Chapter 56 - Linothorax

The smithy they’d set up was a bit off the beaten path. Farnsworth took me out toward the airfield. We didn’t leave the fenced in area of the base proper, but we were a lot closer to the wall they’d set up facing the runways. One of the larger hangars had been repurposed as their armory and smithy.

“See, most of the usable metal we have is from the planes,” Farnsworth explained as we walked. “Aircraft aluminum is light, but resilient. It doesn’t weigh you down, and it certainly wouldn’t stop a bullet—but that’s not something we need to worry about anymore. What it will do is stop a claw or sword cold.”

“Makes sense to me. But isn’t it difficult to shape the stuff?”

He held out a hand, palm down, and see-sawed it back and forth. “Sort of, yes. But we have some amazing machinists here on the base, and that’s before they picked up the Armor Crafting and Weapon Making skills. With those as well, it got much more simple.”

“How do those skills work, anyway?” I asked. “I mean with the spells, I get it—we insert the stone, we get the power to use magic in a new way, along with all the information we need to use it. Are the skills kind of like that?”

“More or less. They’re more informational and less functional. The skills don’t let you magic a piece of armor into being. They do give you a deeper understanding of armor and more knowledge about how to make it. Coupled with the skills our people already had, they’re able to do a lot,” Farnsworth said. “Shoulder cops like these I have on are easy - just a gentle curve shaped into the metal. Knee and elbow protection is a little tougher, I gather.”

“And what’s the body harness you’ve got on?” I asked, curious.

“They call it lamellar. Because big sheets of aluminum are harder to shape into complex curves, they’re still trying to figure out how to manufacture a full breastplate from the stuff. They can do it from steel, but we have limited quantities of steel, and it weighs a ton. This stuff is easy to make, easy to repair, holds up well in combat, and saves a lot of lives.”

I could see that. The whole body harness was made up of a bunch of individual slices of aluminum sheet, cut to rectangles about the size of a playing card cut in half. They’d punched a series of holes in the cards, that Farnsworth called ‘lames,’ and then strung them together with what looked like parachute cord. Figures they probably had plenty of that around, too.

The end result looked mad protective, and I was definitely in the mood to buy some better protection. “What about helmets?”

Farnsworth shook his head. “We’ve only made a few. Again, it’s a metal thing. We have plenty of aluminum, but it doesn’t shape well in tight curves, and that made helmets hard. Plus, I guess the weight of the helmet actually impacts how much protection it gives, something about inertia? I didn’t understand all of it, but if you’re curious you can ask Sergeant Bear in a bit. Once we get more steel from scavenging cars, we’ll do better in that department.”

We reached the hangar. The building had two massive doors, front and back, and they were both halfway open. I guess they needed to be—I could feel the heat pouring out from a dozen paces away. I peered inside, and the setup was pretty complicated. Forges, flames, quenching buckets, and a ton of other stuff I couldn’t recognize.

“Sergeant Bear!” Farnsworth called out, as he marched out of the sun. “Got a customer for you!”

A tall woman stepped out of the dimly lit background, striding quickly toward us. She had dark hair, was built like a linebacker, and wore a heavy leather apron over her uniform. Her face was streaked with sweat, her hands grubby, but she wore a smile on her face.

“What’d you bring me this time, Farnie?”

“I told you not to call me that.”

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“Did you? I musta forgot,” Bear replied. “Sorry, Farnie.”

“You know I outrank you, right?” Farnsworth asked.

“LOL. Sure thing, Farnie.”

Farnsworth glared at her, then at me, the look on his face saying something like ‘you see what I have to deal with?’ Me, I was wondering if they were already lovers or just at the flirting stage. I had a feeling it was more the latter, but I wasn’t thinking it would take much longer. All the markers were there.

I kept my opinions to myself, though, and stepped forward to shake Bear’s hand. “I’m Selena Serrano. I’ve got a bunch of those credit tokens, and Farnie here told me this was the place to come to get properly geared up?”

Bear shook my hand, chuckling at the joke. She was tier four, same as Maura. “Linda Bear. Nice to meet you.”

Farnsworth gave a grunt of disapproval at my joining in on the teasing, but he didn’t comment on it. “She’s a rank five. Been out there on her own the whole time, and brought in a bucket of crystals for Maura. Figured we could get her outfitted a bit better.”

“Whatcha looking for, kid?” Bear asked.

“Armor, shield, and a weapon for me. I have undead, too—bunch of skeletons, mostly. I figured I’d get some simple weapons with the rest of my credits.”

“I see. Cute dog,” Bear said, pointing at Hope, who wagged her tail in response.

“Thanks! So, can you help me out?”

“I surely can. I’ve got full sets of the aluminum body armor your buddy here is wearing, in a variety of sizes, and ready to go,” Bear said. “But—I might have something else that can work for you, and if you want it, I can let it go for just a credit instead of two. Two credits for that shirt plus the aluminum for your neck, shoulders, elbows, and other bits.”

Farnsworth chuckled. “What, you’re gonna foist that lino bullshit off on her?”

“It’s not bullshit, ass. It just doesn’t fit me,” Bear snapped at him. Then she turned back to me. “It’s a new type of armor. One of our scout runs came back with more cloth than we knew what to do with, and the crystals I used for Armor Making gave me a lot of ideas. Seems like the Greeks used to make armor by laminating layers of cloth. Lots of layers. They used glue to hold them all together, give them form, and some solidity.”

She went rooting around in a bin that was filled with discarded bits of armor. They looked like they were mostly experiments gone wrong; the woman must have been making armor like mad! Finally she grunted and pulled something that looked a bit like a stiff t-shirt out of the bin.

The armor was white, with a few embellishments on the shoulders. It had no sleeves, but the shoulders did sort of stretch out in a way that helped protect a bit of the upper arm. The thing protected both front and back. It buckled together on the sides. Bear tossed the thing to me, and I was shocked at both how light and how sturdy it felt. The whole thing was molded to fit a female frame, so it wouldn’t work for a skinnier guy.

“I used epoxy instead of glue,” Bear said. “Which was both good and bad. Good, because it’s hella hard now. I tested a chunk against arrows, and it stopped them as well as the aluminum did. It’s good armor. Bad, because, well, epoxy shrinks as it cures, and although I’d thought I had accounted for the shrinkage…”

I held up the torso armor and eyed her frame. There was no way on Earth that was going to fit her. But it might just work for me. “I see the issue. Help me see if it fits?”

A few minutes later we had me buckled into the contraption, which fit like a glove. Bear made a few adjustments on the fly, tweaking the straps and cutting off a little of the bottom edge. When she was done, there was no chafing left at all. It was only about as heavy as wearing a sweatshirt or two, but because of the sleeveless nature it wasn’t that hot.

“I like it a lot,” I said. “Definitely a winner here.”

“Great!” Bear replied. “I’d like to see it used. There’s only a few women fighters here, and most of them have a little more in the chest than this will allow for. The bad part of a linothorax—that’s what these are called—is they really have to be made to fit the user. A poorly fitting one won’t work out well. But you seem to be just about right for this one.”

I was especially pleased with the purchase. Bear went on to get me hooked up with an aircraft aluminum shield, a steel short sword, the other bits of armor I needed to protect myself, and four more shields and spears for my undead. That used up all my credits. If I wanted to get proper weapons and armor for the rest of my army, I’d need to get more crystals to trade.

“Sergeant Bear, thanks so much. I really appreciate the armor,” I told her.

“Wear it in good health. I’m sure I’ll see you around again,” she replied.

Getting more crystals was doable. Farnsworth escorted me back to where I’d left my undead in the ‘daycare’ they had set up, so I could leave the spare spears and shields there with my skeletons. I didn’t expect them to stay there long, though. The next thing I needed to do was find Kara, and maybe have one more conversation with Colonel Turner.

If he wasn’t ready to make a run to rescue my friends yet, then it was going to be time to plan that rescue ourselves. It was already past noon, and every hour we waited put Alfred, Kat, and the rest of their people in even greater danger. Whether Turner was ready or not, I was going back out there to save them.