Chapter 244.5 (The Black Box) (1/2)

Flowerpatch was working on multiple different pieces of material when Herod materialized in the hallway, requested admittance, and was allowed to walk through the door. Flowerpatch was using nanites again to hold her awareness, giving her a 'physical' body as she worked. There were dozens of workstations active, most of them doing analysis on material that covered a dizzying array of different materials used for different applications.

”Hey, Herod,” she said, bending forward to look at the spectrometer.

”You wanted to see me?” Herod said politely, staying away from the various machines.

”You're the leading particle researcher,” Flower said, straightening up. ”You're familiar with warsteel, yes?”

”Yes,” Herod said. ”In all its paradoxical forms.”

”All right, so, correct me if I'm wrong. Warsteel is an alloy formed of several noble elements, that when fully combined, act more like an atom than a molecule, correct?” Flower said, moving over to a large chunk of metal that was being drilled for a core sample.

”Right,” Herod sighed.

”Once warsteel is set, the atoms are converted from standard valence bonding to antibonding, correct? Usually sigma-star bonding, right right?” Flowerpatch said, moving quickly over to another instrument and glancing inside.

”Right. It shouldn't work, but it does. It's one of those annoying things in particle physics,” Herod stated. ”We know why it works, but it shouldn't.”

”Correct. It's one of the strange things, usually referred to as strange matter and strange particles,” Herod looked around for somewhere to sit.

”Oh, sorry,” Flower said. She waved her hand and a chair appeared against one wall. ”That should be outside of any magnetic interference.”

”Thanks,” Herod sat down and noticed his headache eased up. ”The magnetic spectrum leakage is why you use nanite hosting so much?” he asked.

Flowerpatch nodded. ”It keeps any leakage either way from affecting my test results.”

There was silence for a moment before Herod spoke again. ”Why the interest in warsteel? It's pretty much been examined to death.”

Flower shook her head. ”Sure, sure, with the tech we have nowadays and the knowledge that it works and how it works. With heat and kinetic energy both warsteel can act as a superconductor, which is why it takes hypervelocity rounds to even mar it, the transfer of kinetic energy has to be so fast and immediate that the warsteel can't spread the kinetic energy across itself so that the entire structure has the same kinetic energy total across the total,” Flower said. ”Like superconductor tries to have the same electric and heat charge across the entire structure.”

Herod just sat silently. She was more talking to herself than him.

”So, the Ancients, they create warsteel. Of course they did, our parents love kinetic weaponry where every other species abandons it as soon as possible to switch to energy weapons due to ammunition consumption issues,” Flowerpatch said, moving over to another instrument. ”However, our parents have always had a problem that most races view as insurmountable but they view as there has to be a way around. Well, two problems actually. Power storage and heat. Heat was the big one, from industry to just plain jogging down the road, thermal issues are part of being a human.”

She moved over to the core sampler, removing the core and laying it down next to a dozen other core samples.

”So, that's why armor is so different across military applications compared to nowadays,” she tossed up the eVR representation of the structure of the core samples, complete with labels. Herod noted that it was all military grade armor from the Republic, then the Combine, the the Imperium, then the Fourth Republic, then the Second Federation, then the Confederacy.

”Look, the layering is remarkably different during the times,” Flowerpatch said. She turned and her image blurred as she shivered with excitement. ”We need to know not only what materials, what alloys, hyper-elements, and material knowledge they had, but how they applied it.”

Herod nodded. ”All right. You needed to see me?”

She pointed at a section of armor. ”For the most part, all that survived of materials that we can access is old military surplus. I have some scans and samples of military construction, mainly fortresses, orbital systems, and the like, but most, if not all, of the civilian technology was replaced over the last eight thousand years.”

She turned and pointed at an image of a full conversion cyborg heavy combat chassis. ”That's a Combine Era cyborg, now, as our resident particle physicist, why does he have the laminate in the skull that has approximately five times the thickness in the warsteel bands of the laminate?”

”That's an interesting question,” Herod said, getting up. He walked over to the cyborg, pulling apart the eVR skull and examining it. ”You're sure about these measurements and the data?”

”Positive. He's in storage if you want to take a look at the actual physical war frame,” Flower said. ”I don't, he gives me the creeps,” she turned and tossed up another hologram. ”This is a full conversion 'warborg' in use by the Confederacy. This Marine died rescuing a podling during the First Telkan War, got his braincase cracked fighting against Type-Two Precursors, the ones built by the Mantid, not the Lanaktallan like the Type-One.”

”Hmm, cracked brain case in the newer one. Both of them carry the braincase in the chest, but the armor is thicker in the older version. You're right, they used more warsteel for less protection. Modern laminates are more effective, stronger and lighter,” Herod said, looking over it.

”From a particle physicist point of view, why go with that in the cyborg chassis and not this,” she pointed at a vehicle armor laminate from the same time-frame. ”Virtually identical to the modern warborg, used in light air mobile power armor and vehicles. Why the heavier armor, with more warsteel, when it has less effectiveness?”

Herod walked around it, looking at it from dozens of points of view. ”What killed our older specimen?”

Flowerpatch consulted a digital note. ”Neural degradation. Senility basically.”

Herod shook his head. ”That should have been accounted for. Bring up the medical records and call in Torturer.”

”Ugh, he gives me the creeps, like he's trying to get a peek at my core source coding,” Flowerpatch said, but she reached out and toggled a panel that suddenly appeared.

”Tee here,” the deadpan DS said.

”Hey, it's Flowerpatch, can you come in and look at something?” she said.

”On my way.” The communication just ended.

Herod looked at the medical records. Killed in Action, extensive neural damage.

”You notice he doesn't have a SUDS?” Herod said.

”Most Terrans didn't back then,” Flowerpatch said, shrugging.

”That's not true. That's patently false based on the data we have right here,” Herod said.

Flower brought up a bunch of scans and checked them. ”Combine military forces and Imperium military forces didn't have SUDS.”

Torturer knocked and Flower let him in.

”All right, why didn't they have SUDS but now we do?” Herod said.

Torturer shook his head as he walked over to the medical data. ”Because the SUDS system was damaged from the Screaming Ones.”

”OK, it says neural degradation was the cause of death, but Herod says it should have been accounted for, and the records say Killed In Action,” Flower said.

”Hmm, there's a lot of damage to his brain. Microstrokes, dendrite and neuron damage, axon snapping, hmm,” Torturer stared at it. ”I haven't seen damage like this before.”

”The casing's warsteel looks weird. Almost...” Herod said, leaning in to get a closer look. ”Cracked, pitted, I can see flaking. The battlesteel and plasteel laminate sections are unharmed, but warsteel layers inside the laminate are pitted and cracked.”

Flower nodded. ”See, that's what I don't get. What could have done that?”

The voice startled all three of them.

”Mantid Speaker and Warrior psychic attacks. He was killed by a thrust with a psychic bladearm. The physical bladearm was stopped by his armor, but the psychic energy pierced the brain casing armor and in effect, stabbed him right through the brain,” Victor's voice was solemn. ”He probably had a dozen warriors on him in addition to the Speaker.”

All three of them turned around, staring.

”Warsteel is a psychically active material. It provides protection against psychic attacks,” Victor said, wandering around the lab, staring at the work going on, still speaking. ”You're wondering about why the armor around the braincase is more heavily armored than modern warborgs. It's because the Mantid made extensive use of psychic weaponry.”

Flower nodded. ”All right. That's heavily recorded.”

”You're trying to figure out the logic and reasoning behind the usage of materials for the time. A commendable action,” Victor said, reaching out and touching his fingers on a piece of Combine armor that had come off a vehicle. ”And lets you know what material sciences and engineering methods they had access to at the time.”

Flower nodded again, smiling. ”Yes. If I can understand why they chose to use the materials they used then possibly I can determine what engineering methods they applied to the SUDS system.”

”Are we going to be able to examine the SUDS artifacts soon?” Herod asked.