The Armourer: An Opco Boone Adventure: Difference between revisions

{{a|opcoboone|}}{{smallcaps|Hare looked the}} kid up and down. He was working on a handheld device of some kind. His eyes were wide. He had a hunger to learn.  

E. J. tossed over the piece. Hare inspected it. The workmanship was rough, but sound. It was put together with a young man’s vigour. The structure was sturdy: the defs were true — zilch redundancies. The cross-refs dovetailed — xml field-embedded, auto-updating. The multi-level numbering was rudimentary but true. Hare lined up the counterpart assembly and took a sighter. Straight. Clean.  

Commander Hare shook his head thoughtfully. The kid had it bad: it was time to have some fun with him. He chuckled to himself, dug into the hopper and pulled out a lightweight chro-moly [[engagement letter|engagement iron]] with a [[silencer]].  

“Limited scope, no affiliates, need to know. It looks good, sir. Plus points: it’s sleek, measured, nice [[Infinite bafflement|baffle]] quotient in the early phases. I like the elaborate [[construction]] phase up front. Diverts a front-on attack."

Hare purred. “See? That’s how you do it, lad."

“What the hell ... A BOC indemnity!” The boy flipped a catch and set the piece down carefully on the bench. He fished a [[redline]]r out of his utility belt and started working on the piece. He took it slow. “That’s positively ''dangerous''.”

The boy snorted. “Who the hell drafted th—”. But at that moment he saw the date-stamped authenticated signature below the serial number. “B.A.H.” The boy read the room. He flipped the piece over and inspected the handle. "Whoa: this destroy or return recoil is a nice piece of work. Sweet.”

E. J. smiled back. “Gimme another one, sir. We got a lot to get through. The Eagle Squad needs these at the front line”

The precedent depot was a caged area recessed and towards the back of the warehouse. It backed on to the armoury. As E. J. entered, he ran his hand along the rail. A patina of dust lifted. ''Busy down here much?'' He reached the counter and pinged the bell.  

“Eagle Cadet E.J. E. J.,” the old man intoned, inspecting it carefully. He sighed. “So ''you’re'' this famous E. J. fellow.” Burke studied the boy carefully. “Well: rules is rules: there’s no access with this, I’m afraid, young man.”

“All right, lad. In you go. The waits are stored at the far end of the boilerplate stacks. Head down to row five, column eight. I’ll be down presently. And don't touch anything.”

E. J. navigated the boilerplate, running his gloved finger across the dusty spines. It was all here: all the ineffable, intricate, technical engineering and wiring schematics they contained. This was the articulated history of the Eagle Squad’s exploits, written not in the coloured narrative of some historian, but encoded in the primary source of action, thrust, counterpoint, parry and blow, forged in the white heat of conflict. Here was all the derring-do; all the struggles; all the pear-shaped hulks and wrecked [[prospectus]]es, uncoloured, unspun, encoded upon — ''comprising'' — the very fabric of history. Every aspect: third party rights, representations, warranties, covenants, conditions precedent, conditions subsequent, waivers, notices, assignments, governing law, non-exclusive jurisdiction, exclusive jurisdiction, sovereign immunity, process agency, and protocols, organised by [[trade association]] and cross checked by regulatory regime.  

His pulse quickened. This was the ''special'' sauce. Assorted, curated clips and parchments, some dating back ''decades'' — manuscript amendments, balloons, blobs, [[rider]]s inserts, [[side letter]]s, handwritten variations, accessions, scribbled markups in the hands of these fallen warriors of the FAS Wars. ''A complete set of the [[Enron Corpus]]''. Everything was here: the sum total of Eagle Squad learning.

The volume was dry and worn away at the edges. The spine was cracked. He carefully leafed back through the pages — 1999, 1998, 1997 ... August, July, June — but then thought, ''no. Let’s do this properly. The way it is meant to be done''. He closed the book, balanced it on this palm. As the august legal commentaries of his apprenticeship had predicted it would, the volume, so beloved of Eagle Cadets over the ages, fell open at page 532. E. J. regarded it: a yellowed, waxen page, pinned in the corner. On it, smudged, faded pixels. He could just make out the underlying, double-faxed text.

“Whoa,” E. J. breathed. “The original [[Biggs hoson|Biggs Hoson]] itself.” There it was: that famous, emboldened period: the tiny, microscopic, indivisible unit of legal markup. E. J. just stood there and took it in, in its iconic, finical exactitude. So ''stark''. So ''simple''. So ''elegant''. So ''pure'', in its absolute, utter, limit-attaining pedantry. E. J. whispered: “None smaller. None more pure. None more pedantic.”