Before even returning to base, Tony had already switched to Ivan's communication channel while still on the spaceship.
Are you asleep?
"What do you think?" Ivan's voice came through the channel, with the sound of metal scraping in the background. "The second turret was just finished being tested, the third is still being welded. Are you done firing over there?"
"It's over. Reed escaped, leaving behind a self-destruct core. Lynn held it down." Tony leaned back in the driver's seat, his tone calm. "When you get back, put aside the turrets you're working on for now. I need to build something."
Ivan paused for a moment. "What is that?"
"That'll disgust Reed."
"Be specific."
Let's talk in person.
After the spaceship landed, Tony didn't go back to his office; he went straight to Ivan's workspace. Ivan was squatting next to a half-disassembled thruster, holding a soldering pen. He glanced up at Tony, then threw the pen on the table. "Speak."
Tony pulled up a chair and sat down, pulling up the battle's data package and projecting it onto the screen beside him. The response time curve of Reed's creations, the frequency changes of the core rewriting physical constants, and the iteration cycle of the replicas adapting to energy attacks were listed one by one.
Ivan watched for two minutes without saying anything, then stood up and walked to the whiteboard, drawing two lines: "He's adapting. After each round, the next round's challenges are more targeted at us than the last."
"Right. That's why we can't fight a war of attrition with him. He'll always be faster than us in a war of attrition." Tony circled the structural diagram of Reed's creation on the screen. "Next time he comes, I'll turn everything he brings out into scrap metal."
Ivan turned around. "You have an idea?"
"There are several directions we need you, Banner, Phastos to work on." Tony circled another location. "First, the recombination of creations relies on the synergistic logic of nanomechanics. This logic has a short activation delay, but if we can amplify this delay, his creations won't have time to recombine. Second, the mechanism by which replicas adapt to energy attacks is by mimicking the opponent's frequency. If we simultaneously deploy multiple attack sources of different frequencies, its mimicry speed won't keep up. Third—"
What is the third?
"The third one is specifically for Reed himself. He relies too much on prediction. JARVIS can randomize his attack patterns, but that's just pseudo-random; he can figure it out after a while. This time, I need real randomness, physical randomness, the kind he can't calculate."
Ivan thought for a moment, "Quantum randomness?"
"Yes. Using the uncertainty principle as a random source, each attack pattern is derived from the quantum state collapse, which he can't calculate."
Ivan drew a few lines on the whiteboard and pointed to one of the nodes. "It can be done. But it requires a quantum random source module. I kept a few spares when I made the fire control system for the turret before, which can be modified."
"How long?"
Give me three days.
"Two and a half days."
Stop trying to bargain with me.
"Two and a half days."
Ivan glared at him. "Fine, two and a half days. But you have to work overtime."
Overtime pay will be approved by logistics.
"Nonsense."
The next morning, Tony called Banner and Phastos to the equipment lab. Phastos came in yawning, carrying a stack of blueprints, while Banner was carrying two cups of coffee.
"What happened to the promised rest?" Phastos slammed the blueprints on the table. "I only finished finishing the spatial distortion model at three in the morning yesterday."
"Rest after you're done playing." Tony turned on the screen. "Look at this first."
He projected out the structural diagrams of Reed's creation and flipped through them page by page. Banner understood after looking at two pages. "You want to destroy his creation?"
"Yes. The logic of reorganization in creation relies on the coordination of nanomechanical systems, and this coordination has an initiation delay. If we can amplify this delay, it won't have time to reorganize. How to amplify it is a problem that you and Phastos need to solve."
Phastos leaned close to the screen for a long time, then drew two lines on the diagram with his finger. "The cooperative logic is done in stages. The first stage is to identify the damage, the second stage is to retrieve the reorganization parameters, and the third stage is to execute the reorganization. If we can intervene in the second stage and stuff a bunch of invalid parameters into it, it will take more time to filter them."
Can it be stuffed in?
"Yes, but it requires a parameter injection device to directly target the nanometer communication frequency band of the creation. I can make the hardware, but I need to know its communication protocol."
" JARVIS has the communication data collected in the last battle." Tony pulled up the data packet. "Is that enough?"
Phastos flipped through two pages and nodded. "That's enough. But we'll need to run a few rounds of simulations to determine the injection efficiency."
"How long will it take?"
"Two days."
"One and a half days."
Phastos glanced at him. "Do you bargain like this with Ivan too?"
"Yes, he agreed."
"He agreed because he gets overtime pay." Phastos rolled up the drawings. "I want overtime pay too."
"Approval."
Banner, flipping through another set of data, suddenly spoke up, "Regarding the multi-frequency interference you mentioned, I have a ready-made algorithm framework here. I developed a module for parallel processing of multi-frequency signals when I was working on the monitoring network; it can be used with a little modification. However, it requires multiple transmitters to launch simultaneously; a single source cannot do it."
"The suits can work," Tony said. "Each suit has a different frequency firing module, firing simultaneously. It can't keep up with any of them."
"Then we'll have to redesign the weapon mounts on the armor." Banner pulled up the data and did some calculations. "The existing armor's energy interfaces are sufficient, but the array of launch modules needs to be rearranged. They can't all be mounted in the same position, otherwise the interference effects will cancel each other out."
You line up.
Banner nodded, his fingers already moving across the keyboard.
For the next two and a half days, the equipment lab was constantly filled with people.
Ivan delivered the quantum random source module on the evening of the third day. The module was small, about the size of a palm, and encased in a silver-gray shielding shell. He placed the module on the table. "A quantum random source. Each sample is taken from vacuum fluctuations, which no algorithm can predict. It will work once installed on the main control unit of the battle suit."
Tony picked it up, flipped through it, checked the interfaces and shielding, and nodded. "Okay. Install it and try it."
Ivan leaned against the table and didn't leave.
Is there anything else?
"In your plan, the quantum random source is only used by one suit of armor. Reed will bring more than one suit next time he comes. What if he attacks another suit first?"
"Therefore, you need to make the random source module smaller, and install one on each Warframe."
Ivan paused for two seconds. "Do you know how many processes are involved in mass-producing this module?"
"That's why I sent you."
"You person--"
"Extraordinary times."
Ivan cursed something, turned and left. He paused at the door, then said, "Two days. I'll give you the first batch, twenty sets, in two days."
"That's enough. Install the Vanguard Group first."
Banner had deployed the multi-frequency jamming module and redesigned the weapon mounting array on the suit. The launch modules were arranged in a circle around the outer edge of the suit's chest armor, radiating in different directions. When he handed the blueprints to Tony, he specifically pointed to a line of small print. "This array has a side effect: when operating at full power, the suit's own energy consumption will double. The endurance will drop from the original eighteen hours to about nine hours."
"That's enough." Tony glanced at the blueprints. "Nine hours is enough for one match."
"There's one more thing." Banner pulled up another set of data. "The communication protocol for the parameter injection device has been cracked, but Reed's creations change the protocol every time they reassemble. I only captured the data from the previous round. The protocol might have changed by the time he comes next time."
"Then let's make it adaptive. The protocol changes, you can decode it in real time, with a delay of no more than one second."
"A one-second delay is enough for his creation to reassemble."
"So we need a faster decoding speed." Tony pushed the data packet back, "Write this logic into JARVIS's subsystem and let JARVIS run it in real time. He's faster than a human."
Banner thought for a moment, "Okay, but we need to give JARVIS a separate processing core, otherwise it will affect his response speed in controlling the armor."
"Open up resources from my core R&D department."
Phastos encountered a problem. The hardware for the parameter injection device was completed, but it wasn't efficient enough; each injection round could only cover a single creation, while Reed released a whole group at once.
"We need to switch to area coverage." Phastos slammed the test results on the table. "Single injections are too slow. Before we've even finished the first three, the last five have already recombined."
How to achieve full coverage?
"Change the injection device to pulsed emission. Instead of a continuous signal, it emits a compressed interference pulse that explodes and covers a spherical area. All creations within that area are simultaneously injected with invalid parameters."
What are the maximum possible compression ratio and expansion radius of a pulse?
"The compression ratio can reach 1:1000. The unfolded radius is approximately fifty meters."
"Not enough. Reed's creations are spread out too far; fifty meters is only enough to cover a small area."
"Then we'll fire more rounds. But the number of launches is limited by the equipment's heat dissipation; we have to stop and let it cool down after every three rounds."
Tony thought for a moment, "Divide into two groups. One group attacks, the other cools down. Alternate between them to ensure continuous firepower."
Phastos noted the sentence down, then bent down and made two changes to the drawing. "This way, the heat dissipation pressure is distributed, and theoretically, it can output continuously. But the synchronization rate of the two sets of equipment must be adjusted properly to prevent them from interfering with each other."
" JARVIS tune."
"Okay." Phastos rolled up the blueprints. "We'll have a prototype tomorrow."
Interspersed throughout are some everyday scenes.
Ivan would curse while working until midnight, but would continue working afterward. Banner once went back to his dorm and slept for four hours; when he came back, his face was finally no longer oily. When Phastos drew on the whiteboard, he still drew hot pot broth, but this time his drawing was neater than before.
Harley would come by every evening and leave the field team's patrol briefing on Tony's desk. Tony would be engrossed in his work at the lab bench, and Harley would stand there for a while, waiting for Tony to glance up at the briefing and nod before leaving. Once, after Tony finished reading the briefing, he asked him, "Any anomalies on the ground?" Harley said, "No," and Tony went back to his work. Harley stood there for two seconds, said nothing more, and then left.
Pepper would appear promptly at nine o'clock every night, carrying a hot meal. Sometimes it was stew from the cafeteria, sometimes it was pasta she had cooked herself. Tony would eat while looking at blueprints, and Pepper would sit next to him looking at her tablet, not saying a word or urging him. After he finished eating, she would take the bowl away, leaving with the words, "Don't wait until nine o'clock to eat again tomorrow," and then leave.
On the fifth day, all the prototypes of the equipment were delivered to the equipment laboratory.
Tony stood in front of the experimental table, in front of three things: a quantum random source module, a multi-frequency interference array, and a parameter injection pulse device. Ivan stood to the left, Banner to the right, Phastos leaned against the doorway.
"Have they all been tested?"
"It's been tested," Ivan said. "The quantum random source passed three rounds of verification; the output shows no pattern whatsoever. You had JARVIS run the pattern prediction ten thousand times, and it was a zero hit."
"The multi-frequency jamming array ran for twenty rounds in the simulated environment," Banner continued. "When the clone model faced six different frequency attacks simultaneously, its adaptation speed was four times slower than that of a single-frequency attack."
"The parameter injection device has been tested on the remnants of the previous creation," Phastos patted the heat sink of the pulse device. "One pulse can cover all targets within a radius of fifty meters, with an injection efficiency of eighty-seven percent. The remaining thirteen percent requires follow-up shots, but the follow-up shots are fast enough not to affect the tactical rhythm."
Tony nodded. "Install them. The Vanguard Group will install twenty sets first. The rest will be installed in the second batch of sub-modules."
Ivan asked, "Finished the installation and testing?"
"Test and simulate all attack modes of Reed's creations, and conduct a full-scale combat exercise."
"When?"
This afternoon.
The afternoon's combat exercise took place in the large simulation field of the training hall. Twenty suits of armor were equipped with new modules and were divided into two groups to alternately launch multi-frequency jamming and parameter injection pulses. The simulated Reed creation clusters surged in from all sides. During the first round of contact, the recombination speed of the creations visibly slowed down. After the second wave of pulses, three creations were directly stuck in a semi-reconstruction state and took five seconds to recover.
"Five seconds." Tony stood on the observation platform, looking at the data below. "How many shots can we fire in five seconds?"
"Enough to unleash all of the Vanguard Group's firepower," Ivan said, standing beside him. "But this is a simulation; in a real battlefield, Reed will adjust the parameters."
"He can adjust. But he can't calculate the quantum random source, he has to try each frequency one by one for multi-frequency interference, and he has to change the protocol for parameter injection. He can't handle all three things at the same time."
Banner was adjusting the data below, looked up and shouted, "The reaction time is three times faster than the last round of battle. The same swarm of creations took eight minutes to clear last time, but this time it was cleared in three and a half minutes."
Phastos added from the side, "And that's without using all their strength. If it really starts, the pace can be even faster."
Tony stepped down from the observation platform and walked to the middle of the training field, looking at the semi-reconstructed remains of the simulated creations.
"Send the blueprints to the logistics team for mass production. After the Vanguard Group, give Harley a set too; the field operations team will need them on the ground."
Ivan glanced at him. "Ground teams need them too?"
"If Reed isn't quite dead, throw something on the ground. Harley can't rely on just regular armor."
Ivan nodded and didn't ask any more questions.
That evening, Tony returned to his office and updated the progress of the past few days on his terminal. When Pepper brought in dinner, she saw him leaning back in his chair with his eyes closed. She placed the food on the table without waking him. After a while, Tony opened his eyes, saw the food on the table, and glanced at the door. Pepper was no longer there. He sat up straight, opened his lunchbox, and began to eat. Halfway through, he sent Lynn a message: "The new equipment is almost ready. Next time Reed comes, tell him to try something different."
Lynn replied quickly: Kang has made a move. I'll go out and check it out tomorrow.
Tony put down his lunchbox, stared at the message for two seconds, and typed two words: Be careful.
Lynn replied with a single word, "Mm."