The machine shop was a black-fingered paradise - albeit far too spotless for any offending oil stains. Nevertheless, the room stank slightly of cordite - an antiquated stench for a ultramodern masterpiece of military industrial synergy. Against the back wall, four nano-presses whizzed like angle grinders, their oscillations piercing at you as they prize apart with the hands of a few trillion robotic watchmakers compounds from their constituent atomic bonds, stripping raw materials into armour, guns, tanks, ship components, spanners, pliers, even toenail clippers in a matter of hours, and vice-versa. If an army marched on its stomach, then you were deep in the intestines.
THE SYNDIC LEAGUES
(A co-operative of Rheinland's Shipping Unions, retired from a life of piracy.)
The elevator ride up to the Machine Shop was an awkward and trying affair. In between Jenkins staring lividly at the back of William's head like a miniature train crash had taken place on the surface of his scalp, and the extreme heat caused by a broken A/C duct that left the car hotter than a New Boston day in July, the ride was unpleasant, to say the least. He wasn't even sure why Jenkins hated him so much, though maybe it had to do with the various times William had shoved, berated, thrown things at, and mistreated the man...
Okay, maybe it was deserved. But it was still hilarious. Besides, ever since the debacle on Hamburg all those years back, Jenkins deserved everything William gave him. Goddammit, Jenkins.
Will couldn't help but look down at the various papers he had brought with him. Yes, it's true, they lived in an age where everything from the speeches of politicians to even the toilet paper one wiped with was digital in some way, shape, or form, but there was something solid about paper. Graph paper, with a bunch of light and dark sketches varying from masterpieces that would put a polytechnic prodigy to shame, and doodles that would make a blind hound dog feel like Michelangelo. The papers showcased a variety of armor designs that, admittedly, resembled some of his favorite designs that called Kusari animation home. God knows how many credits he wasted on that damned hobby.
By some grace of the heavens, the lift finally arrived at its destination, saving William from any more time spent with Guardian "Screw-Up" Jenkins. He shoved past the Guardian, looking at his pudgy face with disgust as he made his way out.
"Frig off, Willy!," Jenkins yelled out.
"Go off yourself, Jenkins!," William retorted.
With a slam, the lift closed and returned to its solemn duty of taking crewmembers up and down the ship. William stepped into the Machine Shop, observing the productive work environment with a smile. It reminded him of a workshop aboard any given Navy battleship, sparks and soot clouding the air as new tools for war churned out of the assembly lines. He approached Nesrin, showing her the papers.
"Well, I finally ended up coming. So, we doing this thing, or what?," he asked.
Nesrin was midway through nearly getting her hand blown off by a positron flux from a defective shield battery as Foulke slid through the door, looking like a man with all the answers. His smile was sufficiently slappable for Nesrin consider striking him with her new-found, white hot, twisted fingertips.
"Give me a moment."
She yanked stopper off a steaming something that looked suspiciously like a barrel of liquid nitrogen and plunged herself in up to the arms. She could have been doing the washing up.
Nesrin snatched her freeze dried fingers out, and gave them a flex, shedding carbon ice as she stalked over. Rank or not, Foulke was in her lair now.
"What the hell do you think you're carrying, you think this is Fourteen Forty? Please tell me you didn't kill a fricking tree for this... oh great. You did. Strewth."
She squinted at the paper with the air of a fashion designer nose-gazing at a charity shop.
"Segmented combat armour, hm... no camouflage, clearly designed with coolness in mind... Borderline unoriginal... shot traps in the chest, neck and knees... sexy helmet though... give me that."
Nesrin snatched the paper from Fouke's hands, running it under a sensor plate. In the projection chamber, a three-D extrapolation of Foulke's suit design rose like a store mannequin, proportioned to his measurements.
"Foulke, whilst you've clearly put a lot of hours into this, you're not going to look like an action hero if the joints are placed in such a manner that its physically impossible to move." She adjusted accordingly, disentangling the suit's elbows from its shoulders until the design looked at least a little more plausible.
"Tell me what you're looking for and we'll work around with the wireframe until I'm convinced enough to run some concepts. First off, define what you want? An armature for indoors, in-ship, room-to-room standard infantry work, something you could sit in a cockpit with or get through a doorway, or a walking tank? The two exclude each other."
THE SYNDIC LEAGUES
(A co-operative of Rheinland's Shipping Unions, retired from a life of piracy.)
That was the thing about Nesrin, Will thought. She always had something to say. Would never stop talking sometimes whenever the slightest inkling of a thought came to her head. But when it came down to the wire, she possessed the will to take necessary steps to accomplish anything. Even if she were uneasy, all she would need was a bit of encouragement and prodding through the right methods. In some ways, interacting with the seven foot tall broad was like trying to get off I-95 from Plymouth Shore to Alliance Central, and a giant mountain had sprung up over night in the middle of the highway. Sure, there was the whole issue of arriving at traffic stopped for miles and topping off that spoiled ice cream sundae of a commute with a couple of extra hours of drudgery. But after you got over that initial, very large hump, you could expect to arrive at your destination smoothly.
"Right, just give me a second here, girl... It looks terrible because I haven't got the artistic skills to properly depict this thing the way I wanted it to. Here, lemme show you," he explained. At that moment, Foulke moved to the 3D model and began editing the various flaws. The armor transformed from a cluttered mess of plating and wiring to a much more sleek and utilitarian build. The joints were protected, yet unrestricted in their freedom of movement via plating strategically connected to the various segments of limb that could cover them. Tacking on some minor details, he continuously made tiny little notes as he worked, with phrases like "sensors suite" and "flamethrower." Some of it appeared juvenile, while some of it seemed rather brilliant. It was like a child somehow managing to perform Fur Elise in between mindlessly mashing the keys on a harpsichord. It was truly something magnificently stupefying to behold.
"So what I'm figuring is that instead of having traditional, painted camouflage, we go for one of those active stealth systems that are all the rage. I mean, I might wear a keffiyeh if it looks fashionable, since I really like those. But I figure we put that system on the thing, along with shields, of course," he instructed, pointing at the armor. "The helmet will have pretty much every type of sensor we can fit on the goddamn thing, Same with enhancements to auditory, visual, maybe even olfactory sensors... From there, we can start discussing various utility items and weapons to put on it, though I'd like to fit a jetpack and some grappling hooks on it..," he rambled, excited over the prospect of having his own armor.
He caught himself for a moment, nodding his head. "Sorry... I'd like it to be more of a suit than a mech or anything. Versatile, you know?," he said, answering the earlier question.
Nesrin’s face prematurely ages as she started mentally tacking zeros onto the cost estimate of Foulke’s suit. She was approaching brain death by the seventh figure as she dragged herself over to the work station and grabbed the overenthusiastic trooper by the wrists.
“Slow down Inspector Gadget. Woah. Please. The more functionality you tack onto the suit, the more I have to miniaturise the components, the more likely something goes wrong, the more likely you get yourself killed. For every extra feature, triple the failure modes. Start at the beginning. What do you see yourself doing in it? Active stealth systems could be anything from painting an image of what’s behind you by transposing photons to make you invisible to the eye or anything up to a full-blown man portable cloaking device. The more sophisticated, the more complex, the more mass, the more volume. You want to be able to move your limbs and fit through doorways. Be careful what you wish for.”
She flashed up a dizzying array of diagrams on the console.
“That jetpack you indicated - the centre of thrust doesn’t run through the centre of mass - you’d upend your brains over the regolith at sixteen gee. The sensor suite you designed into the helmet would disorient you - you simply cannot process that much information that rapidly on the battlefield - you need to be able to pick and choose. Flame throwers require a lot of volume due to fuel - and you don’t want to be carrying a vast amount of volatiles around with you. I’d suggest a plasma projector - same effect, dramatically higher temperatures, biological targets immolate and explode, metallic targets melt. Down side is that it requires a reactor to be strapped to your torso somewhere. The heavier you go, the more likely you’ll need it to be mechanically actuated. This is no bad thing - you will feel like a demigod, but any calibration mistakes and you’ll dislocate limbs. Grappling hooks will splatter you inside your armour without inertial dampeners, and you’ll probably want an inbuilt zee-gee field to give you three directions of movement. In short, you can’t just have features. You need features to make said features work.”
“I think we can work with this. It’s just going to cost as much as a fighter. Which means you’re going to have to get some use out of this, Foulke, not just use it to pick up deckhands like you’re fricking Hercules.”
THE SYNDIC LEAGUES
(A co-operative of Rheinland's Shipping Unions, retired from a life of piracy.)
God, was she always like that? Constantly trying to take big dump all over the fun of others? Well, she did have a few points. Cost was certainly going to be a major issue here. And for the most part, she was also right about other aspects. But she didn't know everything about Will. Like how he had called up a couple of contacts from his LSF days to help him siphon some of the confiscated credits obtained selling off the confiscated cardamine after arresting both the smugglers and the drug dealers. God knows both she and Miranda didn't know much about him, and in the case of the former, he aimed to keep it this way. It wasn't that he didn't trust any less than his other comrades. She was just a walking supercomputer, and that wasn't usually considered an invitation for confidentiality.
"Alright, let me stop you there, because I can guarantee you that I can afford to sink some money into this puppy. Let's just say that I felt I was owed a retirement pension by my superiors, ah? How many millions we talking here for managing to realistically accomplish most of what I want?," he interjected into her Negative Nancy-type rant.
"Let the record also show that this suit is meant for any possible scenario that might arise. Hell, you don't want a sensors suite to be feeding me info 24/7, but having various modes would be nice. Plasma works, too. I still require some form of three-dimensional movement with some kind of kickass propulsion and or flight system, though. Plus, while we're on the topic, maybe weapons are in order? I'm thinking some kind of multi-purpose dart launcher, coupled with maybe some multi-purpose rocket delivery systems? You know, wrist rockets? And some type of modular weapon that can use varying attachments to switch between a variety of modes. Like in that one movie that came out of New Tokyo Productions recently. I think it was called "Barrier Rim" or something," he rambled once again.
“Keffiyehs are cool, yup.” Nesrin smiled backhandedly at Foulke - out of all the officers in the in the battlegroup’s command core, he was one of the few who’d she’d trust to dive for cover if someone yelled grenade, rather than requiring a sixteen hundred word independently reviewed academic dissertation first. Like her, he was ex-services, and Khan had never quite lost that deep institutional respect the Armed Forces and the Liberty Navy held for each other. But damn if he hadn’t learnt all the wrong lessons from war - the man was somewhere between the human analogue of a bench press and Nietzsche’s less charitable stepmother, with a side order of Freddy Kruger and an abdomen that’d make a rhino evacuate itself. Dependable, trustworthy, paranoid enough to be worth his weight in body scanners, but you never quite knew where you were with him. Foulke was a boxing glove filled full of thorns.
“Alright, I think I’m starting to share your vision. Overall concept could be functional, but you’re not going to be the most appealing poster boy in human resources wearing that. “You’d look like an artillery piece crossbred with an anime.”She wasn’t sure the marine was even listening to him - he had the expression of a kid about to cause an industrial accident on a chocolate factory tour.
“Look, you don’t want all the sensors in the helmet. Olfactory enhancers can be moved around the body. You only want your electromagnetic sensors in the helmet - perspective and all. I’d increase the stiffness of the wrists - you hit something at an odd angle and you’re going to snap your hand off.”
She gestured to another part of the diagram, tapping a finger through the hologram’s chest.“Increase the molybdenum density here, and run active cooling lines through there to the arms or you’ll burn the skin off your chest when you take a laser. People always aim for the torso. Think in deflection angles.”
“You don’t want the dart launchers on the wrists. If they’re micro missiles, move them to the shoulders. Means you can fire them around the cone of the gun. Neurally activated. Your knuckles are tungsten, thus highly conductive, so you’ve got a free electroshock weapon there. Tasing the people you touch has obvious crowd control uses.” She flipped the model around as easily as a Chinese turn table.
“Jetpacks don’t give you stable flight regimes. Gravity null fields and small thermal thrusters running off the same gluon plasma that your plasma projector uses will give you superior performance for less volume, mass and personal risk. Jets also don’t work in space. This does.”
She tailored the settings until she’d visualised a design that looked appropriately refined - a mishmash of interlocking iconel-boron-molydenium-carbon alloys tough enough to stop a twenty millimetre DU round to the breast. It had calves like a racehorse, and a transmitter antenna rakish enough to put any helmet wings to shame.
“Here you go, do everything kill everything reactive combat armour. Combines the aesthetics of a main battle tank with the dexterity of a ninjutsu master. If you uncapped its performance envelope you’d be able to run at seventy miles an hour plus depending on traction, although I wouldn’t recommend busting fifty since you’ll trash your body, inertial dampeners or not. Physical stress counteraction isn’t a perfect science.”
The templar pushed the suit around, displaying its front and rear alternately. “Entire suit is forward oriented. The heat exchanger and female fuel port is on your back plate - get that shot out and you’ll overheat real fas. The back of the neck is also fairly weak plate - don’t expect to take large caliber rifles to the back of the head - you have to sacrifice armour somewhere. The suit will eject you automatically if internal conditions start getting hazardous, but you can turn that feature off if you really want to. Crotch and back plates open up if you need to pee, crap or have sex with Miranda without fouling up yourself, the whole suit is air and watertight, but you won’t be able to swim unless you remodulate the gravity. Whole thing is covered with a rust resistant layer of carbon nanotubes, but try not to get the thing immersed if you don’t need to. The helmet is deceptive - your eyes are going to be level with the glass - over your skull sits the computer core necessary for filtering all your sensor data. Don’t worry, it’s got its own integrated cooling system and shouldn’t melt your brains. Plasma projectors in both wrists, grappling hooks on the side of the elbows - remember, they’re not strictly hooks, they’re gravity clamps. They’ll stick the walls of anything, including shield bubbles. Bonus perk is the ability to drag just about anything under a handful of tonnes flying towards you if you anchor your gravity field up to full. The whole design works as a space suit, but wearing it you’re going to be as nearly as tall as me and a good few inches wider, so you might have to do some cockpit mods. Plenty of magnetic attachment points for guns, grenades, whatever you might desire. Comms are good through a few hundred metres of steel, more if you use lepton comms. A few extras include Loriclytic cyst based cloaking fields, if you really want to carry bits of live nomad around on your person all day long. Beyond that, you should be able to strap whatever you want onto this bad boy.”
“Wearing this, you’re going to look like a knight in white armour. Really got that gothpanzer superman chique.”
Designers:William Foulke and Nesrin Khan. Unit Specification:Modular Warfare System (MWS) F-1 Prototype. Purpose:Armoured Cavalry Shock Infantry Support Armour (ACSISA). Design Date:20th July, 823 AS. Estimated Cost:12.000.000 SC.
THE SYNDIC LEAGUES
(A co-operative of Rheinland's Shipping Unions, retired from a life of piracy.)
As the final design plans were drawn up, the grin on William's face grew and grew. It was more than he could have ever dreamed of having in the LSF or Navy or... Anywhere else, really. A custom suit of armor, tailormade to only himself. And something that he could fiddle around with and modify to his heart's content. Any mission could be undertaken, any emergency handled. And he had to admit that even after Nesrin's redesign, it looked pretty damn cool.
Determined to not be a useless onlooker, he took a datapad and began writing. Over the next few hours, him and Nesrin would continue to refine the design, adding little details or radical changes in order to make the whole thing mesh together well. Once the final design was completed, William swiped at the datapad, and the description materialized on the main holographic display.
Equipment: ADS SS-2590 "Cerberus" advanced sensors suite
2x ADS GHS-20 "Perseus" gravity clamp delivery system
ADS XFS-00 "Pegasus" experimental personal flight system
ADS CDSV-23 "Boreas" cooling system
ADS HDSS-34 "Heracles" human augmentation endoskeletal support system
ADS ACRS-12 "Hermes" advanced communications suite
ADS XCS-1 "Styx" experimental active cloaking system
ADS XECMS "Aegis" experimental advanced electronic warfare suite
Other equipment still being continuously added on.
The F-1X represents a shift in both philosophy and design from the original MWS series introduced by Joshua Hunt. Seeking to create the ultimate modular survival platform for a soldier, the F-1X incorporates a variety of advanced technologies into its inner and outer workings. Flight, cloaking, superstrength, extreme durability, vast armaments... All were goals set and achieved by designers William Foulke and Nesrin Khan in the creation of this device. Suited for a variety of operations, ranging from boarding operations to assassinations, this imposing suit is envisioned by the two as the first of many working designs to be devised as a protection system suitable for officers on the frontlines of the Battlegroup's battles. However, the extravagant costs of producing such a masterpiece mean that thus far, only one F-1X exists. It is currently in the possession of William Foulke.
Given how new the design is, information is still limited as the full extent of its capabilities is still being tested, and new components are constantly being added.
Nesrin grimaced at the visualisation panel. The problem seemed intractable, a certainty of physics so easy to bend in under the vice of imagination and so difficult to manipulate with mere fingers. For a start, there was nothing to grab.
:: Lightrider becomes progressively more inefficient the more you miniaturise the design. There becomes a cutoff point where magnetic bottle’s inefficiencies outweigh the advantages compared to a standard fusion drive - which is a damn shame since I need that extra amount of active current if I’m going to jimmy a positron reactor into this Hellfire chunk of junk. ::
The bion stared at the wireframe of the Prosecutor, the mass variables stacking around her in the three dimensional workspace.
:: Most of the propulsive cooling lattice can be chopped away - the propellant cooling pumps too. A larger magnetic turbo pump means more barstardry. I’m not sure even a wizard would have a sufficient pixie dust quota to jam the Lightrider in here - will keep working on schemata.::
Amidst the jumbled nexus of the cooling lattice, nanoginders shrieked out polymer scale models of her reactor design, reconsuming them in the fires of creation. The heat would have singed the microfine hairs from her face and blistered her skin pulpy if there had been any real flesh on her metalled bones.
:: I feel like a surgeon, trying to implant an artificial heart the size of a schoolbus. ::
THE SYNDIC LEAGUES
(A co-operative of Rheinland's Shipping Unions, retired from a life of piracy.)
:: Variable specific impulse magnetoplasma rockets. One thousand years of iterative development, still crap at not frazzling every other system onboard. Halbach arrays really don’t like flight computers. ::
She tossed another lightrider design aside, disinterestedly devastating the work of thirty the wireframe crumpling in the deletion space.
:: Okay, we’ll start again. Begin with the installation. Build from the shielding, don’t throw in as an afterthought or you’ll end up scrubbing your own consciousness when you throw her into supercruise. You want to end up with a fighter with Eidolon level drive efficiencies, but maybe you’re going about it the wrong way. Start at the rear, work upwards. That’s the right way to go about this. How does the bullhead, which is basically a server farm with engines, deal with it? ::
Unenthusiastically, Nesrin shuffled ceramic plate after ceramic plate, pressing insulation into every cranny the structure would let her fill. The backfeed still lay in the red.
:: It’d be like sunbathing in the Van-Allen belts of Jupiter wearing a raincoat and no underwear. I’m not sure I can take this. ::
THE SYNDIC LEAGUES
(A co-operative of Rheinland's Shipping Unions, retired from a life of piracy.)
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