'Time to put on a show, this has to be convincing or else I may be in for some trouble.'

"Sir! I apologise for being late to fix the problems on board the ship, I was up all night, or at least what we assume is nighttime, working on some blueprints for a new gun that we could use against our enemies, so that the soldiers will feel more confident should they need to face off against the aliens."

A cold sweat runs down Jackson's neck as the Captain looks at him with a scrutinising gaze, only letting out a breath of relief when he sees the Captain's eyes light up with a spark of joy at the mention of a new weapon.

While most don't realise it, with their dreams of going to space and exploring the furthest reaches of the cosmos, the fact of the matter is that in space, it's every man for himself, there are no interstellar laws that could protect those that may join the crew, no rules to stop hostile forces from attacking them from other planets. The might of Earth? Barely worth talking about in comparison to what is out there in the unknown.

With all these worries, so many years of services, and so many people dying, the Captain has come to consider every member of this ship as part of his family, which is one of the reasons why the old Jackson had not yet been booted into space despite his numerous failures. This is also the reason why, at the mention of a new weapon to help those he considers family, he will jump at the chance to take it.

"A new gun? What type of gun is it? How powerful is it, how easy is it to reload, and are you sure that you were the one that came up with it? Never mind, are you even sure that it works?" The Captain questions, his tone that of disbelief, having known Jackson bad reputation among the crew.

"Sir, the weapon that I aim to make is indeed powerful. The recoil is barely noticeable, and it would do some serious damage should any of the soldiers land a hit."

"And how easy is it to reload? Even if it comes at the expense of a little more power, each second is another moment that one of my men could get shot, a long reload time is not acceptable."

'The Exo Pistol is an energy type weapon, so while it needs to cooldown for a couple seconds, it doesn't really need its energy core to be replaced for at least a couple of weeks of usage. I probably shouldn't mention all of this to him, though. He won' t trust me if I do, I am evidently not well known for my hard work.'

"Sir! Their it should only take at most three seconds to reload. Apart from turning off and on the safety, there is no need to cock the gun either. Don't worry, I'm not getting ahead of myself, I know what I'm saying and I can do it. Please trust me. "

The Captain's eyes seem to grow brighter as a smile crosses his face, this seeming to have been exactly what he wanted to hear.

'So, this pink is finally getting serious. It's about damn time. If he can pull it off, I can avoid having to let him go. While he has done a sloppy job recently, he hasn't exactly had an easy time on board this ship.'

"Hahaha, alright Jackson, I'll give you one last chance, but if you screw this up then I'll have no choice but to let you go. I can't allow someone to endanger the ship by not pulling their weight."

"I won't let you down, Captain!"

"I hope not. Alright, dismissed" The Captain says before he turns around and starts giving orders to the other staff on the bridge having given Jackson permission to leave.

*Sigh*

'That was a close one,' he thinks, walking to towards the onboard workshop. 'I have to make this as pistol perfect, or I really will be in trouble.'

Walking through the halls, now that he did have to panic, Jackson admired the design and craftsmanship of his surroundings. The large reinforced windows giving a clear view into space, though he notes a large amount of wreckage in the area. Probably from who was previously attacking them.

The blast doors looked nice, the standard appearance that you'd expect from a Sci-fi world, including its neon lighting just above it for a clear view of where they are.

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The halls were painted with red stripes, zones labelled in numbers and letters like '1-B', and rooms having their names above them such as 'Workshop'.

"Wait, workshop? That's the room that I need to go to. Hopefully we have the materials necessary to make this energy pistol, or I'm screwed."

Not wanting to waste time, Jackson hurriedly enters the room and heads to a desk, silently marvelling at all the advanced tech available to work with.

Grabbing a piece of A3 paper, Jackson gets to work drawing the pistol. The knowledge of all the components flying through his mind like it was already there from the start.

'Instead of a hammer, I should include a slot to connect the miniature energy cores to save space. I might as well just call them energy packs to be honest, they won't exactly look like normal cores after manufacturing is done, and these can only be used with my weapons, so people need to be able to tell them apart when mentioned.'

Drawing the energy pack's design isn't really that hard, it looks like a normal ammo pack, just without the hole to add ammunition inside and neon green lines symbolising the power.

'Next up is the pistol design itself. Let's base the outer appearance off of the Colt 1911 Black Army, I really liked how it looked, especially the handle. Since I am removing the hammer, the back quarter from the top will be where the slot for the energy pack to be inserted, leaving plenty of room for the barrel to shoot from. Ah, that's right, I need to remember to add rifling inside the barrel. I don't know if it matters for an energy type weapon, but I'm not taking any risks.'

'The rifling should have a 1:10 twist as this is intended be able to shoot long range, maybe not at the range of a sniper, but at the range of a normal Semi-Automatic, the energy release doing most of the work itself in propulsion, the rifling just adding more to aid it in gaining speed while also adding to the accuracy.'

'Inside the barrel, to help with gathering the energy, I'll need to add a small extractor or else the energy pack will be useless. Hmm, pulling the trigger will activate the extractor, gathering energy for as long as the trigger is held, and once the trigger is released it will all shoot out of the barrel.'

After finishing up the design and adding small annotations so he doesn't forget certain details, he picks up the blueprint and has a closer look, trying to find anything that may appear off.

"It's not bad for my first attempt at designing a gun, even if it is based on the knowledge given by the system. I think I did a good job, all things considered."

'I need to figure out what materials I need to use, though. I can't use what is the standard or the gun will become scrap very quickly, either it will melt in its welders hands or it will explode during the extracting process...let's add a heat sensor and cooldown stress level monitor to the side of the gun. Let's place it just in front of the where the energy pack is inserted so we can get the highest accuracy, though I'll need to make sure it doesn't cause conflict when the gun is fired.'

Revising the design a little and adding some small, but necessary, improvements for both safety and functionality, Jackson started to ponder what metal to use.

Looking at the materials index on one of the nearby terminals, he started skimming through them until he found a few contenders that could be useful.

'This will go by the standards of materials in space.'

'Tertanium has a high melting point, but it focuses all the heat in its centre, which isn't ideal. This would cause the energy pack to explode. So that's a no.'

'Calium has a moderately high melting and spreads the heat around the entire metal, however it is really expensive and heavy.'

'Arctum doesn't get hot easily, spreads the heat it does gather and has a fairly high melting point, bigger than Calium but smaller than Quantium. It's not cheap, but it's not expensive either.'

'Quantium is lightweight, has an extremely high melting point, but it's an experimental metal. It's not expensive, but not cheap and is hard to get hot. It's said to also have some special properties, but I don't currently know what they are.'

"Whoever names these materials seems to have an obsolete with the word 'um', either that or so many copyrighted materials exist that it's very hard to name stuff anymore."

"I want to use Quantum, but I really need to know what those properties are before trying anything with it. Not to mention that it's experimental, so it's not exactly a trustworthy metal right now. Maybe next time."

A few minutes of pondering later.

"OK, after much consideration, I'll use Arctium for this pistol. It'll only take a few minutes for me to get all the materials such as what necessary to make the energy packs. I'll take a look around storage to make sure that we definitely have some Arctium also, don't want to start without being prepared after all.

[Mission Alert!]

[Gather materials so to construct the Exo-Pistol with and make three high grade finished products.

Rewards: 1,500xp, Skill: Fast Hands, Skill: Perfect Vision, +2 SP, +2 Str, 300x EC]

"Nice. No new blueprints but that's fine, these rewards are already good enough, and I still have the A.I. to be built after this which will probably yield even bigger rewards."

A spark of excitement builds within Jackson's chest as the expectations start to settle in. Yes, excitement. No longer is he nervous, but he is excited to finally construct something that people will use and rely on him to create.

"Alright, let's do this."