House: Thoth, Rank: 1/255, Squad Zero
M1 Rank: ?/1,275
Term 1, Round 1
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Daedo was frustrated.
“This launch tube is not working properly,” he said after another test where the grenades got caught in the flex, either getting stuck entirely or slowing down their launch velocity.
Mace was concerned. She had nothing to add to solve the issue; everything she had suggested last time just made things worse.
“Let’s talk to Father and see if he has any suggestions,” Daedo said.
Myrmidon: I can fluctuate the compressed air flow and create an air tube within the tube with a more flexible entry system.
Daedo: Yes, but how does that help everyone else? Mace does not have you to assist.
Myrmidon: She must improve her AI companion. Until then, she cannot use the arm-mounted launcher. She could use a regular handheld launcher with munitions fed from the same design.
Daedo: That is a solution. Thank you, Myrmidon. Let’s see if we can solve the issue first and use that as a fallback plan.
Ikaros examined the design and the prototype Daedo had machined that day. He turned it over, hemming and hawing as Daedo explained the test issues and showed the data and a vid.
“The munition is colliding with the outer wall. Why don’t you compress the tube so it can’t move inside it?” Ikaros asked.
“We want to be able to use a variety of munitions – smoke, frag, mimic – and when we nail the designs, a laser trip and deployable canisters,” Daedo said.
“What about a grapple?” Ikaros asked.
“That is next. I was imagining that when we improved the suit further, adding two grapples … one to each arm. It will need its own mechanism, and it will weigh a tonne.”
“Frag and smoke canisters are the same size. Reduce the tube to their diameter and restrict them to one arm.”
“We could hand lay the rootkit and lasertrip,” Mace said. “What if we put a grapple on one arm, smoke and frag on the other with a few rootkits, and lasertrips stored on our upper legs?”
Daedo thought about that. “Let’s test the smoke and frag arm launcher first to ensure that’s working. We just have to modify this one down 6.32 mils in diameter.”
“Let me do that. You start on the arm grappler,” Mace said. “It would be great to get a week of testing and practise on it before next weekend.”
It was Saturday and getting late. The first new exo was in the weave. It would be finished by 0400 on Sunday.
Daedo nodded. A grappler had incredible potential. It had a variety of functions from mobility enhancement to enemy manipulation. He sat in the workshop, editing his early designs to adapt to the changes in the suit. He put his work up on the wall so his father, Mace, and anyone else who was interested could see.
Key among the elements of the grappler was the winder or winch. The launcher could use the same hydraulic system the entire suit supported. By utilising changes in the size of the tubes and the chamber (which switched from liquid to pneumatic and gained power from multiple inject points from three arteries), the launcher was quite powerful. Daedo also pondered adding a magnetic accelerator to the chamber.
He loved the synergy the mesh armour had with the hydraulic exchanges. Normally the tubing was a weak point, but the tubing in this design had a dual purpose. It was both armour and a fluid vessel. All he had to do now was research a liquid that would enhance the hydraulic and armour effectiveness of the design. Off-the-shelf synthetic hydraulic fluid would have to suffice for now. At least it was widely used in mechs and heavy vehicles.
The reactor that powered the hydraulics was ripped straight from the academy’s standard light exos. It was woefully inadequate. Daedo thought about sending Cisse a message and realised he had never done so before.
This project was so important to him that his proclivity to be a loner was easily overcome. He found a message she’d sent him on the day he entered the academy – wishing him well and all that gushy stuff – and replied to it.
Daedo: Dear Cisse. Hmm. Cisse, we would like your help with our first project. We are building our own exo for intra-academy competitions, and its power supply is poor. Father and I are busy with mechanical and structural elements. Your expertise would really help us. I have attached the location of our workshop in Nanterre. We are here every weekend.
A few moments passed before her reply.
Cisse: I will be right there.
Daedo: Ah …Thanks!
Daedo could smell something nice and realised he was hungry.
Vannier: Do you want to come up for food? Or should we bring it down?
Daedo: Down please, and could you bring Axel-Zero? I want to talk to her.
Daedo went back to the grappler design. Due to time limitations, he just ordered three winders which would be delivered via drone and probably arrive within hours. The workshop was a bitcred sink; he would need to do something to start bringing in creds. Although his Spacebuild shop was still operating, he no longer earned any creds from CyberMech, which had been ninety per cent of his income.
“You called, master?” Axel-Zero said sarcastically when she came in holding a bowl full of noodles. She bowed mockingly.
“Don’t spill it!” Daedo exclaimed. He was starving.
She handed over the noodles, and he began to scoff them down. “You did ask me down for a reason. I’m sorry we haven’t been more help, but I feel useless compared to you, your father, and Mace.”
“Huh?” he said, clueless. And then when he thought about it, it dawned on him. “Oh, this is my fault. And you guys have been doing all the crap work, cleaning and organising this place. It should be me apologizing.”
She shook her head, smiling. “It’s the least we can do. I thought I should research something specific so I can be more help.”
“There is something you can do, and there is something I want you to consider,” he said.
Axel-Zero leaned close, and her eyes lit up. “Yes?”
Daedo instinctively turned to keep his bowl between them. While he had made massive improvements in a short amount of time in the way he interacted with his squadmates, closeness like this still made him uncomfortable.
“I want you to use the launchers with your pistols,” he said. “It will give you much more variety and make you more of a threat with more tactics at your disposal. And I want you to look into the design of the winch for the grappler. It needs to use less power and be able to pull more weight at a higher speed. It also needs to be able to handle variable torques and be extremely reliable.”
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Axel-Zero’s face went from uncertainty to confusion to interest, and finally, she beamed. “I can do that. But I don’t think I can design a winch as well as you could.”
“That’s the thing,” he said, “I can’t do everything, and if I focus on the most important priority – the exos … their mobility, strength and durability – it will improve faster than if I’m looking at a hundred different pieces of equipment and technology. Plus, we are House Thoth, and you are graded on a tech project. You need something useful you can put all your efforts into, something meaningful. Ideally, something you will be using yourself. You would be at close to short-range with your pistols if you were working closely with me and Mace; that would be ideal. And using a grappler is part of the close-range team tactics.”
“Do you want me to switch to a vibroblade or lance?” Axel-Zero asked.
He shook his head. “No, no. That would be bad; we need a variety of weapons and ranges. The pistols give you fantastic dps at short range, and with mobility, you can stay out of melee or close range. You can stay out of range of a flamethrower or a minigun’s high damage zone. Just imagine a grappler pulling you up and away as you fire with one of your pistols, or a smoke grenade covering you as you close on a rifle. You could launch a frag grenade into a window, and as the enemy exited, take them out with your pistols at the perfect range. The best way to defeat an enemy is to force or trick them to move where you want them.”
She nodded through his entire speech. “I see, I see. I never considered a launcher, because you either can’t use both or you need to keep switching, which takes too long. But your design where the launcher is attached to your arm is genius.”
“Not really,” he said. “Many mechs have this feature. Multiple weapon types on each arm.”
“Yeah, but no one at the academy has launchers attached to their armour,” she said.
“There was an M3 team with a shoulder-mounted launcher a couple of years ago, but that was on heavies,” he informed her.
Axel-Zero frowned. “How do you get time to research all this? I’m barely keeping up with my tutes.”
Daedo shrugged. It was Myrmidon who had watched all the vids of M3 Squad Zeros going back half a dozen years. “All I can say is that you need to train your AI. It can increase your efficiency tenfold.”
She studied him for a short while, and after coming to a decision she did not share, she shook her head and smiled. “Okay, okay, I will.” She stood and walked away a couple of steps. “I’ll get cracking on the winder or winch – whatever it’s called in this circumstance.”
“I ordered a few electromagnetic direct drive winches to use for now,” Daedo said. “They’ll be here shortly.”
“Oh great – can I pull one apart and check the design?”
“Sure, it is now your project. The only hard and fast rule is that we need them for next Monday night’s match versus Horus. Other than that, testing and drilling are needed.”
“Are you going to assign projects to Vannier, Picard, and Barran?”
“Everyone needs to do a project for tech studies,” he said. “Do you think I should ask Vannier and Picard to do specific projects?”
“Of course,” Vannier said as she walked in on their conversation.
Barran and Picard followed behind her. Barran had been gone most of the day, saying he was shopping for improvements to the workshop. Which was doubtful; it could all be done through the net. He was most likely dodging all the cleaning duties and arriving just in time as they finished.
Daedo looked at Vannier. She was ranked number two and the natural leader of the squad. She did not show technical prowess, but if she was ranked above Mace, she must be competent. She just hid it, preferring to let others take the limelight and just asking questions where needed.
“The obvious choice is a railgun improvement project,” he said. “The current gun is standard issue. I know CyberMech isn’t real, but just by using max velocity setting, it decreased the accuracy and increased damage. I compensated by using algorithms to calculate trajectory, and I did not use the game’s inbuilt target assist.”
“This is true,” Picard said. “The issued railgun is nowhere near current military standard. I thought that was just to do with cost, and that they didn’t want to upgrade them every year. But now that you pointed out they want us to improve the exos and equipment, it makes sense.”
“There are many facets you can work on – enough for both of you,” Daedo said. “Efficiency of the rail mechanism itself would be the biggest. You’ve also got targeting and munitions. You could redesign the whole rifle – longer barrel, larger or smaller ammunition, ammunition shape and composition, loading mechanism, and even bullet velocity.”
“Once you go past Mach 1, it makes an awful loud sound,” Picard said.
“Exactly. You want to be able to change the distance this occurs from the barrel. It will fool the enemy.
Vannier beamed. “I was listening to a very smart cadet this week who quoted Sun Tzu. He said, ‘All warfare is based on deception. Hence, when we are able to attack, we must seem unable; when using our forces, we must appear inactive; when we are near, we must make the enemy believe we are far away; when far away, we must make him believe we are near.’” She walked over to Daedo and ruffled his hair affectionately.
He ducked his head away. “Glad to see you memorised the entire passage.”
“I memorised the whole treatise,” she said, smiling.
“I see!” Picard interjected excitedly. “It’s not a matter of trying to hide your position, it’s using this weakness to deceive the enemy. But how would you change the bullet velocity to such a degree?”
“If it were me, I would design the railgun to be capable of variable bullet speeds and acceleration and train my AI to calculate and manage the settings to alter the outcome,” he said.
“We have a long way to go,” Vannier said. “Should we work on this together?” she asked both Picard and Daedo.
Daedo nodded. “This is the key weapon of the squad, and its design is covered by multiple engineering disciplines. The electromagnetic switching is electronic. Parts of the design are physics, it has metallurgical components, and the targeting is mathematics, coding, mechanics, and behaviour prediction analysis. The heat generated by the rails is thermal dynamics with metallurgical components. This is its primary limiting factor to the rate of fire.”
“Okay,” Vannier said, “will you check our work and give us pointers? I think even thirty minutes of your time each week will result in a much better outcome.”
Daedo nodded. “It is the key weapon.”
Picard beamed. She liked the idea of the railgun being the key weapon of the squad. “It’s a billion times better than cleaning and cooking. I’ll get started on the research immediately. What about Barran and Gaumont?”
“Yeah, what about me?” Barran asked excitedly. He’d been watching and listening like a stunned mullet.
“Barran, you can work with my father in incorporating the advancements we make with the light exo into your heavy,” Daedo said. “It will probably take five days just to generate the mass of fibre and the weave. Hopefully, Father can watch the machines in between his shifts while we’re at the academy. Or knowing him, he’ll program one of his robots to do the task.”
“I haven’t met your father,” Barran informed them.
“He’s in the next room.” Vannier pointed, and Barran followed her finger to go and introduce himself.
“I have no idea what to do with Gaumont,” Daedo said. “Even if I were to suggest something, what would his response be? He isn’t even here to ask.”
“I’ll handle Gaumont,” Vannier offered. “That can be my secondary project.”
“Do you think Master Nader will make you squad leader?” Picard blurted out, prompted by the talk about the Gaumont issue.
Vannier laughed, and Picard nodded, misunderstanding the meaning of the laughter. “No, I will not be squad leader,” Vannier said. “Master Nader told me yesterday.”
“What?” Axel-Zero and Picard said simultaneously.
Barran rushed back into the room, hearing the commotion. “What? What did I miss?”
“Nader told Vannier she wouldn’t be squad leader yesterday,” Picard said.
“That leaves two people then,” Barran said. “Daedo and me.” He looked meaningfully at Daedo and Daedo and gave him his very best ‘May the best man win’ smile and nod.
Vannier laughed again, slapping her thigh this time and pushing Barran. “You idiot. But you are half right,” she said demurely. She looked around at each of the cadets. “Isn’t it obvious?”
Axel-Zero nodded. “It’s Daedo,” she supplied, smiling at him.
“Hang on,” he interjected. “Don’t I get a say in this?”
“No,” Vannier said sternly. “It is decided you will be squad leader. But do not worry, Master Nader has already tasked me to handle all the diplomacy and people management for you.”
“Doesn't he get to decide that if he’s squad leader?” Axel-Zero asked.
“Um … sure,” Daedo said, thinking about it seriously for the first time. It really wouldn’t make much difference, and it would give him control over tactics and drills in the arena. If Vannier handled all the crap stuff, like talking to strangers, he was good with that. He looked around at his squad members who were all beaming at him in his distressed state. “What are you looking at? You all have work to do.”
Daedo went back to looking at the design of the launch chamber for the grappler. It would need to run from the elbow to past the hand. The hand could then grip the tube to provide stability when propelling forward or pulling an object back. However, it needed to be offset from the land to allow a smooth flight path and leave enough room for holding other objects, like a swordlance, lance, or pistol.
The chamber for the launcher itself could be a mix of conductive materials and pneumatic injection. The short spear-like head could be propelled by both air and electromagnetic pulse giving it as much force as possible before leaving the short chamber.
The prototype design was ready. Daedo sent the electronic model to the machining room and made his way to the foundry. He would need to forge rings of silver perovskite nanowire for the electromagnetic accelerator embedded into the ceramic-polymer to form the chamber.
He looked forward to how powerful the hybrid accelerator was going to be.