Trace waited as the 3D-printer sorted through the various electronic materials he had fed it. Deckard had further optimized the program one more time before declaring it as good as they were going to get with this model.
At this point, the printer could be run for an hour straight before they needed to send the cleaning solution through it. Truthfully, they could probably manage it for longer. However, after an hour, carbon would begin to build up inside the intake area. That would affect the strength of the lasers, which would then begin to slowly overheat.
Problems would continue to build up after that point. The hour mark was determined as the point where it was early enough to head them off. At the same time, it was still long enough to get a decent amount of work done.
Thankfully, cleaning it was easy, as the solution took care of most of the work. Only a few pieces actually required any sort of actual physical touch.
Once Deckard had sorted the program out, they had begun to make progress on their various metal needs. Not as much as they hoped, but the piles gradually grew.
Unfortunately, most of the more valuable metals only came in small amounts, and a lot of it seemed to end up in the slag pile. The result had been that the growth of the metals needed most was slower than expected. There was nothing to be done about it, not unless he wanted to buy a more expensive printing unit along with the required modifications, of course.
That just brought him back to the issue of simply needing more credits. It was a constant concern and one that just seemed to keep coming up.
He had already decided that as soon as he could perform a couple of upgrades, they would be leaving to get Monroe’s new truck.
This time around, Deckard would be staying at his apartment. Partly to keep working with the 3D-printer, which Ko would come to clean multiple times each day. All three of them needed those metals, after all. But also, because the server was here, which he had started to use more as he began to work on his own projects.
Now that Deckard had a newer model NetConnect, he no longer needed the desk computer to access the net. However, he liked the extra functionality that it brought. In other words, he liked where he was and didn’t want to be moved.
They would need to find a way to disguise and hide him before he left, just in case.
Regardless, for the moment, Trace left him to what he was doing and went back to his own work. He had been trying to finish repairing the railgun, without much success. His new arm and hand were making the repairs exceedingly difficult.
He was getting better at controlling it every day, and his ability to shoot an extra-sized target with a bullet had returned. His aim wasn’t as good as it was before, not yet at least. However, he was improving day by day.
Knowing that did little to help with his current annoyance.
All he was trying to do was solder the super-capacitors in place. He wasn’t even attempting to work on the components that went on the two controller boards yet. However, additional heatsinks had been prepped and were ready for installation on each side of the wireless energy-receiving unit.
Working on items this large shouldn’t even have been a problem, and yet the fine-motor skills needed to solder and bolt them in just didn’t exist yet.
He would need a few more days still.
***
Monroe parked Black Betty in the warehouse and knocked on the door of the apartment.
Inside, the 3D-printer was currently hooked up to a bottle of cleaning solution. Underneath the printhead was an empty bottle to collect the used solution.
Over the last couple of days, Trace had worked on hiding Deckard’s braincase and disguising the unit Ko had borrowed from Sevorah.
“Come on in,” He called out.
Monroe walked in, a sheen of sweat glistening on his bald head and the muscles of his fleshware arm. “How’s the progress coming?”
Trace pointed to the railgun. The front-half had been put back together.
“My fine-motor control is still not perfect, and the connections I made weren’t up to my standard. They’ll work for now. Everything else I can do with a soldering pen while we are on the road.”
The big man quirked a brow and shrugged after a moment. “If you’re sure.”
“Not really, but we are heading to the badlands. I want to be prepared for anything, and this will help with that.” Trace stood and walked over to a shelf beneath his wall of guns. Sitting on it were seven somewhat odd-looking modules, each one with a number scratched onto its surface. “Speaking of, do you recognize these?”
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
Monroe caught the two he tossed to him. “They look like the one I took from the bear.” He replied.
“They work along similar principles as well,” Trace shook his hand back and forth. “Kind of. The one from the aberration made it able to track something. Each of these makes the user able to do something as well.” He shook his head and tapped the toe of his boot against the floor. “However, as we saw, their effectiveness isn’t exactly guaranteed or perfect. I can’t be sure, but I think it is because of interference from the people using them and possibly the program itself.”
Deckard had looked at the first module while they were gone on the job out in the wasteland. Unfortunately, he hadn’t had a chance to tell Trace what he had learned until after he had gotten back from the clinic.
The welder’s chipped fingernail lightly caught on the edge of the number scratched into its back. “What do you mean they make the user able to do something as well?”
Trace picked up number one. “Mid-level knife fighting ability. The program actually says expert level, but the brief amount I saw when I tested it a while ago makes that unlikely. Going back to what I said before, I noticed during my test that as the user, I was able to interfere with what it was trying to make me do. Anyone unused to the program would try to regain control of their body and fight what it was having them do.”
“Wait, so it just directly takes control?” Trace nodded at the question. “And then what, goes through the motions needed to eliminate the target?”
“Not entirely sure on that one. The knife had a boot-up sequence of sorts, which is really all I used. It had me go through a series of moves before I regained control. Then I pulled the module out. From what my friend who inspected a different one learned though, they remain more or less inactive until needed. If I went into a fight with my gun in hand, nothing would happen. If I did the same thing with a knife, then it would take control.”
Monroe shivered and tossed the modules back to him. “I’m good man, you can keep them. That loss of control scares me. What are you going to do with them?”
“I haven’t decided yet. I find them interesting, but knowing some faceless corporation programmed them makes me less inclined to use them than anything else. Since I can retake control of my body whenever I want, the loss of control doesn’t bother me. On the other hand, gaining a potentially valuable skill I didn’t have before would be useful.”
He put them back on the shelf and turned to face the big man. “Were you able to get everything that we need?”
Monroe jerked his head toward the door. “Come on out and see for yourself.” He replied with a grin.
The back section of Black Betty had been cleared of nearly all welding supplies. In their place was everything they were bringing on their trip north to the badlands. There was the normal food and drink, but it also had a place for one of them to sleep while the other drove. Admittedly, it would be far more comfortable for Trace than the much taller, and overall larger Monroe. But who asked him to become so big in the first place?
There were also sand suits with re-breather units that would supposedly not get clogged. Just in case, they had a couple of spares each. The items that took up the most space were the tools they would be bringing, along with their guns.
Neither of them was going to pretend that this trip was going to happen without some sort of danger. They just weren’t that lucky.
The last two items were the biggest and were what Monroe had spent the last few days working on. He had welded aluminum plating everywhere he could onto the van, sealing it up. The bottom was now almost entirely one large skid plate, with tiny holes for the axles. Those holes had then been stuffed with grease and a truly prodigious number of rags.
Every seam on the vehicle had been sealed as best he could. As an extra measure, when they reached the border, layers of aluminum tape would also be applied. Though neither was sure if it would even hold against the wind, let alone the biting sand.
The cabin air-filters had already been replaced with one of an even finer micron-rating. A spare of that had been prepared as well.
They had done everything they could to prepare for this trip and still, they only gave themselves even odds of succeeding. If the semi had been any farther into the badlands, this trip wouldn’t have been possible at all. As it was, they were pushing it.
The van could hold together for a few miles under those winds, with the sand stripping away all paint and rust from its surface. The windshield would become unusable after only a few minutes, after which they would have to navigate by cameras and screens. Goddess above help them if those got damaged as well.
Trace took his time looking over everything, before transferring his guns to the van, including the ones that Monroe had modified for them. The gun store owner and his gunsmith had been so thankful to them for saving them that they had sold the suppressors to Monroe at cost. The gunsmith had then modified each of the weapons for free, making it so no welding was required. Apparently, the more experienced gunsmiths had their own tricks of the trade they would pull out for people they liked.
All of the guns he used most often were now suppressed and at varying levels of quiet. Which he really liked. There were only two guns in his truck now that weren’t suppressed. On one, the sniper rifle it would defeat the purpose of the gun. While on the second, he didn’t even think it was possible to do, and that was the minigun. Either way, both of those guns would be staying at the warehouse for this little trip.
Trace closed the back of the van and patted the door. “Tomorrow then?”
“Tomorrow,” Monroe agreed. “Better get all the sleep you can tonight. We’re going to be on the road for a long time.”
The doors of the warehouse closed behind the van with a clang as it left. It felt as though this trip had been a long time coming. They had done a couple of simple jobs since he got his new arm, but the old groove had vanished along with his aim. Trace hadn’t realized just how much he actually had improved until it was gone.
Trying to aim and fire with his scout rifle the other day had been a disaster. Stealth that day had not even been in their vocabulary.
Entering his apartment, Trace picked up the pile of metal in his augmented hand and slowly crushed it into a marble. There were already a dozen other marbles on the shelf next to the printer, just waiting for him to swallow them. After this, he would finally have enough material to upgrade his arm.
He had considered doing one of the other items first, but it was the thing that he had been struggling with the most. For now, he hadn’t had any issues with any form of psychosis, and he wanted to keep it that way. Hopefully, upgrading it would help head the entire issue off at the pass.