“PUSH!” I urgently yelled. “PUSH!”
“I… I can’t!” Nairi replied with a strained voice.
“You’re almost there!”
“Ughhh!” Nairi grunted and groaned until she managed to push a heavy metallic box all the way up a hill.
“You’re… so… mean… Forge-master…” Nairi complained as she gasped for air.
I shrugged my shoulders as I looked towards Pridwen’s direction. “Sure, I could’ve helped you out with my <
“Between the… drop-hammer… and the MG-42s… I don’t need… to be strong….” She argued back between pants.
I sighed a bit. “Nairi, it’s fine to appreciate how technology has improved your life. But it’s not good to rely on it like a crutch. We live in a death jungle- it’s never a smart idea to rely on any one thing out here…”
“This bloody weapon… better be… worth it…” She panted some more as she began to get her wind back.
“Well, only if it works.”
“Wait, you haven't tested it in the forge-smithy yet?”
“Nairi, if I did, there wouldn’t be a forge-smithy left.” I casually quipped. Visible shock and curiosity overtook her previously exhausted expression. Damn, I love her natural curiosity- it was a trait that was sorely lacking in this blandly orthodox world.
“What is this new weapon? How does it work?” Nairi asked as I opened the box and began to assemble the mortar.
I stopped myself before I’d enthusiastically jump into a techno-babble that no teenager could reasonably understand. “Remember when I asked Skera to fling me like 50 meters up in the air so I could drop a big boom boom on the Tyrant? Well, I can replicate the boom boom with this weapon!”
Wow, I’d just realized that the Tyrant battle took place 3 years ago. Which meant that 2 years literally flew past me in a blink of an eye after the town was formally established.
Designing and building the first mortar in this world should’ve been one of the easier tasks on my giant docket after establishing the town. After all, it had a simple design- heck, the damn tube wasn’t even rifled! I thought I could knock this out before the year was over. But unfortunately for my inner forge-smith, I had spent whatever time I had left teaching the kids various trades and designing and inventing industrial equipment. After all, developing an industry that could churn out needed materials and raising apprentices to cover my ever-expanding workload was my first priority.
Also, the fact that I had 2 babies dead-set on making sure I didn’t sleep for more than 4 hours a day sure didn’t help matters. I love Aubrey and Braxton, but they were power-cryers who could wake the dead whenever they got hungry, dropped deuce, or wanted attention. Emma, Sapphire, and I were helpless before the onslaught. Holy fuck, how did the other families handle this workload with only 2 people!?
Despite the delay, I managed to complete the prototype nonetheless. I needed the tube to be strong enough to withstand a shell blasting out of it, so I had to hammer the steel instead of simply casting the steel. Forging the steel required for the M2 prototype without the Drop-hammer machine (I’d need to get on finishing that project too) was a pain in the ass, but I got it done. As with all mortars, the M2 is very simple in design. It consisted of a smoothbore metal tube on a rectangular base plate, supported by a simple bipod. The Artorian silver firing pin was fixed in the base cap of the tube, and the shell was fired automatically when it dropped down the barrel as long as there was somebody transmitting mana at the base plate right at the moment of impact.
The ammo I used was a simple impact-detonation fin-stabilized shell. Since there is no source of mana to ignite the shell, I had to use a less reliable ignition method. I basically designed a crude impact-reliant flintlock mechanism that produced a big spark upon impact, which would hopefully ignite the elemental dust in the shell. I knew the design was shit, but without modern chemistry, I didn't have access to high explosives.
Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.
I put on earmuffs made from wolf furs (Loki is now a Champion-sized wolf who still sheds a lot during Fall seasons). Nairi followed suit, but with only one ear fully covered. I checked the surrounding area for any sources of interference. Then I gave a quick glance towards Pridwen’s direction. All clear.
Alright, let’s get loud!
Laying prone next to the assembled mortar with my hands on the base plate, I yelled, “FIRE IN THE HOLE!” Nairi then dropped the shell into the tube right before turning away and covering both her ears. Perfect execution- just like we trained and drilled!
*Thunk!*
A loud popping sound erupted from the barrel. The shell landed some 400m away, but there were no detonation. Damn. Nairi looked worried.
"Shell 1 defective. Testing Shell 2 now." I intoned with a poker face.
"Fire in the hole!"
*Thunk!*
Roughly 20 seconds later, we see a distant explosion 400m-500m away on the plains. Woo! We did it! Granted, there was no aiming mechanism, no angle adjustment mechanism, and the shell itself was a crude prototype. But the proof of concept was confirmed and I officially had a working prototype!
Upgrading the shell was gonna be an ongoing project- I needed an anti-personnel variant on top of the obvious reliability upgrades. But for now, I knew at least more than 0% of my prototypes had succeeded~
“Excellent work, Nairi! We have a working weapon!” I beamed her a boyish smile as I patted her head. She was in shock- after all, any explosion big enough to be seen from half a klick away was not something to make light of.
“Congratulations, Forge-master Rummy! I’m sure we’ve taken another step towards invincibility!” After she recovered from the shock of it all, she declared with childish gusto. Oh Nairi, I wished I had your naive innocence.
“Oh I doubt that. In fact, there are so many things we need to do to upgrade this prototype before we put it into an assembly line like the Garand and the MG-42. Well, that’d come later. Let’s get ready for Shells 3 and 4.”
Despite my attempt to tamp down her enthusiasm, she still seemed excited as she took out the 3rd prototype shell. Right before I began the test, I gave another quick glance towards Pridwen. And lo and behold, I saw a plume of green smoke out of Pridwen. Well, I’ll be damned. Looked like my 3rd kid would be sharing a birthday with a mortar~
I calmly announced. “Test abort. We should hurry and get back to Pridwen soon. Sapphire is in labor.” Nairi yelped in surprise and got to work immediately. We quickly put all the parts in the metal box and shoved it into the storage ring. I hopped onto Loki (who somehow slept through an entire mortar fire sequence) and pulled Nairi up.
“Run, Loki! Push it!” I shouted. Needing no other prompt, my Champion pup gassed it and sprinted across the plains like a bat out of hell.
***
As we rushed back to Pridwen, I wryly smiled at the circumstances that led to this. I still couldn’t believe I accidentally fucked and creampied the wrong hole like some amateur college freshman. Granted, it was pitch black that night with the moonlight blocked by clouds, and electric lighting wasn’t a thing yet in Pridwen (yet another item on the to-do list). But still, for somebody purporting to be this suave harem master, that was an inexcusable fuck-up.
Despite the spontaneous nature of the conception, Sapphire took it as the greatest blessing of her life. Despite that, I still felt uncomfortable being the master who impregnated a woman who clearly needed all sorts of counseling for the metric fuck-ton of abuse and trauma she’d faced up until recently.
I apologized to her after that night and offered to go to the city to get her this world’s equivalent of the morning-after pill. She passionately refused the offer and insisted that she wished for a pregnancy. And that was that. After all, who was I to argue with a woman’s right to choose?
She missed her period that month.
This pregnancy certainly changed things. For starters, the master/slave thing, that had to be shelved now with a kid in the equation (as much as that pained me to do). Plus, I was no expert on parenthood, but even I knew Sapphire in her present mental state would make a terrible mother. Emma and I had been trying to instill more agency and will into her mending mind, to mixed results. But hey, progress is progress and I’d take what I could get.
As we rushed closer and closer towards the quaint little town that could, I noticed Nairi still hugging me tightly from behind, refusing to open her eyes for even one second. Guess the poor girl still had trouble with motion sickness. Sigh… I didn’t enjoy making her go out and move heavy boxes. But as her mentor, I felt that she needed to be reminded that we lived in a dangerous neighborhood and versatility is crucial to our long-term survival.
This over-confidence she has in my creations was dangerous considering she was groomed to be my successor in the forge-smith one day. If she worships me and my work too much, she’d never have the mentality to try to surpass what I’d built. Worse still, she would be over-reliant on tech and die the moment the tech failed her. Well, she was still young and impressionable- she’d learn in good time.
Within minutes,the imposing concrete towers and walls of Pridwen came into view as Loki gracefully dodged the pitfalls and trenches that surrounded our town.
Here it was, the town built by us for us. A place where the pathetic shitshow known as the Holy Artorian Empire could fuck right off.
With a measure of pride in my voice, I quietly said to myself, “I’m home.”