They had finished welding the initial version of the door in place when Trace remembered that he had gotten a message from Ko earlier. Luckily, she was just checking in, but he really needed to get better about checking those messages as soon as they came in. It was just not a habit he had ever established in his life. For the last few years, Stick-Point had been the only person he received messages from consistently.
“Did you want any of this armor or the weapons?” Trace asked Monroe, as they were packing all his equipment back into Black Betty.
Monroe ignored all the armor. None of it would fit his massive frame. “Are the swords any good?”
“I wouldn’t know,” Trace replied honestly. “I haven’t done any training in them. This one is a vibro-blade, though.”
The big man grunted in appreciation and grabbed that one, along with a shotgun. “What are you going to do with the rest?”
“I’ll keep a couple of pieces and most of the lightweight armor. Everything else will be sold, you’ll get your cut.”
“Not worried about that. I just think they might be watching for someone doing exactly that is all.”
Trace furrowed his brows in thought. “Hmm, that is actually a good point. I guess for now, I’ll just put all the extra items into the back of the personnel carrier for storage.”
The vehicle had been moved over near the freezer unit, where the lights could still be effective. He had plans to come down and start cleaning the place soon. They had even lifted the freezer off the ground and placed it on blocks of metal so he could wash the area around it without worry.
He had placed all the mods and the items he was keeping from agents in his truck earlier while Monroe was welding the door in place.
Trace ran up the stairs, out of the apartment, and a moment later was on the lift, lowering it down so they could bring their vehicles up.
“How much more work do you have on the roof?” He asked as the elevator was taking them back to the main floor of the warehouse.
“Just general cleanup, and a few patches.”
“Do you think you can do that tomorrow? Then, once you are finished, we can start planning the job out in the wasteland?”
“That shouldn’t be a problem. I’ll be a little late getting here as I have a prior appointment to fix a few items for another person. After that, I’ll be right over.”
“Sounds good. I’ll see you tomorrow then.” Trace opened the warehouse doors and watched the van leave, closing them right afterward.
His life had been so hectic lately, that just watching someone leave after a day’s work felt satisfying to him now.
He grabbed the broken tech-filled gun from the back seat of his truck and brought it into his apartment, along with everything else.
Inside, he found Deckard awake and running a simulation on the server. “Has everything been resolved?” He asked, splitting his attention between the ongoing task and the items Trace was bringing in. “You seem to be acquiring quite the arsenal of weapons over there.”
He looked at the weapons he had hanging on the wall and slowly nodded. A large portion of them had been taken from Pushman’s apartment. However, he was slowly starting to scrounge up his own number of guns and knives as well. The main difference, of course, was that his were all whatever he picked up while on jobs. Pushman had actually bought and outfitted his guns.
“It’s getting there for sure. Doesn’t mean the quality is anything to speak about.” Most of what he had hanging up there could be sold. They were either doubles or lower quality than something else he had more recently picked up. “In answer to your first question, who knows? I still can’t figure out why that fracking aberration bear came here in the first place. We’ve covered the hole it created for now, and as soon as I get the space cleaned, we can start using it. Even better is that it seems to be a no-signal zone.”
“That will truly be useful for when I begin working on additional hardware refinements,” Deckard said, his avatar grinning. “Not to mention, we will soon need additional storage space if I am to use this 3D printer in any real capacity.”
“Have you almost got it running?” Trace wondered as he placed the broken gun on a small worktable near the door. He grabbed all his various tools and placed them in separate corners of the table. This was going to require far more than just a normal gun teardown.
The avatar waved its hand back and forth. “Somewhat. I have gotten it to work well for a few items. After that, buildup begins to appear within the printhead and the intake hopper. The modifications that have been made to it simply can’t handle the sheer variety of items we are throwing at it. It was meant to dice blocks of mostly pure ore and create the wire used in the printer. What we are doing with it has a lot of excess filth involved. The lasers simply can’t reach high-enough temperatures to destroy it all.”
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“Can we use some sort of cleaning product in-between a set number of uses?” Trace asked as he snagged the chair from in front of the computer and sat down to begin pulling apart the gun.
“I’ll have to look into it. The cost involved and how corrosive they are will play an element as well.”
“Well, let me know. If nothing else, I can always deconstruct the items more. It will take more time, but if it helps…”
“That option is part of one of the scenarios I am running right now.”
Trace nodded and focused on the project in front of him.
The screwdriver was first, as he proceeded to unscrew each of the items that had been added on to its exterior for ruggedization. Each step of the way was accompanied by a photo that he could reference later, in case he ever got confused or lost. The pieces that made up the exterior were only the most obvious. However, a lot of work had been done to its insides as well.
There was no power running through it for him to connect to as the claws from the bear had severed one of the main power connections.
After pulling off the last of the extra exterior pieces, he set about working on the main exterior panel that ran along the length of the barrel and beneath it. The paneling was the least damaged there. Whereas the area directly behind it, where it had been hit, just above the trigger and the main grip had a severe gash in it.
With any other rifle, he would have written it off completely due to all the damage around the barrel. The difference was this one didn’t seem to use a traditional barrel assembly. In fact, when he ejected the magazine at the back, he found it full of what looked to be stainless steel rods. After some quick math, he figured out the magazine could hold fifty of the pointed rods.
If that was the ammo, then it was no wonder the opening on the barrel was so narrow.
He had never seen something like this before or even heard of a weapon similar to it. Then again, just a couple of years ago, he was nothing more than a mostly common street meat. The amount of information he had been able to absorb since managing to get an apartment was limited by his initial knowledge of what to look for. There was an entire world out there that he knew nothing about due to his poor upbringing.
Bit by bit, Trace carefully removed the bent and twisted panels obscuring the interior from view. Every step of the way, he kept taking photos for when he tried to put it all back together and couldn’t remember where something went.
Each of the pieces went into a series of containers according to the section they had been removed from. His typical style was to keep pieces in order, and that wasn’t going to change now.
Finally, he was looking at an entirely naked side of a very tech-heavy rifle. Just being able to play with something like this was a joy for him. He couldn’t quite understand what everything was, but his time in the enhanced teaching courses hadn’t been wasted, either.
The ‘Enhanced Basic Electrical Engineering’, combined with the ‘Enhanced Basic Mechanical Engineering’ courses, helped him to identify many of the individual parts. They, along with all of his own hard-earned knowledge, were enough of a foundation to tell him that he was looking at a railgun.
The basic courses weren’t advanced enough to tell him much more than that.
However, the wonderful thing about fixing things is that you didn’t actually need to know how everything worked. It helped, sure, but it wasn’t required. In this case, since he had a firm foundation in the basics, he was able to isolate the problem areas beyond the obvious gashes.
The torn cabling and destroyed ammo feeder tube would need to be repaired, or straight-up replaced. Beyond those items, and the other pieces of twisted metal, there were several leaking super-capacitors and a section of a controller-board that looked burned. He would need to remove the board and see what had caused the burn before he could make more judgements on that particular item.
The super-capacitors were fairly easy to source and replace, and so was the cabling they had used to transfer power. The tubing and the board were the main issues, and he hadn’t even gotten around to looking at the wireless energy-receiving unit either. Those capacitors would require a ton of power, which meant the receiving unit would need to be an absolute beast. He had never seen one so small before that could output so much power. If it was damaged, then this gun was no better than decoration.
All he could do was work on one thing at a time, and with how powerful this gun promised to be. He desperately wanted to get it back up and running.
Using a hammer and a screwdriver, he slowly worked out some of the bent edges on the case. With the worst offenders out of the way, he gently removed the broken feeding tube that connected the magazine to the barrel.
All along the tube were tiny contact points where it connected to small super-capacitors of its own. The tube was a low-powered rail gun in its own right.
Using his eyes, he scanned the tube and shook his head in frustration. There was no way he would be able to repair the tube. It had micro-fractures running all along its interior.
He carefully retrieved the pieces from inside the case of the gun and placed them on the worktable while he thought.
“Hey, Deckard, is that printer still able to work on normal projects?” He asked the man after thinking the problem over for a bit.
“Yeah, none of its original functionality has been lost. Why, what do you need?”
Trace sent him a copy of the scan he had created of the feeder tube. “Do you think it could create a working replica of this without the obvious hole or micro-fractures?”
“Its height won’t be a problem, as it will need to be printed tube-up.” Deckard was silent for a moment as he ran through a few mental calculations. “Even if you gathered up all the fragments and pieces you found, I’ll still need more just due to general loss and inefficiencies. It’s possible. Want me to start it up?”
“Would you, please?” Trace asked with a grin, clutching the pieces tightly.
This was why he had gotten the machine in the first place originally, and he was glad to know that he could still use it in that manner. Even if the method Deckard had come up with was far more useful and valuable to them.
A few moments later, the 3D printer was spinning up and going through its initial checks. As soon as Deckard gave him the all-clear, he could place the pieces in the intake tray. Then he could start going through his various parts and see if he had any usable cabling and super-capacitors that matched the sizes needed.