Crossover With Non-anime Series Fan Fiction ❯ A Certain Machinist ❯ Valean Blues ( Chapter 3 )

The real estate agent met me outside a set of nearly identical grey warehouse buildings surrounded by cyclone fence and topped by razor wire.

“Is this really the place?” asked Yang. She’d given me a ride on her bike, riding pillion. She’d clearly enjoyed rubbing herself on me to get even with having to take the corners slower and having her suspension compressed, longer braking distances, all those downsides to pillion riding.

The warehouse cameras swung back and forth, though they hadn’t managed to stop taggers from leaving ugly murals of their gross Mistrali gangster-goth girlfriends on the walls, or proclaiming various racial slurs. I’ll be painting that over as soon as I move in.

The inside of the building is stripped out, bare.

“Are you really sure?” Yang asked, carrying her yellow helmet in one hand, staring at the mess.

“I need the space. I can’t build a business in your garden shed,” I reminded Yang. She sighed.

“I get that, but do you really need all this space?” she confirmed.

“Here’s the agreement paperwork,” the lady agent said, offering a printed paper form to me on a clipboard. I put down my name on the rental agreement and transferred lien into the account.

So far I’d built savings for this point because I sold all those hand-made Model 1’s to various shops that served frontier villages. They sold well enough because they were cheap and simple. I want to sell model 2’s to the more upscale shops in Vale, at better markup. But I need different equipment to make it. The building needs power, light, and a smooth floor for equipment mounts. And good ventilation.

Move in day was with the assistance of a neighbor on patch I’d bribed with a model 1 and 200 rounds of ammunition as payment. My actual stuff is pathetically little and fit easily onto his truck bed. Unloading was just as easy.

I settled into the building, wiring up the necessary electrical for lighting, better security, and high amperage circuits for my own CNC milling machine and my own metal casting. This took me nearly a week between figuring out what I needed, finding the parts, buying them, getting them delivered to the shop, and installing them. Yang showed up most days to poke around while I worked, making puns, and posing in skimpy clothing. While I am not blind to her intentions, most of me thinks she’s too young for me, and so I let her flex as practice. Besides it was kinda funny she was trying so hard.

The plastic vat heater was simpler, and maintaining it and the vacuum pump for the molds was a simple enough series of steps. Coat the molds with release agent chemical, bolt them together air-tight. Hook up the hoses. Engage the vacuum pump on the mold. Pump in the plastic which spreads to all parts of the mold. Disconnect the mold and put into the oven rack, which is kept hot for a full day. Remove the following day to the cooling rack, then cool for six hours. If the release agent worked properly, it comes out. If not, the mold is ruined and the plastic will need to be chipped out. I was using a 2-part epoxy plastic with a high temp cure, so once it gets poured in, that’s it.

I cranked out parts, day and night, until I had to stop for food or rest. I continued, then got a good nights’ sleep, a shower and shave at a nearby bathhouse, non-brothel variety. This continued for two weeks. The completed guns numbered 175.

I visited various gun shops and sold off my stock. Each of those shops had fresh orders and more besides. I was growing my business. I paid off the rest of my rent and expanded into more machinery to automate more of the process. This is how you do it when there’s no regulatory sleaze looking for bribes and threatening to shut you down for “environmental and diversity compliance”. Those are words used by fascists. Vale has many problems, but it isn’t fascist.

For all the automation, I am still limited to how many things I can do while I’m standing there to babysit the equipment. At least I’m not hand machining those out of steel. If I want more time, I need to automate more. So I am starting to learn the local software languages so I can program my systems to stop when they detect a failure in manufacturing quality, mostly so I don’t waste materials and can run all this myself. Yes, that limits my production, but I’m not trying to outfit an entire military contract. I’m making these for defense of the various small settlements. For small guard shifts and homesteads and caravans. Hopefully not for bandits and midnight raids on settlements, but it is pretty much unavoidable. Weapons are controlled by those who are pointing them. They don’t do anything by themselves. No, I don’t care what some communist Karens keep saying. They don’t.

The next bit in my production is to setup specific machines to do discrete steps in the manufacturing process, like making the trigger assembly parts, and the barrels, and the block. CNC is great for certain things, but it is too slow for actual mass production. It has too many moving parts, too many points of potential failure. The machinery costs for mostly-automated production are significant. I will need to sell around three hundred of my Model 1 Grease Guns to pay for the equipment for the Model 2 automation. The plastic vat and injection molds were relatively easy with CNC. I have four sets working in sequence. I need machines to make the trigger parts, and the block.

And honestly, I want barrel forging and button rifling machines. Buying rifled gun barrels is expensive, so making them is critical. I’m working with 40 caliber, so that’s good at least. But I’m using two different cases, one of them longer than the other, with a larger head, at least I will be when I finally get the AR platform equipment. For now I’m still working with standard 10mm pistol for the Model 1 and 2. Same magazine, which helps with sales as well as simplify my production. That was the limit of simplicity, however.

The Model 2 is fairly simple construction, and around half the weight of the Grease Gun. Due to lower manufacturing costs the Model 2 would offer better profit. It will use the same 10mm ammo, but that is also a limitation. It is direct blowback, no lockup, so actual high pressure ammo won’t work for it. Easy to work with for self-defense, however, and the recoil springs are similar, though the block that reciprocates is a more complex shape in the Model 2.

For the Model 3, I will add an actual gas system that can run good high-pressure ammo through this, with a proper rotating bolt in .400 AR. I’m already making cases from scratch for Ruby’s rifle, so doing this is also possible. 400 AR runs around 50 kPSI, much higher than the 20K of the 10mm, which is nearly half again more than the .45 ACP the Grease Gun and Model 2 were designed for back on Earth. Direct blowback is very simple, but also limited. When you get a real locking action, you can do quite a lot more.

Ammo sales are a good way to make money, provided I can continue getting my supply of brass sheet/plate to form cases from. And copper sheet for the jackets. 400 AR fires a 10 mm 200 grain bullet at 2300 fps, made for hog hunting. Considering beowolves are around as tough as a monster Alabama feral hog, this is an appropriate caliber. Materials costs are aluminum, still called aluminum, so at least I’m not on one of those English universes where you find it hard to stop spelling alu-mini-mini-mini-um. I need the aluminum for the receiver upper and lowers, and I’m going to use a telescoping spring with guide rods for the buffer and a short stroke piston and a lighter aluminum op-rod that will only move a quarter inch and a heat resistant piston to deal with the gas bypass, with notches for regular and subsonic/silencer operation. Because saving your hearing is important. Testing began and I found it was very similar to the M4. I call mine the M3. The flat-top got a picatinny rail, something I got the patent on bizarrely enough, and ACOG scope mount. I also want to make a 350 grain subsonic bullet that will work with the gas system in the suppressor position, which allows more gas to the action so it still cycles. Hunters need their hearing while they work, and a weapon you need when you aren’t expecting attack does cry out for a silencer, a suppressor.

For the model 4, it wasn’t much effort to make the entire system shorter to a bullpup design. I added a pair of rail-mounted lights and bright aiming laser, as well as a top mounted ACOG-type scope, 2x. If you try and use more you can’t shoot with both eyes open, which is a bigger deal with close fighting than you’d realize. And grim tend to like to attack up close. The thirty round magazine and the nicely rigid trigger linkage leads to the front of the bolt, similar to the setup in the Steyr AUG. And I’ve got a better magazine lock so it doesn’t belch rounds into the stock/housing like the AUG does. The magazine is shared with the model 3. I am still fine tuning this one because I need a wider feed well since you’d be pushing it in under your armpit, which is awkward. This needs to be easy because the Bullpup is meant for CQB and maneuvering around inside buildings without sacrificing velocity by cutting the barrel short. The 350 grain high sectional density subsonic bullet is paired with the suppressor.

At this point my sales were sufficient I was able to spend most of my time on a cot in the back room rather than the laundry room at Yang’s place. Ruby came to visit, Yang was busy. Twice there were burglars. Each time my use of tear gas worked well. I think I’ll need to be more aggressive for the next group, because they will be ready for that.

“ZaaAPP! OWW!” cried the cat burglar who had discovered my electrified window frames for the skylights. They also work on nevermore and creeps. I dialed the number for the Vale Police Department and recorded things on the security cameras. Ten long minutes later the burglars were long gone and the cops wanted their bribe for doing their jobs, late. Calling them is a necessity, if there are bodies to clean up. It just isn’t much fun. I passed them the usual envelope for their bribe and copies of the security feed. At this point I would not be shocked if they weren’t in on it with the robbers. Vale PD are really bad. Not as bad as Phoenix PD, but pretty close.

“So you really live here, like this?” asked Officer Jenkins. There always seems to be a Jenkins. I was not shocked to learn his first name was Leeroy. Probably rushes into any situation without thinking.

“It’s just until I get my business working properly,” I explained. The cops left. I locked the doors and buttoned up, noting if I go to bed now I’ll be able to get a couple hours sleep… or I could do some work with a cup of coffee and not pretend I’m able to sleep.

I started boiling some water and prepared the pour-over coffee funnel. While not as easy as other methods or as retro-Steampunk as a moka pot, it does focus the mind on making good coffee, and goes part way to waking you up in the process.

Production of my model 3 and 4 were much more involved than the Model 2 I habitually carried, my logo painted on the side: Warthog Arms. Most people thought it was a boarbatusk, but it’s a warthog, as a reminder of my former job. The model 3 and 4 both needed cast aluminum for the receiver blanks, which then get machined, drilled, and heat treated. I’m still the process of automating that so it is faster. Each additional step requires more equipment. I also had to make the rotating steel bolt sturdy enough to not shear off if some hunter wants to run higher pressure dust loads or a heavier projectile or both. The piston prevents the self-filthing issues of the AR-15 this is partially based upon, and the short stroke piston resolves problems of lots of parts moving around and throwing off accuracy. I’ve also made it such that I could fire .308 length and power cartridges with this system, even if its setup for the .400 AR, which is still the standard .223 length. The beauty of the AR is most of the load bearing is in the barrel nut and locking bolts on the bolt head. The rest just lines the parts up for loading and firing the next round. Eugene Stoner was a good engineer, if a little too precise. And he probably could have used someone to tell him he’s ignoring reality sometimes. Just because the AR-10 suffered vertical shot stringing because of barrel flex was not a reason to switch to Direct Gas Impingement.

DGI has some issues, after all. It redirects gas from the barrel into a tube which then bumps a notch open that unlocks a bolt and blows the remaining gas into the magazine. The gas and soot ends up coating the unfired cartridges and their critical bearing surfaces with a gritty film of semi-burnt powder residue. This obviously causes it to misfeed and fail, and this exact problem killed men in Vietnam by jamming their rifles in the first magazine or two in a firefight, so the worst possible time. Nobody trusted the rifle, and it was a MAJOR problem for the soldiers forced to fight with it. Did the Army learn from this and fix the problem between 1974 and 1991? Not exactly. They changed from Ball-2 powder, which they had hundreds of tons lying around since Korea, to a cleaner burning powder, but the A2 and A3 models still required a lot of cleaning to operate reliably for a short time. The same problem was seen in Desert Storm and later the second Gulf War ten years after that. There’s just no way around self-filthing as long as you’re using DGI. I am not stupid, and I do learn from other’s mistakes. Thus I went with a short stroke piston and under-barrel counterweights to cancel out the tendency to climb by the movement of the op-rod. It really wasn’t hard, mechanically. And welding it in place on the op-rod to remove points of failure did not interfere with barrel changes.

Honestly, I wonder why this fix wasn’t used on the arsenal back in the good old USA, but politics and pretending mistakes are just fine is how the Pentagon always worked. It didn’t matter if it killed your troops, so long as you got your promotion or more juicy contracts as a salesman for one of the Military Industrial Complex builders. You got your bribe and a luxury retirement. You just have to push whatever they’re selling, even if it kills troops, and who really cares about them, right? I am not going to run my business that way.

It was a month of effort, but I was in the black. I still need to continue investing in automation equipment so I can manufacture the Model 2 by assembling the parts and filling the hoppers to make those parts. The trigger group needed a fast cutout procedure and then surface machining to finish tolerances. While the design of the Model 2 is simple, and most of the trigger group was going into the Model 3 and some parts would be placed differently for the Model 4, I was still making progress. I’m pretty interested in getting a working Model 4 in .400 AR so I could test it properly, get balance and feed issues resolved, and otherwise complete development. Vale SWAT might like to buy some, though with their team being small I’m hesitant to offer them up. I’d sell more to homesteaders, after all, and village guards, and train guards. And probably have a much bigger market to profit from than a few tough cops who still wouldn’t survive a fight with huntsman or serious criminals with huntsman training and aura.

It was weird having this big warehouse all to myself, and I’m gradually adding equipment to automate more of the manufacturing. You sort of have to if you want to avoid all the problems of having employees. Hire a faunus and find out they’re only working here looking for reasons to object to you, then you get a visit from the White Fang. Hire some Valeans and you get a visit from one of the gangs threatening to burn your place down, or steal all your equipment and leave you destitute. If you pay their extortion, you still lose, only somewhat more slowly, and on a monthly basis. And being in the arms business, gangs would demand free weapons, which they would use to commit crimes, and get you on a short list for arrest by the incompetent Vale Police Department. Or worse, on some Atlas Terrorist Watchlist if the White Fang get ahold of them.

I’m only operating in Vale because of supply chain issues and easy sales to the various gun stores in this big city. I got a generic van to deliver crates of guns to shops. It is cheap, electric, and is both slow and has very limited range. On the upside, nobody wants to steal it because it is slow and has limited range.

Vale is not a really big city, not really. To be fair the entire population of Remnant is under ten million people. As a colony world, and it has to be because continents don’t get shaped like children’s drawings of dragons and animals by accident, it has been through several disasters and much of its original technology is only now being rediscovered. Something about dust also means that the stuff is worthless for rocket fuel, since it works less well the higher up you get. You can’t use it to escape this world, and the moon fragments and pretty shooting stars implies anything you get up there is going to be destroyed by orbital debris, called Kessler Syndrome. The residents are trapped down here, and space is forever beyond their reach.

For all the work I’m doing I’m kind of missing the busy noise of the Xiao-Long household. I miss the grumpy old drunk, the boxer, Ruby’s lack of personal space awareness, and Yang’s bad puns. I guess I was more social as a mechanic than I realized, or maybe this new body, younger than the one I’d left behind on the highway outside Tucson, liked people more.