Embers After Flames, Chapter 6.9 (Patreon)

6.9

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March 2, 38 years post Fires of IBIS.

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I might have considered myself a prophet if I wasn’t aware of just how much history liked to rhyme. ‘The next few years would be trying ones’, I said. This was pretty fucking obvious.

As the PCA slowly came to the realization that the RLF was only getting stronger and more capable despite their efforts, their designs started to shift. The years passed, and the number of pilots out on the field at any given time dropped further and further, with endless hordes of automated warmachines replacing them. They dressed it up as ‘reducing the risk to Human lives’, but the truth was that it simply allowed them to operate even more widely with even more force while maintaining approximately the same level of acceptable casualties.

Four years later, and the PCA had towed an asteroid into orbit to serve as their new manufacturing zone just to keep up. Two years after that, and at the rate they were going through it, they sure looked like they were going to need more than the one.

The humble Sentry may as well have not existed anymore; Light Cavalry units had gone into full production, and every pilot who could handle the performance had been given one. The former LC pilots had been upgraded to Heavy Cavalry units, with production of the upgraded machines rushed forwards with even more of their resources going to its development.

The Auxilia got a few upgrades, pulled straight from the Sentry’s stock. A new arsenal, dispersed throughout the squad-based organisation groups they were created in. Some got shields, some got missiles, some got a variety of other weapons. 

Don’t get me started on the AH12s, BALTEUS, or anything else in that rough category. The first had been upgraded significantly, with Pulse Barrier projectors being added to its frame. It wasn’t quite a fully spherical Pulse shield, but they significantly reduced incoming damage and didn’t pose a risk of overloading the ACS when they broke. As for BALTEUS, it had also seen a few upgrades, though it hadn’t gone into full production like the AH12 refit had.

Bad? Yes. But, despite how it sounded, it wasn’t as cataclysmically bad as it could have been. 

Our prior efforts had paid off. Right as the PCA started shifting their efforts, BAWS, and a number of other companies that Flatwell held ties to, had started to make use of the PCA’s stolen technology, producing newer and significantly more capable machines, which, in turn, had immediately started to make their way into the RLF’s hands.

Yeah, the RLF wasn’t running around in a bunch of shitboxes anymore. BAWS was the galactic standard and the galactic standard had just jumped forwards about thirty years. Light and Heavy MTs had some pretty fucking good stuff on them now, and the old stuff was phased out fast. 

The local BAWS branch, staffed by Rubiconians who obviously didn’t like the PCA, made only the barest of excuses to practically hand that stuff away for free. Justified under ‘we get the battle data to make superior products’ or whatever. It admittedly wasn’t actually incorrect, which was the best part of all that; BAWS as a whole was benefitting from the chance to refine all their new stuff under the continuous combat conditions of Rubicon, and that was pushing them a lot further ahead than their competitors, therefore making them a ton of money.

For all that BAWS didn’t operate like a typical megacorp, there was no denying that they sure did like making a lot of money. That only gave them even more reasons to help the RLF, because it was working and it was making them a ton of money.

So yeah, the RLF’s rank and file were now quite a bit pricklier than they used to be. Coupled with the steadily growing supply of ACs, and the RLF was holding on reasonably well even in the face of the PCA’s new ferocity.

Of course, no small amount of help had come from yours truly. I, the kids, and the Firekeepers had been busy little bees over the course of the last few years. Scouting, hacking, destruction; we did it all, and we did a lot of it. 

The PCA built any kind of facility anywhere I didn’t want them to have? We smashed it. Fueling ports? Burned. Logistics depots? Looted. Military bastions? Cracked. Databanks? Robbed.

We’d had a couple close calls so far. Arms or weapons blown off, a leg damaged to the point that the AC had to escape with a very lopsided flight. On one memorable occasion, a head had been half-exploded, and my Firekeeper had to rely on sensor data from the rest of her team streamed into her brain to get out of the area.

Hah... The PCA were building their databases, that was for sure. Slowly getting more and more prepared, even as the Firekeepers grew more and more skilled. The scales remained tipped in our favour, but I was happy to keep it weighted by making sure my Firekeepers were increasingly better equipped.

In some cases, that meant upgrades to their already existing arsenal, continuously eking out a few more percentage points of performance through continuous incremental refinement. Pretty much every existing part that already existed was in that category; better armour, faster thrusters, more capable generators, sharper sensors, the list went on.

Possibly the most dramatic transformation so far was the Primal Armour Expansion Unit I had designed.

For starters, it didn’t actually need to be an Expansion unit anymore. Refinements had made the designs shrink significantly, and then I came up with the particularly clever idea of combining it with the nanotechnological solutions I’d developed for the Augmentation procedures, which left the ultimate shape to be highly variable.

End result? I could fit it into the leftover space of the standard Core Block Form Factor itself, without actually taking up the Expansion slot anymore.

 So yeah, now I had a bunch of new models for that, as well. Primal Armour generation units optimised for various different roles: one for sheer density, maximising the protective effects while it was fully charged; one for ultimate capacity, keeping a great deal of the protection available for as long as possible; and one for recharge rates, resulting in a shield that could regenerate extremely quickly.

The original model was also available, offering a decent balance between all three parameters.

Respectively: IB-C04_I-PA-DEN, IB-C04_I-PA-CAP, IB-C04_I-PA-REC, and IB-C04_I-PA-BAL.

Because it was in the Core Block, I’d taken the opportunity to hook the modules directly into the Generators, piggy-backing off of them to boost their performance even further. High EN Capacity? High maximum barrier capacity. High EN Recharge? Faster regeneration of the Primal Armour. High EN Output? Extra density. That left standard Coral Burning Generators giving stupidly large and dense barriers, while Cycling Surge Generators provided incredible capacity and a great recharge, on top of each individual I-PA model’s specific advantages.

Of course, with that little breakthrough, the Expansion slot was left open again. I’d had two ideas to pursue there, but I first had to test everything with the already existing options, just to make sure there were no problems.

What I got was the opposite of problems.

Fun fact: Primal Armour? You get some really funny results when you slot in Assault Armour on top of that. All that charging Pulse energy induces the Coral to Surge. Ruins the integrity of the Primal Armour field, but also obliterates everything in your surroundings, so it’s quite the decent trade off. Instant glassing, as Rutendo had put it. 

The effects were rather less dramatic for the other extensions. Increases in barrier strength all around, which was good, but on the more mixed note was that the Pulse Barriers were still making the Coral Surge... even when it was in a barrier surrounding the AC in question. This was rather spectacular, and also equally dangerous. Contact with the mixed Surging Coral / Pulse Barrier was ill-advised, because it wouldn’t just burn you, it would also electrify, magnetise, and induce high-frequency vibrations.

Pulse Armour? You’ve now got a field of instant death surrounding you. Pulse Protection? That bunker will evaporate everything close. Terminal Armour? Well, fitting for emergency Pulse Armour, you’re now briefly a wrecking ball made of hatred.

Yeah. Fun stuff.

And that was just the old stuff. 

I had also added a number of new things to the list of equipment for the Firekeepers, mostly by finally finishing the entire catalog of weapon categories and use cases.

I had a version of everything, now. 

Plasma Guns for Hand Units, Plasma Cannons for Back Units, Missile Launchers of varying cell sizes for every weight case and category, lasers, pulse guns, bomblets... Name it and I had something.

I’d added Orbit bays now, even. Borrowed half the tech from CEL 240 and shifted it into something an AC would be able to use without frying the pilot’s brain trying to keep up.

Hell, I’d speciated the Coral Oscillator into a bunch of different forms. Dagger, lance, Lightwave, chainsaw, pile bunker... all there, now.

The pile bunker Coral Oscillator was a nasty fucking thing- and my personal favourite of the bunch.

Sure, it didn’t have the range that you’d normally associate with the words ‘Coral Oscillator’, but that’s because it’s entirely focused on absolute destruction. The giant fucking spike compresses Coral into a very thin but extremely dense point at its tip, boosting penetrative ability to the absolute maximum, and then topped it off by having all that condensed Coral explode after it had penetrated, doing absolutely awful things to the unfortunate victim’s insides.

I loved it. Ayre and Levi loved it. The rest of my children had more mixed opinions, save for Seria, whose only problem with it was its lack of range. Two of the Firekeepers had made it their mainstay.

Even all of that, however, still paled in comparison to the ultimate shinies.

And yes, ‘Ultimate’ was the particular key word, there.

I had mused a long time ago about taking inspiration from the other games in the Armored Core series. Primal Armour had been from Armored Core 4, and my replication of it had proven so useful that I had not regretted it even slightly. So, of course, I had not stopped there.

Introduced in Armored Core 5 were the so-called Ultimate Weapons, a series of incredibly ridiculous and equally dangerous weapons, each with their own unique mechanics, usage, and consequences. From the lovely Grind Blade, to the gigantic Giga Cannon, to the widespread Legion Pulse, each had been weapons of utmost power.

And also, as it happens, completely unacceptable for actual usage outside of a game. Using any of them would fuck your mech up, because each of them was an oversized weapon of mass destruction built for things bigger than the average AC of Armored Core 5. Each individual weapon also had their own drawbacks.

The Grind Blade? Would purge an entire arm upon activation. Giga Cannon? Locks your ass in place. Giga Missile? Same, but also needs lock-on and takes about ten thousand years to charge. Legion Pulse? One use even in the most specialised builds. Mega Blade? Locks you in place after you use it, leaving you in nearly melee range. Mass Blade?

... Well, no, the Mass Blade had been perfect. It was literally just a giant chunk of a building with rockets attached. Its only flaw was the one it shared with every other Ultimate Weapon.

I knew right from the start that my version of the Ultimate Weapons was not going to end up like that. I was not in the habit of giving my Firekeepers equipment that destroyed itself and wrecked the user on top of that, and I was never going to get into that habit, either.

What I had ultimately ended up designing were a series of oversized weapons that took up both Back slots, and had to take up the Expansion slot on top of that just to keep them compatible and safe. They were perhaps not as powerful as they could have been, considering their inspiration, but reliability and safety was more important to my purposes, and they weren’t exactly missing out. There were five of them, each one filling a slightly different role and each one ridiculously dangerous. If not for Coral’s nigh-omnipotent properties, I’m pretty sure none of them would have been viable.

None of them had seen actual combat usage yet, with no need to bring that kind of power to bear against any of our usual targets. It was dramatically overkill against any of the corps, and the PCA was better dealt with through the usual methods.

Unless they needed to hunt Warships, there were better options.

I did expect that they would eventually need to- and hey, it’s kind of funny. I gave them that gift for the new year, and one day after the start of March I found out something that told me things were starting to get on track.

It was a new license registration, which had come down with the latest set of mercs and corps. Innocuous, and meaningless to perhaps anybody else.

But not me.

Rb23.

Callsign: Raven.