Frozen Oasis, Weapons Testing Range, June 25 0800 hours:


    Countryman settled beside Ruri, as he looked at the setup. The seats were just a few chairs, set in a room within the main lab building. Several large monitors had been set up to provide them with an excellent view of the test range, which he saw on the way in.


    The turret Ruri had mentioned, was a standard ball mounting with two guns in it, fully operational, but lacking the usual protective plating. Not that the turret would need that, it wasn’t required for the test, but it did give him a good look at the internal setup Ruri had gone for.


    The XDPC-128-B was a really good medium-caliber starship gun mount. Highly flexible and well suited for ship-to-ship, and tactical ground bombardment. As a multipurpose gun, it was also useful against small ships like fighters and bombers, making it a backup option for dealing with hostile fighters if they ran out of missiles. The current Mark II version they were carrying had proven to be an excellent upgrade for their ship. That had been Ruri’s work as well, so he was looking forward to seeing what she had in store for the prospective Mark III version of the gun.


    “So what kind of test do you have lined up?”


    She pointed at the monitor, “I’ve had a few targets set up down range, for a low-yield precision targeting test, while a shuttle flight is in orbit positioning asteroids for our next test. The second test will be a rapid-fire sustained fire test. We will be firing as many bolts as we can as quickly as we can into the orbital asteroids, while sensors measure heat build-up and stress. Testing will end when the capacitors are empty, and I plan to do several similar tests with little change in variables to build a baseline for the cannon’s performance. Which will be compared against the four years of data we have for the Mark II configuration.”


    “Sounds good, and a firepower test?”


    “That will be done next week, when Richards is done building the targets for us. I’ve sent her the specs for a series of hard targets for us to shoot at. In the meantime, the asteroids we will be shooting today should give us a fair degree of data to work with.”


    Countryman nodded, that made sense to him. They’d be able to extrapolate a good idea of what their weapon could do from that.


    Ruri shifted as someone came up. “We are ready to start the test, ma’am.”


    She smiled. “Good, let’s get started then.”


    Countryman leaned forward a little, watching the monitor, as a tech activated the twin cannons. Quickly locking onto the first target, a mockup tank with a few model soldiers around. One group was painted red, and positioned as if protecting the vehicle, and a second in blue was positioned as if attacking.


    Two bolts fired from the dual turret shooting across the distance in the blink of an eye. The fake tank exploded in a shower of flames, showering the red troops, a few of which caught fire, while the blue troops were left unharmed.


    “Pretty good shooting, that’s about what the troops would want if they called down precision fire from above.”


    Ruri nodded, “I know, I consulted Forrest before setting up this test and the tech manning the cannon is a weapon officer Kaori recommended.”


    “Interesting and the target?”


    “Nothing fancy, simple steel construction, comparable to a mid-20th century tank.”


    “That explains the overkill. Might be nice to see a similar shot against a proper hard target.”


    “Agreed, sadly we will have to wait a week.”


    Countryman nodded, she’d mentioned that earlier. He turned back to the screen, watching as the tech, targeted three similar tanks. Taking them out with excellent precision and without harming the troops in blue. The test was doing a good job of showcasing its utility for precision shooting, of course, the tech was an experienced weapon officer, but that didn’t invalidate the results.


    After making quick work of the targets set up down range, the tech stepped back to let the cannon recharge and waited for the signal for the next test. Moments later the monitors switched displays, giving him and Ruri an excellent view of a formation of large asteroids.


    “Composition?”


    “Nothing unusual, those are chondrite asteroids, the core of these asteroids is iron-nickel but the other layers are typical rocky silicates and carbon. The largest of them is 28 kilometers across...” said Ruri as she started going over the composition. He noted that all down in his mind, but it sounded like she’d picked some pretty average, if large, rocks. Love what you''re reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on.


    “Everything looks good! We are ready to fire!”


    “Excellent, begin endurance firing.”


    The tech nodded and turned to his console, locking onto the asteroids and letting loose with full-power bolts as quickly as the two cannons could fire. Hundreds of vibrant blue energy bolts rained into the first asteroid mere seconds later. Each one tore into the surface with explosive force, cracking the surface and sending shards of rock flying, even as the surface started to heat up.


    Entire sections of rock didn’t just start glowing, they were melting. It didn’t seem like that asteroid would last long under the heavy fire from just a single emplacement, and he was right. As seconds later the bolts were tearing through the other side. The entire formation broke apart, as the weapon shifted to fire on the second target. Another asteroid with a higher metal content. This one seemed to hold a little longer, but a good chunk of their durability was solely due to them being densely packed rock and metal.


    Hundreds of explosive particle bolts raining into the asteroids quickly tore them up, breaking them into smaller rocks that were easily destroyed by the rapid particle fire. Countryman noted the techs were keeping an eye on the cannon and noting down figures.


    Finally, the tech stood up and the cannon stopped, “Okay, that''s it, the capacitor is dry.”


    Ruri stood up, and smiled, “Great, lets see the data, how do the thermals look?”


    One of the techs reported, “Well within the expected range, we never even got close to the red zone.”


    Countryman stretched, “That cannon did a good job saturating the target area, what was the bolts per minute?”


    “Right where we expected it to be 2650 per gun, that would give us 5300 bolts per turret. Assuming we retain the standard two guns per turret mounting we used on the Enterprise.”


    Countryman nodded, “I’d say this looks good for a first test. I look forward to what you do with our cutting beams and heavy ship-to-ship guns.”


    Ruri looked up from the data she was reading, “I’ve got a design for that, I’ll run a few simulations. They’d be somewhat slower to fire, but should inflict significantly greater amounts of damage. I’ll get the exact yield figures to you later.”


    Taking a look around, “In that case, I’ll leave you to your work.”


    Ruri waved him off and Countryman stepped out into the cool air of Frozen Oasis. Techs and researchers were busy moving about the camp, as Countryman weaved past them to the local motor pool, where he found his driver from earlier waiting. The young ensign smiled, “Welcome back sir. Where to next?”


    “I was thinking I’d survey the mines, see how things were going, then head back to the ship.”


    “Sure thing sir. “


    <hr>


    Richards was looking over the foundries. The mining camps were barely a few days old and already they were shipping in material by the ton. People were motivated and sometimes she was amazed at how industrious humanity could be.


    They were processing the material in volume, producing new parts for the Enterprise. From the reports, she’d been getting they were making good progress in finding suitable sources of titanium, tungsten, iron, gold, silver and anything else they might need. While they’d had some difficulty, they’d also found a suitable source of carbon to use in their manufacturing process. Unlike on Earth this world was somewhat lacking in dense vegetation, so they found most of the carbon they were looking for in the rock, rather than other locations.


    In this plant, they were processing a wide variety of raw ores, and extracting the useable elements. Large amounts of rock were being dumped into vats of nanite-laced water, where they were being broken down. The minerals were then separated, processed and dumped out onto a conveyor as raw bricks of metal or carbon.


    Walking over to one of those, she picked a brick up. Feeling the weight, she spoke to one of the techs, “How are things looking?”


    “So far things are working pretty good, we should be able to keep up this volume of processing without any issues.”


    “Excellent,” she said as she ran a scanner over the brick, confirming the item the brick was pure titanium, specifically titanium-50, high grade too. “I like what I see here.” she commented as she put it back on the conveyor, where it would eventually reach the nano fabricators for use as feedstock in the creation of any number of items. That brick would likely be used in the construction of armored plates, something she’d put a large order in for. They were recycling Erudite and other materials from the old damaged plates, and drawing what little was left from the stockpile.


    “Glad to hear it,” replied the tech, visibly relaxing. She had that effect on people, it was one of the dangers of being the Chief Engineer and responsible for the entire engineering department and overseeing the ship’s manufacturing plants.


    Pulling a pad out of her pocket, she started, “Now I didn’t just come down for a quality check. We’ve had some new requisitions from the science department.”


    The man frowned, and took the pad, his frown deepening. “That’s a fair bit of military hardware, what are we doing?”


    “Weapons testing, it seems we’ve had a breakthrough in particle weapons and they''re testing the latest prototypes.”


    “Oh? Interesting. I think we can do this, though it might be tight fitting it into the schedule.”


    “That’s why I told Ruri to expect delivery at the end of the week.”


    The man balked, “Please don’t do that to me, we are already busy enough.”


    “Oh, quit crying, you had a nice break, now get to work.”


    “Yes ma’am,” grumbled the tech. Richards sighed and made a mental note to keep an eye on him.