Save the Day Program, once again. (Gundam IBO/Satisfactory SI): Chapter 25

“Negative.”

“Why? They look really cool!”

“They are all about form and have no advantage in function. Not to mention that its advantage of having multiple beam weapons is almost useless in the current age.  I suggest you give me a different design.”

I felt like crying at ADA’s ruthless words as she discarded the designs for the Musai-Class that I wanted.

For the past few days, ever since the boys came back from the Jupiter Sphere and were being rowdy as usual, ADA and I have been working on improving our ships and weapon systems so that we can stay ahead of everyone in this solar system.

Especially after our discovery of the Mobile Armor and its capabilities.

I will not lie, the damned thing is pretty terrifying.

Its learning computer made it so that it can adapt to nearly any situation. Its armaments were state-of-the-art when they were first brought online, and even today, their beam weapons are shockingly powerful. If not for the Nanolaminate Armor, I have no doubt that these things could have melted their way through everything.

However, the thing that scares me the most is its printing capability and its Pluma.

In essence, the Mobile Armor and its Pluma act similarly to an ant colony. The Mobile Armor is the Queen, producing Pluma by the dozens continuously and fighting off any enemy that its Pluma can't on their own, while the Pluma themselves gather resources for the Mobile Armor to print more Pluma.

It’s a damned grey-goo scenario in the making.

No wonder it took the Gundam-Frames, which utilize the power of the machine and the primal and violent instincts of a human, to stop these things.

However, it is also a fact that the technology that these things use is leagues ahead of anything in use even in this date, hence the reason why ADA and I experimented with it and improved out ships to some degree.

Now, our Skipjack-Class ships are equipped with microwave power transmitters to distribute power, allowing us to remove the internal power sources of the drones and fill them up with even more weapons and explosives.

But that was not all.

As part of Project: Aether, ADA and I retrofitted a lot of our fleet with a lot of changes, including replacing the single Ahab reactors in our ships with a Dual-Ahab reactor configuration, similar to the Gundam Units.

It was not easy since Ahab reactors don’t play nice when they are used in such a configuration, but the result was worth it as the power output for our ships more than quadrupled and allowed us to upscale the Macron cannons to an absurd degree with enough energy left to fit a few other nasty surprises as well.

But, even then, our innovation does not stop here.

The Skipjack-class serves well as our main battle force, especially with their number now ranging in the hundreds, thanks to our various hidden orbital facilities continuously churning them out in the outer solar system.

However, they are mainly used as long-range assault ships and carriers for the drones, and when needed, Mobile Suits, thanks to its modularity.

Simply put, they are more of a carrier than a specialized assault ship.

Hence, our efforts to create such a ship. One that is designed specifically for violence on a strategic scale.

While the specifications are something that ADA and I have long since decided, the chassis is proving to be a point of contention between us.

I want to stay true to our ongoing theme of impersonating the Principality of Zeon, while ADA thinks that I am being childish and wishes to go for more practical and easily to disguise designs, like the ship of the Brewers.

But she doesn’t seem to realize yet that I will not give up just like that. And I have an ace up my sleeve.

I quickly manipulated the 3d designing software and started designing what I wanted.

Within a few minutes, a new ship chassis was displayed on the screen as ADA watched through her clone body’s eyes.

“How about this? Two main cannon points which can be fitted with our Macron Cannons. Two secondary weapon ports that can be used for many things, even our latest experiment. And a few dozen 155mm cannons for Anti-Mobile Suit defenses. Given its size, it can also fit the Twin-Ahab reactor setup and even have space for our experimental printer to resupply the kinetic weapons.”

ADA remained silent as she looked at the ship design, both through her eyes and her digital form, before finally nodding, although I did detect a slight hesitance from her.

“This design is much more logical. What shall we name it?”

I grinned at the question.

“Gwazine-Class”

“Another strange name? I don’t know how you come up with these nonsensical names, Administrator.”

“Just trust me on this, ADA. I know what I am doing.”

“Very well. I’ll run a few simulations on the design and stress test it as much as possible before producing a prototype.”

“Alright. Also, how are the experiments on our shields and other projects going?”

“Slow, but stable. Although the Macron shields are proving to be a difficult endeavor due to the Ahab reactors interfering with the Macron cloud’s cohesion.”

I winced at those words.

Looks like it is going to take longer than expected to come up with a countermeasure for my Macron canons in case their technology is ever stolen or replicated.

After all, it is not really hard to build such a weapon once someone knows the basic principles behind it and just how effective they are against Nanolaminate armor.

Macron cannons work by using a particle accelerator to hurl particles known as Macrons, which are basically tiny objects that are smaller than grains of sand made from regular materials, which happen to be carbon in our case, at obscene speeds towards the enemy. In essence, it was no different than a sandblaster from back home that was usually used to strip paint off parts or other such uses.

However, here, the weapon concentrates the particles in such a way that literally thousands of these particles punch through armor at near light-speed every second, turning the sandblaster concept to the extreme.

It is also the reason why they were sometimes called Dust Guns back home.

This effectiveness as a weapon, however, also means that I need a way to protect my own forces from such things, especially since this is a Gundam universe and it is practically guaranteed that at some point, someone will either reverse engineer this weapon, steal it from me, or make their own version.

That is why ADA and I have been working on ways to negate such weapons, and so far, the best way we have found is to use the Macrons themselves to form a moving cloud of these things around our ships using Ahab particles, allowing us to nullify the weapon in question.

However, this shield has a really big weakness.

It is only effective against Macron Canons and fails spectacularly against most kinds of kinetic weapons. Which means that we will have to use it based on the situation and will have to rely on our Hulls to take the impact from the Kinetic weapons, which is not ideal in any way.

Aside from that, we have also been working on reverse engineering the material smelter and printer of the Mobile Armor to take advantage of these powerful systems.

ADA had been salivating at the thought of integrating those technologies into our existing tech tree.

While on the whole, they don’t appear to be of much use to us since FICSIT’s technology is leagues ahead of anything these people could have come up with.

However, comparing our technology with this printer and smelter combo is something that I feel to be foolish.

The FICSTI technology holds the edge when it comes to its sheer efficiency and production capability. For example, if we wanted to print out a standard FICSIT Drone or a Mobile Armor Pluma, it would take our manufacturer a mere two minutes, while the Printer would take at least fifteen minutes.

However, the Printer and Smelter win out in sheer versatility compared to our technology.

Going back to our previous example, the Mobile Armor’s printers, while slow, are capable of printing out anything when provided with the needed raw materials, while FICSIT’s manufacturers would require an entire supply chain of smelters, assemblers, and other infrastructure to achieve the same result. Not to mention the fact that the Mobile Armor’s printer worked in a similar fashion to my Build Gun and directly reduced its acquired items and resources to their base materials through the use of nanites.

Both sides possess their own qualities and flaws, so a direct comparison does not feel fair to me.

However, this also means that we have to opportunity to take these qualities from both sides and create something new, which was exactly what ADA had been working on along with the shields.

Hopefully, we will find some results on that front.

I turned back to the screen and watched as ADA worked on our new ship’s simulation, imagining a future where our manufacturing and mining capacity was quadrupled overnight thanks to this breakthrough.

-------------------------------------------------------------------

Gwazine-Class ships: