Blue Star Enterprises-Chapter 215 - 4-31

"I understand this is your company, Alex, but a simple heads up that you are testing a new weapon would be appreciated," Krieger said.

Alexander sighed. "I know, and I'm sorry for not telling you, but I wanted a working prototype before unveiling it."

"I take it by the fact that something reached orbit, that you were successful?"

Alexander bobbed his avatar up and down in confirmation. "Even more than I thought it would be."

"So what is this new weapon, and what purpose did you have in mind for it?"

Alexander locked his office door before turning on the holo. Much like the stealth tech and the comm nodes, the FE Cannon was marked 'Top Secret.' Krieger knew the protocol by now, and soon their identities were confirmed and the image cleared.

The Admiral leaned in to get a closer look at the design. "Looks a bit like a Gauss cannon, but what are those rings around the barrel?"

Since the initially successful test, Alexander had slightly tweaked the design of the weapon, managing to get the same projectile velocities with only half the number of static field coils. He managed that by adding the Gauss cannon's firing mechanism to the weapon.

Swapping that feature into the weapon had two benefits. It made the FE cannon simpler to maintain, and if the field failed or couldn't be used, such as in an atmosphere, the cannon could still fire. He decided to keep the original name that Lucas had suggested, though.

"Lucas said I should call it an FE cannon, and that was good enough for me. FE stands for field effect or field-enhanced. The main firing mechanism is from a Gauss cannon, which is why it looks familiar, but the rings produce a static field inside the barrel, enhancing the projectile's speed beyond what a railgun is capable of reaching. It is also far more accurate than either, because the field suspends the projectile inside the barrel, taking up any possible tolerance issues between the round and the barrel while also keeping any physical wear to a minimum."

"That all sounds very impressive, Alex, and I can certainly see the advantage to having a more accurate, longer-range weapon, but aren't the lasers still a better option? Most of the issues with the Gauss cannons that the STO used were related to light-speed delay rather than accuracy."

"I agree," Alexander added. "Lasers are a better long-range weapon than projectiles unless your enemy doesn't know you're there."

"Hmm. You're referring to Char's reports of how they set up traps for Harlow to essentially fly into."

Alexander nodded. "Imagine putting just one of these on a stealth ship. It wouldn't even have to be a turret, it could simply be a fixed barrel, similar to how the missile tubes exit from the front of ships. Line up a cloaked ship on a target from way beyond sensor or even laser range, and fire. Some tests will need to be conducted to ensure the projectile maintains its charge over longer distances, but even if it doesn't, it should be far more effective than a railgun or Gauss volley. That's not even the main reason I designed the weapon in the first place, though, it's just something that came to mind since you asked to meet with me."

Krieger looked confused by that. "It wasn't? Then why did you build it?"

"To replace the railguns in the Stingrays. Have you had a chance to go over the combat reports coming in from the conflict with Xin?"

"I went over the first battle report. I wasn't aware there were more."

Alexander nodded his avatar. "I took remote control of the Stingray we sent out with a comm node. Experiencing the battle showed me a few glaring weaknesses with the gunships. The two biggest were the lack of ammunition and the overall punch the smaller vessels were capable of once their missiles were spent. They were barely able to take down a similar-sized group of coalition-era ships without running dry. Most might consider that an acceptable outcome from a simple gunship, but I was not impressed."

"I see. So you wanted to find a way to pack more ammo into the ships and give them more staying power. It makes sense. How did the whole, 'use a defensive system and turn it into a weapon' come around?"

"Like most things, by complete accident. I was running some experiments to try and recreate my defensive field, but the computer running them took it in a very different direction. From there, it just took a bit of tweaking by myself, and the FE cannon was born."

"I won't say no to more effective weapons, but I would like to see them in action before you go changing things. There may be something you missed or overlooked." Krieger added before pausing in thought. "If I'm not mistaken, the Stingray held about three hundred rounds before. How many will it hold with the FE cannon?"

The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

"It was actually three hundred and fifty rounds, which goes extremely fast when it's feeding twin guns," Alexander muttered. "With the new guns, I can pack twelve hundred rounds into the same space."

"The same-sized rounds as a Gauss cannon?" He asked rhetorically. "I told you that you should have used Gauss cannons from the start. You would have avoided the ammunition issue from the beginning."

"Yeah, yeah," Alexander groaned, getting a chuckle out of Krieger. "If I did that, I never would have thought to design the FE cannon."

"Touché," Krieger admitted. "Since you were sort of there, how is the war effort going?"

"It's hard to say. Going by the last two battles, the Xin had more than enough forces to simply roll over the Asgardians if they simply waited and combined those two fleets. Instead, they seem to be throwing just enough ships at the defenders to keep them occupied, and I don't like that."

Krieger rubbed his chin in thought. "I agree, Grand Admiral Xin has to have a reason behind his actions, but I have yet to see what it could be. Have you been able to get any satellites past the border?"

Alexander shook his avatar. "The first ship I sent out there had just enough to reach the front line. The next fleet heading out will be followed shortly after by another two fishbone ships filled with stealth satellites. Once they make it out there, we should have a better picture of what Xin is up to. To keep them safe in enemy territory, I had the bots coat both fishbone ships with stealth paint. They will also be accompanied by two stealth Stingrays.

Krieger perked up at that. "Does that mean you finally made progress on the armor?"

Alexander nodded. "It took a bit to combine the STO's methods with my own, but Lucas was finally able to make it happen. BSE can now produce armor of a similar grade to what was on Epsilon's Dawn. The optical camouflage is still quite a way off, though."

"Still, that's huge. I know you have a plan for a stealth Orca, and you are already making stealth Stingrays. What about a stealth Shark corvette?"

"I wasn't planning on it. Do you think we could benefit from stealth corvettes?"

Krieger paused to think about that for a bit. "Before your FE cannons, I would have said not really, but now, they may come in handy as automated interdiction ships. Technically, you could use the Stingrays for the same purpose, but a corvette would pack a lot more firepower and wouldn't need a support ship nearby for rearming as often."

That possibility hadn't really crossed Alexander's mind. If he had interdiction ships in that system where the corporate ships attacked and destroyed that freighter, he would have been able to deal with the problem immediately. "I'll need to make some changes to the ship to make that happen. Do you think it would be better with laser turrets or FE turrets?"

"Both?" Krieger asked.

Alexander shook his head. "I thought about combining the two into one turret, but it would be far too complex and take up too much space."

"The Shark will still have the centrally mounted laser, right?"

Alexander nodded.

"Then go with however many FE cannons you can stuff into the turret. The stealth Shark–we really need a new name for the ship–is meant to remain unseen. If it has to rely on the laser, things have already gone south."

"I can see your point, I'll see what I can do. As for the ship classification, how about we call it the Swordfish?"

Updat𝓮d from freewēbnoveℓ.com.

Krieger smiled. "Now that's a name I like. Unless you have any other bombshells to drop on me, I need to get going. My class starts in twenty minutes, and having the teacher and Admiral arrive late would not look good."

"No more bombshells," Alexander chuckled. "At least not today. I'll set up a time for you to view the new weapon in action. Speaking of teaching, I believe my engineering course is set to begin after your class ends. Have a good day, professor."

Krieger nodded before getting up and heading out of Alexander's office.

Alexander didn't mind teaching, he had gotten plenty of experience teaching Yulia over the years.

Speaking of his daughter, she had a new project she was working on that he wasn't all that enthusiastic about. With some time to spare, he pulled it up on his office holo to display her new project.

It looked like a much bigger go-kart, and it essentially was. If it had to be classified by what he knew, he would have called it a dune buggy.

The vehicle wasn't designed for the small circle track or road courses inside the facility. Yulia was building it to explore the surface of Eden's End. While he could see the appeal of getting out of the confines of the facility, he was worried she might hurt herself.

The dune buggy was both faster and larger than the go-karts, with large gas-filled shock absorbers to soak up the bumps. Yulia had been studying hard for months to bring the creation to life, and he couldn't be prouder of her efforts.

He could have deterred her, but he would never squash something she was passionate about, even if it made him anxious. That didn't mean he couldn't help her, though.

"Maybe just a few improvements," he muttered as he pulled the entire design apart and tweaked a few things here and there. Not enough for Yulia to notice the changes, but just some things that would make the buggy safer and more reliable.

It was always faster with that girl. A bigger motor, smoother bearings, etc. Anything that brought about just a bit more speed.

He was still restricting how fast and how large of a motor she was allowed to use, but that didn't seem to deter his daughter, and he knew eventually she would grow bored with ground-based vehicles and demand something a bit more impressive.

While he wasn't looking forward to that day, he was enjoying some of the unique challenges her questions had spawned.

One thing Alexander was testing, thanks to an innocuous question from the twelve-year-old, was a new electric motor design. Specifically, a reduced-friction bearing made using a static field emitter instead of ball bearings. Keeping the area where the bearing resided in a vacuum was proving rather challenging, leading to the test motors breaking down quite often. He was forced to rely on seals on either end of the friction zone, which is why he referred to it as reduced friction instead of friction-free. Then again, even friction-free wasn't frictionless, as that would be theoretically impossible to achieve. There would always be friction from other sources acting on the motor.

It was an interesting concept brought about by Yulia's desires, and he kept at it because it was an engineering challenge he hadn't yet solved. Even if the motors were less than stellar in an atmosphere, they should be a great replacement for the ones used in his ship turrets. A whole lot more testing would need to happen before he considered switching over to them.