32 Blank Check
"So? What do you think, Colonel?" I asked as I returned to my office where the NorCal Army rep waited.
"Mr. Welles, the last time I conducted business on behalf of the Army of Northern California with a man with no pants I was clamping live jumper cables to his testicles. So please put yours on so that I do not have to revisit those memories." Colonel Shannon had a naturally menacing face, rough skin, thick features, deeply etched lines, like all the violence and destruction I encapsulate became a face.
Not because of any battle scars, just that's the way it turned out naturally. Like God intended for this man to be the boogeyman. And that even cadence and tone when talking about brutally harming another man's genitals. Delightful.
I complied with his desire for a fully clothed meeting and as I dressed I asked again, "But really though, how was that for a rally? Doubt any army recruiters pull in hundreds of new faces in only ten days."
"I was not sent here to have opinions, Mr. Welles, just to evaluate the new equipment and services on offer. Something that I have many pages of procedures on. So what I think does not matter, only whether or not Welles Arms meets or does not meet the requirements."
"Fine, be that way." I told him as I pulled on my jacket and gloves, "Let's delta. Go see the real reason you're here. These gonks are at least five weeks out before they're mission ready."
Colonel Shannon nodded and we went out the fire escape down to my truck. We took Santa Anna Street out of the Welles Arms Campus, the rapidly expanding series of factories consuming the industrial district in Santo Domingo. We hit the East Ringroad and drove that to the Stateline 5 exit, pulling off into the Badlands. We kept heading east until we turned south just short of the Sunshine Motel. The old field of wind turbines took up far less space than it had previously, as a new 'secret' branch of Welles Arms had popped up seemingly overnight.
I'd gone ahead and finished the Think Tank's work on Hexcrete, an explosive building material meant to put up foundations and fortifications quickly, formerly uncontrollably. Between Hexcrete's rapid deployment of hexagonal concrete-like pillars and Saturnite grinders wielded by a division of builder bots, the facility was planted and carved out swiftly, utilities and industrial equipment ready for installation within only a few days.
Considering the 'secret' facility was the size of an entire industrial park Welles Arms would hold the record for fastest construction team if we'd told anyone we were doing it.
The sign out front read 'Welcome to Welles Arms Badlands Park. We are 0 days without a workplace fatality.'
The piles of dead Raffen Shivs, Corpo spies and goons, and city inspectors and police officers along the paved path to the entrance said everything that needed to be known about what is going on here. Top Secret Corpo shit. Keep out or die. Just in case the mounted heavy turrets and patrolling robots didn't send the message clear enough.
The Colonel gave the bodies as many fucks as I thought he would, meaning none and we pulled into the fully automated industrial park. My version of the versatile Protectrons - a bipedal robot capable of working in construction, firefighting, policing, agriculture, factory work, and even emergency medical services - was far less lumbering and cartoonish, closer to the various androids that run around night city often serving as robo-muscle for gangs and corporations. One of the buildings in the park built these units and I now had over a thousand of them manning the other plants that produced Mr. Handies, Assaultrons, Sentry Bots, Cargobots, and most importantly of all the Scorpitrons.
I parked the car outside a hanger in the center of the park and commanded the segmented doors to slide open revealing the just over two story tall (excluding the tail's max height) walker tank that received even more love in the final phase of its development, a topic I couldn't wait to brag about.
"Meet the Scorpitron Mr II Ultra Heavy Battle Tank and its test pilots, Pedro and Juanie." I introduced my magnum opus and my chooms who'd jack in for today's demonstration, "This all terrain walker is my submission for best ground combat vehicle, just as fast as Militech's mainline panzer, the Basilisk, but far more agile. Frighteningly quick considering the massive overmatch in armor and weaponry. If those floaters are causing the Free States to surrender, just wait until they get a load of these monsters."
We closed distance on the machine and I began pointing out its features, "Those legs can withstand a heavy beating which we will prove today by firing missiles and gauss weapons at them during the testing. Our proprietary nanolaminate armor system uses a number of materials that only Welles Arms can manufacture currently and performs better than anything the competitors can bring to the market and the battlefield in terms of durability. The underbelly gauss cannon can take out high armored targets from miles away while the tail mounted rotary cannon has anti air capabilities. In the last phase of development we changed up the arm mounted weaponry. The left chaingun now fires high explosive smart rounds and the right employs the new Welles Arms Saturnite API Rounds. You'll get to see those in action on the drone footage. Last but not least, on the back there are a dozen hidden auto mortars for when you want to pin a target location on the GPS eight miles away and send it straight to hell."
"Let's get to the demonstration Mr. Welles." the Colonel started with his briefcase in hand.
"Vamos boys!" I shouted in good cheer at my test pilots how hopped onto a pair of pulley lifts to get them up to the cockpit.
"Let's get to my office." I told the Colonel as the 'Wreck-It Ralph' came online.
This time my personal office was downstairs in the basement rather than on the second level, a bunker command center for the industrial fortress. The walls held many screens feeding up information from performance sensors on the test unit and video footage from a swarm of eye-bots.
"Alright boys." I contacted Juanie and Pedro as they walked the 'Wreck-It Ralph' out of the facility, "How does it feel."
"Like we are doing some dope as fuck shit right now." Pedro answered, "This is a big dick move Juan. Thanks for naming it after Ralph."
"You're welcome, vato. Now before you guys sprint off to the testing ground it's time for rotation and balance testing. Really swing the arms and the tail, try to tip the unit."
The Scorpitron rotated fast enough to kick up a twisting cloud of dust around it, all the while wildly flailing its arms and tail to get it off balance, but never once did it show a sign of tipping over.
"Okay that's good, amigos, now top speed to the testing grounds." I ordered, wishing I was the one piloting that beast.
It could obviously pilot itself, but people get freaked out about automatons with that much firepower. Plus by keeping real OS hidden I'll be able to yank all the Scorpitrons I ever sell back at once. Considering the kind of coding fuckery Bartmoss did back in the 2020's my own evil plan is pedestrian, but what's a guy to do? You can only break the world wide web once.
I handed the Colonel a shard on the break history of Hexcrete, three hundred breaks conducted by three separate independent labs revealing a nearly uniform 25,000 PSI compressive strength and a near 1:1 tensile strength unlike concrete's 10:1 ratio.
It was important that the man understand the durability of the targets we set up as the bullets started flying. Hexcrete is hellishly hard to destroy because of its tensile properties, making it perfect for long demonstrations of various heavy weapons.
Pedro and Juan Started the fireworks display with the High Explosive Smart Chain Gun, peppering the targets with hundreds of fist sized bombs a second, crumbling through the miraculous hexcrete spires one after another.
Next came the Saturnite API (Armor Piercing Incendiary) Chaingun. The Saturnite rounds superheated mid flight due to thermite in the core of the shells. The wonky thermal characteristics of the ultra hard ceramic meant that the rounds heated up to 4,000 degrees Fahrenheit (2206 Celsius for those whose governments force them to use a less precise temperature measuring system), and maintain its structural integrity delivering the ultra hard ultra heated rounds for ultra deep penetration.
Though not as shock and awe as the high explosive rounds, the Saturnite API delivered a similar TTK on the targets, a respectable showing completely blown away by the firing of the main gauss cannon that tore the hexcrete towers in two in a single shot, even tearing through two towers in a single firing.
For the mortars we set up two additional testing sites eight miles away in either direction and had the auto mortars rain hell on them both simultaneously. I felt like we should be blaring 'Orpheus in the Underworld' while watching it, but chose to play it in my head just for me. Honestly thought he song will be perfect for the montage I'm going to cut of this test.
Last but not least came in a swarm of drones firing missiles and gauss weapons at the Scorpitron while the autocannon on the tail returned fire. The unit successfully defended itself from the swarm of one hundred drones but suffered critical damage in several areas, the cockpit battered but structurally unharmed.
Colonel Shannon watched the film several times over and from a dozen angles as he completed his evaluation forms in silence. He sighed and cracked his knuckles when he finally finished an hour and a half after the used and abused 'Wreck-It Ralph' limped its way back into the Scorpitron hangar for repairs. He stood, nodded and said, "We're done here."
Overall the Colonel was rude, broody, and unpleasant, but the blank check that arrived for Scorpitron orders a few days later made up for everything with interest.
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Juan made 450,000,000 Eddies off the insider trading deal. He spent most of it cranking up Welles Arms, and now that money is rolling back to him. Juan will soon be updating from Uncommon to Epic on his Cyberware, so that'll be fun. Had a blast writing about Hexcrete and the Scorpitron too.
You can support me and my family at
ko - fi . com / jmanm
