Dead Star Dockyards

345 Air Defense

Having formally introduced the populace to the concept of firearms, Donovan rode back to the central compound. As much as he'd love to stay out there and set an example for the men with his marksmanship, he could not afford to do so. Now he needed to make plans for an armory and ammunition manufactory, though at such a small scale he could probably combine the structures. Power for gunpowder production wouldn't be an issue, thankfully, and though it might not be ideal he could make use of steel for both the casing and bullet. He didn't want to get into copper or lead processing while simultaneously struggling to spark up a steel sector, let alone find a deposit close enough to be useful, so he'd have to bear with increased barrel wear and less effective ammunition for a while. Not the biggest issue all things considered, he didn't think they start shooting at targets beyond the effective range of their ammunition any time soon, but it was still annoying. 

That was something he was growing ever more concerned with, the annoying nature of his troubles. Individually none of his 'issues' were notable, there were just a lot of them, and they were starting to get on his nerves. They weren't even particularly concerning when aggregated, mostly minor inefficiencies caused by inadequate resources, time, or skilled personnel, and even then they weren't  bad. It was just annoying to know his efforts weren't being realized to their maximum potential, and there was nothing he could do to remedy it. 

"I sure hope there aren't any hostile tortoises." Donovan let his head lean back on the seat, eyes towards the sky. The only thing he could think of that might plausibly be able to defeat such high powered weaponry would be some foe with a thick shell. "Glidy little fuck."

It was faint, but on such a clear day Donovan could vaguely make out the smudge of a Thunderbird circling far above. He'd considered the installation of some form of anti-aircraft deterrence, but realized how much of a waste it would be without knowing if they'd attack. Despite their absence from the fields, small creatures probably weren't on the Thunderbird's menu given how much energy would be needed to get to their preferred gliding height. A Verdant Globe might mean more nutrition from each kill, but there was still an energy price to such an extreme hunting strategy. Tiny bites wouldn't cut it, and it didn't look like their cattle were large enough to tickle the contemptible creature's appetite.

Under this assumption, they were better off just ignoring the bastards and concealing or staying away from any large native creatures they may have killed. 

"Maybe we can use the corpses as bait?" An idea formed in Donovan's head to rid himself of the avian threat by utilizing the bodies of animals they did not have much use for to purposely draw it into range and then mow it down with automatic weapons. Something to consider at a later date for sure. For now he needed to formulate a plan for dealing with the terrestrial threats.

The men to be given rifles would be allotted ten magazines per week. They would be expected to use an average of one a day for target practice, though he was not going to tell them they had to use one every day. If they wanted to use all of their practice ammo the day they got it, so be it. If they wanted to wait until the final day before they let loose, great! If they wanted to space out their usage, all the better. He wasn't even particularly concerned with accuracy at this point, Donovan just wanted them and the people they would work with to get used to the weapons. 

One magazine would be used for guided marksmanship practice. Before they could retrieve the next week's ammunition and submit their rifle for a maintenance check, they would be required to perform something of an examination with one of the magazines given the week prior. It was a test in both proper ammunition stowage and handling of the rifle as well, but he made certain the instructors would not tell the men of this fact. As this was relatively minor thing and the Nekh had no culture of firearms, he wanted this lesson to be learned organically. Hopefully it would have a stronger impact that way.

That left two magazines to spare. In theory they were supposed to be the 'work' mags, the ones they would use to take out any critters they came across, however Donovan knew there were few practical methods of ensuring these shots wouldn't be attributed to 'training' mags instead - and frankly he didn't care. Shooting at a baddie was training, so instead his actual plan was to have these 'work' mags serve as bait.

If they achieved satisfactory results in their marksmanship evaluation, Donovan planned to let them do basically whatever they wanted with the 'spare' ammunition. They could keep it for use next week, slam it in one of the instructor's rifles to see what full auto felt like, or even invite a friend or family member to show them the basics. Hell, if they felt like putting the bullets in a vice grip and slamming a nail into the primer with a mallet just to see what happened, he wouldn't say a thing. It would be stupid to even attempt and they would probably get injured, but it would be a valuable experience. 

He would not permit them to keep a given magazine of ammunition for more than a month though, for safety if nothing else. Regardless of Arc's assurances the powder would remain viable for at least a year in even the worst of storage environments, they did not have the bureaucratic infrastructure in place to keep track of year-old bullets. If they wanted to keep a store of ammo Donovan was more than willing to let them trade old for new, but they had to be taken out of circulation somehow. 

Donovan jolted in his seat at the sound, the driver also jerking the wheel to the side in surprise. For a moment he feared the worst, that the store of ammunition he'd left with Leno and the instructors had gone up in flames, but that wasn't possible for two reasons. The first was that such a small amount of gunpowder wouldn't be able to create such an explosion when aggregated, let alone packed apart. Small arms ammunition on such a small scale going off would be more like a bunch of firecrackers exploding in sequence, not a big boom. The other reason was more simple - it came from the wrong direction.

The muffled roar was all Donovan needed to confirm his hypothesis. A Thunderbird found some prey worth nabbing nearby, almost certainly the same one he'd seen circling up above, and decided to make the trip down from the lower stratosphere as fast as possible. 

"I swear I'm gonna kill the fucker!" This wasn't the first time he'd heard a Thunderbird hunt, and he wasn't referring to his initial encounter with the species. Sometimes in the dead of night the faint crack of a distant sonic boom would grace his ears. Most of the time he could brush it off as 'not his problem', but sometimes they were a bit close for comfort. There had been a few occasions where a circle of knocked over and torn up trees could be seen outside of the cleared limits, the cenotaph of some creature unfortunate enough to catch the dragon's eye.

Taking advantage of the stopped car and the fact they were on a ridge, Donovan stood up on his seat and scanned the direction of the sound for movement. It would probably want to move its kill as soon as possible, and Donovan was in the mood to collect some data. 

"There! There you are. Now where are you going?" During his previous encounter he needed to take his eyes off of it in order to attend to the issues it was responsible for creating, but now he wanted to know which direction it headed after a kill. It wouldn't be of much use now but if they ever needed to track one having a good idea of their tendencies would only be a benefit. "The ocean? The sky?"

He took note of what it had in its talons as well. Knowing their prey was similarly important if he wanted the bait strategy to work. 

"Is it building a nest or something?" However that would only be the case if the damn thing actually picked up prey. From here all that Donovan could see dangling below it was a pair of trees. If they did engage in some form of nest building this behavior wouldn't be surprising, it just didn't make sense for it to waste all that energy diving and then carry them so far away. Maybe it wasn't having as much luck looking for food and decided nesting would be a better use of its time . . . but still, it seemed like a waste. "No, those aren't trees."

He couldn't quite put it into words, but the trees weren't behaving like he'd expect trees to. Maybe it was an odd uniformity in the swaying of the branches, or it could have been an inconsistency in the solidity of the trunk, but those definitely weren't trees.

"You're telling me it was camouflaged as a fucking

No matter how much Donovan and Arc debated the nature of the most recent assailant's features, they could not for the life of them figure out what it was trying to hide as. The shaggy coat did not match a pattern or shade consistent with nearby shrubbery, and the tail in its entirety was an anomaly. There was precedent for things looking nothing like what they hid amongst to the human eye or not intending to hide the creature at all, the stripes of a zebra being a prime example. Those worked by confusing an assailant, making them lose track of their target amidst a sea of stripes - beneficial in large herds but a hindrance when alone. Those creatures didn't work in herds though, and through the limited ability of a tablet's camera to see into the infrared and ultraviolet bands they determined there was nothing going on in the human extrasensory domain.

That meant the fur and tail adaptations had a separate purpose, or at least they thought it did. The two of them hadn't even thought about the view from far above. Through a canopy of pine trees, the shaggy fur would probably be enough to sell the illusion of a fallen tree's branches, the thick cylindrical tail would look like a trunk, and the keratin spaghetti at its end would look close enough to a root clump to avoid speculation.

- - - - -

"Can't I have just one?"

"No."

"Please?"

"I have already said no. I will not spend the time to produce only a single missile to satisfy a petty desire."

"It doesn't have to be a missile! I'd be fine with a laser guided bomb, or maybe an airburst rocket, or-"

"No."

"Why not?!"

"Because you informed me I was not allowed to assent to any request related to hunting down the Thunderbird."

"Gah, dammit." Donovan threw his stylus at the wall, playing into his pissed off demeanor. "Damn me! Damn that fucking dragon!"

Acknowledging his growing irritation towards just about everything, he had taken the rather unorthodox step of ordering Arc  to let him have a missile no matter how much he asked. It was a request born of a desire to rid himself of this anxiety, the only reliable method he had in that field being to repeatedly ask for the obvious solution and have it rejected. For the record, this did nothing to solve the source of the anxiety, only transform it into frustration - which he was much better equipped to handle mentally.

He was basically just turning the question of 'Oh god, what if this happens?' into 'Why won't you let me fix the problem?'. The former could only be remedied by the thing happening, the latter could be resolved by fixing a problem, something he was really good at.

"Flak gun?"

"No."

Donovan clicked his tongue again, silently reviewing the design for an automated laser survey and geolocation system while bending over to pick up the stylus he just threw. As much as they were necessary, he was growing ever more tired of the contractors, the surveyors specifically. He'd already had to improvise around more than twenty deviations from the construction plans as a result of inconsistencies during survey. Nothing serious just yet, but Donovan was convinced it was only a matter of time before a survey error resulted in a botched project. Having Arc control everything centrally through a geolocation array and a few laser projecting drones would both speed up the process and increase accuracy. It would also make initial and final surveys a breeze, not to mention have the information directly processed through Arc. 

He just needed to figure out how to make it viable with the materials on hand. Without polymers, the whole idea of a 'lightweight drone' fell apart.

"Any chance we could miniaturize a recursive split generator?" The current schematic called for a central ground hub for swarm deployment attached to the back of a truck. It would serve as the brain, being the geolocated reference point and give orders to the drones, which would have their independent computational ability limited to extend their mission lifetime. Those drones could be marshalled to a known point and then project different points and shapes on the ground congruent with what the plans call for. Currently such a system would be taxing on their energy infrastructure - a swarm of any usable size would only be able to operate for an hour on the biggest battery they could fit in the truck - but a portable 'unlimited power with limited output' device would solve that problem. 

"There are two problems with miniaturization of the current RSG schematic. The first would be bleed, where the concentrated strand slowly loses split over time. The insulation matrix we have in place is effective but not perfect, a decrease in generation from a smaller system would increase the likelihood of eventual failure. The other problem would be protecting the system."

"Right, right, it has a ton of mercury in the tube." Keeping the system in a building where the structure could be properly engineered to prevent damage and contain a breach was a reasonably easy task. Trying to make it smaller, a process which itself would make the already fragile pipes even more of a risk, and place it in the bed of an unstable truck would only invite trouble. The possibility of crashing aside, the consistent vibrations from the engine and frequent shocks from driving over divots and pockets in their gravel roads would eventually fracture in such a delicate system. "An iron containment unit might work well enough to prevent spill, but at that point we're just adding more weight."

"Precisely. It would be more effective to extend our power grid out towards the project site."

"That it would." Donovan gave it his stamp of approval. They wouldn't be able to build the damn thing until they got their hands on lightweight materials, but having it in their back pocket would provide an intermediate goal. "Just a quick question, what if we were to abandon the whole truck-based approach and just have it fly?"

"How do you mean?"

"If we - and this is just a hypothetical - repurpose a Trawler chassis into a drone hub, we could have a full size RSG operational for the swarm's power supply, increase system mobility, and limit the interference terrain would have on the hub's ability to communicate with the drones. Is there an obvious drawback I'm not seeing of here?"

"It would use up a valuable RSG."

"But not a Split Space Drive, which is currently the limiting factor in Trawler production."

"At the moment, yes, but it isn't limiting by that great a margin. At the maximum production rates I've projected based upon current material shipments from the Holifanian Theocracy, RSG production will outpace SSD production by approximately 3%. If our terrestrial power consumption is to grow at even the minimum projections, sacrificing one for survey instrumentation without an alternative source in place is ill advised."

"Hmm, but if we do have an alternative then it wouldn't be that bad an idea . . . can you put a pin in it for later?"

"Of course."

"And, um, when you are making a mockup of the design, could you install some sort of air defense? Maybe a SAM or CIWS?"

"Donovan, you said no missiles."

"Being serious this time around, bud. Something like this would probably draw attention from that flying fuck, and it will certainly have the kinetic energy to cause damage regardless of how much we armor it."

" . . . very well. I shall take your suggestion into consideration."

"But on the subject of air defense-"

"No."

"FUCK!"