My growling stomach distracted me from the components lying on the workbench. Sighing, I leaned back from my hunched-over position. The bench was too tall, so I stood on a box, but that made me too tall, so I had to hunch. I longed for the day I had a growth spurt pushing me over my five feet nothing.
I tapped the neural transductor, deactivating it. The metal arms and attachments hissed, retracting until it was just a black metal box once more. When I'd gotten it, I had known it was an amazing find, but only since using it and gaining some skill with it, did I realise quite how lucky I was.
Total game changer.
I still couldn't use all the features, needing some mind-linking technology to get the most out of it. This would allow far more precise control, not needing to use the joysticks I currently use. But even with that limitation, it was basically magic.
It was every multi-tool you could name and plenty you couldn't, all rolled into one machine. With arms strong enough to twist and bend steel, welders, solders, wrenches, magnetic clamps, and so much more. Easily my most prized possession, that or my relic pistol.
I eyed the jumble of bits and bobs slowly taking shape into a fully kitted-out helmet. Nodding to myself, happy at my progress.
It was just a standard PDF hardened flack helmet, but it had all the space I needed to attach a load of cool stuff to. Night and thermal vision, zoom optics, coms and best of all, a rebreather.
Finally, I'd be able to filter out some of the chemicals and smog in the air.
Stepping back from the desk, I gave the rest of the room a once-over, with no small amount of pride.
My own room!
It wasn't much larger than the box I was in before, but it actually had headroom. No longer did I need to stay hunched over; I could actually stand up. The novelty still hadn't worn off.
It barely had room for my bed and workbench, but that was enough. The room might have felt larger if it wasn't stacked, floor to ceiling, with scrap. It was all useful. Fixing, building, tinkering, a fair use of my funds.
Others might disagree—but what did they know?
Unlike the majority of gang recruits, I had my own room. Most were crammed into bunk rooms. Perks of getting recruited by one of the bosses I suppose. I certainly wasn't complaining.
I stepped out, locking the door behind me—electronic, with a palm sensor and even a biometric scanner. Not that the biometric scanner bit worked, but it was enough to keep most out. Moving down the tight metal corridors, some even clean, I headed for the canteen.
That was one thing I was definitely thankful for. The food might still be the same old slop and gloop, but I could eat my fill. Gone was the constant gnawing hunger. No more rationing every bite. The first few weeks I had to be careful to not overeat and make myself ill.
But by now I was thoroughly enjoying my food. Well, enjoying might be the wrong word. I was enjoying feeling full, but the food still tasted like shit.
I stepped into the large room, which at one point in time might have been a restaurant for the rich. Much of it had been stripped out, but there were hints of it here and there. Now it was lined with sturdy metal tables and chairs.
Leaning back in the chair, stomach full, when a shadow passed over me, I glanced up, and I saw Voff. "Hey Aleric, can you do me a favour?"
"Voff. Possibly. How can I help?"
"Caidolds shotty's working like a dream since you had your hands on it. Thought maybe you could do the same for my autogun?"
I blinked, surprised. "Sure, I can take a look."
The gang was like everywhere else; you were on your own when it came to weapons. You could go to the armoury and have someone look at it, but it invariable cost you. Most people I'd seen treated their weapons like shit. Never cleaning it and never doing maintenance on it.
Thing is, in the gang, you were expected to learn how to clean your own gear. How many actually did I had no clue, but I found it an interesting difference. Maybe something Lanto brought from his time in the PDF?
"Rad." Voff dumped the gun down next to me. Blocky, ugly thing, dull grey, rugged with a scope bolted on top and something like a silencer on the muzzle.
"When you need it by?"
"I've got a backup, but I am on patrol this afternoon. If you could do it by then, great. If not, no worries."
Glanding at my chrono. "Yeah, I've got time now so should be able to get it done by then."
"Sweet, I owe you one."
Quickly finishing my meal, I grabbed the rifle and made my way home. Once there, I set it on the table and got to work. As I stripped it down, cleaning the parts as I went, I could tell it was from our hive. The components were more sophisticated, and some of the design choices were a dead giveaway.
With all the tinkering I'd done, I'd started noticing something odd about the gear floating around. It seemed to fall into three distinct patterns, or tiers if you will. Which, when I thought about it, made sense.
At the bottom was the simple stuff, mass produced by unskilled workers in the titanic forges above. This was the most common stuff down here: basic circuits, clunky pistons, poorly fitted parts. Cheap. Crude and pumped out by the tons.
Then came the more complicated stuff, mid-tier. Better components, processors, and tighter tolerances. Things like las guns and bionics fit nicely into this category. Still made in the hive, but far more exclusive, and the quality varied from hive to hive. We were lucky in Noxium, our hives' forges put out better tech than either of our two sister hives.
Then you had the advanced stuff, high tier—the rarest of rare in the underhive. These couldn't be mass-produced in the hive. They needed the constant oversight of the tech-priests and were either made on their forge worlds or, in very rare cases, hand-crafted. Mind impulse unit was found here, hence why I couldn't buy one for love nor money. And even here, there were layers, with more advanced ones like those used in Titan, that could only be produced in certain forge worlds.
And then there was only the final tier—relics from the Dark Age of Technology. Half the time, they may as well be magic.
A few parts needed replacing. Luckily, I had most of what I needed—or close enough that the neural transductor could forge the rest from scrap. If I didn't, I'd have hit the armoury or various merchants to try to find the pieces I needed. Not something I enjoyed doing. They were always trying to squeeze every credit out of you, which was just exhausting.
That was not too much of an issue with autoguns, mostly mechanical, so the parts were pumped out of the manufactorums above by the 1000s of tonnes.
Putting it back together, I dry-fired a few times, then headed off to the gun range for some 'testing'. Or that would be what I said if asked.
Truth was, I just wanted to shoot it.
I'd not tried this particular model before; it was much smaller than those I normally used. Designed for medium range, bigger than any autopistol but more manoeuvrable than my monster.
The gun range itself was surprisingly well-kitted—or at least, I thought so. I'd nothing to compare it to. No idea if it was a common thing, but everyone had mandatory shooting practice. Each week, you get a set number of rounds to burn through.
No formal training or anything, just firing shots down range.
Unless an older ganger took you under their wing and showed you the ropes, rare as that was. If you survived your time as a rookie, otherwise? You were on your own. Still just shooting, focusing on aiming helped a lot.
I was honestly pretty pleased that the training I did was actually helping, like training a rusty skill. The knowledge was still there, just dulled. But more than that, I could improve the skills I gained through my sparks. Lanto had given me some tips and tricks, and I could actually feel the skill fragment grow, which was a huge relief. I'd been incredibly worried it wouldn't.
Which was a good thing, because as time passed, the frequency of my sparks was decreasing. Not by much, but if it continued, there would be a time when I was no longer gaining sparks and would only get them through milestone which would get harder and harder to get.
This was proven by my most recently gained milestone sparks. I'd gained two for a skirmish and then the warehouse mission, but nothing for any of the combat since.
I lined up on the target and looked through the cracked scope… another thing to look at. More to the point, how the hell did he even manage that? It was incredibly tough glass, needing serious effort to damage it; you almost had to be trying. Regardless, I sighted as best I could down the range.
I set it to burst fire and had some fun. Like most slug-throwers, it kicked like a mule, but with this model, it was more manageable than most. The smaller gun, with lighter rounds, made the recoil more manageable, although if I went full auto, I'd have zero control.
Some of that was just me—my size or lack of it.
While I'd miraculously escaped deformity, mutation, malnutrition and many of the other pitfalls, I was still stick thin. Weighing about as much as a wet tea towel. Hopefully the steady meals would change that… just in time for puberty. Even with the few scraps I remembered from the last time, I wasn't looking forward to the experience.
Looking at the target, I blinked stupidly for a moment.
I missed.
I never missed. Or at least not that spectacularly.
Switching to single shot, I tried again, and this time could clearly see the shot hit far to the right. Once I compensated for that, I started landing shots like normal. Definitely something wrong with the scope, and the cracked glass wouldn't account for it.
The scope was a surprisingly sophisticated, a red dot that shifted to highlight the target, making each shot perfect… in theory. It even displayed other information like the remaining ammo, which seemed to be working fine. But more testing ot letting it worry me I set a was certainly warranted.
Not letting it worry me, I set about shooting all the ammo I could down range, enjoying a solid couple of hours of target practice. Although my shoulder was definitely grumbling by the end of it. My whole body was, to be fair, like it had just had an intense workout.
Back at my workbench, I set the gun to one side, happy that it was as good as I could make it without pouring hours into it. And let's be real, considering my track record, he probably wouldn't want me tinkering with it anyway. Not after what happened a few weeks ago when I'd tried my hand at modifying a gun by giving an autogun a grenade launcher.
It worked perfectly… right up until I fired it. Then it exploded in my face.
The explosion would have likely killed me, had I not used the high-tech testing solution of some string tied to the trigger. Even with that minor setback, I had a blast and couldn't wait to play some more.
I slotted the scope into my transductor. Its screen lighting up, and a bit of navigating later, I was scrolling through the internal error logs and code. It took some trial and error, but I found the cause. I had found the coding to actually be far harder than I was expecting, or maybe messy was a better word. Just like the hardware, it was a hodgepodge of designs and styles all stuck together.
At the very bottom, the foundation was a beautifully written piece of code. It was efficient, clear and well documented. Everything stacked on top of it? An absolute mess. Like someone had just stapled on blocks of code with no idea what half of it did. Entire sections were worthless, actually slowing down the scope's targeting.
Now that kind of bloat didn't matter with something as simple as a gun scope, but I shuddered to think what some of the more complex systems were like.
With the code fixed, as well as the glass, I put it all together and ran some tests, then set off to find Voff. I would have liked to have another go at the range, but I had used all my ammo and didn't want to have to trade for more.
Having tracked him down and handed back his gun, I figured that would be the end of it, but as the saying goes, 'no good deed goes unpunished,' and several weeks later, Voff was once more standing over me while I was eating.
Greeting me, he plopped down in the seat opposite me and pulled out a square vox, an old beat-up thing meant to pick up vox stations. What he expected to hear down here I had no clue. Maybe a few signals were in range, the Emperor's light would be if nothing else.
That one was always blaring in every corner of the hive. Shouting the virtues of the Imperium and the Emperor himself, piped straight from the local Ecclesiarchy. Now there's a faction I never wanted to get on the bad side of. Even deep down in the underhive you heard stories of their reach, which had only been growing in recent times.
Word was, the governor answered to them. If they said jump, he asked how high. Not that I had any way to corroborate that, just whispers around the bars—drunken talk, always muttered low and with eyes glancing over shoulders.
Insulting the priest or the nobles was a good way to find yourself disappeared.
Voff looked almost sheepish. "Could you take a look at the vox? I've had a few tecs poke at it, but none could find what's wrong."
I weighed up my options before deciding to go for it. Voff owing me another favour couldn't be a bad thing. "I can take a look, but no promises."
"You're a blessing, I'd never find another one with such a good range." With that said, he disappeared into the crowd before I could ask any questions, like what was actually wrong with the damn thing, except for the helpful insight of its brokenness.
Sighing to myself, I picked at the gloop called food, fiddling with the vox as I ate, trying to find something that might point me in the right direction. Was it cutting out at a certain frequency? Triggered by volume? Taking it apart didn't reveal much. A few worn components, but they were well within tolerances. I noted them anyway, just in case.
Once it was back together and still not working, I set out to look at the software, which, honestly, was what I'd expected from the start. I'd learned, through some carefully worded questions, that hardly anyone in the undercity, hell, the hive in general, messed with software or machine spirits, as I heard some of the techies mutter.
Why they called it that, I didn't want to know. I mean, the code in general was weird. Some was well made and even had some adaptive algorithms, but that was it. And then others were incredibly complicated and inefficient. Like someone used several paragraphs that could have been condensed into a single word or sentence.
Others were almost mutated, like they had grown, which, according to my knowledge, was not a thing. But I had noted it, so when I had a spare spark, I might use it to find out more.
Just as I thought, a coding issue. A corrupted file caught in a loop causing the glitch. A bit of finagling later, the vox crackled to life, to a painfully cheery voice shouting about the latest stonking victory over the orks. All in the Emperor's name, of course.
Not keen on listening to the same crap most bars played, if they had their own vox. Twisting the dial, I passed a few stations until I came across a very faint one that was barely in range.
It was playing something I could only describe as jazz, and very well, actually. I left it playing, sat back and let the music wash over me. I couldn't tell you the last time I listened to this sort of music. While not a favourite of mine, compared to the local noise? It was bliss.
The local stuff? All haunting melodies, windchimes and droning organs. That kind of thing. I had no idea why people loved it, but they did, almost unanimously. Which severely limited my already pitiful music options. Half a dozen songs later, I roused myself and handed the vox back to Voff, this time not sticking about in case he asked something else.
--
"Okay, now you're taking the piss." I said to the grimacing Voff. Next to him stood a girl I vaguely recognised. Probably part of the haulers, but I could be wrong.
"I know I said that was the last time." Voff said, glancing at the girl. "But Velma's las rifle is fucked. We took it to the armoury, and they told us to scrap it. You know how rare these are."
I leaned back, regarding both of them. "True. Okay, I'll take a look, but this won't be for a favour. I need a trade or credit."
"Really, come on—"
"Nope. If you're going to keep bringing things for me to fix, I need to get paid. I use my own supplies you know."
"I get that, but come on this—"
Velma cut him off. "It's not much but will this do?"
I gave it a quick inspection before I nodded. It was a well-maintained knife, beautifully inscribed and fit snugly into my hand. Smaller than my current combat knife, it would make a nice addition to be tucked away. "You've got yourself a deal. I will see what I can do. Might cost extra if needed for rare parts."
Agreeing they left me to it, and that was how I found myself quite the profitable little side hustle. Pretty soon, almost all my free time was taken up by repair jobs. Not that I complained, getting paid to tinker with technology and learning as I went.
Win-win as far as I was concerned.
It did mean I had a near-constant backlog of things to work through, so proper free days were rare. Which suited me just fine. I did make exceptions though, like when the Tidefall rolled in. I still wanted to explore and try my luck, but I never pushed very hard.
There was no need to.
Even so, I was going deeper than ever; a mixture of my confidence in defending myself and my new knowledge helped me cruise through the safer sections at the start.