Alexander finished setting up the st pte of armored steel against the backdrop of a rocky outcropping. They were about half a mile from the facility, and nowhere near where any people or mining was taking pce.

  He quickly crossed the distance separating him from where the gun was situated. Alexander joihe twenty-odd people who had e out to see the test. Some of them were Travers people, but it seemed like Damien, Lucas, and Gabriel had heard about the test and wao watch as well. Not that Alexander mihe audiehe rest were just random meraries who were on their downtime and looking for aertai.

  “So, you’re making ons now?” Damien asked as he approached.

  “I’m testing ons so I e up with a design to build defenses,” Alexander replied calmly to the man’s question.

  The man only grunted in reply, wandering away with his perpetual scowl on his face. At least Damien redictable. Alexander might have been ed if the man was suddeed that he was making ons. The fact that the martial artist didn’t seem to care one way or another spoke volumes to his character, even if the man wasn’t the most likable person. He had gotten a briefing on Damien’s history from Matthews and the Field Leaders; A decorated martial expert ao leader ssh security officer for Eden’s End. A rather impressive resume fuy who seemed to dislike everyone and everything.

  That briefing also included what the Hawks found on their initial sweep of the facility. From what he learhe only guns the Hawks fouhe ohey fiscated from a group of men and the one man who tried to shoot them when they first ehe facility. There were also a few pulse rifles that the Hawks had returned after Alexander and the locals had e to an agreement.

  The fact Damien and his people had been able to repel or kill off pirates with only improvised ons and a few pulse rifles was a testament to the man’s ability to pn effectively with very little. He could appreciate that fact, even if he didn’t like the man all that much.

  Alexander had thought of produg more of the sonic ons for the locals. He probably would eventually. When the Hawks left, there o be a capable group of security people to defend the facility. He only hesitated at the moment because he didn’t know these people enough. He left figuring out who could be trusted for the Hawks as they trained some of the locals per his extended agreement.

  Ohey were trained up, Alexander should be able to print out pulse rifles for them. The devices were surprisingly sophisticated. He would not be able to get away with cobbling together a 20th-tury puter chip to repce the elei the rifles. Making the flechette or CQB rifles, as the Hawks called them, orders of magnitude easier. But he didn’t trust these people that far. He khe pulse rifles were useless against him, but he couldn’t say the same about the flechettes. In time, if the people here proved trustworthy, maybe he would produce better arms for them.

  To be fair, Alexander would prefer to be building pretty muything other than ons. He wasn’t na?ve enough to believe pirates or other unsavory sorts would simply leave them be once he started actively building in space though. That was why he had goraight into building the defensive railguns instead of fog on designing and building the engines he wanted. Putting off defending the facility was simply not an option. It was best just to get it done as soon as possible and while the Hawks were still here to cover for the ck of defeions.

  The defenses were to protect Yulia, his operations, and the people on Eden’s End, in that order. He didn’t tell them that though.

  Alexander arrived at the tripod. A slew of thick cables ran from the back of it to a box. The rge bulky box was a series of batteries and supercapacitors with a wide umbrel of sor panels over it that produced the only shade for miles around. Everyone who didn’t have vac-suits was uandably crowded uhe umbrel. So only Damien, Lucas, and Gabriel were standing in the shade. All the other meraries had their suits sealed and their visors set to reflective.

  They didn’t to breathe the thin atmosphere out here, but it did provide thermal regution and prote from the UV radiation of the blue star, which the thin atmosphere did little to filter out.

  Alexander’s interface barely registered a, but the radiation would give you a sunburn io fifteen mihe locals managed by c any exposed skin and wearing darkened goggles. He wondered where they got them.

  He checked over the o time. Everything looked in order. The batteries were at full charge and everything looked good on the power pack. He entered a security code into the simple keypad and a slow whine began to build as the batteries dumped their energy into the capacitors. He used both because batteries could store power for much longer without it bleeding off, but they couldn’t dump power as fast as a capacitor could.

  As the whine built, he picked up one of the pencil-sized sabots and slid it into the open breach. O was ied, he closed and locked the breach. Then he aimed the on at the first target two hundred yards de. It was a ludicrously she for a railgun, but he wasn’t testing ra the moment.

  The single yer of dense armor pte should be equivalent to what the Hawk's augment suits might have. Or so he assumed after studying the things walking around the facility. He really wished he had an old-world equivalent to pare the augment suit’s armor to, but he didn’t. Alexander dialed the energy output to twenty pert.

  With little fanfare, he yelled, “Firing!”

  There was a click followed by a sensation of static as the capacitors dumped their energy into the railgun. The on kicked back along the shock absorber as a fsh of light left the barrel, followed by a deafening boom.

  He could see the two halves of the sabot separate and drop away but even Alexander’s enhanced eyesight wasn’t quiough to track the projectile. But he wasn’t trying to, he just o watch the destination. Almost instantly there was a fsh of light and a spray of molteal from behind the target sheet. The round hardly slowed down as he noted a puff of dust on the distant hillside.

  “A bit overkill,” Travers stated. “Then again, that’s kinda what railguns are known for.”

  Alexander readjusted the gun to the set of targets. The first pte, while armored was only about a quarter inch thick. The arget was two of the ptes sandwiched together.

  The tungsterator at the core of the sabot easily tore through the two sheets at the same power output. But he here wasn’t any impa the hill behind the target.

  The third target was the same two ptes, air-gapped to simute front and rear armor. The round easily tore through the first pte, but when it reached the sed, there was a bright fsh of light. He wouldn’t know the results until he ied it after they were done, but he suspected the pencil lead-sized peor had either e apart or tumbled after going through the first pte.

  There was no ent from Travers or anyone else.

  He adjusted the gun again, this time moving to the targets at six hundred yards. It was the same set of tests so he expected simir results. It was simir, at least on the first target. The small dart must have lost too much speed to pee the dual yer of armor. There was a bright burst of sparks between the sandwiched sheets before the welds holding them together came apart, sending both halves crashing to the ground from the force.

  “That’s one way to do it,” one of the meraries called out, earning chuckles from a few others.

  The third test gave no real surprises. The dart tore through the first armor and exploded against the sed. It should have goraight through, but Alexander was beginning to think the peor was simply too small to hold together from the forpact.

  The third test was at twelve hundred yards. Before he ran that, he checked the batteries and capacitors. They were holding up fine, although they were getting slightly hot from the energy discharge. He made a mental o add some sort of thermal ma to them.

  The third set of tests went about the same as the sed. The only ge was that the sed target didn’t explode apart and the fsh from the third target wasn’t nearly as eic. The round seemed to be losing more speed than it should at that range. A fw in the aerodynamics of his design? It wasn’t as if he had a step-by-step tutorial for designing railgun rounds. He just put something together based on what little knowledge he had.

  For the final tests, he ked the power output to the full one hundred pert. This was to test for any failure on the gun or batteries at full load.

  The st target was a series of six ptes with about six inches betweehey were set at the same twelve-hundred-yard range as the third test.

  The three people huddled uhe shade of the sor panels moved away as the whine built.

  “Why’s it making so muoise?” Gabriel asked in .

  “I’m using the full power output. You may want to move farther away from the energy pa case it fails.”

  The three moved away from the device. To be fair, the meraries moved farther away as well.

  Alexander loaded the round. The air ractically buzzing with energy as the capacitors whio release their stored power. He obliged them as he fired the gun.

  The kickback was so forceful that if Alexander hadn’t caught the on, it would have been unched bato the energy pack. Down at the targets, there was an increasingly bright fsh as the round tore through the armored ptes. The st target produced the brightest fsh of light, but also a series ht e sparks. This was likely the tungsten carbide shattering against the st armored pte.

  “Alexander, behind you!” He didn’t o turn around to see that the energy pack was throwing sparks as the heat melted the pos inside. He did turn his avatar though, to assure everyohat he was aware of the issue. As he turned, he yahe power cables out of the gun to prevent the internal pos from being damaged by a surge of electricity.

  He stepped back to joihers as they watched the pack reduce itself to a half-molten pile of sg. It could have been worse he supposed. At least these weren’t like the old lithium batteries that burst into nearly unstoppable fmes. The energy just discharged into the surrounding material, heating it up and breag more cells until everything was too hot to remain solid.

  “Well, it looks like I have some things to work on. Shall we go see the results of these tests?”

  “I’m going baside before I get burned.” Alexander watched Damien and his group walk off. He just shook his head.

  Ohey were gone, he went to joiher meraries who were already iing the closest targets.

  He went straight for the third target in the closest row. The entry hole was a tiny thing but the material it blew out the opposite side was impressive. The e of molten material was about the size of a tennis ball. sidering the peor was the size of a piece of pencil lead, that was a whole lot of damage. The back pte had a nice spray patterhe molteal impacted and hardened, along with a series of deeper craters in the ter, likely caused by the remnants of the dart.

  The projectile had indeed broken apart. When he ied the sed test in the closest row, he found just a small hole bored through until the back of the target blew out. The first test matched the same pattern. He would o che where the round impacted on the hillside after he looked at the other tests.

  The sed row of tests showed a simir damage pattern. The sandwiched ptes showed that the first pte blew out, which is likely what caused the ptes to burst apart. There were signs that the dart had goo the sed pte, but it seemed to have exploded before making it all the way through, leaving a rge crater and g in the hardened material.

  The third test was much the same, only with less damage. The tungsten dart didn’t even mao get through the two ptes that were welded together. There was also less blowout, showing the speed of the rounds had bee signifitly reduced over the short flight time.

  The full power test was iing. It looked like someone had taken a psma cutter to the ptes. After the first pte, each showed multiple holes melted through from the material of the previous o was only on the final few ptes that the material had cooled enough to weld itself to the pte instead of melting through. The st pte had a small dent from where the round finally shattered.

  sidering how muergy he had dumped into the gun for that test, he had expected more damage. If he had used a rger peor, he probably would have seeer results. The small size of the one he used just wasn’t meant to trahat muergy. He would look over his video ter aermihe speed the projectiles were flying. It would also help him determine why they were slowing down so much.

  Before leaving the range, he walked over to the spot on the hill where the first round had go would have been hard to spot for anyone else, but Alexander quickly located the tiny hole drilled into the tan surface of the rock. He couldn’t see how far into the rock the peor had gone, but it had clearly gone quite far. What he did notice was the hole didn’t have any indication that the fins impacted the surface. Had they been ripped off by the first impact? He filed that fact away for ter. If the fins were being broken or torn off, it might expin why the rounds weren’t w as expected.

  With the tests over and his curiosity sated, he packed up the surviving pos and headed back to the facility alone. All the other meraries had left some time ago, their i waning shortly after the fireworks were plete.

  As he made the walk back, Alexander realized this was the first time he had been alone in a long time. The st time he was truly alone was after Yuri up a, and the first few weeks after he opened his shop orov Station.

  While he wouldn’t give up his current life, no matter how hectic it had bee, he was gd for the moment of pead quiet.