Chronicles of Sol: The Fall

Countryman made his way down the corridor to the lab. The Enterprise was now en route to the Delta Four star system. That was good since they would want to steer clear of Cathamari space for awhile. Especially given that they would be descending into civil war soon if they haven’t already. The probe had done its job well and brought back high-quality sensor data on the impact. It was hard to determine exact casualties, but they estimated roughly nine billion dead, with millions more being blasted with lethal levels of gamma radiation. Probe reading indicated a massive gamma burst unleashed by the detonation, and that wasn’t the only type of radiation released. They had packed the cruiser with anti-hydrogen, and as much hydrogen as they could spare. Not all of that anti-hydrogen had interacted with its counterpart. The result was incomplete matter-antimatter annihilations on a large scale, which consequently unleashed a large burst of exotic radiation. Along with some other nasty effects, associated with incomplete annihilation reactions. As a result, large chunks of the surface had been rendered radioactive, and radiation readings were off the scale when the probe departed. Combined with the orbital shift, caused by the sheer energy of the impact and subsequent detonation the planet Cathamair would soon cease to be habitable. Projections indicated that the planet would be subject to severe geological instability, and violent weather for the next few years until it stabilized in a new orbit. When it did, it would no longer be the second planet from its sun, but the fifth. During this time, global temperatures would plummet, and the oceans will freeze over. Eventually, the planet will be largely glacier with vast ice sheets covering its surface. Geothermal activity however would provide enough heat for a subsurface ocean to remain for quite some time.

While intriguing they were not going to be able to really stick around and study the results of their handiwork. It was enough however to know that the Cathamari had also lost their world. Earth had been avenged, and the mood aboard ship was already improving thanks to the news. They may have lost their world, but they had struck back. Not only had they struck back, but they had also done so effectively and without any loss of life. It was unfortunate however that the destruction wasn’t more complete, but there wasn’t anything he could do about that. If he had been willing to take the risk, and invested in that Resonance Pulse weaponry that Ruri had outlined as being possible if they scaled up their mining technology. They could have destroyed the planet, but that would have been far more risky. As it would have required more than one ship to have any chance of success, and he sure wasn’t going to risk the fleet against the superior numbers of the Cathamari defense forces. Not if they were going to be outnumbered to that degree. Especially not without a way to even the odds, and they were currently lacking that.

As it was, the cruiser missile had faced quite a few ships. Thankfully, it only had to blow past them, not destroy them all. It only destroyed or disabled those actually in its way, which had included one very large Cathamari ship. A dreadnought from the look of things. He already had people analyzing that battle, and working to improve the automated combat algorithms they had devised. They might prove useful in other applications afterall. In fact he knew they would, especially when combined with the AGI systems he had Ruri working to complete. Modern AI was truly powerful, and very useful with numerous applications, but it was still inherently ‘Dumb.’ It worked really, really well in the applications it was specifically designed for, but outside of that? Not so well. This wasn’t much of an issue for say a chess program, but it did present certain limitations for military applications. Now that their numbers were so few, the only way they would be able to defend themselves once they settled a new world, would be to supplement their numbers with machines or clones. Both presented their own advantages and issues. Of the two, he would vastly prefer the former.

Putting that aside, he was almost to the lab. He was looking forward to seeing the new power cells. They too had numerous applications, and he already had ideas of what he wanted the young researcher to work on next. The Mark IV suits, naturally, but there were other applications that could use the more powerful energy cells, she had adapted for use in the S-III.

Reaching the lab, he stepped inside. Unlike with Ruri, the occupant here was actually properly dressed. Although, he wouldn’t say she looked presentable either. She had a few stains on her lab coat, and her hair clearly needed to be brushed. Other than that she looked alright. She noticed him as well, and smiled. “Glad to see you, sir.”

He replied, “I read your report, ready to demonstrate those cells?”

She nodded, and said, “Yes actually.”

There was a bit of excitement in her voice, as she activated some equipment, revealing two suits of armor, and a few turrets. Along with what looked to be an Archer-30 power pack, the kind used to power most current-gen powered assault armor models, including the S-III which was the most common model. Although the Archer-30 was typically used in light to medium armor suits. Heavier suits required a beefer pack for viability, and often used the Archer-35, but some models used twin Archer-30s instead.

She turned back to him, “I sent you my preliminary testing data.” She picked up the power pack, walking to the suit on the left. “I just need to install a fresh pack, in this suit, and you can see the difference. As you know, the Mark III system is quite remarkable, providing excellent protection from a wide array of battlefield threats, and enhancing human capabilities to their limits. A single soldier in Mark III armor is often said to be worth a hundred ordinary troops in basic combat armor. However, the Mark III does have one notable area that can be improved upon, its power systems. The suit is only useful as long as it has power, and becomes useless once the batteries die. A reactor might solve that problem, but we are still a long way from that. We can however extend the power supply by using better batteries, as my demonstration will prove.” she told him while installing a fresh power pack into the battery port.

Exchanging batteries was a simple procedure, all one had to do was open the armored power port. Pull out the old pack, and swap in the new one. A special tool was needed to open it of course, but it was meant to be quick and easy. The tool was often included in the kit of field technicians. Although the cells could also be recharged by connecting a power source to the suit’s charging ports. Recharging was often the preferred way to go, but sometimes in the battlefield, it was better to simply swap power cells. As it could take a few minutes for the power pack to fully recharge, even with modern rapid-recharge technology. Time was often critical on the battlefield.

Stepping away from the suit, after sealing it up, she returned to the control bank behind a blast shield. It was transparent so you could see through it, but it wasn’t made of glass. Instead, it was made of a highly robust and transparent synthetic material. A material also used in starship construction, most notably in the construction of viewports. The material was a compressed nano-composite of synthetic polymers and laced with metals such as titanium. The resulting material was not only transparent but virtually bulletproof. It could stop any man-portable ballistic weapon, and when reinforced by a structural field it could do the same with most energy blasts. That was because the material was not only remarkably strong, but it had highly desirable thermal resistance properties, as such it did not melt easily.

The blast shield here was nearly 8 cm thick. An age ago that was considered the norm for stopping small arms, but this wasn’t bulletproof glass. This material was far superior and could stop tank shells. Not the super high-velocity guns mounted on modern tanks, but lower velocity AP shells could be stopped by that. The blast shield was especially impressive when reinforced by a structural field, but it had to be in order to withstand the destructive potential of modern small arms, such as the XR-471. The power of weapons like the XR-471 is simply a reflection of the impact the powered assault armor program had on weapons technology. With each new generation of powered assault armor, more powerful weapons came to counter them, and with each advance in weapons a new generation of armor had followed. A cycle that came to a crawl a few years ago due to power limitations. Regardless advancements continued to happen. Advancements that also necessitated improvements to lab safety mechanisms to ensure the researchers didn’t get themselves killed when testing anything involving destructive energy. This blast shield was just one of the more recent examples.

Breaking him from his thoughts on the blast shield, she said, “I’m going to demonstrate the advantages the new cells provide the armor. The turrets here are equipped with standard particle weapons, equivalent to the XR-471 which was designed to penetrate the S-III. I’ve programmed the turrets to stop firing once the AIF fails. I’ve also programmed a firing pattern, that will allow the field enough recovery time to ensure that failure would only happen if the power cells reach critical levels. Thereby making this a test of how long the battery can last under fire.”

He nodded, understanding what she was going for. The XR-471 was indeed designed to penetrate modern powered assault armor, and it did it fairly well. A single high-intensity particle pulse from the gun wouldn’t, but a sustained burst would rapidly drain the AIF, once that failed all it would take is one hit to kill the occupant. It wasn’t the only weapon designed to deal with armored infantry. There was also the LRB-1247, it was a sniper’s weapon an anti-material weapon, and it was one of the tiny handful of infantry weapons able to penetrate the armor with AIF enhancing it. It could do it in one hit, but it would often take the full 3 tenths of a second discharge to kill. That meant there was enough time for a soldier to escape certain death. At least in some cases. Of course, while the armor was good against most threats on the battlefield, there was one notable weakness. Shock protection, the system designed to protect the wearer from concussive force, and physical impacts could be overwhelmed. There were even a few weapons designed to exploit that, the LFI-47 Concussive shock grenade, was one such weapon. It relied purely on the concussive force of detonation to kill. It packed a remarkable amount of compressed explosive and could kill armored infantry, although the kill radius wasn’t that large about three meters. Of course, that was against armored infantry, that radius was much larger against unarmored infantry.

He put thoughts of that aside and focused on the test as it started. The turrets activated and started to bombard the two suits with a barrage of fire. His eyes quickly picked out that they were equal barrages in strength, and following the exact same firing pattern. One designed to deplete the batteries and not the AIF field. As such, every few moments there was a pause just long enough to allow the field to rapidly recharge. In effect this simulated heavy combat with the soldiers taking cover only to let their AIF recover, and only briefly. He checked the sensors, noting that there was a measure of battery level for both suits. Their AIF’s were performing almost identically, there was some variance, but nothing unexpected. It was well within expected operating parameters and would not affect the test. As for the batteries, there was a difference between the two already, but nothing large enough to be considered definitive. Suit A had a charge of 99.99999% while suit B had a charge of 99.99998%. While measurable, it was a very small difference in charge, well within the margin of sensor error. It would be at least a few more minutes before they could collect any meaningful data, and they would have to repeat the test a few times to be sure. He expected that she had already done that, as he could pick out signs of previous tests in the testing chamber.

Countryman looked forward to reading that data, but said nothing as he monitored the test. It took time, but before too long the sensors began recording meaningful data. The AIFs of the two suits cycled a few times in that interval as their batteries drained at a fairly rapid pace, although not as rapid as real combat of this level since they were not actually moving. That wasn’t required however for the test. As this was enough to gauge what they were testing. It was a forming trend in the data, but that was what they were looking for, trends. In fact in research that was often everything, the trends in the data were often what they used to make their conclusions.

By the end of the test, and after reading the results of her other tests, he concluded much the same as she did. Her adapted power cells were working very well. They would indeed triple the average battery life of mark-III suits. Not only that, but they did seem to have what was needed to support the Mark IV suits, which were long overdue for implementation.

Turning to the young lady, “I agree these new cells are ready for widespread implementation. Might be nice to adapt them to other form factors, as I can see uses for them in other applications. I would however like you to work on the Mark-IV series of Powered Assault Armor.”

She blinked, then frowned, “Mark IV? What would I even improve? Where would I even...”

He cut her off, “I see where you are coming from, but frankly the only thing you will need to work on is the power systems. As much of the research has already been done.”

She gave him a look, “Already been done? Wait you mean the Mark-IV already exists?”

Countryman nodded, “Implementation of the Mark-IV is long overdue. Development of the Mark-IV actually started over fifteen years ago, but it ran into a snag, and was ultimately shelved about ten years ago. That snag was power, many of the improvements required more power to run, and that ate up battery life to the point that the suit had an unacceptably low battery life. None of the available solutions came with acceptable compromises, and as such the project was shelved. Some of those improvements tested in the project were however added to the Mark III designs, as part of the last minor generational upgrades.”

She frowned, and then after a moment asked, “...What did you improve? The Mark III is already a superior combat suit. It enhances the wearer to the limit of what the human body can withstand and provides excellent protection from a wide array of battlefield threats. Practically turning anyone wearing one, into a walking tank. Only limit is that it requires the wearer to be in superb physical condition, and it also has to be calibrated to the wearer.”

He nodded, “All very true, but its protection does have one notable weakness. Like any protection, if you throw enough energy at it the suit fails. High energy explosions however have been known to be particularly effective. We devised a complicated system based on the inertial dampers found in fighters and starships and implemented it in the armor. This not only augments the shock protection of the suit but also allowed us to augment the wearer further than was previously possible. At least without other forms of augmentation being used first. Most of which are risky, expensive, and often illegal.

“The resulting suit, the Mark IV would have had the same impact on modern warfare that the Mark I had over a century ago.”

She gave him a look, “That would be a mighty leap. As I recall, the Mark I was so revolutionary that its precursors were immediately rendered obsolete.”

She was referring to the Gen Zero platforms, commonly referred to as Powered Combat Exoskeletons. The Powered Combat Exoskeleton had been an important advent for the battlefield, and its development led to two major branches of battlefield equipment. Those items being Powered Assault Armor, and Combat Walkers. Most people didn’t really think of the old gen zero precursors as Assualt Armor, but rather a precursor to modern combat walkers. Largely due to them being most similar to light combat walkers. Just smaller, as they sat between light combat walkers, and Powered Assualt armor in terms of size.

“That covered what happened quite well. The old platforms before the Mark I were useful, but they were never widespread. The Mark I powered assault armor was the first armored combat suit, that was not only effective against most small arms, and augmented the wearer at an affordable price. An unfortunate reality, that lives were often assigned a price tag. The Mark I however was cheap enough for mass production, allowing entire battalions to be outfitted with it compared to older platforms which were simply too expensive for such widespread use. Naturally, it wasn’t long before every army was trying to produce as many units of armored infantry as they could. To the point that many thought tanks and other heavy vehicles would be rendered obsolete. They weren’t, although there were changes in usage.”

The younger woman nodded, “Lines up with what I read. I’m not all that familiar with gen zero equipment though.”

He waved his hand, “Not really needed nowadays. Anyway, I’ll send you the only mark IV prototype we have. It shouldn’t take you too long to get it working.”

She nodded, “If the only problem is power. I think you might be right there. I’ll likely be done in a week or two.”

He smiled, “My estimate is two months, but that is because technology has advanced since the suit was made. A few of the other systems could be further improved over the existing prototype. The gel layer for example. We developed a far more potent shock-absorbing gel for the Enterprise, and it didn’t exist when the Mark IV project was in the works. That can be exchanged. Some of the other systems could be tweaked as well, but since the bulk of the work is already done it should not take you and your team that long to complete.”

The young woman blinked, “...Team? ..I don’t.... Wait!!? You are promoting me!?”

He smiled, “Congrats, you are now a project leader. I have Ruri organizing a list of candidates for you to choose from for your team.”

Moments later, he left the young scientist behind, who seemed to still be processing the fact that she was now officially a project leader.