Klaxons wailed through Ha Noi, sending people running for cover as Enforcers combed the streets. Hovering gunships prowled the air, weapons and searchlights swept over abandoned vehicles and concrete structures. Few people dared move, while two figures ducked from alley to alley.
"Come on Charlie!" She called back to her partner as he lagged behind, the sounds of their boots and shoes pounding on cracked pavement echoing over her call.
"I'm- Ngh- coming as fast as I can here, this thing is heavy!" He called back to her, strain on his voice as he readjusted the awkward pack. "If they catch us, we're dead!" As if to punctuate his statement of the obvious, Enforcer Thrumm guns cracked nearby, prompting more screaming.
"Worse than dead!" She corrected with a grin she knew he could hear on her tone. "Definitely tortured, maybe eaten!"
He huffed and grit his teeth, feet shuffling partially with every stride he took behind her. He held tightly to the straps of his pack, even as the weight cut into his shoulders. The guttural shouting of local Enforcers could be heard over the din of the tightly packed city, klaxons of alarm making people yell and shout to be heard over them. It was enough to make her ears throb, the raucous noises overlapping each other violently enough to give anybody a headache.
She slid to a stop halfway down a nondescript alley, her well worn sneakers skidding on discarded refuse. The door she wanted was partially hidden, requiring her to push aside a plywood board that had mostly rotted through to reveal a glossy black box with an LED screen. Her fingers danced across the face, causing it to illuminate against the moonlight. The pad beeped, swiftly prompting her to lean in and speak "Damanshi Customs Best in the World."
The lock chimed and with an electric hum the door swung open, revealing the hermetic seal and magnetic deadbolts set into the steel frame. She ushered him inside, hand setting on his backpack as he did. With a quick glance up and down the alley, she shut the door behind them and engaged the locks once more. He nearly collapsed right there in the entry, his knees shaking from the effort as he pulled off the pack and hauled himself into a chair. "Do you…" He swallowed through a dry throat. "Think this will work? Akira?"
She unclasped the top flap of the backpack, flipping it over to reveal the hefty silver cylinder decorated with black trefoils over a yellow circle. "If it doesn't it won't be our problem for very long. Resistance will be shit outta luck though." She glanced up at him, shooting him a winning smile. "It'll work, I know it will. Whoever gave Archie and his boys this intel was spot on. I mean the Enforcers seriously had this thing just sitting there, just like the intel said! I have everything fabricated already, been prepping for this little baby for weeks!" Her eyes went down to his chest and the little hole in his oil stained coveralls lined with crystal. It was high up, but off to the side, If he was lucky just this once, the Thrumm shot would have grazed him or skipped off a rib. "How bad?"
"Not bad, just winged me." It was his turn to look up at her and smile, his teeth gleaming white in the darkness. His face was strained and sweaty, but not so much that she had to worry. "Don't get distracted by me, go, get to work."
She stared into his eyes for a brief moment, before accepting it with a nod of agreement. Leaving him on the chair she scooped up the heavy bag, huffing with exertion as she swung it up to her shoulder and walked it into her work area. Benches filled the central space amid lathes and presses, while tools of every make, model, shape and size lined the walls. Parts, pieces, springs and pins littered the benches, amid multitudes of conventional firearms and torn down Enforcer weaponry. She hefted the pack onto the central bench, where a frame and emitter sat waiting for their power source. The workshop was darker than outside, with spots illuminated by humming bulbs hanging off drooping cords.
"This will work." She said out loud as she stripped the bag off the powercell. "Stealing this damn thing was too hard for it not to work…" Setting to work, she began disassembling the protective casing to better access the internals. "You take your potassium iodine pills today, Charlie?"
Her companion grunted around the neck of a water bottle that shook faintly in his fingers, before swallowing and grimacing. "Did you?"
"Probably. Shell open in three, two-" The geiger counter mounted on her workbench began to tick as she set the shell aside. "We have about one hour before it doesn't matter, between the Sieverts and the Enforcers."
"Starting… the clock." He thumbed his phone screen, setting the wall mounted clock to ticking. Sixty minutes to do the impossible and live to tell the tale.
Wouldn't be the first time. She thought to herself with a cocky grin.
Lifting a hand, she toggled a small remote to begin the creative process. Music began to pour forth from her adhoc sound system, filling the shop with high speed rambunctious music. She bobbed her head as the beat kicked off, and murmured to herself as tools filled her hands. "Let's make some Damanshi Magic happen…"
This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
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"Half… an hour!" Her companion called to her with pain in his voice, breaking her from her groove. The music had changed at some point, and the reactor was still being obstinate.
She spat a stream of curses at it, kicking the table in frustration. Someone was pounding on the armoured door, their angry alien voice muffled by three inches of reinforced steel. Her companion remained in his chair, though now armed with an automatic rifle pilfered from her racks of exports. Not that it would do much of anything to Enforcer Carapace. He hunched forward slightly, foot tapping incessantly on the floor as he looked her way briefly. "Talk to me, Akira." He asked in a strained tone, his eyes shadowed by the poorly illuminated entry.
"The-" She began cursing again in Vietnamese before returning to English for her partner's sake. "The goddamn energy oscillator won't spool up in sync with the reactor's output."
"Okay… why is that- important?" He asked before swallowing dryly again. There was strain apparent on his features
Running her hands through short cropped black hair, she exhaled and replied in a level manner. "The idea is a nuclear accelerated plasma weapon, using an Enforcer Fusion Cell to reduce charge times to a fraction of a second via an oscillating beam that excites a chamber filled with pressurized dihydrogen hexa-argon gas. Resulting emission is injected into a ferrous fluid and then propelled down a tungsten chromium alloy barrel set with magcoil propulsion." She turned the mass of tech and pipes over, scrutinizing every inch with a glare. "The problem is getting these two parts to sync, but if I get the reactor feeder any higher the damn thing might go critical, and if I dial down the oscillator, it won't create a coherent beam…" she tilted her head, staring down at the weapon. "Maybe…"
"Whatever… whatever idea you have, go for it. You're… I-" His breath came in hoarse burbles, ragged and wet against his lips. She was wholly engrossed in her work, so it was all he could do to keep a hand pressed to his oozing side and keep his mouth shut. He smiled softly, looking at her under the workshop lights.
"If I multiply the barrels using the spares, rotate them with a small motor… have the oscillator feed into the…" She began flying into it again, the beat of the music picking up as the pounding on the door amplified. The frame had to be reworked, a small motor cannibalized from another project, and an overclocked injector system cobbled together for it all to mesh. She set to it with ferocious intensity, hands a blur as she bobbed along with the intensifying beat.
The minutes ticked down and down, nearing the final hour before the overall radiation would become too much to recover from. "Gamma rays don't bother me, I'm the best there can be!~" She sang off tune as her ratchet clicked and geiger counter ticked, the weapon coming together before her eyes. Another snag arose, causing her to cuss and spin the weapon around.
"Yooooou mechanical sonuvabiii-itch!" She snarls at it, eyes prowling for the solution. "There's proper power, the barrels are spinning, but it's still not working quite right…" She tapped at her chin, feeling a growing unnatural discomfort through her whole body as radiation bombarded it relentlessly. Something was rhythmically slamming into her door, but it hardly garnered any attention. "Maybe if I… reverse the motor polarity and spin the barrels counterclockwise." She set to it again, unwiring the motor before wiring it up in reverse to how it had been.
As the minutes fizzled away, the weapon hummed to life, barrels spooling, emitter humming. Slamming the casing shut, she was rewarded with the geiger counter's incessant ticking stopping completely. Her eyes flicked to the clock as the last five minutes arrived, and a smug smirk crossed her features. "Stick that in your pipe and smoke it, Uncle Sam! Akira Damanshi is the best there is! Charlie! I think we're gold here!" She called out as she drew out a foil pack from her work vest, popping free several tablets to swallow. She then began pulling the weapon harness on, letting the crude exoskeleton take the weight of the heavy weapon while she hefted the emitter. It was bulky and unrefined, but in theory could melt through anything. "Think I'll call this one… N0-1 NARC. Nuclear Accelerated Rotary Cannon. Has a nice ring to it, don't you think?"
Pulling the weapon free from the bench, she tilted her head and looked to the front of the weapon's shop she had been running for years. "Charlie?" Her companion sat in his chair, head slumped down and eyes half lidded. The lights hung over him, casting his unnervingly still body in dark shadows. Blood slowly dripped from the hole in his coveralls to the floor, where a large puddle had collected under him. Bits of crystal from the Thrumm shot floated in the pool like tiny killer dancers.
Eyes wide and lips drawn in a tight line, She kneeled down before him, giving him a light shake as blood soaked through her jeans. "Charlie? Come on, don't quit on me now…" She bit her lip, a painful knowing settling over her like a shroud. "You… jerk." She whispered softly as her shoulders slumped, her hands briefly settling on his knees as she placed her head there. "You didn't want to distract me, huh? Well this is pretty damn distracting." She wiped her eyes with the back of her grease stained hand, letting out a shaky breath. She wanted to be sick, the aching feeling in her whole body loomed over the pills she'd crushed down, with his blood on her hands and knees only edging her closer to that precipice. The pneumatic pounding on her door didn't abate as she reached up, closing his eyes with her forefinger and thumb. "I'm sorry I got you killed, Charlie…" She set her hand over his cheek, cupping it gently as she leaned forward and kissed his forehead. "Sorry I couldn't be what you needed me to be…"
Another impact struck the door, causing one of the magnetic locks to fail. The sound made her jerk away from the corpse before her, a snarling scream escaping her lips. "WE'RE HAVING A MOMENT HERE! SHOW SOME RESPECT!" Another impact, and the door continued to buckle. With a scoff she stood, bringing the weapon back up as the barrels began to spin. "Fine! You wanted my attention, and now you've got ALL OF IT!"
The weapon proved louder than anticipated, letting out a cacophonous howl as the beam of white hot plasma utterly illuminated her whole workshop like a halogen light. With spots in her eyes and ringing in her ears, she shut off the weapon long enough to note that there was now a five inch hole in her door, glowing hot and dripping metal. On the other side an Enforcer squealed and shrieked in its alien tongue, creating a racket in the trash cans as it thrashed and flailed. The creature within the armour popped audibly, cooking alive inside impervious carapace that had now become a tomb. More calls sounded out, but the pounding had stopped, now replaced by mechanical whining. The music still pouring through her speakers flooded into the empty space the weapon's report had left, like a tidal wave of human emotion.
With a manic grin, Akira spun the barrels again, and unleashed a barrage of beams through the reinforced walls of her shop, filling the air with howling screams. The door into the shop was wedged inside its frame, likely to never open normally again. She ran the beam over the steel, carving out a glowing U shape that she stepped through as the metal plate crushed the pneumatic breaching tool beneath it. The Resistance would have their trump card, but like any good gunsmith, she had to test it first. With plenty of soft targets cooking at her feet, her eyes lifted to a hovering hardened target as it swiveled its spotlights onto her and brought its nosegun to bear. Akira hefted the weapon upwards, the barrels spinning fast as they illuminated. Her smile only widened as she squeezed the trigger, and the NARC boomed out thunderous proclamations.