chapter 46
Time flew by as I started to work on upgrading my main weapon. The revolver will stay the same, as I don’t strictly need it to have penetrating power but use it more as a utility weapon. The bullets that go into it are big enough that I could make a lot of different kinds for different uses.
Currently, there were two finished specialty bullets. One was, of course, the atomic one, which was for last-resort use. The other finished one was quite easy to make.
The battery technology was a lot more advanced, so this one just had an unstable small battery inside its bullet that would shatter on impact and release quite a devastating electric discharge.
It could possibly kill—and if the bullet hits, it certainly will—but its main purpose is to disrupt different types of armour and suits. Of course, specific electronic devices as well, perhaps even drones and other stationary weaponry.
The third specialty bullet still needed its programming finished, but Lola was working on that. It was quite tricky to get that working properly.
The main idea of this bullet was simple: if I couldn’t get through a defence, be it a shield or anything else, why not go around it and attack the weak point?
This bullet has stored within it pressurised gas. It could expel it through a few holes within the bullet itself, allowing it to manoeuvre.
Now, it wouldn't be a graceful display of manoeuvrability—in fact, it would look quite janky—but the simulations were promising. If this works, it would be a great tool in my arsenal.
Yet what this revolver sorely lacked was true penetrating power. We simulated making the bullet have a sort of rocket to increase its speed, but that didn’t seem to help too much. It was simply too small and too weak overall.
That meant, for true penetration, I needed another weapon. I already had a decent enough assault weapon, but that was by Earth standards. In the galaxy, this was a peashooter. Well, perhaps not that bad, but close enough.
In front of me, I brought the three guns that I had purchased: the coil gun, the laser rifle, and the laser gun.
Laser weaponry was quite limited. It was powerful and able to apply that destructive power immediately. The most limiting factor was that with a strong enough smoke grenade, that laser gun would be useless. That didn’t seem to have changed from what the history of Earth taught me.
Of course, if you didn’t have smoke, well, those lasers could burn through whatever defences you had, given enough time. That’s why I will definitely be making some laser weaponry, but the main focus would still be on projectile weaponry.
Apparently, Lola had also found that there are plasma weapons, but I had honestly no idea how those things could work, as plasma should just dissipate as soon as you fire it.
That left the coil gun for me to learn from and use to upgrade my current main gun to give it the necessary power to contend against the defensive options available for basically everyone.
Speaking of that defensive capability, a couple of drones were currently cutting up a few pieces of leftover armour so I could make myself a protective barrier that could actually take some fire.
There were coil guns on Earth as well, used by the best of the best, but making this technology small enough was something I never learned how to do.
Now, with the coil gun in front of me, I started to disassemble it and learn how it functioned. The basic function was quite simple. You had coils that were energised in a sequence to propel a ferrous projectile at great speeds.
They were quite similar to rail guns, but rail guns needed the current to flow through the projectile or the rail for it to function, the coil gun didn't.
The bullets that came with the coil gun were made of steel. That was quite curious, but when examining the barrel, I understood why it worked.
The barrel was made of metal a couple of grades above steel, giving it the same effect as copper bullets had in regular guns.
They made bullets out of softer metal so that the inside of the barrel would last longer, but now it was possible to make bullets that were made out of stronger metals like steel that wouldn't wear out the gun barrel so fast.
Technically, you did not even need contact between the gun barrel and the bullet in a coil gun. That, however, brought up the problem of accuracy. It would be like going back in time to the era of smoothbore muskets.
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That made me pull out my current main gun. Its original name was AR-58-773, but this particular one had been modified quite heavily by the black market.
It uses a hot gas system for propulsion. Something that was extremely common back on Earth. The hot gas system was what replaced the bullet casings and black powder.
It worked by using pressurised gas, where a precise amount was transferred into the ignition chamber. The gas was under enough pressure that it could shoot the bullet even without ignition. Guns like that were called pneumatic weapons. But here, the gas was ignited, which opened up the ignition chamber to the gun barrel, where a bullet was waiting.
While these weapons were a bit more powerful than the older variants, the main advantage was logistics. Now you only needed to carry around refillable canisters that fit into the gun and could easily be used to fire 1000 or more bullets. Bullets themselves no longer needed bullet casings which meant a lot less weight to carry them around and less room used.
Funnily enough, magazines stayed about the same size, although you could now fit almost twice as many bullets into them. The main limiting factor in making these weapons stronger was the materials used, as the gas expansion was quite powerful. Now, however, I have access to stronger materials.
It didn't take me long to come to a solid plan on what to do. I will be making a combination of this hot-gas system using stronger materials to make it even more powerful, and around the gun barrel, a coil system to increase the speed of the bullet even further. Because I can use steel bullets or perhaps stronger metal, there was a good chance that it should have enough penetrating power for my needs.
Two hours later, with Lola's help and a lot of computing power, we were able to confirm that. Of course, I couldn’t just shoot through anything, but the bullets would have enough power to slowly chew through even my ship’s armour. Although I would need quite a lot of them. Still, it was a good start.
“You could always use Adiminium?” Lola suggested.
“Even if we use a fraction of that metal to make an alloy, the gun will still cost like 20 to 30 million. Using the pure metal would make it worth basically as much as this ship right now.”
“But it would be a lot stronger. Think of how strong an explosion it could contain and how fast that bullet could come out.”
“There would still be other limitations. The current gas mixtures I am aware of would basically not be enough. But you brought up a good point.”
“Now I’m certain someone has used Adiminium to make a proper sword. That would easily cost 50 million, but there are even purer versions of this metal, which means that out there, there are people walking around with weapons that would cost in excess of a billion.”
“That actually does sound crazy. But do you think there are weapons even above that?”
“Who knows what this crazy galaxy has in store for us. It’s time to start working on making this rifle, but I don’t even have the proper tools to start working, as the 3D printer isn’t set up for these types of alloys. It would mess up their structural integrity. Perhaps there's a workaround, but I would need to think about that.”
“You always think of something,” Lola said, while encouragement was coming through our bond.
While I was working on this, it was also important to make sure that I kept up my other pursuits and, of course, the practice of my skills.
Sensing mana had now become quite a lot easier and more importantly, faster. Soon enough, I think I could start using it during fighting to hopefully sense when someone is using skills or their whereabouts.
For the Mind Guard skill, I did not know if I was making any progress, but I was following the guide to the best of my capabilities, and the skill did feel more solid as I was using it, so hopefully it was working.
There was no place to properly test the new rifle that I finished making almost two weeks later. Everything seemed to cycle properly. The coils seemed to work in proper sequence, but would it all work together. I did not know.
Just in case, I reassembled the coil gun I purchased and my AR-58-773. Yes, I had basically all of their components, because in the end it was necessary to make everything from scratch for my new weapon.
The question was, what should I name it? But even if I had ideas of what it should be named, before I tested it out to see if it actually worked, it didn’t deserve an official name. So currently, it was just Experiment 333.
We will soon be reaching the area where we should have turned off the line, but because of the war, we needed to continue flying in this FTL current. I didn’t like this current. It was way too smooth, almost feels like flying in empty space.
Because of the war, Lola and I were thinking of refueling a bit sooner so we could skip basically the entirety of the affected area, even if officially the war hadn’t spread this far.
So, for the next week before we reached our new refuel stop, that was a decently popular trade station, I worked on the design of the Mark II.
At first, I was still hesitant to go above the tiny size classification, but I had to admit none of my designs felt quite right. But when I decided to go one size classification up, things just seemed to perfectly start falling into place.
There were two classifications for small-size ships: Small B and Small A. Small B was up to 150 metres in length and 75 in width, and Small A was 200 in length and 100 in width.
The Small B felt just right.
What I ended up with was a ship that was 143 metres in length and 74 metres in width. Of course, a lot of that was wingspan. The hull itself was still 23 metres in width and 25 metres in height.
The wings seemed just perfect and could even work for planetary landing and takeoff, which would give us a lot more mission opportunities, especially in the cargo transport category. It would give even more space, which now started to become big enough that I didn’t know how to fill everything up.
Eventually we will discover more technology and more things, and ultimately even this new upgraded size would feel small, but hopefully, that will take quite a while.
While I still didn’t know much, I think the ship would weigh approximately 500 to 600 tonnes without cargo, and with engine sizes I could work with, we should be able to bring almost the same amount of weight in cargo.
Soon we were docked to a trade station. This time, I didn’t want to go inside the station, so we just refueled, as being around these parts for the least amount of time was a good idea.
We had just detached from the station when all of a sudden, alarm klaxons started to go off, bathing the cockpit in red.
At the same time as Lola started to speak, the main screen displayed an overview of the area, showing a lot of ships with suspicious movement.
“There are three battlecruisers that look to be in defensive positions, and many frigates seemingly going behind them for protection,” Lola managed to get out when an alert came from the station itself. A moment later, the station opened fire on those three battlecruisers and the frigates.
The hostile fleet immediately opened fire, not just targeting the station but every ship around the station, including us. Two strong jolts hit us, and I knew that we had just been hit by railgun fire. Two spots of the armor indicated yellow, meaning those spots would still offer some protection.
“This station should be able to easily kill those ships. What were they thinking?” I asked Lola as I started to manoeuvre our ship in a way that the station would block us from direct attacks.
“There’s something wrong with the station. Their most powerful weapons aren’t firing. Give me a moment.”
“I don’t think we have a moment,” I said as I saw hundreds of missiles appear from the ships attacking the station, who also started to broadcast their pirate symbol. They weren’t the pirates I knew, they were some other pirates.
Immediately, I activated my missile interceptors as they started to fire out from below my ship.
“I was able to confirm that there’s fighting inside the station. It seems that the pirates had infiltrated and are trying to take the control room. The station is going into lockdown.”
There weren’t that many other ships out here. The station’s weapons were crippled, as they could only use their weakest weapons. And if the station’s control room fell, the small amount of protection the station currently gave us would quickly disappear.
There was no way I could accelerate to FTL and escape these attackers, as I already saw a few being taken out by railgun shots as they were trying to escape.
“Think, Remi, think. There needs to be a way out.”