Chapter 116: Knights of the Sky.
Eve circled Varrel taking notes and measurements as she did all while under the watchful eyes of both Seven and Varrel's sister Vizzy.
She kept having to resist the urge to reach out and run her hands over his segmented and flexible carapace, he was just such a magnificent specimen of both his species and of masculinity.
His rich red and black carapace just looked so strokable smooth and shiny, it was like looking at moulded plastic that had been wrapped around his body which despite its insectoid nature still displayed all the wonderful traits of masculinity that a heterosexual woman such as herself looked for.
A broad and strong-looking chest, wide shoulders, strong arms despite there being four of them, strong-looking stout legs as well as surprisingly handsome facial features.
"Hmm to armour them both effectively we are going to need some lightweight materials otherwise we risk compromising their ability to fly altogether," Eve said moving from Varrel to Vizzy and taking the same measurements from her while recording them.
"Pity Malakai isn't here, he'd whip something up as soon as look at them and that silk-based armour of his is as light as it comes," Tim said leaning back against his workbench as he reclined on his stool.
"Yeah well if push comes to shove I can always go and fetch him, I mean sure it would be a bit of a flight but I'm sure given the speeds I can reach these days I could make the flight there and back with ease," Seven said.
"Actually I might have an idea, while it's not as light or as easy to shape as spider silk it is very light and very strong," Eve said thoughtfully.
All of the team turned their attention to her and she quickly moved over to the board and began to sketch out her design with a couple of coloured chalks and they all looked on in curiosity.
Soon there was a crude representation of Varrel on the board and she outlined each of the pieces that made it up.
"Ok the first thing we would need is a substance known as kevlar, this stuff is a fibre material that acts kinda like spider silk and while not as light or as strong we do have easy access to it here and the means to produce it," Eve said.
"Oh, how so?" Seven asked.
"The bottling facilities used to use it in their belts and in the pullies because of its strength, they used to keep the raw materials on site to produce more parts as needed as it was cheaper than getting an outside vendor to manufacture them and before you ask why I know that I've had a lot of time to read through a lot of the old world emails and documents here, so not only do I know where the production facilities where they made the stuff is but I also know where they kept the raw materials so if it's still there we can produce more, now while kevlar itself has a shelf life the ingredients used to make it do not, so we should be good on that front as long as it's still there," she said.
"Ok, that's a start what's this next piece?" Seven asked.
"Titanium," Eve said and Seven looked at her in surprise.
"Thought the point was to make it light?" he said and Eve nodded.
"It is and that's why I chose titanium, its incredibly light, strong and heat resistant, now while kevlar is great on its own it will struggle when it comes to higher calibres and will all out lose when it comes to any flame-based weapons, so w need an edge and that's where the titanium comes in, so just like power armour my idea is to make a kevlar under a suit with titanium plating over the top in vital areas which can be shaped and angled just like vehicle armour to deflect higher calibres away from them upon impact, while the kevlar catches any that do manage to punch through the plates which thanks to them having been robbed of most of their velocity will be caught," Eve said.
Seven glanced at Timothy and Shauna who were both scratching their chins, this was more Timothy's area of expertise being an engineer and he seemed to be totally engrossed in what Seven guessed were mental calculations.
"Yeah that could work, titanium itself is pretty damn light, like aluminium levels of light but stronger than steel, an absolute bitch to shape but not impossible by any means though it might need some raw mutant or Claw power to beat it into the right shapes when heated up," Timothy said scratching his chin thoughtfully while nodding.
"Alright then, any idea where we would get some as I can't imagine they just have piles of that stuff laid about," Seven said.
"Now you say that....." Eve said with a grin while leaving her sentence hanging in the air while they all looked at her curiously.
"Well fuck me sideways," Seven said looking down into the absolutely massive scrapyard which was filled with old rides and ruined bots of all shapes and sizes to name but a few of the things lurking here.
"Most of the old rides and bots have the stuff in them, they couldn't use steel for the most part as the bots were designed to be out in all weathers and some of them were designed to carry and dispense beverages, so they couldn't use materials that would corrode or rust or they'd have had more lawsuits than they could count, so they used to contain a lot of both aluminium and titanium which while it made them expensive to produce made them last a hell of a lot longer according to what I read," Eve said sweeping her hand over the huge junkyard.
"Is like graveyard for metal peoples," Thundertail said looking around at the lifeless bots as she nudged what had once been one of the walking fridge bots with the tip of her long thick tail.
"Pretty much yeah," Timothy said leaning down to inspect one of the ruined droids.
Suddenly he made an exclamation and he quickly began to attempt to pry off one of the bot's covering plates which as soon as she saw he was struggling Shauna leaned down to help him with.
No sooner than she'd grabbed hold of them with her massive hands she managed to yank it clear and handed it to Timothy who nodded in thanks as he took it.
"This here is exactly what we're looking for as he held up the silvery metal that had a golden sheen to it," he said holding it up to show the others.
"That's it! Medical grade titanium," Eve said nodding,
"Medical grade?" Seven asked curiously and Eve nodded.
"It not only doesn't corrode it could be used in internal replacement joints and bones due to its neutrality meaning a body wouldn't reject it like a lot of other metals, it was also completely sterile which made it great for working with food or beverages," she said.
"Alright people spilt up and grab as much of this stuff as we can carry, I'll start making runs with what you grab back to the base, also keep an eye out for anything we can use to make a forge, like ceramic, graphite and old gas canisters, I get the feeling we're gonna need to rig up a propane or plasma forge to melt this shit down to shape it properly," he said and with that, the team split up and all vanished into the silent chaos of the junkyard.
They'd only been at it twenty minutes when Seven heard a loud yell and what sounded like a thunderous boom from somewhere close by.
Immediately he took to the air and circled around until he located the source of the noise and dropped out of the air ready to fight only to find Thundertail smashing her long armoured tail into the ground repeatedly.
'What is it!? What going on!?" he exclaimed as the others came bursting out of other locations equally ready for a fight.
"Nasty roaches bite Thundertail's tail!!" Thundertail yelled angrily as she smashed the ground one last time and that's when Seven noticed the pile of green paste that had once been a giant rad roach and he sighed as he stepped forwards an patted Thundertail's thigh.
"You never cease to keep us on our toes Thundertail, I'll give you that," he said before he waved the all-clear to the rest of the team who simply slinked back off into the junk again.
After a few short hours of sifting through the piles of scrap and a few runs by Seven to transport their findings back to base, the team believed they had what they needed to make a start.
So while Seven, Visa and Thundertail set about building an arc furnace that was powered by one of the spare fusion cores because they couldn't find any extra propane, Vizzy, Varrel and team nerd set about finalizing the designs for their armour.
As they worked a couple of curious Gatorclaws came over to see what they were building and pretty soon Seven had himself a little workforce of Claws all eager to join in on the project which thanks to the many hands now helping took shape rather quickly.
Pretty soon Seven was filling the hollowed-out container space in the large empty gas cylinder with a mixture of crushed ceramic and clay which created a crude but effective protective layer inside the forge and would prevent the outer metal of the cylinder from heating up enough to melt while also reflecting the heat inwards to melt the metal added to it.
Once it was complete Seven used some large graphite rods that had been salvaged from some industrial dry batteries to create the anode and cathode of the forge and once the power was connected it melted steel in the ceramic and graphite crucible they'd made in less than a minute.
"Alright guys forge is done and ready and I gotta say I am very impressed with the result here, turns out our friendly Gatorclaws here have a real knack for this kind of thing," Seven said giving a thumbs up to his Gatorclaw work team who all fixed him with large toothy smiles.
