Commissioned by RoyalTwinFangs
Project PHAETON
Chapter 7
-VB-
As much as most League leaders were sure that there was nothing to learn from the Zeonites, House Caelum still went ahead and began another research facility to try and make their own mobile suits.
Why? Lord Zeuys Caelum thought it was cool and they had the resources to spare.
Sometimes, one didn’t need a reason beyond “cool” and “I’m rich enough.”
For Annaiah Oneasteroid, her version of that was splurging his wages on good food and collectible miniatures. As a clone, she had no family to support aside from other clones, but they didn’t need help from her when they were also working their jobs.
She was a more specialized clone, unlike her siblings; she was made to be a researcher and opened her eyes already with all sorts of information about natural sciences and engineering concepts loaded into her brain.
She’s been working as a prototype engineer for House Caelum for six years now, which made one of the first clones… which was evident by her name. One. She was one of the first series of clones produced by Zeyus himself, and met the man regularly enough to consider herself well known to the man.
“So tell me about your prototype,” Lord Zeyus asked as he looked up at the mobile suit she had put together quickly using the printers in the Zone 3 Lab.
She already spent a lot of time looking at the mobile suit she made, so she gave her full attention to the lord. Despite the fact that he was now in his late sixties, he looked like he was in the mid to late forties with only a streak of gray hair marring his otherwise dark hair.
“Our first prototype is P3A, Prototype 3 Type A. As you have instructed, we reduced the size of the mobile suit in half in comparison to the Zaku in Zone 5 Lab, and we have retained much of the defensive and movement capabilities.”
“And offense?”
“... I fear that it is lacking,” she hesitated to answer. She didn’t hesitate because she feared being punished. If anything, failures were often discussed, dissected, and then worked on so that any clone working underneath Zeyus Caelum could improve themselves if they put their efforts in. It was why despite the fact that cloning technology was widespread, most clones preferred to live under the banner of House Caelum, and House Caelum stood as the guarantor of all clones in the League. The younger clones didn’t get how bad things were for clones in the first few years. The suspicion. The hatred. The jealousy.
Why are you perfect when we are not?
Zeyus Caelum was often the only person who stood in the way of the people who wanted to hurt people like her. He was also their father in more ways than one. He was, after all, the creator of the modern cloning systems and more than one line of clones held his genetic material.
So, in a sense, he was both their creator and their father. And no child wanted to disappoint their father.
And so to stand here and say that she failed to meet his requirements for the prototype? It hurt her.
“Which part of it?” he asked as she handed him a datapad with a summary specs of the P3A.
“We can easily match the Zeonite structural engineering and material, but we are running into problems with the anti-laser coating. Since we lack some of the specific components used in the standard anti-laser coating, we are substituting them with more standard and abundant materials. This has, however, increased the weight and thickness of the coating. To compensate for it, we had to remove as much internal space as possible so that the mech did not end up too bulky as you had requested, my lord.” Her excuse sounded like she was blaming him, and she hated it.
“I did request that, yes,” he hummed before he finally looked down at the datapad and then at her. He smiled. “Still, if what is written here is right, then you have done marvelously. Thank you.”
She bit her lips. “But … it is not complete.”
“No. It’s why it’s a prototype. It will get better. Won’t it?”
“It will!”
“Good. Now, tell me how all of this led to reduced offensive capabilities.”
“With limited internal space, we had to rely on external sources for ammunition. Since it is now clear to us that lasers will be too weak except in barrages, we chose to use ballistics for P3A’s weapon. From our analysis of the Zaku, we determined that P3A needed to be equipped with at least 75mm autocannon. The problem lay in the weapon itself. Our arms industries have been focused on plasma, laser, or a hybrid of the two weapons. But both weapons require a significantly large battery or fuel tank to use. Thrusters on the mobile suit also require fuel as well. Because of this, we had to divide the choice between more fuel for movement or room for ammunition. And since we designed our mech with speed and maneuverability in mind, our team chose to focus on that even more. As a result, P3A currently lacks ammunition capacity for fights that last more than five minutes.”
“And how much is that exactly…?” he asked even though he was holding the datapad himself.
“... We equipped P3A with Telmar70 80, and there was just enough room for three magazines, each containing 40 rounds.”
Telmar70 80. A fully automatic 80mm cannon made by Telmar Arms Industry five years ago (70 U.C.). They were weirdos from Vesta. Maybe it was their proximity to Earth and the Side colonies - as well as the frequent trade - that made them choose to develop their cannons more.
Whatever the case was, they had the most advanced “autocannons” currently in the open market. At five tons, Telmar70 80 delivered 200 rounds per minute at roughly mach 3 in standard 1 atmosphere. In vacuum, it could reach higher muzzle velocity. It was the best that the League could supply in a short amount of time if they needed to rapidly manufacture this mobile suit for deployment.
“Three magazines, including or excluding the one that would be on the cannon already?”
“Excluding.”
“So four.”
“Yes, my lord.”
“That’s why it will get better,” he replied. “If it’s necessary, then I’ll open up some trade with the Earth Federation so we can get our hands on what we need. Otherwise, let’s keep the anti-laser armor to a minimum. It isn’t as if the Zeonites or the Earth Federation’s main arsenal are laser weaponry.”
That was true.
“And if we lower the tonnage of the armors, then how much more ammunition can P3A carry?”
“P3A will be able to an additional magazine with each ton we can remove.”
“Then that’s the goal we’ll work toward. Retain standard composite armor tonnage, reduce coating to a minimum, and improve armament tonnage either in raw firepower or in combat effectiveness duration.”
She nodded firmly. “Yes, sir.”
He smiled before he pulled his hand up and ruffled her hair.
She squawked.
“Still the same little Annie who used to run around in the steel halls of the Caelum.”
She blushed.
She was one of the first clones. Unlike the latter lines, she and her “direct” siblings were all raised from childhood, not babes or toddlers. The latter lines were born as teenagers at the youngest and more often as young adults.
“It’s a wonder you remember all of us,” she mumbled when he finally stopped.
“It is hard to keep track of you all,” he huffed as he handed the datapad back. “Sometimes, I need reminders or help. Just the other day, I mixed up John Onetree with John Twosea.”
“John Twosea?”
Line Two’s were those that were born as teenagers.
“They had the same favorite color, hairstyle, and attire. And they each have nine siblings who are also Johns.”
She giggled. “That’s your fault, my lord. You named them all.”
He hummed. “That I did,” he muttered. Then he cleared his throat. “What about the other projects?”
“Project GL is proceeding well. While this would mean that armaments may be more expensive, we might not have to worry about coatings anymore.”
“And how is the research collaboration with the Feddies coming along?”
“Routine as it can be, my lord. The federation researchers brought with them their own preliminary designs for the federation’s mobile suits,” she said as she flicked her fingers across the datapad and turned it around to show him it. “They call theirs RGM-79.”
“79?” he asked abruptly and more seriously than she expected.
“That’s the year they expect to finalize the designs.”
He hummed. “That’s only three years away.”
“My lord, I feel the federation may be taking the development and use of mobile suits far less seriously than we are,” she reported after a long while.
He hummed. “That’s expected.”
“Expected, sir?”
“The Earth Federation is not a monolith. Hundreds of member nations, megacorporations that number in the hundreds across all sectors, limited budget, federal and local oversight, arms regulation, and so much more keep them from focusing on just one thing, especially without a direct and continuous threat to their well being. Which is the result of them not taking Zeon’s war-like attitude seriously, no matter how many times their intelligence agencies report it. Because it’s not profitable to the corrupt politicians, they are ignoring what the intels are saying,” he replied before chuckling. “Worse, many of them hope that a war does break out. There’s nothing quite profitable like war, after all. The problem will be that because most of those politicians are completely disconnected from reality, they will not know until the war is at their doorstep just how weak the federation forces are right now compared to the Principality of Zeon. Or just our house’s fleets.”
She frowned. “How bad is it, my lord?”
He hummed. “If I really wanted to, then I can have my house’s fleets engage the federation navy is a pyrrhic battle that will see all participants losing all naval assets.”
She blinked. “But we barely have over a hundred capital ships, sir.”
“Precisely. A single house of the League, no matter how strong, should not be able to consider a war with the federation. That’s how marginalized their navy is. And once they lose the navy, they lose their orbit. And once they lose their orbit, the planet is open to all sorts of abuse.”
“Wait, doesn’t that mean Zeon will -.”
“Yes. But what the federation does with their navy is their business, not ours.”
She frowned. “... What about their Salais and Magellans? They were part of their naval upgrade plans.”
“And those ships also all depend on standard EM-based sensors to utilize their firepower safely. And considering what happened to Noctis’s fleet when they engaged, I doubt that those ships will be of much use. Especially the Magellan. That one doesn’t even have decks for fighters, which means once they engage in close quarter combat, they are even more vulnerable than the weaker and smaller Salamis.”
“I… see. Is that you have my siblings in Zone 6 Lab working on? I heard that they were working on some kind of modification to the current subspace modules.”
He nodded. “We need a new way for long range targeting, and since low frequency EM waves like radio, microwave, and even infrared are unavailable and naked optics with the visual light are the only ones we have, we’re developing a new one. Just in case.” He paused. “By the way, how are the federation researchers doing?”
“Very happy, sir. They are surprised by the ‘lack of oversight.’”
He frowned. “But we do have oversight.”
She sighed. “They’re surprised that they don’t have a political officer looking over their shoulder every second, literally and metaphorically,” she replied. “I have been told by the federation researchers they call their own government ‘Near Zeon’ and the principality as ‘Far Zeon.’”
Her lord closed her eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose.
“What the fuck are they doing over…?”
-VB-
“So?”
Doctor Jeremiah Artkins looked down at the data he had in his hand.
“The League researchers aren’t here to screw us over.”
Because of the corrupt and paranoid nature of his own nation, Doctor Atkins found himself in a windowless room with the best scientifically minded intelligence agent. It was one thing to double check everything but it was something else to put their own researchers through what was basically intimidation interrogation.
“And the fact that they sent clones doesn’t change anything?” the agent with a raised eyebrow.
Because in the federation, anyone who used clones were considered “inhumane” and “corporate.” The kind of people who would turn human lives into disposable assets.
As if they weren’t already doing it or have been doing it for decades. Centuries.
This was a part of the federation political theater that Jeremiah genuinely hated.
This was all a production for the masses to consume.
Even now, there were news media talking about how the “League was not cooperatively properly since they only sent clones while we sent our very best.”
As if they were better than these clones.
Jeremiah might be a scientist, who were stereotyped as introverts and maybe even autistic, but he knew enough about the League to know exactly who they had sent.
Andrew Oneaxe. Or A1A. The literal first clone child made by House Caelum. The clone with the most experience and intimate knowledge of House Caelum’s inner workings. A clone who had worked the most in person with Zeyus Caelum. Andrew may not be Lord Caelum’s right hand man, but he came damn well close to that position.
And yet instead of collaborating with a man who worked with a once a millennium genius, Jeremiah was here. In an interrogation cell. Being interrogated. About the fucking designs that worked.
This was the kind of shit why reasonable people like him couldn’t refute the Zeonites. Because the Earth Federation really was a politically and socially corrupt monster at the top.
An empire that needed its colonies.
… It didn’t mean the Zeonites were good, but at the very least, he understood the initial cause behind their independence.
“What about this part of the design? It’s non-standard.”
Jeremiah just wanted to punch this bastard in the face.
-VB-
A/N:
In which House Caelum (not the League) are developing their own mobile suits just in case with federation collaboration while the federation is being a paranoid chihuahua (weak and ineffective, as all corrupt things are).