Reid's closed-door meeting with Durandal yielded little. The man was here this time to probe him and, on the side, try his luck at getting a handout. What if Reid took a liking to him and suddenly agreed to provide Minovsky Particle Fusion Reactors?
In the end, however, the two sides merely signed another series of trade cooperation agreements (with the New Misurugi Kingdom exporting food and PLANT exporting high-precision equipment) as a show of friendship, and the meeting concluded.
After arranging for Durandal and his entourage to rest for a night at the state guesthouse, Reid took him the next day aboard a supersonic transport (the AC Universe model equipped with a high-energy laser cannon) to Orb to attend the Dawn Company's new Mobile Suit unveiling ceremony and the subsequent handover ceremony for the international rescue organization.
Reid's choice of transport was truly overkill. Given the short distance between the New Misurugi Kingdom and Orb, it felt like the supersonic transport had barely taken off before it was landing.
However, Reid's purpose was to show Durandal that the New Misurugi Kingdom's technology was beginning to spread to all sectors and that its comprehensive national power was in a period of rapid ascent.
Durandal, in fact, was well aware of this. The two men, escorted by two Mass-produced Wing Gundams, chatted and laughed all the way to Orb, landing directly at the Dawn Company's airfield.
The Dawn Company had been in the spotlight recently. With two Z-era Minovsky Particle Fusion Reactors in hand, the whole world was trying to curry favor with them, their doorstep worn smooth by all sorts of former business partners.
The various distant relatives of the company's senior executives in other countries had all come to visit, proving the old saying: "No one asks after the poor in a bustling city, but the rich have distant relatives in the deep mountains."
Furthermore, a flood of modification orders came from numerous partner factories that had previously claimed their needs were met and they couldn't place orders in the short term, single-handedly reviving the half-dead Dawn Company.
However, the Dawn Company was simply taking the money and not doing the work. Strictly adhering to their agreement with Reid, they kept the world in suspense, stating that they couldn't just carelessly tamper with the New Misurugi Kingdom's Minovsky Particle Fusion Reactors. They promised to secretly sell them to everyone as soon as they achieved their own technological breakthrough.
As for when that breakthrough would happen? "Please have faith in the Dawn Company's technology. If the Dawn Company can't make a breakthrough in a short time, then the data would be useless to you anyway."
These business partners were naturally helpless upon hearing this. They also knew that those cooperation orders were, at best, just an entry ticket. If they didn't place them, and the Dawn Company really did achieve a technological breakthrough in the future, they wouldn't be able to buy a single nuclear fusion furnace.
So, with their newfound wealth, the Dawn Company had lavishly decorated the exhibition site today to welcome visitors from all over the world. An uninformed observer might have thought a festival was about to be held.
Then, all the guests received a silhouette of the Mobile Suit to be displayed today, along with the name of the technology being showcased.
Of course, Reid's version was a special edition. Besides the name, it also provided detailed armament and parameter information. This was because Kira would be piloting this Mobile Suit for activities around the world, and its various parameters couldn't be hidden from the major powers for long anyway. Only the Mobile Suit itself was shown as a silhouette to maintain an air of mystery.
However, when Reid saw the silhouette and weapon parameters, his first reaction was to wonder if Kira and the Dawn Company had cheated or awakened memories from another world. How did they manage to create the Build Strike Gundam Full Package?
Of course, the Mobile Suit's name wasn't Build Strike Gundam, but GAT-X105B/FP Heavenly Strike Gundam.
Based on the parameters provided by the Dawn Company and a comparison with the data just secretly passed to Reid by the New Misurugi Kingdom's mole within the company, Reid basically understood the design philosophy of this Mobile Suit.
First, although the machine looked like a Strike Gundam on the outside, its frame was not the Strike Gundam's X100 standard frame. Instead, it used an enhanced frame from the Freedom Gundam to ensure performance under continuous high-intensity combat and a higher equipment load capacity.
In terms of internal conduits, the Dawn Company had clearly not yet developed conduits specifically for Minovsky Particles. Just as Reid had done when he first built the Mystic Lightning, they were simply using the Minovsky Particle Fusion Reactor as a generator, while the internal power system continued to use the CE Universe's excellent electric propulsion design.
Reid had done this back then considering it would be convenient for future reactor swaps; the cost of changing Minovsky Particle pressure lines was much higher than replacing voltage lines.
Here, Reid guessed that the Dawn Company had stumbled upon the right solution by accident.
It was worth noting that, in a horizontal comparison, CE Universe Mobile Suits had a higher electricity utilization rate than all non-super-robot Gundam universes. After all, even a 50-meter-class behemoth like the Destroy could be driven by a large number of batteries while maintaining such powerful firepower and powering three large positron reflector beam shields.
If you gave other Gundam universes the CE Universe's black-tech batteries, they wouldn't be able to create such a battery-powered Mobile Suit. (And don't even mention 00; the Alvatore needed eight pseudo-GN Drives, so its energy efficiency wasn't that high. Besides, 00 later completely abandoned electric propulsion in favor of GN Particles, and its tech tree focused on GN Particle compression rates rather than utilization rates.)
Of course, there was another advantage to the Dawn Company's design: their subsequent design work wouldn't be a shot in the dark due to not having fully understood the properties of Minovsky Particles.
When it came to designing electrically powered MS, the Dawn Company was very professional, especially with the help of a master like Kira this time.
Since he was designing a Mobile Suit for himself, Kira was highly motivated. According to inside sources, the Dawn Company's VPS Armor was rapidly brought to a practical stage thanks to Kira's help in overcoming various technical hurdles.
Yes, the Heavenly Strike Gundam used VPS Armor. In the original story, PLANT's VPS Armor was developed by Dawn Company employees who had fled to PLANT during the First War, so the Orb Dawn Company naturally had the design concept for VPS Armor.
Moreover, from what Reid knew, the VPS Armor on this Heavenly Strike Gundam was different from PLANT's version.
Erika Simmons had designed an auxiliary system for it that integrated power storage and voltage transformation.
This system was born because when the Minovsky Particle Fusion Reactor started up, it had a minimum power output as a generator. If the Mobile Suit didn't need that much electricity at the time, the excess power would be wasted.
Reid solved this problem by adding various super-power-consuming systems to his Mobile Suits; after all, the Lambda Driver alone could ensure that not a single unit of electricity was wasted.
The Dawn Company obviously didn't have so many miscellaneous systems, nor did they have something as ridiculously weight-reducing as AC Gundanium Alloy armor. Therefore, the system designed by Erika Simmons could store all this excess electricity, minimizing energy waste.
Of course, the system's greatest function was to drastically increase the VPS Armor's voltage when the Mobile Suit was hit by a beam attack.
You see, even the power output of a Z-era Minovsky Particle Fusion Reactor couldn't make Phase Shift Armor immune to beams.
But the electricity previously stored by this system could now come into play. Activating the system could instantly boost the voltage of the Mobile Suit's outer armor to the point where it could withstand a direct hit from the Freedom Gundam's MA-M20 Type 'Sirius' Beam Rifle.
The only drawback was that the maximum pressurization time for the full armor was only about ten seconds. If the stored power was not full, the duration would be even shorter.
However, it was said that Kira had modified the program to allow the transformer to locally pressurize specific parts of the armor. But this was an operation that only a few people like Kira and Athrun could perform. No one else could pilot the Mobile Suit in combat with one hand while predicting where their suit would be hit and selectively increasing the armor voltage in that area.
It was important to note that this Mobile Suit did not have an improved Psycommu System, so it couldn't be controlled by thought.
But overall, the performance of the VPS Armor developed by the Dawn Company this time was indeed superior to the version developed by PLANT.
However, considering the developers were Erika Simmons and Kira, one could only say that PLANT's loss was not unjust.
Fortunately, PLANT's VPS Armor didn't even exist yet, so there was no need for comparison. In the timeline Reid was in, the inventor of VPS Armor would only be recorded as the Orb Dawn Company.
With the armor covered, the next item was the specialized backpack. Although it looked unrelated to the Freedom Gundam, the wings on this backpack actually used the Freedom Gundam's movable aerodynamic elastic wing technology.
However, the Dawn Company had modified it into a six-wing combination, increased the size of each individual wing, and integrated technology from the Justice Gundam's support flyer system, the Destiny-00, allowing it to detach from the Mobile Suit and operate independently.
However, to ensure the backpack could fly independently, the physical weapons would require extra magazines and added weight, so this backpack was not equipped with electromagnetic cannons.
Fortunately, the two M100 "Whale" Plasma Convergence Beam Cannons were still there. However, these two cannons were no longer located on the upper part of the backpack but were now independent barrels hanging below. When in use, they could be fired from the waist like the Freedom Gundam's "Balaena" railguns.
Due to the absence of the two electromagnetic cannons, the armaments in the Heavenly Strike Gundam's left and right hands were specially modified to compensate for the loss of firepower.
The beam rifle in its right hand was the [Hundred Faces] Multi-Function Beam Rifle, independently designed and produced by the Dawn Company.
This rifle had a three-section barrel design. Normally, two additional barrels were attached to the top and bottom of the main rifle body.
This gave the beam rifle three firing modes.
Normal Mode: It was just an ordinary beam submachine gun, with an attack pattern and power similar to the Hyperion Gundam's RFW-99 Type 'Stigma Flag' Beam Submachine Gun.
Beam Rifle Mode: The upper barrel would lower and connect to the muzzle of the beam submachine gun. The submachine gun's firing port would shift to the left to ensure a direct connection with the inner barrel.
In this mode, the weapon became a beam rifle with power comparable to the M1 Astray's Type 71 Beam Rifle.
The final Sniper Mode, naturally, involved the lower barrel extending further forward, greatly increasing the beam's range. However, its power was weaker than a typical beam sniper rifle, but it was sufficient to take out a warship's bridge or snipe a PS Armor-equipped MS.
Moreover, the transformation time for this rifle was very short, capable of switching modes in just 0.5 seconds, and it didn't require the Mobile Suit to detach and reattach parts; the gun transformed automatically.
In short, this multi-function beam rifle sacrificed beam power to meet the demands of different environments and missions.
In Reid's opinion, he might have to clone this gun with his Sharingan.
Although it was a bit of a downgrade for the Heavenly Strike Gundam, since the beam rifle mode's power was only about the same as the M1 Astray's rifle.
But in this era, the rifle's power was absolutely sufficient. By CE 74, when beam shields became widespread on high-end MS, there would be no difference between the M1 Astray's rifle and the Freedom's rifle, as neither could penetrate a beam shield anyway.
Against grunt suits, the only difference between hitting a target with a Type 71 Beam Rifle and a 'Sirius' Beam Rifle was the size of the hole they made.
Therefore, Reid planned to clone it and equip the Ghost Jegans with it. This would greatly reduce logistical pressure in the future. Warships on sorties would no longer need to stock many different types of beam weapons, at most just a few high-power, ultra-long-range beam sniper rifles.
With the Heavenly Strike Gundam's right-hand beam rifle being so fancy, its left-hand shield naturally couldn't be left behind.
This shield was also a composite offensive shield, with a built-in Heavy Ion Beam Cannon to satisfy the Mobile Suit's need for continuous beam sweeps.
The exterior, like the Freedom Gundam's, was an Anti-Beam Laminated Armor Shield. But the clever trick was that this shield was actually a thickened version. The outer anti-beam laminated armor could open to the left and right, revealing a Yata Mirror Armor Shield inside.
This outer anti-beam laminated armor existed purely to block beam sabers. If faced with a ranged beam attack, the shield could be opened, increasing the defensive area while the original shield area could directly reflect the beam attack back.
If this shield were in the hands of someone like Reid, who liked to play dirty tricks, an unsuspecting opponent could easily be killed on their first encounter.
But a kid like Kira probably couldn't unleash this shield's full potential, so Reid also planned to copy it for his own use. It just so happened that those three golden Yata Mirror shields hadn't been used since their first deployment. He could take them for modification; they should be able to give his future enemies a nasty surprise.
Thus, even after removing the customary two head-mounted Vulcan Guns, this Heavenly Strike Gundam still retained four beam cannons, so the multi-lock function was still present. It just went from being a "Rainbow Cannon" to a "Four-Color Cannon."
The remaining armaments were the two MA-M01 Type 'Scorpio' Beam Sabers on its waist, the same model as the Freedom Gundam's.
However, the Heavenly Strike Gundam's current firepower was not much lower than the Freedom Gundam's, and it was much more versatile.
Coupled with the fact that its electronic equipment was even better than the Freedom's, its overall performance already surpassed the Freedom Gundam. It was as if all the resources originally intended for building the Gundam Eclipse had been poured into this Heavenly Strike Gundam.
Even Durandal, who only had access to the special edition parameters provided by the Dawn Company and not the mole's data, nodded repeatedly, constantly remarking that the VPS Armor and the multi-function beam rifle were excellent. (His data only listed the shield as a regular Anti-Beam Laminated Armor Shield and didn't mention the VPS Armor's energy storage burst mode.)
It seemed that as long as the Heavenly Strike Gundam's demonstration didn't flop, and no organization like the "Innovators" showed up to spoil the party with a Mobile Suit of overwhelming performance, Durandal would definitely have a good long chat with Cagalli before he left.
Reid now only hoped that the old fox wouldn't manage to sweet-talk every last detail out of Cagalli, down to the color of her underwear. He'd better send someone to remind Erika Simmons to attend the meeting as a technical advisor, to at least keep an eye on Cagalli.
Finally done.....
(End of Chapter)