Hyde might not be in the intelligence arm but he damn well had idea when something was going wrong. One of Jackson's people came calling on priority. With these particular sorts running control points it meant a capital p Problem. An anomalous reading or an active ship?
Field testing was still something you had to fight for. One had to be in the right place at the right time. Which is why if you were smart you kept your overview dossier already in your pocket. Used when a good situation came up and not placed before. Work it into options when it can be relevant. So when the alarms went off you had a gun handy to stuff in an armory. Trying to get field testing without a field to put something in was an uphill climb. As the tech connected everyone to the meeting Hyde went to work. Pre-cooked a secure transfer set up so he could feed the report across at the click of a button. This particular report and very classified project was a grenade in Hyde's pocket. In the sense of how hot as it was developing.
As he listened to the conversation Hyde looked over the data one hand tapping his chin. His glasses pop up sensor data in the background. Even raw data is useful sometimes with statistical assumptions changed. Different assumptions often teased out fringe data. Many useful statistical anomalies looked a lot like noise at the edges so often parsed out. After seeing energetic green of the firing weapons he flagged down a researcher. Profiles presented to the researcher by a nearby panel for him to work over. Hyde meanwhile looked over the weapons feed and didn't see anything he liked. That was no slug thrower nor a simple plasma weapon. Evidence of envelope spiraling along its firing plane added complexity. Some sort of destination package contained by the wave front. Impact more decomposed the ship when payload struck rather than blowing metal apart. Mass driver strikes made plasma as metal turned to vapor. It then then energized wildly by temperature. Instead, most of this explosion was the envelope heating up the top layer. Projected momentum pounded the tail inward as the payload shot holes through.
Hyde waited for a clear moment to comment, "This weapon isn't a simple one. It demonstrates a deep understanding of projected energy mechanics. What you're seeing is a plasma weapon as a secondary strike on a primary payload. After the payload hits it fatigues everything it hits from the particules used. The plasma channel I would presume is a weakening hit to internals. It also doubles as an anti-personnel weapon."
He adjusted his seat to nod sideways. Hyde then translated his fellow's assessment, "I'm getting particular patterns of hot points. Normal sensor operation filters the raw sensor data for cosmic rays. My fellow isn't wrong suspecting quantum particle strikes. They trip sensors and don't match with a increase of total background noise. That makes radiation strike unlikely since the level of background noise didn't rise. At that distance the energy involved at the impact point is considerable. I would postulate that this weapon scatterbombed with subatomic particles in the payload. Destroying everything behind it with resulting high energy particles. As they passed they break crystalline structures fatiguing whatever metal remained. Arriving high-velocity plasma then strains through the fatigue holes. A secondary wave of fragmentary steel would tear away in the plasma. I would consider the weapon used rather over-focused on human casualties. Especially for what's purported to be a patrol vessel."
Meanwhile an orthogonal exterior schematic produces from ship architecture programs. They took in the sensor data merging the result into the data stream. Hyde indicated it, "This ship is a design one would use with a very strong state that has a deep logistics arm. The design takes pains to not bring attention to any obvious reserves. This behavior is consistent with shielded refuel designs suitable more for military craft. A patrol ship with these hatch wells would tend toward thick armor the seamless ones more so due to design. Not to mention the energy shift we saw in its shield. Military-class morphic shield structures are capable of redirecting shields around at high ratios. While this may indeed be a patrol vessel it's one belonging to a war state. One designing patrols to operate in enemy territory with little expense spared. Thus it's reasonable to presume resistance to more detail about internals or material. Such efforts may come under fire by a ECM package which would fit that ship complexity. Passive and active sensor systems on the station were in partial disagreement. Even after accounting for the shielding there is either cloaking or unknown materials."
He pressed the button to send the report on the Corpse Flower project. The technicians receive classified document seals on it of Hyde's department. In the event non-classified were present hyde had to describe generally.
His words are a careful measure, "Future research may be useful against that sort of weapon. We do have a partly autonomous fighter and drones of a nature more resistant to energy weapons. Their potentials are not yet explored to completeness. It still needs field testing. One that does not involve throwing prototypes at someone's battle-tested war machine."
~~~
The project met design goals they set for themselves and plenty. Still the project's star is close to running away with the poor bastards if one read close. Sygildrists desperate to shape its TEI structure leaves of an active ship on the fly. If they hadn't figured out how to get the thing to turn back into plates they might have had severe setbacks. Suspending the ship compressed it to a base inert form of glass plates. Folding rates decreased on reachable surfaces easy to edit. Otherwise it was hard to read TEI on active folding fractal interiors.
The side effect was now the TEI patterns in the larger cousin were moving on their own. Even on the plates themselves when 'suspended'. The drone-class duplicates hadn't that particular habit and disabled to inert hardware. They'd not yet discovered the impetus for the change in scale and complexity of the larger. Even the Vox glass now pull TEI leads across the surface at logged intervals. They found the fold rates based on impulse conduit length and system scale. Though folding the corpse flower pattern at longer periods as sleepy pile of glass plate.
Further capability report detailed the speeds of their fighter design. Theoretical max speeds equal that of light fighters even in its medium fighter class. Though they expected it still had a medium ship's momentum. The weapons note testing with small TEI structures on a 'Quantum anchored interface'. A square of rich mineral paper they drew TEI 'seed' frameworks on to describe interfaces. They then grew by inserting between plates while the ship suspends. They were confident they could get a large weapons output but lacked a field to test them on. Despite the development close to running away he kept overexcited eggheads to earth. Sane research guidance with mundane and progressive testing. Instead of random firing at test targets inside their hangar. Especially not with the first thing they could write down that worked with the interface.
Armor described as regenerative TEI conduit folding and material transmutation. It contained bare logs of not much than hand tool strikes and one very heavy impact. He sure as hell didn't let them shoot at the prototype. At least until they figured out how to make the seven smaller inert drones grow comparable to the first. He detailed their requirements to grow the drones as big as their sibling first. The report noted that Hyde convinced a superior to punish such over-excited scientist. The man tasked with fringe-hardening the TEI patterns doing quite well. Caught with a 300 kilowatt industrial drill whining up much to Hyde's terror. Given explanation was 'because the corpse flower can take it!' The problem demonstrated frame folds changed everything tampering with test results. While Hyde made sure to note that the reasoning was in part justified. The impromptu testing method was still not an approved method. A vacation recommended for the man to put his head back together. Hyde figured Jackson would read between the lines on that one.
There were some physical data as well as recordings presented as well. The Corpse Flower details there as the larger prototype referred to by the project. It hovers above the floor of the hangar when engaged with stable dimensions. Hyde noted that every now and again the ship would pivot to point at a scientist. Divination patterns at the center bow sensor passed 4 TEI folds per second when that happens. Problems remained of a sharp fighter-sized object rotating about with discussion of options. Later a frustrated scientist arrested it with a cinder block tethered by paracord. He'd used one stamped with the helix logo placed on the floor. It worked quite well much to the surprise of the scientists. The brick never moved from spots they left it. The ship still pivoted as far as its thin leash allowed never far enough to drag the block.
Development on the plate movement also suggested intelligence. Testing that was underway as soon as the cinder block incident. They estimated it instinctive at best. A short video terminated the testing of a researcher moving the multi-ton prototype. This time paracord tethered to follow the researcher as some iridescent shifting balloon. A few days after imposing the cinder block they tied a helix-marked teddy bear. Lanky researchers got tired of carrying a cinder block. They noted still worked.
Another video demonstrated an interesting foreknowledge on the ship's part. Its wing jerked to intersect a careless forklift worker from flattening a researcher. That impact shown later as a 3d scan and numbers of high resolution photos. The thick cage obliterated in sharp angles inches above head level. Thick spars split in flat angles like as if hit in odd angles by a giant glaive.
There was panic for days in the log documenting the shatter patterns with video. At least before time-lapse showed the glass was moving cracks around every TEI fold. By the next week a new deep refractance scan and electron images commenced. Whiskers of Vox infiltration recorded spreading among the cracks. At the end of that week a graphs showed the total number of cracks were flat even as the surface area decreased.
They'd tested injecting ink into the cracks to try and provide repair materials. They documented significant loss of crack quantity on the next TEI fold of the affected area. Other formulas and materials tested to differing degrees of success. It responded to a plasma welder during a repair test not as expected. It folded patterns found written around the fusion core to link the affected area. Other small energy weapons of no large threat tested to similar result. Especially after they introduced protective sygaldry to the interface.
Tests this week were on seeding Vox glass plates with protective TEI seeds. Intended to see if Vox glass could integrate guided purpose-built armor layers. They theorized it could function much like how they produced the interfaces.
