[center][h2]Royal Shipyards, Orenjiro[/h2][/center]

"You called me away from the frontlines for this, Countess. It had better be as important as you implied."

"I assure you Empress Laidach, it is."

The two women stood in the open air, watching a giant whale-like creature float by in the upper atmosphere of the gas planet. It was an area rich in oxygen, rich enough that an Abh could walk around outside unaided. The entire area was protected from the crushing gravity of the world by the same type of gravity manipulation field used on starships. In fact, the technology was based off of it. The wind, however, was only reduced enough to allow people to not have their skin shaved off by it. Their hair was constantly blown, Countess Lasis ending up with her hair flying in the air like it was forced to by a special effects team. The Empress wasn't as lucky, her bob cut having been completely mussed by the wind.

"Just Laidach, please. Now, what exactly is it?"

"See for yourself, Em-... Laidach."

Just as Lasis spoke, the bow of a starship poked out from behind the solid metal cover of one of the largest drydocks at the ancient facility. The most immediately odd thing about it was that it wasn't the usual light blue of an Abh military vessel, instead, it was a glaring white. As the ship continued to move forward, a giant ring came into view, almost like a gravity ring from one of the older ships. It was, however, completely different. It clearly wasn't designed to spin, and didn't have any windows on it. It was right then that Laidach realized what it really was.

"You cracked the warp equation!" She exclaimed, not even trying to hide her excitement.

"I did more than that. We cracked negative mass entirely, I've drawn up plans for negative mass generators, warp turbines, it's amazing stuff!"

"Warp turbines... you mean-"

"Yes. We can say goodbye to fossil fuels. I just made an electric generator that doesn't need any input after it's started, and can generate more electricity than anything else. That ship's full of them."

Laidach almost asked what the ship needed them for, but she quickly saw the answer as the ship moved forward. There were giant turrets, each marked with numerous yellow triangles, each with a different symbol inside of them. One had a psi symbol on it. Another had a poppy on it, for some reason. Finally, the third one had a staircase that connected with itself in a way that was only possible due to the two dimensions it was drawn on. All had words in the ancient language under them, which Laidach certainly could not read.

"What do those mean?" She asked, pointing at them.

"The first one on the left warns against things called 'macroscale quantum systems', whatever the hell they are. The second is warning against a 'motivational hazard', presumably some kind of addiction danger. The final one has something to do with a thinking problem."

"Why are they in the ancient language?"

"That's how I found them. This ship isn't exactly an original design, I more or less just replaced the antiproton turrets with gluon disturbers. The shipyard fabricators automatically added the things, I spent a week figuring out what they hell they meant."

"Wait, you perfected [i]those[/i] too?"

"Yep! Threw the things straight into mass production. Next batch of warships is going to be armed with them, but that's not the point of this. The point of this is [i]that[/i]."

Lasis motioned towards the ship, which was now fully revealed, its stark white hull standing out against the orange sky. It had dozens of tri-barrel gluon disturber turrets spaces out across its hull, mounted on ball-like structures sunken deep into the hull to give them a full range of motion. Missile tubes lined the ship as well, holding swarms of antimatter missiles inside. Letters in the ancient language lined the bow of the ship, which immediately caught Laidach's attention.

"What are those characters?" She asked, pointing at them.

"They say 'Eff-Ess-Ess [i]Excalibur[/i]', I don't know what it means, aside from some relation to a straightsword. The smaller ones, though, are easy. They mean 'May the warriors who refused war live on, and may the memory of their parents never die'."

"That ship design was meant to be found." Said the Empress, the hairs on her neck standing up. "I can feel it."

"You're right. The file it was in said so, it was meant for the warriors to use against a single enemy of the ancient empire. I don't think they'd object to us using it against the Romans, do you?"

"No I don't... what are its specs?"

"It has a standard FTL drive like ours, supplemented with a negative energy warp drive best suited to quick escapes from battle. It had a spinal mount that I put a giant hybrid gluon disturber/antiproton lance on, theoretically, it could drill straight into a planet's core and let it collapse in on itself. You've seen the turrets for yourself, they're mirrored on the other side. A hangar bay runs the length of the ship, surrounding the spinal lance. It can hold two hundred fighters, which I've specially designed for use on the ship. The missile tubes hold antimatter missiles of all warhead types, and some kind of fabrication system I don't fully understand makes new ones if you feed it antimatter and... uh... apparently anything. Still have no idea on how the hell that works. Oh yes, the shields! It has a standard conversion shield as the bottom layer, which I added. The other layers are all some sort of ablative shielding, which I again don;t really understand. What I do understand is an emergency failsafe which activates in the event of a total shield failure. It generates a solid plasma field around the ship, which absorbs fire to allow an escape. It's ablative too, but without the bleedthrough the other shields have. If you're brought down to it, you jump out. I don't care about the honor code, you're not saving yourself, you're saving the ship. It's our best chance against the Romans."

"Is it ready for combat right now?"

"Yes, but I've got something else to show you."

Lasis motioned for the Empress to follow, which she did, though she wasn't exactly sure of where they were going. After a lengthy trip through the giant ancient facility, they came to a laboratory with a [url=http://vignette3.wikia.nocookie.net/codegeass/images/b/b8/Akatsuki_-_Line_Art.jpg/revision/latest/scale-to-width/300?cb=20091107230316]giant, humanoid vehicle standing in the center[/url].

"This is a new combat vehicle, powered by a warp turbine I manged to get a few scans of the enemy aerial vehicles on Kibo-Hosh, they seemed pretty effective. It's equipped with an antigravity system, neural interface, and two wrist-mounted gluon disturbers. It can hold any kind of weapon large enough, two of which I have designed specifically for it. A sized-up nanoweave katana and an automatic railgun. The gluon disturbers can handle anything, but they use up power insanely fast, and the warp turbine needs some to operate. If they're fired recklessly, the thing will just die right there. So I've added that extra armament. For mobility, it has negative mass manipulation devices for flight, and I didn't give it legs for show. However, it also has foot-mounted wheels, which will let it move faster than any tank on land. The main advantage it has over the Romans is cost. Apparently, Roman versions are extremely expensive, and they could only bring ten to Kibo-Hosh. This, however, has already been put into mass production at restored factories here on Orenjiro. We're sending transports to the homeworld to prepare."

"Prepare for what?"

"The end of the war. With these new combat units, we can invade a whole world. The new battleships will be more than enough to counter the Roman fleet, and your ship is the best we've ever seen."

"You mean-"

"Yes. The fifth planet will fall."

((The rest is coming. Kinda had to have the Abh make their knightma-... I mean "Advanced Anthropomorphic Combat Vehicle"))