Crossover Fan Fiction ❯ A Certain Machinist ❯ Machines of Loving Grace ( Chapter 2 )

TWO

I couldn’t just sleep on their couch. I cooked them breakfast, lunch, and dinners. I was on Remnant, which is a bad place doomed to a terrible end, and Vale hated the homeless, who preyed upon each other like rats. Patch, where I was now, did not have any spare housing. It was all families, mostly farmers and fishermen. I needed to find myself a justification to keep this safe roof over my head.

“This food is good. Keep up the quality and you can stay the week,” Tai-Yang offered.

“Thanks. I have a shopping list. Can I borrow Ruby or Yang to hold the money and help carry groceries back from the market?” I asked him. He grunted assent.

“It’s not like Summer’s food, but it’s better than Raven’s,” he offered. That was almost a compliment from the exhausted drunk.

“I’m hesitant to try any spicy dishes with you folks. The girls might not like it,” I explained.

“I’m from Mistral, but I’ve been to Vacuo. I know about spicy food,” he shrugged. “A little spice is probably fine with them.”

“I’ll test some recipes. Your spices are similar to ones I know.”

“I thought you were some kind of alien with no memory, Bob,” Qrow reminded me.

“Right. Yeah. But your moon is really f’d up,” I pointed back. “And several of your continents are shaped like dragons and animals drawn by a toddler with a giant space laser.”

“Touche’,” he agreed. The wall map is ridiculous. If ever there was evidence that Remant is a failed space colony, those ridiculous continents are it. That and the stars being wrong. Or this is a simulation and I'm in the Matrix. Or something like it. Possibly IF, aka Infinite Fun, but that suggests I got rescued by The Culture, which is arguably worse than Remnant. The Culture always ends up with galactic empire war or megastructures getting destroyed by antimatter or exploding suns. The sort of devastation that Star Wars tried to do at the much smaller scale of mere planets. 

“Making ammunition is a series of steps. You follow the steps and you get good ammunition,” explained Ruby. Learning technical things from a girl who didn’t reach my shoulder is somewhat humbling. Ruby is teaching me how she makes cartridges for her weapon.

I learned that after cooking breakfast that first morning. The basic setup isn't hard, from cleaned cases to magnum rifle primer to gunpowder to seated bullet. You do things carefully and methodically and you get good reliable ammunition.

Her sister was grinning at my discomfort learning how to make explosives from a child. It’s her planet. I’m the alien here. I listened to the local pop station broadcast from Vale at the Patch repeater, getting some idea of their commercials and the very strange parallels between Remnant and the Earth I'd left behind. And I was sleeping on a cot in the laundry room while Qrow visited. Not the most elegant setup, much less when you needed to get up in the night to visit the toilet.

I made little Ruby 109 rounds of ammo, and she'd tested enough to be comfortable with the quality. I am looking for improvements in either quality or effectiveness. I spent three days learning how fire dust worked, similar to smokeless powder, and gravity dust, and how they interacted.

"Where do you get your bullets?" I asked her.

"I make them," Ruby explained. She showed me next. I learned how to form FMJ copper jackets from discs cut from a copper sheet. You use a hydraulic press with hardened steel forming dies. Over and over again, 120 times. Then you heat up and pour molten lead into the copper shell under a fume hood to avoid getting lead poisoning and turning into a violent thug because lead does that to your brain. Clean-room techniques are necessary with this step, and a location downwind of the house. For lead, I used old wheel weights collected from a local junkyard and a bit of snipped tin to improve the lead hardness with a crucible running on fire dust.

Learning to work with dust instead of electricity or a gas furnace is interesting. Dust is granular, rather than a liquid or gas, so handling it requires special mechanisms.

After the lead bullets cooled it was time for quality control by weight and concentricity, which you sort into bins by single grain differences in weight. I had to make another two hundred bullets before I got this process right. With good projectiles it was onto the next steps, which involved mixing gravity dust gelatin onto the bases to reduce the recoil so a ninety pound girl can fire a heavy anti-tank rifle without wrecking the velocity. The dust layer on the base meant it regained momentum before it exits the barrel. It’s a really clever trick for drastically improving the velocity of the round. A regular .50 BMG is already doing over 4000 feet-per-second from a standard M2 machinegun from World War Two. This new method was faster, around four times faster. Aero drag is still a problem, but the projectile is heavy so momentum is everything.

I added a lacquer coating of Earth dust to the forward curve of the bullet, which is a type, not just dirt. The coating then ablates in air friction and reduces the sound so you don’t go deaf firing the rifle. Ruby was very impressed by that. It was pure self-defense for me, I promise. The sound-cancelling earmuffs I built using plans from the house scroll kept me from going deaf. Ruby herself just healed her eardrums using her aura.

“Ruby, I found several steps where I can improve your process for better ammunition. After that, how do you feel about explosive armor piercing with mono-polar gravity dust?” I asked her.

“Really?” she asked, getting into my face.

Yang raised an eyebrow at her sister’s enthusiasm. I had already shared the information I’d gleaned from her Uncle Qrow about Yang’s mother. No need to go to Vale and pick a fight with a local gangster, wrecking his dance club and pissing off his huntress nieces. Yang knew about her mom now.

“So she abandoned me because she loves me?” Yang asked skeptically.

“Pretty much. And Summer was a good mom, right? Raven is a bandit queen, and the bandits are the worst kinds of humans and faunus you can imagine. They wouldn’t hesitate to use you to get to her, force her to do something she didn’t want to, just to keep you safe. And once they’ve done that, they’d do it anytime.”

“What do you mean by worst?” Yang asked.

“The sort who invade remote settlements, rape and pillage, and leave the survivors to the Grim if they’re lucky. If they’re not lucky, the bandits keep them a while or sell them as slaves, or until they die of the abuse,” I explained. Yang shuddered.

“So yeah,” I answered, “She left you here with a safe home because she cares. And if you spot any ravens nearby, one of them might be her. She hasn’t really abandoned you.”

“That’s… huh. I need to think about that,” Yang said, looking lost.

I got back to making ammunition. It was a relaxing process, very Zen. It is also like cooking, only more precise, because precision is accuracy. The precise amounts of dust used, and the size of the dust grains affected the pressure and the muzzle velocity. You wanted it to be the same each time. Grinding, sifting, sorting, all with grounded equipment to avoid sparks or other sources of ignition. Dust handling safety is more than just a small pamphlet from the Schnee Dust Company.

Day continued with cooking meals, making ammo for Ruby, talking to the residents about various things and then the weekend arrived.

“That’s a nice little sport bike, Yang,” I said the third week of my visit to my benefactor’s home. She’d just finished riding up and parked it. It was cooling off from its most recent performance ride and I admired the yellow cowlings. Looked a lot like a Ducati 750 or Ninja 600, only Duchat Montrose and Kwakasami Nyamo were the models here. Vale is sort of French and sort of Italian. Mistral got the Asians.

“I’m pretty happy with it. Bumblebee is super fast,” she said proudly.

“On pavement. How about the roads around here?” I asked her. She frowned.

“It’s mostly for commuting in cities like Vale. I’m getting ready to go to Beacon, and it’s paved there,” she explained.

“Sure. It’s fast. How do you keep it from being stolen? Two guys and a pickup could carry it off,” I pointed out. It was a common way to steal bikes everywhere. A big downside to owning one is parking it anywhere was gambling if it’s there when you come out of a place or not.

“I’m more concerned with how it rides my ass,” she complained.

“Is it too firm or too soft?” I asked her. She blushed at the implied innuendo.

“Wouldn’t you like to know,” she teased. I stared, waiting.

“Aw, I thought that was a good one,” she complained.

“Innuendo jokes would work great on a seventeen year old. Especially a Valean yokel named Yellow. He’d probably blush himself crimson over that little joke of yours. You might even get lucky, using that joke on him and show him your cleavage. However, I was referring to the suspension.”

“It’s too firm, and bumps tend to be hard to control,” she admitted.

“You can tune some of these. If not, swapping springs and fork oil will do it. Maybe add a reservoir and progressive spring setup. What do you weigh? 115?” I asked her. She raised an eyebrow.

“Something like that,” she finally answered.

“Wearing riding gear, with boots and any baggage you tend to carry? The more accurate the number the better a job I can do tuning your suspension to your body. Should smooth out and let you go even faster.”

“Faster?” Yang asked, looking excited. She had magical body shields, aura, so crashes were a lot less of a big deal than for normies like me.

Her garage had the needed parts. I measured them and got started on her project. The mechanisms are easy to understand. Replacing springs and fork oil is key, along with rebound dampening from Formula 1 racing. Eventually we had a tuned progressive suspension that had adjustable ride height and settings for hardness, based on surface. Knobbier tires would also help, for gravel roads. Slicks are great for roads, but worthless on gravel like Patch had. Yang tested my adjustments and we got her dialed in after several days of effort. A quick hug and kiss on the cheek and she was off again. Teenage girls are a delight, to be sure.

It was back to helping Ruby with her ammo again. The first and second batch found some variation in muzzle velocity and accuracy, and I was concerned about overpressure in the chamber. Considering her sniper rifle was mechashift, and its barrel was in segments that extended, I was somewhat limited on the sorts of powder mixes I could use without blowing it apart. She’d shown me the blueprints and the spec sheet on max pressure, wear rate, and erosion pressure. No matter what kind of steel you use, if you try to run gas over 65000 PSI, you got deformation of the steel and what is called throat erosion, requiring either rechambering or a new barrel. This is why all the talk about a new Service Rifle for the Army was pure bunk, because the Pentagon was pushing for Sig and its 277 Fury round at 80K PSI, which would fail in a few hundred rounds, probably explosively and killing the operator. It would be possible to get very high velocities with the right powder mix to avoid overpressure, but that’s very tricky engineering and placement of the propellant matters. Most cartridges use the same powder delivered by volume by a measure, usually a tube.

Ignore ignorant authors claiming scent of cordite or swapping clips. They don’t know anything about guns. Only some revolvers and the M1 Garand use a clip, and a few similar antique exceptions. Everything else has a box magazine. And they’re called cartridges. The bullet is the pointy bit on the end that comes out when it goes off. Authors get that wrong all the time. It shows ignorance.

I’ve got all the tools to make single stage ammo, doing everything in carefully controlled steps. I am trying to get a good reliable powder burn that she can get used to for her acrobatics with the scythe, which is still taller than she is. She looks amazing standing next to it.

“Ruby, I’m thinking I need special materials for your new ammunition type. I’m going to want Tungsten wire for the core, and I’ll want to work harden the copper, then add fire dust, then insulator, then lead cap, then the actual lead pour atop that. I’ll need to create a machine to do this safely,” I explained, showing her the ideas I had using the house scroll. I don’t own one myself. This is Patch. It is the boonies, pretty much. There’s a weekly Bullhead delivery of goods and the local farmers sell their produce and handicrafts back to Vale. The guy and woman who also arrived ‘without memory’ like me were getting the same lecture. Apparently this is a common thing for Patch and certain other communities. I’m guessing they are isekais but I didn’t ask because it would be rude.

“Those last ones you made are really good. I’m getting really good groups now,” Ruby enthused.

“And when you use them for acrobatics?” I asked her.

“You’ve gotten the gravity dust right so I have the same recoil I’m used to. Those first ones were amazing, but totally useless for my fighting style,” she explained. This is true. She uses the recoil to power her acrobatics because she wasn’t all that strong. Just ninety pounds of murder princess. Yang laughing at her kept her showing up to training sessions while I fine-tuned her ammunition. It is clear to me that when she goes off to Beacon, I’d need to keep working on her ammo factory and sell to the school on Patch, Signal. Tai-Yang teaches there, along with Qrow. I’d say it was weird for a teacher to be a drunk, but I’ve met teachers before: they are all drunks.

Fun fact: grim don’t have organs or blood, exactly. They are made of black goo that evaporates when their shell is sufficiently damaged, so I’m not sure if small caliber hypervelocity rounds would work on them. Those work because of hydrostatic shock shutting down organs all at once. Without organs, grim are immune to that effect. Even pistol rounds seem useless, because they mostly rely on bleeding trauma or organ hits, and grim have neither. That means you need a big gun or special ammunition to kill most of them. Most of them move really quickly, what is worse, so hitting them with a slow reloading rifle is a recipe for death, mainly your own.

Remnant is even more dangerous than I thought. For non-hunters, it’s a struggle to stay alive and cheerful enough when grim might break into your village tomorrow and kill everyone. And even thinking about it can summon them, because they are drawn to negative thoughts and despair. So pretend to be happy or end up dying. Optimism and cheerfulness for people like Ruby is actually a survival trait here. What the ever loving f’k? Really?

I need an anti-Grim weapon, some kind of PDW. I made a tube out of steel pipe, capped by a welded end. I assembled a pair of welded rods as spring guides, a heavy weight with a firing pin, a simple full-auto trigger that gets out of the way of the piston, and use a .400 rifled barrel just under a foot long. I attached it to the larger tube with a castle nut and a simple spring latch to lock the nut in place when tight. The barrel was drilled for a silencer which I assembled from washers as baffles and a shroud with a heat shield. It wasn’t that long. I was able to hang it from a harness on my chest when I went to the market alone. The kids were back at Signal. I could walk the mile into town with some chance of survival carrying this. I made 10 millimeter ammunition for my grease gun and tuned the recoil and springs to the weight of the piston, which was half again heavier than the original chambered for 45 ACP. 10mm is around twice the energy, so you need a bigger piston to deal with recoil. It wasn’t that fast cycling, which helped, but it was reliable because it was simple. PHUT-PHUT-PHUT. And it would damage most grim. I used gravity dust to increase the impact on the target, tuned to activate on impact, primed by firing. Shaking in the magazine well wasn’t a problem. I also used a holo sight because the irons on a grease gun were terrible. It was good to around 100 yards. If I wanted better range I need a completely different ammunition and mechanism. Direct blowback is very limiting. I named my weapon Spud. They name weapons here. Ruby thought it was funny naming it potato.

“Hahaha… potato. You named your gun potato!” she laughed. Cute kid. I had to remind myself she was cute. Like a little puppy.

“Laugh all you like. My gun only cost 15 Lien. That’s less than I spend on your chocolate chip cookies every week.” She abruptly stopped laughing and looked to her dad. Tai-Yang raised an eyebrow.

“And any commoner could fire it, without aura,” I added.

“Just think what the villagers will make of it,” Tai-Yang said.

“Or what criminals would do with copies,” pointed out Qrow, sipping from his ever-present flask of hooch. I am not sure where he gets it but I suspect he fills it at various bars, from whatever rotgut is available cheap. It always gets him drunk and always leaves him with a sour headache the next morning. Even with aura, that must be nearly poison. I could easily run that stuff through a charcoal filter after separating out the methanol fraction, then add some botanicals and call it Gin. Would probably be better for him, too. And taste better. Note to self: start my own distillery. Everything is legal on Remnant.

“Technology always has downsides. It is lighter than a Tommy Gun and simpler than the Mauser NP9. Roller locks are complicated, and wear out. This has fewer moving parts, so it is cheap and reliable.”

“But that flip over safety latch. You need two hands to use that. And using your finger to cycle the piston?” Qrow complained.

“All true, but it’s still cheap and it works. And I might add a spring loaded non-cycling bolt handle on the left side, and maybe a safety notch on the housing. It’s another moving part, but won’t add much to the price”

“Cheap and it works. What did you call that again?” Qrow asked.

“A grease gun,” I repeated.

“Huh. Well, I mean if you wanted to start making those, it would be a business. Probably easier than making Ruby’s ammo,” Tai-Yang offered.

“I need to work out the sale price, wholesale to gun shops in Vale,” I explained. “I need to cover the material costs, energy needed to run the machines, shipping and delivery, any regulatory issues, bribes to the corrupt Valean officials, taxes, all those things. And rent on a building, and a security system that can stop Roman Torchwick or the White Fang from stealing my products.”

“Obscurity is the best security,” Qrow pointed out.

“Very true, but when you have employees, you suffer the consequences of them getting drunk and spilling your business secrets to someone who is connected to criminals, or gets paid for tips on shops to hit. Eventually I’m going to get robbed,” I answered.

“I suppose I should get started on the plastic one,” I commented. “It costs even less, and has a better safety and firing group.”

“Eh? Plastic?” asked Tai-Yang in confusion.

“Yeah, there were tests using a similar design to the grease gun, only with plastic housing. Cast parts are very cheap. It’s still blowback operated though, and tends to bounce around on firing. Not super accurate, but for grim or bandit defense, it is adequate. Guess I’ll call it the Model 2: UFO.”

“OOF-O?” asked Qrow with confusion.

“Uncomplicated Firing Object,” I answered. Like heck I’d step on some German trademark.

I went to do the design work from memory and it took longer to deal with the trigger group and firing system than the rest of the weapon. It wasn’t complicated. It was the UMP after all. Just a railed plastic version of a Grease Gun. I opted to make a dust powered red-dot scope for it that would work at night. Sold separately for thirty lien, or package deal for 100, which is still three times what it cost to make. The machinery for plastic heating and casting and trimming, and the metal lug parts that the plastic casts around dealing with the actual locking system and internal bearing surfaces… slightly more complex and costly to maximize automation.

I need more space. I am out of storage shed at this point. I need a building where I can expand, with power I’m paying for myself and locks on my doors. As great as it has been to live with the girls and their… dads, I need my own place.