Chapter Forty-Three
"Hardly." Coran answered Vekk's breathless pronouncement. "Merely a piece of it, as I can tell."
"The most important part!" His Asuran friend retorted in wonder. "This… this is the link! This is the vital fragment to the great code we've been missing, and no wonder why! We would have never thought the transfer of matter to energy to be that incomprehensibly high!"
"I'm glad you at least understand each other…" Devona mumbled.
Vekk held up his pen. "If these numbers are correct…"
"They are." Coran interjected glumly.
Vekk ignored the interruption, focused entirely on teaching this concept in a way that the simple minded humans and Charr could comprehend. "By these calculations, there is enough energy within this stylus to obliterate everything within a fifty mile radius."
"It's not that simple, of course." Coran explained further. "Energy is often bound in forms we cannot use, at least not with the level of efficiency that would result in such catastrophic destruction. Matter is far too stable to be exploited in such a fashion."
"Then what is the problem?" Cynn asked. "How is that going to help us?"
"Because there exists matter that can be exploited to a minimal extent… and even a rupture of one percent of a mass's energy would be devastating in scope, especially since no one with such knowledge would use a mass as small as that pen."
"Agroium." Vekk noted.
"And that is?" Pyre finally spoke up.
"A metallic ore found deep in the crust of the world." Vekk explained. "It is found at great dilution within the great statue outside the Central Transfer Station, for example. Even at that very low composition anyone with mystic sensitivity can feel the magic radiating from it. The Asura don't even go within miles of any confirmed veins of any purity beyond ten percent. It is extremely unstable… even exposure to the air can cause it to ignite… any significant force… yeah, you're dead, and probably the rest of the survey team behind you."
"And… that is what you'd use?"
"When properly refined in a large enough charge, I cannot imagine a Agroium detonation wouldn't have enough power to destroy anything it was targeted with, even this beast of madness. We would have to act quickly however… there's no telling how resilient it would be if allowed to fully awaken."
"Well then, fine… get some of that stuff, get a team of these genius super rabbits together, and make Bhu-whatever go boom." Pyre said with a shrug.
"Absolutely not!" Coran replied, aghast in terror at the suggestion. "Presuming I actually agree to developing and constructing an Agroium detonation device, there is no way I'm letting any Asura get anywhere within a hundred feet of it."
"Why not?" Mhenlo queried, finding the sudden disdain for Asura odd to be made manifest in a man who had lived and learned and taught among them for roughly a decade.
"Let me explain something about the Asuran thought process." Coran explained, his voice bordering on comical. "Step one; how do I make this boom bigger? Step two; what do I need to make this boom bigger? Then finally, step three; how do I make this boom bigger? I involve an Asuran engineering krewe in this, and what will begin as a weapon designed to destroy a spatial anomaly of a cavern will become a super-weapon that could destroy Tyria seven times over."
Devona found this to be somewhat unfair, "Coran, that's…"
"Rather accurate, really." Vekk nodded, his hand on his chin thoughtfully. "My only quibble is that my kinfolk would stop with seven times over. We'd go for at least ten; it's a nice round number." The pseudo-joke aside, Vekk raised his head to address the headmaster. "At any rate, I agree. We can keep the numbers necessary for this project small. No offense, Coran, but you are not an engineer by trade. I am. You can trust me, can't you?"
"Of course." Coran responded.
"Good. I can begin work on a design immediately, consulting you of course on the mathematics. Between the two of us, and our present friends doing the grunt work, there is no reason why the planning, manufacturing, or use of this project need extend beyond anyone in this room."
"Unless you think these people would be able to safely mine Agroium, I doubt it."
"My suspicion is that we could use an enriching process similar to the ones we use for other heavy metals. It's mostly inert in smaller concentrations after all… we would then be able to properly contain the enriched fuel in a much more secure manner."
At this point, the party gave up trying to understand or get the two to speak proper language the rest of them could comprehend. "I suspect they will inform us when we are needed. Let's go." Aidan ordered, gesturing for them to move out of the cramped space.
Devona, however, lingered, stopping at the doorway. The only other time she heard Coran so… engrossed and passionate about something was… and then immediately blushed at the thought. Truth be told, she was curious. She rather wanted to know more about her betrothed's other love, the one that kept him sane and occupied for a decade.
"You know, if we created a particle injection system that introduced the shattering force at a particle level, we could probably drastically improve the yield to initial force level dramatically." Coran noted to Vekk as his friends filtered out, apparently oblivious to the fact.
"A gold filament would probably be the perfect injector… stable and able to carry a strong electric flow… the electric particles would probably be the ideal catalyst, really. Requires little power and moves easily across any medium." The Asuran genius responded.
"Would those particles have enough mass to start the reaction, though, even on a particulate level?"
"Good point… but we do know that electric particles can act on larger ones. We might have to experiment to find an ideal charge to set off the chain reaction we would need."
"Far away from the academy grounds, I would hope."
"Isn't there a large weapons testing range in a nearby chamber?"
"Clearly you don't grasp the degree of power we're talking about here as well as you say."
"Well, I mean we could test a little bit of it… a scale testing."
"Planning on a one-one millionth scale test there, Vekk?"
Devona's eyes dashed back and forth between the tit for tat, like she was watching a match of two squares; only in this case, she would have no infernal idea about the rules of two squares or the purpose of the game.
"Well, how do you suppose we determine if this concept will work?" The Asuran asked.
"We have a veritable and literal goddess of knowledge we can consult, you do realize."
"Yes, because as has been determined recently, your gods have just been full of truthfulness and honest helpfulness in the past."
Devona scoffed. "Couldn't you find somewhere else to test this… thing? I'm sure there are several sites above ground that could work."
Coran shook his head, "You have no idea what you're talking about, love. The sort of power I'm referring to would be painfully evident to anyone within miles. No matter where we did it, it would shatter the very wall of secrecy we are trying to maintain."
"Well, pardon me for trying to find a solution." Devona snarled, and abruptly turned about, feeling slighted. Even as she knew he hadn't meant it as an insult… the implication was still rather demeaning.
"Could you hold that thought for a moment?" Coran asked rhetorically, as he was already moving out the door after his betrothed before the sentence was even finished.
"Sure." Vekk said to no one in particular, and rolled his eyes. You can take the human out of the stupid, but apparently you can't fully take the stupid out of the human.
He caught up quickly to warrior, but that said, Devona wasn't exactly trying to flee. "Is something wrong, dearest?" Coran asked. "Did I offend you somehow?"
She stopped at the entrance of the Paragon Hall, and asked, "Do you think I'm stupid?"
Coran blinked rapidly, fearing a trick question. "No. Of course not."
"Do you think you're smarter than me?"
"That's a qualification that I can't make. I am more educated than you are. I am more learned. Intelligence isn't something that can be so neatly and empirically proven."
Devona sighed, and tilted her head in confused frustration.
Coran half-grinned, and reiterated, "I am saying that my knowledge doesn't necessarily come from any perceived intelligence. That's impossible to say. I merely had opportunities to learn things you didn't."
Devona turned away, rubbing her shoulder nervously. "I… I just… when you disappeared… I turned to my training, to combat, to cope. My training became my lifeline; it's how I stayed sane without… without you. I wanted to see what it was that made you cope in turn."
Coran turned his betrothed back to face him. "Well, what you tried to do was somewhat analogous to me picking up a sword and trying to step into a duel you were engaged in. Much as a child needs to learn to crawl before he or she can learn to walk and eventually run; much as a warrior in training needs to learn the stance and techniques before; so to does one need to learn the basic fundamentals of science before trying to inject their thoughts on very complicated discussions of detonative device testing."
He dropped a quick kiss on her lips, "Perhaps, when I have more free time on my hands, I can try to teach you… provided your willingness, of course."
"I wouldn't mind that at all… I suspect getting a wrong calculation would be a lot less painful than making a wrong decision on a parry."
Coran raised his eyebrows, "Have you seen what happens when an Asura makes a mistake on one of their machinations? Come with me… I think you'll quickly discover the fault in your estimation."
As Coran then guided her further down the basement levels of the Academy of Atal Ra, toward a floor specifically labeled the "Floor of Utterly Broken Asuran Resources", Devona was already starting to question her decision…