Arclight Foundries

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The standard Atlesian weapon for field units was one of two things, a burst fire bullpup design rifle or a heavy slug thrower with a red Dust cap that exploded on impact and shredded the target. The former was relatively inaccurate, fired small caliber rounds and had a high capacity for ammunition, and this was typically handed to the drones the military liked to field. Cheap fire saturation without any lives at risk, which made a compelling argument even to him. The second was the opposite in basically every way, designed to hit hard and reliably, but with a smaller maximum capacity to match.

Thankfully, they shared a firing mechanism scheme and so he didn't need to do much on his drafting sheets beyond confirm that and then copy it. That done, he moved on to more… Fun aspects of his redesign work.

Namely, whatever he could find a reason to tweak.

The basic droid rifle was a simple weapon overall, with next to no consideration for it surviving a fight. The casing was made of aluminium for that reason, only really cared about in terms of whether it contained the weapon's innards. The insides were made up mostly of cheap pig iron wherever possible, though he recommended an upgrade to higher grade iron for it, for the same reason the casing wasn't cared about.

Survivability didn't matter for disposable troops as much as sheer cost reduction, but he sold the internal upgrade on the weapon in terms of recycling the weapons after.

More salvaged components meant less that needed to be made, after all, and the upgrade in quality was a negligible cost only forgotten due to an old days' lacking of recycling methods. But with modern conventions, that was no longer a problem. How that change had been missed he chalked up to it simply never coming up, and that was a more than understandable problem.

Beyond that, though, the 'cheap as dirt and scrapped easily' design did its job and so he left it alone and sent the blueprints along. He figured, frankly, that the design was probably already blueprinted and lodged somewhere, but chalked it up to Atlas wanting improvement recommendations wherever possible and moved on. He didn't really care, of course, because he got paid either way, but his mind had a way of running away from him like that.

When he moved on to looking at the AT-1, though, he saw so much room for improvement without a major cost kickup that he essentially gutted the design entirely and started from scratch. For that, though, he enlisted some help from someone who knew guns as well as he could ever hope to.

"The steel casing was good ten years ago, but ceramic armor is a good bit lighter and just as good." Coco explained as they worked, pointing along the rifle's barrel. She sighed and leaned on the table beside him, looking over the weapon and shrugging. "I mean it's alright, but you know…"

"Could be better?"

"Yeah, could definitely be better." She smiled and hopped up to sit on the table, turned so that her knee rested against his arm and he got a good, long look at her legs. And stomach. And b.r.e.a.s.ts, which she saw him looking at and smirked, "Eyes on the job, babe, or the puppies stay in the kennel after."

"Rude…"

"Yep! But let's get work done, alright? I keep getting dirty looks for not wearing the damn tighty whities everyone else has." She'd been offered an Atlesian working uniform, but turned it down for 'obvious reasons' that was willing to wager began and ended with liking the way her b.u.t.t looked better in her normal clothes. "Isn't my fault it's the ugliest thing this side of the planet."

"Hey, I'm wearing that uniform." He argued weakly, raising an eyebrow, "And you just don't like them because they don't hug your behind the way you like."

Not that he was complaining, of course, her b.u.t.t did look good in the brown combats she preferred.

"Hey, I got it and you like to look, so damn right I wanna wear what shows it off. Especially for you." She made a show of rolling onto her side, leaning on one arm while she grabbed a generous portion of that rear end showily. "You know you love it, babe."

"Yeah… It and you both." She blew him a kiss and winked playfully. Then he rolled his eyes and she sat up, seeing him turning back to work sliding back into work as easily as they'd slid out of it in the first place. "Anyway, the casing?"

"Replacing all this with ceramic-composite would keep the protection and versatility with no extra cost, and lighten the weight considerably." She answered, sitting there and plucking a piece of the metal outer shell off the table to toy with idly. "I mean, not considerably considerably, but pretty considerably. Think it's worth considering how considerably but not considerably it would help?"

"How considerably exactly, Coco?" He asked, turning around to hide his smirk at her joke and slotting his Scroll into an electronic drafting board and throwing the blueprints he'd drawn up and scanned of the weapon a day ago on it.

"Half a pound give or take some change, if you do it to the stock too." She answered after a few seconds to actually do the math and measuring. She gave him a look and shrugged, laying back on the b.a.r.e part of the table in the middle of his office. Why was obvious from the view it gave him and her little smirk, but she didn't address it and moved on instead, "Not a lot, but a few ounces at the end of your gun can affect reaction speed, steadiness, aiming… What do you wanna do when your family gets into town?"

"I'll recommend it." He nodded, noting the changes on his drafting sheet and smiling. "As to what we should do… I dunno. Dinner with my parents is definitely a good idea when you meet them properly, though."

"What do they like?"

"Food." He laughed at her sour face and he added, "Frontier people, remember? Food is food out there, by and large."

"I'll find a good place, then. I know some nice places, and with the payments coming from Atlas, I can treat us to… Basically to anywhere we want to go." She nodded, eyes roving over the pieces of the rifle on his work table as she thought. "We could use the added weight to lengthen the barrel a bit for a touch of accuracy, or maybe harden the internals."

"Make the ammo load a few rounds heavier?"

"Could, yeah." She agreed, sounding relaxed as she trailed a finger along the barrel itself to the small, blocky firing mechanism. There, inside a small chamber safely contained inside the tiny block, an electrical charge would be applied to raw red Dust to propel the rounds at high speed. "Or we could update and enhance the internal rail system, so the rounds fly faster and hit that much harder. Less ammo is fine if the first shot that lands does the job all on its own."

She seemed happy here, working the technical stuff with him, and that made him smile and the work go easier than it ever had before.

In the end, they made so many changes from the previous variant that they felt justified in dubbing it the Atlesian Technical Rifle Mark Two. The barrel was replaced with a higher quality composite of Seer-Steel and normal steel to increase heat limits, which matched with the change to the internal combustion unit which increased the round velocity by around a quarter inch per second. The trade-off was heat and recoil, which were what had prompted the barrel changes and the angled grip they'd added to the design to help the soldier keep hold on the weapon without making the weapon profile any bulkier.

"What do you wanna do for the sight?" He asked quietly, checking and rechecking his recommendations to be sure they were properly fleshed out.

"Well, we could-"

"I said sight not night." He smiled when Coco snorted at him cutting her off and then clarified, "I'm thinking of putting in a basic holo. Nothing fancy or expensive, but a little bit of extra."

Aside from the sight and miscellaneous internal work, the rest of the rifle was fine enough as it was, and they couldn't find ways to upgrade it without raising costs. Which was something they'd very specifically been asked to avoid doing wherever it didn't hurt the performance of the new designs. It made most of the jobs kind of boring, just strip a gun he was given down, draft out the blueprints, put it back together and send them both off to be catalogued, but that just meant he could focus on… Other things.

"Jaaaaaaune." One of those 'other things' w.h.i.n.ed when he closed down the drafting program, pulled the chip with the data on it and set it in a box with the reassembled rifle ten minutes later. He turned in time to catch a face full of her c.h.e.s.t when she pulled him in for a hug and, holding him there, she w.h.i.n.ed, "Babe, I'm hungry!"

"Mphe phou mre fmm."

"What's that?" She asked, letting him go so he could stagger back and blink up at her, the woman grinning widely at his pout. With a pout and as much faux innocence as she could possibly have managed to gather up in her voice, she asked, "What? I saw that in a movie, thought you would enjoy a face full of my love."

"One, don't copy what you see in anime. That is a recipe for disaster if I have ever heard one." The woman rolled her eyes and, smiling, he shrugged and bobbed his concedingly. "But… Yeah, it was kinda nice."

"Enough for you to wanna fulfill my every naughty officer worker fantasy?" She asked playfully, a hand pressed to her c.h.e.s.t as she pretended to swoon and then laughed. As always, the sound was bright and energetic, and filled him with a warm kind of happiness as the woman turned and sauntered towards the door. "Come on, babe. I have an execution to attend, in case you forgot."

"My parents aren't that bad, unless they catch you trying something under the table." She gave him a look, head tilted to the side like she was considering the idea and he rolled his eyes at her. "No, Coco, you can't get up to anything under the table. Behave."

"Are you sure?" She asked with a small pout, blinking wide eyes at him and smiling innocently. "I could drop a fork, crawl under the table and-"

"Coco, behave. Come on now, I know you can do it. " He laughed, checking his pockets at the door to make sure he wasn't forgetting anything. He could be forgetful about things like that, sometimes, and he'd picked up the habit after wandering out without his ID one too many times. "You're a big, bad huntress, you can have a little libido discipline. I believe in you. Plenty of faith."

"Hey now, you're the one that keeps rolling over in the mornings and biting my ear so I'll-"

"W-We have to get going for dinner!" He flushed, straightening his Atlesian uniform and pushing out into the hallway outside his new workshop before she could respond. Coco's laughter followed him out into the hall, and earned off looks from the guards, but he ignored both and called over his shoulder. "Did you think of a nice place to go? My parents can meet us there."

"Remember our first date?" She asked coyly, the blonde pausing and holding the door open for her to step through.

"I remember our business meeting, yeah. And all your s.e.x.u.a.l harassment." He joked, the woman scowling at the term and chuckling playfully. To answer her question before she could drag them into a teasing war like they often ended up embroiled in, he moved on before she could say anything, "Yeah, I heard it came out of the Battle of Beacon alright. Thinking of heading there?"

"I mean, yeah. Sounds like a pretty good place, doesn't it?" She asked, the young man shrugging and agreeing that it really did. It was quiet, private, and nice enough that they couldn't get mad about them skimping on dinner. Smiling, the woman offered a small tease as they made their way to the gate, trying to edge them into the war he'd tried so hard to dodge. "You'll have to make do with not having a hot young woman hitting on you constantly, though."

"Eh, I sleep with one, so it's not that big of a deal." He could certainly see it as a good place to see the folks again.

Even if he could see by her smirk that they were going to spend the next half an hour trading teases, and had to resign himself to suffer through it, he was in a good mood. How he would possibly survive a beautiful woman hanging on him and flirting with him, he had no idea. Time to find out, he supposed.

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AN

Super short, I know, but I really wanted to do something with the story. I haven't had time, between the podcast, other stories and so on, to make a full length chapter. But I figured a lil bit of techy stuff, and some fluff, would do the job. So I jotted it down throughout the weeks whenever I could just sit down and take a break. I don't get many of those you know!

Cheers! And apologies for the short update.

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