Your Home Became a Mine

These shells came in two types: Conventional Kinetic Energy Shells, and warp antimatter shells equipped with Warp Engines.

The two differed in initial launch velocity and served different purposes.

Shells equipped with Warp Engines generally had a slower initial velocity, reaching only around ninety percent of light speed. It was not that their launch speed could not be increased, but achieving greater speeds required applying a stronger acceleration field inside the barrel. A stronger acceleration field meant greater acceleration and inertial force. If the acceleration became excessive, the antimatter stored within the Gravity Well could break free of its confinement due to inertia and collide with the material behind it, triggering matter-antimatter annihilation and causing the barrel to explode.

There were two ways to prevent this: improve Gravity Well Technology, or slightly reduce the intensity of field acceleration. The first could not be achieved overnight, so humanity could only choose the second.

For this reason, shells equipped with Warp Engines were not suited for bombarding planets. Their primary use was combat between warships, using warp propulsion's faster-than-light properties, combined with their own kinetic impact and antimatter annihilation power, to strike enemy vessels.

They could be considered faster-than-light weapons.

The other planet-destroying mode was what humanity had now activated.

In this mode, the shell fitted with an Antimatter Warhead was first sent into the Planet Destroyer Cannon's launch field. There were also field containment devices created with Gravity Well Technology here. The shell then released its own containment field, allowing the Planet Destroyer Cannon's field to restrain the antimatter warhead. Next, the shell casing that had originally stored the antimatter was withdrawn from the containment field, leaving the antimatter inside the cannon barrel's launch field.

Finally, the Planet Destroyer Cannon's acceleration components violently accelerated the shell, which was now entirely antimatter.