(A/N: This week's 500 stone chapter)
The year was 12 of the Byzantine Cosmic Era.
"Commencing experiment number 37."
On the other side of the sun, in a complex of stations, there was a 'shooting range'. G-Force designed the unique construct to shoot all sorts of beam variants from and see how far they can go.
Mobile suit versions of beams, massive orbital beams, and even the new classification beams called 'Solar Beams' are tested here.
"Calibrating focusing lenses, searching for any interference, the coast is clear… Ready for firing."
The staff that was running the test made sure there was no one in the area. Once everything was in order, the gunner pressed the trigger and shot the beam.
Four charging points formed a semicircle, creating four beams that converged at a single point before a massive red beam shot out, sending a red wave bursting from Lagrange 3 towards deep space.
"Calculating distance…"
Multiple deep-space cameras continued to track the beam.
"...1 Million…"
"...3 Million…"
"...5 Million…"
"The altered space is fixing itself at 6.2 million miles."
Marcus looked forward and listened to the reports with crossed arms. Before him were several monitors as he was tracking the whole thing.
"Decent, we did this with a single burst of resonance." The Emperor commented.
"What do you mean by decent? That's like one-third to Mars when Earth is close." Anna rolled her eyes. The distance was huge in her opinion!
"Yes, I know, but I need it to be in hundreds." He replied to her as he turned around and returned to his fancy command seat. It's where he could make live adjustments.
By this point, he had devised an active cell of scientists, engineers and mechanics that work with him and the Central Legion in the G-Force headquarters.
"In hundreds… You truly want to blast someone through the whole solar system…" Anna realised that he was dead serious in that!
"And we already figured out that it's not hard. We have a timer when space starts to fix itself. With two focusing lenses, we reached 6 million miles."
With that said, Marcus already had a model. Hell, he's been tinkering to make the perfect platform for deep-space cannons.
That's what happens when you work on a single thing for close to five years.
By all means, he was in season two of Gundam 00… and the defences in Jupiter he built were decent.
Making people prepare without knowing it will happen is a bit hard. So he dealt with a quagmire, but at the same time, it was fine.
Once ELS arrives and he deals with the threat he has been talking about for years, the world will crown him the Emperor; it's as simple as that.
"Two space lenses and two for brain burst." Anna checked over.
"I suppose you could do it with two layers of attack?" The Science Empress said with a pondering look.
"You could warp space first and then shoot the brain burst." Another voice as the person entered the command room.
"Cecile, how are the implants?" Marcus asked without even looking who it was
"Stable. It has been quite a trip." The blue-haired woman said with a nervous chuckle.
"I do apologise, but it's a new type of technology for me," Marcus replied as his chair turned around.
"No, it's okay, Your Majesty, I am more than happy to know that you took care of me and developed something from scratch." She immediately waved her hands. The woman is more than baffled to know that she was one of Marcus' 'patients'. There is no one else that she would give herself to be a test subject.
"Yes, but it took me five years of testing to get it right. Geass or not. Space works in strange ways." He frowned a bit as he realised the limitations of his powers.
He realised that his Geass is not almighty. It's a power restricted to humans. So space, element zero and all that is 'alien' doesn't quite scratch it.
It means that he is limited to human 'minds', and if there are no humans who were in deep space, researched Element Zero or any of that, how could his Geass 'figure that out'?
Marcus swiftly realised that his geass was quite vague when he was developing Cecile's implants. Honestly, he felt a bit shit that he needed to use her as an experiment to create stable implants for the first ever Biotic of Humanity.
"And that is more than enough. I doubt anyone else could have done faster than you did.
It took some tests and… a lot of warping space, but it's fine now." Cecile recalled how her patient's room would look from time to time. Thankfully, at some point, doctors demanded that engineers bolt everything in her room to the hull so she couldn't make things float around, and she didn't have a laptop anymore. A relic of the past, but a laptop was the most comfortable item to work with.
She switched to holograms now.
"I see. But from the looks of it, you are quite talented in space now." Marcus looked at the bright side of things. The woman before him was probably the most talented when it came to space.
"...I wouldn't call myself an expert… but I do know a thing or two now." Cecile humbled down that little fact. Then she suggested her assistance.
"I could offer my advice on how we could improve the range, Your Majesty."
"Show me what you learned." He motioned her to demonstrate it.
"It would be my pleasure."
Marcus sent her a hologram showing the current configuration of the parts. In a sense, it was an exposed engine, and they were tinkering with it.
The only difference is that this engine was the size of a mid-sized country and could easily cast a massive shadow across the entire planet.
"First, I suggest resonating the space, and its trajectory, then using the brain burst. At the moment, the gap between those two is around a second or two.
But in the future, we should be able to sync the shoots." She explained after finishing the configuration.
Instead of a half-circle, the design divides these into two. The two gravity resonators create a tunnel of warped space. The brain burst would then use the tunnel to arrive at its target swiftly.
"In other words, this is a jump space corridor." Marcus nodded; he realised he should forget the typical beam mentality he had used before.
What he was looking at is not a Gundam shooting a beam, but actual artillery… at a cosmic scale.
"Indeed."
"In that case…" The Emperor pressed a button on his command chair.
"As I thought, replace the 3rd generation fusion reactor with a 4th generation engine. We are going to use GN particles."
"Certainly, Your Majesty, we have a super-sized engine on its way," one of the engineers replied to Marcus.
"Oh, I see… are the engines ready. I read about them quite a bit." Cecile sounded excited; she tried to keep up with the latest things from her bed, but it was just that… pictures and data.
But all she got from Marcus is a grimace.
"Well, let's just say that while it's extremely powerful… in fact, our warships will be able to cross around 14 to 20 light-years in mere seconds, these engines are… well…"
"What husband wants to say is that these engines, if one gets blown up in a fight… the result? a small supernova!
Not only that, but to start them, we need excessive radiation from a gas giant.
In other words, they are just like your typical GN drive, only on cosmic steroids." Anna explained to Cecile.
"...Well, that happens when you have a sun, no?" The biotic lady tried to sound as optimistic as ever.
"...Not really, third generation was the perfect middle, you could 'vent' the reactor room as the sun wasn't truly a real sun.
But now, it is a real sun. It has a strong magnetic and gravitational force.
The ships are basically miniature Dyson Spheres that act like cages for these suns." The Science Empress sighed a bit.
"That is why the warships we are making are going through a revision," Marcus replied with a strained smile.
"Simply too much power and dangerous." Anna chipped in as she looked at him.
"We are thinking of stepping one step back and making a mix of 3rd generation and improved GN technology and using 4th generation on extra large things that are hard to destroy." The Empress said to Cecile, looking at her husband.
"I do hope this is what you want. Because… well… it is dangerous." Anna said to her husband.
"It is well. We do have means to stop it." He smirked a bit as he looked at his wife and her reaction. Her reaction was that of annoyance.
"If you mean 'controlled supernova' like Nina suggested, then you are out of your mind!" The Science Empress air-quoted the 'controlled' part with extreme sarcasm!
"Technically, the gravity barrier around it should maintain it. We are thinking of 'gravity rods' to slide into the sun to scramble the reaction and forcefully terminate the engine." He said with a pondering look as well. He was thinking about ideas.
"Yes. But it's the 'technically' part. It could cause a black hole by all that we know, and you don't want that in our Solar System!" Anna puffed at him for suggesting this!
"Yeah, that is why we are withholding it and staying on 3rd generation and improved GN drives.
Honestly, focusing on purely the GN drive itself is not a bad idea." Marcus shrugged. Last time he checked, the 00 Qan[T] is not that bad.
The GN reactor particle charge time in that machine is a beast. But he can't have all of his machines have that. It would be… counterproductive.
Simple GN drives are still good. All he needs to do is boost the particle generation for Jump Space. If he links directly to Fusion Reactor, the recovery time for particles should improve.
"If you could generate more than release, then you wouldn't even need a 4th generation reactor, and if the warship gets destroyed, it won't blow up in a supernova." Anna pointed out.
"I guess we do."
Marcus nodded as he got up from his seat and walked over to Cecile. Anna followed after him.
"Let's go, it will take a while for adjustment to happen, we can enjoy a tea break." The Emperor smiled at the blue-haired lady, who slowly nodded. There was a small blush on her cheeks. All the Emperor needed to do was smile at her.
But at this point, he didn't need to do much…
'Now that I think about it… she is a bad cook as well.'
The moment he realised that, he sighed. It would seem the world had cursed him with women who can't cook!
"What is it? Why do I feel that you are thinking something bad about us?" Anna's hand went to his shoulder as she gently bumped it.
"Ugh… nothing. Your Innovator senses are way off." Marcus tried to brush it aside.
"Last time I checked, my sixth sense has been 100% accurate." The Empress narrowed her eyes at him.
The Innovator Emperor sighed again. He shouldn't have turned his wives into Innovators; now they have a sixth sense for what he is thinking! The moment he thinks something naughty… they can tell, or like now! The moment he felt that they were useless in the kitchen, they can tell!
~~~
It has been 5 years since Jupiter became an Imperial Province. The population was close to six million.
The number of industries around the Gas Giant is visible through a simple telescope from Earth. It tells how much the Empire has grown.
Not just Jupiter but the other four Provinces as well.
There was a massive amount of growth just outside Earth, at Lagrange 1, space travel is slowly becoming a civilisational norm.
It's basically like plane travel. One could buy a ticket to Jupiter and visit a spa on Europa.
It's like one of those holiday trips to the beach, but in this case, it's to the Gas Giant.
There are commercial flights available from one of the transit hubs in Earth's orbit.
And it's only bigger and bigger as Mars will soon have its first dome cities, as phase two of Mars terraforming will soon begin.
After all, the empire extracted carbon from Venus and moved to Mars, where an artificial magnetic field is holding the artificial atmosphere in place.
The planet became warm enough to sustain biological life.
~~~
500 powers stones = 1 Extra Chapter
1000 Power Stones = 2 Extra Chapters
And so on, You know what to do.
~~~
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