LIGHTNOVELONLINE 220 Plume
Five shots in, and Donovan was beginning to get nervous. He wasn't at all concerned about making it look like all this was for nothing, like he wasn't really showing anything new to them. Donovan was concerned that the weapons he was displaying were over performing.
Sure, the Arboreal Maiden might have said that she wouldn't restrict his endeavors in the realm of space combat, but he could see her changing her mind after this display. The driving factor wouldn't necessarily be that she wanted to do so either. She had brought a lot of people with her, not all of them would be so easy to accept such a sudden and drastic change in the paradigm of how wars were to be fought. The Marshal looked like he was to be the biggest obstacle there, visibly disgruntled by what he was bearing witness to.
Now, though, was the real test for him. They had set out seven ships for the Blunderbuss, preparing seven shots with which to fire at them with. The plan, if it was even complicated enough to be called one, was to have Arc approach the firing range at a certain speed and begin to slow down after firing the first shot, which was at 50km, and continue to slow down as the Foundry-Pegasus pair approached different ranges.
They were to fire at ranges of 50, 25, 10, 5, 2.5, 1 and o.5 kilometers, however despite the relative closeness of the 2.5km shot the Pegasus had yet to actually be seen. The culprit behind this, unsurprisingly, were the massive steel rectangles that were beside them. In order to guarantee the safety of the audience, they had been placed at an angle that pointed towards the target ships. The audience, therefore, were looking at the ships from an angle - something which not only made them easier to see, but also obscured the approach of the Terran construct.
"This next shot will be from one kilometer. The Pegasus should be visible right about . . . now."
Donovan's timing wasn't the best, but it was good enough. A mess of steel beams and loose wiring first trundled into view, disorganized and clumsily manufactured to the untrained eye but easily understood to a professional or computer, those were the most optimal paths for various wires to cut down on material costs.
This mess was followed by a truly colossal entity, though it would be more accurate to say that it was accompanied rather than followed by. It was bulky, blocky, and 'empty'. The two short and fat cylinders on its 'back', centrifugal smelters, were a more energy efficient method of creating 'gravity' so that the slag involved in the steel refining process would rise to the 'top' (center) and could be extracted. The pure-r iron could then have carbon and desirable impurities re-added to achieve the desired qualities in the steel. One of those cylinders was always active at any given moment, often both of them were, and they would 'pour' their steel into the box at the base between them.
That was the casting bay, the place where all the magic happened. There, an Atmospheric Containment Field would create a mold in the desired shape for the steel to fill. This process could be exceptionally energy intensive depending on the complexity, size, and number of shapes involved in that round of casting, but once the outside layer had cooled enough to be considered a solid the part would be extracted from the bay and left to cool down in a separate processing chamber. There, any surface abnormalities caused by the steel pressing up against the ACF would be cut off or smoothed out by one of the Cutter Lasers, eventually leaving a product that was good enough to be used in the final product.
Other metals were not ignored, copper being one of the most vital given their reliance on electronics, however they did not need processing on the scale that the iron to steel pipeline did. That job could be done on a smaller scale, a combination of Cutter lasers to melt, a piston to push, and a Miniaturized Atmospheric Isolation Device (the one that 'belonged' to Mercedes) generated 'funnel' to contain the melted copper was more than enough to squeeze out spools of wire. Similarly simplified processes were carried out for other processes, the completed copper wires expected to be exposed to corroding agents being passed through an isolated box of molten tin (secured courtesy of the steel slag) on their way to installation.
'Arms' extended from this structure, many jointed wholly inorganic, putting pieces of the Pegasus into place even as it continued the combat demonstration. The bright yet tiny lights all around the steel jungle gym were signs of such installation, the smaller offshoot arms and nanobots dutifully arc-welding each part into the necessary place.
This foundry, a factory more complex than anything the Holifanians could cook up yet exceedingly simple in its processes, was now being freely exposed to an audience with members who could probably make a guess as to what was going on. It would be an understatement to say that Donovan was feeling a little nervous about that.
Before anybody could say anything about it though, an extremely bright pillar of light, of flame, erupted from one of the stubby protrusions atop the only real solid portion of the Pegasus. Given the relative dimness of the construction site in question, the light would normally have been a welcome addition. Unfortunately, there was no question in anyone's mind about the nature of that light. Being thankful for it was not on the table.
- - - - -
"What the hell was that?" Trebar leaned into Gawan and whispered the question rather aggressively.
"I think they call that the plume?"
"How many plumes do you know of that move as a uniform cylinder beyond the rim of the barrel? Isn't that impossible?" Trebar stared at his friend, who was maintaining a perfectly neutral face. "Come on, you're the gun guy, what went on there?"
"I don't know." Gawan shrugged. "What do you want me to say? I thought that thing was supposed to be a shotgun. I was expecting a long barrel to get the pellets going fast, you know? I guess maybe that's an extension of the barrel?"
"I gathered that, I just want to know how he did it. Is there any magic theoretical gas vector system you know of?"
"Nothing that can do that."
"Fuck." Trebar wanted to bang his head on something. Factoring this in together with whatever the hell that construct was, he had severely misjudged just how far behind they were. "This changes everything . . ."
- - - - -
Titanyana's heart raced from the sight unfolding before her, hands sweating from that all too familiar sensation of fear and dread. She had been primed for it since this morning, Donovan's lecture turned simulation having given her a visualization of what was likely to happen, but those little floating models didn't really mean anything to her back then. Why would it have? She might have understood the results on an academic level, but she failed to really attach that to a life-sized model. Now that she could actually see what happened to those wooden ships, expensive pieces of equipment her people could barely afford to maintain let alone produce, were practically reduced to splinters.
It didn't take much of an imagination to figure out what would happen to a person stuck on one of those. She had basically felt what would happen at the beginning, her ears being much more sensitive to sound than the people she was sitting with. Titanyana had to wonder if those weapons would ever be turned against her people if ever they decided to rebel.
THAT was a scary thought, the one that inspired the dread she now felt.
In spite of that, she wasn't feeling fear and dread in isolation. There were other emotions there, emotions inspired by the exact same sight that scared her so much. Those weapons might certainly be used against her people, but that was only in the case they fell out of line. After seeing it, Titanyana didn't doubt that Donovan could make an invasion impossible. Once more, Titanyana had discovered that safety could be found in Donovan's embrace.
But there was more there. Hope.
Up to this point, Titanyana hadn't really registered how serious Donovan was about the numbers of Nekh he could save. She didn't really understand how it was possible. Now though? Sitting here and bearing witness to a floating fortress being constructed in real time? How could she possibly doubt his capabilities? She could see another subtly glowing beam being removed from one of the big boxes by yet another of those metal arms, slowly being put into place along the Pegasus' side. She could easily understand how one of these ships might be finished in a month with this sort of speed.
Titanyana's ears were tickled by a faint rumbling, a disturbance in the air that almost set her off. It felt strange, dangerous even, but for the life of her she couldn't tell what had caused it. The Arboreal Maiden? Perhaps a reaction by the Great Csillacra to the damage it had taken? Her hand slowly shifted to grip the handle of her sword.
tok tok tok tok
One of the other little lumps atop the Pegasus began to sing it's song, a consistent cadence of fire and smoke erupting from a the end of the pike attached to it. This sound, clearly audible if faint, unnerved her just as much as the rumbling from before. Every time the sound reached her ears they twitched involuntarily, an instinctual reaction. Her body somehow recognized that sound as something loud, working on the premise and promise that it would get louder. And louder it got.
Every explosion was ever so slightly louder than the last. Each one forcing her ears to fold and recoil a little bit further each time. By the time the tenth burst reached her ears, she could no longer pay attention to what Donovan was saying. She wanted to, but the knocking was distracting her, drawing her attention away and activating her 'danger' instincts. Titanyana wanted to run, but she couldn't move. She was paralyzed by that sound.
Attention firmly held by the metal construct before her, Titanyana caught a glimpse of movement. It was slow, but one of the stumps that had spit out that plume of flame was moving, turning upwards and stopping perpendicular to the top of the Pegasus. She didn't know exactly what was going on inside that 'turret', but she knew that the product of those processes was going to be the destruction of yet another priceless ship.
Well, they didn't seem quite so priceless now that she had been exposed to 'Terran Naval Power', which took the form of this ship which carried infinitely more value in comparison.
Just as slowly as it had been raised, the barrel of the Blunderbuss lowered. It had finished the salute of death Donovan called 'the reload cycle' and was now preparing to kill again. Remembering this, Titanyana's tail stiffened, the fur along it standing on end. The knocking had stopped, and for a moment it seemed as if the world had gone quiet.
For all her speed, Titanyana failed to cover her ears in time.
BKA-sssSSSS-POW
For the final time today, the Blunderbuss spoke. It started as a sharp yet deep impact, like someone had hit a wooden table with a cupped hand next to her ear. This sound didn't feel like it properly finished though, being stifled before its roar could be heard, instead being replaced by a violent hissing as the block of flame accelerated in a straight line. The pop at the end coincided with the flames dying out.
A gaping hole from stem to stern had been blown through the wooden construct formerly considered to be a void vessel, and Titanyana's ears were left ringing.
- - - - -
Donovan wanted nothing more than to bury his head in his hands right now. Mistakes had been made, big ones, and there was a fairly decent chance everybody who had decided to attend was suffering from some form of tinnitus after that blast. Even when muffled, even when suppressed, a traditional ballistic weapon with a barrel diameter of half a meter was not to be underestimated. To stop at calling it 'loud' would be one such underestimation, even if it wasn't as loud as it could be.
That was because of the slow-burn nature of the powder used and the nature of the acceleration method. The powder was honestly closer to solid fuel than powdered combustibles, burning for an extremely short period of time rather than generating a 'long' explosion, but it needed to be that way. This weapon, the Blunderbuss, utilized the Atmospheric Containment Field Generator aboard the Pegasus in order to create a lengthy extension to the barrel.
This wasn't a perfect barrel, the incomplete containment of the high-pressure gasses was the source of the hiss, but that was acceptable. It saved them a ton on the materials that would be required to reinforce the turret and mount, the recoil being almost exclusively redirected to the ACFG, which was relatively easy to create a bracing for. That ACFG had a limited range though, so after a certain point the cylinder containing the gasses would 'explode' as the walls were instantly removed, which helped scatter the steel balls a little bit. So why wasn't this monstrous explosion heard before? To Donovan, the reason was pretty obvious.
Despite everything that had changed, some things very much stayed the same, 'sound' being one of them. Sound needed matter to move through, or else it wasn't sound. In an atmosphere, matter surrounds literally everything. In space, there usually isn't much of it to go around. Therefore, there wasn't any sound in space because there wasn't anything to transfer it. However it was important to remember that some things had changed.
In this case, it was the Great Csillacra. More specifically, the air around the Great Csillacra. The sensor readings were inconsistent, and asking the Arboreal Maiden about it yielded a very persuasive 'it depends'. To be safe, they had gone with being 500 meters from the branch being the closest acceptable distance. Clearly that wasn't far enough.
"Sorry about that folks. Looks like we got a bit too close. . ." Donovan shot a mean glance towards the Arboreal Maiden, not hiding the fact that he blamed her for this one. She had spent something along the lines of a bajillion years here and she didn't know how far out the air went? Barring that, couldn't she have just asked? Surely the Great Csillacra would know considering that, well, it facilitates that phenomenon.
