Hunter Or Huntress

Chapter 43: Experimentation

Over the next few days Dakota had gotten back to her feet properly, she was still sore and needed time to fully heal but she was up and about. Tom had tried to give her a pat on the back for what she and her mother had managed. If not for them The enemy would likely have escaped. She had pulled a smile but not answered him turning to her mother.

“It was her idea, she wouldn’t let them run.”

Nunuk was still bedridden and would be for some time, she was properly awake much of the time by now and improving slowly. Dakota spent most of her days caring for her mother and resting herself. The old lady was clearly not done yet. Even if she would be carrying a few more scars and probably some new aches and pains to go with them.

“It’s not easy getting old”

Tom Himself too was slowly doing better as well. He was still sore as fuck, but it was nothing he couldn’t handle as long as he didn’t do something too strenuous. He had discussed the two incidents of thievery with Rachuck.

He apologized profusely especially at the fact Vulzan had gone through Tom’s things, which clearly didn’t sit well with the captain of the guard. He even asked if Tom wanted to press charges. Tom just waved him off, he had checked and the trader hadn’t actually stolen anything, he had just been curious after all. Jackalope’s escapades had Tom worried though, she could have killed herself or someone else. Tom stressed that if they started fiddling with something they didn’t know what was, they could either break an irreplaceable piece of equipment or seriously hurt themselves.

They had agreed they needed to figure out something better for storing Tom's things. After some arguing, they had settled on clearing out the crafting hall across from the smithy. It had mostly been used for storage and things that needed tanning, drying, curing, and the like. It would become Tom’s little home away from home even if he was still sleeping with the kids. It would take some time to clear out and they had other things to worry about, but hey, he finally had a room. Even if it did smell of curing leather.

Tom had noticed walking around the keep with Rachuck they did have quite a few empty rooms in fact. Mostly some bedrooms and storage rooms. But still, there was a lot of space here. Even the Dragonettes didn’t know how old this place was, so it sort of made sense. His request to get an actual bedroom had been denied. Apparently, because he had been doing too good of a job with the kids. Normally they would have shifts to look after them morning and evening. Now they only needed to do it when Tom was on guard duty.

He didn’t mind though, he didn’t particularly feel like being alone with his thoughts right now, he would much rather have the children to keep him occupied. Even if someone had half-eaten one of his sketches of the chuck for the lathe. He swore he would find the culprit one day.

He had done his best to make the most of the days, his joint child watching technical drawing sessions had been a great success. Sapphire had joined it too, she might learn a thing or two and the kids enjoyed watching the pretty pictures. He and Sapphire would throw a story or two in there as well, all in all, it had been quite fun. He had begun with explaining the concept of the compound bow and drawing up some schematics hoping Sapphire along with Shiva could make that happen without too much input from him. His main project though was trying to design a lathe using the bare minimum of metal, as well as coming up with a way to drive it. Sure they had some wind power for the forge but that wasn’t gonna cut it for this.

He had begun experimenting with the powders. The flash stuff was clearly a powerful incendiary, even a few grams had been enough to take Tom's eyebrows off and singe his beard. It was literally like a fireball going off. The real magic had come when he had mixed it with his homemade saltpeter. 75% saltpeter to 25% flashpowder to start with. He was damn glad he had only tried the tiniest of amounts. The result was a powder that exploded with a crack even in open air. He had high explosives!

The stuff even seemed stable to impacts, the slightest spark would spell disaster though. Sapphire seemed more than a little worried about what he had managed, while Jackalope had laughed a little too maniacally for Tom’s liking. Shiva had just observed silently with a scowling on her face grin. Following that, the three dragonettes had followed him around whenever he was experimenting

Jackalope and Shiva were eager for another boom while Sapphire was worried he was going to blow up her home by accident. A fair concern to be honest. She did seem to have taken a bit of a babysitter role as of late in fact. He guessed she was either worried about him or bored.

Tom had tried to appease all parties by going through some safety instructions on dealing with dangerous substances. Not that he really knew much, but he could sound official so that would have to do. They had nearly half a kilo of the stuff after all and that was before mixing. That may be enough to bring down the keep. Sapphire had clearly been horrified by this and even Shiva had calmed down at the thought of just how wrong this could go.

He had begun playing with the mixture resulting in an altered burn rate. With 50/50 it seemed to be just subsonic. It was possible then, that this stuff could replace proper gunpowder. And here he had been excited about making black powder.

He did reckon it would make one hell of a muzzle flash though. Even the small samples he had tried resulted in something more akin to a Hollywood explosion than anything he knew.

The really interesting stuff was this blitz gel though, he had stuck the electrodes in from his multimeter in it for curiosities' sake. There was a current there and it wasn’t small either. On his first test, he got over 10 volts. That was a heck of a lot from a single cell. He made sure to treat the stuff with greater care from then on, he didn’t feel like electrocuting himself by accident.

He had made a little jig with some crude copper plates suspended in a clay pot hooked up to a short circuit with a big iron ingot. He then took the entire contraption out to the landing platform not wanting to go down the stairs. Using some wires and string went about the experiment from a safe distance. This stuff was considered extremely dangerous after all. He had urged Sapphire to come along despite working on the bow at the time. She needed to see this.

The surface area seemed to determine amperage with the distance giving the voltage. As he moved the plates closer and closer together the voltage kept climbing to around 50 volts and over 10 amps. The ingot he was using as a short had even started to warm up a little. That is when the whole contraption blew up in a bright flash and thunderous roar. Tom and Sapphire had just dived for the floor as pieces went flying. His ears were ringing and he was even half-blind for a while. At least it hadn’t cracked the stone of the platform.

They soon had a lot of company coming to see what had happened, the alarm being sounded from the tower Balethon believing they were under attack again. After a lot of promises, everything was fine, sort of at least. People had gone back to their duties. Some seeming a little, scared others just disgruntled at the disturbance.

Sapphire’s hearing had taken till the next day to fully recover, perhaps he should think about some dragonette ear protection for the future? While Tom hadn't expected an explosion it wasn't exactly without use either. Even if he should really build a test rig that used less of the precious gel. That stuff wasn't cheap after all. Not to mention the safety concerns.

The next test used only a tiny amount but with it smeared across the electrodes, the result was as expected higher voltage but the same amperage. He had tried to run it down to see if he had gotten his hands on eternal energy here, unfortunately, after about 5 minutes it too had exploded with more of a pop than a bang though.

It took a few tries all ending in a pop of sparks and a flash of light before he considered it might just be overheating. He devised yet another test this time suspended in water. Sure enough, after a while of discharging, the water began steaming, but no explosion this time. It took over an hour at 500 Watts initially, even if the power began dropping off rather quickly towards the end. That was still around 0.5 kWh from something the size of a mobile phone. No LiPO ever made could come close to that, even if the discharge rate was quite slow by comparison. He tried to recharge the gel to no avail so it was a one-time deal but still one hell of a deal. He had used around 20ml for the little experiment so that meant nearly 25kWh per liter of the stuff, that was incredible. He would need to map out how to get reliable voltage from it but this would solve his power problems when it came to recharging with ease. It might even be capable of driving something more than a laptop.

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After the execution it hadn’t taken Tom long to get back into the swing of things, he worked with a purpose now unlike Sapphire had seen before. When he had arrived it seemed almost like he was doing this all for the fun of it, which may have been true. He did claim so after all when he arrived. Now though, he was working every chance he got despite technically still being injured. He had tried to explain to them what he was doing whenever he got the chance, but to be honest, she hardly understood any of it and when she didn’t he just kept going.

What she did understand was when something exploded, horribly. Though Tom didn’t seem to mind he just noted down the results from the experiments and kept on working. The blitz gel in particular had him captivated like a child with a new toy. He talked about it like it was extraordinary even by his people's standards, yet he hadn’t actually made it do anything other than heat up a chunk of metal and explode seemingly at random. So to say Sapphire wasn’t exactly convinced was an understatement.

The more time she spent with the human the more she started to figure out how he functioned. He needed this. He needed the work and the challenges. Just like Dakota needed validation she was good enough, and Jackalope needed something she wasn't allowed to do. Sapphire had come to realize Tom was actually happy. He wasn’t pretending, he was just not thinking about the bad things.

She did envy him a little for that, it must be nice to just shut out the bad stuff. Although it didn’t sound that healthy to her. Not that she knew much about people that was sort of Esmeralda’s specialty and she was certainly not in the mood to try and help Tom, she needed to tend to herself first of all.

Sapphire had just elected to watch him work trying her best to understand what he was doing. Judging by his excitement the blitz gel was important to him so it must do something, even if she couldn't understand it for the life of her.

The rather non-standard lessons with the kids had been informative though. The weird bow design he had given her didn’t make any sense either but he claimed it was amazing. He had also insisted on using metal bow limbs for some reason. Her Shiva and Jackalope had gotten to work on it even if Jackalope couldn’t do much with only one good hand for the moment.

Shiva was a little better off, she had lost her pinky and index fingers on her left hand blocking a sword strike during the battle. They had been properly amputated and the wounds sealed and bandaged, making the hand usable again.

“Com one Jacky can't you even hold a pair of tongs? And you call yourself my daughter"

“Hey I’m not the one who got my fingers chopped off by forgetting how to use a shield”

“Shut up would you, We all know the only reason you still have yours is blind luck. Now get on the bellows, slowly we need a deep temper if this isn't going to snap in our faces.”

As they worked she tried to copy Tom, letting her get drawn in by the work. The friendly banter did help, she didn’t feel useless here. Even if Shiva often tried to make her think that. Sapphire knew the old smith well enough to know she was just having fun at their expense, she didn’t mind. She was helping.

The design was a mess of bowstrings, very weirdly shaped metal pulleys and those absurdly short bow limbs mounted to a wooden center section. They looked almost like crossbow limbs, Sapphire remembered having seen some in from her time in the capitol. The weapon of a moron who couldn’t shoot. But this was no crossbow that was for sure. Tom swore this would be better, if a little heavier than their bows, so they kept at it.

For the woodwork they had to turn to Kulling, he wasn’t pleased to be told what to do but the threat of Sapphire telling Shiva who had lost her favorite hammer last year did the trick. The woodworker had done a fine job making the center section for them. He did have a lot of experience with bows after all. For the bowstring Sapphire had to join a few of their ready-made ones together, again it wasn’t pretty but it should work well enough.

It had been difficult to do, but this wasn’t her first bow, she had a lot of experience. The first set of pulleys had been rejected by Tom when Shiva had just made them round assuming the drawing to be inaccurate. Their strange shape was apparently very important and delicately designed. When asked why Tom had just answered mathematics. It had taken quite some time for Shiva and a wide variety of swearwords but she had succeeded in getting very close to Tom's drawing.

The bow limbs and the wooden body he had been happy with though, Sapphire just hoped this was worth the effort. The finished bow had been ready after just over a week's work, a rather impressive feat Sapphire thought. It was a little crude looking but it should work. It was much shorter than any of their bows but still quite a bit heavier, it was still manageable though. The handle and weird little sight was a nice touch,

Tom had been excitedly watching as they strung it up for the first time. As sapphire pulled out the bow it felt normal enough if quite heavy on the draw. That was until she drew it out fully. The bow limbs were flexing alarmedly but it seemed to hold at least for now.

The big thing though was just how light it became. Sapphire stared in wonder at the weapon. She could hold it with ease?! As she brought it back forward the bow came back to full strength. The jolt surprised her and pulled her hand forward. Shiva and Jackalope had a bit of a snicker, she had looked like a complete novice. That didn’t matter though this was amazing.

“How does it do that?”

“The pulleys," Tom answered pointing to the weird wheels, Sapphire pulled out the bow again watching them as they turned. She didn’t understand what they did, but it was clear they were doing something.

“I don’t get it but I like it.” This would be a game-changer for sure.

“Yeah math is weird but it’s always right. Unless you make mistakes of course.”

“I don’t get what counting has to do with it either but sure. Hey Shiva, try this it out”

The smith pulled out the bow with the same surprised expression.

“It’s so light, like a kid's bow, and yet not? Bravo Tom.”

Tom did a bit of a chuckle, clearly happy they liked his little invention.

They had taken it to the firing range immediately to try it out. Most people caught on to that something was happening and came over to watch. Sapphire had gotten the honor of the first shot. Her splint made her a bit unsteady on her feet but no matter. She had drawn the bow back and demonstrated to all just how easy it was to hold at the ready. She nocked a regular arrow and let it fly the bow fired beautifully sending the arrow rocketing downrange. It was a bit higher than Sapphire wanted so she gave it a bit of a nudge in-flight guiding it home. The arrow landing in a bullseye on the first shot, embedding itself deep in the target. There was much cheering that their finest markswoman still had what it took even with a brand new weapon.

Tom was clearly impressed but didn’t question it, seemingly not having noticed the little trick, god she was good.

She had tried for distance. This was the heaviest draw she had ever fired but thanks to it going light at the end she didn't struggle too much. As she released the arrow shot downrange, arcing beautifully through the air. They didn’t have a target that far out but the arrow went out to at least 500 meters. Not bad at all, not that she could hit anything reliably at that distance the target and arrow would be too hard to see after all. It would still make it easier for closer targets with such a fast-flying arrow.

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The girls had done well on their bow, it didn’t look pretty but he was confident they could fix that by themselves now that they knew how it worked. For his part, he had been continuing the alchemical experiments mapping out, burn rates for his explosive powder, as well as trying to dry small amounts of the blitz powder. Apuma had started taking a more active interest in his work. The old man did have some experience with alchemy that much was clear. Even if he had mostly been working with herbs, medicines, and compounds for magic rituals.

He had a few good pointers for Tom about some of the materials, the first batch of the blitz powder had been incredibly sensitive, Tom had just hit it with a light tap from a screwdriver and puff. It wasn’t an explosion as such more like showers of sparks and an electrical crack. A bit like a powerful Vandegraf generator with some magnesium thrown in. The big kicker had come when Apuma told him that was normal for fresh gel they usually let it sit for at least a year before drying it if they needed any in powder form.

Tom reasoned this could be because the gel discharges over time. All other kinds of batteries did so it only made sense after all. He tried discharging a small amount of gel by around half. Then went about drying it. The result was a fairly stable powder that could be handled. It had taken a sizable whack from a hammer to get it to go off. Even so, the result had made Tom's ears ring and even blinded him slightly, so still plenty of oompf.

He did the math. He had incendiary, high explosives, gunpowder of sorts and this stuff might be able to take the place of primer powder. He had everything he needed to make ammunition and even something much nastier if he wanted to. How the dragonettes hadn’t figured out how to put this stuff in a metal tube with a bullet in front of it he didn’t know, but hey, their loss was his gain. The only problem he had was the lack of anything truly slow-burning for fuses and the like.

He had gone about drawing up plans for a simple cast for making replacement bullets. They had plenty of lead so that was not much of a problem. A small punch to make the primers out of the thinnest copper plate Shiva could manage to hammer out was next on the list. This, along with the reloading jig he had brought should see him able to replace at least most of the ammo he spent. In a 50/50 mix, he had enough flash powder for over 300 rounds. If he wanted to start making ready to use explosives, he would need to get more of this stuff. But for the time being, this would do nicely.

By now It had been a little over a week since Vulzan's departure, and things were returning to normal with more and more of the dragonettes returning to their duties. It was amazing to watch how injuries that would take several weeks or months to heal naturally only kept them in bed for days, a week or two tops. Even Nunuk had taken her first walk again. She was still limping and clearly in pain but she was walking. Tom was back to using his weights and not feeling too bad at all in fact. He had even started his workouts again. Broken bones were seemingly the only thing that still needed lots of time even if they could accelerate the process. Jackalope's hand was gonna be useless for a while, but Sapphire would be coming off the crutches sometime next week.

His little drawing sessions had continued even if there was getting more and more history mixed in. Apuma had even joined them on Sapphire's insistence. The lessons with the children were also continuing but without Tom for the time being there was too much to do and too little time. To make up the difference Sapphie was spending as much time with him as she could now, running him through their language while they worked.

It was a nice way of going about it, he really needed to expand his vocabulary after all. The time with the kids was as enjoyable as ever, even if he often found the room a little more empty. There had been more than one instance of kids breaking down crying at where Anastasi had gone. Kiran was affected more than most. He had gotten a lot quieter, sometimes not wanting to play with the others and just sitting by himself. Tom had done his best to try and cheer the little guy up, even if he deep down felt Kiran had every right to what he was doing.

There had been many evenings of working on designs with him on Tom's lap. Tom had tried to apply his own way of dealing with the trauma, namely distraction. Music, pictures in his books, and of course as many stories as Tom could come up with. Esmeralda had tried to help out with the kids as she usually did but found it hard to handle when the subject turned to Anastasi as it often did. Add to that, she and Fengi were the only huntresses currently capable of hunting and she didn’t have the time either. This meant Wiperna had to cover for the Esmeralda on child duty. The farm woman was kind, if quite stern. Even more so than Esmeralda could be if the kids got on her bad side. It had quickly evolved into a good cop bad cop scenario with children coming to Tom to ask permission for just about anything.

That did complicate the dangerous experiments involving high explosives and liquid lightning somewhat. Trying to console a kid who had their favorite toy taken by someone else while wearing whatever protective gear Tom had managed to cobble together holding unstable magical components, had been a challenge. Having Sapphire tag along much of the time did help though. She could often keep the kids away from the more perilous work.

Work on designing the lathe was progressing too. It was a challenge to be sure, he wanted the thing to be able to cut everything from a gun barrel to a steam-engine cylinder. And he only had a limited supply of metal and sand casting to do it. He really just needed a huge lump of brass, but iron and steel were by far the most common materials around. At least the forge was sizable and they did have some sort of crucible, which they used for making cast-iron things such as pots and pans.

He had settled on making the body out of forged runners with the cast-machinery sliding along it. Shiva had looked skeptical about making something like that by hand, especially keeping it straight. Tom had to concede that point. He needed some kind of milling machine to do this right, and he needed a lathe to make a milling machine. It was sort of like an eternal spiral. He had seen the smith work though, she was skilled in the extreme. The literal decades of experience clearly showing. She would have to do her best. The result would hopefully be good enough to make both a milling machine and in turn a better lathe in the future.

As for driving the thing, he had begun to consider a crude electric motor. It would be expensive to run but it should work. He had no clue what to do otherwise short of building a steam engine which he really needed the lathe for. Not to mention a lot more metal. He still had four and a half jars of the blitz gel giving him around 4.5 liters. By his reckoning that meant over 110 KwH of power. Enough to run a small lathe for days on end.

And with some luck, he might have another fuel source incoming. According to what Archeon and Vulzan had said that was still weeks if not a month or more away though. So for the time being he might as well get started with what he had.