Chương 55: 035 – The Analyst

Not for the first time since they'd arrived on this alien space station, Thomas Cooper—never Tom, because he didn't like how it made him sound like either a girl or a cat—made sure his voice recorder was still active as he followed his volunteer guide.

"—oved the gun emplacements that were originally installed on the dome section to other parts of Stargazer Fortress," Marie said, the Kaedekin gesturing towards the large floor to ceiling windows, pink hair pulled back into a bun at the back of her head, loose hair framing her face as he walked beside her.

"That allowed us to utilize the space for housing and support infrastructure. Today, the dome section contains only a quarter of the original gun batteries it did when it was originally lifted into space."

"And how many gun batteries is that?" Thomas asked as they walked through one of the station's very pink hallways. He glanced at a passing box with three growing plants in it. The plants' leaves were green.

"Currently, I mean."

"Well, currently the dome section alone has seventy gun batteries of hybrid cannons on rotary emplacements, as well as forty dedicated laser emitters," Marie said as she walked with one hand on the sword at her waist to keep it from swinging against her dark red skirt. Since laser emitters was fairly self-explanatory…

"Hybrid cannon? What are those?"

"They're our most common kind of mounted heavy weapon," Marie said. A red rank button with a white border glinted on the collar of her white blouse, clean enough to satisfy any inspection. Her red armband had patterns on it, subtle against the bright red.

"They can act as a railgun, coil gun, a plasma cannon, and a plasma beam emitter, although in-atmosphere variants ones like those used by Field Rangers and Void Rangers can also function as shockwave cannons and lightning cannons." Thomas nodded in acknowledgement. From what he understood, there were probably significant engineering challenges in developing such a multi-functional weapon, but it seemed the Kaedekin have solved them enough to make them useable weapons.

"And these are the standard weapon emplacements for your defense forces?"

"Pretty much," Marie said, her boots surprisingly light on the deck beneath their feet.

"We prefer it because it allows us to switch between kinetic energy to directed energy as needed. The railgun is also how we launch specialized payloads." Thomas nodded, checking the recorder again.

"What's the range on those cannons?"

"Virtually unlimited in the case of the kinetic rounds, at least in vacuum," Marie said.

"For the others, it depends on how much power is routed to maintain the magnetic containment envelope, which is what extends the plasma's range." Their engineers would be interested in that, even if it was unlikely to help with directly countering the Hegemony's own plasma weapons. Their plasma beams had no magnetic signature, so the only way to shield against them was with mass.

"And here we are!" Marie announced, having led them to a nondescript door with only some fittings and a number on it… which made it stand out against any of the other doors in the hallway. Many of the doors had been decorated, and the ones on the rooms of either side of their destination had been painted with a hand-drawn mosaic of flowers and a painting of… actually, it looked like the view of the stars from the dome.

In comparison, the bland pink door with only some kind of alphanumeric code on it was conspicuous in its blandness.

"Sorry the door looks so plain, but the planters on it were removed to harvest the potatoes growing inside," Marie said. Thomas nodded, simply accepting that was among the Kaedekin's priorities. It wasn't time to analyze yet. Raw data first, outrageous conclusions later. The conclusions were more likely to be far less outrageous once you had context and time to actually think calmly instead of just leaping to the first conclusion that came to mind.

Calm thinking is what leads to rational insights, otherwise you'd end up believing that faster than light travel was magic instead of the work of brilliant engineers finding ways of telling the universe to bend over and get screwed using its own loopholes. The analyst would have thought that the door leading to one of the stations cannons would be locked, but it opened easily under Marie's hand… and at a closer look, he didn't see any sort of keyhole. An internal locking system? Or did they just not lock it at all?

And why was this just a normal door when one of the sleeping quarters contained an airlock?

"Door is of the standard size, with numerical designation—" he quickly recited the number, speaking quickly and with as little moving of his lips as possible, the suit's outside speakers deactivated.

"The door leads into a large room, about eight by ten meters…" The room beyond was eight by ten meters with five meters of vertical clearance, and contrary to what he would have assumed, what he presumed was the hybrid cannon wasn't in the middle of the room but was instead tucked near one wall.

Its barrel was three meters in diameter, the outside seemingly octagonal instead of being perfectly round, which terminated in a large box with rounded off edges that presumably contained most of the cannon's internal components. The hybrid cannon was mounted on a multi-gimbal mechanism of some sort, which seemed capable of giving it 270 degrees of traverse on any axis.

There were five Kaedekin in the room, and while none of them greeted the door by actively pointing a weapon at it, Thomas noted that all of them had a hand on a weapon when he stepped in. One of the Kaedekin was pointing something at them, but given the tablet-like design he hoped it was some kind of detection equipment. He noted the Kaedekin in question had a blue armband on their bicep. Presumably they'd been notified in advance.

"Clear! No nanobots detected," the blue-armband Kaedekin announced, and everyone relaxed, hands falling from weapons. Naturally, Thomas turned towards his guide.

"Nanobots?"

"Nanobots," Marie said unapologetically.

"We're sorry for not warning you in advance, but if you'd been a carrier of nanobots we couldn't give up the element of surprise. Stupid nanobots…" That last was said in what was clearly a derogatory tone, the first example of such he'd ever head from the Kaedekin.

"Are nanobots something to be concerned about?" he asked. They must be, if the Kaedekin were so actively concerned and even had what seemed to be specialized scanners for— This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author's work.

"Thankfully, not today," Marie said, sounding relieved.

"But we can't be lax. One day, we're actually going to encounter nanobots, and we don't want to be caught unawares!" The other Kaedekin all nodded with the grim resolve of people who were utterly convinced what they feared was true. Then Marie smiled, and it was like nothing had happened.

"Well, enough about stupid nanobots. Thomas, let me introduce you to gunnery team sixty-nine. These are Sorceresses Bunny and Kaguya, the Reds in command of this squad." Thomas turned towards the indicated people, but found only a single person standing there and wearing a red armband. Why…? Oh, right. The Kaedekin had a habit of introducing their artificial intelligence personal assistant. Before he could ask Marie to specify which one was their actual name, his guide was already continuing.

"These are Knights Michiru and Amara, in charge of the maintaining the cannon's mechanical systems; Knights Amy and Nova, in charge of maintaining the cannon's internal firing components; Paladins Mana and Stronger, the squad gunnery operator; and Knights Honoka and Angel Guard, the squad's medics."

The two Kaedekin in blue armbands, the one in the yellow armband, and lastly the one in the pink armband with the line of darker pink triangles on a white strip all greeted him with a smile and some variation of 'hello'.

"Gunnery squad sixty-nine, this is my new friend Lieutenant Thomas Cooper, of the FTCS Venture." Thomas made a note that either the Kaedekin were using the claim of friendship with officers from the Venture as a status symbol, or they took friendship really seriously. It was probably the former, as the whole squad asked if they could be his friends too! Well, he had no reason to say no… and as an intelligence officer, they were encouraged to acquire local contacts in useful areas.

And he still needed to ask her to make it clearer which were their names—"Anyway!" Marie said once that was settled, "they were scheduled to do some maintenance on their hybrid cannon and have graciously allowed us to watch for as long as we can." That immediately derailed his train of thought. There was immediate intelligence to acquire.

"We can't watch the whole thing?" Thomas asked.

"Well, they'd let us if we could, but… isn't your air limited?" Marie said. …Oh. Right. He'd forgotten about that.

"…oh. Right. I forgot…" Marie nodded, looking both apologetic and understanding.

"And unfortunately, we won't be able to let you watch the cannon being dry-fired, since that testing happens at the end of the maintenance cycle." Huh. Very unfortunate.

"I understand," he said.

"I'm thankful for this opportunity you've given me already."

"Do you want to sit down?" Sorceress Bunny-or-Kaguya offered.

"That suit looks very heavy, and you're moving like it doesn't have any antigravity to reduce the weight." … He'd go over his recordings about that later.

"I wouldn't want to put you through the trouble," he said.

"Oh, it's fine. We'll borrow a bench big enough for you while Amy, Nova, Mana and Stronger get started on the cannon maintenance." A few minutes later, Thomas found himself sitting at the far side of the room from the hybrid cannon on a bench that… well, seemed to have been specially made for sitting in while wearing this exact model of environment suit.

Instead of a backrest, there was raised shelf at the ideal height to catch the suits backpack and take its weight off his shoulders while allowing him to sit comfortably.

"So," Thomas asked as the other five Kaedekin began removing panels, "how exactly did your people develop the hybrid cannon? Combining a railgun with a directed energy weapon does not seem… intuitive."

"It's a fun story," Marie said enthusiastically.

"The first generation of hybrid cannons were originally a joint project between the Field Rangers and the Void Rangers. You see, their mecha were originally equipped with pewpews, since that simplified their logistics by removing the need for physical ammo—""Pewpews?" Thomas said. He'd learned that the Kaedekin didn't seem to mind interruptions if you were asking for clarification.

He hadn't been able to keep himself from concluding that this implied they valued clear communication over protocol—or that their social protocol was to prioritize clear information—but he was only human. Pure objectivity was something to strive for, not the default.

"Oh, sorry. Pewpews is the term for plasma weapons. Plasma Energy Weapon: PEW. So, pewpews." He'd have called it childish, but militaries had a history of more insane unofficial terms for things, so Thomas just nodded.

"I see. Thank you. Sorry for interrupting."

"Don't worry about it. If you don't understand something, just ask. We don't want any silly miscommunication," Marie said, giving him a smile and a thumbs up.

"Anyway, at the time the standard weapons were pewpews, which they primarily used on kaiju. Kaiju had high mass and thick flesh, so the pewpews were effective for trying to herd them away from populated areas by inducing skin irritation and burns. However, it meant that mecha equipped with pewpews couldn't deploy lure canisters and pepper rounds, which were more effective against kaiju with heavy shells and more armored skins since they had far lower skin sensitivity and could afford to ignore impacts from pewpews.

That meant deploying mecha equipped with bangbangs instead of pewpews." Thomas kept a straight face.

"Bangbangs?"

"Ballistic Accelerated Normal Guns," Marie said earnestly, her face betraying no amusement.

"BANGs. Hence, bangbangs." …Militaries have had more insane terms…

"Ah. Please continue."

"Mecha-mounted bangbangs were either railguns or gauss guns, depending on what kind of payload was being launched and what rate of fire you needed," Marie obliged him.

"However, they weren't often used on non-armored kaiju due to the much higher chance of dealing a crippling or lethal injury. We try to avoid seriously hurting the kaiju when possible, both because it's cruel to the kaiju and because dead kaiju are a massive biological hazard and will draw in predators. It's better if the kaiju walks away on its own." Thomas frowned.

"Exactly how big are kaiju?" The term seemed vaguely familiar, like something that had once been brought up in a spelling bee when he'd been younger, or one he'd glanced over in a wiki at some point while looking at some other reference.

"Well, it depends on whether the kaiju is bipedal or quadrupedal," Marie said. Ah, so it was a category, not a name for a specific kind of animal.

"For quadrupeds, general rule of thumb is that if it exceeds fifteen meters in certain dimensions that's not overall length, it's a kaiju. So if it's fifteen meters from ground to shoulder, fifteen meters wide at the shoulder, has a fifteen-meter stride… uh, I think I'm forgetting a few things, but you get the idea. Anything bigger than that minimum is classed as a kaiju. For bipeds, it's anything that's more than twenty meters from ground level to its shoulders when fully upright." Ah.

Kaiju was a class of very mega fauna. Gigafauna, if you will. Possibly even terafauna. One that the Kaedekin thought required cannons to deal with. That… Thomas firmly clamped down on what he thought of that.

"I see. That recontextualizes this whole conversation. And the hybrid cannons were developed to deal with them?"

"The hybrid cannons were developed to expand engagement options so that more mecha could be fielded, and because everyone agreed it was a cool idea," Marie clarified.

"The original development was a group of off-duty Field Rangers trying to create a bangbang that could function as both a railgun and a gauss gun while they were on leave so they would have a cannon that can switch between high acceleration and high rate of fire. Near the end of building their prototype bangbang, someone noted that the use of magnetic levitation systems to minimize wear on the barrel could easily be augmented and altered to act as plasma containment.

This led to the team doing the math and drafting to see what would be needed to give the bangbang the capabilities of a pewpew. Since they weren't as familiar with pewpew systems as they were with bangbangs, they invited some other friends of theirs who happened to also be Void Rangers to consult on the problem.

Once they had a working proof of concept prototype that didn't explode, they brought the idea to members of their respective Ranger forces weapons development labs, who all lived a few houses away and had been wondering what the explosions had been about." … Thomas reminded himself that military personnel had done more insane things when they were on leave. Probably.