4.7

The mercs have officially arrived.

There's no 'big names', as it were; none of the kind of people who shaped the affairs of worlds with their actions, who were spoken of in the years after they left in reverent -or hateful- tones.

It was a rather common theme in mech and pilot games, actually; where many characters could have been the protagonists of their own games, if not for you. The legends, the movers and shakers.

No, our new arrivals were definitely not those kinds of people. What we had now was the D and C ranks, there to pad the numbers and not much more. The kind who you'd find the wrecked ACs of out in the field and barely even blink at before moving on.

Most of them weren't even that interesting. Rubicon's situation meant that anybody operating here was either publicly licensed with ALLMIND, or illegals, and the latter mostly consisted of natives. There was a bunch of chicanery with law and politics involved, but there was a certain minimum of information that mercs were encouraged to make available.

Mercs, after all, were paid by the job, but even with ALLMIND acting as an easy liaison and job board, it wasn't easy being hired when you were unknown. Mercs, then, felt the pressure to advertise themselves, but at the same time, too much information on your capabilities being out and available wasn't great for your health.

Taking public jobs being offered to anyone was a possible solution, there, but it raised the potential complication in the form of competing mercs, and generally it wasn't great in terms of pay, either. Enough money to cover operations and save for a bad day, at most.

Either way, not something I had to worry about for the moment. It was a thing Flatwell was dealing with more than me, since he was both more suited and more well known.

If my attention had to come to a mercenary? There were going to be some problems. Still, if a mercenary survived long enough to make it to my attention, then that was an indicator that something was up, wasn't it?

Hah. Busy busy busy.

...

On a somewhat similar note? I haven't seen anything from ALLMIND. That was definitely not saying that ALLMIND wasn't doing anything, though. ALLMIND had access to MDD technologies, and that meant that spotting ALLMIND's activities was not, in fact, a simple thing.

Come to think of it? I could use some Antigens of my own.

November 9, 26 years post Fires of IBIS.

[glow=red]"Project PA. Beginning test number twenty six."/glow]

An electric hum resonated through the air of the testing chamber. On one end; a pair of coilguns. On the other; two pieces of vaguely mech-shaped dummies, armoured and reinforced but otherwise they were little more than metal statues.

With a single exception, that is.

The Frame wasn't functional, but the Core Block did contain something useful. Both of them had cables trailing from the Core Block, going across the floor and leading to a pair of stationary generators.

With a flick of a switch, those cables energised.

A barrier of electric green-white burst into existence around one the dummies, while red-white steadily crawled into existence around the other.

I waited a few seconds, and then activated the coilguns.

Not even a moment later, two projectiles slammed into the dummies. The former was protected completely as its Pulse Barrier flared, depleting the barrier a bit. The latter took a direct, but much reduced hit, a spray of molten metal splashing across its chest.

The coilguns fired again, to much the same effect, and then several more times after that. Five seconds between each shot, constant and unrelenting, until, eventually-

The Pulse Barrier popped, stressed too far. Sparking plasma and Pulse stayed around the dummy, until the next shot put the projectile straight through the dummy's armour.

I powered off the coilguns and the dummies, and the room fell silent. It took a few more seconds for the second dummy's shielding to fade completely, but it did so without any issues.

Mechanical arms descended from the ceiling, and I spent a few minutes opening the dummies up.

The first had a hole through the armour, and the projectile was still in the interior. A deep breach, but not a clean punch through it. Internal damage. Expensive, and time consuming, to fix.

The second, though, had kinetic damage and heat warping across the majority of its outer plate. Nothing underneath it, though, the internals were completely intact. About six minutes worth of time to replace the outer plating. Fabrication costs; much cheaper.

Good.

I went about replacing the materials, putting the armour back on while swapping out the 'internals' of the first dummy with a spare that I'd already fabricated. The coilguns were shifted out of the way, replaced with much faster firing machine guns.

[glow=red]"Project PA. Beginning test number twenty seven."/glow]

Again, the electric hum. Again, two barriers.

Again, the guns fired.

This time as fast as they could.

The Pulse Barrier flickered, but stood up admirably to the bullets, crackling as they smashed into it and failed to penetrate. The other, though...

The first few bullets were splattered much less dangerously. But, as they kept coming, they made it further and further, more intact, the barrier not able to completely keep up. After about five seconds, a penetration was registered by the sensors, and I cut the power again.

The first dummy was fine. Totally untouched. The second had internal damage.

[glow=red]"Project PA. Testing confirms all theories. Test also confirms the effectiveness of the final design. Primal Armour Expansion fits inside the form factor of standard Core Block construction."/glow]

Primal Armour.

A concept originating in Armored Core 4, and one of the central conceits behind the importance and sheer power of the NEXTs, the ACs of 4.

It was basically a barrier that protected against attacks, similar to Pulse Shielding, but it differed in that rather than being a perfect barrier that you had to wear down, Primal Armour instead reduced the damage taken significantly depending on how strong the field itself was. Repeated attacks would wear down the field, increasing the damage taken. The field would regenerate over time, presuming it wasn't being worn down.

My attempts to replicate it had been a little... messy, at first. The principles of Primal Armour in AC4 relied on the instalment's specific Minovsky Physics, which were Kojima Particles. Kojima particles were incredibly toxic, radioactive, and corrosive, so much so that a bubble of them would literally just outright erode incoming materials.

I didn't have that option, here, and since Kojima Particles were also so dangerous that they made the surface of Earth unlivable within twenty-ish years of discovery, that was probably a good thing.

I did, however, have two easy alternatives; Coral and Pulse technology.

Pulse Barriers were a long mature technology, and Coral had already been combined with it thanks to those nutjobs at RRI.

So, right off the bat that was a decent chunk of the work out of the way, but not all of it. The thing is, the IB-C03W4 was a Pulse Shield, not an equivalent to Primal Armour. Setting aside the fact that it was its own dedicated Back Unit, even if it was also the most advanced AC-scale shield generator in existence, it didn't actually do what I wanted it to do.

So, I started reworking it.

As noted, it was messy. Some of the early attempts would scatter Coral rather than gathering it, some of them would create destructive Pulse Interference rather than actually stable barriers, and one of them accidentally caused a brief Surge that I had to calm down.

After quite a few long months of effort, I eventually arrived at my current designs; a dedicated Core Expansion unit to produce my version of the Primal Armour.

In terms of actual mechanics, it wasn't actually that different to AC4's version. Coral mixed with Pulse fields created a bubble that scattered most energy weapons and splattered most physical ones. Explosives detonated earlier, and the blast waves faced interference from the Pulse shielding. This dramatically reduced the amount of energy or mass that reached the mech, in turn reducing damage on account of either spreading it over a wider area or just not hitting it in the first place.

In terms of existing shielding, though?

That's a bit tricky.

Here's the thing; on the scale of ACs? There's actually nothing in the way of permanent shielding. Core Expansions could provide temporary Pulse Barriers if it was necessary, but ACs were just a bit too small to fit a generator large enough to keep them up forever. There were plenty of Arm or Back Units that could generate shields, but only the IB-C03W4 could make an omnidirectional one, and they both could be overwhelmed and didn't actually provide complete protection.

To note; this was life, not the game. The Expansions here were not limited to a certain number of times used, but they did have their own dedicated capacitors that meant they couldn't be spammed. The module I'd developed could stay active indefinitely, but it was also reliant on Coral to do so. This was both bonus and malus, because while the Coral provided plenty of energy, it was also rather distinctive. The RLF wasn't going to be able to use it, in other words.

It also couldn't provide complete protection, but, well, that hadn't been the goal in the first place.

Primal Armour's main use was that it was a permanently active and passively regenerating ablative armour. The Pulse Barrier Expansion might have generated a brief barrier that wouldn't let damage through, but it would have to be timed very well to not waste it.

In the actual use-cases of ACs... Primal Armour was, ninety five percent of the time, a lot better. It dramatically reduced the dangers of alpha strikes, and significantly improved defence against so-called 'chip damage'. An AC should already be dodging everything that was coming its way, it shouldn't be trying to walk through it. Primal Armour was much more useful for whatever stray shots did hit it infrequently. In a drawn out battle or long mission, Primal Armour would be exceedingly helpful.

What Primal Armour wouldn't help with is when an AC gets caught. The barrier just wasn't that strong in comparison, and repeated hits would see it depleted and the AC vulnerable. Pulse Shielding would eat the shots of a gatling gun for long enough for an AC to get the fuck away, but Primal Armour would take a short barrage and that's it.

So, yes, still useful, but it did have to be used in a different way.

Of course, it would still be competing for the slot with Assault Armour, which...

Well, speed is life, but dead enemies can't hurt you, and few things produce dead enemies like just bombing everything around you with a Pulse discharge like that.

Eh.

I'll leave the choices to my Firekeepers. They're the ones who will actually be using them, after all. I'd wager a decent chunk of them would go with the Primal Armour since most of them weren't aggressive enough for Assault Armour and maybe three of them had the timing for Pulse Shield.

Well, that's that, I guess. One final pass to ensure everything was in order, but after that? This project is done. IB-C04_E-PA could be considered officially finished.

That only left another ninety nine things to do, and unfortunately, most of them weren't coming soon. They were at best a year or two off, and at worst a decade. The other Expansion Unit was looking closer to the latter, for example.

Still.

I'm slowly working my way through it.

All I need is time.

You know, I intended to release this yesterday?

But Christmas eve was such a shitshow that I literally slept through most of Christmas itself.

Ugh, I'm tired, and now it's officially vacation season.

So, a bit of bad news. I have no idea when I'm next going to get the chance to do... anything related to writing. I won't claim an official hiatus, but getting a workflow going while being constantly interrupted is fucking impossible, so hey.

Sorry guys.