Preemptive Strike 2

Alongside his orders, he received a package of data that he had initially assumed to be details about the mission.

It wasn't.

The file name was labeled 'reading materials' so he could be forgiven for thinking that there were some top secret stuff in there, but no.

What it contained is exactly what was stated on the tin, reading materials.

He couldn't be sure, but from the size he inferred that every book recorded digitally must be contained in the file. Millions of entries, all of which could be fit in a data chip the size of his big toe.

A second file was transferred an hour into his evacuation from the hangar, titled 'visual entertainment'. Once again, full length movies and episodic productions galore filtered into the ship's data cores.

He thought it was weird, but fashioned it to be growth materials for ARC.

It was horrendously behind the curve when it came to references. Perhaps the egg-heads were trying something new to remedy that?

The last file, even larger than the previous two, was named 'Historical Record' and was filled with documents. Don, at this point well outside of the carrier, opened a few of them up out of curiosity. He was met with walls of text that made little sense to him as he read them.

This was definitely something for ARC. There was no way they could have expected Donovan to know what to do with this.

A final bit of information filtered in, a message. The details of his mission and, to his surprise, more information on some of the more obscure features of his ship, Noah.

Some of the information governed the use of commands in regards to ARC. Other information covered the contents of Noah's armor, specifically the layering and how to use it to the greatest effect. There was some data regarding the use of his sensor arrays as weapons, though that was purely theoretical and would be less effective than some of the other tools at his disposal, notably the Cutters and the 30mm autocannons.

The most interesting tidbits by far were the details of ARC's damage control capabilities and the specifics of the railguns he has access to.

ARC had the capability to perform repairs through the use of nanodrones and manipulating the inertial dampener. Apparently, the reason ARC had not told Don about this was because "You didn't ask about my specific capabilities." and "This information was best left unmentioned as it would encourage reckless behavior."

It made a modicum of sense, but this made Don feel like there might be more that ARC was hiding. He did consider the possibility that there could be things that even ARC was unaware of.

From their conversations, it was obvious that ARC was not 'raised' in the Noah. He was probably developed in some secret extraterrestrial lab, kept secret from just about everybody for fear of rebellion.

Don also had to consider the fact that there might be some funky stuff with conflicting orders and protocols. Maybe something like ARC was told to not divulge certain information in spite of Don having the proper clearance level.

Didn't matter though, Don was not familiar with the protocol that a non-organic would have to follow. He didn't plan on gaining experience with this field of study either.

Just flying his big black brick was enough for him.

Shoving his unspoken queries aside, he turned his attention to the details of his railguns.

"JG-C Mod 217/2-X. Quite the mouthful, eh?"

ARC was unresponsive, probably immersing itself in its studies. He decided to do the same.

JG stood for Jump-Gun, the official name of the weapon class. The -C stood for Capital class, the largest available. Mod 217, model number 217, the /2 denoted it was in a twin arrangement, by far the most common arrangement. The X then must stand for experimental.

At this point the magic that they were the very largest kinetic weapons available to a vessel had long since worn off. He had fired them a few times during his test runs, and they were honestly kinda disappointing.

They eviscerated the asteroids, that much is not to be mistaken.

He just felt that everything else about them was a bit of a let-down. There was no heat glow on the hull, everything was internalized and the heatsink was absolutely phenomenal. There was no *click* or *chunk* as the rod left his ship. No whir of an autoloader moving the next rod into the tube. No static buzz from the EM radiation on his comms.

There wasn't even plasma chaff from the rod being torn apart as it accelerated!

The most exciting thing was the huge push from the Noah lurching back, something about Newton's laws of motion. Even that wasn't going to be as exciting anymore as ARC had told him it had figured out a way to further increase the effectiveness of the inertial dampener.

The crazy computer was actually going to remove the internal atmosphere from the dampener's zone of influence. Well, all the internal atmosphere except where he was sitting.

'Mighty considerate that one.' Don raised an eyebrow at one of the light fixtures. ARC didn't have anything resembling a face, but the lights would occasionally change color when conversing as an auxiliary to ARC's tone. It was a neat trick.

He buried his nose in his tablet.

Model 217. Don't the newest ships use Model 209's? Most of the fleet is still on either the 205's and 199's. Some of the older ships might even be on backlog with the 192's an ancient design at this point.

There really wasn't much difference between them, they all launched heavy shit at imperceivably high velocities. The older ones just got hotter faster, wasted more energy, were bigger, and had some issues hitting targets at their maximum range.

What possessed the designers to put a two generation jump in weapon design on a ship which was meant for recon. Surely there would be a better use for the space.

At the same time as he was thinking that, Don had already decided hat he didn't care.

He had permission to fire the most powerful railguns available to the navy.

What more could he ask for?