In the woods outside of an abandoned quarry on the surface of Raylesh, Bella Morgan, Jessica Morgan's great-granddaughter, fidgeted nervously and checked her phone.
A young man, even more nervous than she was, paced back and forth in front of a folding table upon which rested several weapons.
Her great-grandmother was almost an hour late.
Bella felt nauseous. Jessica was nearly obsessive where punctuality was concerned. She often said that it was a sign of respect and how much you valued someone's time.
This did NOT bode well.
Eventually, a gravitic armored personnel carrier decloaked above them and landed nearby.
The doors opened and several grey-clad humans in light combat armor, each carrying a sabergun, debarked and rapidly swept the area and secured a perimeter.
"Area clear," a woman in her early fifties said into her helmet.
She then approached Bella and the young man.
She looked at the table and shook her head."You've dun goofed, kid." the old Morgan Security soldier said. "You've got about thirty seconds to start running."
Bella squared her shoulders and grabbed the young man's coat, preventing him from doing just that.
Moments later, a gravitic armored car decloaked and landed with an angry "thump".
The door swung open, and Jessica stormed out of it, nearly charging her great-granddaughter.
"Bella, this had BETTER be a fucking joke," she said, pointing at one of the weapons on the table.
"You said you wanted an iconic 'porkie gun'," Bella said as she picked up a simple submachine gun consisting of two round tubes, the larger one to the rear having a long channel cut in it revealing a compression spring. "You can't get more iconic than this! The Terrans had their AKs, and we had these! Everyone knows at one glance what—"
"You called me all the way out here, exposing both myself and you, for a fucking nail gun?"
"With these simple open-bolt arms, our people were able to protect themselves during our exile in the cold dark and then during our early days in the refugee camps and..."
"We're done here." Jessica snapped. "You!" she barked at the terrified young man.
The man tried to respond, but the only thing that came out was a strangled little wheeze.
"Who the fuck are you?"
"Someone working for me!" Bella exclaimed forcefully as she stepped between the doomed man and her enraged great-grandmother. "This is my project… and my decision to bring it to you."
"Then you are the one who's taking the fall for it!" Jessica snapped. "I made myself quite clear about thousand-year-old tech! Still, you insisted that you had something 'special,' so I am on the surface, risking my men, so you can show me a scavenger's STEN?!?"
"A-actually..." the young man stammered behind her, "It is much more like a Swedish-K..."
"Shut up!" Jessica Morgan snapped. "You're lucky that Bella here is stupid enough to bet her life on the fact that I have the misfortune of sharing blood with her!"
She glared at Bella.
"You aren't going back to that fancy ship," she growled, "You like playing with garbage, then that's exactly what you are going to do. I hope you are fond of shovels, young lady."
Jessica turned to leave.
"You ARE going to turn around, and you ARE going to listen to what we have to say, goddammit!" Bella shouted as Jessica's troopers' jaws dropped, "Do you actually think I'm so fucking stupid to show you just a nail gun? I could have done that in an email, not hopped a freighter, flew across hostile space, and run the blockade! Now come back over here and let Gregor show you what he came up with. If after his demonstration you still feel like this is a complete waste of time, then do whatever you want to me, but Gregor is acting under my orders."
Jessica let out a low whistle and then turned around.
"Ok...pumpkin..." she smiled wickedly. "Show me. You had better pray I like it. I might have had mercy on you before… eventually… but now? You just put your ass on the line. I hope for your sake it's worth it."
Bella patted Gregor's shoulder as he was trying not to literally throw up.
"Ok," Bella said as she picked up a submachine gun. "from the top… With simple firearms like these, we were able to..."
"Save the sales pitch and fucking show me already!" Jessica snapped.
Clearly disappointed (she had spent days on that presentation), Bella opened a small box and handed Jessica a pair of dark glasses and some earplugs.
"What's this?" Jessica asked.
"You're going to want to use those," Bella grinned as she put her glasses on and her earplugs in as Gregor did the same. "Those helmets good for noise and flash?" Bella asked as she nodded to the soldiers.
"We're packing saberguns," the female soldier replied. "We'll be fine."
"Great!" Bella grinned as she inserted a magazine into the simple submachine gun, pulled back the slide, and slid it up and into the safety notch.
"If you would all direct your attention downrange," she said smugly as she indicated several targets behind sandbags, cinder block walls, and riot shields.
She took the slide out of the safety notch, shouldered the weapon…
...and pulled the trigger.
The submachine gun's steady "thump, thump, thump " was almost immediately replaced by a constant deafening roar that Jessica could feel through her feet as the entire target area was consumed by a series of bright flashes ripping into everything at six hundred rounds a minute. Through her lenses, Jessica could see sandbags flying apart, cinder blocks exploding, and targets vaporizing.
Bella ripped apart the range with a series of controlled bursts, pausing only to reload a second mag.
After that, there was nothing left, and she had started amusing herself by ripping chunks of stone from the quarry's walls.
Jessica just stood there, jaw open, as small fragments of debris floated down.
"Holeee shit!" the old soldier exclaimed. "That's a sabergun!"
"Not exactly," Bella smugged, "I shall now yield the floor to Gregor… that is if anyone is interested..."
"Don't turn your win into an ass beating," Jessica mock growled, "Gregor, was it?"
"Yes, ma'am?"
"Would you mind explaining exactly what the fuck I just saw?"
Gregor opened a cardboard box and shook out several nine millimeter cartridges with clear, almost crystalline tips.
Inside them was something blue.
"It is an electrostatic round," he said. "Inside, there is a fully charged Zeta ultracapacitor that, upon impact, breaks open, releasing the stored potential in a single blast."
"That's it?" Jessica asked, a bit surprised.
"In theory," Gregor replied, "yes. In practice, it was a bit trickier to pull off. To get the intended result, the capacitor has to be fully charged to extremely high voltages before being embedded in the round. The bullet then has to have the right resistance to both electricity and impact to be handled and fired safely and yet still detonate on a rapid deceleration regardless if it is a hard surface or flesh. It was, in a word, tricky."
"I see," Jessica smiled. "How quickly can these be produced?"
"The Xeta ultracapacitors are already manufactured here on Raylesh and are in the supply chain. Millions of them can be diverted today. The bullet polymer is a simple enough formula and could be made just about anywhere. There are a few other components in the round, but they all lend themselves to high-speed production. The only limiting factor is charge time. But, that can be easily addressed, and the assembly of the round could be safely performed by only slightly modified precision industrial machinery we already have in place."
"...and the 'nail gun' is iconic..." Jessica snickered. "And could be just shit out by the millions. We could arm everyone, and the designs would be easily replicated by just about any species..."
"And we could sell them all bullets!" Bella exclaimed happily. "Federation go boom!"
"How does the yield of these compare to Imperial electrostatic charges?"
"Well over fifty percent greater, ma'am," Gregor replied. "It's our Old Earth capacitor technology. As far as we know, we are the only people still mass-producing the Zetas. They aren't true supercapacitors, but they pack one hell of a punch."
"Why don't the Terrans still make them?" Jessica asked.
"I think they have fallen victim to inexpensive components streaming in from the Empire," Gregor replied, "They can get a thousand capacitors that are, for most typical applications, almost identical performance-wise for what it costs us to make one Zeta, but even so, the Zetas are still cheaper than one of their front line bullets several times over. The Zetas also require certain rare earth elements that aren't required for the Imperial and Terran caps."
"Is that going to be a problem?"
"Not for a long while, ma'am," Gregor replied. "As long as we hold Raylesh, we can make them."
"Can these be used in higher-power rifles?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"What about gauss arms?"
"I would strongly advise against it," Gregor replied.
"Goddammit!" Jessica shouted to the heavens. "A fucking thousand-year-old slug thrower! Fuck me!"
She started loading a magazine.
"So..." Bella asked, "I get to go back home?"
"Nope," Jessica said as she continued to load rounds.
"No?" Bella asked in alarm.
"You're wasted there," Jessica replied as she slapped the magazine into the submachine gun.
She leveled it at what few scraps remained downrange.
"You are coming back with me."
Jessica grinned as Hell was unleashed at six hundred rounds per minute.
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