Blue Star Enterprises

Alexander gestured to the fire button. "I'll let you do the honors."

Lucas didn't hesitate to press the button on the screen. There was a bang, but nothing came out of the barrel.

Alexander frowned. "That's less than ideal."

They powered down the weapon and headed back outside to investigate what went wrong. It didn't take long to realize that the gun had failed catastrophically. The breach had been blown clear off the back of the weapon, and the barrel, despite being made from hardened ceramic, had shattered.

"What do you suppose happened?" Lucas asked as he bent over and picked up the mangled remains of the penetrator, a few feet from where the weapon was lying.

The man handed it to Alexander, and he turned it around to look at the mushroomed backside.

"I think I need to adjust the timing of the fields slightly, it looks like they launched the round backward instead of forward. Shaping the field so it angles forward should prevent a scenario like that from happening again."

With something as experimental as the FE cannon, there were bound to be issues that cropped up.

"I'll start packing up," Lucas said with a sigh.

"That won't be necessary," Alexander said. "I brought three prototypes with us in case this happened."

He went into the shuttle and pulled out another crate, then began the lengthy process of mounting the new weapon to the feeding mechanism, which hadn't been damaged despite the explosive deconstruction of the FE cannon.

Once that was complete, he modified the static field generators so that the field was now shaped a bit like a Mach cone. The change did necessitate disabling the last field, which projected beyond the barrel length. It would probably be fine, but he wanted to ensure that any acceleration took place within the barrel. If everything checked out there, he would turn that final emitter back on before they completed their testing.

After changing the field orientation, Alexander double-checked the timing for the emitters, but they looked fine. That meant the velocity of the projectile was underperforming based on his projected math. To verify that, without going through a second weapon, he switched all but the first three field generators off. It would mean incremental testing until they got to the end, but that was better than running out of prototypes and having to print more, which would have to be done back in his workshop since the barrel had to go through a hardening process after printing.

The pair went back into the test chamber, and Lucas once again pressed the firing icon on the tablet screen.

The projectile tore through the thin foil membrane that ensured a vacuum as it flew down range.

The camera facing the targets picked up the impact as the heavy projectile smashed into one of the targets.

The velocity it was carrying wasn't enough to penetrate the armor, but there was a whole lot of momentum, which caused the target to flip end over end in the dirt before coming to a stop.

"Eight hundred feet per second," Lucas noted. "Not exactly awe-inspiring, but that was only with three fields active. Didn't you say your test with two was only strong enough to burst a plastic ball?"

"Yeah," Alexander replied absently as he looked over the numbers.

His estimates had indeed been off. The projectile was moving at least fifteen percent slower than he had accounted for. It wouldn't have been an issue with only five fields, but the moment the sixth field turned on, it would have blunted the projectile's velocity even more, then the other fields would have kicked in and eventually the forward momentum would have been reversed, which is what led to the dart slamming into the breach hard enough to rip it off the gun.

Alexander quickly adjusted the programmed timing from his tablet and loaded the next round. Then he turned on the fourth field emitter.

Once again, he handed the tablet to Lucas, who gladly pushed the button.

Nothing happened.

Alexander mentally slapped himself. He forgot to replace the foil cover so the vacuum could be produced.

He did an emergency ejection of the round and ensured the weapon was safe before hurrying outside and slapping on the foil cover.

The round was loaded again, and the button was pressed; this time, there was an audible crack as the round broke the sound barrier.

The result on the second target was about the same, sending it tumbling through the dirt.

Futuristic armor was some tough stuff, even the outdated materials.

The fifth, sixth, and seventh field tests went off without a hitch, but Alexander was noticing another new pattern. The speed at which the projectile's velocity was increasing wasn't linear, it was ramping up. It wouldn't cause the same issue as the first test, but he would lose any sort of field-assisted acceleration by field ten if it kept increasing.

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He decided to test that theory and activated the eighth, ninth, and tenth emitters for the next test. The projectile was now nearing hypersonic speeds as it left the barrel and had no issue punching through regular body armor and even the frigate plating.

He could end the tests there and consider the weapon a success, but he still had ten more emitters to go; might as well find out how fast the FE cannon could push the rounds.

The eleventh test was the same as the tenth. There was only a deviation of five feet per second, which was within the margin of error for most weapons.

"What happened?" Lucas asked. The man could see the same reading as Alexander.

"The projectile is outpacing the field initialization. I need to adjust them slightly." It didn't take Alexander long to make the change, but he was probably going to run into the issue again before the testing was over.

The incremental velocity increases weren't on an exponential growth curve, but it was a curve. Alexander simply didn't have enough data points to track the future growth, it would have to be adjusted one at a time until he had the whole picture.

With the next test using the first eleven fields and his adjusted program, the projectile finally passed Mach five, putting it at the same velocity as early Gauss cannons and railguns.

By the fifteenth emitter, the FE cannon was hitting the same velocities as his ground-based anti-orbital railgun and was nearly twice as powerful as the smaller ground-based defensive railgun that it was modeled after. The field timing wasn't even optimized yet, it was just good enough to work.

Alexander was almost ready to call it there and spend the time optimizing the timing, but he wanted to see what the gun was truly capable of, even without those tweaks. He was pretty sure Lucas was too. The man was practically salivating to see what the gun could do against the thick plate of destroyer armor and the double layer of corporate armor that was still waiting to be shot at.

He made his final adjustment just to ensure the last four fields could impart some momentum, and then he pressed the button, earning a sour look from Lucas.

The hypersonic crack rattled the canyon walls and sent dust and rocks tumbling down. The camera didn't catch the impact on the destroyer armor, but it could see the molten hole left behind.

Playback of the video in slow motion showed the projectile had been turned white hot by its passage through the thin atmosphere. That didn't stop it from passing through the armor plate without issue, but it acted more like a shaped charge than a tungsten penetrator at that point.

The instrumentation had failed due to the Mach cone, but Alexander knew the FE cannon's projectile was far faster than any railgun he had ever designed simply from how hot the round had gotten in such a short distance.

"I should have brought ear protection!" Lucas yelled as he wiggled his finger in his ear and shook his head.

The bunker was underground and sealed, which negated a lot of the noise, but firing off the weapon in the valley had caused the sound to reverberate and pass through the thin layer of dirt that covered the bunker.

Alexander paused any further testing to print Lucas some ear protection and earplugs. He was pretty sure the next two tests were going to require both.

Safely back in the bunker, Alexander gave Lucas the thumbs up to test the twentieth and final field. The man didn't hesitate to press the firing button.

He watched as the end of the barrel exploded and the tungsten penetrator was sent skyward with more than enough velocity to reach orbit.

Alexander snatched the tablet from Lucas and quickly pulled up his orbital map to see if anything might be in the path of the errant projectile.

It was just his rotten luck that the storage facility with the alien ship was in the estimated path.

His first instinct was to use his defensive satellites to intercept the projectile with their static fields, but he quickly realized the issue with that approach and stopped himself. With him swapping the polarity of the field on his FE cannon, they would just impart more force to the object.

Alexander warned fleet assets of the rogue projectile and its path. Then the pair of them watched a satellite feed as a small glowing object left the atmosphere. The now tear-drop-shaped projectile punched through his fake storage facility and out the other side as a spray of metal.

Alexander sighed internally. It seemed that the projectile had missed the ship hidden within; if it hadn't, it would never have made it out the far side. He doubted even the FE cannon had enough power to punch through the alien armor without breaking apart and losing most of its mass and momentum.

"Shit," Lucas breathed. "I did not expect that to happen with the field extended beyond the barrel."

Alexander nodded his avatar in agreement. They had gotten really unlucky with the angle that the field threw the projectile, it could just as easily have been sent downward. He replaced the broken weapon with the last remaining prototype. Once it was in place, he disabled the twentieth field emitter once more and optimized the timing of the other nineteen based on the chart curve. It might need another optimization if the next test showed different results, but he would adjust as needed.

"You wanna do the honors again?" he asked.

Lucas shook his head. "I'm pretty sure the Admiral isn't going to be too happy when he learns of this incident. While he can't really be mad at you if it happens twice, he can be with me."

Alexander chuckled at that. "I wouldn't worry about Krieger too much, but if that's how you feel, I'll do the final tests so he only has me to yell at."

"I appreciate it," Lucas stated.

The first optimization test was eye-opening. Not only was the projectile faster, it was nearly twice as fast, making it nearly four times faster than one of his railgun rounds.

They were less effective at that velocity, but that was due to atmospheric heating causing the rounds to partially liquefy before they reached their target. Since the weapon wasn't designed to be used in the atmosphere, the excess speed wasn't really an issue.

The final round of timing optimization brought about only a five percent increase in velocity over the previous test.

It was safe to say the FE cannon would be an ideal replacement for any space-based artillery system. Now Alexander had a decision to make. He could stick with the same-sized penetrators, but that was complete overkill with the added velocity. Then again, he did like overkill.

It was something to think about and discuss with Krieger once he brought the weapon system to him. Alexander would also be creating a swappable module for the Shark prototype to test out the new weapon system. The whole swappable premise hadn't really panned out for his automated fleet, but it did make a good test bench for new ideas.

The pair finished packing up just as Alexander's tablet buzzed with a call from Krieger.

"Ohh, busted!" Lucas said with a laugh.

Alexander just rolled his avatar's eyes at Lucas' comment and prepared for the tongue-lashing Krieger was about to give him.