[b]The Bridge of the [i]'Entrant Torch'[/i][/b]

The newly appointed Captain Jonah O'Malley looked over his brand new ship with both awe and anxiety. The first in what would hopefully be many such ships was going to be placed in his hands and he was responsible for making sure that it performed perfectly. 

The [i]Entrant Torch[/i] was a four person ship that had been designed largely with utility in mind; while its primary function as a scouting ship had dictated that the engines, FTL travel, fuel and sensors were given priority, long held wisdom had proven that in space over-specialization got you killed. The fact that several new objectives had presented themselves during construction of the ship only cemented that wisdom.

The end result was a ship that was somewhat bigger and slower then the average scouting ship, but made up for it by having much thicker armor, a turret gun on both the top and bottom of the ship and more space for cargo. The guns had been insisted on due to the very important fact that they really weren't alone out here and that if they were picking up these signals from the cold void of space, those humans that would do them harm would sure as hell be picking them up as well. 

Taking a deep breath, Captain O'Malley said with an almost excited confidence "Take us out. The egg heads want answers and stuff to poke at and we are sure as heck going to provide them with both. Set a course for that asteroid field and let's see if its worth having."

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[b]The A.I Enclave[/b]
 
The A.I Enclave had never taken up a large part of the Event Horizon on account that they hadn't really required that much physical space, but in terms of information and knowledge they had earned themselves a lot of respect amounts the other factions of their mobile nation. They were also the keepers of the possibility archives; The resting place of any idea, upgrade or science experiment that had been thought up during their centuries long journey but due to various limitations could not have been explored. Numberous A.I's over the journey had put themselves into habituation or even outright terminated themselves in order to ensure that the archives remained functional and uncorrupted during the trip.

In the end, their sacrifices and hard work had not been in vain. Numerous scientific and engineering projects and teams had already been established in order to take on different projects that had been stored so that their times might finally have a chance to come, but the A.I Enclave themselves tended to decide which of these ideas in waiting were going to be explored; They were the only ones who could sort through all of the information and weigh up what the Confederacy needed to study and what it could do with the current level of resources and technology.

And what was before them was... interesting. About two hundred years prior, a man named Gue've had submitted the idea for a rifle that could shoot individual, energized particles to potentially destructive effects to whatever was hit by it. Considering that the Confederacy required it's military to gain some kind of advantage for its solders on the field of battle if and when it would come down to it, such a project would be invaluable... but it needed the right kind of minds in order to create a proper prototype for this kind of brand new technology. 

They swiftly assigned it to a team of A.I in order to work on it before pulling up the next project to be judged.

...........................................................

[b]Testing Site Beta, A.I team Theta Foxtrot
[i]March 5th, 6521[/i][/b]

S.T.E.V.E took quite a few steps back as the latest prototype for the so named 'Pulse Rifle' was loaded onto the test firing set up. They had been working for months ever since the project had been assigned to them, but out of the five prototypes before hand the first three hadn't worked at all and the last two outright exploded. While he had confidence that they had worked out the original flaws that had caused the last two to explode, solving one problem tended to result in a new one that couldn't be accounted for until after the fact; Caution was a wise move on his part. 

"Test firing prototype six! Testing firing prototype six! Firing in three... two..." 

S.T.E.V.E would have blinked if he had been originally designed to at what had happened. The button that triggered the firing mechanism was pressed and the gun [i]fired[/i] a single, brightly glowing bolt that zoomed down the firing line, hit the target smack dab in the middle, [i]passed through it[/i] and continued flying into the wall... which it also seemed to leave a glowing, small hole in. 

There was a moment of stunned silence that lasted 0.3 of a second before the rest of the time started to discuss what they had seen. After 6.7 seconds of discussion the firing button was pressed again in order to continue testing the prototype. A second shot fired that traveled through the holes that the first one made, most likely making the hole in the wall much more deeper in the process... 

The gun itself was glowing red from heat through. Mentoring equipment was recording dangerously high levels and it was likely that the gun itself was likely to malfunction due to heat damage... No human would be able to carry it in this state without risk of horrific burns. More testing was going to be required, but S.T.E.V.E was rather hopeful for prototype seven. Progress was clearly being made at least.