“The problem is, at its core, a simple one,” Graham assumed his “lecturing” voice and mannerisms, clasping his hands behind his back and leading Celesta deeper into the heart of the ship. “The RDS develops unexpected variances in its power supply and causes a push-pull on the MUX. Sometimes it’ll draw enormous amounts of current unexpectedly, other times it will dump so much power back on the bus that it blows out the junction.

“Tsuyo R&D assured us that this was all accounted for, and to be fair there is an extensive detection and suppression network on the power taps, but what we’re finding in real world testing on Icarus is that the MUX controllers aren’t always ready for what the RDS power sub-system does. I’ve had discussions with the Amsterdam’s chief engineer while we’re in such close com range and he agrees with my findings.”

The Icarus, like every other starship since humans had begun leaving Earth, utilized a “smart” electrical distribution system that allowed the computer to monitor and prioritize where power was sent. It utilized a multiplexing system, or MUX, to distribute power and reduce the amount of wiring stuffed into a ship that was hundreds of meters long. It also had many redundancies and safeties built in to prevent the ship from being damaged, the same safeties that were causing them problems when it came to their new reactionless drive.

“And what solution do you suggest to mitigate this?” Celesta asked.

“In descending order of preference I would first take the ship back to New Sierra and tell Tsuyo to either pull the RDS pod or properly integrate it into the ship’s power distribution system,” Graham said, ticking off the points on his fingers. “Barring that, I would leave it disconnected and simply refuse to risk the safety of the ship over what is proving to be a system that isn’t ready for active deployment. Third, I would order my teams to begin fabricating an interface consisting of up and downstream surge detectors coupled to fast-break load contactors. What this should do, in theory, is very simple: When an event is detected the connection to the main bus is broken before the RDS has a chance to damage our power system.”

“Cons?”

“We’re breaking the connection completely,” Graham shrugged. “That means when power is reapplied that it won’t just come back up. You’ll have to reinitialize the entire startup sequence again.”

Celesta frowned. The startup on the RDS was an intricate and lengthy procedure that also required they shut down a myriad of other systems that would interfere with the initial calibration of the field generators. Realistically that meant that if Graham’s interface was triggered and cut the drive during combat, or even normal intrasystem flight, that would be it: no RDS for the remainder of the operation until they could call for a full stop somewhere.