1
"What was all that commotion about?", Edward demanded. "We nearly got found out here.
"And then lo and behold, it's a whole posse of Minutemen. I thought you were the number one fan of keepin' this whole deal on the hush hush."
The General nodded along as she walked with the ghoul back to where the alien spacecraft was hidden. "I do, I do. The Gunners...well, as far as we can tell, some Gunner deserters that is, rushed north along the train tracks. It was all I could to get a force I did control to counter the one I don't that would have run roughshod all over the place.
"Did any one get close enough to/"
"Not that I can tell.", Deegan reported. "When you came barrelling through, it was still a ways south of here.
"Your Minutemen must be shaping up into really something if they can stop an all out Gunner push."
The General dismissed that as optimism she could not afford. "It wasn't all the Gunners by a long shot. And the only explanation the force that deserted is broadcasting out of yet another previously hidden vault is that they felt the Gunner side of the war was attacking their clients. If I was truly reckless, I'd try to recruit them before the war was over. But there's a difference between trying to convince this Captain Bridget to accept the Commonwealth's council as the 'new' Gunner's sole client and trying to convince her men to shoot the people they've grown up with instead of the Minutemen that have hassled them this whole time."
The ghoul wondered, "How far in the future do you think in? I mean, Jack and I have been awake the entire time you were frozen. And Jack's even older than I am. He doesn't even seem to have the perspective you show."
"Thank you.", the General accepted.
"That's not an answer.", Edward pointed out.
"Neither is 'Let's get a move on.', is it?", the General continued.
2
The General handed Dr. Cabot another vial of MYSTERIOUS SERUM. "And that's replicated. One hundred percent tested and in use in the Institute proper. If I can ever get this new nation in a state where we can have real industry and not just another fight on our hands, we might be able to end old age and infirmity in humanity."
"What about hunger, thirst, irradiation, shelter, want, violence, and the newly mutated spot much lower down on the food pyramid?", the man casually countered.
"One thing at a time, Dr.", the General replied. "I've learned that the hard way. Trying to find my son and fight the force that took him. Trying to restore order and be Overboss. Trying to cope with the loss of my husband and then traveling with Preston...
"Yeah, one thing at a time.
"So what have you learned. Why am I keeping you in serum?"
Jack walked over to pieces of technology that were roughly the size of now holes gaping in the craft's hull. "Well, I've figured out the theory behind a lot of these components. Fortunately, a lot of the technology is akin to things human scientists had mathematically proven were possible in our universe even though pre-war engineering had no hope of actually inventing the things.
"Plus, a lot of it was based on having way more energy available than we could provide. Besides the idea of attempting to generate that much power in so little space. In fact, that black polyhedral construct there is what I think is the core source of energy for the entire ship. I am not opening that thing up, and even you can't convince me to do so. Because the only things I can even conceive of it being are either a long term anti-matter matter reaction of true zero-point energy: as in mining the void, Hawking radiation, virtual particles from a vacuum zero-point energy."
The General nodded. "Okay. So what safety precautions do you need to find out?"
"Depends on how quickly you want to destroy what's left of the world.", Dr. Cabot tried to explain. "If you want to lose our tidal stability and burn away the atmosphere, we could try cracking it on the near side of the moon which might crack. If you're looking for a longer game like just pushing our orbit out of the Goldilocks zone, you might want to try opening the thing on Mars. I did mention that it could be a zero-point energy generator, right?"
"Have you found anything that we can use?", the General demanded. "Before the race or races that built this come back and find a species vicious enough to nuke itself out of its own civilization and into wastelands but with no defense against technology of this magnitude."
"Very much, actually.", Dr. Cabot stated. "That over there is a micro-wave, xeon thruster. Those are an actual example of warp coils or at least that's to be surmised from the abberations of the atomic clock you've gotten me. These are crystal laser hard light projectors."
"Whats?", the woman asked.
"Er...have you ever watched any science fiction based on star ships? Shields, effectively. Not just force fields, like a magnetic field to dissuade a missile from it's route to a tank or the earth's gravitational field. Actual immaterial shielding...or solid holograms, depending on the crystal. However, these crystals seem to be mutable under electric current so both maybe?"
"Can humanity build any of this and have it work?", the General pressed.
Dr. Cabot looked around helplessly. "To get a working spacecraft? The Minutemen and its settlements...I don't see it. The Institute that can have a Mark I synth walking around today in combat ready status from how many decades ago? Maybe the thrusters, the blasters... You want to use the warp coils and shields to make a manned mission to Alpha Centauri in a month or less? With re-knitting, micro meteor resistant, micron thick solar sails and the other secondary system gadgets this thing is storing like a Vault's E.D.E.N. device?
"You're going to need a united humanity. I mean no other effort other than starship city and infrastructure to support the humanity that's supporting starship city. And that's only the first step to providing some sort of defense."
The General sat down on what she hoped was at least terrestrial in origin. "Alright. This can be done.
"Dr. Cabot. I need you to write a proposal for a space program utilizing not only this technology but our current. It needs to include suggestions on how to supplement any needs gaps with human invented tech. And how to go about inventing any missing pieces.
"Do that, and I should be able to get you a seat at the Institute.
