NIH Chpt 3

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==Not Invented HereChapter 3 - Starts and Fits==
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Hauptmann Zorch is here, with his trusty companions, the Laser-Bearers! X-Ray! Gamma! Microwave! Stand and face me, villain! "Hauptmann Zorch"', New Avalon Independent Broadcasting Corporation, 2955-2960
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===Part 1===
 Wynn's Roost - Outworlds Wastes
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When last we left our hero... eh, he should cut out the internal self-introductions. He had a tendency to dramatics and exaggeration that he'd been told, most strenuously, to rein in. "A sense of humour is an asset, but a sense of professionalism in an engineer was an absolute need." "Be the calm centre instead of the hurricane." If he kept telling himself that, maybe it'd sink in.
 
Regardless, the boy standing in the hull of the turret was climbing out to meet him. He didn't even know his name yet, but he sensed he'd already made an enemy.
 
"Diego, this is James Ferguson. He's come a very long way to work for me."
 
"Pleased to meet you, Diego," said Ferguson, sticking out his hand to shake. Diego looked at it like it was a dead rat, and very purposely folded his arms, daring him to make something of it. Yup, pure fit of jealousy. He sympathized, really he did. Some flashy businessman in a nice suit coming round and throwing around enough money to buy off your boss in an instant? He couldn't act more Lyran if he'd tried, and on top of that, being some sort of super-tech when all you had was your practical experience? He'd hate him too.
 
Well, no way out but through. He immediately stripped off his jacket and let it fall on the dirty floor. Ugh, the mag-seal would pick up all the rust-flakes. Never mind, he was making a point. "Mind if I take a look?" He lifted himself up and over into the turret Diego had just vacated.
 
"Hey!"
 
He looked back at the boy. "Coming?"
 
There were very few ways to change first impressions, and one was to act well outside the expected norms AKA his own personality - dramatic, fastidious and obsessed with technology, but not so caring of suits. If he had to work with this boy, it'd be easier to treat him like a fellow engineer with valuable insights.
 
As the boy scrambled in he appraised his work. This... didn't look like any autocannon he'd ever seen. The feed was wide enough he could put his hand in, and the ammo can was wider & bigger than most AC/5s he'd seen, yet it wasn't reinforced enough for AC/10. What kind of rounds did this fire?
 
Diego observed his hesitation with glee. Dammit. Well, another way was to give ground and let the local expert have the floor.
 
"Can you tell me what I'm looking at here?"
 
"If mister LieFed Bigshot the Third can't work it out, why would ah tell you?" His new co-worker's sneer was plain to see. "Neat trick wi' the coat, by the way."
 
"Diego!"
 
"Grandpa, he's just a suit! I don't care how much money he's got, he's no better th'n us. And I c'n tell he don't know a fuckin' thing," said the boy triumphantly.
 
On the other hand, there was no point letting someone walk all over you.
 
"Fine then."
 
Looking over it, it was definitely a custom job. In the back of the tank a larger-than-normal diesel engine and gearbox had been crammed in. Very sweet work. The armour looked different underneath the scratches in the olive-drab paint, more like steel than the grey of titanium. And what he'd taken for the feed mechanism was just a box bolted into an odd mount.
 
Ah! The original box was welded on, part of the usual standard of quality from Quikscell, but it had been cut off and a removable sliding mount secured with a recessed locknut had been added. Simple, ingenious.
 
He went and got himself a long-handled wrench, loosened it, and tugged it out with ease before handing it to Diego. "Here you go."
 
"T-that proves nothing!"
 
He began poking around inside, inspecting how they'd made room for the odd cannon, not meeting the boy's gaze. "I'll tell you what. I could fight and scrap with you constantly, I could field-strip that fine engine in the body in a couple of hours: there's any number of ways to beat you down with my superior knowledge, but the thought of wasting all that time wearies me." Only now did he look him in the eyes. If he was crouched down and below him, looking up? Well, that was all part of the power politics. "In fact I sympathize: were our positions reversed, I'd be asking "who is this asshole, coming in and taking over?" You don't have to like me. I propose an alternate solution: I teach you everything you ever wanted to know in return for working together peaceably."
 
"Fuck you. Fuck you right up th' arse. You don't know anything."
 
Ferguson sighed. "I think I know enough by now." He pitched his voice over to the side of the surly teenager. "Boss? Just a shot in the dark, but Diego's your apprentice?"
 
Devolo rubbed the back of his balding head. "Aye. Promised his mother I'd take him in. He had attitude problems at school, but he loves engines and he picks things up quick."
 
"Don't you ignore me!"
 
"Are there any other employees?"
 
"Eh, no, it's just us two. He's actually been a big help."
 
"You hear that, Diego? You're valuable. Hell, you might even be able to supplant me when you learn enough. Offer's open."
 
The boy just stood there, confusion warring with anger, and the unexpected approval. "Who the hell are you, anyway?" he blurted.
 
"I am vast. I contain multitudes," quoted Ferguson. "I am a businessman, yes, but I am a mechtech and electronics tech and lots of other techs as well, and I ascribe wholeheartedly to the policy of making my enemies into my friends. Hostility's so boring."
 
Confusing your enemies into submission was also a strategy, though not one he could use much. He didn't need the boy, but he was so easy to figure out he couldn't help but revert to his old habits. And it would be easier to have a willing pupil.
 
Part of this strategy was not leaving the confused party time to find their feet in the tide of freewheeling bullshit. And he did have an appointment after all...
 
"Boss? I believe I came here for a demonstration?"
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===Part 2===
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Now they were outside behind a crude bunker, masks and safety goggles on, goat tied up in its kennel. Diego had been a grumbling thundercloud at the start, which thankfully faded after a few words from his grandfather as he helped out.
 
Cellular Ammunition Storage Equipment, or CASE for short, was an active defense against one of the worst combat necessities: the volatility of modern ammunition. As armour became better, the ability of weaponry to penetrate it worsened. The current standard in armour was so durable that it took a lot of punch to get through, and the current explosive compositions used in propellant and warheads to provide that punch made TNT seem as safe and simple to handle as plaster of Paris. Unfortunately, modern armour was also ablative, so chip or melt off enough, and/or a stray round could penetrate and... boom. He silently cursed the ancient Terran Hegemony's design compromises, the current worship of the Star League golden-age that perpetuated them and the stupidity of proprietary standards. Even those of his previous employers.
 
Off on a tangent there. The point was, install a raft of sensors (heat, pressure and others) inside ammunition bins that were selective enough to detect an explosion, and quick enough to trigger explosive bolts on vents and baffles before the blast-wave of a ton or three of SuperRDX penetrated into something vital, like the tank crew or 'mech reactor. And lastly, reinforce the bins and the internal structure enough that they could redirect the force of a diminished explosion designed to penetrate armour.
 
It was a phenomenal engineering challenge, not helped by the fact that this particular piece of LosTech was self-destructing by design. Most researchers could reinforce the compartments for each salvo, some managed the baffles and explosive bolts, very few could tune the sensors to withstand normal combat vibrations (early test pilots had triggered it simply by jumping in a mech) and no-one yet could recreate the circuitry to tie it all together. His own personal theory was that there was some kind of cut-down expert system in the originals.
 
The mock shells had been loaded in the prototype ammo box bolted inside the Scorpion chassis. All the explosives handling had been done by Devolo.
 
Stripped of the head and gloves of his rather grungy ballistic armour bomb-disposal suit, which must have been military surplus, Devolo held up the igniter and prepared to push the trigger with his toe-thumb. (It still bothered Ferguson.) Diego had a clipboard and pen at the ready.
 
"Testing! Prototype #88, test 122 of the CASE on 250 kg of simulated Medium Rifle ammunition. Three, two, one, fire!"
 
There was an almighty -crack-, and the burned out hulk simultaneously rang like a bell and blew a gout of fire out of its rear. It had grown a little darker and cooler, so it was really quite visible. He felt the heat on his face. The boy cheered.
 
"I got a good feeling about that one, Grandpa!"
 
"Yea, me too." Back went on the helmet and gloves. Ferguson noticed that the right glove had been duct-taped to fit the Thumb. "OK, ah'll go and safe the range. Both of ye stay here until I come back. Diego, not a peep out of you towards Mr. Ferguson. Ferguson, same."
 
Devolo waddled out, slowly approaching the test site. From somewhere he produced an instant camera, taking several shots of the blast pattern and tucking them into a pocket. Next was a mirror on a stick, which he used to examine the exit point of the blast and the interior. Finally, he approached the old tank itself to inspect it with the Mk. 1 Eyeball and a torch, before turning back to give the universal 'OK' sign. All clear.
 
Diego scrambled out before remembering he was supposed to be showing how pro he was to the usurper, and walked sedately around the test site in a circle, making crosses whenever a piece of shrapnel was found. Ferguson waited until he'd finished his circuit and peeked at the paper. He had not marked any in the three quadrants of the circle opposite to the vent. Superb.
 
The best was yet to come, and he hurried to inspect the pseudo-ammo box. It had withstood an equivalent force to an Atlas' full barrage, yet it was only slightly bulged. The shrapnel that had spewed out the back was littered with what looked like broken sabot rounds. Something tickled at the edge of his brain before what Devolo has said brought up the contents of an old history lesson. Of course, rifles! An evolution of the 'one big bullet' concept, they had been the Terran Hegemony's ballistic weapon of choice, before the advent of modern armour had forced a focus on literal chip damage. The smallest of them could not even penetrate the hide of a Scorpion, while a medium was comparable to the lightest of autocannon, and a heavy was almost comparable to an AC/5.
 
He'd estimate that what had blown up was about the strength of 5-7 AC/2 rounds. Honestly, in ten years time he might not have been needed. Of course it was a world of difference between handcrafting something and producing it, but now he was being nitpicky. Plans were forming...
 
"Mr. Devolo - boss - you've done something marvelous here. What did you use to reinforce the ammo box?" Ferguson ignored the smug look on Diego's face.
 
"Internally, titanium bracing wi' sheet tungsten blast shields. The whole thing's contained in high-strength steel."
 
Hmm, doable. Perhaps dicey if you were on a metal-poor world, but Wynn's Roost was not. "Where do you get your metals from?"
 
"Ah know a girl in the outside o' Turnerville. Part o' me ol' unit. Can get me a fair bit o' steel alloy for not much over cost. Course she still makes me pay through th' nose for the tungsten an' titanium, but y'can't have everythin'."
"Could she do industrial quantities?"
 
"Auntie Brenda runs a refinery," said Diego. The so there! was implied.
 
"Let's keep the hostility down to a dull roar, please, Diego? Listen, learn." he snarked back.
 
He turned back to examine the test article. There didn't seem to be any circuitry. Surely...
 
"Is this a passive system?"
 
"Yeah, well, is that a problem?"
 
"In my humble opinion, boss, it's something of a dead end. You're tapping off and redirecting the blastwave, so a tiny bit is compressed, traveling faster than it can blow up the box to set off the explosive bolts?"
 
"Aye, well spotted."
 
"There's a problem. It just doesn't scale; you end up with a box that weighs as much as the ammunition or heavier."
 
"Ah kinda figured, but it'd be worth it. Anyway, that box, the vents and the bolts only weighed 150kg an' it stood up to a quarter-full ammo box jus' fine."
 
"A quarter-ton of RDX - is it RDX? OK, I guessed correctly - is great for passive. It's just that it's not reliable. I'll show you the test profiles, but it relies upon the explosion front happening near the vent and reaching the bolts, and you can't rely on that. It has to work first time, every time, especially with containing something like, say, four tons AC/20 ammunition with HEAP SPHN warheads and erythritol tetranitrate/aluminium propellant."
 
Devolo looked thoughtful. "Aye, that'd make a helluva bang. What's SPHN?"
"Stabilized Peroxated Hexa-Nitro; I'm not even going to try to pronounce the full chemical structure. Erythritol tetranitrate is almost as energetic. Given SPHN can be set off with a stray bullet, and it's one of the safer explosives that were and are loaded, if I went for a passive design that could cope with all the common propellants and the warheads on top of those, I'd have to end up building an inside-out tank inside the ammo box. You have to also eject the unexploded ammo around the penetrated cell before the blast reaches the other rounds."
 
Now he had turned mulish. "Ah'd still do it, if it meant the soldiers was safe."
 
"Boss, we're talking something like a 5 to 15-ton compartment compared to something that, by all accounts, only added an extra 500kg. Total!" His boss of all of half a day looked even more resistant. "Sir. You're an engineer. I'm an engineer. My engineering instincts are saying this is a tradeoff that we cannot afford."
 
"Cono, what d' yer survival instincts say? Forget how thin ice was just a few hours ago?" He snorted. "Maybe ah should send ye out in one o' the militia's tanks next time there's a raid. See how 'motivated' ye are then!"
 
Ferguson backed off. This would not be won immediately, especially after insulting his life's work. Great going there, by the way.
 
"Start researching active systems. It's all I'm saying, boss." He hooked his mask back over his nose and mouth. The dust was already giving him a cough. "I'll be in the workshop if you need me."
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===Part 3===
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That didn't last long, thought Ferguson. He supposed it spoke well of Devolo's character that he came in only five minutes after, having calculated (in pencil!) the curve of armour required to ammunition carried.
 
It didn't speak well of his own character that he'd talked down, accidentally and on purpose, to both people he should have been winning over. Some envoy he was.
 
He was fortunate that logos was currently over-riding pathos. Ethos would come, if he didn't mess up much more.
 
He was going to mess up, he knew it.
 
...Being this down wasn't like him. Body clock was out of sync, that was all.
 
The boss walked over to where he was sat on the ragged sofa in the office. "Listen, Ferguson, I... I think you were right. You didn't need to be so high-an'-mighty know-it-all about it, but you were right. Ah did the calculations and it just keeps going up and up for increasing calibres. With the mass budget, th' current tanks woulda been given th' choice o' weapons OR armour."
 
Lowering himself into a duct-tape-patched office chair, he rubbed his face. "Suppose what ah was more angry at was th' thought o' my life's work bein' all fer nothin', and me being thinkin' I was doin' well 'cause I didn' test wi' everythin'."
 
"Boss, listen, it doesn't mean you can't pursue a hybrid or augmented system. Before I came here I reviewed anything to do with CASE in all the current engineering publications and ancient manufacturer's catalogues I could find. There wasn't much, but there were some indications they were going in the exact same direction you have, and got a lot farther before they had to include sensors. They had to dip into the most esoteric materials science of Star League, stuff like high-entropic alloys, diamond fibres and zero-gee single-crystal metals, but they did it. So I suppose I should have prefaced with "current technology"."
 
"Great, ah have t' match th' Star League. Why don't ah jump t' Santa Monica while I'm at it."
 
"I thought the moon was named San Diego?"
 
His boss looked at him askance, then smirked. "Looks like ye don' know everythin' eh? Eh?"
 
"Clearly I needed better star charts. I thought Diego was named after it." muttered Ferguson.
 
"Well, some do. Sorta tradition to name someone in th' family that when there's a lunar eclipse when they're born. His full name's Diego Monica Corredor. Don't say to him ah tol' you," warned Devolo.
 
Ferguson thought of Terra's ruddy lunar eclipses, then imagined a baleful red eye ringed with actinic white hanging in the sky for an entire night. "It must be very-" terrifying "-impressive."
 
"You were thinkin' 'terrifying', I bet."
 
"No comment, boss."
 
So the technology he had been sent here to investigate had been a dud after all. It might reach some level of usefulness after those ten years, appropriate to hold Rifle ammunition and maybe some of the lesser grades of machine-gun propellant, but little else.
 
The Dropship was still landed while the JumpShip was recharging in-system. If he rushed, calling the taxi to pick up his bag at the hotel, and called the receptionist to leave a request to the captain, he could leave all this behind. There was a literal escape clause hidden in the contract, scattered across three subclauses: in an emergency, the new employee could default on any compensation, leave a recorded or written "Dear John" message and flee whatever war-torn battlefield the agent found themselves on.
 
Of course, that was not what he was ostensibly here for. Had he not gone into this career wanting to help preserve mankind? The balance of lives saved to lives lost thanks to him and his could use some rebalancing. He was also greatly looking forward to the technical challenge. There had been precious little of that these past few years of travelling.
 
He didn't really believe in the divinity of Blessed Blake anyway. What he'd said, and the stories of what he'd done rebuilding Terra, that he believed in. It had taken a certain cultivation of doublethink just to make it through his first few assignments, but it went both ways. They'd send their newest loyalty-challenged member out here, to beyond the middle of nowhere? Well, they'd appreciate it if he didn't break cover all that time. If he was out from under ROM's thumb for the duration? All the better.
 
He'd have to walk the razor's edge and hope he left nothing that couldn't be explained away as independent development. The excitement almost drowned out the fear.
 
"All right boss, I am at your disposal. What do we do now?"
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==Author's Chapter Notes==
;Word from the Author: Foisted boneheaded mistake in naming the moon off on the character. You saw nothing
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