Now it was Emily who interrupted him, “Oh of course, you can’t pass up a chance to talk about your ancestor, can you?”
“Would you rather I hate the fact that my ancestors were technological geniuses? Can I continue?” He was smiling broadly, making Morgan think this was old joke between them.
“If you must.”
“How gracious of you, your grace.”
“Are you getting that wrong on purpose, or have you forgotten all the manners we beat into you?”
Instead of answering Larry continued on with where he had left off, though with a slight smirk. “The handguns and rifles from that long ago are still useful given how little more power can really be squeezed out of a gunpowder design. It also didn’t matter much since there wasn’t really any armor good enough to completely stop a bullet. Oh, they had vests that would keep it from punching a hole in you, but the impact was still generally enough to break ribs or knock someone out temporarily.
“This lasted until someone invented the first skinsuit. Are you familiar with those, Morgan?”
“Yeah, I learned about them on the way here from my homeworld.”
Modern skinsuits – so named because they were skin tight and only a few centimeters thick over most of the suit – were designed to protect the wearer from vacuum, sudden pressure changes, and the extremely hot and cold extremes of temperature encountered on a space ship. They were nano-fabricated with some of the hardest materials available while still maintaining flexibility. Morgan had been told they were good protection even from fires or small explosions, so she could see how they would be useful against guns.
“Okay, I’ll skip the explanation of those then. I will say it didn’t take long at all for someone to adapt them for use as a more traditional armor. Against a skinsuit, even the most powerful rifle rounds will only leave a small bruise at best. Only a hit on the faceplate has any chance of penetration.
“To answer this problem, penetrator rounds were invented. You saw a few of them in the middle section of my store, as well as this,” he patted the rifle next to him, “Penetrator rounds are a simple design, but brutally effective. There are two parts, the round and the penetrator. The larger part is the round, a shaped explosive that focuses all of its energy forward and wraps around the penetrator. The penetrator is a hardened hunk of metal, specially shaped, with an impact triggered detonator at its base. When the bullet strikes something the penetrator is pushed back into the round, triggering the detonator and propelling the penetrator forward with enough force to pierce even military grade suits, as long as you hit at the right angle.”
“That may have been a bit too complicated for us,” Gertrude said after a moment of working through all of the info.
“In basic terms PR weapons fire a big, slow bullet at something, which then explodes on contact pushing a small hard tip forward even harder.”
“That sounds. . . painful,” Morgan said, looking over at the rifle sitting on the ledge. With a barrel that wide there could be a lot of power behind a bullet shaped explosive.
“Well, yeah, that’s the idea. They certainly are more dangerous than normal firearms, but most of human history can be summed up as ‘got progressively more dangerous.’ Against a skinsuited person though they aren’t as dangerous as you would think. The explosion doesn’t do much to the suit, and the penetrator is so small and so hard that it doesn’t do much more than put a straight hole through someone.”
“Are they legal to own?” Gertrude asked, clearly upset at the idea.
“They are. Of course the penalties for misusing one are really high, as are the consequences of mishandling one. Really though most people don’t bother with them for self-defense as the instances of thieves, murderers, or rapists actually using a skinsuit to commit a crime is effectively zero planetside, and they are really hard to carry concealed.”
“And there is the not so insignificant fact that they are really expensive to fire,” Emily added.
“So what is the third kind? I assume those are the little shiny ones made with Iridium out there?” Morgan asked.
“You have a good eye. Those are something new, generally called ‘Iridium Specials,’” Emily said.
“Are you doing the explaining or am I? Anyway, yes, those are Iridium Specials. There are very few places you can buy them, for the simple fact that it was my father who invented them 20 years ago.”
“Joseph Browning was a genius. A pity such things tend to skip a generation,” Emily said.
This just elicited a laugh from Larry. “As you say. Anyway, they’re called Iridium Specials because of the bullet, not the gun itself. The frame does needs to be stronger than normal, but using Iridium there is more of a marketing gimmick than anything else. Not that we’d admit that out loud normally.
“Iridium Specials’ took the same problem the PR rounds solved and came at it another way. Instead of going bigger in order to fit an explosive charge these are designed for speed. As I said before basic gunpowder hadn’t changed in centuries, due to one iridium-clad limitation of physics. Put simply, the expanding gas would expand so fast, and no faster, no matter what was done to it. So after a certain point cramming in more powder or using a larger round wouldn’t do any good.
“That’s the ‘special’ part of the bullets. My father came up with a new propellant that had similar properties to gunpowder, but that expanded more than twice as fast. The hard part wasn’t even the expansion speed, but stability. It was easy to get something much more volatile. Getting something that was stable at normal temperatures and expanded faster? That was his genius. Now I won’t tell you what is in it or how we make it work – at least for the moment no one but the Browning Company can manufacture the stuff. That this also limits availability and raises prices didn’t hurt our bottom line any either.
“The other half of the answer was new bullets, denser, shaped to pierce better. The final shape of the bullet he made has slowly ended up being incorporated into our penetrator rounds as well, but the exotic materials are simply too expensive for widespread use, especially for something as volume intensive as military applications.
“Iridium is the best answer, being the densest stable element naturally occurring in nature. Unfortunately, it is also one of the rarest elements in this part of the galaxy. Many planets don’t have any at all. Asteroids can reliably be found with good deposits, but that’s still fairly expensive.
“The most obvious added expense is the extra dangers of mining in space, and the isolation. And of course the gate system is useless for getting out to asteroid fields because there is no gravity well large enough to jump to, and right there the cost of shipping triples. Ships can jump back, but only if the ship is big enough to have an internal gate and the builders had been able to afford the hideously expensive system in the first place.
“After all of that we also have to compete with ship builders and mechanics for iridium supplies too, since so many systems in space ships need it also, thanks to its much higher heat tolerance than common metals and alloys.”
“That was. . . informative,” Gertrude said after he finally stopped talking.
“Don’t mind him. He’s proud of his family, after all,” Emily said, smirking again, “Iridium specials use better propellant, and harder bullets, which lets them puncture suits, but also makes them expensive. Right now neither of you needs a PR or an IS gun.”
“I guess I’d better start saving then,” Morgan said at last.
“Oh?” Emily asked.
“I fully plan on working in space. That means skinsuits. I won’t be helpless again if I can help it.”
“Well, let’s talk about that. They are expensive, but there isn’t much point in you buying a gun you won’t use or need. What about you, Gertrude? Do you want something you can take up into the black with you?”
“In theory yes, but I’m mostly doing this for Haruhi.”
“Wouldn’t she be hurt just as bad if something happened to you as if somet
hing happened to her?” Emily pointed out.
“True,” Gertrude didn’t sound happy at the thought.
“We can make this work. I loved Gunny, the magnificent bastard, and any friend of the Colonel’s is a friend of mine. How about we set up a plan where you pay it off over the months between now and when you graduate? With whatever you can pay down now to start things off? I’m not even going to worry about interest.”
“That’s very generous,” Gertrude said.
Larry shrugged. “We have a monopoly on the biggest innovation in firearms technology in the past two centuries. I can afford to be, especially to my friends. I will expect to see you out here twice a month for practice with them though; a gun you aren’t familiar with is much less useful.” He paused for a moment, thinking. “I’ll have some normal gunpowder rounds made up for your weapons. Much cheaper to practice with. Normally we don’t offer them, since the recoil is much less so it isn’t quite as good for training and we can make more money that way. Of course usually anyone who buys one can afford it. Anyway, for you more practice will be better, even if it isn’t quite what the real deal will be.”
***
With that settled, the visit devolved into something akin to the earlier clothes shopping. First it was picking out just the right weapon for each woman – Gertrude preferred something a bit larger for her larger hands, while the smallest one they offered was better for Morgan’s smaller size. Thanks to her greater strength, Morgan could handle the added recoil just fine. Despite the small size of the pistol, the equally small size of the bullet and cartridge gave it a capacity of 30 rounds in a standard magazine, which was a nice plus. The pistol itself was slim enough that she could slide it into her coveralls pocket without it bulging out, and three slim magazines could fit in the opposite pocket easily.
Carrying it with a dress would be slightly more difficult, given most dresses lack of pockets, but they were able to find a thigh holster she liked with a little help from Emily.
Once they had settled on their personal choice of weapon, and fired an additional hundred rounds through it to be sure on the one hand and get pointers on form on the other. This went fine except for the one hot cartridge that flew straight back into the V-neck of her dress, causing Morgan to dance about a bit in pain, frantically loosening the tie a bit so it could fall the rest of the way through and land on the floor.
“In the future be mindful of what you’re wearing for practice,” Larry had said, “But also remember that you won’t have the luxury of knowing ahead of time when you’ll need to use the gun, so be ready to just grit your teeth and deal with it if one finds its way down your dress when you’re fighting for your life. If your choices are a small burn or ending up dead, well, the choice is easy.”
Larry then took them back out to the front to pick out holsters. Gertrude only wanted one she could use in either pocket or purse, but Morgan ended up selecting several, including one she could tuck into a boot top, one for pockets, and one she could strap to her thigh under a dress or skirt.
Throw in ammo, the extra magazines, and small handprint safes so the women could store the guns safely in Gertrude’s home and the cost really added up.
They did run into one snag when they went to pay for the purchases. By Zion law anyone legally an adult could buy a weapon and carry it, concealed or not – though concealed was by far the more popular choice – although there were exceptions for this for criminals convicted of violent crimes and a few other cases. Gertrude’s check in the system was over in less than a second, but the computer refused to process Morgan’s without a last name entered.
“You seriously don’t have a last name?”
“I really don’t.”
“Can you do it manually?” Emily asked.
“Yeah, give me a moment,” Larry said, pulling out his uplink and looking up the code to connect to a real person at the records office.
“Honey, have you considered giving yourself a last name, just to make things easier?” Gertrude asked Morgan as they waited.
“Actually I hadn’t,” she replied.
“I wouldn’t want to pressure you one way or the other, but given issues like this, or what happened at the hospital, you should at least consider it,” Emily added.
“You’re probably right,” Morgan admitted.
“I can help you with the forms and hassle of getting it changed,” Emily offered, “It wouldn’t take more than a few hours with my people’s help. Do you have anything in mind?”
Morgan thought about it, half-heartedly listening to Larry in the background arguing with the records worker. There wasn’t anything tied to home she could use, except her parents’ own names, but that didn’t really seem like a good choice. Looking about the room her eyes caught on a small picture on the packaging for one of the brands of magazines. It was a simple starscape, a drawing of a bunch of stars with lines tying them together in a constellation, maybe the systems where they did business. She thought about how she’d felt on the trip to Zion, how anxious she was to get up there and make something of herself. ‘The Long Black,’ the freighter crew had called it, the emptiness between the ‘Blue Isles’ that were planets.
“How about Black?” Morgan said, turning back to face the women.
“Morgan Black? I like the sound of it. Why pick that one?” Gertrude asked.
Morgan shrugged, “What better name for a mechanic working the fright lines, up there?”
“It suits you,” Emily said, nodding in agreement.
Somehow Morgan felt like this small decision was the start of something bigger, that she was starting to actually find a place of her own in the worlds and beyond. Or maybe she was just being silly, and it didn’t mean much of anything at all.
CHAPTER 12
Hiring is a perennial headache for any competent boss, especially in the perpetually understaffed space sectors. They have to balance the dangers of unqualified candidates with the dangers of an overworked staff, on top of all the normal concerns of finding someone who will fit with the personalities of the rest of the team. Even minor conflicts can spin out of control after six months cooped up together in the same small starship.
- Lindsey Ballard, HR Director, Molon Shipyards
TWO ZION YEARS LATER / THREE EARTH YEARS
MORGAN WOKE as she did so many mornings, with Haruhi opening the door to her room as quietly as possible.
At some point this had become their game, Haruhi trying to wake Morgan up just before her alarm went off, and Morgan trying to pretend to be asleep until she could grab and tickle Haruhi as ‘punishment.’ At first, it had just been the weekend days Morgan didn’t work early. But a year after moving in with Gertrude, Morgan had been able to find a regular position as a ground car mechanic, enabling her to leave her other two jobs and work a more normal schedule.
Even with two years of practice behind her Haruhi had still only managed to repeat her first performance some dozens of times, and most of those were mornings after Morgan had found herself staying up far too late studying or, as was becoming perhaps too common, mornings when Morgan had stayed up far too late reading a novel that could just as well have waited.
Still, the fact that she was now proficient enough at reading to enjoy such late nights was worth any sleepy days, and one of the most visible benefits to her friendship with Gertrude.
In either case what happened more often than not was that Haruhi either woke Morgan before she made it across the room to open the drapes around Morgan’s small canopy bed, or Morgan was already awake and lying in wait for the rambunctious four-year-old.
As she waited Morgan realized that mentally she had automatically translated that figure from Zion years into Earth years, six in this case, but not into Hillman years. Taking a moment, she tried to do the conversion, but ended up having to guess, the fog of morning still slowing her thoughts. Nine? Ten? A couple short years before any Hillman child would have to start learning how to work the mines.
That
pleasant thought distracted Morgan enough that she was still metaphorically shaking her head of the image when Haruhi enthusiastically tossed aside the curtain and yelled out.
“Wake up Aunt Morgan!”
And then Haruhi proceeded to jump onto Morgan’s chest, practically bouncing up and down.
“Ooph. I’m up, I’m up.” Morgan rolled over so Haruhi plopped off of her and onto the bed.
“I got you!”
“You did, Haru. Now go eat your breakfast and let me get ready. It’s a big day, for your mom and for me.”
“You don’t have school anymore. Will you be here more?” Haruhi asked as she hopped off the bed.
“Maybe,” Morgan said, trying to keep the sadness out of her voice. There weren’t any freighter companies Morgan knew of that allowed parents to have their children on the freighters, it just cost too much, not to mention the dangers. Worst case Emily had offered to watch Haruhi, but even the best case she’d still be with the other employees’ children on one of the big stations in orbit, watched over by the caretakers the companies hired.
As for Morgan herself, well, the odds of them both being hired by the same company were remote. Morgan knew that, and thought she had accepted it. But she found herself rather unhappy at the prospect of leaving her friends. No, she had to be honest with herself. She hated the thought of leaving her family again.
But there wasn’t any way around it, and staying in bed would only end with her getting hired nowhere, so Morgan untangled her legs from the blankets and reached for her robe.
There were agents of a dozen freight lines and merchant houses in town to interview the fresh graduates from Isa Mechanical, and while there were probably more openings than there were graduates, the agents would still turn down bad candidates.
Morgan got ready more or less on autopilot, ate on autopilot. Simply too much on her mind. She didn’t put her makeup on just as automatically because Gertrude stopped her and forced Morgan to let her help. . . after making her take it all off so they could start again.
The Long Black (The Black Chronicles Book 1) Page 17
