_thoris]

Dejah grinned, looking down at her feet.

"I am glad I could be of some small assistance to you, my friend. It was truly a challenging project to work on, and I learned a lot."

[hecu_marine]

"Glad to hear it," Shephard says. "I got to buy you at least a couple rounds of drinks, though. Just for starters. Only fair, y'know?"

[dejah_thoris]

Dejah laughed and nodded. "Absolutely. And when you take her into the field, I will want to hear all about how she performed in the wild. So you'll have to come back and tell me everything."

[hecu_marine]

"Naturally," says Shephard. "It'll be a pleasure tellin' that particular story."