Max's team was hard at work on the creation of the intricately detailed alloy shell for the Dyson Sphere, as detailed in the ancient human plans that Ranarth had provided, when an idea came to Max.
There was a flash in his memory of a long forgotten repair process, not even on a Mecha, but a relic starship from his youth that he had purchased in order to sneak away on vacation. It was even more derelict than Terminus was when he first found her, but the Warp Drive used a Dyson Sphere similar to the one that they were constructing, only it had once contained a self-sustaining star inside that had been purged when the ship was decommissioned.
The images flowed through his mind of years spent trying to get the wreck to fly without getting caught with an unregistered space vessel, and Max realized that he actually knew the basics of the design that they were trying to replicate quite well.
Not because any human should have known it, but because he had dug an Eon old spaceship out of a dead space scrap heap and decided that he simply needed to take it on a joyride before he hit the age of majority and was drafted into service.
The old Darkling might have been born after the time reset, where Max's previous life was well before that, when the war with the Gods was only getting started, but he might still know something more than Max could remember. Even better, he might have actual diagrams, which Max had never owned.
"Hey Ranarth. We only need to get the fusion reaction to sustain itself, right? Once we have that, then the sphere should absorb all forces and energies that the contained miniature star emits." He asked.
"That is correct. Everything from radiation, photons and even gravity should be absorbed or reflected by the sphere." Ranarth Agreed.
"So, if we cut a small ball out of a Neutron star, say the size of my fist, the sphere would contain the gravity that it emitted, right? In a strong magnetic field, that should be enough gravitational force to sustain the fusion reaction. Or close enough to it that we can help it along with technology." Max suggested.
"I'm not sure that what you're suggesting is possible, injecting any controlling energy into a Dyson sphere would generally require compromising its integrity. But in theory, yes, you could do that. Can you explain what you had in mind, so I can check with my database to see if it's feasible?"
Max nodded. "Of course, what I am suggesting is that we go for a Carbon Nitrogen Oxygen, or CNO fusion cycle miniature star, which will produce its own hydrogen for a proton to proton fusion into hydrogen, which will be inherently unstable at such a small size, and continue the cycle.
Occasionally, we will likely need to inject some new material into the Dyson Sphere, since the degradation rate on such a small star will be exponentially faster than a regular star, but in theory it should be possible."
Ranarth started running numbers in his head as he searched for the appropriate data, which didn't seem to be in any of the regularly accessed or properly indexed files.
"By my count, the Dyson Sphere will need to be purged once every twenty thousand years, and a new supply of matter introduced, in order to keep it operational if you should forego the Dark Energy stabilization route in favour of using the gravity of hyper compressed matter.
That should be much more than the service life of a Mecha, but it would introduce some new dangers to the battlefield. Namely, the intense gravity wells that would be produced if one of the spheres was breached and its core were exposed to regular space.
But, you can always develop a safety protocol to deal with that. Dumping it into another layer of space would work fairly well. Gravity works differently in the one you are most Familiar with, and leaving the core there would allow you to retrieve it in a new sphere without too much inconvenience."
The Gravity of a small ball the size of his fist should only be a tenth of a thousandth that of a star, which was not a big deal most of the time. It would be no more than the standard gravity on Kepler Prime if you were near it. But if the compressed baseball of fusion got close enough to interact with a planetary body, or worse, a ship travelling at warp speed, the results would be catastrophic.
"Alright, we will test that after we have a working prototype of the Dyson Sphere built. I think it would be best to load it with all the other materials we will need, then find a way to introduce the piece of the Neutron star to it afterwards. I just don't know how we would do that yet."
Ranarth gave him a smile that spoke of millennia of experience.
"That is the easy part. Since they don't exist in the other layers, or at least the stars don't exist in the same spots, we only need to put the sphere in place, and then open a portal to drop the piece inside. After that, you fire a load of plasma into it, close the sphere, and it should light up every power system in your ship."
"That is genius. I hope that this idea works because that is too good of an idea to never try in person." Max laughed.
Max got back to work, thinking of the very first ship that he ever tried to repair back in his past life, and slowly more of the lost and forgotten memories of his first childhood began to come back to him. Things that he had never thought were relevant in this life, and ones that were barely relevant in his past life.
But it seemed that they were now because they needed so many new and strange technologies to make everything that they had been developing work together.
