Saturn Breaker: Overview

Short of Glacier these are the largest drone systems within the GDS arsenal, utilized almost exclusively to patrol the perimeter of Frostfall and other GDS facilities of importance. Saturn Breakers are available for clients to utilize in securing their own bases and borders, but at a mind-numbing cost on top of weekly upkeep fees.

I was given leeway to design something and worry about the budget later for once in my life, and after the plans for the Saturn Breaker were shown to Iza, I have good reason to doubt it'll ever happen again.

Our primary concern was creating a patrol system that could handle the environment and terrain of Frostfall, meaning we would be going with a drone platform. A quadruped movement system ensures it won't get stuck and can remove itself from any potential pitfalls. The whole room seemed onboard until I flipped over to the slide detailing its armaments.
I believe it was the missiles that really pushed it over the edge.

My approach was to take the type of defenses we'd employ to secure a base, and then place it on a mobile platform. While I'm no strategist, I'd imagine that in a siege your goal is to nullify any defenses or find a way around. Most would find that a rather difficult task when the base defenses are actively moving towards their position.

The testing phase of these was nothing short of absolute hell, as balancing that much firepower atop a quadruped movement system meant half my waking hours were spent doing stability and weight distribution calculations. A lot of the work was based off our previous measurements from the engineering of the Attack Dog platforms. Most of the initial testing phase, however, consisted of watching the prototype tip over and hit the snow like it'd been shot by a tranq dart the moment it tried to take a single step forward.

"I need a progress report on the Saturn Breaker, now." was a frequent message from Iza that I preferred to answer by pretending I never saw it. _{You’re making a strong case for returning you to ICA custody. – Iza}

Once we figured out the mobility system, it became a matter of slapping on the weapons and adjusting as needed. It could walk, so how was it going to guide itself? For this we used a derivative of the OS that runs most of our drones. To be honest that's all we really do. The baseline OS we created is sufficient for just about anything a drone needs to do, and it can be incorporated into any platform with relative ease. This means it's only a matter of changing around some parameters and adjusting the scope of certain functions. The Saturn Breaker runs off of an OS that's appropriate to handle the functionality of a drone for its size and has tie in capabilities to the ARS Swarm if need be.

For the purposes of defense however, we created the S-AS Swarm system. While the Shepherds and Wisps use ARS Swarm links, we wanted the Saturn Breakers to have their own network for the purposes of inter-drone communication and coordination. While still utilizing the unified comm system as usual, the additional S-AS link would offload coordination and comms between all Saturn Breaker platforms within their operational area. In practice, should one Saturn Breaker engage with an enemy it will immediately relay all relevant information to the others. In the event of a large-scale invasion, multiple targets are loaded into a shared database of info that's replicated between units. There's no situation where taking out one unit will destroy the collected intel they have on their targets, since each unit keeps its own up to date copy.

And since I'm paranoid this database of target information is likewise replicated to multiple nodes within the GDS comm network, globally.

Once a target is identified, marked and tracked, there is no feasible way to eliminate that information. Don’t try and get smart with me by claiming you could make the Saturn Breaker load in a “target” that's actually some type of malware which gets distributed globally to our entire network. That's all accounted for in ways that a certain someone wouldn't appreciate me disclosing. The results of numerous war games with this new system were such that we've extended this tech into the normal ARS Swarm system.

Getting the armor for this goddamn thing working was much of an ache as everything else.
The mobility system is powered by artificial musculature on top of a synthetic skeleton, so a cellular hardening reaction to incoming ballistics would result in the entire thing again, toppling over. What a discovery, that hardening muscle fibers to absorb and then deflect bullet impacts made the joints lock up too. It's possible to shorten the hardening reaction so the entire muscle doesn’t seize up, but then again, why should we let the muscle get hit in the first place.

Armor was fabricated using Zephatun materials, and after numerous fittings and adjustments it was fully capable of taking numerous artillery shells without so much as a shift in position. A failsafe was also included in each leg where if a limb was targeted down by attackers, a secondary, far less robust limb was embedded on the top half. Meaning should you knock off the lower portion of a Saturn Breaker's leg, the unit can still move and return fire in an accurate manner. Albeit with far less grace than usual. Assuming you have the firepower to crack the armor and shock absorption systems in the first place.

With most of the system taken care of, we had to work on the usage of Gray Conduits next. Given the size of the drone system, the primary concern was with mobility. It was already toting enough firepower to level a mountain, what the hell would more offensive capabilities give it? To that end we worked to ensure the standard for a Saturn Breaker's Gray Conduits were trained extensively on Illit and Koris subtypes, and all others were secondary.

As a result of this, even if the drone was stuck in a hole or something similar, it was a simple matter of using its Gray Conduits to free itself through various means. At one point we witnessed a Saturn Breaker use its Gray Conduits to throw itself around 200 meters through the air to traverse a gap in the ice, which was rather goddamn alarming when it was the fucking prototype that was doing it. Iza was already being a touchy, impatient bitch with the current production costs, the last thing I needed was to show up with yet another bill because my prototype launched itself off a cliff due to an unjustified sense of competence in its abilities. _{I don’t want to hear that from a chronically behind schedule funding leech like you. – Iza}

At the end of the project, we were quite proud to finally have a system that could easily patrol the area surrounding Frostfall without worry. The Saturn Breaker was capable of engaging both ground, air and sub-orbital targets with ease and accuracy. Each weapon system it carries is of the highest class, and the internal storage system ensures it can operate for days on in in combat before needing a resupply. As if an enemy force could even stand against it for so long.

By itself, a single Saturn Breaker can hold off a significant invasion force, and now we have around a hundred of them patrolling the perimeter. I cannot for the life of me think of any force capable of getting past them, both terrestrial and those only found within the Celestial Throne.

And thus, after the rousing success of the Saturn Breaker project, all further project proposals entailed an entire Administrative Legion team of financial specialists following me around to prevent Iza from having yet another aneurism.

- FrW Dr. Acris Baddarick