Chapter 368 - Far Future Ch. 78 – You Know Sometimes Wards Have Two Meanings... (1/2)
”So, this place wasn't even designed by the Warp, was it?” I conjectured aloud, allowing my eyes to go deeper, looking into the pulses of energy that formed this place and its boundaries, definitely sweeping out from the direction we were heading. Briggs lit up his and did the same. He didn't have the Knowledge Depth that I did, save in a couple key categories, but he had mechanical insight that wasn't all that out of place even dealing with multiple types of physics here.
”No.” He pursed his lips. ”You ever seen the harmonics for a Crown field?”
”A mechanical one?” I riffled through a perfect+ memory. ”Can't say I have. The psionic version is basically a mirror of a magical one with adjustments for psi vs mana. I can't say I've seen someone using a weird science Crown field...”
”Well,” he mentally pointed out some of the sweeping patterns in the sky and land, mixed into all the other shit and actually pretty damn hard to pick out, ”those look like an inverted and very large Crown field to me.”
Brainfarts exploded in my backbrain as the researchers promptly went diving for verification and correlation. They were having exciting times back in the labs... especially after some of the Coronal and Umbran researchers were invited in and didn't want to leave...
A Crown field was a personal version of a Throne field, the Protection from Chaos effect that let most ships sail through the Warp. Inverted... not opposite. Opposite would be Protection from Law...
”Vulnerability to Chaos?” I murmured, spinning through the math and Craft of it. Protection effects were defensive, abjurative effects, right next door to the living axiomatic Fate-based repulsion effects of Curses. This was like a combination of the two...
A massive area effect field that rendered the area vulnerable to the Warp. The Warp would be able to infringe on reality within the area, but the fact it was an artificial field would mean the effect would be intrinsically unstable, especially since in reality it would always be moving relative to the Warp...
”I'll run with that,” I agreed. ”The different tech zones would be from different harmonic overlays, like standing waves of specific intensity or type, allowing different levels and types of synchronization. Where the edge of the field is would be akin to a spatial breach, but more like a reality re-write. That also fits...”
”Which begs yet another question...” he nodded, while the eggers in Markspace verified the preliminary readings, and were going for stress-testing against all the factors they could think of.
”More like sticks it screaming in your face, demanding your attention.”
”Uh-huh. So, I don't suppose you have the schematics for a Throne Generator.”
I shook my head. ”Hadn't been necessary. They only make them in the Core System of a Sector. TL 12 stuff.” Helldiving was only TL 11, of course...
”Mmm.” He looked at the sky again, before dropping his glowing eyes again. Gold backlights on the pale violet looked soooo sexy... ”So, just how big a Throne field would be needed to generate an area that covered half a continent?”
”Ugh. I know so many people who want to invert a Crown field and find out.”
He chuckled at the idea, despite himself. Yeah, you wouldn't get executed for starting a Warp Incursion for nothing, would you? ”We still have to go through this area...”
”Yeah, I think our chances of clearing it are pretty low,” I murmured as the beam cannon of the landcrawler followed whatever massive shell from the main gun, and punched through the chest of the megamech. There was a half-second delay before the fusion core overloaded, and nuclear warp energies went kablooey in ectoplasmic nuclear fire.
A missile came falling from the sky at Mach 20, punched into the landcrawler, and set off its own power core. Briggs and I watched, devasight making us immune to the blinding effect, and Radiant resistance meaning we weren't worried about radiation damage.
”What do you think the chances are that we'll find non-Warped forces here?” he asked rhetorically.
”About the same chance as it would make for great fun on the part of the Warped Gods,” I replied thoughtfully.
”Well, don't kill humans not showing the signs of the Warp Gods,” he noted for us both, his helm snapping closed. He pulled his shoulder-las mount out of his Masspack and quickly affixed to his left shoulder. It synched up quickly, hummed, and began to look about independently of him, prepping to rotate. The power cable extended into his Masspack where his supplemental generator was humming, and frost fell from the barrels, ready for some extended usage.
”Buying into the whole future is ranged combat meme?” I asked, laughing, as my Tails rose behind me, and burning Spikes rotated around them. Paten was in hand, waiting for use.
”Hammer Shards max range fifty yards. Need something with more reach,” he admitted without shame. ”Shall we?”
”We shall!”
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It took us a while to locate something that wasn't Warped. That's code talk for saying we slaughtered... a whole lot of stuff.