Universe's End

Chapter 283: Lockheed

“…and after reversing the internal talisman department, we managed to finally crack down on the core issue causing the cascade failures.”

Rory sat in his chair, arms crossed with one leg over the other as he nodded along as Marciello, Roxy’s assistant, gave the rundown on the most recent iteration test.

“Makes sense,” Rory said after a moment. “I should have thought of it sooner, but the fact that the talisman burns from the bottom up means there is a ‘flow’ in the direction of the energies. A negative or positive flow direction compared to the surrounding components would absolutely result in potential screw-ups.”

“That’s what Dan and Rian were thinking as well,” Marciello said. “We think that, with having narrowed the issue down, we can get back to proper testing on the next iteration.”

“Perfect timing,” Rory smiled. “Roxy and I just finished our own updates as well.”

After the failure of the Goblin Mk. 1 and the Goblin Mk. 2, Rory had put the full-scale testing on pause as the small team broke up into two parts. Dan, Rian, Marciello, and Janice were to investigate the root cause of the cascading failure that led to the entire structure exploding violently. At the same time, Rory and Roxy would tackle refining other systems at play, addition by subtraction.

It had been another six months since the Mk. 2 failure, and Rory was beginning to suspect that the next event against Aelia’s siblings was purposely being stalled out by Aelia herself, a sense that was only reinforced as he found himself the target of leaves constantly blowing into his face.

Which didn’t seem like much of a sign, until one realized that a leaf appearing out of nowhere to smack him in the face was something that, as a tier eight, should have been impossible to miss without the intervention of the literal world spirit of the planet.

If this one doesn’t have at least some success, I get the feeling Aelia won’t spare me any extra time.

It was to the point that Rory had begun primarily outsourcing anything that wasn’t entirely experimental; Gil had been forced at the forge to essentially abandon anything that wasn’t working as a proxy member of their team, if only to keep up with the constant demand.

The Mk. 3 had to succeed. There were no other options. Rory had no idea what sort of things he and the other Founders would be facing on Aelia’s siblings. Still, there was absolutely no guarantee it would be resources usable for the purposes of the Goblin-series Aerial Combat platforms, or the G.S.A.C platforms, as they’d come around to calling them, much less the future Sky Fortress project.

Rory could already envision a world where, if the G.S.A.C platforms succeeded, the potential for aerial exploration would explode; the difference between exploring using a basic glider and a G.S.A.C platform plus a Skyblazer suit would be like the difference between fighting with a bow and fighting with a modern semi-automatic.

Pre-modern? Whatever, semantics.

It wasn’t really his main motivation, or a true motivation whatsoever, but if Rory could help out the people of Ehkorrus, and Sky-Haven to a lesser degree, by leading at the cutting edge of innovation, why not? But they would need a prototype that actually worked before those schematics could be circulated.

Plus, Apostolos will probably feel better to have that as a final farewell gift.

It had been formally announced around the time of the initial G.S.A.C failure that Apostolos would be ‘retiring’ a year from then. Six months later, that timeline was ever closer, and boy howdy was Apostolos stressed. Given how much of Apostolos’s identity revolved around being the Chief Protector of Ehkorrus, hell, given the fact that his vocation was Chief Protector, his adopted younger brother was likely in for a whirlwind of change as his vocation likely changed upon finally stepping down.

Trying to make the most of his time left, Apostolos had been running himself ragged with preparing everything he possibly could, constantly butting heads with Irene as they bickered about allocating resources or the like. With his time left, he had officially reorganized the combatants of Ehkorrus into the three Fronts, official classifications. Hired muscle and adventurers or even private groups, such as the Rong clan, were registered as ‘Charters,’ which had loose regulations but few benefits.

The second Front consisted of the former hired guards of the city and other ‘official’ combatants, now known as members of the Garrison. Interestingly, there were already subgroups in the Garrison, but Rory cared little to expend precious time and energy investigating further. The Garrison had been on a full-speed recruitment and training drive, partially inspired by what Apostolos had learned about Tidal Grove and how they operated as a militarized city that blended civilian and military roles much more closely than Ehkorrus did.

And finally, the third and most elite Front, the Cadre. There were no official Cadre personnel yet, as they were meant to be selected and trained from the best performing and most qualified members of the Garrison.

It was all rather interesting, but Rory had the pleasure of seeing it all play out from a distance, unlike Apostolos, who spent what time remained preparing the three Fronts to become the formal backbone of Ehkorrus once Tsarina took his place. If Rory could leave behind the goodie that was the G.S.A.C blueprints, well, maybe Apostolos could avoid going grey at least one day longer.

With that little bit of extra motivation, it wasn’t long before the G.S.A.C team met for what was likely the final time, within a triple-reinforced warehouse that they’d been using for the experimental testing.

The Goblin Mk. 3 had taken everything they’d learned and applied it. No longer a rigid platform, it was more like a series of connected segments that could flex and shift independently, guided by an ‘inscription matrix’ processor –pearlescent core that had then been converted into a modular mechanical gem and hooked into several separated inscription sequence splitters. It was an extremely delicate part that only Rory could produce. Still, he hoped that future iterations of the G.S.A.C. would find a way to simplify the requirement for an entire pearlescent core within an inscription-matrix pipeline.

But that really wasn’t his problem.

Each segment had its own compartment for talismans that triggered the platform’s ‘start-up’ sequence and opened or closed highly compact bound-space pneuma crushers within each segment. Nearly every single core component had two or even three layers worth of inscriptions, and while second-layer inscriptions were something that highly skilled inscriptionists outside of Rory could manage, the third layer was still something only he had achieved, once more something making the G.S.A.C a highly experimental prototype that would hopefully be simplified for the future.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on NovelBin. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

One also couldn’t forget the special laquer layer added on top of the already rather special stratovite alloy. This laquer traded pneuma conductivity for pneuma durability. While it made the entire system more costly to run from a pneuma standpoint, given the many extremely advanced inscription layers and sequences involved, plus everything else, it was deemed necessary to prevent an errant flow of pneuma from causing a cascade failure, as in the prior iterations of the goblin series.

Aiding in speed were the Point Accelerators. Rather than propellers or jets or any of the like systems for propulsion, Rory had skipped the middleman entirely. Point Accelerators were actually surprisingly simple in how they operated, almost identical to how Rory himself was capable of flying about when push came to shove. Rather than relying on physical propulsion, the Point Accelerators latched onto space-time points, attracting and repelling. It was magnitudes more advanced than any ordinary propulsion, omnidirectional in range. Still, it was the reason why the Goblin Mk. 3 needed an entire inscription matrix to ‘process’ all the information at once.

Finally, and perhaps more importantly, was the weapon system. There had been some debates regarding just how far to go with the weapons. In the end, Rory had decided on a modus operandi of no restrictions. Seeing as the Founders were going to be tackling Aelia’s siblings together, Rory had a sneaking suspicion that even the strongest artificial weapons they could tack onto the G.S.A.C wouldn’t be a massive power imbalance, unlike the railguns of yesteryore.

Thus, the Heavy Light cannons and Null Glitter Lance. The Heavy Light cannons were partially inspired by the pneuma lasers that Miguel had added to the heavy gliders of Sky-Haven, which concentrated pneuma and fired it as highly condensed beams. Functioning almost identically, the main difference was that sunlight and starlight were also concentrated, the condensed pneuma interacting with the captured light as it was reshaped into prismatic affinity pneuma, the same affinity that the Bird had made deadly use of. By further adding an inscription sequence and quite a myriad array of gems, the prismatic rays would be forcibly slowed by an exponential degree, relative to what a tier eight might realistically fight at. This massive slowdown conferred an inverse increase in attack potency as a parameter trade-off. All of which resulted in energy beams that carried so much oomph that they applied direct physical force capable of kinetic damage even without any real mass.

If the Heavy Light cannons were the general-use weapon, capable of energy and physical damage, then the Null Glitter Lance was the ‘fuck you’ button. From a fully charged ‘battery,’ the Mk. 3 could only use the Null Glitter Lance three times before it was reduced in power capacity to such a degree that it was capable of only basic gliding maneuvers, with all weapons or acceleration subsystems offline.

But oh, was it worth it.

Because the Null Glitter Lance wasn’t just a fancy-sounding weapon, the usage of null was purposeful. Directly modeled after Rory’s singularity strike, an exploding convergence of paradoxes forming an outburst of oblivion energy, the Null Glitter Lance was essentially the same thing, just far more targeted. Locking onto a target, the Null Glitter Lance would populate a linear vector from point A to point B with micro-points of paradoxical points, the same way that Rory would converge two gems of zero and infinite conceptuality, just with significantly reduced one-to-one potency but far more in sheer number. Once the vector was fully established and saturated, all that remained was the chain reaction of convergences: the paradoxical points colliding, causing other points to collide, almost like the start-up of a nuclear bomb, a beam of null light racing outward in a single instant and blasting whatever the target was with a highly focused oblivion energy.

It also had the fun visual effect of looking like black-and-white glitter was locked in stasis along the transversal vector, perfect if you forgot to buy streamers for the retirement party at work.

Weapon systems, propulsion systems, power systems, and flight systems were accounted for; all that remained was a practical field test.

With the small team holding their breath, Rory mounted the newest model aerial combat platform, pulsed pneuma through it, and a moment later, it began to rise.

So far, so good.

Rising higher, Rory tentatively reached out to Earth Soul, calcifying a thin exodermal layer of protection around it. It was both another layer of defense in case of catastrophic failure and a way to test how the Mk. 3 would respond to pneuma and skill usage while riding it. Prior iterations would have exploded at this point. Yet, the lacquer application to the stratovite proved its worth, no longer so sensitive that the delicate systems within would spiral from pneuma in its vicinity.

Alright, good, good.

Shifting his weight, the Mk. 3 responded as they lurched right, taking all of Rory’s balance and coordination to adjust on the fly.

Okay, still extremely touchy, but not beyond the ability to be usable by a tier eight with at least some investment in cognition or flexibility.

Shifting again, Rory found it smoother now that his mind had already integrated how touchy it otherwise was.

Okay, nothing has exploded yet. Time to speed things up a bit.

Smiling, Rory slipped the very tip of his right foot into a small divot, the direct ‘connection’ to his aura making the platform respond to intent. With that connection established, Rory suddenly launched forward, zipping through the air faster than any glider from Sky-Haven, even the glider he’d given Miguel, could hope to compare to. It was almost as fast as a Skyblazer suit after one or two acceleration ring boosts.

Extremely fast, and still not exploding.

Seeing as nothing had gone wrong yet, Rory began to push his luck, shooting around and cackling, thankful for the mask he’d donned in case of bugs or debris.

Now we’re talking.

“Roxy to Dad, you hear me?” Rory heard a voice buzz from within the mask, a short-range transmission specifically designed for the testing.

Side note, I should probably make something like this for the other Founders so we can communicate seamlessly… But that’s a much easier build request than a G.S.A.C, so no rush.

“I hear you, Squirt,” Rory said, his voice sounding static-y.

“Why do you sound like something is disrupting your voice?” Roxy asked over the mic.

“Nothing important,” Rory answered back, not about to explain that his own internal interpretation of transmission systems required a static sound, thereby causing his own voice to transmit with that same static he associated with back on Earth.

“How are things on your end?” Roxy asked, not bothering to chase a further explanation on the already dropped subject.

“Good, no explosions.”

“Great, then we’ve got a request down here, we’re filtering in some information as you fly about. Mind firing up the Heavy Light Cannon?”

“What about the Null Glitter Lance?” Rory asked, well aware of what she would say.

“Please, do NOT do that,” Roxy sighed, humoring her father. “Just the Heavy Light Cannon.”

Grinning, Rory floated upward before turning around to face the targets that had sprung up. Aiming with the precision of a highly cognition-invested tier eight, bursts of light, almost like tracer rounds, raced outward, striking the target and exploding them instantly.

“Alright, perfect. On our end, we don’t see any problems. Anything on your side?”

“Zilch,” Rory answered. “Looks like every safeguard and planned contingency is working flawlessly.”

Please don’t say that, it sounds like jinxing it,” Roxy sighed. “Alright, well, let’s see how much actual flight time you get in a relatively controlled setting.”

“Roger, Roger,” Rory said, snapping a two-finger salute downward as he switched to zipping around in varying patterns and circles, accelerating and decelerating as they collected information on just how long it would take to exhaust itself. They had theoretical assumptions, but it was always better to test than assume when possible.

Which, in the end, proved redundant albeit wise. Within the acceptable range of deviation from their estimate, the last talisman was burnt up within its compartment, and unable to trigger the bound-space closing sequence, the pneuma-crushers were unable to refine the environmental pneuma beyond a low-grade level, the speed of the prototype aerial platform massively dropping to something closer to that of a regular glider, the weapon systems likewise going offline.

Setting down gently, Rory stepped off the Mk. 3, peeling the mask off and revealing a wide grin on his face.

“So?” Roxy asked as she approached, hands on her hips as the golden bangles surrounding her wrists gently jangled.

“Well, I’ll say one thing,” Rory chuckled. “Lockheed Martin would be damn proud.”