Gates of War - Chapter 9 (Commander SI - Multiverse)

CID: Day 102

I watched my new Commander Modification Platform as a dozen fabrication arms slowly completed the preliminary work for a new prototype Commander Chassis. Two days after I had acquired the TFDF ships, I had finally gotten around to reading that third Datacore and took a long read into the complete military database it possessed, and every single thing the 25th century had to offer, along with every recorded experimental project the military had ever devised.

Most of it had wowed me completely when the implications of some applications came to light. While I personally doubt I will ever use information on running an interstellar economy, it illuminated the ways in which an interstellar nation had been run. My favorite part was everything regarding Terraforming worlds. Most of it required a suitable world already capable of sustaining human life, but it was still a fascinating read, and will be helpful when I reclaimed Earth.

In the end however, I saw most of what the Cores gave as similar to a Warhammer STC, in that it possessed the sum knowledge of humanity in this universe. I could reproduce every single vehicle, power system, mode of locomotion, weapon, tool, industry, manufacturing process, clothing, toys, video games, songs, work of art, clone of animal, plant, and so on ever recorded by mankind.

I could now understand why, having read the totality of the cores, why the mechanicus treats them as reverently as they do. One does not understand how much knowledge there is, how much was lost, until they had seen it. Read it. Understood it.

Two months had passed since that week of reading, and I had made the decision to finally make the changes to my chassis I had been seeking to do since my days on Pillar. While I couldn’t speed up my build time normally, it occurred to me that I could actually do so, but in a different manner than I desired. Plus, I needed to make my Gundam-Wannabe into an actual Gundam.

However, before I even attempt to change my current form, I needed to test out some ideas. I needed to see if they were as effective as I think they are, or if it’s just me in a bit of whimsy. So, I decided to actually make a test bed for all the modifications I had in mind.

The Tykus model of Commander had already looked enough like a Gundam that it needed little modification to look more like one. So, I used the platform to create a new version of the Tykus with all the changes in mind.

The head, torso and shoulders retained 90% of the shape, mass and hardware it originally possessed. The changes were the addition of gravitic emitters underneath conductive armor plates that, when energized, produced anti-gravitational force. These points were all over the body of my unit, allowing for 360° movement across all vectors. The mathematics required to make this from of movement possible was enormous to begin with, as was the power requirements, hence the lack of such vehicles that use this tech aside from the Hover Tank, Icarus, and the Kaiju.

The thrust produced by these plates was adjustable in order to allow my Chassis to accelerate to nearly any speed I require. The level the emitters project gravitational force can even rise to the point where they could actually thrust themselves through my own chassis if they had enough power shoved into them.

That would make for an interesting makeshift projectile weapon, but I prefer not to break myself in the process.

Speaking of breaking. The emitters also have a secondary function of canceling out gravitational forces under the plates, and in turn my entire body, so as to not crush my innards like a tin can when I go from zero to ludicrous speed in a short time. That’s pretty important for my final test after the modifications are finished. The third function of the emitters was to produce a Gravity field around my body, which was aided by the production of an electromagnetic field to act as a personal gravitic-shield.

This would protect me not only from bullets, lasers, particle weapons, and plasma-based weapons, but also act as a means of deflecting radiation and various matter in space as I travelled at high speeds. I admit using it as a form of “force field” in battle was actually an afterthought, as protecting myself from exotic space matter was more important for my upcoming test. It’s cool that the effect of oversaturating the field makes it appear like a GN-Field.

From the back of my torso where the large exhaust like ports were, came a pair of new robotic limbs that slowly extended twenty-five feet before ending with a trapezoid shaped object. Each arm possessed four segments, each connected by a ball joint, allowing for a full range of motion to allow what I had in mind to be a reality.

The final change to my torso was to make it a bit taller for the new miniature hyperdrive I was adding into the lower torso near my waist. It didn’t have a great range. In fact, it was meant to be used primarily within a solar system, as it was a tactical drive. The addition of a hyperdrive was one of the first things I had in mind when I first started the redesign of my chassis, and found that this was all I could handle without making a whole new chassis, which would take months to actually fabricate.

If I was going to make a new body for myself, I was going to do it from the ground up and make it look either completely different from my original or make it into a proper goddamned Gundam. I would make a new Chassis, but I didn’t want to be out of commission just yet as that would require my full attention.

The next thing I did was to change my freakin arms into normalish ones. One’s with hands!...okay not so normal. The standard commander forearm was a square thing that was often three to four times the length of the arm. Each of these contained the fabricator nanolathe and the plasma cannon. My arms were now proportioned in the same way as a human arm would be, each ending with a hand. However, I wanted to keep the Nanolathe and Plasma cannon without compromising their location.

My simple solution to keeping the plasma cannon and nanolathe in the arms laid in simply repositioning them. Instead of taking up the entirety of the forearm as they normally did, they instead were moved to the back of the forearm, and extended backwards past the elbow. Then I applied the emitters I had designed thanks to the Terran Tractor Beam technology and the improved miniaturization from various designs I now had from every fabricator design the federation ever made, to make my new arms.

I will outright admit, I ripped off Dix-Neuf from Gunbuster in the design of these forearms. Both of them looked similar to the left arm of that machine, because I loved the bruiser look of em. I will also outright admit that I got the idea of the emitters for my Avatar, the hands and fingers, from No. 19 as well.

I wished I could place a plasma cannon and commander grade nanolathe in each arm, but that wasn’t possible without compromising my desire. In the future I will make a new form to allow for better capabilities in light of what I now possessed, but for now this is satisfactory. Each hand possessed the means to fulfill their function. The right arm was able to fire the plasma cannon, and the left could spray the nanites.

Also, as I said, I based the arms off of Dix-Neuf, which means the fingers were useful too. Each finger possessed an emitter for a tractor beam, but also my F.L.V.L. weapon system. So, I had more gun than just my plasma cannon or standard laser cannon. With five such laser weapons in each of my hands, I was more or less able to take on all forms of enemy targets. Destroying them is another matter, but then they shouldn’t have gotten near me to begin with if I Command properly.

I then changed the legs. Don’t get me wrong, I like the 80s era machines, but the legs were just...disproportionate really. Large torso, short legs. I had to change the size, and I decided to make them look different while I was at it. After some thought, I made them appear similar to “Gurren Lagann’s Master Grade” legs because they just looked really good.

I think it works well with the arms, giving it that bruiser look. I had made some changes to the legs due to their, frankly, larger length and diameter compared to my old legs, and added Solid Power Cell units as backup power systems in case I was ever out of contact with my resource and power network ever again. They were also for two other purposes.

The Power Cells themselves were interesting in and of themselves. I had thought about it ever since I had gained the knowledge on Pillar, but never really got around to it until I came to Dustball. With the need for a source of energy in case my own system wasn’t enough for this test, it became necessary to create an energy containment unit that can store high yield energy levels. Thanks to the free abuse of graviton manipulation, I was able to achieve this, and create a power cell that was able to store as much energy as a standard energy storage structure on its own. Being connected to the network filled these cells quickly, thus not requiring the slow crawl of my own generator.

In the end the changes added height to my form, increasing it to 20 meters, or 65.6 feet overall from the 48 feet I was originally. The legs and arms were also shaped and colored to match the aesthetic my chassis possessed so as to not look too kitbashed.

Lastly, my shoulders were changed, not in appearance, but in function. Before they were just stylized armor plating. Now they were stylized armor plating that could open up slightly. Within the opening of each shoulder were three internal slots, each holding a Stinger without the bells and whistles of the other Stingers. These particular Stingers replaced the sensors and small weapons that allowed them to work beyond my control, and possessed a laser cannon that made up a third of the unit. With them, I had my own personal funnels, as any decent Gundam would.

The process took four hours, but when it was finished, I took personal control.

I looked down at my hand, and mentally grinned as I flexed and clenched it, feeling the servos strain from the force. I stepped off the modification platform and onto the open ground, loosening up the new parts and going through all the last-minute testing and number crunching before stopping. I spread my legs apart, bent my arms to my side, and allowed my back arms to flex before activating the emitters on the ends of them. A blue light erupted outwards, like flames spraying into the air before stopping and taking shape.

The wings that formed at my back are a staple for high end Gundams. Destiny, Victory, Wing Zero, Gundam-O. The list goes on. But in this case...I copied from the only Gundam that I felt needed to be copied given my capabilities. The Stargazer Gundam. While I found it ironic, I was emulating my least favorite Gundam Universe, it was the best design to base off of for what I had in mind. My wings slowly solidify as the tractor beam emitters shape the nanites within to form the ring that characterized the Stargazer and begin to channel gravitic force from the emitters, using energy from the leg Power Cells for that purpose, along with two others.

When I began to study into the anti-gravity technology of the Progenitors, I quickly realized that for all the bullshit they were, even the Progenitors had to follow some physical laws of reality. One of those laws were the set of laws by Newton, regarding the fact that reactionless drives were mostly impossible bullshit unless you broke the rules in some way that steps outside of reality or changes how it worked. Hyperspace being one of the ways the Progenitors did just that. It also answered a few questions regarding the Omega, and why it actually possessed a Reaction Drive instead of some super science space drive.

Firstly, with all the energy one wanted, and the metal extractors providing matter that could be put together by nanomachines into whatever exotic fuel you needed, why bother being more complicated than needed?

The other, because Newton is an asshole, and so is Einstein. Reaction equal to opposite reaction, plus conservation of energy, plus blah blah blah. I hate thinking about it all, again, even though I could do it in a moment.

Basically...it’s really, really hard to do when you aren’t breaking the rules. While the Progenitors did that often, they didn’t break all the rules. Gravity, surprisingly, was one of them. The way their anti-gravity worked, essentially, was that the tanks, and the Kaiju, utilized a Gravity Repulsor. A device that took Gravitons, energized them, and then used the gravitational force to push off the ground. However, this doesn’t mean that they were cancelling gravity out.

Nope.

They were in fact producing enough “thrust” to equal a planet's own gravitational field, creating the illusion of it defying gravity. The machines produce a short burst of gravity equal to twice the world's own force to lift off the ground, and then maintained a force equal to keep itself from flying off or from settling to the ground. Then it lowered or raised said force in order to rise or fall in elevation depending on terrain.

Is it needlessly complicated? Abso-fucking-lutely. Did this turn said units into energy hogs, thus making hover units rare compared to legged, wheeled, tracked, rocket and jet powered, and screw driven units in my arsenal? Yes indeedy. Did it, however, give me a few units that can go anywhere, and attack anything short of orbital and underwater? Yup. Hence the other reason there were only two, that weren’t orbital based.

Speaking of Orbital Units. They used these devices as well, but they used them primarily to either keep themselves tethered to a planet, to lift off the face of a planet, or to travel from one celestial body to another. Orbital mechanics simply made the job easier and less energy consuming. However, this is where the limitations came to play. The repulsors only worked when there was something around to push back against.

Just like with the tractor beams, they needed something of greater mass to push off of. They couldn’t push against nothing. Not even background radiation and free flying particles, spacedust, or space gases. Hence why Gravitonic Drive wasn’t a thing for the Progenitors, and why their only battleship used a standard Reaction Drive in the form of a fusion torch.

I was aiming to create a gravity-based drive system until I learned all of this. I was a bit miffed. So... I had to improvise, and use my progenitor-based technology to create the most bullshit thing I have done to date. The reason I would have to outright create a whole new Commander unit instead of merely upgrading it, in order to take full advantage of what I had done.

That is, if it worked as intended...

The ring separated into two halves, and re-orienting themselves to form a pair of “wings”. The outer lining of the rings shined a bright blue as the inner mechanisms began to commence with charging the gravitons. My body slowly lifted off the ground, and as soon as I was a sufficient height, I took off like a bullet into the air. Despite the thin atmosphere, I cracked the sound barrier within three seconds, going from zero to mach one in that span of time, and cracked it again two seconds after, and then again, and again, until I left the atmosphere entirely and into the vacuum of space.

Soon enough the repulsors had nothing to push against without more energy to continually intensify the gravitons. I cut the energy off and allowed the gravity generating particles to lose their charge before I made the “wings” orientate and become the ring once more. I had been travelling away from the planet at approximately 15 km/s, and began slowing down as gravitational forces tried to exert their control over my mass.

Not for much longer.

One of the most interesting things about my stabilization ring, aside that it allowed me to travel in hyperspace easily, and acted as a means of propulsion in the right environment, was that the innermost portion of the ring possessed an advanced metal storage unit. It allowed me to store three times the metal that a standard unit could store.

Why? For the bullshit.

It took me weeksof through, deep searching and reading to find something that would allow me to operate independent of the network, and to change the way my units could operate against the Gbaba, and anything in the future. I had found it...and while it was nearly impossible for the Terran Federation to do, it was simple for me, once I learned how it was done and mix and matched my technologies in a way even the Progenitors hadn’t done. Mostly because they hadn’t bothered, they had interstellar travel and everything else, plus better stuff already.

I couldn’t be so picky.

With a thought, nanomachines began to take metal from the network, and with a few changes and alterations to the structure, the particles changed from positive matter, to negative matter.

Powerful electromagnetic fields began to surround the negative matter as it continued to fill the ring, and for every second increased in its negative density. It went from one negative ton, to a negative five, then negative one hundred, and so on, until it the storage space could no longer accommodate the volume of negative matter. The EM fields projecting, and canceling out the force of the NM were immense. The Power Cells strained to keep up with the demand. I knew it would not matter soon however.

The ring now possessed a volume of negative matter equal to my own mass, thus completing the assembly of my Negative Matter Propulsion System. As cool as it sounds, Negative Matter propulsion is a bit tricky to work with. It follows all of the laws of physics, and works exactly the same way as a standard drive system does in the requirements of energy, mass, time, and so on when travelling through space.

However, all the rules are inverted. For example, in order to move a ten ton object, you need the energy to move ten tons. With Negative Matter, you needed an object of equal positive mass to make it move towards you. Also, as an object accelerates in space, its mass increases, while negative matter’s mass decreases.

In order to accelerate an object, you needed the energy, and eventually you will no longer be able to keep up with the demand to increase velocity. With Negative Matter’s mass decreasing at the same rate as my own mass increases, the necessary energy to continuously accelerate is fucking ZERO. And it all worked within the laws of physics. SUCK IT NEWTON and EINSTEIN!

The only problem I could see with this however was the fact that when I need to stop, I need to reverse thrust for the same amount of time I required to reach that velocity in the first place. If I had access to my network or sufficient resources, I could produce reaction thrust to help slow it down even faster, but again, I needed the resources to do that.

Therefore, as awesome as the fact I could in fact reach near lightspeed was, it wouldn’t be something I would actually need to do unless I was STL-ing it towards another star system, or within a star system for some reason.

“Enough reminiscing. Time to get to work. First, standard thrusters, then my Hyperdrive. Then...the big one.”

With a thought, my thrusters roared to life, creating a white burst of light that would eventually be seen from Safehold in time, and accelerated forward. I quickly learned how high my rate of acceleration could go, before the energy required for greater levels began to increase to levels where it became pointless to continue. An incredible 495.695g.

I was incredibly happy my armor produced a Gravity/EM collision field that pushed things out of the way as I moved, and that it grew and shrunk in size and power depending on my velocity. Things would get very messy if I slammed chest first into a man-sized rock suddenly.

It took me two hours of flying in a straight line at maximum to reach what I considered the maximum velocity of 25,000 km/s, or 126,000,000 kph, or 0.08339102c. Once I reached that point, I couldn’t accelerate further without requiring more time, or putting in more energy than I currently was pumping out, since physics is a thing, and Einstein is an asshole. To reach 0.1c would take me a third of a standard Earth year. Nearly one million years to go to 0.15c

Still...not bad. At that rate of speed...I could cover Earth’s solar system from center to Pluto in about...46.87 hours. That speed will be important when it comes time to go into other systems.

I applied thrust to slow down, and my gravity plates preventing my insides from turning into sheet metal, stopping from 25,000 km/s to zero in approximately the same amount of time to take to reach it. I had stopped approximately 195,731,925.555 miles from Dustball in the middle of an empty void with nothing but cosmic dust, the occasional pebble, and a lot of free flying forms of radiation. I stopped thinking for a moment, and just look around me. I could see the stars so clearly. So many of them in every direction, and even distant nebula detectable only by my enhanced optical sensors. I sat there for about fourteen minutes, wondering which of them was home. I shook myself mentally, focusing back onto the task.

I turned towards Dustball and locked onto the area of space I wanted to go and spun my drive up. The tactical drive I had been designed in mind to use my wings as a stabilizer, just as the focus rings on TFDF ships were, and as a result I possessed the means to hyper myself anywhere in the solar system.

The limitations of the system were still the same, as I couldn’t jump into an area with gravitational forces. I can’t jump on a planet, or close to the sun. This limitation is also one of the reasons why I utilized sympathetic plating over my grav-emitters, to prevent that problem from my own emissions.

While the Tactical Drive was meant to work within a solar system, it was able to travel out of one as well. Unlike the ships I had found, as well as the ones I am currently designing, however, I couldn’t travel tens to hundreds of light years in distance...at least not in a short time. The maximum jump range for my drive was only a mere five light years, as that is all the energy this tactical unit is capable of handling at the moment.

Even with Progenitor materials and energy production, it could only hold so much energy before it simply broke and burned, or did something similar in description to the Warp from Warhammer. Still, a mere five light years is still a massive measure of distance no matter how one looks at it. Even the Terran Federation couldn’t make a tactical drive, and even if they could, it would be limited to a single star system, if only a small measure of distance within it. So, I say I have it pretty good.

The drive is spun up and the arms on my back spread out to my sides, and reshape themselves into a thick, shining blue ring that formed perfectly.

“Welp. Here we go.” I say to myself as I activated the jump sequence.

The Fusion generators in my legs shifted the majority of their power from the ring to the drive, fulfilling its second purpose. The ring began to shine brightly, becoming blinding in its intensity until I felt...everything...shift. I felt myself spread in every direction all at once, even though I didn’t feel any change. I felt myself trying to calculate the sensations and range of the of the spread before mashing the cut off, as that’s what dives Artificial Intelligence’s insane in most versions of Hyper Jumps. Then it came to an end. One moment I was looking at a small dot, not any different from the stars, and the next I was approximately ten thousand miles from Dustball.

“Hell yeah! Interstellar, Bitches!” I shout in triumph and proceed to dance in place like an idiot, finishing by doing the moonwalk while my wings flapped me backwards as gravity took hold and pulled me downwards.

“Alright...now for the main event.”

I turned away from the world and checked on the EM-Fields surrounding the Negative matter. They held strong, and with a final mental breath I released the field, allowing my positive mass to affect the negative mass. I felt my body push away from the substance, and felt my ring pull towards me at the same time. It was working!

…...and god this was slow. I just floated there, letting the object do it's business for the next fifteen minutes. I did work on the ground as I let the ring do its work so I wouldn’t get bored, but by fifteen I finished calculating the Time/Acceleration curve of the drive and groaned.

It would take weeks to build up to any meaningful speed with this method alone.

Thus, I spent another two hours accelerating to maximum velocity before trying again. As I activated the system, I could see space actually warping around me in a very peculiar way. My sensors were telling me that I was actually creating a kind of...hourglass shaped warp. Behind the ring, space was bending as if I was pushing through a pool of water face first. In front, it was the same, only it was as if I landed on my back into a pool of water. The warp only extended outwards to fifty meters, creating this massive ring of wobbly space that looked...like plasma if I were to be honest.

It was somewhat worrying to be honest. Still, I kept an eye on my velocity, and sure enough, it continued to rise. Slowly, but it was rising. New calculations showed it would take approximately...seven months to go from zero to near light speed with this method, if it could go there without causing space to explode violently due to my breaking the rules really hard.

In the end, I stopped, warped back to Dustball. It worked, and I had created a new form of STL/FTL propulsion, but it would be quite awhile before it could be utilized to any form of potential. While I was pleased by the success, I realize that it wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. Not a failure, but not really the success I had been aiming for. Oh well. Little steps I suppose.

Time to get back to work.