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it is finished.
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Worldbuilding Subreddit
Kill Machine Aster Yukon partakes in a peacemaking intervention above Haneymett
A South Margaritiferi skyship oth'line was caught beaming the surface of the Jovian moon Hanymett in violation of good taste and common decency. The Axis State of Earth found this greatly embarassing - after all, the moon was supposed to be under their protection, and here comes some puny bandit state from the worse side of Mars with nothing less than a mighty vessel that Axis itself had sold to them some two decades prior to "help maintain peace".
Their immediate response was to ruin their foreign relations further still.
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Through some unfortunate miscalculation all Axial skyships assigned to Yupisirnu Svera were on the opposite end of their orbit. As is commonly known, flying all the way around Jupiter takes a long ass time, even with the shiny new fume-core drives of the Void Navy. However, another solution just happened to be stowed in what was officially a civilian cargo ship flying right by at a near orbital delta speed to Hanymett.
Aster Yukon (Хастэа Юукон /ɦástɯa̯ juúkon/ [ʕɑ́stɘ̀ɐ̯̀ ɥǔːkʷɔ̀n]) - the third Starkiller-class Kill Machine of the World Liberation Ordnance. A godlike 300 foot tall robot.
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What happened next illustrated pretty clearly why nuclear lifeforms are not supposed to be used against another state - it's quite unfair, really. The poor boat barely got to register some man-shaped blip on radar and already had its whole reaction mass tank flash-fused and replaced by a neat hole.
Every party involved felt awful about it. The State of Hanymett didn't feel protected at all and could've handled it anyway. The Ordnance declared the whole engagement a massive failure - Aster was overexerted, flashing a beam yield around ten times larger than necessary, and had to be brought all the way back to Earth or else have its lens split in twain the next time it shines. The Void Navy hated to see Ordnance do their job for them. The Axis government was greatly embarassed. South Margaritifer lost a ship they had no way to replace in what they termed a misunderstanding. And finally Yuma and Jova, Aster's drive espers, had to somehow convince themselves that what they did was not murder.
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A colorful ring can be seen right before the glimmer. Each Kill Machine's beam bombard has a unique color profile and a name tied to it - the Rainbow for Aster Yukon, th'Aurora for Volta Yural, and Morrowlight for Mod Saigon.
Addendum 1: Why peel off armor if laser strong?
- The ship's propellant tank and fuel bunker contribute most of the explosion.
- The yield flash is preceded by a feeler flash to analyze how the target respons to different frequencies so the shot can be tailored to pass through most of it and reach deeper.
- While Aster could, potentially, do this much damage without any help from inside, it would cause even more strain, force it into repairs for at least another month and cost the taxpayer about as much as this whole ship.
From Megaton Heart, a setting of extensive biotech, arguably benign dictatorships, cold war retrofuturism, alternative models of the cosmos, and most importantly giant robots.
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