There was sothing extrely, criminally satisfying about building weapons out of parts that technically shouldn't even exist in my old world. Like, here's a capacitor I yanked from a speeder that definitely spent its last five minutes doing its best impression of a firework.
Here's so repulsor-grade coil wire scavenged from a freighter docking array that slled like molten plastoid on extraction. And over there? Structural braces trimd down from a protocol droid's femur—which, yes, is apparently a sentence I can say now. Point is: none of this was ant to beco a weapon. At least not in the planet-of-origin sense.
But the rulebook had changed, and if the rules change, I had to change harder.
Everything was coming together with the sa half-manic, half-ticulous care I used patching up Vasha's prototype rigs. Except this wasn't about parts requisitions or doing favor jobs for dock crews who didn't believe in preventative maintenance.
This was personal.
An engineering problem with extra aggression baked into it. thodical intent, expressed entirely through math.
And the best part was that I had ti.
Sleep inertia had completely folded Vasha. she'd faceplanted into her bunk after yesterday like she owned the world, and was now buried under enough thermal layers to qualify as middling terrain on a topographical map.
She wasn't budging. Not unless the ceiling fell in or the fire alarm sang a mariachi cover. Two years ago, she would've been up at dawn swearing at the municipal grid and dual-wielding caf mugs like she was in a standoff. Atleast these days she actually slept atleast 10 hours a day. Can't ever go wrong with more sleep, not to ntion, I had heard that sleeping more actually helps in slowing down visible aging.
So yes, I could say that this is one of my few greatest acheivent of this second try at life in a fascist space empire novel.
It's the least I could do for all she had done for . And I also kinda felt guilty for being such a little perv to her kinder-than-Mother-Teresa personality. (Through she was definetly more sassier...)
Anyway, peace and silence ant I had a very rare, very unsupervised window to raid the shop. And not under "optimize-the-surge-dampeners" supervision. This was full creative freedom. Which is another way of saying bad decisions were on the nu.
---
One hour flat. That's all I gave myself. And the whiteboard looked like it had lost a fight with a madman.
Three coil designs sprawled across the corner, each one torn apart and redrawn too many tis to count. Notes stacked on top of notes, arrows pointing everywhere, colors clashing like they were trying to start drama. One version just said MAX COIL DUMBASS in thick red marker, with a little exploded capacitor underneath, two X's for eyes and a frowny face. I put that one there yesterday. Past was a sarcastic jerk.
It always ca down to the sa thing: coils and power. More coils ant better acceleration, tighter shots, more punch. But they sucked down energy like a starved bantha and took up half the damn chassis. Fewer coils? Lighter, quieter, easier to carry. But you'd be lucky to stop a pissed-off rodent.
Then there was the shape. Rifle-style gave control, range, stability. Also scread governnt project if you walked it down a backstreet. Sidearm build was sneaky, compact, could vanish under a coat. But cutting the barrel ant slower charge, weaker kick, and hoping your target wasn't wearing anything thicker than a vest. I sketched a shoulder mount for fun: big, loud, hero-style. Lasted five minutes before I realized I'd be walking around with a sci-fi anvil strapped to my back.
So I went modular.
Collapsible grip. Swappable coil packs. Central capacitor you could yank out and slap in a fresh one like a power cell. Parts that snapped together fast, broke down small, and hid in a tool crate. Not pretty. But it worked. We weren't going for sleek. We were going for built in a panic, functional, and hard to trace.
Visually? Imagine the Gauss rifle from so old holovid, stripped down, shaved thin, then rebuilt with junkyard parts and actual thought. Less prop, more thing soone stayed up all night to finish.
Recoil wasn't bad. Not like a slugthrower punching your shoulder. This was different, a steady push, like the air itself was leaning into you. Annoying, not dangerous. Easy to manage once I added stabilizers.
Pulled shock springs from an old swoop bike. They were still caked in grease, perfect for the rear brace. Threw in a pulser unit mid-fra, tweaked magnetic dampeners to handle burst fire. Also rerouted the flyback current. Old loop was lting during warm-up. Rookie mistake. Fixed it.
Capacitor bank was holding, barely. Wrapped it in heat-sink fins ripped off so dead nav relay. Don't know what it was before. Doesn't matter. It kept the system from cooking.
Now, ammo.
That's where things got ssy. The shop floor was littered with scraps: nails, bolts, broken bits of hardware. Could've just fed those into the barrel. But that's not building a weapon. That's giving up and hoping for noise.
I needed consistency. Sothing that flew straight, kept speed, could hit harder than drywall.
Shaped rounds were tempting: darts, needles, flechettes. But guiding them without tumbling? Too finicky. Not for round one. I needed symtry. Simplicity. Sothing dumb enough to work every ti.
Ball bearings.
Perfect. Round, dense, predictable. No weird spin, no wobble, no surprises. Fire them at the sa charge, get the sa result. Everywhere in the galaxy, too. Boring as hell. Which made them ideal.
The only issue was that half my batch was aluminum alloy. Light. Too light. Good for testing, not for stopping people. What I really needed was tungsten. Heavy. Dense. an. Pretty sure I've got so left from that hauler gearbox. Might have to tear apart Vasha's rig to get it.
Later.
For now, aluminum would do. As long as I didn't blow a hole through the back wall and hand the Empire a direct view into the shop. Just needed the rounds to fly clean. Damage could wait. That's future 's problem.
Still grinds my gears though, this whole galaxy. You can build a space station the size of a planet, plate it in cortosis weave, run hyperdrives on recycled starlight. But try to make a small 3D printer? Forget it.
Real talk though, it still annoyed that a society rich enough to plate their starships in cortosis-laced alloys could not prioritize making decent, compact 3D printers. Like excuse , you can build a gastructure the size of a moon, but I can't fabricate a hollowpoint on-demand in my garage?
Deeply offensive, galactic tech standards.
Sure, fabricators exist, but they're the size of a small apartnt unit, half-organic, cost an inheritance, and require more paperwork than arming a freighter. Desktop CNC? Not a thing. Portable additive manufacturing? A pipe dream. The modern galaxy has anti-gravity hover-tanks but does not know the pleasure of a well-planned Fusion360 loadout and a limit switch that just works.
Add that to my list.
Introduce Ezra Branded Bras and Lingeries to the Galaxy.
Introduce 3D Printing.
Maybe kick the Empire in the teeth. Ti permitting.
But one thing at a ti. And whining doesn't build weapons
----
I set up a basic tal fra with adjustable coil slots and mounted the launch tube. Made a crude stand using spare stabilizer rods and one half of an old pipe-cutter. Not elegant, but stable enough that it wouldn't fall over if I sneezed near it.
Power was routed through a set of inline switches connected to an old thermal detonator casing I'd converted into a capacitor bank. Fully drained for now—because charging that thing indoors while half-asleep was a recipe for sudden cremation.
Then ca the classic test: copper coil, iron-bearing round, low-charge test fire. If it launched at all, I'd call it a win. If it lit the bench on fire, well, at least the fire-suppressor droid was nearby.
Charged it slowly, just a little. Enough to nudge. I held my breath, flipped the switch, and—
Thunk.
Three ters. Straight shot. Clean impact into the slab of dura-steel I'd propped against the far wall. The ball bearing flattened slightly on contact, leaving a neat dent. Not a massive one, but deep enough to leave a mark. Which, for a test on partial charge, was impressive.
I found myself smiling and sowhat satisfied. Just that subtle curl of satisfaction that ca when things did what they were supposed to. The kind of satisfaction that didn't rely on mystic revelations or ancestral trauma or eldritch soul wounds. Just raw function. Coils, wires, impact.
I reached over and ran a finger along the impact mark in the dura-steel. Clean, centered. A little scorched from residual heat discharge. Promising.
Not bad at all.
Also, shoutout to the guy who installed sound insulation in the walls. That bastard had charged way too much, but at least I wouldn't be disowned by the angry Twi'lek goddess currently dozing in the next room.
--
The capacitor bled power like a sulking teen draining drama from a room—slow, steady, and just loud enough to demand respect.
I made a quick note to strip the repulsor coils further too. Those superconducting loops from the defunct lift array were a damn miracle. Minimal resistance, zero heat if you didn't push too hard, and barely any energy loss during the pulse burst.
After a couple of more shots, I turned off the contraption. Prototyping was done.
Aside from the gun itself, I also needed real data. Projectile speed over distance, recoil dampening force, drop-off curves at varying arcs. I'd seen holos with stormtroopers missing at six feet; I wasn't about to join their prestigious dart club.
If I wanted this weapon to matter in the field, it needed an aiming system. Not just iron sights and sad hope of calibrated digital targeting.
Maybe a heads-up display mapped to my helt's HUD interface, with low-grade trajectory prediction. Arc calculations, lead timing, velocity estimation or even a basic red dot that aligned with the magnetic fields forming the launch vector.
Could fire ten tis and hit nine, maybe even ten if I wasn't texting during the fight. I could use small hologrid emitters for real-ti overlay, sync up visual feed with the onboard minimodule in my current helt.
The system could guide my aim like a friendly ghost.
And hell, why stop there? Side-mounted stabilizer? Sure. Another idea I had previously discarded ca back to my mind.
Shoulder mount.
Yes, it was comical, for perhaps. But for the targets? Nothing was comical when it can kill you.
I might look like so masked mandalorian death-furry cross bred with alien-hunting Predator.
One head turn, one killshot. That was a future dream, but marking it now. Prototype today. Homicidal exosuit tomorrow. We elevate in steps.
My brain slid right into the absurd next gear, gears clicking like automatic gunfire.
Why didn't this galaxy already have this? Not just the cool shoulder mount, but any aiming systems.
Spaceships had manual turrets, for kriff's sake. Like barbarian nonsense. Decades behind actual logic.
They were flying kiloter-long cruisers with artificial gravity and ions bursting from their sleek hyperfoil wings, but to shoot a tie fighter, so droid or organic had to sit in a ball turret and manually aim using their feelings and a targeting scope. What in the actual Sith-blasted, ancient-Gungan-bolt-action hell was that?
Auto-guided missiles barely existed except in military blocks, and even then they were dumbfire half the ti, like they just kinda moved in the direction you said and hoped real hard.
You're telling they could feed a droid a philosophical argunt and have it pass the Republic's citizenship test, but couldn't shove one inside a missile casing and have it steer?
I added a new column to my "Tech This Galaxy Forgot" whiteboard, scribbling [Auto-Aim Systems] at the top in double underlined sarcasm. Sa list I'd dumped repulsorlift foam stabilizers and proper 3D printers under.
Hell, I was about two sleepless weeks away from accidentally becoming the next Tarkin, in the "weaponized innovation" departnt at least. Atleast if I stopped having nightmares that I couldn't rember.
But for now, I'd start small.
One good COM link between the HUD and the firing array and I'd have a system better than ninety nine percent of what the Empire ran in the field.
I cycled off the capacitors, again, the quiet whine tailing down into silence. Those superconducting coils stayed impressively cool—with just the faintest warmth. All things considered, we were golden.
Which let queue up my next project notes while I set up for a few more test rounds. Wanted to push the firing arcs across a few angles, get a noise profile, maybe see how big a dent four shots in a row would make.
I dropped another aluminum bearing in.
Next shot thudded square again. Slight spark. No ricochet. Perfect landing.
That's when I heard her voice.
"Ezra?"
I froze mid-recoil compensation. For one millisecond, my brain attempted to shut down opening programs, cancel tabs, and fake innocence.
"Huh?"
"You making those banging sounds in the other room?" Vasha's voice floated from the house half of the depot, groggy, half-curious, and one caffeine molecule away from giving a damn.
"YEAH! ITS , I WAS JUST HAMRING SOTHING!"
I moved fast but smooth. Prototype slid under a pile of old jumper cables. I yanked a tarp loose, dropped it over the stack, and nudged the steel slab—still bearing little crater scars—with the force, flicking a grease-stained cloth from the shelf to cover it.
By the ti I stepped out of the workshop, I looked like I'd just been fiddling with...whatever-else-I-usually-fiddled-with. Probably a service droid's spine.
She was stretching in the hallway, arms high, one sock on, the other dangling off a lazy foot like gravity couldn't finish the job. Her sleep shirt hanging off one shoulder, and she dropped back onto the sofa with the drama of soone auditioning for a sabacc ga called "stab in the morning."
The sofa creaked, gave a wheezy puff of tired upholstery, and she flopped her legs over the side with all the grace of a sack.
I resisted exactly eight comnts about how bendy she was and focused instead on not looking incredibly smug and/or guilty.
She blinked at slowly. "What were you hamring?"
"Oh. Just… fiddling with so defense stuff," I said as I padded over to the kitchen unit and patched myself into the caf setup. "You know how weird Capital's been lately."
Her eyes narrowed slightly. "Defense stuff." (She looked so cute when giving that glare-y pointy eyes...)
"Yeah. Robbery's gone up six percent since they announced that new damn tax. And Jon ntioned his neighbor got his warehouse broken into last week."
She propped her head up on her hand, squinting vaguely in my direction like she didn't trust but wasn't awake enough to do anything about it. "Are you making another one of those shock-stick traps? I swear if I get zapped again walking past the storage corner I'm yeeting you off the roof."
"Nope," I said, maybe a little too quickly. "New idea. Just a prototype. Not live yet."
"Mhmm." She yawned again—long, slow, full lungs, slicer-level noise filtering out as a content groan. "You're such a weird little gremlin. Tinkering at five in the morning while the rest of us just try to sleep like regular humanoids."
"It's after eight."
"Don't ruin my delusions," she mumbled into the pillow she'd dragged onto the sofa like a makeshift pet.
I set the caf to steep a little longer and leaned on the corner of the counter, absently spinning a bearing between my fingers, thumb and middle flicking it up in tiny arcs.
Still felt jittery under the skin. Not the "haven't-slept" jittery. The other kind. The staring-into-the-void-and-the-void-breathing-back kind.
The trick was not to hold onto it. Just keep moving. Keep building. Keep doing until the noise stopped, or at least quieted down.
Caf beeped. I poured mugs out. One for her, one for , and took a slow sip. The edge of bitterness against my tongue was cleaner than everything happening beneath my thoughts.
Wasn't nothing, what just happened in the workshop. It was just tech. Tangible. asurable. It did what I told it. Didn't dream, didn't cry, didn't whisper in half-mories.
No voices. No ghosts. Just speed. Force. Problem-solving.
I handed Vasha her caf. She blinked blearily, accepted it like a sacred relic, and cuddled further into the upholstery.
"No traps," I repeated.
"Better not be," she slurred. "Or I'm putting bleach in your next protein drink."
"Noted."
And that was that.
I watched her for a mont, the easy way she accepted my weird brand of paranoia, the trust that I wouldn't actually burn the place down around her. (Maybe not full trust, my previous shenanigans have kinda made her reconsider that...)
The unease from the night before hadn't faded. It was still there, eating at my subconscious mind. But watching her, safe on the sofa, with the sll of caf filling the air and my secret project tucked away in the workshop… it felt manageable.
For now..
---
A/N: Was the techno-stuff too much?
Sorry, I had forgot to update the chapter here.
And I am back from my writing-break on patreon. Took 6 day break there, so to maintain the chapters count here and there, I will have to do around the sa break here too. Through, it would happen after more 4 chapters, when the prologue volu ends.
Hope you guys don't end up forgetting the book lol.
Also I was thinking of whether to make another book in parallel for the next volus or to keep this one going only. I thought so because we would be going relatively faster in future volus, and the genre would also not be Slice-of-Life, which this total volu was.
Your thoughts?
If you want to support or read advanced chapters, you can do so at Patreon. I would be highly appreciative of that and it would support very much in my writing endeavors.
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