"How are the tests proceeding?" Alexander asked Lucas.

"Eh. The field is getting stronger, but like I said before, I don't think we'll be able to make it work without more power. In fact, I know it won't work. We built another test platform that was about half the size of the Stingray to do a small-scale test, and hooked that up to the Stingray's reactor. We were able to produce a stable field that blocked the FE rifle rounds on full power. Considering we haven't even been able to block them consistently on low power, that's a huge improvement. That's not going to let us reach the goal of shielding an entire ship, however. I was kind of hoping you were checking in to give me some good news. Like, I don't know, that you figured out the reactor issue?"

"Yes and no," Alexander admitted as they walked through the manufacturing center. "I have a few designs that should work. I'm producing some prototypes now. If they work, I'm not sure how viable they will be for smaller ships. Especially the automated ones."

"What? Why?" Lucas asked.

"The new reactors require a dedicated computronic core to maintain stability. With the Shican's rampant use of ECM and their mastery over ECW and system intrusion, we would not be able to rely on the core that runs the ship. It would have to be a separate system, fully disconnected from all other systems. I could do that with the current computronics, but it would severely degrade the automated ships' performance."

"Can't you just shut down their transceivers?" Lucas asked. "That would prevent the enemy from gaining a foothold on those systems."

"Have you noticed an odd trend with the automated ships?" Alexander asked his friend.

"Trend?"

Alexander nodded his avatar. "I only became aware of it after I read the latest report from Krieger. It seems that when the automated ships determine that their mission cannot be completed through normal means, they default to suicidal tendencies to try and resolve the conflict. I can't argue against its effectiveness, but let's say they decide to do that, but Krieger is ordering a withdrawal to preserve as many ships as possible for the next fight. If their transceivers are turned off, they will simply throw themselves at the enemy in a pointless act. Or maybe they will realize the fleet is withdrawing, but not have any idea where to go?"

"Why can't they simply give the coordinates before a battle?" Lucas asked in confusion.

"Those were just examples," Alexander pointed out. "What I'm trying to get at is that cutting communications between any part of the fleet is a bad idea. It's already bad enough that we have to disable the comm nodes when fighting the Shican because we don't know if they have any other ways to exploit the connection other than just locating it."

"I could see how that would be an issue." Lucas rubbed his chin in thought. "If we upgraded the Stingrays to the new processors, we could save space for a separate core. Heat buildup might be an issue, though. A dedicated coolant system could take care of that."

Alexander sighed. "I haven't had time to design such a system for the Stingrays yet. Until we know for certain that these new reactors are going to produce enough power to form a defensive field, I don't want to spend the time either. I'm still focused on that whole motion stabilizer project."

Lucas groaned. "Would it be so horrible to call it an inertial dampener?"

"Yes," Alexander said with a chuckle.

Lucas snorted at his stubbornness. "Alright, it's your project, but I feel like I'll be able to change your mind one of these days if I'm persistent. How's it going by the way?"

"Not great," Alexander admitted. "Let's hop over to my workshop, and I can show you what I mean."

Once they arrived, Alexander gestured to two sets of plates on top of each other, set about five feet apart. A chain was dangling between the two, looking motionless as it hovered in midair.

The long-term experiment was connected directly to the facility's power, unlike his initial test.

Lucas gave a squawk of concern when Alexander reached between the two plates and flicked the chain, before retracting his arm once again. The part that was hanging down swayed back and forth with ease.

"At least warn me if you're going to stick your arm inside some experiment," the man exhaled.

"Oh, trust me, I'm well aware of where the field borders are, now."

"Now?" Lucas asked. "You mean you got stuck inside it, don't you?"

Alexander decided to turn back toward the chain instead of answering the question, which was pretty much admitting guilt.

Lusas tsked in disapproval.

If the man actually knew how many times Alexander had gotten stuck during his tests, he would be doing more than just tsking.

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"As you can see, the field is only so thick. Then again, you probably already know this based on your own tests."

"Yeah, we measured its effective area at about a foot thick, which is even more impressive given its capabilities of stopping stuff like the FE rifle rounds. Imagine what we could stop with a two-foot or thicker field?"

"Probably not much," Alexander said, before moving over to a little panel and adjusting the field.

Between the two plates, the chain slowly began to descend. That descent picked up as the field expanded to fill the space between the two emitters, causing the chain to clatter to the bottom emitter.

"Ah," Lucas said. "Field strength decreases with area."

"So it seems," Alexander said in annoyance. "Feeding it more power doesn't seem to increase the field's ability to lock things into place over a wider area either."

"What about reducing the field to half the area? Would that make it stronger?"

Alexander knew Lucas would ask a question like that, and he was glad he had extensively tested all options. "Not really. You are already siphoning away all motion on an object when it enters the field. Making the field smaller only intensifies the effect, but gives it less time to work."

Lucas threw his hands up in faux disgust. "How is that not an inertial dampener?"

Alexander ignored the man's comedy routine, but he answered the question anyway. "Because it dampens motion, not inertia. If you hurled a person into the field, they would still splat against it after their inertia tried to push their squishy form through to the part that was captured. You don't see this deformation on projectiles because they are solid objects, and the field affects the entire projectile the moment it touches."

"Huh. I guess that makes sense. I always wondered why the projectiles didn't flatten themselves against the field when they impacted it." Then Lucas held up a finger while he looked as if he were pondering something. "If that's the case, could you apply the effect to an entire ship just by having a tiny portion inside the field?"

Now it was Alexander's turn to pause and think. He spent a few minutes doing the mental calculations before shaking his avatar. "The effect would have to have an upper limit on how far it could extend into an object. I believe it would be a similar distance to what the external tests reveal. That is a good question, however, and it finally explains something I have been wondering about for some time. The missiles that Katalynn fired at the Shican dreadnought did explode. That couldn't have happened if the enemy's defensive field had locked the entire thing in place."

The answer didn't seem to dampen Lucas's enthusiasm, however. "Okay. Bear with me, this is going to sound like a far-fetched idea. What if you took the field and used it to enhance the armor?"

Alexander was about to say that it wasn't possible, but he stopped himself. Hadn't he been working on locking the entire structure of a ship and everything inside it in one place? Locking down a foot-thick section of armor would be easy in comparison. It didn't even need any adjustments or tweaking to the field to make it happen.

"Do you mean as a way to combat energy weapons?" Alexander asked tentatively. The defensive field was more than sufficient to stop any physical projectile the Shicans used, so doubling down on that seemed inefficient.

Lucas nodded enthusiastically.

"Hmm. It wouldn't work for our normal composite armor. The heat would still melt the material, but it might work with the carbon composite. I need to do some testing to see."

The biggest issue with the plasma bolts was their heat. The alien carbon armor was really good at dispersing heat thanks to the material it was composed of, but it could still be overcome. If Alexander could enhance the strength of his variation of the armor, the damage would be considerably lessened. An impact against such a hardened surface might also cause the bolt to destabilize, preventing it from transferring as much thermal energy to the ship.

Lucas had just given him an idea that might be even more significant than the defensive field he was currently working on when it came to fighting the Shican.

Less than a day later, Alexander had a very basic test rig that was essentially a cube, made from the alien carbon composite, with a field generator and a power supply inside.

The object was carried within the belly of a Fishbone transport until it reached the backside of the first moon. Alexander wasn't concerned about any danger from the device. Bringing it out there was just a way to hide the test from being seen by any of the GS ships, which were still in orbit and busy ferrying building supplies down to the surface.

Alexander had to admire Rush's people. They worked with robotic efficiency that mirrored his own robots. It was just another sign that something was odd about the bunch. They had to be enhanced or linked in some way because humans were never that uniform in how they approached tasks.

He kept an eye on their progress, but since Rush and his people weren't causing any issues, he didn't pry into their business.

Once the test was in place, the Fishbone transport deployed two more devices.

The modified missiles lacked any explosive payload. In its place was a small-scale fusion reactor. Alexander had taken the laser compression reactor design and modified it to fit inside a standard anti-ship missile housing.

Taking the outdated reactor design and modifying it wasn't all that hard to do with his improvements in laser technology. The end result wasn't all that powerful or efficient, however. He certainly wouldn't be recreating Harlow's plasma missiles anytime soon using the method. The thermal output of the reactor was barely enough to turn the warhead portion of the missile into plasma. And that's really all he needed for the test.

Once everything was ready, he sent Lucas a message to meet him in the monitoring center.

His Head of Research and Development showed up a few minutes later. "What's up, Alex?"

"It's ready," Alexander said with a big grin.

Lucas looked puzzled. "I imagine it's something amazing, but we have a few projects in progress that I would like to see ready, so you'll have to be more specific."

"That armor test we talked about yesterday."

"Already?"

"I couldn't wait to test it, so I built an absolute bare bones test rig. Come take a look." Alexander moved off to the side of the room and pulled up a holographic representation of the cube. There was no point looking at it through a camera since it was made entirely of the alien carbon armor panels and was practically invisible.

Lucas scratched his head as he walked around the floating hologram. "Why does that remind me of something?" Then the man snapped his fingers together. "There was that twentieth-century TV show that had a group of aliens that used ships like those."

Alexander laughed as he realized that they did indeed look like those cubes. "I can't believe you're still watching those old movies and shows."

"Why not?" Lucas smiled. "Half of my best ideas come from them."

"Is that where you got your fixation for inertial dampeners?" Alexander asked.

Instead of answering, Lucas simply smiled in return. "So, when's the test start?"