The next day felt a lot better, I could move my limbs without shakes and there wasn’t any pain, it was still hard to really lift my own weight around in big motions though as some simple big knee lift exercises in my bedroom dropping me onto my bed as I quickly over balanced and couldn’t correct due to simple weakness.
No climbing for me yet then. I had breakfast with mom quickly with both of us just eating some starries and soup, mom didn’t like me drinking coffee so she drank hers and I chugged down a juice mix. Went with strawberry and star fruit, never even seen a picture of a star fruit but it was probably star shaped. Starries and star fruit.
After breakfast I headed over to Noe’s apartment and sat in her workshop to see the new gun.
Noe was super excited to show it off, the weapon was a quite impressive with most of it’s actual frame stripped and exposed with the only parts having anything other than bare frame being the receiver and the rail on top which had a dark grayish green casing over them up to the stock which was also just the pipe. It would be strong on the complicated parts against impacts but the frame of the gun and the stock would be light.
As she pulled it out and I looked over it she quickly checked it over and made sure the receiver functioned properly and that an empty magazine locked in properly and released smoothly. She then locked eyes with me and I braced for some full on technical speech aimed directly at me.
“So this here is an old Kreller Munitions model with a full body rebuild with modern materials, it’s basically a totally new design coming in at only two point eight pounds bare. Then it’s got a combined BNU PSU module that I took apart and arranged into the core of the now empty frame underneath the barrel close to the receiver, then covered with a laminate casing like the receiver and the barrel. The gun is overall made of a really nice elastomer that I made myself and should be good to take a lot of punishment with laminate able to shrug off indirect small arms fire pretty well. The actual barrel is the heaviest part being made of carbon steel with a good mixture of chromium and molybdenum near the chamber and then swapping to a carbon fiber barrel once it gets two inches out. A bit over complicated but it means less repairs and better for longer operations.” Noe blathered at me relentlessly about the various part of the gun.
“Wow, it looks preem Noe, sounds very sturdy as well. How much is the weight with two sights and it’s power unit?” I asked, a bit overwhelmed.
“It reaches about three point six pounds of weight which is excellent for a heavy submachine gun. Light as a feather really. And it’s chambered for the forty five auto family of rounds with it able to handle smart rounds and standard but be careful with anything exotic like multi-heads or supers, they usually look like they’ll fit fine and then jam after the barrel heats up the smallest bit. I can refit the receiver for something fancy like that if need be or even put a lever clamp on the chamber if your majorly interested in that stuff but I think this’ll do for now. As for scopes you’ve got a red dot with a magnification up to ten and a spicy nerd sight with fusion night vision and thermal vision digital with up to three time magnification with a wide band NLJD imaging module built in to spot electronics through the view as well, although it doesn’t work on wires because that takes tech I can’t get hold of, real tiny scale magnetic sensors.” Noe explained with gigantic enthusiasm that bordered on religious as she got closer and closer throughout.
“Okay then. That sounds perfect Noe. It’ll really help on my next job actually. I have to set up a bunch of IR emitters and receivers throughout the green aqueducts, so I’ll be working in the dark. It’ll be nice to be properly armed and ready to react this time instead of just chancing my way through.” I said, trying to placate the fervor in her shining eyes.
Fortunately it worked and she switched out of gun mode and into normal mode, placing the gun in my lap and stepping away to check my signet.
“You should have been careful and prepared last time too, at least this time you’re properly armed. Just be careful. I’ve fixed your signet like I said I would, new receiver on it made mostly from the old one. An easy fix all told.” She said, apparently the enthusiasm didn’t carry over to older or simple projects. She handed the signet to me and I slipped it into an underarm holster she had given me when I arrived and sat down.
I then slung the smg into my storage rig under my other arm but much further down near my belt, it took a bit of strap resizing to get it to sit nicely and secure among the rigging but eventually it fit properly despite it’s big size and I could swing it out with a simple two movement draw, first back and up to untangle the mag, then up and forward out of the rig and into a firing position. Very nice.
Once that was done I took the smg out and put it on the side as it was a little big to sit around wearing. It was a nova piece though. I gave Noe a fist bump as soon as she noticed I was done fiddling with it.
“I’m gonna get on making some IR stuff, do you mind if I use your tools? I don’t think I’ll need your printer for anything apart from the lenses. You’ve already got a load of IR emitters and receivers in the electronics bins so I’ll just pay for everything I use.” I said, rolling the office chair I was sat in up to the bench beside Noe.
“Yeah that’s fine, just leave the ammo clamp alone. It’s temperamental and has a bad attitude. I’m hoping mom can either fix it properly or replace it when she gets back. I think there’s some lenses mom uses for laser grenades you can use over in the box in the corner, the blue one.” Noe said as she started working on soldering something on a weirdly shaped box.
“What’re you working on now?” I asked as I rolled the chair over to the blue box and took a handful of prisms and lenses from the box of tiny bits of cut glass. They were all labeled and separated into sections but I just grabbed some from the smaller set, not the smallest though. Those ones were basically sand and likely for microptoelectronics or something similar.
“Now the big Mal gun project is done and you’ve finished dying I’m going back to one of my digital scope projects. I wanted to make an advanced scope system that some of the stock milspec fixed sniper platforms have, but I wanted to try and shrink it down to a rifle mounted system by using better materials and less hardening and redundancy. Not everyone is a soldier on a mixed tactic battlefield, there’s not many micro-nukes and EMPs out in the city. I think it’d be cool to have a long rifle with a scope that can manage a full range of digital visual tools. Digital night vision, low light color, thermal overlay, full augmented targeting display suite, pinpoint high-range x-ray, audio visualization tools and an adaptive tactical suite with full close network support. It’ll need a big scoping unit and mounts for all the sensors and then a big computer bank and power supply unit which is what I’m working on now.” Noe said slipping back into her madness and her eyes filling with stars.
Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.
I just sighed next to Noe as she chattered away in happiness. It must be nice to have your own world to disappear into whenever you talk about some new toy. I knuckled down connected to Noe’s printer and used the software on it to start molding the little parts needed to make a set of tripods as laid out in the documentation that Marchand had given me.
The little tripods would have emitters, receivers or prisms attached to them along with a small explosive charge that could be triggered through an IR signal they were already being used to transmitter with a small timer so the signal could get through the tripod network before the first one exploded and broke the chain, instead they’d all explode at roughly the same time a few seconds later as part of the scuttle protocol.
Ultimately all I needed to make was one emitter and one receiver and then enough prisms to keep line of sight from the emitter to the receiver at the other end. But there were all kinds of problems listed in the documentation that would require multiple sets of emitters and receivers throughout the chain. In areas of very bright light or areas of dense dust or smoke could make the laser unstable and cause packet loss and connection issues. Also very long chains of prisms or using prisms of low quality can cause laser dispersion that causes a lot of issues that only very advanced netrunning equipment can deal with. The kind of stuff I didn’t have. So I’d need a few pairs to take along.
Me and Noe just sat side by side for a few hours tinkering away on our projects without sharing many words apart from the odd question about where something was or if either of us wanted a juice. I was finishing up a taller tripod and fumbling with screws when I had some Sanctum boxes on my interface for the first time that day.
[User should be informed that they have several profile updates pending integration. Does the User wish to integrate and view them now?]
Uh, sure Sanctum. We’re just sitting here quietly, you could have just had them pop up whenever. Not like I’m in a combat situation.
[User profile updated.]
[Improved Attribute: Insight. User Value: 1]
[Improved Attribute: Presence. User Value: 0]
[Improved Skill: Combat, Pistols. User Rating: Novice.]
[Improved Skill: Engineering, Electrical. User Rating: Proficient.]
[Improved Skill: Engineering, Mechanical. User Rating: Competent.]
[Improved Skill: Negotiation. User Rating: Novice.]
[Acquired Skill: Engineering, Network. User Rating: Untrained.]
[Acquired Skill: Engineering, Optical. User Rating: Untrained.]
I felt a shiver through me as the changes settled in and when it passed I found that considering the work in front of me was a lot easier to think about, each consideration being smooth and seeming obvious and comfortable compared to before. A very nice change.
Looking at the details of the little tripod guide that Marchand’s documentation explained seemed lacking to me now instead of interesting and unfamiliar. The tripods should be quadruped and have a universal prism, emitter, receiver design that I could just reuse and reproduce over an over. At the same time I could build up the area around the emitter so the infrared glare from the bright emitter less visible from the sides.
These changes would be included in the next generation of my designs as I kept working on with the parts I had made for the current models. My hands worked with newfound confidence and speed as I quickly fit together the full selection of mostly prism tripods and bunch of pairs of emitters and receivers.
“Your really getting used to that work aren’t you? I thought you were mostly a gonk when it came to working with your hands like that. I figured I’d be working on it for you eventually when you got frustrated and threw something an hour in to the job.” Noe said next to me while she drank a can of prune juice.
“You can’t be an operator for very long unless you can handle complicated things. You’ll either mess up early or annoy someone and they’ll shoot you. This is just one of those things where you need to focus and get into the motions, same as moving properly or handling danger. Except I’m sat here screwing nuts onto bolts instead.” I said lamely.
“As long as you’re not fighting anyone hand to hand I’ll be happy. Maybe when we’re grown ups I’ll feel better about you fighting but ever since that time with that big kid, you remember fanged Eddie?
The kid with those grills and the cyberarm? He practically pulled you in half Mal, it really scared me back then. His big brother just sitting there watching his little brother break both of another kid’s arms just because you wouldn’t take less of a cut after a job we all worked on.” Noes said, crossing her arms.
Yeah, that had been a rough point of life right near when I started running around getting into actual trouble with the other kids, less breaking open vending machines and more actual little jobs where we stole cars or broke open storage units. Fanged Eddie had decided I’d really slowed the little team down by securing our exit instead of rushing in and stealing an empty repair drone truck. When we’d got back to his big brother and wanted our pay Fanged Eddie had complained that I slowed us down by a lot and almost blew our window of opportunity and his big brother had cut my share in half, I complained and said I was just making sure we were secure to get the vehicle actually away from the yard it was in.
Big bro, never knew his name, didn’t like the back talk and told Eddie to break my arms, not even punching, just grab my arms and pull them apart. Fanged Eddie was a whiner, but he wasn’t a total dimmer and he didn’t like the idea, you could see it on his face. I looked at him and he looked at me, I shook my head and pulled my little knife out as a little five year old against a combat cyberarmed eight year old. Eddie’s cyberarm was a botch job, just a normal full grown combat grade cyberarm cut down by a ganger scrapper and then fixed back together until it more or less fit Eddie’s frame.
Still looked ugly though and was full of micro-spasms whenever it moved.
Eddie had looked at his brother but one glance was all that was needed to know it wasn’t a choice. Fanged Eddie had then quickly disarmed me and knocked me onto my back before grabbing my left elbow and planting his foot on my shoulder so he could pull the top arm bone apart. Then he did the other one. I don’t remember much from when it happened and I think I passed out. Noe was there though, and she was terrified. I look back and just thank Eddie that he took the time to break my arms the way he did, he could have ripped them out of the sockets and tore my ligaments or tendons or whatever to shreds along with my bones. He took effort to break just the bicep bones, whatever they’re called, cleanly in a way they’d heal back fine.
Fanged Eddie was a ganger up north with a gang called something bleeders last I’d heard and his brother was dead over some ganger mess up, some disrespect to one of the leaders of the Dissolvers down here in the south. I didn’t know details.
Noe had never liked combat, had never even liked carrying a pipe let alone a knife. When Eddie had broke my arms she had cried a lot and was quite scared for a few weeks. She found her bravery eventually and we had a good three years of running around in our little rotating gang.
“It’s not an issue Noe, I’ll be throwing gonks around when I’m an adult. It’ll be like the action flicks. All whutaah! And they’ll go tumbling away all broken.” I said while chopping the air over the workbench.
“Such a gonk.” Noe said, checking a tiny weld with a monocle thing.