Daedalus 21 M1 - Term: 1, Round: 1

House Thoth, Squad Zero

M1 Rank: ?/1275, Tier 3 M-Rank: Null

Term: 1, Round: 1

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Daedo looked frustrated.

"This launch tube is not working properly," he stated simply after another test where the grenades got caught in the flex either getting stuck entirely or slowing down their launch velocity.

Mace looked concerned also. She had nothing to add to solve the issue everything she had suggested last time just made things worse.

"Let's talk to Father, see if he has any suggestions," Daedo said.

Myrmidon: I can fluctuate the compressed air flow and with more flexible entry system create an air tube within the tube.

Daedo: yes, but how does that help everyone else? Mace does not have you to a.s.sist.

Myrmidon: she must improve her AI companion until then she cannot use the arm-mounted launcher. She could use a regular handheld launcher with munitions fed from the same design.

Daedo: that is a solution. Thank you, Myrmidon. Let's see if we can solve the issue first and use that as a fallback plan.

Ikaros examined the design and the prototype which Daedo had machined that day. He turned it over humming and harring as Daedo explained the test issues, showed the data and a vid.

"The munition is colliding with the outer wall. Why don't you compress the tube so it cannot move within it?" Ikaros asked.

"We want to be able to use a variety of munitions, smoke, frag, mimic and when we nail the designs a lasertrip and rootkit deployable canisters," Daedo said.

"What about a grapple?" Ikaros asked.

"That is next, I was imagining that when we improved the suit further adding two grapples, one to each arm. It will need its own mechanism, and it will weigh a tonne," Daedo said.

"Frag and smoke canisters are the same sizes," Ikaros stated, "reduce the tube to their diameter and restrict them to one arm."

"We could hand lay the rootkit and lasertrip," Mace said. "What if we put a grapple on one arm, smoke and frag on the other with a few rootkits and lasertrips stored on our upper legs.

Daedo pondered, "let's test the smoke and frag arm launcher first, ensure that is working, we just have to modify this one down six point three two mils in diameter,' he said.

"Let me do that, you start on the arm grappler. It would be great to get a week of testing and practice on it before next weekend," Mace said.

It was getting late on Sat.u.r.day the first new exo was in the weave, it would be finished by 0400 on Sunday.

Daedo nodded. A grappler had incredible potential. It had a variety of functions from mobility enhancement to enemy manipulation. He sat in the workshop, editing his early designs to adapt to the changes in the suit. He put his work up on the wall so his father, Mace and anyone else who was interested could see.

Key among the elements of the grappler was the winder or winch. The launcher could use the same hydraulic system the entire suit supported. By utilising changes in the size of the tubes and the chamber which switched from liquid to pneumatic which gained power from multiple inject points from three arteries the launcher was quite powerful. He also pondered adding a magnetic accelerator to the chamber.

Daedo loved the synergy the mesh armour had with the hydraulic exchanges. Normally the tubing was a weak point, but the tubing in this design had a dual purpose. It was both armour and a fluid vessel. All he had to do now was to research a liquid which would enhance the hydraulic and armour effectiveness of the design. Off the shelf synthetic hydraulic fluid would have to suffice for now. At least it was widely used in mechs and heavy vehicles.

The reactor which powered the hydraulics was ripped straight from the Academies' standard light exos. It was woefully inadequate. Daedo pondered sending Cisse a message and realised he had never done so before.

This project was so important to Daedo that his proclivity to be a loner was easily overcome. He found a message she had sent him on the day he entered the Academy, wishing him well and all that gushy stuff, and replied to it.

Daedo: Dear Cisse. Hmm. Cisse, we would like your help with our first Academy project. We are building our own exo for intrAcademy compet.i.tions, and its power supply is poor. Father and I are busy with mechanical and structural elements. Your expertise would really help us. I have attached the location of our workshop in Nanterre. We are here every weekend.

After mere moments pa.s.sed.

Cisse: I will be right there.

Daedo: ah…Thanks!

Daedo could smell something nice and realised he was hungry.

Vannier: do you want to come up for food? Or should we bring it down?

Daedo: down please and could you bring Axelzero I want to talk to her.

Daedo went back to the grappler design. Due to time limitations, he just ordered three winders which would be delivered via drone and probably arrive within hours. The workshop was a bitcred sink, he would need to do something to start bringing in creds, although his s.p.a.cebuild shop was still operating, however, he no longer earned any creds from CyberMech which was ninety percent of his income.

"You called master," Axelzero said sarcastically while holding a bowl full of noodles and bowing.

"Don't spill it!" Daedo exclaimed he was starving.

She handed over the noodles, and he began to scoff them down. "You did ask me down for a reason. I am sorry we haven't been more help, but I feel useless compared to you, your Father and Mace."

"Huh?" he said clueless. And then when he thought about it, it dawned on him. "Oh, this is my fault. And you guys have been doing all the c.r.a.p work, cleaning and organising this place. It should be me apologizing," he said.

She shook her head smiling, "it's the least we can do, I thought I should research something specific so I can be more help."

"There is something you can do, and there is something I want you to consider,' he responded.

Axelzero leaned close, and her eyes lit up, "yes?"

Daedo instinctively turned to keep his bowl between them, he had made ma.s.sive improvements in a short amount of time in the way he interacted with his squadmates, but closeness like this still made him uncomfortable.

"I want you to use the launchers with your pistols, it will give you much more variety and make you much more of a threat with more tactics at your disposal," has said. "And I want you to look into the design of the winch for the grappler. It needs to use less power, be able to pull more weight at a higher speed. It also needs to be able to handle variable torques and be extremely reliable."

Axelzero's face went from uncertainty to confusion, to interest and finally, she beamed. "I can do that, although, I do not think I can design a winch as well as you could."

"That's the thing," he said, "I can't do everything, and if I focus on the most important priority the exos. It's mobility, strength and durability. It will improve faster than if I am looking at a hundred different pieces of equipment and technology. Plus, we are House Thoth and you are graded on a tech project. You need something useful you can put all your efforts into, something meaningful. Ideally something you will be using yourself. You would be at close to short range with your pistols if you were working closely with me and Mace that would be ideal. And using a grappler is part of the close range team tactics."

"Do you want me to switch to a vibroblade or lance?" She asked.

"No, no. That would be bad, we need a variety of weapons and ranges. The pistols give you fantastic dps at short range and with mobility you can stay out of melee or close range. You can stay out of range of a flamethrower or a minigun's high damage zone. Just imagine a grappler pulling you up and away as you fire with one of your pistols. Or a smoke grenade covering you as you close on a rifle. You could launch a frag grenade into a window and as they exited take them out with your pistols at the perfect range. The best way to defeat an enemy is to force or trick them to move where you want them."

Axelzero nodded through his entire speech. "I see, I see, I had never considered a launcher because you either can't use both or you need to keep switching which takes too long. But your design where the launcher is attached to your arm is genius."

"Not really," he said, "many mechs have this feature. Multiple weapon types on each arm."

"Yeah, but no one at the Academy has launchers attached to their armour," she said.

"There was an M3 team with a shoulder mounted launcher a couple of years ago, but that was on heavies," he informed her.

"How do you get time to research all this? I am barely keeping up with my tutes," Axelzero asked.

Daedo shrugged, it was Myrmidon who watched all the vids of M3 squad zeros going back half a dozen years. "All I can say is you need to train your AI, it can increase your efficiency tenfold."

She looked at him scrupulously for a short while, and after coming to a decision she did not share, she shook her head and smiled. "Ok, ok, I will."

Axelzero stood back up and walked away a couple of steps, "I will get cracking on the winder or winch, whatever it is called in this circ.u.mstance."

"I ordered a few electromagnetic direct drive winches to use for now," Daedo said, "they will be here shortly."

"Oh great, can I pull one apart and check the design?" Axelzero asked.

"Sure, it is now your project. The only hard and fast rule is we need them for next Monday nights match versus Horus. Other than that testing and drilling is needed," he responded.

"Are you going to a.s.sign projects to Vannier, Picard and Barran?" Axelzero asked.

"Everyone needs to do a project for Tech Studies," he answered, "do you think I should ask Vannier and Picard to do specific projects?"

"Of course," Vannier said as she walked in on their conversation. She had Barran and Picard following behind. Barran had been gone most of the day, saying he was shopping for improvements to the workshop. Which was dubious, it could all be done through the net, he most likely was dodging all the cleaning duties and arriving just in time as they finished.

Daedo looked at Vannier, she was ranked number two and the natural leader of the squad. She did not show technical prowess, but if she was ranked above Mace, she must be competent. She just hid it. Preferring to let others take the limelight and just asking questions where needed.

"The obvious choice is a railgun improvement project," he said, "the current gun is standard issue. I know CyberMech is not real, but just by using max velocity setting it decreased the accuracy and increased damage. I compensated by using algorithms to calculate trajectory, and I did not use the games' inbuilt target a.s.sist."

"This is true," Picard said, "the issued Railgun is nowhere near current Military standard. I thought that was just to do with cost, and that they did not want to upgrade them every year. But now that you pointed out they want us to improve the exos and equipment it makes sense."

"There are many facets you can work on, enough for both of you," Daedo said, "efficiency of the rail mechanism itself would be the biggest. You've also got targetting and munitions. You could redesign the whole rifle, longer barrel, larger or smaller ammunition, ammunition shape and composition, loading mechanism and even bullet velocity."

"Once you go past Mach one it makes an awful loud sound," Picard said.

"Exactly, you want to be able to change the distance this occurs from the barrel. This will fool the enemy.

Vannier beamed, "I was listening to a very smart cadet this week who quoted Sun Tzu, all warfare is based on deception. Hence, when we are able to attack, we must seem unable; when using our forces, we must appear inactive; when we are near, we must make the enemy believe we are far away; when far away, we must make him believe we are near." She walked over and rustled his hair affectionately.

"Glad to see you memorised the entire pa.s.sage," he said ducking his head away.

"I memorised the whole treatise," she said smiling at his ducking head.

"I see," Picard interjected excitedly, "it is not a matter of trying to hide your position, it is using this weakness to deceive the enemy. But how would you change the bullet velocity to such a degree."

"If it were me I would design the railgun to be capable of variable bullet speeds and acceleration and train my AI to calculate and manage the settings to alter the outcome," Daedo answered.

"We have a long way to go," Vannier said, "should we work on this together?" she asked both Picard and Daedo.

He nodded, "this is the key weapon of the squad, and its design is covered by multiple engineering disciplines. The electromagnetic switching is electronic, parts of the design are physics, it has metallurgical components, and the targeting is mathematics, coding, mechanics and behaviour prediction a.n.a.lysis. The heat generated by the rails is thermal dynamics with metallurgical components, this is its primary limiting factor to the rate of fire."

"Ok," Vannier agreed, "will you check our work and give us pointers. I think even thirty minutes of your time each week will result in a much better outcome."

Daedo nodded, "it is the key weapon."

Picard beamed, she liked the idea of the Railgun being the key weapon of the squad. "It is a billion times better than cleaning and cooking, I'll get started on the research immediate. What about Barran and Gaumont?" She asked belatedly.

"Yeah what about me!?" Barran asked excitedly, he had been watching and listening like a stunned mullet.

"Barran, you can work with my Father in incorporating the advancements we make with the light exo into your heavy. It will probably take five days just to generate the ma.s.s of fibre and the weave. Hopefully, Father can watch the machines while we are at the Academy, in between his shifts, or knowing him he will program one of his robots to do the task," Daedo said.

"I haven't met your Father," Barran informed them.

"He is in the next room," Vannier suggested by pointing, and Barran followed her finger to go and introduce himself.

"And I have no idea what to do with Gaumont, even if I were to suggest something, what would his response be? He isn't even here to ask," Daedo complained about Gaumont's lack of teamwork.

"I will handle Gaumont," Vannier responded, "that can be my secondary project."

"Do you think Master Nader will make you squad leader?" Picard blurted, prompted by the talk about the Gaumont issue.

Vannier laughed, and Picard nodded, misunderstanding the meaning of the laughter. "No, I will not be squad leader, Master Nader told me yesterday."

"What?" Axelzero and Picard said simultaneously.

Barran arrived back suddenly, hearing the commotion, "what? What did I miss?"

"Nader told Vannier she would not be squad leader yesterday," Picard said.

"That leaves two people then," Barran speculated, "me and Daedo." He looked meaningfully and Daedo and gave him his very best, may the best man win smile and nod.

Vannier laughed again slapping her thigh this time and pushing Barran.

"You idiot. But you are half right," she said demurely. She looked around at the cadets, looked at each one in the eye. "Isn't it obvious?"

Axelzero nodded, "It is Daedo," she supplied, smiling at him.

"Hang on," he interjected, "don't I get a say in this?"

"No," Vannier said sternly, "it is decided you will be the squad leader, but do not worry Master Nader has already tasked me to handle all the diplomacy and people management for you."

"Doesn't he get to decide that if he is squad leader?" Axelzero asked.

"Um..sure," Daedo said, thinking about it seriously for the first time. It really wouldn't make much difference, and it would give him control over tactics and drills in the arena. If Vannier handled all the c.r.a.p stuff, like talking to strangers, he was good with that.

He looked around at his squad members who were all beaming at him in his distressed state.

"What are you looking at?" He asked, "you all have work to do."

Daedo went back to looking at the design of the launch chamber for the grappler. It would need to run from the elbow to past the hand. The hand could then grip on the tube to provide stability when propelling forward or pulling an object back. However, it needed to be offset from the land to allow a smooth flight path and leave enough room for gripping other objects, like a vibrosword, lance or pistol.

The chamber for the launcher itself could be a mix of conductive materials and pneumatic injection. The short spear like head could be propelled by both air and electromagnetic pulse giving it as much force as possible before leaving the short chamber.

The prototype design was ready, he sent the electronic model to the machining room and made his way to the foundry. He would need to forge rings of silver perovskite nanowire for the electromagnetic accelerator embedded into the ceramic-polymer to form the chamber. Daedo was looking forward to how powerful the hybrid accelerator was going to be.