> In ancient history, it’s often called ‘crossing the Rubicon’ when one takes a step beyond the point of no return. In future, perhaps they will look back at our guiding him to Hellas as Graecia’s Rubicon—perhaps even humanity’s Rubicon. They would be wrong. The point of no return was not taking him to Graecia, it was failing to end him the moment we had an inkling of what he might have been, as implausible or improbable as it was. I was the one who declared he was no threat. I was the one who vouchsafed his stay. In the end, I will be the one solely responsible for the end of mankind as we knew it.

The journey toward Hellas proved far less eventful after the sight of the King Alexander and its escort fleet, and it was only when the shuttle was truly closing in toward the planet over an hour later that Arthur realized something had been bothering him since the pass over the Ascendancy’s flagship.

“Atreus, I have a question.” Arthur said while turning to look where the black-amored Myrmidón maintained his vigil over the two Kidemónes occupying the cockpit.

“Go ahead.” The spartan responded with a helmeted glance back.

“It skirted past my immediate attention earlier, but now that I’ve had time to reflect, I need to know… how did the shuttle slow without contravening thrust?” It had been bothering him since he’d noticed it, though he’d only just fully realized what it was that had been nagging at his mind.

While quite far ahead of ancient technology like chemical or even ion thrusters, Plasma-based propulsion was still relatively constricted by the laws of physics in that—to the best of Arthur’s knowledge—they could not properly create an inverse thrust strong enough to bleed momentum in a vacuum. With no air resistance to speak of in space, it was thereby required that all ships equipped with such technology make a ‘turnover’.

In essence, they pivoted 180 degrees in space to face their thrusters toward their destination at the halfway mark, and used the same thrust that had accelerated them to instead slow them down gradually, reaching ‘zero relative thrust’ upon reaching their destination.

The shuttle had not done any such maneuver when slowing to give him a view of the King Alexander.

It was utterly perplexing.

“I had wondered if you’d even noticed.” Atreus admitted without an immediate answer, though he did turn to regard Arthur properly. “In truth I was worried you weren’t nearly as skilled an engineer as we’d hoped. I am pleased to see my assumption was incorrect.”

“Thanks for the faith.” Arthur said dryly. “Though that isn’t an answer, Atreus.”

“I suppose it is not.” Atreus said with a hint of amusement. “Very well. I am not familiar with the scientific principles behind the technology, but the essence of it is a form of spatial manipulation. Special additions to the drives create an intangible ‘mass anchor’ at the rear of the ship, and force a rapid—by the standards of space flight—deceleration.”

“A mass anchor? Huh…”

Arthur’s mind puzzled over the concept after Atreus’ explanation, and he found himself genuinely surprised. He had expected something far more rudimentary like forward-facing thrust cones, but not something he’d never even heard of. Even the Grand Imperium hadn’t invented a means to decelerate a vessel at speed reliably until they’d started breaching the realms of Graviton technology.

The more Arthur thought about it, though, the more it made sense.

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Much like the wet navy vessels of old Terra, the Graecians had in essence recreated the idea of a deployed ‘anchor’ to slow or even hold in place a starship. The fact it was both intangible and only affected the vessel from which it was spawned only served to confuse Arthur further.

He had the knowledge needed to create a suitably powerful Eidolon, but the idea of a ‘mass anchor’ was not part of his own scientific understanding. The advantages of a gene-enhanced memory made it so that ‘forgetting’ was an impossibility, other than cases where external influence—like the Inquisitor’s—forced a lapse. He may not have immediate recollection, but he knew that he could access anything he’d learned, experienced, or otherwise with enough focus.

The fact he had no recollection of a ‘mass anchor’ led him to an interesting thought.

It might actually have been a genuine first in terms of galactic innovation throughout the known nations of the humanosphere, and that alone was worthy of immense praise.

It also put the sheer might of the Ascendancy into better perspective, when viewed from the lens of their preferred style of stellar warfare within their sector of space. They never needed to expose their vessels to danger with ‘turnover’, and as such could fearlessly engage any foe with neither hesitation nor concern for their entirely forward-and-broadside vessel designs.

It also held the potential for an entirely new lane of technological development outside of the usual path of Plasma, Impulse, Antimatter, Dark Matter and Graviton technologies.

Not that he actually remembered the specifics of the latter three.

Arthur immediately had to wonder if the Ascendancy even realized that they’d innovated something completely outside the scope of expected development or not, and couldn’t help but to shake his head in disbelief.

The idea of mass manipulation brought up incredible possibilities.

“I can see that you have an appreciation for the technology.” Atreus said suddenly. “That is good. If we can garner that much surprise from a Fringe-trained engineer, then perhaps the technology truly is worth exploring.”

“It absolutely is.” Arthur said with a partially distracted amount of excitement. “The possibilities that mass manipulating technology opens are… Well, they’re multitudinous! You could invalidate the usual constraints of shipbuilding! You could actually make use of Neutronium!”

That alone would be a victory outside the scope. The manner of creating Neutronium had been understood for centuries, but its density, weight, and incredible mass made it impossible to work with as more than the body of a Warp Anchor, or the rare piece of redundant hull on a star fortress—and even then, it required extensive thinning and a minimum station mass in the megatonnes to be even feasible.

If the Ascendancy managed to find a way to reduce the effective mass of the neutron star material, they could create ships that even outer Verge powers would have to take seriously. Ships that would let them completely outclass everyone and everything their peer powers anywhere in the Rim could field.

They wouldn’t be enough to do more than slightly even the playing field against the Mantle and major Verge powers, or the Grand Imperium whose technology had already surpassed the need for things like super-alloys; but against Rim or Fringe nations?

Neutronium warships would be a complete upending of the galactic power dynamic.

Arthur couldn’t help but whistle in disbelief at the prospect.

The Coreblood in him knew that the Imperium would almost certainly be investigating such a development with critical assessment, especially if the Imperator’s intelligence network wasn’t already aware of the Graecian innovation—but another part of him, the newer blend of both Arthurs, wondered at the what he’d learned from his conversations with Endymion and Perseus.

Would the Imperator even care, given how far the Rim was?