Chapter Forty - Up-Gunning

"If you have to ask yourself if you should, or shouldn't do something, you ought to first ask if you can afford to do, or not to do it."

"But what if it's something you shouldn't do, but have to?"

"Then ask yourself who'll suffer if you don't, and who'll suffer if you do. Who'll recover easier, and whom can you help recover? Can't make everybody happy."

– Road Rash, excerpt from his guest speech during a Family seminar on Implied Vanguard Responsibilities, October 2052

 

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They were easy indeed, and the ambush went off without a hitch. Threes weren't that scary if I came prepared - barely more a threat than that large model One I killed on my first day. Especially if I was the one who got the, uh, drop on them. Terrible choice of words, but hey, at least I could joke about it without going clammy…

Xenos dealt with, we paused yet again for Leah to buy her gun.

"What kinda gun are you going for?"

"I want to take advantage of the muffler, and use the points that would otherwise go into that kind of functionality to improve its other characteristics. So, a kinetic gun, I think. Also lets me use your bullets, right?"

"Sure."

"Ypsi? What have you got for me?"

"Here! This is neat!"

Ypsi showed us two items, a pretty stubby smoothbore weapon with an irising variable barrel in a bullpup design, a sash harness with multiple straps and a few pouches for magazines, or maybe grenades? There was also a robotic arm that had a three-fingered mechanical hand at the end of it.

"The weapon is a modified Class I Warforged Penhecker. I did away with the railgun parts of it, since you wanna use Tinea's bullets with the muffler! They'll be as quiet as railgun rounds, anyway. But like her Sentinel, this one can also fire 40mm ammunition. So it's also a grenade launcher! And then, as a bonus, I was able to use the free points for this harness and a robotic arm. It can help you hold the gun properly, reload it for you, catch you if you trip, and even toss grenades for you! But it might break if it has to catch you from a proper fall, it's not that strong. Oh, it can even use a melee weapon while your hands are full!"

"Oh? Wow, that sounds useful. How is it so cheap?"

"The harness is really simple! It's basically all in that arm. And it barely has a microcontroller, so you have to use software on your eye to control it. It's not really very convenient." 

Ypsi, adorable Ypsi with her contrite and shy voice making Leah go all mushy. It looked like Ypsi had her totally wrapped around her fingers.

I tugged on Leah's until she turned to me and I could dazzle her with a smile.

"Don't worry, there's plenty of software on the internet; I'm sure we can find something suitable, and I can throw together two or three quick macros for the arm to follow. We can customize it from there until we've got proper routines, or you don't need the arm anymore."

"You can do that?"

"Yep. Freelance coder of many years. I've programmed more than a few manufacturing robots."

"Oh, cool. I think that'll work. Should I buy it?"

"I'd say so. It seems like you're getting a pretty good deal, all things considered. The weapon is light, appears to be highly adaptable based on what I've been able to do with my Sentinel, and you get a little henchman to go with it."

"Alright, I'll take it, then."

 

Cost	x	Item
105	1	Class I Warforged 'Penhecker' Variable Smoothbore Smallarm
5	1	Simple double-sashed Harness
45	1	Class 0 Robotic Arm, modified and hardened for combat, networked
155		Total
43		Combined Remaining Points

 

Combined points, huh? Yeah, that made sense. We were working together, and I could just leave tracking the splits to the AIs. Our decisions were using the combined totals, anyway.

Two plain boxes appeared, of the same size. Leah opened one and revealed the gun, while mine held the harness and robotic arm.

All items followed Leah's gear aesthetics; blackbody body shaped in alien arches, decorated with graceful golden lines, and scary accents of white vapor misting from white adornments.

"Harness first?" I asked, holding it out towards her.

"Yeah, gimme. Thanks."

She put it on and sorted out the small variety of straps. A wide and comfy-looking band cinched itself around her torso just below her chest, and four straps held it in position; two "main straps" that reached up from below her arms and held onto her shoulders like any normal underarm holster. Then it had another soft band that wrapped around her throat like a choker, and two more straps, one that led from the choker, down between the shoulderblades to the one around her ribcage, and the other attached both bands between her breasts.

Sexy. "Is this bondage thing becoming a theme with us, Leah?"

"Hmm. I believe it takes at least three incidents to define a trend, does it not?"

"That…could be arranged," I said, narrowing my eyes at her.

She gave me a toothy grin, and I could see the dare in it. I squinted harder. "Leah. Are you sure you want to risk challenging the natural rope factory here? I'd win."

Leah snorted at me, and said, "Can you really tie my arms behind my back, if I don't have any?"

"Necessity is the mother of invention."

Laughing, she answered, "I don't know if I should be looking forward to that as much as I might be. Something to think about." She reached out and smoothed a hand down over my hair to my shoulder. I wanted her to do it again, with a soft and warm hand. "Let's get home first, though."

I laid off, smiled at her, and said, "Alright. The harness looks good. It flatters your Amazonian stature. Robot arm?"

She removed it from my box, and studied it. It had three joints. One at the base, an elbow, and a wrist. Its booms had an interesting inverted and graceful arch to them with the upper arm consisting of two parallel pieces between which the lower arm could fold itself. The hand had three identical fingers, lined with golden swirls and plates resembling fingernails.

Leah manipulated these through an apparently pretty annoying, elaborate process via her cybernetic eye, and the fake fingernails extended themselves into white talons with that characteristic vapor steaming from them.

The other end was a fairly straightforward malleable base, much wider than the rib-sash of the harness. It clamped itself to the harness underneath her arm, and curved around her ribs to partially cup her boob on that side, a little like a woman archer's chest protector. There were several clicks as it secured itself mechanically against the honeycomb exoskeleton of the Sleeve. Neon-white lines like tracing lit up along the harness once the arm connected with it, and I watched as the arm went through a calibration routine where it reached for every slot of the harness.

Underneath Leah's left arm was a holster suitable for the Foxteeth, which she slotted it into.

She also moved the few magazines she had from their silk pouches to the harness, and experimentally drew the Foxteeth first with the robot arm, then with her own while she let the arm reload the sidearm for her.

"Okay, Tinea, this thing is really clumsy to use. Better than nothing, but it's already pissing me off. Can you do your thing?"

I nodded, and used my aug to connect to it. Via the uplink I searched through a variety of robot arms online, until I found one that looked very similar in dimensions and functions, and downloaded its driver directly into the onboard memory of the arm.

Hmm, I'd need to figure out how to use my new aug 'normally'. I was pretty sure I should've been able to just plop the driver somewhere into my brain and almost literally pull it apart to sort it out… Later.

"Tynea, I don't have the time to really dig into this driver. Could I ask you to adapt it to the arm, or adapt the arm to it? I want to be able to give Leah macros for the arm, and for her to have an easy way of designing them herself, without needing to study up on that kind of thing."

It's already quite close to purpose. Here, I've added several functions to its API, and this is the format in which it accepts instructions. There, all set up. The easiest method of training the arm is to manually move it from position to position, and tell it what to do where.

"Alright, thank you."

I activated the program and waited for half a second until a graphical interface popped up. There was the old 'record' button, with the message that I'd be guided through the process of setting up a routine for the arm to follow.

That itself was fairly simple. My cerebral augmentation let me swish my way through the interface with little trouble, and with Tynea's ability to heavily optimize my rough drafts, I quickly set up macros for reloading weapons, drawing and stowing the Foxteeth, stabilizing a larger gun like an extra hand, and even an automatically triggered one that would try and catch Leah if she tripped. I rounded out the collection with one that could throw grenades.

"Okay, Leah. I created a bunch of hopefully useful options for you. The interface is really quite simple, and you should have no trouble setting up more yourself, especially not with Ypsi's help."

"Mhm, thanks. She's placed them as icons in my HUD. This is really…not what I imagined samurai tech to be, to be honest…"

"It's Class 0 stuff, right?"

Yes. The arm is basically just modern Earth technology, but crafted with Protector precision. You could get a very similar arm for around eighty points that would be far more convenient, smarter, more durable, and faster.

"I see." Even Leah looked less disappointed with that explanation.

Leah had already grabbed her gun and inspected it, unslotting and reslotting the magazine, letting it synchronize with her eye, and she checked out how the arm helped her hold it stable with one of the macros.

"Remember to add the muffler to it." I reminded her, grinning at the enthusiasm she displayed playing with the bullpup.

Not discouraged by my maybe-tease at all, she commanded her new robotic cat's-paw to unholster the smaller weapon and hold it up for her. She moved the muffler over to let it attach itself underneath the barrel, where it once again readied itself for use.

Finished, she held a rather remarkable gun in her hands. It was all graceful, badass alien beauty that combined itself with an unsettling something that had my hackles up, almost like there was a constant drone in the background pinging my instincts, as if it wanted to capture me between staring and running, gawking and hiding. The strange shiver-shadow of the muffler's active effect would fit right in. It was something, alright.

I turned the effect that let me see Leah's face through her visor off, and there stood somebody in front of me you really didn't want to mess with. It wasn't just absolutely obvious that she was a Vanguard, but beyond that, you wouldn't even want to approach her. 

Which really surprised me—I had the impression that she was a welcoming kind of person, somebody who engaged often and easily with others, who took care of, protected, and guided children as a way of life, but the figure standing in front of me had thorns.

Huh. I had to appreciate how little I really knew Leah, after all, and it excited me to gain an understanding of her various facets and traits. I wanted to see who she really was.

"Ready?" Leah's voice shook me out of my contemplations. I turned my x-ray vision on again so I could see her eyes, and answered, "Yeah. There's a Four hiding in the trees not too far away. It's probably not the only one, either. We'll need to check above our heads all the time, carefully. Can you see into the thermal spectrum with that eye?"

"Yes, though that stuff is all basic. It's really more a personal computer than a proper spy-eye. Too cheap for everything, but yes, I can see into the thermal and also the ultra-violett."

"Wanna follow me again? I'll take us to the Four and highlight it. I want to check how well we can detect ambushers."

Leah grinned and manipulated her new industrial robot arm to point ahead.

I grinned back, and started walking. In the other direction.

It was only until she groaned that I could suppress my snickering.

 

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