The Dreadnought Contingency

To ensure no pilot of the ENDWeapon Program could ever successfully take personal advantage of his ENDWeapon, the Dreadnought Contingency was established. An insurance policy of retribution, the Dreadnought Contingency necessitated the development of three superlative ENDWeapons, so in the event of a rogue pilot, there would be a force fully ready and capable of incapacitating his ENDWeapon, regardless of type.

A single combat frame was developed for the Dreadnought Contingency Agents, the R-X Nightstalker. The most powerful and physically capable combat frame developed by the Monarch Corporation, the R-X comes in three distinct variants. Of the three variants, one is optimized exclusively for ENDWeapon incapacitation; the [second] is designed to be both an effective anti-ENDWeapon and a machine generally capable of finishing what objective the rogue ENDWeapon may have been assigned; the third ENDWeapon is optimized for versatility, sacrificing some ability to incapacitate other ENDWeapons. The purpose of this arrangement is twofold: to ensure an appropriate ENDWeapon can be utilized in the event of an indecent, and to ensure that if a Dreadnought Contingency Agent were to go rogue, it could be easily incapacitated by the two others. The Dreadnought Contingency Agents are three of the five orbital-deployment ENDWeapons. Placed equidistant from each other, the Dreadnought satellites orbit in LEO, which allows any one of the Dreadnought Contingency Agents to be deployed anywhere in the world within minutes.

A secondary purpose of the Dreadnought Contingency Agents is to be available in the case of an emergency situation necessitating immediate ENDWeapon response. The R-3, however, is hardly considered an emergency response ENDWeapon, because, as previously stated, it is designed exclusively for ENDWeapon incapacitation.

While the Monarch Corporation could permanently incapacitate a rogue ENDWeapon by introducing a neurotoxin into the pilot’s native brain, and by extension his proxy brain, this does not solve the problem of mission completion or ENDWeapon security. Not only is each ENDWeapon a multi-billion dollar, highly specialized weapon system, the technology implemented is so advanced, it would put enemies decades ahead of their current technological progress. In addition, it is preferable to keep the ENDWeapon at least mostly functional, including the ability of its pilot to control the Weapon, for research and development purposes because of the novelty of such technology. This is the reason for the specific combination of weapons systems of the Dreadnought Contingency Agents. A railgun is used to pierce through the armor of a rogue ENDWeapon, thus allowing the hijack blades easy entry. The hijack blades can then allow the pilot of the Dreadnought Contingency Agent to directly override the control system of the rogue ENDWeapon, either forcing the ENDWeapon to complete the mission or simply have it return safely to its pickup zone.