It took me surprisingly long to get the design for the new assault skimmer together. Mostly caused by delays by the various manufacturers of the board electronics to answer my requests.

I even tried, pro forma, to get the license for the Kawamoto XCR-778 Sigma multi-band radar. In vain, naturally, as for some reason Kawamoto was not quite in the mood to trade with us.

It was not such a big loss though as the Raytheon V7-88 Mk. III was essentially as good.

Now, I know that I could have designed the skimmer with the assumption of gaining the license. In theory at least. In practice, though the design constraints of the different modules were closely held, and I just did not know enough to factor them in, until I got the classified data.

I knew I should have just gotten the specs from the Abyss, but no, I had to go the legal straight and narrow here. Well, I know better now.

As it was, it took me a bit over two weeks to get it all done.

At least this delay allowed Warden’s project in material science to come to its conclusion.

And so it came, that on the 18^th of March, a Monday, I called Naveen and Michael to show what chaos I had sown.

It took them a few moments to arrive in the viron I had prepared, and we drifted in empty space for a moment.

Michael, who appeared a few moments before Naveen, commented a bit acerbic:

“What, no comfortable office environment this time?”

I just shrugged.

“That would just be in the way shortly. And come on, we don’t need it.”

“It’s still nice.”

Just then, Naveen appeared as well, and Michael continued:

“Now… are we waiting for somebody else or will you tell us why we are here?”

“No, just you two for the moment. I wanted to present you the fruits of my work.”

Michael looked a bit confused, while Naveen perked up a bit.

“You are done? You have an assault skimmer.”

While I nodded, I answered:

“We have to build it first, of course. And I bet you, your goons, and the minions can improve on the basic design a bit. I just don’t know enough about combat to get it perfect on the first try.”

Then, with a grand gesture, I waved toward the empty expanse, and an ugly, blocky thing appeared.

Well, a quarter of an ugly, blocky thing appeared. The other three-quarters were the skeleton of some ugly blocky thing.

“I called the design the Valkyre, but you can change that of course.”

Michael rubbed his chin and looked at the projection closely.

“Honestly, I would have expected it to be bigger.”

I rolled my eyes.

“Remember when I said we should make the payload section modular? That is only the basic vehicle. The thing that every version has.

The majority of the batteries are in the head section here, along with the primary grav coils. The rest of the batteries, and the secondary coils, are up there in the spine.

It has the newest available radar-absorbing materials and the same kind of optical stealth that the Atropos have. If my simulations are right, it should roughly have the radar cross-section of a sparrow. Fully loaded I mean.

It has the Raytheon V7-88 Mk. III multi-band radar, the ABAS KT-22/UVR LIDAR system, the Kobashigawa TR-NXgo navigation system, the ABAS TVX flight control system, the Vandermeer I-77 targeting array, and in general the best avionics I could find.”

Naveen nodded appreciative, though Michael frowned a bit.

“I get that you want to put in the, what do you want to call it, mission module? Whatever, I thought this thing would be a bit more aerodynamic.”

I chuckled.

“When I started, it was. At least more aerodynamic looking. A typical teardrop design. It gave me tons of problems getting stuff in there.

And despite how it looks, this thing is surprisingly aerodynamic. Well, with the mission module. It is designed after something called a box fish.

It looks a bit like a miniature wardrobe, but it is astonishingly aerodynamic. Not quite the perfect teardrop, but close enough.”

“Ah… ok. And those avionics you mentioned, those are firm?”

“I acquired the licenses for all of them. I needed to to get the specs.”

Naveen drifted to the front of the thing, looking intently at the various parts.

“I see the double Gatling gun, but no other weapons… I don’t know if you know, but it looks like a Gauss, and those are generally insufficient against stronger armor or hardened positions. And I can’t see any PDCLs either.”

“You are right about the Gatling Gauss. Mostly at least. I have taken the Vandermeer Chalybs Imber, and improved it a bit.”

“Improved? I thought the Chalybs Imber was the top of the line already.”

“Yes and no. The original design is actually almost 20 years old. The old government of the Commonwealth decided it was too ‘dishonorable’ for the war with the AFS, and banned Vandermeer from building and/or selling it.”

I rolled my eyes and then snarked:

“The reality is of course that it was too effective as a weapon. The Knowles wouldn’t have been able to sell the story that the war is a stalemate with such a monster, and a few other Vandermeer weapons involved.”

Michael cleared his throat.

“Excuse me, but… what the fuck is a chalice imper?”

Booth Naveen and I chuckled and Naveen answered him:

“It is Chalybs Imber. Chalybs is one of the Latin words for steel, while imber, with a B, means rain. All in all, it is called steel rain. It is a Gatling Flechette Gauss with eight barrels, and a single one fires a bit less than 24000 rounds per minute. Each shot contains, depending on what ammunition is used either 12 razor disks, four darts, or a slug, either armor piercing or not.

They are usually used with the flechette ammunition, the darts, and you can imagine that a single Chalybs Imber is truly worthy of that name, with around 95 thousand steel darts thrown downrange per minute.

An extremely devastating anti-infantry weapon. And a good addition to the arsenal of any assault skimmer.”

Then his voice turned serious, and he looked at me.

“But it is not sufficient as the sole weapon. And that still does not address the lack of point-defense lasers. Or how you improved it.”

“Let’s stay with the Chalybs Imber for a moment. It was a decent design, but it was not designed to be built in a NADA, or with my new findings about quantum fields in mind. I… rectified that.

First, I replaced the graphene-aerogel supercapacitors with ones I designed with ultrahigh-temperature ceramic superconductors as electrodes and a zinc-mangan-oxid dielectric. They charge a bit over eight times faster and can store twice the energy than the GA ones.

The problem with them was that it was nearly impossible to manufacture them. Without a NADA that is. The ceramic superconductors are insanely brittle and can’t be worked with on conventional machinery. Standard, flexible superconductors that can be formed into a capacitor can’t stand the high temperatures of the discharge on the other hand.

So previously, no superconducting capacitors for the Gauss guns. The same is the case for the electromagnets. Conventional flexible room-temperature superconductors can’t withstand the heat of firing the gun, while the ultra-high-temperature ceramic superconductors are too brittle to use any traditional form of machining them into coils.

Not so for the NADA-built Gauss guns. In other words, the enhanced Chalybs Imber have superconducting supercapacitors and superconducting magnetic coils. That alone increases the efficiency of the whole weapon by around two and a half times.

I am not done with it though. The basic problem that Gauss guns have is that the projectile becomes saturated with the magnetic fields, and such is less pulled by the magnets. That limits the potential muzzle velocity to a large degree.

Previously, this problem was insurmountable, and the reason why everybody goes with rail guns instead. Those have their own problems, sure, but those are problems that just increase the maintenance requirements exponentially.”

Michael nodded.

“You said previously. Am I right in the assumption that you found a way to surmount those insurmountable problems?”

Naveen chuckled softly, while I nodded.

“Mind you, everybody with a NADA can make an improved Gauss gun, with what I have already mentioned. But the next step is what makes it an enhanced Gauss gun and only we and Vandermeer have, at this time, the ability to make them, as it takes a 4D-enabled NADA.

What I did was placing an EM-manipulator coil between each magnetic coil, that de-saturates the projectile. The effect is that the projectile will be pulled by the last magnet as strongly as the first.

This… well, I can see how this could replace rail guns, at least for Vandermeer, in the future. It means that there is no longer a hard limit on the velocity a Gauss gun can impart. If you make a Gauss big enough, it will reach the speeds of a rail gun or more.

Not quite in the range of a grav gun, but a good second place I think.

In the case of the enhanced Chalybs Imber, it leads to around 2.5 times the muzzle velocity.”

I nodded to Naveen.

“That means if they use solid, hardened slugs, they should be good enough as anti-armor weapons as well, but that is not what I intended them for.”

Naveen nodded.

“I see. And the point defense lasers?”

I sighed.

“Honestly, I dislike lasers. I know I should be able to enhance them to the point where they are effective, but… I just don’t like them. If you are insisting on them, I guess we can put them in, but for the time being, I have that:”

A short mental command, and several structures on the skimmer head, and the skeleton were highlighted.

“I call these PACs, or Particle Accelerator Cannons. Technically they are lightweight particle beam cannons, just with a pulse mode to save energy. The way I have designed them, they fire 500 times a second in three micro-second pulses. In sum, for 1.5 milliseconds per second. They have the same 3.8GW as the standard proton lance, but as I said, only for 1.5 milliseconds per second. Or 5.7MJ. Even that is… taxing for the batteries.

But they have the same range as the particle beams, the same near lightspeed for the pulses, and should be incredibly accurate. And even one pulse should stop anything an assault skimmer has a business engaging with. Anything it can’t cope with is something the skimmer should not encounter.”

Again, Naveen nodded, but he did seem a tiny bit unhappy.

“I understand that, but we can’t plan for our assault skimmers to never encounter anti-ship weapons.”

Michael on the other hand, shrugged.

“Yeah, I get that, but tell me, can any assault skimmer withstand those kinds of weapons?”

“No, not really, but I would love for ours to be able to do that.”

“Well, to continue, it has 16 PACs distributed in a way that at least six can fire in any direction.

Now, you mentioned that the Gauss guns are not enough against stronger armor. But that is not everything this thing has. The nose twin Gatling Gauss turret is integrated, but if you look here at the chin…”

Another mental command let the PACs release their highlights, while the somewhat flat area under the chin was now highlighted, and a series of dark blobs appeared under it.

“Here you see a hardpoint where we can mount a variety of weapon modules. At the low end, we can put another twin Chalybs Imber turret there, in case you want to double down on soft targets… that reminds me, why does the CI have this razor disk ammo? I can’t see any use except for completely unarmored targets.”

Naveen shrugged.

“As far as I know, that was the exact reason. The AFS had, for some time, the ‘glorious’ idea to use clones as human wave cannon fodder. It turned out that using beings only a couple of days old without training, or real equipment was not such a good idea after all. It did cost the Freebies more to make the clones than it did cost the Commies to shred them, even without the Chalybs Imber.”

I shook my head in the face of such inhumane tactics. And those were the self-declared ‘good guys’.

After a few seconds, I sighed and then continued.

“Whatever… as I was saying, it could be used to double on the Gauss guns but unless you want to eradicate a large zombie horde I doubt you need that very often.”

The first of the shadow blobs morphed into another twin Chalybs Imber turret and then moved to a side for the next blob.

“Next up we have a standard ballistic heavy machine gun, also a twin. I used the same 15x175mm caseless ammo that Mark has developed for his Exterminator, just to make logistics a bit easier. It has a longer barrel, but otherwise, it should be good at up to four km.”

Again, the shadow blob morphed into a weapon turret. Two single-barreled guns this time.

“The next option is a 30mm autocannon. I took a bit of inspiration from the ancient GAU-8 for the ammunition. I converted it to caseless as well, to make it lighter, but otherwise, it is the same. So now 30x170mm caseless. A nice armor cracker.

The autocannon is available in two variants. One long-barreled, relatively slow-firing long-range variant, essentially a sniper weapon, or as a shorter-barreled Gatling version to… saturate an area.”

Two blobs morphed into weapons. One was a single, long barrel sticking out of a ball turret, while the other was a significantly shorter gun with seven rotating barrels, also in a ball turret.

“The last weapon module it can carry is a plasma cannon. My simulations show that it should be rather devastating. No ground vehicle armor or fortification will withstand more than a couple of its shots.”

I looked at Naveen while I was saying that, and was not disappointed, as his mouth fell down in astonishment. Michael on the other hand frowned and looked at me questioningly.

“I… thought you needed a fusactor, or a fusion reactor to make a plasma cannon work.”

I smiled sweetly.

“Most people think that, but they are, at least in theory, wrong. There are in general two types of plasma cannons. The one everybody knows about is akin to a hose that you connect to a reservoir of plasma, and then spray at whoever you want. It is for all purposes just a conduit for the plasma.

And yes, that type needs a plasma source, the most convenient of them is the fusactor.

The other type was more or less only theoretical. This type creates the plasma internally, by whatever method.

In theory, you could hook a barrel into the reaction chamber of a fusactor and call it a plasma cannon, though that might be a bit unwieldy.

The ‘easy’ way to generate the plasma is by inertial confinement fusion. That method has been known since the 20^th century. Three problems prevented it from being used as a weapon though.

First, the mechanism to trigger the fusion process is… was, a bit large. As in building-sized.

Second, the chamber strong enough to withstand what is essentially a tiny nuclear explosion is… also a bit large, though not as large as the trigger.

Third, it was seen as impossible to make a barrel that could direct the energy of the explosion instead of being destroyed by it.

With the help of our new technology, I solved all three problems. Triggering and confinement of the chamber is done by tiny grav coils that leave only one way out, through the barrel, which is magnetically protected from the plasma. That is possible thanks to the new EM-coils. Otherwise, the magnets would be roughly the size of the spine here.

It works by compressing a tritium-pellet until the fusion happens and then squirts that expanding plasma ball through the barrel, collimating it. It should have a range of around two, maybe three kilometers.”

I made a small pause.

“So, while the warship plasma cannons are relatively easy, being in a warship and connected to a fusactor, those plasma cannons are more like a tiny casaba howitzer.”

The last shadow morphed into a short, stubby barrel in a turret.

“If that are not enough options for you, then we have to work a bit harder, I think. And no, a disruptor takes too much energy I fear. As it is, if the Valkyre flies 1000km, it has a loitering endurance of around two hours or 30 minutes of low-intensity combat. High-intensity combat is more like 5-10 minutes.

With the assumption that you want to fly the 1000km back. If that is not the case… it is quite a bit longer. Obviously, the times are also a bit higher when you have the conventional ballistic weapons at the hard point. The Gauss and the Plasma take a bit of energy for each shot.

It also depends on what mission modules you install. Some will have additional battery capacity, some are an additional drain on the batteries, and then there is… well we’ll come to that in a bit.”

Naveen looked at the plasma cannon a bit closer.

“And this thing will really do what you say?”

“My simulations say so, but obviously, I haven’t tested it yet. If it doesn’t we can get a rail gun, or maybe a big enhanced Gauss gun instead, but I think it will.”

“Well, I would love to have a greater range or longer combat endurance, but this is as good, if not better, than anything on the market right now. The gun modules are mostly fine too. If the plasma works, then it is better than fine. Though tritium is mighty expensive.”

“That is relative. Sure it costs more than lead or carbon, but the exorbitant price of tritium is an artifact of the olden days. When it was used in nukes, and was hard to produce.

With a fusactor, we can produce it in large quantities. We only need lithium. The only reason why that rumor still makes the round is that tritium is rarely used anymore.”

“I assume that the batteries are LX-NS? Like in the Atropos?”

“Of course. I see no reason to use inferior batteries that cost us more to produce.”

“Well, then, how about the mission modules? Those are what will make or break this thing.”

“OK. Let’s start with the connection. It has three tractor beams in the spine to lift or put down a module, and the cage can open and close around it. For the various modules, there is the standard stuff. Troop transport, vehicle transport, and so on. The standard troop transport module can carry 112 soldiers in up to heavy unpowered armor, with their equipment. In the large configuration, it can carry 75 troopers in power armor. The cyber transport configuration can carry 32 Achilles combat cyborgs. All that assumes that each person has enough room to move a bit.

The bot transport module can carry 146 Einherjar. The vehicle transport module can carry two of the Badgers.

And of course, there is a med-evac variant with four auto-docs.

All the transport modules roughly double the battery capacity. Then there is the freight module. Essentially just an aerodynamic shell around eight standard containers.

There is a 265.6m³ liquid module as well, though I am not sure we need that. But it was easy to create, so there it is.

And those are the transport modules.”

While I was talking, the various modules appeared beside the skimmer, and Naveen immediately walked to the first troop transporter, and opened the side door on one side, seeing the weapon mounts on the floor, and nodded.

“That sounds thorough and is more or less within the standard for an assault skimmer. A bit bigger than average, but not unmanageable.”

Michael on the other hand furrowed his brow.

“You said those are the standard modules… does that mean you have more?”

“Of course. A bit different from the rest is the drone tender. Designed to run up to four Atropos, with their standard complement of parasite drones. Unlikely that we ever need it, but it will barely take any time to build, so no point in not designing it in case we could use it.

That now brings us to the combat variants.”

I heard a slight gasp from Michael and turned to him. He looked a bit surprised, and when I raised my eyebrow, he asked:

“Wasn’t the whole thing a combat craft? I mean, everything is designed to be used in combat.”

I was spared from explaining it by Naveen answering though:

“No, the variants she showed us are combat-transport. Designed to bring troops, equipment, or supplies into a combat theatre. As I understand it, combat variants are designed to do the fight themselves.”

I had only to nod, but I still said “Correct.”

Then I turned back to the vehicle.

“Well, mostly. Two are combat support roles. The first is an EW variant. It is planned to distract and blind the enemy sensors. The other is a scout variant, packed full of sensors. The EW variant is sadly the one with the smallest run time. The various jammers and signal emitters eat up power.”

I made a short pause, tilting my head.

“Honestly, I am not sure we really need it, but I designed it for the same reason as the drone tender.”

Naveen frowned at that statement.

“Why do you think we don’t need it? It sounds like a useful addition.”

I had to smile.

“That is because of the next variant. It is a SEAD module. Instead of stealth, this one has a multi-band radar emitter and transponder to be a good target, as well as an additional 12 PACs and a complement of anti-radiation missiles and cluster bombs. Where the EW module is designed to blind the enemy air defense, the SEAD module is designed to destroy it. But as usual, I only create the toys, you have to play with them, so it’s your decision.

Now, that was the first direct combat variant. Then we have an air superiority variant, with several multi-homing missiles. You know, electro-optical image recognizing, infrared, active radar, and beam riding homing all in one search head. It also has 12 additional PACs. Obviously, I designed it to take out enemy skimmers. We have to see how it does with that though.

Then we have the bomber variant, with 24 tons of bombs in variable configurations, from dumb, over guided bombs to glide bombs. Whatever bomb you can dream up, if it is less than 24 tons and fits through the bomb chute, it can drop it.

Then we have the ground-attack variant. 16 tons of unguided rockets, with four launched at the same time through two ports on each side, and a reload time of .02 seconds, as well as two additional gun hardpoints, one on each side.”

I stopped there, and Naveen smiled and nodded appreciatively.

“I think that should ruin the day of anybody who encounters it. I like it, honestly. And thanks to the modular design, we can quickly swap out the profile.”

Michael narrowed his eyes.

“One thing here… you were so adamant against modular design in the warships. Why do you insist on it here?”

“Several reasons. First, it is one thing to have a slight decrease in efficiency in something that costs a couple hundred k bucks and that we get a few thousand of, and something completely different in something that costs us around two billion dollars and that we get maybe a few dozen of.

Second, the modularity is less than you think. Yes, the hardpoints are modular, and the mission modules, but the first is relatively straight forward and we only lose around 3-6% in volume here, the volume of the weapon system, mind you, not the whole skimmer.

The other is not really modular. It is a skimmer with a payload compartment, and I have designed a standardized payload.

For the ships, their role decides their basic form and internal layout. I estimate that by making them modular, we lose around 10-20% of the volume and around 10-15% of the efficiency. Again, for something that costs in the billions of dollars, that is not acceptable.”

“I see. Well, if Naveen is happy, then I am satisfied.”

“Oh, I am happy. Sure, we have to build the prototypes and test them, but this looks promising. What is the crew complement?”

“Seven. Two pilots, one of them the commander, two gunners, a sensor tech, an EW tech, and a flight engineer. There is room for two additional people for mission-specific tasks like additional gunners for the AS or the SEAD modules.”

“Well, I am happy with it. Thank you. I will start the production of the prototypes immediately…”

“Wait… don’t you want to know the best part?”

“The… best part?”

“Well, the last module. It is a bit special. For when you definitely want your displeasure known, you know?”

“The ground-attack module does not show our ‘displeasure’ sufficiently enough?”

“It is a good start, I give you that, but we can do something better I think. I read that some transport aircraft have been converted into a gunship role in the past. I have no clue why they stopped doing that… but I thought it was a good idea.”

“A gunship?”

“Yes. Look at that.”

The last module materialized, and the skin became half transparent.

Michael, looking at it, gasped again.

“Is that… that can’t be.”

“It is. I managed to shrink a fusactor down enough to squeeze it into an, admittedly oversized, skimmer. This thing produced 53GW. Enough to power the four full-powered particle beams and the two point defense grav guns on each side, as well as the disruptor in the retractable ventral turret.

Additionally, the PACs can be configured for longer pulses. The absolute maximum is 500 microseconds though, and even that is burning them out fast. They lack the heat dissipation of the full-sized particle beams. We should institute a non-emergency maximum of 250 microseconds.

And I think it doesn’t need to be said, that this variant has the absolute longest flight time. It is also the only variant of the skimmer that has a place to fight against warships. Small ones only though.”

For a long moment, neither man said anything before Naveen finally uttered:

“Well, fuck me sideways, that is a surprise. And yeah, this thing will make our displeasure known. Quite thoroughly I would say.”

I had to smile before I continued:

“As far as I can tell, it is traditional to name those gunships after some kind of dragon, so, I thought we should call this module ‘Fafnir’.”