Nyx looks up.
“Drawing from my memories of one particularily disastrous vacation on the Moon. Dad needed to uncover, where did the shipments of technical gold go, Ash the Earthsider was searching for a missing Diancie and got sponsored to go to the Moon and I was just with the family. Our routes got kinda intertwined on the later stages and, well… let me just say, that it was for a multitude of reasons - one of them being that gold is a great gain material for the explosion-pumped X-ray laser and one of the others being that diamonds make great reflectors for the X-ray lasers.”
She chuckles sadly.
“Even though I am a pretty powerful Psychic, I still have a big weakness - none of my normal defense moves cover certain parts of the electromagnetic spectrum, which are where combat lasers usually work. I have to bypass this with solid-matter barriers I form with telekinesis.”
Nyx looks back at the PDA.
“So, what’s happened is that in our investigation we’ve found where did both Diancie and gold go. We’ve barely survived the meeting with it. On my previous drawing is what we’ve met in our searches - a laser mech with diamond optics and explosion-pumped laser. Let me just quote one of the technical notes we’ve found back then.”
She opens a text file on the PDA, which reads:
“Wow. Holy smokes, peeps.
I've got a thought about a mech. Gigantic mech
With a laser. Humongous laser.Step-by-step:
Take inertial-contained fusion drive, or mini-mag pulser, pulsed fission-fusion etc.
Throw away the magnetic nozzle and most of the radiators.
Ignition system (laser, particle accelerators, plasma, antimatter - whatever) is put together like a ring. For example, for the fuel pellet with 10t TNT equivalent, we're going to have ring roughly 100m in diameter (or maybe much smaller, nozzle of the mini-mag pulser’s 20m in diameter with energy yield three times greater, but we don't have to intercept energy - quite the opposite, in fact).
Fuel pellet's loaded with a golden rod.
Do you feel it? Right, it's a gain material for the X-ray laser, which emits the beam along the axis of the ignition ring. Without bomb-jiggle and all those misguiding factors, just like in the drugstore.Then, we place multi-layered diamond X-ray reflectors a few hundred meters apart.
Now we have an X-ray laser with an actually good aperture, which's not limited by the gain material proportions. With 10m reflectors and a ton of TNT on the nanometer beam, this thing’s going to keep the power at lethal levels (around 10 kJ/cm2) on the distance up to 200 light seconds, more than a third of an AU. Holy Arceus.
And the funniest thing is that mass of this thing’s going to easily fit in a few dozens of tons. Don't wanna calculate RN, but looking at the engine designs we, approximately, have: required systems of the mini-mag pulser are less than 30 tons, and we're having even smaller of a "caliber".
Of course, this thing’s wonderful by itself. Or on the spaceship. Especially since it can easily be a part of an engine, it just needs a nozzle.
But it's not stylish enough for us, so we're going to place it on a small celestial body without atmosphere (Moon, where we already have some assets). And put it on the legs. Since the machine's low on mass, the gravity is weak and the size is enormous, we're going to get a gigantic Surskit-alike on long, thin legs. It can easily crawl around, not being limited in remass (it always has an unlimited supply of it right beneath its legs). Considering range of those lasers, ability to constantly and chaotically move around, even in standby mode is a gigantic advantage.
And just to hammer things in, we can install MHD recuperation system on the either side of ignition ring, using the energy from otherwise-wasted plasma to recharge capacitors of the ignition system. With that thing in place, our only firing rate limitation would be how how fast we can chug the pellets in place and how fast can we dissipate the heat."
She selects the second note, which is much shorter and reads:
“Approval for your project is given. Resources will be transferred to the Moon shortly. Begin the R&D ASAP.”
Nyx closes the app, switching back to drawing, and resumes:
“With that in mind, when we first met the laser mech, we, to say frankly, were at a gigantic disadvantage. Even if we ignore the mobile nuclear powerplants, converted into escort laser tanks and Psy-jammers, this thing could still depress enough to take aim at the things at the ground level. Thanks to the Psy-jammers, I couldn’t attack it directly via normal means and looking down the optics of a gigantic laser with enough power and range to be able to damage the colony without even leaving the Moon was… disturbing, to say the least. Thanks Victini dad managed to ‘procure’ an old, but still working portable tactical subkiloton nuclear launcher from the times Soris Empire was sorta-expected to attack the Von Braun city and vice versa and use it to cripple the leg of a laser mech, forcing it to fire beam to the side…”
She sighs, remembering this hectic day further.
“The problem was, we were still at disadvantage and the mech was still working. We’ve had to run towards the ‘Drapion’ and take off from the Moon ASAP... but, unfortunately, they’ve managed to swap out the leg and bring the mech into action again. I’ve had to lift around 20,000 tons of regolith and form it into a chaotically-swirling cloud in order to cover us against laser fire, while also helping to lift the ship faster. Here’s the still from one of the ship’s rear view cameras.”
She opens a picture and shows it to Hannah:
“The cloud-like things at the sides are exhaust cones of the nuclear thermal-arcjet engines. The grey cloud in the middle is the regolith shield I’ve formed. It was taken when I was almost entirely spent, hence mech managing to nearly-penetrate the shield by firing at one point and forming a Matryoshka cavity. Thankfully, it got overheated soon and, as soon as it stopped firing, I’ve fired most of the cloud at it as a dispersed attack. It didn’t destroy it completely, but it did destroy the optics, which were the most expensive parts of the mech, and force it back into repair cave. Even so, from having to keep the cloud formed and swirling chaotically enough non-stop, then launching it… long story short, I’ve fallen into a hypoglycemic coma from using Psychic so much without taking care to keep the blood sugar at an optimal level. It wasn’t a problem, but it did bring me out of action for a shortwhile.”
