Metamorphosis Alpha to Omega: Part 7: Deck 8A: Warden's Engine Room

A vessel as improbably large as Warden could only be propelled to fractions of the speed of light by equally improbable engines. The mighty thorium-fusion engines that are the thundering heart of Warden are accessed at the aft end of deck 8. A complex of engineering stations, machine shops, laboratories, and crew quarters lay within the bulkhead immediately before and around the six power units and the three outboard vents that focus the propulsive force they provide. These not only provide Warden with its ability to move, but also the energy to maintain all shipboard activities. And that energy is staggering in its volume.

Warden's engines were a modified version of the power plants that had been developed to provide the power for much of the Earth. Each engine has the potential to provide the energy for large nations; all six together could keep the lights on for entire continents. It had been intended that Warden would provide its colonies with power via broadcast energy until they became self-sufficient. At the moment, the engines are set at their lowest levels, having powered down after braking into orbit around Xi Ursae Majoris.

Such massive power was necessary to provide motive force for a ship of Warden's size in normal space, especially because it needed to reach relativistic speeds to reach its destination before too many generations had passed within the ship. Theoretical models and field experiments had been on the verge of breakthroughs in faster-than-light propulsion during the construction of Warden and her sister ships, but those breakthroughs remained tantalizingly out of reach. Warden's engineering personnel and the scientists in the universities and labs in the citydomes kept in constant contact with their counterparts on Earth, gleaning any and all information on FTL travel that could be sent their way...until Earth went silent. Still, the minds aboard Warden felt that they could one day harness the great engines of the ship for an even greater ability to travel between the stars. And then, Warden fell into chaos.

In Warden's engine section, engineers, physicists, and the robots and androids that served them held their ground valiantly as armies of mutants swept through the ship. To lose the engine room was to lose all hope for the ship's complement. So fanatically did the engineering crew hold its section of the ship, that eventually all else faded into memory, and then even the memory faded.

The engines became the center of their world, the source of light and life. They took to bathing themselves in the radiation of those holy energy sources, hoping for and accepting any judgment their now-god passed onto them. Illness and death were considered punishment for transgressions; beneficial mutations were the blessings conferred for exemplary existence. This is the world of the Brotherhood of the Divine Radiance. Any intruders are subjected to the judgment of the engines. The Brotherhood awaits the divine word of the Captain, the Prophet of the Engines, the only rightful leader. Until then, the engines are maintained and protected, as to do otherwise is to bring on the end.

Next: Part 8: Deck 7: Farm Deck