Commissioned by RoyalTwinFangs
Project PHAETON
Chapter 5
-VB-
“What do you mean the Phaetonites were there?”
The question echoed out in the grand hall where the Zabi family, their closest supporters, and trusted advisors looked at the boy in the center of it all.
Garma Zabi.
Dozle Zabi knew that allowing his sister to take charge of Garma’s placement could lead to problems, but he didn’t expect this level. Because not only had Garma failed in his first military mission (which shouldn’t even be his responsibility) but he had handed the mobile suit technologies to the Phaetonites on a silver platter.
At the same time, he couldn’t be completely held responsible because the recordings and testimonies from the naval squadron sent with him proved that the choices were taken away from his hands by saboteurs of all things.
Because, yes, they found out that someone caused an explosion from inside the Musai light cruiser that supposedly took an attack from the Phaetonites.
Was it ever going to be made known that the attack was a sabotage from within the principality’s own ranks?
Never.
Was it going to be handled properly internally?
Definitely.
“This is why I advocated for not having political officers so close to the commanders, father,” Dozle stated calmly. “Ninety-nine percent of them are not properly trained in the roles that their superiors have, cannot make the right decision that will benefit us in the long term, and will perform acts that the other polities accuse us of. Like sabotaging ourselves,” he said, trying to pivot away from the Phaetonite presence. Because if they got into talking about it right now, then they weren’t going to stop and this entire meeting will devolve into … that. At least, stop it from devolving right from the start.
Because if there was one thing that the majority of his family had in common, then it was their shared distaste of the Phaeton League.
The Phaeton League was everything they wished their home to be.
Powerful, successful, and, most importantly, independent.
Oh, he knew that many decriers of the Principality of Zeon denounced them for making a mountain out of a mole hill. Except it really wasn’t. Side 3 colonies still depended so much on the Earth Federation. The size of the colonies limited population growth, so immigrants were needed. None of the colonies made fuel, which meant that they had to import the fuel, especially fuel for the Minovsky Reactors from the Earth Federation that “owned” the Jupiter Fleets.
And what the public did not see was how the Earth Federation’s corrupt politicians extracted concession after concession from the principality. Day after day. Year after year. Negotiator after negotiator. What’s worse was the fact that no Earth Federation negotiator truly negotiated on behalf of the federation. No, every single one of them funneled resources and business from the colonies into their own business or that of their associates’.
Then they would report to their equally corrupt higher-ups that the negotiation had been “not as successful” as they wished. Meaning they couldn’t get more out of Zeon. Their higher-ups would then take this to the press to slander his people.
It was all a game to them.
And Zeon suffered for it.
And Phaeton…
Phaetonites had it all.
Somehow, their people broke away from the Jupiter Fleet and in a shorter period of time than Zeon, they would make a league of “clans” that have their own holdings all across the Asteroid Belt. And the insulting part? They were independent. They did not trade resources with the Jupiter Fleet or the Earth Federation. The few goods they traded were luxuries and goods, and when the Earth Federation demanded bribes, they just shrugged and stopped trading.
Dozle knew that his people were jealous of that independence.
Why them and not us? What did they have that they did not?
So they first sent scholars. Then spies.
Nothing.
They could learn nothing from the Phaetonites because they did not share. So many talented spies and diplomats were caught and returned.
As failure after failure landed on their desks, that jealousy cuddled into hatred.
And no one hated the Phaetonites more than Father.
Father always said that Deikun would have lived if the Phaetonites had helped. That they possessed medical technologies that no one else had. Whether they actually had the medicine or the willingness to help or not was not something that mattered. His father believed it, and so determined his stance to the League.
Worse, with his health declining, his hatred was only becoming more intense and much more personal.
“Yes, the Phaetonites were there. Waiting,” Garma quickly spoke up because even he knew that this was his chance to make his side of the story as straight as possible. “They had a whole naval squadron waiting for us in the perfect position to intercept us in our chase. And once they saw us, they made sure to broadcast publicly that the traitors were their refugees.”
“So they finally shed their supposed neutrality,” Father’s voice rang out from the head of the room, and many eyes turned to look at the bald and sickly man. Dark bags hung under his eyes, and they seemed to weigh on him like sins and regrets rather than the result of a man trying to keep a nation alive under the pressure of the federation’s corruption and extortion. “I knew that they were always a part of the Earth Federation’s sphere of influence. Tell us, son. What did they do?”
“They deployed their fighters and overwhelmed us with numbers. We were not able to get any reports from the zaku pilots because of the distance involved,” Garma responded quickly.
“So communication is a problem,” Dozle hummed. “We knew it but for it to be used against us… But how were their fighters able to coordinate so well?”
“We weren’t able to figure it out at all,” his littlest brother bowed his head. “And our attempts at taking down their carrier didn’t even result in damage. The only thing we were able to see was some kind of … transparent barrier.” Then he fumbled with his clicker, but when he managed it, the room dimmed slightly and a projector on the far end of the wall slid down. Moments later, a projector showed a slow-motion video of two moments caught by the exterior cameras of the Musai cruisers.
Both instances showed the main Minovsky particle cannon firing upon the Phaeton carrier.
Both instances ended with some kind of splashing effect, a return to normalcy as the “splashed” particles faded away, and a greenish-blue hue in front of the carrier.
Everyone looked.
Dozle’s stomach dropped. Whatever plans on how to steer this meeting dropped.
“No. They couldn’t have …!” he muttered as he slid up.
“Dozle?” his father spoke. “What is that?”
-VB-
“A tachyon loop energy barrier,” Doctor Jeremiah Artkins muttered incredulously as he stared at the videos the federation spies on Side 3 colony, “Zeon,” managed to send home copies of.
All around him in this room were generals, admirals, politicians, other scientists, and engineers of the Earth Federation. Only those with the highest clearance levels were allowed to be here.
And what he was seeing was …
Magnificent.
Ridiculous.
And would change warfare forever.
“Is this something we can copy, doctor?” one of the generals asked.
He turned around to meet the man’s eyes, bewildered and stunned at what he was asking.
“Copy?” he uttered out, and there must have been something in his voice and tone because the entire room stilled. “Copy that? You have better luck trying to copy the Zeonites and their weird mobile walkers! I am the foremost theoretical particle physicist on Earth and I wouldn’t know where to start! And the only reason I know this is because Zeyus Caelum used to send in regular scientific papers before some dumbass sent kidnappers after him,” he hissed that last part out loud.
Some of the people here cleared their throats, and not a few glances went towards the director of the Intelligence Bureau.
The man, a gray-haired statesman with square jaws and a single scar running across his cheeks right underneath his eye, did not comment. He merely stared at the screen and ignored the rest of the room.
“Then you have the basis of that barrier, do you not?” someone else asked, and Doctor Artkin turned to look at the silver-haired general who asked the question. He was Commander-in-Chief of the Earth Federation Force, Johann Abraham Revil. “Those research papers that Caelum sent.”
“You mean the same papers that we laughed at?” Artkins asked back. “Just like how we laughed at the papers published by Minovsky?”
More clearing of throats.
“Is it feasible?”
“Do you have the equivalent of the entire Earth Federation Force budget to spare?” he asked in return as he looked around. “This is the equivalent of asking us scientists and engineers to take the principles of flight and recreate modern airliners using only 15th century materials. Yes, we can do it, but you will not the time it takes or the price tag.”
“That is ridiculous!” some member of the parliament hissed out. “The EFF takes up a full tenth of the entire federation budget!”
“We could… just ask.”
Everyone turned to look at the odd person in the room. This was Melanie Hue Carbine, the CEO of Anaheim Electronics. The only reason why he was here was because he was one of the principal financial backers of more than a few projects.
“What?”
“We could just ask House Caelum for help, could we not? Though there were missteps in the past, the Phaeton League is not hostile to us,” the war merchant drawled.
People looked around.
The idea wasn’t… bad.
“And what concessions do you think he would extract from us?”
“A lot, I suppose,” Carbine shrugged. “But if that’s what it takes to see us safe from the Zeonites and their military build-up, then why not?”
“In the meantime,” General Revil spoke up before anyone else could. “Perhaps we should focus on those Minovsky physics instead. We do have a better understanding of it than we do of these … tachyons, do we not?”
“We do,” Artkins replied. “But I would still need a lot of funding, help, and facilities.”
“We will make sure you get them, because it seems to me that we are woefully behind the Zeonites,” Revil remarked before looking around. “Because even if the outreach fails, we should still have an offensive means to match the principality.”
“What about those walkers?”
“What about the walkers?” Revil asked. “It seems to me that they failed against the League’s fighters. If anything, we should try to emulate the League’s naval technological advancements.”
-VB-
“It’s remarkable. It’s both advanced and not!” a scientist muttered out loud while looking through the readings provided by some kind of destructive analyzer on the far end of the lab while Noctis waited for an explanation for that exclamation.
The first thing Noctis had done after the battle and salvage was to return home with spoils of the battle and report to his father. And Father made sure the lesser scientists and engineers of the League get a look at the Zeonite mobile suits.
What they were now reporting helped him put the wider picture of the Solar system together.
The Minovsky Particle. To those in the League, it was an interesting side subject because to those who lived in the Asteroid Belt, the Caelum Tachyon Principles were a much more interesting and, slightly less important but still contributing factor, an “in-house” subject. Of course, not everyone was allowed to study it.
But the main difference between the Tachyon Principles and Minovsky Physics was the fact that the latter needed a special fuel while the former didn’t, just a shit ton of engineering refinement that made manufacturing any component needed for the energy shields unfeasible outside of House Caelum’s special labs. And even then, the labs had a seventy percent failure rate on making those components.
“How so?” he asked.
Father had let him take charge of this for some reason. Maybe he was busy with something else? Or did he want his more martially inclined son to find weaknesses to exploit?
“The Minovsky Reactor itself is very advanced. It provides more power than most energy generators on the market here in the League and the Earth Federation. Not as great as the very best that our labs and factories can make, sure,” Doctor So An rattled on without looking at him. “But the fact that these are factory mass-produced means that the principality is ahead of us in military-industrial complex technologies.”
“So it’s advanced in the … pipeline of logistics?”
She paused before turning to look at him. “That’s a good way to say it.”
It made sense. While the League - and his house in particular - have been militarizing, it wasn’t to the extent that the Zeonites have been putting themselves through.
“But not advanced in other ways?”
“Oh, yes. Most of what they have done to make this mobile suit are components and technologies that have been around for decades. I can tell you that one of the reasons why our lasers didn’t do well in these suits is because they are caked in layers of semi-transparent coatings designed to scatter light. Of course, our lasers aren’t just light, so they did do some damage. But it will be better if we were to change out all of the weapons on our fighters with plasma weapons instead.”
Noctis grunted. That was going to cost a lot, but it would be better for them to actually do damage.
“Why don’t we have it?” he asked instead.
“Well, because the most critical components needed to make the semi-transparent coating aren’t found outside of Earth.”
He blinked. “Huh.”
“It’s why pirates have been falling to our lasers while these suits didn’t. Just like how we don’t have a consistent large reserve of the material, the pirates don’t. And since pirates and the Jupiter Fuel Fleet are our biggest concerns…”
“We have been gearing ourselves to fight them.”
“Exactly, general.”
“So modernization is needed.”
“Very much, sir. Especially if we end up fighting the principality again. Or the federation.”
He hummed. “Anything else?”
“Like the coating, most of what we’re seeing here are things that could have been done years ago, but just that a lack of a compact power source prevented us from doing so. But since the Minovsky Reactor can provide that power now…”
“They can make these suits.”
“Precisely, general. These suits are essentially giant versions of our power armors. But instead of being anti-infantry, they are anti-armor. Well, anti-everything, considering their size. As far as I can tell, they wanted a tank that could move like a jet.”
“Unfeasible until…”
“Minovsky Reactor was introduced into the design, yes.”
“Is this something we can use? Make our own suits?”
“Certainly! And unlike other nations, we have the subspace communication module, so we will suffer none of the problems that they do. Of course, Minovsky Particles still interfere with EM regardless, so while communication won’t be affected, targeting and other EM-reliant functions will be affected regardless.”
Noctis hummed. “Still something to consider.”
“Of course. If you would like, then I can assign one of the departments to theorycraft how we can use these beyond what these mobile suits.”
“Do so.”
Noctis walked away after that, but as he made his way back home to report to Father, he wondered about how the other states would react to the existence of the energy barrier.
Oh, he expected Zeon to try to steal it, of course, not that they could. Even if they did steal the know-how, he doubted they would be able to build the right lab and factory to take advantage of it.
But the Earth Federation? Now, that was a reaction he wanted to see. They couldn’t afford to ignore this, so would they come groveling or would they come demanding?