Chapter 6 Part 2 of 3 (Patreon)

“What is this metal? Smells like iron.”

“Blood.”

“Euugh?” Taran’s face pressed into a frown as he looked at Rugrat.

“Well, we can’t use metal or inanimate objects to interact with the storage rings. I took a trick from Erik and used some of my blood to make this channel and bingo. I used some of Erik’s blood and it worked as well. Though I don’t know if it will work for everyone. I will need to test or have them use their blood. This is what allows the weapon system to be man portable.”

“So you fill up the storage ring with ammunition and activate it through your blood channel and it just pours out?”

“Pretty much. You run out of ammo, you hit the release here. It ejects the storage ring and you smack in another one. I picked the storage ring sizing based on the number of rings we have in that size. We can’t produce storage rings ourselves, yet. So, for now, we’ll have to do with what we have.”

Taran held his chin.

“If we were to add something like this to the new mortars, you would only need a gunner and a team leader; embed the ring in the side of the mortar and have the gunner activate it, dropping in whatever prepared round he wants. Just have to make sure they have the rounds prepped with different charges and shell types.”

“You working on the new rail mortars?”

“Yeah, same idea. Starting charge to get it going, then railgun formations up the barrel, separated by sleeves. They’ll expand when the round is outgoing. Speeding it up over a longer distance and draw back, hitting the heat release blocks when they come back. Should be able to increase the rate of fire by a factor of ten and increase the round’s size, power, and range. Still, I’m not sure you don’t have too many formations.”

“I have the turning formation, it mechanically affects the other areas but it doesn’t apply mana to them. Then there’s the storage ring for ammunition and spell plate so you can apply spells to the rounds. The sabot sheath has a formation, the sabot rounds can have their own formations, increased piercing, explosive and so on. Then the barrels are the same as the railguns, independent ringed formations that don’t overlap. There is one socket formation on the buttstock that affects the weapon overall, heat decreasing formation and silencing formation. That would be kind of fucking terrifying.”

“A little. That all for formations?”

“Yes.”

“How are you getting power to them all; you running them independently so you charge them all, or linked? And what about the heat core in the barrels. If that overheats, you’re screwed.”

“If you pump the gun, opening the chamber, you can rotate it to the left, unhooking the entire barrel assembly. Then you slap it to a heat dissipating pack on your back, drains the heat while you grab another barrel, rotate it to the right, lock it, and push the cocking handle forward.” He tapped the foregrip. “Like a shotgun. Then it’s all back together and you’re ready to bring freedom through superior firepower.”

“Power?”

“Ah, sorry, that is a bit of a tricky one. Going to need to run, basically, a superstructure through the weapon of enhanced iron to charge all the formations. This thing is going to be a power hog,” Rugrat grinned.

“No shit.” Taran shook his head. “Going to be using enhanced iron to increase the power of formations?”

“Of course; I think I’ll have to use sky iron to get the most out of this.”

“Allow you to use stronger formations. We’re going to have to create the next series of railguns with sky iron. But we don’t have machines in the factories to make them. And we still need experts to work with sky iron.”

“Well, the body might need the sky iron, and the superstructure. What I’m thinking is just hammering the sky iron into support rods and flat plates. Then we just need to cut them with a mana blade or use a fuse spell to put it together. Instead of building it all as a single piece.”

“That could work. Yeah, make things faster.”

“And the drum won’t be sky iron either, we can replace that easily. And the barrels are just earth metal. Again, if we can get them mass produced in sky iron, then we can weld them together and slap them into this. The buttstock is from the Mark Seven.”

“So the hardest thing would be making the sky iron sections. The rest is from earth iron which can be upgraded in the future.”

“You got it.”

“Smart.” Taran studied the plans for a few more minutes. “What about your modified rifle, you going to give that up?”

“Of course not, she’s my baby,” Rugrat looked Taran up and down as if he was crazy and pulled out the rifle. He pulled out the magazine and ejected the loaded round, catching it with mana.

He put it all down on the table.

“Though I think it needs some modifications.” Rugrat leaned on the table.

“How so?”

“Change the recoil system to the same hydraulic systems to be used in the mobile-gat. Use the new heat dissipating sabots and increase the round size to twenty mil.” Rugrat tapped the magwell.

“Isn’t that going to be a massive round?”

“It is large, yeah. But only needs a short stubby starter charge; so cuts down the size a lot, more round, less powder. It’ll be about as long as my middle finger and a bit thicker than my thumb.”

“Going to need a whole new barrel.”

“Just scale up the other barrels. The extra metal should increase the performance and the heat dissipation blocks will be bigger too.”

“It’ll be bigger than you are.”

“Eh, I do plenty of curls.” Rugrat couldn’t hide the shine in his eyes. “I’m thinking that it gets used by the sharpshooters and those in the higher teams that want it. There’s also a belt fed version that can replace our belt fed grenade launchers. Those things are good for a few hundred meters and not much else. A twenty-mil rail gun, that’ll lay down some serious firepower over distance. Give them explosive formations and spell them up with explosive shot and someone’s gonna have a shitty day.”

“So twenty mil portable cannons and a portable gatling gun too. If we have them, then we can take out the grenade launcher, modified Mark Seven and the bolt action?” Taran asked.

“Yeah, the Mark Seven we just slapped on an attachment to take feeding through an open bolt and the bolt action wouldn’t be able to break these fucker’s barriers. All of them were nearly fifty percent their strength and our rail guns were having issues punching through. I like the grenade launcher but it doesn’t have the lethality we need. There is a limit to the amount of weapons we can produce. The fewer the models the better. When is the mark two rail mortar coming out?”

“Might be a few weeks; going to close production on the mark one, start mark twos. We’ll filter them through the service until we’ve replaced them all with mark two’s.”

“What about the artillery cannons? They’re all getting changed to the rail cannons?” Rugrat asked.

“Yes, they’re having heat issues as well. So, wherever they’re placed will have external heat radiators, circulate a cooling liquid around the barrels and pump that into a box with heat dissipating blades. With the size of it, they’ll have to run off of formation sockets; so we can just replace the sockets. The portable versions are much smaller, requiring the formations to be built-in. They’re going to have a shorter shelf life.”

“Until we reach a point where formations are small as hell and we can replace them in small equipment as well,” Rugrat said.

The two of them fell into silence.

“You think they’re going to find us?” Taran asked.

Rugrat turned, leaning against the table, rubbing his face. He took off his cowboy hat and scratched his head before putting it back on.

“To be honest, man, I have no idea. It’ll be difficult. But we are a large organization. There are sure to be some footprints. The Institute attacked the Beast Mountain Range through proxy,” Rugrat opened his hands.

“Some people think we should just cut ourselves off from the other realms.” Taran leaned against the other worktable across from Rugrat.

Rugrat shrugged and pressed his lips together.

“I’m not the guy with the plan. I’m the guy that will be out there tearing the fuckers apart if they show themselves. If we cut ourselves off from the realms, we’ll be weaker. We need materials, we need information. We’re developing information at an incredible rate. That does not replace the fact that the information we get from people in the Ten Realms can open new doors and paths. We wouldn’t be where we are now if we had isolated ourselves.”

“We have the materials and we have the knowledge. We just need to digest it and spend time on it,” Taran said.

Rugrat opened his mouth and then closed it.

“When was the greatest period of advancement for Alva? Was it when we only had connections in the First Realm or a few months ago when we reached the Sixth Realm and brought back information books, new materials, and methods?”

“During the attacks, people were doing everything they could to create things to help out people on the front,” Taran said.

“The closer the bullets are the better the soldier is,” Rugrat said. “People thrive under pressure. But, if we blindly follow our own path, we’ll be idiots. Innovation and change is created through problems and information.”

“Are you saying that fighting is good for us?”

“No, I’m saying that concentrated and focused effort is good for us. Pushing the boundaries is good for us. If we’re cooped up in here, then does anything out there even matter anymore? Over time, will people lose their drive? Sure, there are weaknesses, but would we rather hide and lose our fire? That’s the rub.”

Taran was quiet.

“This is just my personal philosophy, hiding from the world won’t do anything. People need something to strive towards, to have a fulfilled life. Shutting ourselves off; that is just admitting defeat. While we did lose, we were not defeated. The Alva military stands to defend the people of Alva; so that they might live freely.”

“Just… we’ve lost so much. And we could lose so much more,” Taran said.

Rugrat nodded, agreeing with the man.