The Armourer: An Opco Boone Adventure

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The Armourer is the principle munitions expert at the settlement. No one knows her name. Legend has it that she was a key protagonist in the battle for Bretton Woods, and is a dead eye sniper who could put 3 bullet swaps in a TARGET. She fits out all Opco’s bump stock GMSLAs.

Hare looked the kid up and down. His eyes were wide. He had a hunger to learn. It aggrieved him to see this undirected, crackling energy. He was working on a handheld device of some kind. The boy looked up. “Finished. I done this one.”

“What? Give that here.”

Barberazza tossed over the piece. Hare inspected it. Turned it over in his hands. The workmanship was rough, but sound. Put together with a young man’s vigour. The structure was sturdy The defs were right. The cross refs dovetailed. Hare lined up the counterparts and took a sighter. Straight. Clean.

“Yeah, that's not bad, but there's not a lot that could go wrong on a calc agent appointment side letter. You got a bit to learn yet, lad.”

The boy looked at him with blazing, fierce excitement. “It’s all I want, sir — to learn. Whatever you got, I’m buying.”

The kids had it bad. Hare thought it was time to have some fun. He chuckled to himself, rustled in the the hopper and pulled out a lightweight chro-moly aluminium engager with a non-disclosure mechanic.

He tossed it to the boy. “What do you make of this one then, lad?”

Barberazza took it low, with his left hand. Reflex catch — he moved with graceful economy. Hare could tell he was a natural.

The boy weighed the piece in his hands, flipped it over, locked his elbows, splayed and took a sighter.

“Well?”

The boy nodded “Nice pick-up. Handles smoothly, though a touch front-heavy — I guess on account of that front load definitions module.”

“Go on?”

“That extra weight lends the piece a certain confidence, sir, but really it isn't necessary. I mean, it might be handy in a scrape close-quarters, but over a long engagement, that's going to wear you down.”

This was quite the piece of analysis. Whatever Farquhar was drilling him on in Eagle Squad was sinking in. “Very good. And what about construction?”

The boy deftly disassembled the piece and lined up the parts, studying then for a moment. “Finance-grade, for sure. Seems a bit over-engineered.” His hands flew urgently but carefully over the boilerplate. He ran through the standard Euro confi playbook. He must have committed it to memory. He didn't miss a beat. The boy was well-drilled, Hare had to admit.

“Limited scope, no affiliates, need to know. It looks good, sir. Plus points: it’s sleek, measured, nice 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."

“ — But the balance is off by quite a bit, and there are a couple of backdoor security issues.”

“What?”

“No NOM or EA. It’s susceptible to a D.E.A.A., sir. ”

“Er, a D.E.A.A. —”

“Denial of Entire Agreement attack, sir.” Cloyingly submissive, the little bastard. “Significant parol vulnerability.”

Hare gritted his teeth. “That’s excellent work, soldier. You’ve picked all all of the issues with this one. Strong analysis. I’m impressed. You are learning fast.”

But the boy hasn't finished. “Oh, look at this. There's a general indemnity. That's mad! Who the hell fits one of those onto a confi?

Hare cleared his throat.

The boy kept going. He flipped a catch. “What the hell ... A BOC indemnity!” He carefully set the piece down on the bench and started working at it with his red line. “That's positively dangerous.”

He made a couple of careful incisions and slowly, delicately, withdrew the offending mechanism and dropped it in the sterilising waste receptacle.

Hare looked on, warily. “I —”

“That was close sir.”

Against his better judgement Hare heard himself blurt out, “What is a BOC indemnity?”

“it’s an indemnity for breach of contract, sir: as most inappropriate indemnities are, its largely untested, but standard reference works cite an elevated risk of localised explosions. High degree of indeterminacy, exothermic chain reactions possible.”

“Oh, a bee-oh-cee indemnity,” Hare said, quickly. “Right.”

The boy snorted. “Who the hell drafted —”

But at that moment the he saw the date-stamped authenticated signature below the serial number. “B.A.H.”. the boy read the room. "The destroy or return recoil is a nice piece of work. Sweet.”

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

Hare snorted. “Meh. Take your time kid. Those peashooters don't need nothing.”

Barberazza