257 Field testing 1

"... What's going on here?"

Arriving at a particular beach Dax came across a slightly peculiar sight, while Mu appeared to be spending her time teasing Lilly and Alice, Ra was busy petting Mare's head with a slightly panicked look on her face, spotting Dax Ra's face bloomed into hopeful optimism, it seemed like she couldn't say no to Mare and was thus stuck patting Mare's head for a long time. 

[Dax save me!]

[Nah.]

[DAX SAVE ME!]

Deciding to ignore Ra for the moment, Dax greeted the others and updated Lux on the current situation, informing her that elder countermeasures were finally ready for field testing.

"Field testing huh? Count me in. Mu, make sure that there's another set of 5th generation armour ready for me."

"It is already in production, more importantly, Dax where did you find this girl? She's so cute~"

"Dax, don't just ignore me! Unhand me, woman!"

Somewhere along the way, Mu had once more caught Lilly in a solid hug and refused to let her go.

"I actually ran into her while I was captured by some elvers, but I can promise she's even cuter when you're actually nicer to her so let her down."

"Che, fine…"

As Mu reluctantly let Lilly go the small elver hurriedly ran to Dax's side, hiding behind him as she started complaining with a pout on her face.

"Is that really your sister? I seriously don't like that woman…"

"She's just a little excited about meeting you and Alice, that's all. Mu is nice once you get to know her."

"I highly doubt that."

"Dax, where's Terra?"

With Alice's seemingly harmless question the joyful atmosphere surrounding the reunion all but disappeared, leaving Dax to explain the presumed fate of the deep recon operation which had ended in complete failure with none members of the operation returning from the elder occupied imperial continent.

"She's still alive."

"Alice…"

With the news of her close friend declared missing, presumed dead Alice chose to avoid reality as tears formed in her eyes, before a look of determination formed on her face.

"Take me with you when you go kill those things."

"I can't do that, the elder countermeasures require a neural connection."

"Then promise me this: When you eventually travel into the imperial continent you will do everything in your power to look for survivors."

"That's the plan."

---

After meeting with Lux and the others Dax immediately travelled into orbit with Lux, Ra and Mu, their destination was the ship Mu and Ra had used to cross dimensions, onboard it was a state of the art manufacturing facility which had been working at max capacity around the clock lately to manufacture 5th generation manatech equipment which would enable Dax, Phillipa and Lux to take on the elders.

"So that's it?"

The ship in question looked nothing like the other spaceships Dax had ever seen. The half kilometre long, 1 kilometre wide, 200 metres tall, arrowhead shaped spaceship was fully enclosed in completely white armour segments with a highly irregular scale like arrangement. Contrary to Dax's expectations the back of the rear of the ship had a single pair of propulsion units near the centre of the ship while the rest of the back appeared to be filled with a mix of access docks and open hangers containing all sorts of different smaller ships and landing crafts. 

"It looks like you're packing a small army…"

"Well, we didn't know what kind of situation we were running into so we came prepared for all sorts of situations, luckily those preparations also made sure we included a state of the art zero g forge on board, thanks to that the entire craft can rely on mining to stay entirely self sufficient."

Docking with the battlecruiser the group met up with Phillipa who was already on board the craft and headed for the manufacturing wing.

"So, what do we have to work with? Give me the full rundown."

"Right. Studying the creatures you guys have taken to calling 'elders' we have learned a lot about them, first is the creatures strange method of propulsion.

Tuning on a hologram while she continued explaining, Mu displayed a 3d model of one of the elders, highlighting the area around it.

"It seems that the creatures somehow generate their own supply of the special particle using some unknown method inside their body, from what we've observed so far it seems that this internal supply of mana is used to generate a sort of protective forcefield around them which remains active at all points in time."

Manipulating the 3d render as she continued explaining, Mu painted multiple bubbles around the elder.

"This defensive 'forcefield' is partly structured like a gravity barrier, with the outermost part of it detecting and slowing down, and capturing munitions fired at it when activated, past that is secondary and tertiary barriers which neutralize anything from ionizing radiation to thermal attacks but those are not that important. The main issue is the first part of the barrier which slows down or deflects physical attacks, to effectively bypass it we've developed a few weapon prototypes."

Pointing to a line of reinforced weapon crates with the Lazarus logo on it, Mu let Ra take over the explanation as she was the weapons expert.

"First is the simplest way of bypassing the barrier: hitting it with a projectile which moves through the barrier faster than it can be registered, to that end I humbly present an entirely new type of rifle, the Lazarus type 19 mana powered anti barrier coil rifle / ETC hybrid. It fires a newly developed 10 millimetre hypersonic armour piercing ammunition, the only downside with the system being a relatively low rate of fire with frequent interruption due to cooling or charging cycles enabling the frankly absurd amount of armour and barrier penetration. I'm also designing a 50 millimetre version of the system for mounting on vehicles, although there are still a few kinks I need to work out before it'll be viable."

"I'm calling dibs."

Looking at the black rifle with purple glowing segments Phillipa immediately claimed it as her own, some part of her qiton brain felt she simply needed to have it.

"I already knew you would say that, so I've already customized one of them just the way you want it."

"Yay, Ra I love you~"

"Then there's this one for you Lux, I know you love to get up close and dirty."

Opening up the next crate, Ra showed Lux a long single bladed black sword with purple lines running through its construction.

"Instead of bypassing the barrier, this mana powered sword creates a localized anti mana field event along its blade, jamming the elders grav barrier, there's nothing this puppy can't cleave its way through as long as you get close enough."

"Well, getting up close and personal is my speciality."

While Lux and Phillipa were busy playing around with their new toys, Ra turned to Dax with a smile on her face.

"Finally there this one for you Dax, the Lazarus R9 remote release flechette launcher, this modified heavy rifle fires a dual purpose 50 millimetre projectile equipped with a grav field jammer, once the projectile is past the defences of the target it explodes with enough explosives to level a city block, or you can detonate it early to create a large jamming field."

"Sweet… But how are we even going to get within effective range of the elders? I don't know if you're aware Ra, but the by far most annoying thing about the elders are their offensive spells."

"Don't worry about that, I've already figured that out~ It's part of the main system."

Coming to Ra's rescue, Mu revealed the central part of the 5th generation manatech system, a powered exoskeleton with the same kind of scale like segmented armour as the Hermies, just scaled down.

"Since our first done was taken out by an elder I've looked into how they do their seeming physics breaking attacks that seem to annihilate everything in their way."

"So did you figure it out?"

"Nope, I'll need a sample to do that. But I did figure out how to disrupt their ability to target anything, which is almost as good. More importantly, start suiting up, we've identified a lone elder that's going to make a perfect unwilling test subject~"