De Colores

So, I'm making a change: now zled lasers are "frequency agile". What this means is, for close-in work you set them to near-infrared, for medium range you set them to visible light, and for long range (or anti-materiel—or shooting through two people at once—at close range) you set them to near-UV. I discovered that switching from near-infrared to visible light (specifically c. 500 nanometers, which is at the green end of blue-green) doubles the range at which a 10 kilojoule "long" laser will do the damage I need it to do, in a scene in my book (sniping troop-transport choppers, specifically by lasing holes in their tilt-rotors). Switching from that to 250-nanometer near-UV doubles the range again, to the point where it can vaporize 10.5 centimeters of aluminum (I figure a good proxy for any other aerospace material) at a whole kilometer. Go down to 210 nanometers (you want to stay above 200 nanometers or you're not talking "near UV" any more, and a planetary atmosphere becomes opaque) and you can vaporize 10.5 centimeters of aluminum at 1,190 meters.

I don't think I need to have them be very scary, "gets its laser from ionizing radiation" free-electron lasers—which it's also kinda hard, if not actually impossible, to make man-portable. I've found several papers online about other ways to do frequency-agility in lasers; I'm not sure they demonstrate the ability to tune the laser all the way from 250 to 1000 nanometers, but zledo invented the space-fold drive the year we landed on the moon, Earth's 2015 tech is not exactly indicative of what they can do in the 24th century. I imagine there's a fire-selector on the laser, somewhat like the one that switches an assault rifle between full-auto, burst, semi-auto, and safe (actually many assault rifles only have burst or full auto, e.g. the M16A2 only has burst, while the AK often if not usually only has full-auto). I imagine the typical troops get a series of pre-sets to switch between—near-IR, one or maybe two near-UVs, at least one visible wavelength—while the sniper-types might have a more fine-tunable device.

The main reason one changes one's laser's wavelength is for range, so there might be a "ideal range for" indicator next to the wavelength-selector. Then again perhaps not, since a lot depends on e.g. whether one is fighting armored or unarmored opponents, and how armored, or whether one is doing anti-vehicle stuff.

Interestingly apparently near-infrared is more likely to blind you than visible, since the whole eye is transparent to those wavelengths; it's not that big a concern, though, since even 24th-century humanity has medicine that can regrow those cells, and the zledo are 300 years more advanced. Still I imagine most military personnel wear protective contact lenses, and they might be a part of civilians' "survival kits" for if shit hits fans before they can evacuate. Not sure if zledo do things like put in contacts with their fingertips or with the backs of their extended claws—maybe they stick the lens to their fingertip and open their eye with the back of their claw, that's somewhat like how humans put in contacts. I imagine having a whole third-eyelid nictitating membrane (also called a "haw" on horses at least) makes the whole thing a bit more difficult.