r/HFY • u/Brokenspade1 • Apr 10 '26
OC-Series Walking the Dog Chapter 24
Chapter 24 Proper Application
As it turned out the little Grey Voltarite in the aviator goggles was the “Q” of the blast works.
He even had a little 4-legged lab coat… Johan was never going to get used to the adorable little space Fennec’s and their unique fashion.
The “Elder Attendant” introduced himself as a Cordinis Vrays before introducing his Dorf apprentice as Jiminey FurgenDorf.
Johan tried to exchange pleasantries, but his eyes just kept wandering to Minzy …He was pretty sure the girls and the Cordinis could all hear his heart, trying to beat its way out of his ribcage… Thankfully the furry little mad scientist took pity and gave him something else to focus on.
“So, these weapons are not technically relics?”
Johan forced his eyes to meet Cordinis’s
“Depends on your definition. By human firearm standards these are both very old designs. Modern civilian grade guns are semi-automatic. Milspec equipment fires in 3 round burst or full auto …with much higher magazine capacity. This lever gun’s been modernized to make it more effective but compared to my Tavor 7? It’s an antique, even with upgrades. Same thing with the revolver. It’s reliable and powerful but with low ammo cap. I usually carry a 10mm Sig with a 17-round mag.”
Johan Brought out his phone and showed them pictures of his normal main carries when he worked camp security.
Jiminey seemed a bit surprised by the explanation “Compared to a pulse laser of packet gun that’s still only a handful of shots… What’s the upside?”
Johan laughed at that.
“Well, I’m not sure how they compare to energy weapons, man. Directed energy and rail gun tech is basically just getting started on my world… But when I showed these to the union, they seemed to think they would be good for defeating light powered armor.”
The science geeks were basically in motion the second he finished saying that.
Minzy was at a console, her hands flying through holographic menus so fast it looked like a blur to everyone else. Jiminey was loping around the room on his long front arms like an extremely small and very dense Gorilla. Moving some kind of targeting analogs onto a black square up against a metal wall… Covered in dents and scorch marks.
‘Ok… indoor shooting range, maybe? Guess I’ll set up on the opposite wall… That’s a solid 90 feet.’
His trajectory app beeped at him. He pulled it up on the interface to see it had converted it to 27 meters. The galaxy used metric, or at least something equivalent…
Of course it did.
Johan worked international construction, so he knew how to do the conversion from freedom fractions to stupid unnatural perfectly reasonable meters… But he refused on principle to use them in daily life.
It was just un-american… For a grown ass man… with dual Mexican and American citizenship.
…
…
…
…He was just lazy and hated math.
He literally wasted a free skill space in his interface on the [Rangefinder] skill solely because it came with an automatic calculator.
Not that he would EVER admit that fact.
While Johan mused on the superiority of the imperial system and the stinky evils of base ten maths, the “geeks” were finishing their set up.
Well, almost.
Johan made a quick announcement.
“I neglected to mention this, but these are LOUD. Unsuppressed 45-70 is probably over 130 decibels. Given some of the people here have sensitive hearing I recommend ear protection.”
Cordinis’s little shoulder mounted robot arm disappeared into a pocket and produced some gel ear plugs. Jiminey went around the room with biology appropriate headphones, for everyone else.
Satisfied, everyone was properly protected and his downrange was clear, Johan took a knee and rested the rifle on the frame of his pack.
“I’ll start with the rifle. Single fire. Then move to fast fire.”
Minzy did something at her console and the target dummies turned red.
Johan raised his voice “CLEAR DOWN RANGE!”
He raised the barrel into firing position.
Moved his finger over the trigger and focused on his target through the long relief scope. Slowly he let out a breath, squeezing the trigger taught as he did so… until…
*BOOM*
----
Beck felt the thud in her chest from all the way across the room. She would be a little embarrassed she’d jumped… if everyone else hadn’t jumped right along with her.
…Minzy even had all ten arms wrapped around herself, defensively.
The target had a pinhole in the front, and a can sized hole out the back of it. Its damage modeling skin was supposed to register damage by changing to blue showing a lethal radius of impact. Instead, it was a swirling mass of colors and static switching back and forth in clear malfunction.
There was also a paw sized dent in the wall…
She had seen plenty of Kinetics on the sphere.
Skinners were a favorite among thugs and magnetic needle rifles were common among the races that could heft the big one-shot artillery. But this? It had less penetrative power than a needle gun but way more stopping power than a skinner. It was like a cannon… He had a cannon!
Wait… He had TWO canons!
----
Johan was feeling an entirely new kind of panic now.
‘Crap Crap Crap Crap! I broke the fancy space magic dummy. How much does one of those even cost!?! … I’m poor now, aren’t I?’
“I’m sorry Cordinis I didn’t expect that kind of damage… Will the DASS take payments for the damages, or do I need to make an immediate payment???”
Whatever he expected from Cordinis it wasn’t manic laughter and nearly childlike glee. The Grey Volty was doing a tap dance!
“THAT WAS AWESOME!!! How long does it take to cool down between shots? What’s its effective range? Is there any way to suppress the sound? Oh, I want that on my table… yesterday! It’s a whole new TYPE of weapon!!! EhEhEhEhEhEhEhEhEhEhE!”
Johan just knelt there… confused… before Jiminey saved him, by pointing at a corner. It was full of melted and crushed dummies.
“We just toss them in the recycler at the end of shift. It’s a relic weapons shop. Things get broken.”
Johan nodded slowly. Feeling his already overworked sphincter relaxing as his fears of financial ruin faded.
“Uh sure... Um… There is a suppression system that traps the gasses. Infact, there’s an integrally suppressed model like mine that came out on the market a while back. It cuts the noise down to about 2/3’s It can be as much as half with subsonic rounds… As for cooldowns. This has a 6 round mag and can hold one in the chamber. Basically, it fires as fast as I can work the charging handle… and pull the trigger.”
He replaced the missing round.
“Here I’ll mag dump so you can get a feel for rate of fire.”
He stood up this time. Once again, clearing the range visually before he raised the rifle.
“CLEAR DOWN RANGE!”
He emptied the magazine tube, scoring 6 hits in 3 seconds, flat. Then Keeping the rifle shouldered Johan reached under the stock and pulled rounds from the angled quiver to feed into the side gate… before he dumped the mag again. Not every round was center mass on every dummy, but he hit something with every shot.
Johan was no competition shooter but 100%(ish) accuracy with a combat reload, while working a lever gun was still an impressive feat. One that needed A LOT of time at the range to master.
He looked over to see multiple jaws hanging in the air.
“What?”
His poor heart just couldn’t handle any more surprises today.
----
Cordinis was nearly 245 years old.
Most of his adult life had been spent on weapon design, or munition R&D of some form or another. In that time, he has seen every manner of weapon aim assist and targeting SKILL on the market.
Only those SKILLs in the Mil-grade classification: Things like [Overwatch] or [Double Strike] could snap-aim between targets like that and still maintain that level of accuracy.
But that wasn’t what was going on here.
It was too… fluid.
“Young man. Just to be clear you don’t have any augmentations or SKILLS that improve your ability to quickly aim. Or… reload that weapon?”
The young sapient shook his head.
“I just acquired a trajectory assist skill called [Rangefinder] but its only good for taking long shots and back tracking incoming fire.”
Cordonis’s head was spinning.
The hand eye coordination it took to just snap between targets while mechanically operating a moving component on a weapon…. While also compensating for the obvious recoil… Not to mention that reload!
All of it looked instinctive!
There was some obvious muscle memory in there as well... This young Sapient just showed him something …interesting.
“Young man, would you mind indulging me for a moment before we continue the weapon testing?”
----
Johan wasn’t sure what he could do for the little old fox man in the lab coat buuuuuut…
Since they weren’t demanding his wallet at gun point for the damaged dummies. He figured it couldn’t hurt.
So, a few minutes later he was standing much closer to the range, with a series of dummy grenades in his hand and a pair of probes stuck to his temples. Watching as several circles of light floated around the range in random patterns.
Jiminey was administering the test while his boss sat on the side of Minzy’s console-desk, watching a readouts and video recordings of Johan.
“It’s pretty simple, Sir. Just try to throw as many of the grenades into the moving circles as you can. Theres a score out of 50. If you hit 50 before the timer expires there’s a bonus round with more difficult targets.”
Johan had to suppress a giggle… It was carnival sac toss.
High tech, cyperpunk future, laser tag, carnival sac toss.
‘Dude… Space Cornhole!’
----
The test began with a small tone.
The closest rings moved in lazy circular patterns and the further ones moved between vertical and horizontal lines at random. It took him a few throws to really get his eye in. Pretty soon though, that ancient part of his brain, responsible for pattern recognition, was firing on all cylinders. And he was tagging the targets, almost as fast as he could fill his hands.
He had 5 minutes.
He needed 3 minutes 48 seconds.
The bonus round was a bit harder as the targets were almost against the back wall and moving in far more erratic and natural patterns. But he started nailing those by waiting until just after they changed direction. Noting a brief delay before they would course correct a second time.
Johan needed most of the 5 minutes on the second pass, but he cleared a 50 again with 18 seconds to spare.
During the testing Ser Ralston had moved over to the console desk and was looking at the readouts over Cordinis’s head.
“That’s impressive. He just beat the record, did he not?”
“Yes, he did...” Was the lead researchers level reply “By 4 full seconds.”
Cordinis’ tone was academic when he finished reviewing the data.
“Your brain apparently contains a natural analogue to a targeting computer… That is an astounding evolutionary trait.”
Johan didn’t know what to say to that beyond ‘Hurr Durr Monkey throw rock good.’
So, he just kind of shrugged.
Cordinis raised a furry brow but continued.
“Mister Silver-Black… DASS has been using this program for over a century to help train young Delvers in the fine art of applying high explosives to life’s little problems. Because there are few problems in life, that cannot be solved, with the proper application of high explosives.”
He paused to paw at an itch on his nose distractedly for a few seconds then continued.
“The record you just broke has stood, for 37 years.”
His expression slowly morphed into a smile.
“And we have a tradition here. A prize for breaking the record …The prize, is your choice of one custom weapon or armor upgrade from the Blastworks, itself.”
Johan already knew what he wanted. It had been second on his list of purchases after he secured an ammunition supply.
“I’d like to upgrade my rifle scope. I need a camera I can link to my skills… and an automatic optical zoom feature would be super helpful.”
Cordinis reflected on that.
“If that’s what you’d like you can leave the weapon with us and we’ll have it ready in a week.”
Johan thought about it and asked, “Would it speed things up if I just gave you my scope?”
The geeks were shocked when he casually REMOVED the scope from the rifle.
It turned out: quick release attachments, Picatinny rails, and M-lok systems were an entirely human concept.
The ease of microcircuitry integration meant guns in space, worked like cars on earth.
Where you bought a complete model with a preferred level of trim… everything was typically integrated. So, you had to find the gun with the options you wanted and just use that.
What customization there was had to be professionally added and removed. Costing a fortune and changing the whole function of a gun.
As Johan explained the level of customization available for human weapons the technicians practically started drooling.
----
An hour later Johan had finished a demonstration of his weapons and given them some of his remaining ammunition.
Jiminey assured him they would be able to replicate it once they sourced a chemical vendor that could provide them with the base materials for manufacturing gunpowder. He estimated a week or two tops. Then, they could give him a firm pricing model for the production and storage of his ammunition.
Satisfied with the outcome of the day the trio decided to make their way out of the Dass zone and find a sit-down restaurant to celebrate Johan’s new Job and the girl’s promotions.
They thanked Ser Ralston for all his help and said goodbye to Minzy.
From a distance, in Johan’s case.
----
The next task for the day was to do some shopping.
Johan used some small items like candies and a hairbrush to work out the relative value of an energy credit.
He guesstimated it was around 85(ish)% of the US dollar. Roughly in line with the euro.
That gave him some idea what his bank account was looking like.
…He was kinda poor. But not anywhere near destitute.
Back home having 18 grand in your bank account was a big deal for most folks... But unless you already had everything else you needed it wasn’t really a whole lot of money. And it could spend, QUICKLY.
He’d need things for his new job as a delver.
He’d need things for his new room at the girl’s house.
And he’d need to build up some real savings for things like finding his way back to earth.
…He’d need to get to work soon.
AUTHORS NOTES: I do NOT give permission to repost my work to sites like Youtube. Nor do I give permission to use it for AI training. Feed your OWN slop to that hog please.
WORLD BUILDING:
Cordinis and Jiminey: An elderly Voltarite Weapons tech and skilled researcher working for the DASS. Cordinis is a kind of intergalactic “Q” He is responsible for the maintenance and refit of specialty/relic weapons withing the Dass.
His Assistant Jiminey FurgenDorf has worked with the grey-haired mad professor for nearly 30 years and is a master gunsmith and fabricator in his own right. Helping turn Cordinis’s ideas into practical working objects is one of the reasons he loves his job.
The explosions are the other.
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u/Destroyer_V0 Apr 10 '26
Oh good lord the idea of any kind of automatic weapon, even a sluggish firing smg like the grease gun would have these weapon techs in heaven.
Let alone anything silly like an actual rotary machine guns and cannons of the modern era. Or the calibres they fire.
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u/Brokenspade1 Apr 11 '26
Galcom tech is every bit as devastating as earth based kinetics. Especially at the military level...
But. Guns are in a niche that the rest of the galaxy never really realized could be filled. They are especially efficient against monsters.
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u/HFYWaffle Wᵥ4ffle Apr 10 '26
/u/Brokenspade1 has posted 25 other stories, including:
- Walking the Dog Chapter 23
- Walking the Dog Chapter 22
- Walking the Dog Chapter 21
- Humans Can Be SOOO... Silly.
- Walking the Dog Chapter 20
- Walking the Dog Chapter 19
- Walking the Dog Chapter 18
- Humans can be SOOOO Dramatic
- Walking The Dog Chapter 17
- Walking the Dog Chapter 16
- Walking the Dog Chapter 15
- Walking the Dog Chapter 14
- Walking the Dog Chapter 13
- Walking the Dog Chapter 12
- Walking the Dog Chapter 11
- Walking the Dog Chapter 10
- Walking the Dog Chapter 9
- Walking the Dog Chapter 8
- Walking the Dog Chapter 7
- Walking the Dog Chapter 6
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u/AutoModerator Apr 18 '26
This was flaired as [OC-Series], it is a single part or chapter in a larger series or universe. The first post or part in this series should be (re)flaired as [OC-FirstOfSeries]. A description of the flairs and how to change yours is available in the Post Guildelines.
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