Chapter 118: Research and Development
It would seem that while this healing potion definitely could put things together, it didn’t dull the pain much. The healer had also warned Jacky that such a quick-acting potion came with different side effects and it would take a while to clear her system. As it turned out, Jacky’s side effect was sharp shots of pain arriving seemingly at random. It likely didn’t help that Jacky’s reaction to those shots of pain was tensing hard and trying to curl into a ball. Tom did reconsider laying face to face as this was a battle he could not win, some alarming cracking emanating from his back on the first squeeze. She had let go before he ran out of breath though, and his back actually felt better incredibly enough. He couldn’t leave anyway. How could he? She was laying there breathing rapidly, not daring to move a muscle, tensing again as he ran a hand down her face.
“You okay?”
“Not sure to be honest, feels like someone just stabbed me in the back,” Jacky finally replied weakly, not letting go of him.
“It’s gonna be just fine. Look on the bright side. You aren't gonna be in here long.”
“How could I? You need all the help you can get.”
“That’s me, helpless little Tom hiding behind big strong Jacky.”
“I think you can fit in brave and beautiful.”
“Well duh, that is just implied.”
The pain attacks had only happened twice more during the night. But Tom had learned his lesson, switching position to be the little spoon so she wouldn’t break his back by accident. The third lasted long enough that Tom was gasping for breath when Jacky finally let go. Just as before it left her near frozen again taking quick and shallow breaths. Turning back around to Caress her face left Tom with a wet hand from tears running down her face.
“Oh come here.”
When morning came Tom was very happy that he needed less sleep than they did 'cause he hadn’t gotten much. Tom would have thought she would need to be bedridden for weeks, but Jacky had been told to try and move around a little if she could. The pain would subside in time. It was simply her body’s reaction to the rather forceful healing. Tom had work to do though, and Jacky refused to be left alone, so he ended up being tailed by a dragonette zombie for the day. He was completely certain it wasn’t comfortable for her in the slightest, but there wasn’t much he could do for her other than walking slow and letting her lean on him when she let him.
Tink had been damn near bouncing off the walls when they made it down to the workshop, Shiva taking one look at Jacky before going over to give her a very careful hug. First up, they needed to know just how dangerous this fly stuff was. That meant getting it out of the little cylinder, preferably from a distance. Tom didn’t know what ancient alien civilization’s opinions on safety warnings and hazard stickers were, but there was nothing on the chests or the vials to indicate the contents would kill you.
Still, a test was set up to find out more. They would break the glass in one of the cylinders and gather it up in a glass beaker where they could put different things in there to see what happens. It was not exactly an elegant solution, but it would have to do. Fengi and the younger huntresses had been conscripted to procure some sort of small mammal. Jacky managed to sell it as a training exercise for them, which Tom guessed it sorta was.
Judging by how Bo and Pho had dragged themselves back in the door about two hours later, it had been a tough one too, but they did have a field mouse to show for it, incredibly enough. Perhaps he should dare Jacky to catch one, so he could watch, when she was considered entirely fixed. It was still quite funny, to get to see her sit and expertly tie the little guy a harness. Hopefully, it wasn’t soon to become an ex mouse, but until then it needed to stay put next to the test stand.
It took a bit to set up the experiment, so they ended up running the test after dinner. Linkosta had told them not to drop a hammer on it, so that was the plan. Specifically, they were gonna drop a hammer onto a chisel that rests against the glass for maximum result. It did in fact get the desired result, the liquid running out and down into the little beaker they had ‘borrowed’ from Apuma now that he was busy with local history.
Tom had put on the respirator to go over when the mouse didn’t keel over dead after half an hour. The liquid seemed to be behaving itself rather nicely in the beaker, and he couldn’t smell anything through the filters. Tom took a bit and poured it on the mouse, with no seemingly bad effect, before retreating again to wait a little longer. Again nothing bad happened. The respirator went back on and he went to put a few different things in the liquid, looking for bubbles. Again absolutely nothing. In fact, it seemed almost perfectly inert. The viscosity was akin to cooking oil, but he couldn’t even manage to get salt to dissolve into it, though it did seem able to be diluted with water which did let the salt dissolve. For the next test, he poured the little guy a drink of the watered-down concoction. If it could be drunk, he reckoned it must be at least mostly safe to handle.
Being chased by two greenhorn huntresses was apparently very tiring, the mouse happily taking a sip from the bowl after Tom walked off. It took a little bit, but eventually, the mouse lifted off the ground, much to Tom’s amazement. Saph and Jacky just started laughing, and the mouse just seemed really confused by what was going on. It didn't panic though, incredibly enough. It just sort of hung there, being tied down by the harness, contemplating its life. Tom had to ask the question though, ‘When is it gonna come down again?’
“Is that part of the test?” Saph questioned, sounding only slightly sarcastic.
“Just give it to Wiperna as a pet. She couldn’t bear to kill it,” Jacky countered, still giggling even if she was holding her side now.
After a brief discussion, they had all agreed that, yes, Wiperna indeed needed a new pet. She loved animals, and it doesn't get much more exotic than a flying mouse after all. Even if it didn’t really do much except hang there. Jacky had wanted to do a max altitude test with the little guy, but that seemed a bit too cruel to Tom.
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“That doesn’t look quite right?” Saph questioned, looking at her work.
“What is right though? We have no clue what we are doing,” Jacky countered. Saph was glad that she was paying attention despite looking like shit while sitting on the bed. The amount of blue and purple bruises she was still sporting even after a few days was pretty damn impressive.
“I think it needs to be like a flowing line, no edges like that,” Essy added, sounding very thoughtful, resting her head on one hand.
“I hate you right now,” Tom protested from his place in front of the mirror. It had taken a little convincing to get Dakota to let them use her room. This was rather messy after all, but Saph was honestly wondering if it would have been better if Tom didn’t have the ability to see what they were doing.
“You said you couldn’t do it yourself, and you didn’t want me to do it. But it still needed to be done,” Jacky countered.
“Yes, but I don’t want to look like an idiot.”
“Yeah geez stop complaining, I’m doing my best here,” Saph added.
“I think it looks good, isn’t that right, Kiran?” Dakota went with a slight chuckle.
“I think Saph's jealous,” Kiran echoed.
“Of what? Having a giant mat of fur hanging down in front of my eyes?” Saph countered. “Yes, I am very jealous.”
“Well, it’s nice and warm in here,” Tom added with a smirk.
"Don’t cut off top, it’s comfy,” Kiran pleaded as Saph tried to cut Tom’s ears free. This was tricky as hell to do. They had considered getting Wiperna to do it, but when Tom had heard that the farmer’s only experience was the fact they had sheep where she grew up, he had declined.
Essy had also acquired a pair of shears, reasoning that two people had a better chance of guessing right. Saph was fairly sure she just wanted some fun too though. She had to agree with that. This was great fun, even if it was a little tricky.
“Ohh, do like a cool pattern or something,” Jacky went after a bit, Tom stiffening in the chair.
“Please no.”
“Lightning bolt?” Saph questioned, trying to look serious and likely failing rather badly.
“Hmm…. I guess that is easier than a hot water bottle,” Jacky replied thoughtfully, Tom sighing deeply.
“Maybe a stray arrow to show he doesn’t check his shots?”
“Hey, I was stressed okay. It healed just fine.”
“You still put a hole in my left-wing.”
“And I said sorry.”
“And your fancy arrow didn’t work,” Saph continued as she pondered just how you would cut a pattern in his hair.
“That was hardly a finished product,” Tom countered indignantly.
“I say a heart for him and Jacky. We could paint one to match on you,” Essy added, looking to Jackalope.
“Who says we need to stick to one?” Saph questioned looking around at the others.
“Lightning bolt and heart,” Jacky confirmed with an evil grin, Essy just snickering as Dakota put her head in her hand while smiling wide.
“I hate you all,” Tom protested, crossing his arms, but otherwise not moving.
“God I think he hurt my feelings girls,” Saph replied, taking a step back putting a hand on her chest. “Should I go and get my heart checked?”
“Impossible, your heart is frozen solid,” Jacky responded, Saph feigning further insult before getting on with her masterpiece.
“Kiran, you are making sure it looks good, right?” Tom questioned, apparently having resigned himself to his fate by now, just sitting perfectly still while they cut away.
“Yes. I’m on it. She will not miss again,” Kiran replied from Dakota’s arms, shooting an angry glare at Essy.
“Good lad.”
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Tom did his best to ignore the snickers and staring as he got back to work. It had really been needed, but perhaps he should just have let Jacky do it in private. At least that would have limited the number of bad ideas. The lightning bolt had at least come out decently, and it did sort of distract from the slight bald spot Essy had given him at the base of the neck, so there was that. And no one could tell what the heart was, so hooray for that. Saph had nicked his ear, making another snarky comment about how “that couldn’t hurt, surely. It was like a wing membrane, right?”
He did feel genuinely bad about getting that close to landing a proper hit on her. He really should know better, but considering whether you had a clear shot when shooting upwards wasn’t exactly a normal thing to deal with. The nick to the ear had still hurt though.
Grevi had been dispatched to the capital, carrying some of the spoils of war for study there, as well as Balethon. It had taken quite some arguing, but it had been decided that Balethon would be going with her, to have a nice prosthetic tail fitted that would allow him to at least fly again. Even if he would be clumsy at best. Tom had pondered if he could have whipped up something better, but considering he knew next to nothing about making something like that, chances were that it would just end up being a lot of trial and error resulting in something that wasn’t even an improvement over what they could make in the capital.
Linkosta and Apuma had both gone with the rest of the combat wing to start mapping out the tunnels. They were hoping to find either an unblocked, or easily opened, entrance down there. Failing that, they were hoping to at least find something else useful that they had missed originally. They had a construction crew incoming, which might find something more to do in case they did manage to find a suitable entrance. If they could clear that then they could bring some serious muscle down there, like Baron or Glira, to crack open those vaults, assuming Linkosta could figure out how to disable the seals. Otherwise, they would need to bring in some more experienced mages, likely from the academy, to help.
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For Tom and the workshop crew, it was a matter of getting the mill done, so they could get to work on the planned equipment. They of course also needed to figure out just how these cylinder things worked and how to exploit them. They had finished making the M2 parts that they could on the lathe and had started making the first shotgun parts in between the stuff for the mill. Shiva put in a lot of effort to forge the tubes for the shotgun barrels with a level of precision Tom honestly hadn’t thought possible in that amount of time. That would limit the amount of material waste quite a bit, even if all the surfaces still needed to be turned down and bored out. Kullinger had been put to work making the stocks for the guns so with a little luck they could have most of the parts when the mill was finally free from Machinegun duty.
More experiments had concluded that heat clearly played a role with the little cylinders, much like Linkosta had suspected. That is to say, after a cylinder that had been left in the sun on the window sill started floating off, Saph jumped out the window to grab it before it made for orbit. Inspecting the one they had broken earlier revealed that there was indeed a valve at the top. It was not one way though; there was instead a little disk inside the cylinder to keep whatever entered from above separate from the liquid. In a sense, you could blow into this thing and it might just make a little bit of lift. There was a much more complex-looking valve at the bottom though, which did appear to be some kind of either one-way valve or safety valve.
“Heat and pressure then?” Tom mused after Saph triumphantly returned with the runaway cylinder. “And separated compartments. So steam then…”
That of course resulted in a few curious expressions, followed by the quick 101 guide on steam engines. Tom made a mental note that Linkosta would have to get the history of the industrial revolution some other time. Tink, though, was all ears, as was Jacky of course, at least from the moment ‘engine’ was mentioned. That would have to be a project for a later date, but they could try and make a little boiler to put one of these cylinders under pressure to see what happened.
It would also seem that the liquid didn’t just last forever, either that or they had just figured out how long it takes for something to go through a mouse after Wiperna recorded a flight time for the little guy of roughly three and a half days. Her report was followed by more strong words about treating animals properly. When asked where their little pilot was, she only answered “free” before turning to leave in a huff. That resulted in a fair amount of teasing towards Bo and Pho later that day for just how hard they had fought to catch the bugger. The two young huntresses sighing like only a true teenager could before heading off for their next training session with Dakota, Saph following along to join them since it was apparently archery practice today.
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“Do we need to go catch it?” Saph questioned as the little platform Tom had made gently made its way into the sky, its inventor watching proudly. It was quite fun to watch actually. She was glad they had held off their little test until she came back from the day's hunt. They had been working on the thing for days after all.
“I wanna see how far it goes,” Jacky countered as Tom started scratching his neck.
“I mean, it’s working better than expected I guess. How long did it have fuel for?” Saph questioned. Tom had been rather doubtful as to how much lift the low pressure would provide. He apparently believed it wasn’t just a matter of adding pressure. The steam was flowing through the cylinder somehow when they had done some bench tests. The steam could be seen coming out the bottom of the cylinder despite there being no direct route down there aside from through the disk and the odd liquid. Linkosta had taken to calling it ‘gravity oil’ after Tom's rather lengthy explanation of what he knew about the art of falling. Saph had to give it to him; he was as close as she knew to an expert on the subject. Not that he had appreciated that comment of course. Saph thought it sounded stupid though. She wanted to call it sky oil, or cloud essens perhaps.
“Not very long. With a bigger fire, we get more pressure. We could perhaps make it carry someone. Ooh, or make a lightweight backpack. Or perhaps like a cart to push around the sky,” Tink replied excitedly, getting stuck in his little loop of great ideas, Junior shaking his head a little.
“I think we need to go get it. It might just fall out of the sky and break,” Tom went after a while, looking at the device getting smaller and smaller.
“We?” Saph questioned, looking at the wingless individual. “Well come on then. Go get it,” she jested with an evil grin. Tom just looked back at her with a bemused expression.
“First to catch it gets a shotgun.”
“Oh fuck you!” Jacky cursed as Sapphire ran off, chuckling to herself as she took to the sky. Someone was still not quite allowed to fly and had to take it easy after having been thrown at a wall. That meant she only had Junior and Tink to beat. Neither of them had even bothered to give chase, much to her amusement. The platform was not very big. They had just used a cut-off segment of shotgun barrel they had spare, after making the barrel for the pistol Dakota had requested. Shiva closed off the ends and then they just drilled a few holes to make the boiler. A small pipe ran into the top of the fluid cylinder that was, mostly, steam tight. The whole contraption was nailed down to a plank that could be weighed down. Then they lit a fire under the boiler and waited. It had been boring as hell, but for once Saph fully grasped what was going on. Excluding how the magic fly liquid worked, but it didn’t really seem like anyone understood that part, so she felt excused on that front.
They had played around with it for a bit to get the balance right before finally letting it fly free. Getting it back down again, though, was gonna be a bit more challenging. It was a very awkward shape, very hot, spewing steam, and it wasn’t really capable of lifting more than its own weight at the moment. Saph elected to simply fly up and pluck it from the sky, dragging it with her into a dive, making well sure to keep the hissing device at arm’s length.
“A promise is a promise,” Saph went cockily, presenting the test rig to Tom, Jacky still fuming.
“Like I could keep them out of your hands anyway,” Tom replied, seemingly not very concerned. “I don’t think we are getting much more out of this thing until we get a pressure gauge on it, or at least a safety valve.”
“Safety valve?” Saph questioned. He had used that one before when explaining the steam engines. She was fairly sure its job was to keep things from exploding. She went to blow out the fire under the boiler, finding it already extinguished, before very delicately putting the test rig down, cursing as it tried to lift off again. Junior came over with the sandbags they had brought to weigh it down originally. ‘At least he's helpful,’ she cursed as Tom and Jacky had a bit of a snicker, like two misbehaving kids. “Why is that so funny? It could have blown up? You said how dangerous hot steam can be.”
“Someone wasn’t listening when he explained it earlier,” Jacky, of all people, chuckled, Saph squinting at her.
“That’s the safety valve,” Junior pointed out, taking a pair of thin pliers from his belt and poking a little thing on top of the boiler, letting the steam escape.
“Oh, you are just hilarious,” Saph cursed, trying to look as unimpressed as possible. ‘Doesn’t matter. I still get the shotgun.’
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“See, as flat as Jacky’s belly, and in a matter of seconds,” Tom went proudly, cracking a smile at Shiva’s annoyed gaze before she looked back to the first test of the mill, Jacky giving him a playful punch to the shoulder.
“Your opinion of my daughter aside, I see why you like this thing,” Shiva replied, running a hand along the now perfectly smooth piece of steel.
“And with that, we can start making guns, right?” Jacky questioned, not sounding at all impatient.
“Ohh yeah, we need to make use of all those casings Jarix made for us.”
“I gotta say, I have never seen him work that hard before. It better be worth it, or he is gonna eat you alive,” Radexi added. Tom had to agree. Jarix had attacked that particular duty with vigor. The notion that each round made was going towards his gun likely helped a lot. He had also managed to crank out a lot of extra brass sections for the first locally made shotgun shells. Tom had only brought so many after all. Jarix had also proved incredibly useful for making the shot as well. With just a simple steel tool, that didn’t even need to be hardened, he and Radexi could roll and cut lead shot at ten times the pace Tom had thought possible to manage.
They hadn’t been able to find a good method for making plastic though. All the stuff that was easy enough to make had way too low a melting point, rendering it pretty much useless for this. So the choice had come down to ‘spend more valuable brass’ or ‘figure out how to make cardboard.’ They had gone with the latter in the end, only because they had not actually gotten quite as much brass as Tom would have liked and they really needed the stuff. Vulzan had promised to find more though, so there was that.
The task of making the cardboard had been delegated by Nunuk to Rachuck, of all people. Apuma knew how to make parchment, as did the Lady, but she was of the opinion that her son needed to show a bit more initiative when it came to all the projects at the keep. Aside from just worrying himself sick with how to keep everything safe. Tom was fairly certain he would receive a guiding hand from Nunuk, but hey. As long as they got cardboard it would work just fine. They also needed to make the belt. That one had gone to Heron and Unkai, since his own sewing abilities were best described as none, and they were some of the few people who didn’t have anything specific to do.
“Well, what are we waiting for then? We have gotten everything else. And I’m not spending more time in the guano pit without some boom to show for it,” Jacky countered.
The gun was gonna be as close as they could get to an original M2, with a few modifications on account of the boom powder propellant. The locking lugs had been strengthened by using mithril, to handle the chamber pressure. That was especially handy, considering Tom didn’t really know the quality of the steel they had gotten their hands on. The barrel was heavier to offset overheating from the hot burning powder. The gun was going to be equipped with quick-change sights, the standard being a fully adjustable AA sight, just so they could get the gun on target in a damn hurry if needed.
The pride and joy of their combined efforts was the barrel. Tink had already gotten quite handy with the lathe, spending a lot of time practicing by now. It also helped that a small mistake simply meant Shiva needed to spend an evening with the offending item to put it back together again. Even if it had left her sleeping in her rocking chair more than once, it was still very handy. The smith's damn near arcane knowledge when it came to metallurgy had Tom wondering if she could just look at a piece of steel and know what it was. What mattered though, was that she could put him and his books to shame when it came to hardening work.
The smile on Shiva's face when they let the oil run out of the bore confirmed they had a masterpiece of a surface harden on the inside of the barrel, and they hadn’t even warped it. Quite the feat in Tom’s mind, but for Shiva, it was just expected.
Tink's excitement had been ever-growing, too, as they started putting the weapon together, parts going in as soon as they were finished. With Shiva hammering out the rough parts, Tom, Tink, and Junior finished them up on the lathe and mill, giving them back to Shiva and Jacky for hardening before assembly. They, of course, also had plenty of other people running around. Radexi was in charge of stamp press Jarix. Ray helped Wiperna and Raulf run the distillery and the niter trap in addition to their work tending to the fields. Chief assistant Kiran was given the responsibility of making sure everyone was doing their best and preferably smiling. Saph had ended up being needed for training the new huntresses, leaving Essy in charge of the ammo belts. To Tom’s dismay, she had taken the opportunity to try and teach some of the kids to sew, even if they weren’t allowed to work on the actual ammo belt. It all looked more like a kindergarten arts and crafts day, and the kids were evidently having fun. So Tom let the little child workshop slide. Still, that was an odd situation, to say the least.
All in all, the projects ran like well-oiled machines. Tom almost wished Linkosta and Apuma were back from their little expedition so he could run some more ideas past them. They also needed to finish the land mine, but you couldn’t get it all.
He had instead taken some time to take Lothal aside. Nunuk and Dakota had started a rather rigorous regime of statecraft for him, hoping to get him as ready for the trials ahead as they could. Tom instead elected to focus on making sure the young man was doing well, fearing they were running him too hard. If they were, Lothal definitely wasn’t telling. Tom figured that hadn’t been the case about what had really happened at his home either. And that had left him a crying mess in a corner, so it wouldn't hurt to have a chat at least. It was only slightly awkward as Tom went through the common questions. “How are you doing?” “Are you having fun?” It quickly became apparent that Lothal had figured out what Tom was going for though. The young man just sat down on a bench, looking at him politely, waiting for Tom to get to the point.
“Have you ever thought about if you want to be… A lord, I guess?”
“Mum was gonna be the lady. Grandma was the lady before that. I’m older than Jinaro, so I’m gonna be the lord,” Lothal stated matter of factly, as if there was no room for discussion there.
“If you want to. There are plenty of folk around who would want to be the lord or lady.”
“I don’t know them… What if they are evil? Or weak?”
“I dunno, you leave and go somewhere else?”
“The others can’t,” Lothal countered, with a certainty that betrayed he had probably already considered this.
“… Fair point,” Tom had to concede. Lothal might have the right to choose, but he was the only one that technically could. “I think we could pull some strings though.”
“I’m gonna fix it, okay? It’s gonna be a nice place again,” Lothal countered in a very convincing voice.
“I’m sure you will. We’ll try and lend a hand too. And if any of the ones from the capital are bad people you just let me know.”
“Then you’ll come and shoot them?” Tom had to pause at that. Telling a kid ‘hey, if you don’t like them I’ll come and kill them’ wasn’t exactly where he had wanted this to go.
“Perhaps more like, help them leave. Murder is very illegal. You know that.”
“How many have you murdered?” Lothal questioned rather leadingly, looking at Tom.
“We don’t talk about that one.”
“Trick question,” Lothal replied with a sly smile. “You haven't murdered anyone. Murder is a crime. If you try to confess to a court that you have murdered a darkling they will laugh you all the way out.”
“I think some of the things those two women are teaching you are a little disturbing,” Tom countered, feeling like he didn’t really achieve much with this. But perhaps Lothal did.
As luck would have it, two days later Archeon had returned, carrying the construction crew. But to their surprise, no representative of the Hylsdal family was present, the foreman instead having been given instructions on what the family wanted.
Tom had kept an eye on Lothal, the young man showing his relief despite his best efforts. This meant he could stay here without trouble, to help look after the other kids. They had feared he would either be summoned to the capital or they would try and take him to the ruined keep to help out and perhaps start the grooming process.
The foreman was called Tulow, and as far as Tom could tell he was a prime example of ‘leave me alone, I know what I’m doing.’ He was also very far from impressed at the mention they might need him and his crew for some excavation work in the future. He replied that if they could get him a contract he would read it and then they would see. It was clear that he and the work crew at least found Tom to be interesting, even if it mostly resulted in them gawking at the weird thing as Tom walked over to Vulzan to retrieve the promised bucket of red paint they had ordered a while ago.