Chương 171: Chapter One Hundred and Seventy-One

Luan says, "I was thinking that our 'Pilgrimage' could end at Belacane. I know you've been planning to flog our stasis cargo container and castellan void shield STCs to them Dad, ever since you let slip that Arch-Magos Daedus is actually dead and they have no idea how to build their primary exports anymore. Even then, Daedus only vaguely knew how to make stasis fields and the last chance of piecing together the STC that they lost died with him."

"Yes, that was one of my plans," I say.

"No one is more desperate for those STCs than Belacane would be," says Luan, "but rather than trading for materials, void ships, and data as you no doubt originally intended, I was thinking we could use the chance to gain enough support to put our family in charge of Belacane.

"I know you don't want to work with a place that has so many entrenched factions, nor become responsible for their Tithe, so our control would have to remain unofficial. However, we could then use their resources to resettle one of the lost Forge Worlds in the Koronus Expanse. There are two options, Aubray's Anvil, among the Ragged Worlds, spinward of Winterscales Realm, and Raakata, one of the Heathen Stars, spinward of Cobalt.

The second one is probably our best bet so we can avoid conflict with House Winterscale." Dareaca says, "I see where you're going with this." Luan glances at his brother, then continues, "The chance to reclaim a Forge World would make Belacane look really good. With the return of their STCs, the mission that they sent Distant Sun on in the first place, Belacane could restore their falling status within the Imperium and, more importantly, the Mechanicus.

We would get a strong ally within the Calixis Sector and appear beyond reproach for asking help to resettle a Forge World as a reward for an STC, obscuring how strong our influence on the world actually is." I nod, "That's much better than my original idea. I was going to try and get a Fleet out of them, but with Dareaca's pilgrimage idea, that will no longer be necessary. Does anyone have any objections?"

"Run it past Quanni first," says Brigid.

"He is your heir and should have a say. I don't think he will say no, but he will have his own insights and will want to put his ideas into action. Giving him a vested interest in our actions will keep us all on task." Brigid grins at me, "What is it that your cult likes to say, 'For the Unity?'""Yes, they do say that." I say.

"Owen has done an excellent job of directing their philosophy away from," I pause, "troublesome beliefs." Alpia goes bright red and looks to the side.

"Alpia, what did you do?" says Brigid.

"I joined!" says Alpia.

"Róisín bribed me, but everyone in the cult is really nice to me so I couldn't bring myself to quit. I think they keep promoting me through the ranks so I won't run off. It's your fault Dad for preaching about responsibility all the time!" I sigh, "Are you sure they're not using you to get more legitimacy?"

"Only partly, I think. Some of the leadership can be a bit like that, but the congregation just like to ask for advice. I tell them some of the stories you used as anecdotes for our lessons while we were growing up."

"You are still growing up," I snort.

"So long as you can keep them away from actually worshipping me, I don't have an issue with it. Owen says that they're not, but having you be part of Iron Foundation to keep an eye on it isn't actually that bad, even if I do find it a little odd. If you ever feel that they're pressuring you, or want something you don't think you should give, just quit, or come and talk to me or Brigid about it."

"I will!" Luan smirks, "Daddy's little princess."

"Hey!"

"Luan, knock it off," says Brigid, "You're too old now for me to be rubbing burn cream on your bottom after getting zapped by Alpia." Dareaca bursts into laughter and even Fial hides a smile behind his hands. I clap my hands together once, "Alright family. Thank you for all your excellent ideas. Meeting adjourned. How about we watch a film together, or play a game."

"No card games or luck based ones. You and Mum cheat too much with your implants," says Luan. Fial clears his throat, "I've been working on a table top role playing game scenario. If you're all willing to give it a try. I have ready to go characters and everything."

"Sure," says Dareaca, "I'll give that a go." Alpia says, "Count me in." Luan nods and gives Fial a thumbs up.

"I'm game," I say.

"Brigid?"

"I'll watch, but otherwise I have some work to catch up on."

"Please, Mum?" says Fial. I vox Brigid,"I'll help you with your work. I don't mind running my extra minds at maximum speed if it will make Fial happy."

"Oh, very well. I am not fond of these things as I hate that there's always a five percent chance that something can go wrong, no matter what you do. It grates on me far too much."

"Just roll with it, Love."

"That was terrible, and I'm blaming you for every critical fail that I get."

"So long as you play with the kids, I don't mind. We're not going to see them for another three months, you know. That's a blink of an eye for us, or rather a few minutes of accelerated time, but it isn't the same for them."

"You've made your point, Aldrich. I have already agreed."

"Thank you, Love."

"Alright, Fial," says Brigid.

"Let's give your game a try." Fial smiles, "Let me get my datapad. I made a custom program for the holo projector so we can have models and stuff to move about." Fial runs back to his room.

"He's really trying hard on this," says Luan. Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation. Dareaca scoffs, "It's about time he pulls his head out of the nebula." We play for a couple of hours then the kids have to go to bed. They are due back in the barracks early in the morning for physical training, mostly coordination exercises to get used to their taller bodies. Fial is pleased that his game, Space Hulk, is well received.

I spend some private time with Brigid and once she is asleep, I remain in bed and start checking out the Environmental Suit STC. The first thing that strikes me is how angular the power armour is. A closer inspection shows that every surface is composed of triangles, hexagons, and pentagons. The surfaces are still curved, but they're made up of hundreds of flat pieces. The helmet is sleek and vulpine. A gorget protects the neck and tassets cover the hips and upper thighs.

The tassets contain maglocks and charging mechanisms for tools and power packs. The armour is built from a chromium, cobalt, and nickel alloy that gets tougher the colder it is, or when force is applied to it. When layered and bonded with ceramite under high pressure, it forms a protective layer that is a staggering five times tougher than the usual ceramite plasteel mix.

"This armour is ridiculous, E-SIM. It's like someone decided to put the protective properties of Terminator armour into a light power armour." ++It is highly effective against ballistic threats, but put it up against high yield thermal weapons, like hellfire, volkite and melta weapons, and it's not much better than standard Imperial armour, while requiring significantly rarer resources. You should examine the ceramite though. It holds many secrets.

++"Still, the trade off is likely worth it, especially against Orks and Eldar. I can see how it wouldn't be a big improvement against Tau, Necron, and Imperial forces though. It makes sense why it would be labelled as an environmental suit for Dark Age of Technology researchers as it is the ideal defence against micrometeorite impacts.

"The five percent improvement against thermal weapons wouldn't have been worth the extra cost when everyone was running around with volkite and gravity cannons, especially if you had billions of troops. The same goes for using it as void ship armour, though there is some merit in using the alloy to replace the outermost ferrocrete ablative layer, given its significant protection against physical impacts.

There is a significant weight saving to be had if we can locate sufficient chromium and cobalt as the layer could be made much thinner than the ferrocrete layer is. Even though the alloy is heavier than ferrocrete, it would be lighter overall." I follow E-SIMs advice and check out the ceramite. Apparently, the flat surfaces are not an aesthetic choice, but a manufacturing requirement for the method of ceramite compression.

By the time I finish reading, my eyebrows have risen so high, I'm surprised they haven't floated off. Ceramite, like steel alloys, comes in many different grades, each with their own tolerances, specific use, and manufacturing methods. The one usually used for infantry armour focuses on density, forming the thinnest, toughest plates possible for maximum protection and mobility. Thanks to the enhanced strength of power armour, weight is less of a concern.

The compression method for infantry armour is not suitable for large pieces as the industrial press would fail under its own weight when used to compress larger pieces. Vehicle ceramite is thicker and lighter than infantry armour ceramite. Protection is less good, but the lighter armour means you can cover a tank in it without making it so heavy it burns an entirely impractical quantity of fuel and digs too much into soft surfaces, like mud.

It can also be made in large pieces and is cheaper as less material and energy is required to make it. The lighter ceramite is more insulating too, so vehicles remain unaffected by intense fires or arctic and desert conditions. Void ship ceramite cares little for weight and is intended to be as thick as possible. Here, the goal is to absorb as much energy from enemy weapons for the lowest cost, especially energy lances.

It doesn't get compressed much and therefore you can form it into huge slabs, literally spraying the stuff on and sandwiching it between plasteel plates. It is rather prone to shattering, though this is by design as shattering spreads the damage out from high velocity physical projectiles. It doesn't need to maintain integrity, like power armour or vehicles do, because there is an adamantium alloy hull beneath it.

The Environmental Suit STC is valuable, not just because of the new alloy, but because it possesses a new way of creating ceramite armour at scale. As in, I could use infantry grade ceramite, the best type, on a void ship. For the environmental suit, it means its armour is two percent thinner and seven percent more dense and overall provides an epic eleven percent increase in toughness for its weight.

The new ceramite will be excellent for improving our MOA infantry shields, but when coupled with the new alloy, it is highly resistant to physical projectiles and could likely survive multiple kraken rounds fired by a heavy bolter. In practice, the person inside the armour would get injured from shock waves propagating through the armour before one could fire something strong enough to breach the new armour.

The new manufacturing method uses a lot of power as it relies on gravity manipulation and only works in zero gravity, or micro-gravity environments. It works at any scale, with any grade of ceramite, as well as being compatible with both the new alloy and standard plasteel for creating armour plates.

"E-SIM, this method suggests I could potentially reduce the weight of all our void ships by at least fifteen percent while maintaining the same level of protection. The lower reaction mass expenditure alone would pay for the increased energy cost of manufacturing new armour plates in under a year of continuous acceleration at one gravity and even faster at higher velocities. There has to be a downside to this, it's just too good to be true." E-SIM does not respond to my commentary, which is never a good thing.

I continue to look through the STC, picking out other improvements. The knowledge on gravity manipulation will likely lead to better artificial gravity for void ships and help with the integration and replication of the Gravitic Accelerators Quaani picked up. It might make the production of anti-grav hover tanks possible.

We would have to find an inexpensive and high output power source for a hover tank and be willing to disregard the dubious logic of using complex machines in a highly destructive environment when it isn't necessary to do so. One could also say the same about Knight Suits and Titans, but I can't give up the dream of a big stompy robot any easier than any other Tech-Priest can, and if one is feeling uncharitable, Ork Meks too!

The micro-fusion generator for the environmental suit is another delight, providing many more material configurations than we currently have, especially more powerful and expensive versions. It also explains how they work, because this is a proper engineering grade STC. The compact toroid design is the same that we already use but we've only been replicating them. Even I don't precisely know how they work as our current STCs only contain how they're supposed to be configured, but not why.

I am looking forward to reading up on them properly. We already have multiple designs of larger reactors from the D-POTs and Origami. Those use different principles, but as we already have a working solution for larger reactors, there is little value in scaling up these new designs at this time. It is nice to get more data though as a broader understanding and more options is always good to have.

What is absolutely crucial though is that the STC has automated methods of producing, repairing, and recycling these micro-fusion reactors on a large scale. This, along with the long bake times for the armour plates, were the two largest hold ups we have for mass producing power armour. Yes, the micro-factories can make these objects, but they're not specialised devices; they are general fabricators and there are many other, more critical demands on their production time, like voidship components.

There's even a special rig in the STC for assembling and disassembling power armour as well as the individual components that it's made from, for rapid repair and automated manufacturing. Everything about this power armour is just slightly better than what we have. Better synthetic muscle, better auspex, better man-machine interfacing and so on. I doubt I need that Centurion design from the Space Marines any more, but I'm not going to complain if they actually deliver on that trade.

The environmental suit won't feel like a second skin like Space Marine Black Carapace enables, so you can still get claustrophobic in it, but the new interface should eliminate the slight delay in reaction speed that normal power armour has for non Space Marines. I think the best feature of the environmental suit though is the improved mobility. With the higher quality armour, there is less need for bulky shoulder pads to hide your head behind.

You can actually perform superhuman, acrobatic feats in this armour, from flips and cartwheels to some truly epic parkour. Thanks to the thinner armour, the environmental suit is light enough to walk in, though not run, while unpowered, something that most Imperial designs just can't do. You can also turn the strength boost off and just have it support itself, or use it for custom resistance training to build one's strength.

For someone like me, this feature makes it the perfect armour as I can use my maximum strength without damaging the mechanisms. This really shouldn't come as a surprise considering where I got the data from, but somehow I still am. I can also see this armour being used by Space Marine scouts and neophytes who are usually stuck with carapace armour yet still thrown into the toughest of battles. Really, anything that helps those poor kids make it to twenty years old is worth it in my book.