Blue Star Enterprises

The day to test the ship had finally arrived and everything was ready or as ready as a prototype could be. Despite all his work, the stingray looked exactly like an untested prototype.

It was rough around the edges, literally. There were gaps between the stealth armor panels since they didn't quite fit tightly together. To minimize production time Alexander had been forced to standardize parts as much as possible. He didn't have time to implement the slightly angled sides of the armor that let them overlap like the STO had or adjust the mounting points to make the panels fit better.

Without the panels, the ship looked equally as odd, having holes spaced evenly in the under armor to allow the pins on the armor plates to slot in and lock into place. Would it work? Yes. Was it aesthetically pleasing? Absolutely not. It was probably the ugliest and jankiest thing Alexander had ever built. If it wasn't for the time crunch they were under, he might be tempted to throw it into The Maw just so nobody else would see such a disgraceful design come from him.

That wasn't to be though. He glanced over to the crew of the stingray prototype.

Katalynn stood off to the side next to Branston, making the six-foot-tall man seem short by comparison. They were discussing emergency scenarios and how to deal with them. Branston had prepared a great deal of contingencies in case problems arose, which was a distinct possibility considering he had slapped the design together in a few days. Another month, and he could have handed her the much-improved stingray, minus the stealth panels.

As Alexander listened in to their conversation, he realized Brandston was oddly well prepared for a man who had never done any test piloting before he had joined Alexander's payroll. It was a good thing he was taking the assignment very seriously though.

Soon the pair finished their briefing and Alexander walked over.

Branson turned and gave Alexander a salute before placing his helmet on and joining Katalynn in the awkward crawl beneath the ship and into the hatch. Alexander made a mental note to change the hatch placement or add a second hatch to the roof in case the ship had to land belly down.

Once the hatch was secure, the air was pumped from the hangar and Alexander walked around the ship to ensure no new leaks had sprung up. The ship was airtight as it had been during the first vacuum test a week ago.

"You're good to go," he transmitted through his connection to the tablet.

"Roger that," came Branston's reply.

The ship started to power up and Alexander felt the slight vibration of its systems through the floor as he made his way to the shuttle.

Dry runs, power cycling, and tests had been conducted throughout the week, exposing a few issues with some of the integrated systems that had to be bypassed. He had replacement modules already printed and ready to install but Branston didn't want to delay the initial flight testing. So they simply ran power and data cabling around those systems.

One of the issues was with the waste reclamation system and the other was for environmental control. They weren't flight-critical systems, which is why Alexander had agreed to wait. If it wasn't for their suits, it might get a bit cold or hot inside the ship, but the suits could sustain them for hours if something went wrong and they had RASPs onboard for emergencies.

"Power nominal, all systems green," Branston reported as Alexander made his way to the shuttle's cockpit. "Ready when you are, boss."

Once Alexander was situated, he radioed back. "You're clear for takeoff, please take it easy until you get a feel for the ship," he added, knowing Branston's predilection for pushing vessels.

The man chuckled over the radio. "Pushing the ship is the whole point of these tests, boss, but I'll take it easy until we're at our first test site. See you in a few hours."

The hangar bay door opened and the pitch-black craft rose off the deck, giving one quick pulse of its thruster, which sent it flying out of the hangar faster than advisable.

He could just imagine the grin on Branston's face.

***

Holy shit!

Branston had been expecting the ship to have a lot of power with the upgraded thrusters, but that little puff of thrust had shoved him hard into his seat, producing over two G almost without effort.

He turned to look at his co-pilot but she seemed unbothered by the explosive thrust. He turned his attention back to the controls and brought up the thrust vectoring. With a flick, he set it to the closed position, closing off the engine cone and essentially turning the ship invisible to all but the most advanced sensors.

"ETA on our arrival?" he asked, knowing the extra speed was going to get them there much faster than anticipated.

While the Lagertha looked up the adjusted time, he kept his eyes on the sensor screen projected on the hull in front of him. With it wrapping around the front of the craft, making the forward bulkhead vanish from view, it almost made him feel like he was sitting outside the ship.

It was a neat, if a bit eerie sensation, which he had thought he had gotten used to in the hangar but was entirely different when experiencing it in space for the first time.

Branston couldn't argue against its usefulness though. He could see almost everything in front, above, below, and to the sides of the ship without adjusting a display. There were sensors to the rear as well, but if something popped up on those, he simply got a flashing alert that he would have to click on to bring up a rearview image from the cameras.

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The display tech was another prototype that Alexander had decided to test inside the prototype ship. A sort of projected tactical view instead of the orb one that the Eden ships had. Branston preferred this view over the larger ships, but he could see the advantage of both, especially for the warships having a full tactical view of the entire space around them.

Branston didn't envy the captains of those ships. He had enough trouble filtering out all the contacts on this display. That was something he would need to bring to Alexander's attention. For now, he simply flipped through the sensor settings and shortened the target designation range to something more manageable.

More than half the icons cluttering the view simply dropped away, making it much easier to see. Sometimes too much information was worse than none at all.

As the ship grew closer to the objects, they started to turn yellow, then to orange, then to red. The red indicator around the object started pulsing to alert him they were getting dangerously close.

He adjusted their course ever so slightly with a momentary pulse from one of the directional ion thrusters. He could have used the cold gas thrusters, but the ship was too small to fit a gas converter on board, so that supply was limited and should only be used in an emergency situation.

"We will arrive ten minutes ahead of schedule," Lagertha stated.

She didn't comment on nearly running into one of Alexander's laser satellites, even though she could clearly see the same indicator that he had.

Branston had planned out a clear flight path based on shuttle acceleration, but that had been way off. Now he was going to have to dodge a few objects as they made their way to the southern pole of Eden's End.

He kept an eye on the orbital distance as well. They were in a decaying orbit at the moment, and that would continue until they fired up the main drive again.

A new blue icon came into view as they curved around the planet and a tight beam signal hit their ship.

"How's it going so far?" Alexander asked from the stationary shuttle. Not being constrained by the lack of thrust, he had easily beaten the stingray to the checkpoint.

"Good so far," Branston sent back, "but we need to clear up the tactical display or add a filter. Way too much cluttering the view at full resolution."

"Acknowledged. I'll ask Lucas to work on it. Anything else?"

That's what he loved about working for Alex, the man listened when people told him there was an issue. In the STO, he was lucky if his commanding officers didn't just bury the problem or let it go until it became a serious concern.

That didn't mean Alex was perfect, he made mistakes just like anyone else, but unlike most, he worked to correct those.

"Nope, all good," he responded.

The ship soon reached the rendezvous point and he shifted the orientation before accelerating hard. The ship automatically reopened the vectoring louvers, disabling the full stealth mode on the thruster. The ship rocketed away from the planet, quickly hitting seven G's and shaking hard the entire time.

The forces pushing them into their seats quickly reduced to five G as the acceleration program Branston had implemented tapered off the thrust. Once it reached a more reasonable three G, he started maneuvering the craft wildly to get a feel for how it handled.

Other than a few grunts of exertion during the initial burn, his co-pilot had remained stoically quiet.

He turned his attention back to his maneuvering.

The ship wasn't balanced around the control points correctly, giving it a slight wobble as he put it through the series of movements, which is probably why it was shaking so hard during acceleration. That was the problem with not doing simulation testing beforehand. He would mention the issue to Alex, but the man had probably already seen the issue in the simulation for the upgraded design.

"You feel that?" he asked his co-pilot.

"The floaty feeling?" she asked.

"Yup. You'll need to watch that if you're forced into combat and during planetary descent, otherwise it should be fine."

"Noted," she stated before going quiet once more.@@novelbin@@

He cut acceleration halfway to the moon, coasting the rest of the way since they were already ahead of schedule. With the thruster off, the weird off-balance issue seemed to mostly go away.

Soon the moon flashed by on their left and he started prepping the jump drive. They could have made it to a safe jump point sooner by flying south of the ecliptic, but this is the course Branston had chosen instead.

The jump testing went about as boring as you might expect, which was a good thing. It meant he hadn't been pasted across a huge stretch of space along with his passenger. He couldn't imagine how much shit her death would cause Alex, especially considering he had built the ship with the whole purpose of keeping her alive to face that Isbjorn fellow.

Their return to the southern pole of Eden's End was equally as uneventful. He pinged Alexander as they came in. "We're on our way back for the final test flight. You ready?"

"I'm in position," came a slightly static reply. Loss of signal was a common issue when tight beam comms were expanded. It seemed Alex couldn't quite pinpoint their location if that was the case. A good sign for the stealth properties of the ship.

All of that went away as they entered the atmosphere though. The ship bucked wildly as the thin air grabbed at the winglets and even through his suit's climate control, he started to sweat as the interior of the ship heated. That issue would be resolved when Alex fixed the environmental system. Of more concern was the ship's flight characteristics. Instead of a smooth glide, the stingray started to rock up and down violently until it over-rotated and started to tumble end over end.

"Hold on," he grunted through the strain, doing his best not to black out as the ship continued its powered tumble. He managed to reach the shutdown for the thruster and as soon as he did, the tumbling started to slow and the thrusters started to fix the uncontrolled descent. He kicked on the cold gas thrusters to assist and the ship finally stabilized.

"You good?" he asked, not taking his eyes off the flight panel in front of him.

"I'll live," came the reply.

"Branston, Katalynn, are you two okay down there?" came Alex's worried response.

"Yeah, we're good. Just some control issues with powered descent. I'll tell you about them later, although you may have to come down here and get us, I don't think this ship's leaving the planet."

"I'm right behind you," came the response.

***

Retrieving the stingray had been a bit of a challenge, but Alexander managed to pull it off. The instability issue was determined to be caused by two factors. The shift of weight with the reactor being located where it was as well as air getting trapped underneath the armored panels.

Alexander also learned that Lucas' stealth coating did not survive reentry, which was less than ideal, but should be fine for a single trip.

He addressed the weight issue first by adding weighted plates in the cockpit below the seats. The armor issue was a bit more of a challenge. He was forced to go with some thermal foam to fill all the gaps. Then he had to painstakingly smooth off the extra foam and seal over those areas with a high-temperature tape. Stay updated through My Virtual Library Empire

It was an inelegant solution, and wouldn't last more than one flight through the atmosphere, but it should stop the uncontrolled descent issue that Branston and Katalynn had experienced.

The second test proved that it did indeed work, and even allowed the stingray to fly back to the hangar where Alexander spent the better part of a day chipping out the burned foam residue so he could fill the cracks once more for Katalynn's eventual trip to Asgard's surface.

Overall, he was on the fence about the ship. If his new design maintained these issues, he would have to go back to the drawing board.

The next test involved the weapons, which had not been loaded during the initial flight testing. He thought it a bad idea to have an untested craft running around with an anti-ship missile attached to it.