These tactical observation platforms are covered in multiple sensory modules, priced at something over a million esteyn each. That’s not even counting the ones that are too classified to have anything resembling a market price. This I know very well, as they’re part of the ship’s hardware I used to be responsible for.  Still am, in a sense.

So, naturally, I’m just ripping them off the truss by chopping through their bolts with the hullcutter, then tossing them into a catch-net. But then, my air supply is already uncomfortably low – except the travelling oxygen – and diminishing, and for that matter, so is my brain. My medichines may not be able to fix the problem, but they can read the symptoms well enough to give me a read on how fast my cognition’s deteriorating, and when they’ll no longer be able to compensate. Ugly methods will have to suffice.

Anyway. I am working on the forward section now, which is basically the central truss of the tactical platform with stuff mounted to it. Most importantly, the piece that’s there already: the platform’s stabilization gyros are built into a navigational unit that’s fixed within the truss.

Problem: these gyros are too small, by the book, for this candle – it’s got too much mass and thrust.  The gyros won’t provide big enough correctional forces.

Solution: That’s easy. Overriding the safeties will let me run the gyros much faster, providing higher correctional forces. It’s not going to be a rock-solid ride, but my calculations show that a little less than triple-running them should provide barely adequate moments.

Problem with Solution: Isn’t that pretty far inside the amber degradation zone?

Solution to Problem with Solution: Yes, but it’s not like it has to last the full operational lifespan.  It just has to last long enough.

Further Problem: Isn’t that also a short whisker underneath the explosive delamination threshold, exceeding which would cause the gyros to leap out of their casings in a million razor-sharp laminate shards and punch holes in the propellant tank, disembowel you, and not incidentally open your suit to space?

Further Solution: Well, I’m told they calculate these things – and inspect the products – very carefully.

Further Problem: And if they didn’t?

Further Solution: Well, it’s not like it can kill me any deader than sitting here with both thumbs up my ass, can it?

The side beams are welded to the tank – and still no leaks, or for that matter explosions – and the chunks of hull plating bonded to the beams. For once, that went smoothly. I’ve even cut four extra short chunks of beam and welded them onto what will be the thrust frame near the edges to mount the side-mounting thrusters on, leaving enough space in the center to attach the cutter’s core if I can find it.

I’ve even stripped power cable, data lines, and enough flexpipe to get them rigged to run.

Which makes it time to balance it (it’s enough mass that I’ll have to balance the for’ard section separately). It’s embarrassing if your first candle falls off its tail when you take it out for a near-hab jaunt. Under these circumstances, it would be a little worse than that.

If I was doing this properly, I’d have a clean room, and a torsiometer, and a gradiometer, and a quantized-thrust applicator, and assorted other fancy tools with verniers to tweak, and I’d finish up by carefully placing gold-tungsten washers and balance weights in exactly the right positions such that I could fire her dead-stick and not see more than a milli in a mega drift. If I was building a really fancy candle, I’d go ahead and throw some trim tanks on there while I’m at it.

But I don’t have any of those, so I’m using a more informal engineering technique, namely giving her a good shove along the thrust axis and eyeballing the gross wobble, then planing some mass off the heavy side with a laser torch.

(In theory, the stabilization gyros I’m pulling from the tactical platform should compensate for any deficiencies in this area, but with the extra mass this will have over and above, I don’t want to make them do any more work than they have to. I’ll be running them too close to the delamination redline as it is.)

…I wonder if the Navy would sell me this for a keepsake when I’m done with it? Give it a couple of thousand years, and it’d be nice to tell my hypothetical descendants a few horror stories of how Grandma Isif had to get about the place before the magic transilience drive was invented.

The remass tank is out. With the LOX tank pulled and the rest of the life-support machinery junked, pulling a few bulkhead panels let me into the for’ard maintenance compartment, and thanks to a bit of forethought on the parts of the designers, the fill, drain, and press connectors are all at the ends, so I only had to crawlspace it to unhook the retaining clamps.

Also, Athneél be praised standing, it’s not only holding pressure, but the manual gauges read full-and-high, and still read full-and-high now I’ve kicked and cursed the damn thing out of the cutter, out of the bay, and into free space. Where it’s tethered – it’s the biggest part of the candle, so it might as well be in position.

The first part of the structure is easy enough; there are secondary beams spilling out all over the aft end of this hulk. I can see half-a-dozen from here long enough – well, I’m going to cut four a little longer than the tank, for a start, then weld them onto the sides where the retaining clamps were. That’ll let it stand up to thrust.

If I was building this to last, I’d need to assemble a thrust frame at one end to mount the drives, and another frame opposite it to keep mass off the fuel tank structure when under thrust.  As it is, air’s too short to muck about with that, and I do have a hullcutter.

So I’m going to slice two big chunks of hull plating out of the sides of the landing bay, instead. They’re solid enough to do the job, once the beams are bonded to them at each end, and should also help keep the drive radiation from frying me too badly.

I hope.