Chapter 42: Lofting Embers

In a still intact sub-basement of a blasted office building in Capital City’s Porkietown, a motley assortment of xenos gathered around a table.

“That’s it?!?” a tentacled xeno exclaimed as it, clutching a scanner, crowded around the disassembled Terran AK-47D.

“Yep,” a middle-aged woman clad in grey fatigues replied, “That’s it.”

The small crowd of xenos started muttering excitedly.

“This alloy is very unusual,” another one stated, staring at their scanners. “It’s mostly iron and nickel, but mixed in are all manner of elements! I’ve never seen an alloy like it. Is there a non-Terran source of this special metal?”

The woman laughed.

“Your solar systems are absolutely loaded with ‘sources’! They probably just melted down some random nickel-iron asteroid. They do shit like that. Lemme see.”

The woman peered at the xeno’s scanner, pulled out her phone, and took a screenshot.

Her phone beeped.

“Culvair-216,” she said in a matter-of-fact tone. “It was a fairly good-sized rock that got claimed and eaten during the Great War. Looks like it was good enough for them just to ‘melt and run’. You see all sorts of crazy shit in their lower-grade alloys, especially when they get pressed.”

“I thought the Terrans were known for the quality of their alloys,” the xeno replied, its eyes blinking in confusion.

“I hate to give those assholes credit for anything,” the woman said with a smirk, “but they make some of the highest quality alloys in the galaxy… when they want to. What you specify is exactly what you get, down to the atom. That being said, their industry runs on cheap ‘rock iron’ just like this.”

“...How?” the xeno gasped. “How can they do that and everything not just fall apart?”

“It would take a day to fully cover it, but the short answer is that their metallurgists and engineers are good enough that they can wing it. Besides, they over-engineer things to hell and back. If something needs to be two millimeters thick, they will make it five if they can get away with it. If something needs to be perfect, they will make it perfect, but if they can use a ‘melt and run’ alloy that is literally one twentieth of the price, that’s what they are going to do. I absolutely hate the motherfuckers, but I have complete faith in their engineering. It’s almost as good as ours… almost.”

“But it’s iron...”

“Iron has a bad rep in the Federation,” the woman chuckled. “You guys consider it ‘trash,’ so it’s only used for the lowest quality goods, which are shit no matter what they are made of, and when you do use it, your metallurgy sucks. Most iron in the Federation is just pure iron after removing the more ‘valuable’ elements or its poorly processed ‘rock iron’ from asteroids that aren’t worth processing otherwise. You don’t know iron. You should. When properly alloyed, it can have properties as good or better than a lot of those fancy materials that you swear by, and all of your systems are just loaded with it.”

“If it’s so great, then why aren’t we using it?”

“You mean, why does the Federation have you shelling out for raw materials that you could replace with something that is universally abundant and cheap?” the woman sneered. “Probably the same reason that those same materials are required by Federation law. ‘Quality and safety,’ my freckled ass. We have a saying, ‘Follow the money.’ Ever wonder why certain species, the same ones so insistent on ‘quality and safety’ are so free with their tech? Everyone just happily accepts the production designs and never questions why they then wind up paying those same species a major portion of their GDP for the specialized materials needed to make those designs work. You are being shaken down and don’t even realize it.”

The group of xenos started grumbling angrily.

“The Sovngarde, Alduin, and even the Retribution are all made out of steel, their word for iron-alloys.” The woman said, “That should tell you everything you need to know about that ‘trash’ element. The Empire is now making ships out of Terran steel as well.”

She gestured to the AK on the table.

“Needless to say, it’s more than good enough for one of these pieces of shit.”

“You have done nothing but speak ill of this weapon,” A brilliant red Jova said as he licked his eye thoughtfully, “yet you chose it to equip your people. Why?”

“I call it a piece of shit because it is a piece of shit,” the woman scoffed. “It’s thousand-year-old tech and not even the best example of it. It’s inaccurate, clumsy, cheaply made, and its ammunition capacity is a fucking joke.”

She picked up the magazine.

“This holds just thirty rounds… Thirty! That’s it!”

“And don’t even get me started about its so-called ‘reliability’, as if actually firing most of the time you pull the trigger is something to be proud of… Shit… They just picked it at random based on some half-baked folklore… and it was a design that they could find. It’s a garbage gun made by garbage people!”

“Now this...” she said as she raised her sabergun, “now this is a weapon. Accurate, truly reliable, hundreds of rounds of ammo per magazine, powerful, versatile… A real masterpiece of design, art, skill, and the zenith of true human engineering. In the hands of someone trained in its use and practiced in its application, it is death. With it, I can punch a hole in an APC, accurately hit targets at well over fifteen hundred meters, or fire a perfectly silent killing shot at close range.”

“So why aren’t you issuing those to your people?”

“Because it takes a skilled artisan weeks and some incredibly expensive and rare components to make just ONE of them, and it takes months to use (and maintain) one with any proficiency, YEARS to truly master it and reach its full potential.”

She lovingly set it down and picked up a nearby fully assembled AK.

“This? This piece of SHIT can be thrown together in someone’s garage with nothing but scrap metal and some basic tools. ANY robo-fac can crap them out by the millions using any random asteroid that drifts past as the only component. Yes, it’s ‘garbage,’ but it’s more reliable and accurate than the untrained people that we are handing them out to by the hundreds of thousands… and that is the pure HELL of the AK. One untrained yahoo with one AK? That’s a joke, easily dispatched. A hundred AKs? A thousand AKs? A million?...”

She sighed and shook her head.

“It doesn’t matter how good you are when you are literally outnumbered by a hundred thousand to one… especially when there are another hundred thousand getting handed another hundred thousand of these pieces of shit just in case the first hundred thousand weren’t enough… The AK didn’t win the Sol War despite being a piece of shit. It won the Sol War, defeated us… BECAUSE IT IS A PIECE OF SHIT. A people can put one of these pieces of shit into the hands of every single member of its population because it’s a piece of shit. You can have one of these pieces of shit poking out of every window, lurking around every corner if you want to… and you can have them firing these!”

She pulled a bullet from her pocket.

“Now this, this is most certainly not a piece of shit. This is a late-generation antipersonnel round specifically designed for Federation soldiers.”

She handed it to the Jova.

“Pass that around and hit that baby with your scanners. That is a masterpiece of design right there, and they can make them by the millions. With that and other equally nasty payloads, you turn these pieces of shit into the nightmares that slaughtered the Juon, the bugs, and the Feds alike. You can get millions of rounds just like that one pretty easy… But you don’t need them. Just a solid lead projectile will defeat a Federation troopers deflector screen, and while it won’t defeat the standard armored vest, it will still likely incapacitate the asshole anyhow. On those tablets, I gave you are designs for many of the rounds that were developed over the years, from a basic lead slug to the latest generation stuff. You should be able to find something in all of those that you will be able to produce with little difficulty that will do the job. Those tablets also have the entire history of Old Earth weapons design from stone arrowheads to their… our… nuclear arsenal… You will be surprised how easy they are to make if you can manage to sort isotopes.”

She smiled wickedly.

“Seriously, though,” she chuckled, “If you want top of the line Terran ammunition, especially in 7.62 by 39, just buy it like we do. You can get it in pretty much any quantity you want pretty easy, even now. Since you are all now ‘friends of the Confed—…the Forsaken…’, we will have no difficulty securing plenty for you. But, if you find yourself in a pinch, there is a bullet design in that database that will work just fine.”

“What about those bullets that the Terran Ambassador used,” a black-furred Klaxx asked, her purple eyes glittering, “the ones that make people weep their own blood? I really like those!”

“Good luck with that,” the woman laughed, “Those ‘red-tips’ are one of the few weapons that the Terrans do control. You can only get those direct from the Republic arsenal itself. We do have scans of them, but you need some of that weird Terran techno-heresy to make those little monsters.”

“You can’t make them?” the Klaxx asked, “Aren’t you the same people?”

“I’m gonna let that one slide because I like you,” the woman laughed, “But I’ll give you a little bit of advice. NEVER say that again to anyone. But to answer your question, no. We can’t. We were the same people over a hundred years ago. There has been a bit of… divergence… since then, and the nano-tech packed into a red tip is part of that divergence. We can approximate one red tip, but we can’t mass-produce them like they can. Something like that is only an option for us as an assassin’s bullet, or if we want to try to frame the Terrans, and if we are going to all that trouble, there are other things we would do instead. Polonium is universally fatal in even tiny doses and a whole lot easier… So are Californium bullets, for that matter.”

“Californium?”

The Klaxx pulled out her tablet… and then squeaked.

“You… have those?”

The woman smiled.

“We have a lot of things, little bit. You can, too, if you put your mind to it.”

The Klaxx stared at the screen and trilled happily.

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“If any of you can produce elements like Californium-252 in any appreciable quantity, have your people get in touch. I know a particularly nasty old woman who would LOVE to talk to you.”

***

Halfway across the Federation, Jalabel, the Baleel Foreign Minister, was having a decidedly bad day.

Those void-worshipping humans…

When they took out the clock, they took down the entire Federation network… every Federation network, from basic email to banking, was paralyzed…

And now she just heard that the repair crews were going missing, and the Federation was going to have to send Federation escorts along with each team…

Which slowed any recovery to a complete crawl! They weren’t even pretending to make false promises about when things would come back up. Of course, the Creator-cursed Gvorta were using it as an excuse not to pay for their shipments…

Of course, they are still demanding delivery of the goods. Of course, they were! Void claim her egg sac. She fucked up and let them back her into a corner, and of course, she backed down.

Of course she did. She was a Baleel, after all.

And, of course, word got out, and now nobody was wanting to pay, citing ‘extraordinary circumstances’ to delay payments.

“It will all work out, and of course, we are going to pay our outstanding debts. We just have to pull together during this difficult time.”

Of course, the Federation backed them up, backed them all up, ‘stability of the Federation’ and all that!

Funny how some of those same species still demanded payment from them, though, and the Baleel government was still expected to make their payments both to the Federation and other creditors… via courier.

Pay them with what? IOU’s? They were hanging by a fucking thread before all of this! They were going to have to take out yet another loan from the Federation, and they lied about their assets to get the last one. They were juggling “maxed out” lines of credit like most of their citizens!

She let out a ragged sigh as slime started to ooze.

Karashel just might have to call in that favor!

Ugh… Karashel...

That was the absolute last slug she wanted to talk to right now!

She flicked a tendril over her sensor pad, and the “Karashel Files” appeared on her holo screen. Ugh… Terran… She was rubbish at languages.

She activated her neural implant.

What absolute rubbish!… and human rubbish at that! Did she actually think it would be that simple? Of course, they wanted to do more for their people! But, every year, their economy got worse and worse, thanks in no small part to some… criminal… deals they were basically forced into.

Here that twit was moaning about “inequity” and their ever-growing poverty index, completely oblivious to the fact that the Baleel were bankrupt! It was all she or anyone else could do to keep entire business sectors from slipping forever from Baleel hands.

What was she going to do? What were any of them going to do?

The slime started to freely flow.

This could be the end of Baleel sovereignty! As “bad” as things are now, it is nothing compared to what will come if the Baleel economy collapses and falls into “management”…

Management… Such a polite word for being carved up and passed around like a pickle tray.

She idly flicked through the documents Karashel had gathered.

Colonialism… Jalabel snorted. Of course it was.

Of course.

And just like all of those “third world” nations she wrote about, they were…

They…

They were about to become a third-world nation! Oh, Creators!…

She slumped. They were about to be reduced to one of “those systems”… Broken… Lost…

What’s this?

There was a folder simply labeled “Hopeless”.

She felt pretty Creator-boned hopeless.

She opened it.

What are ‘music videos’?

It must be a Terran thing.

Inside the “Hopeless” folder, there was a “playlist” (whatever that was) labeled “Burn the Slime Away >:)”.

Well, she was sliming.

She selected the “playlist”...

And pressed play…

***

The next morning Jalabel burst into the Prime Minister’s office.

“Your eyestalks are bouncy!” the Prime Minister said in surprise. “Please tell me you have some good news.”

“I have something better!” she exclaimed as she handed him a neural interface.

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