Countryman walked into the council chambers. It had been four days since the battle at Draxus. The fleet had already secured and extracted everything of interest. The complex on the surface had also been destroyed and the planetary surface glassed. This meeting was to discuss the gains of the battle, and how they would adapt to the changing Cylovan fleet. That new battleship class was the first of its kind they had encountered, but it would not be the last. The new class was as yet undesignated, but it was interesting. Unlike every previous Cylovan ship it was not also a carrier. It had no hangars, and that factor removed a weakness while creating a new one. They never corrected the original flaw their ships had, a severe lack of AA mounted weapons. Their reliance on beam weaponry was also exploitable.

As he sat down, he listened to the reports being presented. While he had already heard them, not everyone on the council had. Samantha Greyman for example had not, and she was rather attentive at the moment. In short the reports were covering the battleship, what they knew about it, and how the fleet had countered its new metaphase disruptor. The report that came up after covered what they had stolen from the Cylovan research facility. There was quite a bit of data taken, but the most important item was data on Cylovan armor manufacturing techniques. They now knew how the Cylovans worked with neutronium. Even better they had data on an improved neutronium lattice they had been working on.

The Cylovans had been working with new neutronium based alloys and artificial polymers to produce a strong armored lattice to support a new Duranium based alloy plating. The data they had seemed promising and would have tripled the structural integrity of their ships. For the fleet, however, it was only a start. He already had Ruri assign a few labs on creating their own Neutronium-Rydium based alloy lattice. Integrating that with standard overlord hull plating would likely be expensive, but any equipped ship would be virtually indestructible. At least in theory. Ruri promised they would have a prototype for a next-gen armor using the neutronium lattice technology they captured before the year was out. Given the resources, she assigned they could have it in as little as three months, but he figured it would likely take five months. He already had a ship on the drawing board to test it, and a young woman in mind to command it.

A young commander had recently caught his attention. Commander Jane Kirk was the first officer of a light cruiser that ran into trouble two days ago. The exact nature of the trouble notwithstanding, she had distinguished herself nicely there. Her captain had even put her in for commendation and recommended her for a promotion. Countryman had to agree, especially based on her performance under pressure. She already had some command experience as well, but that was the point of the first officer position. They served as an advisor to the captain, but they mainly gained experience for command themselves. He had also been looking over her record, and believed she was the kind of person that would do well with the new ship.

As the report came to an end, he dismissed his line of thought. Before he could speak Ashley Drakes spoke up, “In light of this new ship, we need to consider countermeasures in case we encounter more like it.”

Airi spoke up, “The question is what countermeasures. That ship is vulnerable to fighters, but we can bet they won’t deploy future ships like it without escorts. I would still recommend that we include at least one carrier in all future battlegroups.”

Drakes responded, “That is sensible, but we can’t rely on fighters alone. We need more to ensure reliable protection of our capital ships.”

Countryman interjected at that point, “Supplemental Ablative Hull armor. It’s cheap to install, easy to repair, and far cheaper to replace than overlord plating. A couple meters of ablative plating could substantially increase the life expectancy of our cruisers against Cylovan Metaphase weapons. I have had a lab working on it since we first captured their metaphase weapons. Ideally, we want Regenerative Ablative armor, but there are some problems we need to work out for that.”

Samantha Greyman frowned, “Ablative armor? I’m not familiar with that technology. Must be fairly new.”

Countryman shook his head, and said, “Actually the concept is fairly old. It can be traced back to the Old Earth’s twentieth century and early spacecraft. Early spacecraft used ablative heat shields to protect from the rigors of atmospheric entry. These shields fell out of favor later and were replaced by superior shielding technology. Ones that had no need to ablate in order to protect a ship from atmospheric entry, but the rise of laser weaponry during the colonial wars led to a resurgence of ablative armor technologies. Ablative armor saw heavy use during the second colonial war but was displaced by polarized and early overlord armor later in the war. The problem with ablative armor is that you lose a bit of it every time you take a hit. This is because ablative armor doesn’t try to absorb or deflect incoming fire, instead a layer of plating vaporizes on each impact. Leaving the layer beneath relatively unscathed. It can be very effective, but it can get rather expensive to maintain. The plating has to be replaced after every battle whereas more conventional plating doesn’t have to be replaced unless it was breached.’

Samantha frowned deeper, “Interesting, but cant the plates simply be repaired?”

Ruri answered that question, “Not really. They can be recycled, and ablated layers can be restored in a nanite bath. However, they have to be removed first to be placed in a bath. We have been working on a way to regenerate the plating while still attached to the hull, but we have nothing promising yet. Nanites or microbots are our best bet, but we have a few problems to work out with that idea.”

Airi interjected, “That’s all fine, but would the plate hold up against low yield shots? If it ablates every time it is hit that could be a problem.”

Megumi Richards smiled, and said, “I can answer that. It won’t be difficult to reinforce it with a projected structural field. How it responds to fire depends on the materials as well. With the right material, it would resist most weapons, but ablate when more powerful weapons are fired against the plating.”

Ruri nodded, “We found several promising choices for a supplemental ablative armor. The most promising is a tripolymor blend that is highly resistant to disruptor damage. Conventional and metaphase disruptors, but it also resists particle, plasma and laser based weapons to a similar degree. This is what we want. We don’t want the ablative material to ablate too easily, or it would be worthless,” she paused and then projected an image, “Now as you can see when a powerful enough discharge hits the plate, the outer layer vaporizes leaving the layer beneath unscathed. The vapor also has an effect on the beam, most notable in laser based weapons, but there is a lesser effect to disruptor based weapons.

“As the simulation here shows, that plate withstood eight direct hits from a metaphase disruptor before failing. That is eight extra hits worth of protection. It certainly raises the survivability of our ships. For further protection we can also conduct internal modifications to the overlord plating and shields. That would allow the standard overlord plating to absorb three maybe four more hits before failing. After that any successive hit to that section of armor would penetrate.”

Countryman noted that she was done, and then said, “That seems to cover everything. Supplemental ablative armor, shield and armor upgrades, and ensuring carriers are attached to all battle groups should be sufficient for now, agreed?”

They all quickly agreed that implementing those changes would be good for now. They then moved on to the next topic. Countryman began, “Now that Cylovan armor technology we got our hands on, is interesting. Particularly the data on neutronium alloys, and lattice augmented plate. With some work, we could adapt our own armor to use that technology. To that end, I have placed a battlehawk cruiser on the drawing board to be used as a test vessel for the new technology.”

He pressed a button and a diagram was projected, and then continued, “As you can see I left quite a bit blank. Most notably what materials she will be built with, and when the keel will actually be laid down. Right now armament is listed as standard for a configuration A Battlehawk cruiser.”

Ruri spoke up, “I assume I have discretion to alter that, as I see fit?”

“Given that the ship is intended as a testbed for the new armor the science division will be working on, the answer is obviously yes.”

She leaned forward, “I am not ready for announcements yet, but I have labs working on improvements in several fields in addition to that new armor that will need testing in a few months. Assuming the current progress holds.”

Countryman already knew what those projects were, but did not feel the need to talk about them. “We do need to have decided on a name for this future construction, and add her to the registry.”

Greyman spoke, “For cruisers, the registry number 4117 is still open I believe. We can mark it down there. Given the armor, may I suggest a name indicating strength, perhaps Bulwark.”

“We could just call it the Fortress,” proposed Misaki.

Countryman said, “Keeping to that theme Bastion is another good name.”

The conversation continued for a while before they ultimately decided to name it the Bastion. It was slated to begin construction in six months, by then the armor would be in prototype phase and they expected to have the design finalized. It was provisionally listed as a configuration D Battlehawk class cruiser however its weapons, armor, engines, and even the shields and stealth systems were left unlisted.

Then everyone’s mood changed, Samantha was the first to speak, “I guess that leaves us with the only topic no one wants to talk about.”

Countryman who had been keeping up said, “We might as well dismiss here. There has not been much progress with that, and frankly you’re right I don’t want to talk about it.”

Ruri sighed, “Nor do I. I do have one project in mind that I would like to discuss instead.”

Countryman, now curious, inquired, “What kind of project?”

She shifted, “The Cylovan reliance on disruptor based beam weaponry is something we can exploit. I have a few ideas for integrating basic mitigation shields into our standard armor. Using an adaptive matrix tuned specifically for disruptor based weapons. It might be worth looking into.”

Several heads nodded, and Richards said, “That might be worth looking into alright. How effective do you think this supplemental integrated shielding would be, and would it complicate maintenance of the armor?”

Ruri said, “I have only done some preliminary simulations, so take everything I say with a grain of salt. It should not significantly complicate maintenance. A few new circuits and components would need to be incorporated, but the nano repair method we use now should work nicely for correcting any issues that may crop up. As for effectiveness, simulations show it could reduce the power of Cylovan Metaphase disruptors as much as sixty percent. Compare that to the twenty five percent the currently slated upgrades are expected to achieve, and you can see it should be worth it.”

Countryman said, “Go ahead and get on it, and get back to us later on when we can expect these Beam shields. They might prove useful and every avenue to counter these new cylovan weapons should be pursued.”