Chapter 21 - New equipment

I woke up feeling full of energy and was humming some tunes while washing and dressing, my previous depression gone without a trace. Even Otty noticed my change, watching me intently with both his sprouts. 

After starting up the food printer, I went to the lab to check the things that I left baking in the forger for the whole night, where I found my new horns already completed, waiting for me.

They looked like two rectangular fins and were longer and thicker than my current horns. One side of them was entirely made of light-dispersing crystal that would point the light behind me. 

It was a Skyline G5. One of the latest Battle horns models for beginners. Keith made sure to find me the best quality thing.

This model is not as overpowered or as adjustable as professional battle horns, but still a good upgrade compared to what I have now. From all the models that can be fit to my existing head connector, these are the best. 

Fitting anything better would require a head connector exchange, and that can be done only through operation. Which is impossible without an autonomous medical capsule. 

Well, now that I have a source of Cry, it's just a matter of time until I build one, but there's no sense walking around with the cheap ones until then. 

I took out my new horns, comparing them to my old ones in the mirror, and smiled. Not bad, they actually fit my face, making me look quite stylish.

Before leaving the lab, I quickly loaded a day's worth of programs into the forger and went to have breakfast, leaving the machine to its work. By the end of the day, I will have myself a pair of brand new boots and a few other useful things.

Now that I have enough Cry to allow forger work for 24 hours a day without stopping, I can realize lots of things I considered a waste of battery charge.

As we sat eating, I dove into another study.

I was going to need a few weapons. Even though I reassured Keith that taking out golems would be harmless because they were inactive, to be honest, I wasn't completely sure about it. Who knows what program is loaded into them, and how would they react to being pried out of the wall?

The wall behind them seemed to serve as their charging dock, at least when the maze was still active. What if it starts up the moment I disconnect it from the charger? If that thing finds me as an enemy, without weapons I would have no way to protect myself from it. So I decided to find a few schemes to craft myself some means of protection.

I know Keith must have had all kinds of weapon schematics, but asking him for some would make him worry. Besides, that would be considered an illegal crafting of weapons on his side and could bring him some serious trouble. I did not wish to put my friend into an odd situation. 

Yeah, we may be a civilization revolving around fighting each other, but we still have some semblance of civility and united regulations.

Although they are mainly about weapon regulation.

These rules basically state that all weapons should be registered when you enter a space station, and all weapons must have a disabling function to make it impossible to activate them on any space station without permission. Basically, all space stations are no-shooting zones.

Also, if you are found trying to enter the station with an illegally modified weapon that allows you to use the weapon in a no-shooting zone, or are found with such a weapon on you in standard scanning procedure, the station guards have the right to throw you out the chute and flush you into space without questioning, jury, or trial.

Normally, weapons sold in official stores come with a special function that shuts them off in no-shooting zones automatically, allowing people to pass customs clearance fast and undisturbed. This function can easily be found by scanners on the space station. Not having this function or adding some backdoor that allows you to bypass this function is what considered an illegal modification.

Because of this, modifications could only be done by official weapon crafters, and trying to craft or dismantle one without a weapon crafter's license is also illegal.

I know Keith did not have a license, so asking him to dismantle weapons was not an option for me. The moment he tried to scan any weapon he had to make a scheme, the scanner would sell him out to his local authority.

There were other ways to procure these schematics. Intranets. Some of them were very poorly managed, which allowed criminals to prosper there.

There was just one small issue. I could not buy anything. Without a retransmitter, I could not buy anything from the outside, as I had no way to transfer Cry or receive Cry in the form of money. 

In other words, I had to find some free stuff that could be found in some less-regulated intranets. Or try to develop something on my own.

I spent a great part of the day diving through the darker intranets that I knew, to find any information to craft some weapon, and tried to make a few schemes for less sophisticated stuff.

Like magnetic accelerating guns, or MAGs, which we humans used to call railguns. This name holds since ancient times, when the first design of that weapon looked like two huge metal rails that passed the charge to brick-sized projectiles. Today it is merely the size of a bulky handgun, something like an ancient magnum revolver, and projectiles the size of a rice grain, so it hardly has anything to do with rails. 

I know ignition weapons are easier to do with a forger and their schemes can be found anywhere because they are considered museum artifacts of ancient times. Even with my knowledge, making something like a revolver is no big deal. The thing is, none of them would be able to pierce my astro suit, not to mention the armor of those golems.

Even the smallest of MAGs can do a lot more damage than the biggest rifle with old-style bullets. 

MAG weapon schematics are also not hard to find in our time. The problem is to make them compact and efficient. As they use a lot of power, they also give a huge fire power, which gives a strong recoil. It is storing this power, using it efficiently while not blowing your shoulder off with a monstrous recoil, and packing it all up into a wearable size is what requires the most knowledge. But it's still something I would be able to do if I rely on my AI. 

Yeah, it would not look as stylish and compact as the ones you can find in shops. People optimized their form for hundreds of years, but I would have to make do with it being bulky and ugly.

The more sophisticated weapons like plasma guns or matter splitters are beyond my understanding, so I doubt I would be able to craft them.

I could also do a photon beam weapon or laser rifle. The principle behind them was quite easy. Make lots and lots of light, then focus it at the enemy with some holographic lenses. 

But there was an issue. You either made them in an old-style way with light bulbs, photon accumulators, and big generators, or by supercharging your 4GM to make it shoot an all-destroying beam. Which wasted Cry as if you were shooting money out of a barrel. And not a small amount of it.

So the most logical choice in my opinion was MAG.

My first creation looked like an ugly piece of Solid State brick with a handhold and a trigger, with high-voltage batteries and light diffusers sticking out of it all around it like branches. The lower part of the barrel had a rectangular clip of a hundred small projectiles. But after some time I realized that the battery may not be enough to shoot so many bullets, so I remade it to have an exchangeable battery as well. 

After several more modifications, my result looked like an ancient one-handed machine gun, with a clip sticking out below the barrel and a battery integrated inside. This way I would be able to change the clip and the battery together. All I had to do was test how many shots it would be able to make.

The forger would be busy for half a day more, so to make myself busy, I started to look for information on photon accumulators. Maybe I would be lucky to find something. It was always good to have a backup plan. After all, golems could use 4GM just like living beings. If they were loaded with physical barrier programs I would be screwed. The only way to penetrate it would be to exhaust it by shooting a shitload of projectiles at it until the barrier falls. With an energy weapon such as a laser cannon, plasma gun or any other beam type weapon, I would be able to bypass the barrier destroying the golem behind it.

Several hours of searching did not give me any results. Photon accumulators were part of lost technology, and even if someone had it they were not sharing it. At least not for free.

If energy weapons were beyond me for the time being, what other options did I have? An idea struck me. What if I made another MAG, only a lot more powerful. So powerful, I'd be able to penetrate the barrier and armors that my main weapon fails to penetrate. 

It would have a limited amount of shots, but each of them would be a life-saving shot, so to speak.

In a few more hours I had my first design that looked like a bulky shotgun that could fit only one projectile several centimeters long and one and a half thick. To shoot it I would use the entire rod-like battery, that would have been able to shoot fifty shots of my handgun.

The biggest part of that rifle comprised the magnetic recoil diffuser that would make sure I did not die from the force I've put into this monster.

By the time I was satisfied with the final design of the prototype, I had a notification that the forger finished all the works I programmed into it in the morning. 

I went back to the lab, took out all the freshly made stuff and loaded it up for a whole night's work, so that my guns would be ready by the morning.

Meanwhile it was time to test my new boots. A smile spread on my lips as I put them on and looked at Otty.

"You ready?" I said, receiving in return what I understood was his version of a confused look.

I walked out into the open area and directed my 4GM particles into the boots, making the light diffuser at their sides light up with bright green color, as they began to charge.

Then I dashed forward and after a few paces jumped up. When I felt myself reaching the highest point of my jump, I bent my knees and pushed myself off of air. My body leaped up once again, as if the air under me instantly turned solid, allowing me to jump a second time in the middle of a jump. 

I landed on my two feet, the lights shining once again as the diffusers wore off the force of impact from several meters' fall. The double jump was a success.

Next I tried a triple jump, but unfortunately it failed. Boots needed a few seconds to recharge, so by the time they could allow a second leap, I was already landing.

Then it was the strafe gait test. I jumped to the side, then activated the leap while pushing myself in another direction, and my body changed trajectory. However, I was not ready for the forces at play and lost my balance, falling on the ground.

This would need more practice. I saw fighters use leaps in all kinds of ways, moving from side to side in a zig-zagging pattern, instantly stopping and backing away as if they ran backward just as fast as forward, but they made it look so effortless. Only now I understood what effort they actually had to go through to make those moves look so easy and light.

I stood up and began my practice. I don't know what other dangers this place may hide, so these moves may save my life someday. 

"Move strange." Came Otty's thought, making me smile.