Aberrant: Infinite Earth - Cosmos Nova - [CN] At home in the aerodrome

[Mr Fox]

Through means that might justifiably labeled Sith, Nate had acquired a home.

He wasn't proud of it, but neither was he ashamed of his actions. The previous owners of the old Airship hanger had been running their business into the ground and were poised to take a lot of people to the cleaners in the process. He had discovered it when he was looking for locations big enough to build his spaceship, and when he had realized what they were doing he had gone to the bank that was their major funding source and had cut a deal.

He made the bank manager an offer he couldn't refuse; in exchange for cutting Nate a very good deal on a property that he had his eye on that be bank owned, he would provide information that would save the bank millions and save the bank's reputation from taking a negative hit for allowing a big investment to go bad. The man had been intrigued and agreed to consider making a deal, so Nate had laid out how a business venture was about to go bust and he gave some scary details, but he had withheld the name and any specifics necessary to identify the business. After seeing the finances outlined the manager had been impressed with the seriousness of the situation and so had agreed to Nate's terms, which had been a hell of a bargain to be sure, but compared to losing millions on the bad investment had seemed like the best option to the bank.

In the end he had picked up the entire facility including it's inventory for just over a million dollars. The bank had lost money on the deal, but it was a much smaller loss than it could have been without Nate's warning. It was a win for the bank manager who earned a promotion for 'discovering' the potential fraud and nipping it in the bud.

With his work at the DSA and potential patent licensing revenues that he was likely to be generating soon he thought he would have that million paid off inside of three years, and that was not even including money he might be making off the governments of the world for hauling their space junk around the solar system and dropping off deep space science modules.

He smiled considering it. Sure there were novas that could jump to nearby stars and drop off small sensor packages and things, but there wasn't a nova that he knew of that could transport a entire space station sized habitat module into orbit around Saturn, or Alpha-centuari for that matter. Not that he could either yet, but he had the vision, and he had the skills; it was just a matter of time. And now he had the facilities with which to put his plan into action.

[Mr Fox]

First thing he did on moving in was to organize and pack up all of the old equipment and materials that Markham Brother's LLC had left behind. He was impressed with their gear, they had definitely bought the best stuff, which was part of the reason they were out of business now. What he didn't need he either sold off or piled up to be used as spare parts, or as raw materials.

He had been somewhat afraid that they might trash the place or try and loot it of valuables before they left, but they had apparently been so deeply in shock over being caught by the bank that they had left quietly. Their employees were the ones that Nate felt sorry for, they had families to feed and as much as he would have liked to keep them on, the Markham Brothers had paid them unreasonably high salaries and while his income was enough to pay the mortgage he didn't have money yet for employees, at least not ones that made that kind of money. That was actually the one thing that gave his conscious a twinge, if he had left things alone, they would have continued to have jobs for many months, or even a couple years perhaps. On the other hand the brothers had been paying them to some extent with stock options which would have been worthless so they might have ended up in even worse financial shape down the road. At least that's what Nate told himself.

Once everything was cleaned and organized he began putting the plans for his ship down onto paper, or rather onto the memory of his computer. He didn't actually want to commit anything to a medium were the information could be stolen. He had been designing his ship in his head off and on for over a year, and had at least a good idea of how much raw material he was going to need to get started.

That wasn't really a big challenge, but it would be time consuming. His goal was to build the entire ship without having to go into debt to do it. That meant finding raw materials that he could scavenge. Seeing a set of old railroad tracks that were no longer in use he petitioned the land owners to remove it. They agreed providing he do remediation on the area from which the tracks were removed. It was annoying, but it was worth it for all of that high quality steel. He had come out with 38, eighty foot rail segments. Anyone else would have required dozens of trips back and forth to haul it all away, but he was able to lift the metal himself by hand or by telekinesis and pile it all in jumble at one side of the property while he piled all of the wooden rail ties in a separate stack. After that it was just a matter of walking the area and making sure there was no trash from the tracks remaining. Before going he used his sith alchemy to turn the long i-beam like tracks into a big sphere of solid steel and the ties were condensed down into dense heavy piles of carbon. Nothing was wasted, and every bit of metal and even some non-metals were sorted, condensed and purified. When it was done he walked home with large spheres of metal, carbon and other elements floating in the air around him. Once back at the hanger he separated the materials into bins he had prepared for this. The steel pile bin was the largest since that was the biggest raw material he needed and the tons of steel he had just picked up were no where near as much as required.

Of course, it wouldn't be steel when he was done. He had to invent a new alloy to be the hull and bulkheads of his new ship. One much stronger than steel, lighter, and tougher, but also with the ability to be see-through. The Star Trek movie that had been set in San Francisco, just a hundred and fifty miles from his hanger, had included a fictional material called transparent aluminum. It was a great idea actually, and current materials science was actually very close to creating such a thing, but he wanted something stronger and more space age, so he was going for a transparent titanium and steel alloy. Not all of the hull would be transparent, but it was important that a good portion of the party deck and his living quarters be clear. He also liked the idea of the electrostatic glass that could go opaque or transparent with the flip of a switch. As much as he would like to make that a property of the material, he could simply add a coating on the inside of the ship to perform that function.

As it turned out, time management was his biggest difficulty. He did his best to divide his time between his job at the DSA, collecting raw materials, and developing his new material for the ship's hull. He added sleep into the list every now and then.

[Mr Fox]

It took over three months to perfect the material and the process to manufacture it, which was amazing really, but to Nate it felt like forever. The material itself wasn't that difficult of a concept, baseline scientists had already stumbled onto a way to alter the state of matter to make it transparent, so creating the Hull-steel was just a matter of mixing the materials in various proportions until he had an acceptable alloy with the properties he was after. The real trick was coming up with a mundane way to make it in mass quantities and that was what took time.

Meanwhile he had sent his assistant Hollie to approach every major steel manufacturer in the US and propose licensing the process to produce the new alloy. She reported back that they had all been enthusiastic when shown the new material and it's properties and all but one had been willing to sign contracts on the spot.

When she returned from her month long sales trip she was radiant. First words out of her mouth were, "You're going to be rich!"

He chuckled, and asked for specifics.

"Well, all but Jerusalem Steel agreed to your terms. They say they won't sign anything until they see the process first hand and get details on how it works." She frowned and added, "I don't trust them, they've got a reputation for being shady in their dealings, I think they plan on copying the process and altering it just enough to avoid patent issues, either that or they think they can take your idea and use it to make an alternative material to compete against hull-steel."

Nate nodded, he had expected at least some resistance. The fact that he was offering to license the process as cheap as he was what made the difference. He suspected they would all be looking to learn the manufacturing techniques and then apply them to other alloys, but they would find that he had covered those bases with patents as well by the time he released the process. Not that he wouldn't let them use the process, he just wanted to make sure he earned a lot of money first. He had a space ship to make after all.

"Let's get it done then. I put together a presentation on how the process works along with technical specs on the equipment needed. Go over it if you don't mind and make sure it is readable by someone other than me. After that take a few days off and then we can begin signing contracts."

Hollie frowned slightly and asked, "Are you sure about the terms? You know you could ask a lot more up front and they would go for it."

He nodded, "It's a different business model. Instead of asking a bundle to allow them to produce the material and then being hands off, I'm only asking a million each to allow them to produce it, but then charging them 1% on every order they fill. I'll make 31 million up front if all but one sign and that's not as much as I could make, but it's still nothing to sneeze at, but then I'll have a large steady stream of income for at least a few years until some other even smarter nova invents something better. I'm not greedy, I just want to be able to build my ship. Once it's complete I'll be able to make more off of it than I do from the steel industry if I feel inclined to get greedy."

She shrugged and then walked over and gave him a kiss on the cheek. "It's your life and you are making me rich enough to retire so do what you want." She gathered the folder off his desk and left the room heading for her own office.

He reflected that his weekend in Vegas a couple months before had been extraordinarily fortunate for meeting Hollie. She had a great head for business, he just regretted that he would never get to see that tight little body again. Her policy of not mixing business and pleasure was absolute. It wasn't so bad, he did have Kei when she was around and she was a nova so he didn't have to worry about her being fragile the way he had with Hollie, and Kei was fun.