บท 15: Chapter 15

In addition to designing new MCU units to serve as the crew for the Halcyon-class light cruiser, Axel was also working on various other components of the ship, including the engines and weaponry. Like most UNSC vessels, ship lacked any sort of shielding.

For Axel, having shielding on the ship would ensure the protection of everybody onboard and also improve the ship's defensive capabilities.

In addition to the shields, Axel was also tasked with improving the vessel's weaponry. The UNSC's traditional arsenal - a mix of MAC guns and Archer missiles - was effective but hardly innovative.

Axel decided to rely on Energy shielding as his main form of protection, as it was the only feasible option available to him at the moment. Creating other types of shields or finding a new energy source would require extensive research and development, which was currently out of reach for him.

As the Head of Section Three, he had a considerable amount of funding, but it still wouldn't be enough to carry out his plans. While ONI was providing some resources, he knew he would need more. However, he also understood the dangers of introducing new, powerful technology without proper caution. He didn't want it to fall into the wrong hands or be misused in any way.

Once he held a higher position of power than his current one, he would begin to develop and put into action more groundbreaking new technology.

For now, Axel poured his focus into the energy shields. He tirelessly worked on enhancing their power output without compromising the ship's other systems. He ran numerous simulations and test runs on the energy shield and how much energy they would consume while in combat.

The trouble with energy shielding was the delicate balance between power efficiency and defense capability. Too much emphasis on one and the ship would either drain its power reserves too quickly or fail under a heavy bombardment. These calculations were meticulous and had to be precise. They were, in essence, the line that separated life from death for the ship's crew during battle.

Axel didn't know why the UNSC didn't think of energy shielding before, maybe they didn't see the need for it or maybe they were incapable of creating a workable design that wouldn't drain the ship's power.

Or perhaps the ships weapons drew too much power when shot. The MAC cannon on the ship being the Main weapon, was a powerful weapon which could tear a ship apart in one shot, but it also drained a lot of energy and took time to recharge.

There were many factors tying into the creation of energy shielding, yet this was only a future thing that Axel would add. Maybe in the next 10 years or he would add this technology to the ship since right now he was in no position to deny his superiors access to this technology should they demand it.

For the next few weeks Axel worked on the energy shielding project while keeping it a secret from everybody else.

It wasn't until the start of August that he switched his focus from the energy shielding to the Engines, or more precisely the Slipspace drive onboard the ship.

The Halcyon-class light cruiser was equipped with a Shaw-Fujikawa Translight Engine, which was capable of making transitions to and from slipstream space, thus enabling faster-than-light interstellar human travel.

A/N: This next part is a description on the functionality of the engine so it might or might not be interesting to some.

The Shaw-Fujikawa Translight Engine functions by creating ruptures, referred to in some sources as wormholes, between normal space and an alternate plane known as slipspace. The nonstandard physics of Slipspace allow it to be used as a shortcut realm, Facilitating Interstellar travel between distant regions in reasonable time (Usually months depending on the distance).

The engine makes ruptures by using high-power cyclic particle accelerators to generate microscopic black holes. Because of their low mass, Hawking radiation gives them a lifetime of around a nanosecond (or potentially a little longer than a whole second) before they evaporate into useless thermal energy. In that nanosecond, the engine manipulates them into forming a coherent rupture between normal space and the slipstream.

An engine remains active for the entire period that a spacecraft is in the slipstream. When active, a Shaw-Fujikawa engine emits alpha (helium nuclei) and beta (fast electrons) particles.

To Humans this was a great innovation which allowed them to travel a large distance in a short amount of time, but the time in which it took for them to go through slipstream varied and was sometimes unreliable.

Which is why he took from a fantasy design from his previous life called the Warp drive. The Warp drive would basically warp space-time so that it moves faster than the speed of light, and that's putting in simple terms.

In reality there was a lot more to it than just warping space-time and that was something that Axel would have to do some research on. But once he did create it then the UNSC would have faster and safer methods of travelling at the speed of light.

While Axel was focused on this Halsey was busy with the future Spartans. While she and Axel often were nice to them, they were also stern and strict commanding absolute obedience from them.

In the end the Spartans were weapons who would be used by the UNSC whether she liked it or not, but somehow she felt that, that would not always be the case. She knew that the UNSC would probably treat them like they were simple machines and not the path forward for humanity which would conflict with her goals of taking humanity to the next level.

But for now she would just focus on the present and come up with a solution once the problem starts to become apparent.