John Ringo - East of the Sun, West of the Moon

“And if I wanted to see it?” Megan asked jokingly.

“We would, with all due respect, tell you to go to hell,” Peterka said gruffly.

“I see,” Megan replied dryly. “You and my father would get along splendidly.”

Finally, they were in the building proper, but there wasn’t much to see. The corridor they were led down had doors to either side but they all had locks on them. Near the end, Peterka pulled out a ring of keys, fumbled through them, and opened up a door like any other.

The room was oval and had several chairs around a table. At one end was a dais with some covered equipment. At least two of the pieces had to be man-shaped statues but the rest were a mystery.

“Right,” Peterka said, taking the head of the table and gesturing for them to take seats. “You’ve seen the plans for the ship and you’re finding new techs and cannon fodder. You’ve a plan to take the ship, yes?”

“Yes,” Herzer said, raising one eyebrow.

“And you’re ready to start training, eh?” Peterka continued. “You’ve got the mission licked, right? You’re bloody screwed , lad.”

“Why?” Megan said, sharply.

“I’ll show you why,” Peterka said, standing up and going over to the covered statues. Removing the cloths over them revealed two space suits on manikins. One was a suit something like an ancient wet suit with a bulbous, clear, helmet. It was mostly bright silver with bands of blue. The other was a complicated set of armor, somewhat close fitting, with odd joints and broad fins on the shoulder and back. It was a dull bronze in color.

“This is what we made for the first team,” Peterka said, gesturing at the armored suit. “The fighters and commanders. The skin suit was for the techies, eh? Well do you know how many dwarf hours went into making those bloody armored monstrosities? We’d just completed the last suit. Making forty of them took us two bloody years!”

“Ouch,” Herzer said.

“And all the people they were fitted for are six feet under,” Peterka continued, angrily. “Two bloody years of hard work by the best dwarven wrights and it’s down the drain !”

“So you’re saying no armor?” Herzer asked.

“Not good bloody armor,” Peterka said. “We’re brainstorming ideas. Have been since the team went down. The skin suits are semiarmored themselves; we’ve thought about throwing standard armor on top. But there’s heat regulation problems, bloody bad ones. And we need armor now so your team can start training now .”

“How fast to produce the skin suits?” Herzer asked.

“Slow enough,” Peterka noted. “Some of the ones we’ve stored can be cut down and restitched, although that’s going to take long enough. We’re gathering more fabric; the goats are damned pissed, I’ll tell you.”

“Goats?” Megan asked, biting her lip to keep from laughing. “They’re made from wool?”

“Spider silk,” Peterka snapped. “It’s a bloody ancient technology, but it’s still around. The goat milk has spider silk strands in it. Milk ’em, extract the silk, spin it, weave it and you’ve got spider silk cloth. Six layers of thin spider silk cloth bonded with a sealant then a plasteen insulator layer. Six more layers of silk and the heat transfer layer. Had another bit of luck there, there’s an old tech that’s basically a giant tree leaf mod. Bond that in, hook up to the vascular system and run liquid through it for heat transfer. You understand the problem, there?”

“No clue,” Herzer said, shaking his head. “I spent the last couple of weeks reading up on the damned ship. I saw the armor design specs and the skin suits, but it didn’t cover how they were made.”

“Space ranges from bloody hot to bloody cold and naught between,” Peterka said. “And I’m talking three hundred degrees Celsius in the sun and damned near zero in the shade. Those suits are made from beryllium bronze modified so it’s not particularly heat reactive and they were still going to expand and contract like mad. We’d worked around that, especially at the joints. But you can’t let that hit the human body. So the suits have the plasteen insulator, just about as close to a zero transfer insulator as you’re going to find. With me?”

“So far,” Herzer said.

“Problem is, the human body generates one hell of a lot of heat,” Peterka pointed out. “Enough that you’ll drown in your own heat in no more than fifteen minutes if you don’t get rid of it. Can’t sweat, can you? Not and not blast yourself into space.”

“Okay,” Herzer said. “Thus the leaf thing.”

“Right,” Peterka said. “Run fluid through it and it carries away the heat. Actually absorbs a bit of the sweat as well so you’re not drenched all the time. Problem, space is a lousy conductor itself. Air carries heat away on Earth. Ain’t none in space, soldier boy. Getting rid of heat is the A-Number-One problem in space.”

“What about air?” Megan asked.

“Air’s easy,” Peterka said shortly. “There’s these things called air -bottles. Recirculate it through scrubbers to get out the CO2 and you’re golden. Heat’s the problem.”

“Thus the big vanes on the armor,” Herzer said, gesturing.

“Right,” Peterka said. “That would allow the heat to escape. If you were in shade. System had a thermometer system that shut it down automatically when it got too hot on the surface. There was a heat sink that would carry you over. Very damned complex system and one we hadn’t actually been able to test very well.”

“How did the skin suits handle it?” Megan asked, looking at the suit that was vaneless.

“Well, they actually sort of used sweat,” Peterka admitted. “A certain amount of water is gathered from the vascular system and it was released in measured amounts. Evaporating water is great for carrying off heat, lots of caloric transfer in evaporation. But it won’t work with armor, even appliquéd armor.”

“Appliquéd?” Herzer asked.

“Slapped on the outside,” Peterka said.

“Don’t tell me you don’t have an answer,” Megan said.

“We have one, but it’s not a good one,” Peterka said. “Ice packs.”

“Ice?” Herzer asked.

“Yeah,” Peterka said, sighing. “We’ll hook up a system to run the water through ice packs. The ice packs will melt and turn to water. Eventually, you’ll get damned hot and have to change the packs. We’re looking at some of the problems with it right now, but it will probably work. But you’re going to generate the most heat when you’re most active, like when you’re fighting. You’re not going to be able to say ‘Excuse me, Mr. Orc, could we pause a moment while I change my ice pack?’ ”

Herzer laughed at that and shook his head.

“Right, safety tip: keep your pack changed.”

“You think it’s funny now,” the dwarf said, shaking his head. “They’ll only last about fifteen minutes!”

“Oh, hell,” Herzer said. “That’s bad.”

“Why?” Megan asked.

“Most fights last longer than that,” Herzer replied. “Okay, this is part of your design. We’re going to need some way to… turn a switch or something, and switch to a new pack. That will be a training item, but the fighter will switch to a new pack when we’re about to engage in combat or as soon as possible after. And back if that one gets used up. Three or four would be nice.”

“Two or three is the most we’ll be able to do,” Peterka said, picking up a note pad and making a note.

“Okay, you’re going with appliquéd armor?” Herzer asked.

“Have to,” Peterka said. “We looked at all sorts of possibilities, laminar, scale, but your fighters already have their own damned armor. Fittings will have to be replaced but there’s no reason not to use it. Some… expansion and contraction issues, but lorica will flex for that and the light carbon steel they’re made of is actually pretty resistant to thermal cracking. They’ll tend to be… brittle in the shaded areas, though. Keep that in mind. Have to be careful about the collar area as well. Might put a bronze ring in to prevent it contracting too much. Have to put an insulator layer on the inside or when it heats up in the sun it’ll burn away your suit. By the way, did I mention radiation?”