Little girl, Big galaxy

[Alkor Centaris]

"You found her on..." Phaygus peered at Alkor skeptically, then glanced to the young engineer that stood behind him. She was caked with grime and it appeared she had yet to shower, though she did not stink like most of the male technicians after several days without proper hygiene. It appeared that she had the tact to worry over how she was presented to some degree. All engineers were a bit eclectic, Illyns granted.

"Gyndine," Alkor repeated. "We barely escaped after I brought their shields down. It allowed us to extract in a timely manner, but they had a more entrenched network than I anticipated."

"It's the bloody Republic, Alkor," Phaygus chided, "you need to stop playing anarchist against these large political groups. You're one man, and even a contract with the Mandalorians doesn't indemnify you from bounties by a Senator. What if someone had seen you?" Illyns glanced sidelong toward the girl. "And what of her? Can she be trusted not to let word of this slip to them?"

"[member="Karai"] wouldn't," the Jen'jidai motioned, "the Mandalorians paid her well for her work, and I was sure to compensate her with hazard pay." He nodded in her direction. "I saw her work," he added, "she was able to override the manual power on our ship and get us out of Republic space in spite of immense pressure against us. She is an Engineer of noteworthy skill."

"And you would like me to contract her?" Phaygus steepled his fingers and glanced at the sprite of a girl with a fat grin. "I am not opposed to the notion, but I would like to ask that she give me a display of her skill as a craftsman of fine arms."

Alkor nodded his agreement. "As long as she consents."

"If you would like to work for this company," Phaygus told the girl, "I need to know your work is of the caliber that the Balmorran name represents. What do you say?"

 

[Karai]

Karai grinned as [member=Alkor Centaris] mentioned her little trick on the Werda. It wasn't a simple task, telling a computer to stop pouring all the energy it had into the shields so the half-working hyperdrive could actually start up, and then triaging the motivator so it wouldn't explode and leave them stranded out in witchspace. But it was pretty fun.

"Yea, I'm sure I could find a way to impress ya. Everything's just a bit of math anyway, and making sure your workmanship doesn't explode." Karai raised her left arm to show what she meant. The prosthetic looked human enough, until her fingers split apart into twenty separate miniature appendages.

"Designed it and built it myself. The removal was the easy part, BlasTech took care of that for me. Removable and modular." Karai looked over her hands and thought she might like a second prosthetic, but was wondering about the downsides as well. Not really worth it in the long run.

"So yea, you can count on how well I can build something, but you want to know exactly what I can do, right? I'm an engineer, so I solve problems. Just keep your problems practical, and I'll give you a fun little demonstration whenever you like."

 

[Alkor Centaris]

"Thermobarics," Phaygus cut to the chase. His curled mustache bent upward as he plucked at it and peered down his nose at the girl. Her mention of the name BlasTech only served to enhance his curiosity, but he decided that putting her under the knife would be far more telling. "We have been working with fuel/air explosives for some time in an attempt to contain the blast radius to a minimal area while maintaining the maximal damage output within those constraints. It starts well enough, but we get caught when the fuel ceases to burn in one place and spreads like wildfire along the concussion trail."

It was a simple enough notion- fire spreads along the gas trail, and the gas leaks outside of the defined parameters. Because of this, the weapon becomes too dangerous to employ for anything short of a mass genocide, and Balmorran couldn't technically deal in things that weren't sanctioned like that. Of course, it was obvious that they already were and that nothing would stop them from staying the course. "We need to define that area of kinetic force and ensure that the blast remains within it. I'm even alright if the outer layer of the blast gets incinerated, I just want to be able to sell these grenades open market. As it stands, thermobaric weaponry is never going to touch the galaxy as a whole, except as a terrorist weapon. And we can't legally put our name on anything like that."

"Legally," Alkor snorted. "Fething Republican laws."

"You laugh, but those "fething Republican laws" can terminate our contracts and send us packing. We need to work within them, for so long as Balmorra is not a free and independent state."

Alkor glanced toward his friend and weaponry mentor with a half smirk. "You leave that to me," he assured the graying man, "I have a few contacts who might just be able to send your planet on the road to freedom."

"Nevermind that," Phaygus snapped, "in this room, we have several items for you to play with, Karai. The fuel, for instance, is a Tibanna derivative that has been processed in a methane rich environment- it's ideal for combustion, and of course we have several plasma charges that you can detonate from a safe distance. If you find anything worth noting, there are techs on hand to assist you in any way you need."

[member="Karai"]

 

[Karai]

Thermobaric was such a nice word to hear as an engineer. Karai's mind was already working quickly, coming up with ideas for how to solve this little problem. What they wanted was containment on a device originally designed to be unconstrained. Such marvelous ambition deserved respect! Karai counted on her fingers as Phaygus and Alkor stopped their political discourse, and she was informed of her resources.

"Sure, I'll probably have something on paper in about an hour for theory, I'll have someone send a copy while I work the practical design."

She had already narrowed down a probable solution, but she would need to take a look at the data that had already been collected, and collect some more herself. She would need to know everything about what she was working with, and then some. "I'll also probably be sending someone with designs for a microcontroller and an electromagnetic field generator, shouldn't be too hard to repurpose some of the droid manufacturing systems to build about.. 25 of them? Maybe 50 if you want to make sure the tests are completely accurate."

Phaygus and Alkor saw themselves out of the rather large labratory, complete with blast-proof testing facilities. Karai picked up one of their prototypes and sent a technician to demonstrate the current blast yield. The doors closed with a pneumatic hiss that reminded the young engineer or spacecraft loading bays.

As the grenade detonated, Karai took notes. It took about two seconds for the gas to fully disperse from the charge, and then the igniter kicked in and began the real fun. It was too fast for the human eye to recognize, even for a trained one such as Karai's. But a look at the high-speed camera indicated exactly what was going on. The blast wave was moving much quicker than the gas could burn, causing the original specifications of about three meters to extend out to around nine or so. All in all an effective fuel-air explosive, but not truely on the level of thermobaric grade.

The main problems were burn rate and containment. Since they were so closely related, there were of course, at least two ways to go about preparing a solution; either increase the burn rate, or contain the gasses.

Karai turned to the technician operating the high-speed camera and taking notes. He seemed to be working rather diligently, not distracting himself with meaningless talk like the rest of the crew had been so far. "So, what's your name then?"

"Kellig, miss. Did you need something?" He looked confused. Perhaps he was new.

"Yea. I need you to bring me some superconducting wire and the most efficient power cell we have. It doesn't need to be stable."

Karai looked at the aftermath of the explosion. The burn marks had begun fading as nano-bots scrubbed the blast chamber clean for another test. Her mind was racing as equations were calculated. Containment was not the only solution. It was only the beginning of one.