A/N: Got most of the second-to-last scene roughed. Still working on this chapter!
Jack led SG-1 up into the locomotive behind Lady Ayame, intrigued. Yep, definitely a teenage girl, from the way she moved. But one who carried herself with the kind of confidence he was more used to seeing graduate West Point. Not to mention Kurusu and Kibito were following her lead without so much as a side glance or a suggestive wink. She was their commander. End of story.
Put that together with that little impromptu speech – she’d told them who she was, pumped in a morale boost, and sketched out clear as a bell what she expected of them as yet another set of rescuees. Nice, and even better because every word was true. Young as she was, the lady had been command-trained.
Now we get to see what she wants from us in specific. Jack let his brows bounce as they hit inside and went up a set of stairs to what had to be the rear compartment of the locomotive, Kibito and the lady-in-waiting peeling off in the middle of what looked like an improvised sleeping area just long enough so SG-1 could go ahead of them. Shouldn’t take long. This? Is someone who gets down to business politely.
Inside was a table, big enough to gather at least a half-dozen people around, and a whole bunch of small compartments in the walls that looked like they were either parts lockers or held various maps. Probably both.
“Wait just a moment.” Ayame inclined her head, and headed back down toward the front of the locomotive, Kibito and the lady heading to some lockers to pull out rolls of paper while Kurusu planted himself at the door behind her like a sharp and pointy wall.
…Which Jack was not going to grump about, even if he had to slap his own mental knuckles with a ruler. The front of the locomotive had to be where the conductor worked, and if any place on this whole Doomtrain needed high security, that was it. There just couldn’t be that many people on this hayajiro who could run the freaking thing. Heck, Jack would rather take his chances landing an alien plane he’d never seen before. A plane you could at least coax out of the sky anywhere. A train had to stick to rails.
Not to mention, if this Makurakii Engine really was fusion-powered, a hayajiro crash could end up being spectacular. Real Fourth of July, and not in the fun way.
Crossover Queen's Creative Chaos 
%$#@ it Jack, you’ve gotten yourself destined to get stuck running a McRucky locomotive, haven’t you?
Thanks. Enjoying it a lot.
Condolences on the RL.
Just got woken up in the middle of a weird dream involving, as I woke up, processing the mechanics of a thanksgiving episode in an imaginary sitcom. That has somehow resulted in figuring some things out for mess in progress.
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Interesting seeing how the difference in circumstances of the encounter change Jack’s take on things. I just re-read Waking to Another Sky, and seeing his take on Ayame and Kurusu vs his take on Asuna and Kirito is interesting, especially since it makes sense given how they were encountered. And this is one reason I like your stories, Vathara. Too many other fanfic authors can’t separate (to borrow C.S.Lewis’s term), “the mere character” from “the character in his circumstances”, writing a character as acting _way_ ooc when the circumstances have changed but the actions continue to be identical to the source.
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Thank you! Jack facing down someone from an alien culture is more likely to believe they have the authority they say they do, while someone who had guild rank in a game… not so much.
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Especially given first impression of “voice on a radio giving critical information to survive imminent zombie apocalypse” vs “waif in a hospital bed in a coma for years”.
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I think Jack is simultaneously right and wrong. When the Fusang Fortress crashed in episode 1, it was certainly spectacular, but only from the train cars flying across the station and the Kabane pouring out. There was no explosion. Either it’s got enough failsafes to prevent an Earth-Shattering Kaboom in the event of catastrophic failure, or it just doesn’t explode that way on failure
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This is, from my knowledge of physics and fusion research more likely than not. As much as scifi likes to treat a fusion reactor as an unexploded nuke waiting to happen, the reality is that if you broke a fusion plant it would jus go out.
A fission plant, the thing that drives the reaction is the fuel. When you loose controll of the fuel the reaction therefore just keeps going out of control.
But fusion isnt like that outside of a star. Even a fusion nuke is a very short burst of fusion – microseconds worth before the conditions just wont work that way anymore.
In a fusion reactor, the reactor doesnt just controll the reaction – it makes it happen at all. Break the reactor without deliberately trying for boom, you mostly just get a (relitively) little fire and then nothing, because breaking a controllable reactor isnt going to make things better for fusion.
this is why we dont have fusion power yet; it turns out making controlled, continuous fusion is frustratingly hard.
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Also making it sufficiently dense. Most of the “successes” so far have had plasma so diffuse that if it leaked, the burst might look pretty but wouldn’t feel any worse than brushing your hand through a candle flame. And even if it was made sufficiently dense to actually work with, then you still end up with the situation that makes the Orion feasible: it dissipates so fast that it barely does anything to stuff exposed to it for the short time before it’s gone.
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Yep. This is, from my knowledge of physics and fusion research more likely than not. As much as scifi likes to treat a fusion reactor as an unexploded nuke waiting to happen, the reality is that if you broke a fusion plant it would just go out.
A fission plant, the thing that drives the reaction is the fuel. When you loose controll of the fuel the reaction therefore just keeps going out of control.
But fusion isnt like that outside of a star. Even a fusion nuke is a very short burst of fusion – microseconds worth before the conditions just wont work that way anymore.
In a fusion reactor, the reactor doesnt just controll the reaction – it makes it happen at all. Break the reactor without deliberately trying for boom, you mostly just get a (relitively) little fire and then nothing, because breaking a controllable reactor isnt going to make things better for fusion.
this is why we dont have fusion power yet; it turns out making controlled, continuous fusion is frustratingly hard.
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There were a few booms, though. And Jack has no idea what other fillips there might be in the system that would explode.
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Jack has plenty of reason for caution even if he knows all the above, really. For reasons that sum up to ‘Casual language is bad at scale’.
Sure, if your fusion reaction shuts down it’s not going to go off like a nuke.
It was still outputting enough moment to moment energy to run doom train. And also possibly change gears, accelerate, stop, run the lights, etc etc.; To do that smoothly enough to change modes in a crisis, it would have to be running a substantial energy surplus, too, some of which is ‘on tap’ in the system, ready to be used. Compared to an actual nuke, that’s still next to nothing, really…but.
Compared to a human body or your average building sized or even train sized peice of the landscape, that’s a terrifyingly huge amount of energy, contained in relatively efficient mechanisms and primed for release in carefully calculated directions.
A nuke isn’t efficient at all; it just drops all that energy all over the place – quite literally, a expanding sphere of going everywhere wasting almost everything. It’s just so much that in that process a great deal of everything is going to get obliterated.
If doom train’s reactor output breaks it’s shackles? It’s not nearly as much, but it’s going to likely mostly go in one direction and mostly as kinetic force.
The two likelyhoods are forward or backward, and you’re standing in the way of option number two.
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AKA, “What’s the difference between a flamethrower and a jet engine? A flamethrower doesn’t have as much hard thrust!”
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It’s the little touches, isn’t it? Just that tiny, subtle reminder that they’re speaking a foreign language. ^_^
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Aw, thanks! 🙂
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I’m going to guess that Yukari (was that her name?) and the others who can actually drive the train are also on the must-not-lose-all-of-them list. Can’t blame them for making it high security area too – I would if it was me in their shoes.
Think the above comments are right that Jack hasn’t unfortunately taunted Murphy and will probably ended up trying to operate this machine (or similar) at some point. Hopefully someone can shout instructions.
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Yukina, and definitely.
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