Another Omake I wrote. Thought that the idea of weapons that can adjust themselves for several functions, like the Lawgivers from Judge Dredd, for example, would be pretty nifty. Plus, probably making the logistics easier for the Alliance and the like as well.
Arsenal Adjustments
"URGH! How the hell do you *deal* with this *crap*!?!"
"You'll have to be a bit more specific than 'this crap', Revy..:" Hannah told her with a smirk.
Glowering at her mother even as she was trying to catch her breath, Revy pointed at the numerous weapons attached to the back of her hardsuit. Her mother had the idea to give her a taste of the kind of training that her (boy-)friend Brian would soon have to go through as part of joining the Alliance. Both so she'd better appreciate the differences in their situation, and also so she'd learn to better appreciate her powered suit for doing most of the work for her.
"This crap," Revy repeated. "Lugging around half a dozen different weapons. It's heavy, and annoying, and uncomfortable, and blegh, and all."
"Maybe," Hannah allowed, "but the tactical flexibility more than makes up for it for most. Better to sweat a bit more than finding yourself without a suitable weapon for the situation you're facing."
"It's stupid; that's what it is! And I'm gonna do something about it!" her daughter shouted before stomping off in the direction of their house, most likely to, once again, lock herself in her workshop for a day or two.
Hannah sighed and massaged the bridge of her nose, silently blaming her husband. She had absolutely no doubt that Revy got her penchant for tinkering from him; he always insisted on repairing everything himself. Mostly with success, thankfully, and in those cases where he failed he just shrugged, grinned, and said that he'd learned something new and would be able to fix the problem next time.
Shaking her head with a smile, HannaH turned to make her way back home as well, thinking that Revy truly was her parents' daughter.
-----
"So, you're going to show me what you running off in a huff was all about, I'm guessing?" she asked Revy a few days later while meeting her on their weapon testing range/city.
"I didn't run off in a huff," Revy insisted in return, forcing Hannah to fight down a smile. It was good to see that her daughter, for all her smarts, was still a teenager.
"Right, right… so; what were you going to show me?" she instead tried to get her daughter back on track, taking the visor she was offering her.
For once not one of Revy's designs, it would still protect her eyes and ears from the noise and other miscellaneous problems and dangers that might crop up on a firing range, while also working as a commlink with her daughter, and including a heads-up display that included a clear view of the target area, and could display various warnings.
While she carefully put it on, Revy went and grabbed two weapons; one a handgun or maybe SMG, the other a rifle of some sort, holding them up with a grin.
"And with this, I'm going to put an end to that idiocy of forcing our soldiers to lug around half a dozen weapons. Watch!"
Putting the rifle down, she took up a firing stance with the gun.
"Semi-auto, high power, armor-piercing," she intoned clearly, prompting the gun to perform some function that apparently included shifting a few of its parts around. She then took aim, and pulled the trigger, again and again.
Turning her attention to the firing range, Hannah watched as the projectiles impacted a piece of simulated cover, a camera-window in her HUD showing how they punched through and impacted the targets behind it.
When Revy stopped firing after a few moments, Hannah remained silent, already knowing that her daughter would give an indication when she was finished. Instead, she idly noted that the grouping of the shots had markedly improved from when they'd started out.
"Semi-auto, low power, medium scatter, incendiary."
Again the gun seemed to re-arrange parts of itself, and when Revy fired at a group of targets in the open, Hannah noted how it now seemed to fire not just one, but multiple projectiles at once, and how the places they were hit immediately began to smolder and even burn until some drones put out the fire.
This set the tone for the rest of the demonstration; Revy would call out some combination of variables, the weapon - first the handgun, later the rifle - would somehow rearrange itself and then perform accordingly.
"So, because you found it stupid to carry around five weapons for different tactical scenarios… you went and built two weapons that could fill all those roles by themselves?"
"Yep!" Revy confirmed. "And this were just some pre-set choices. With a manual and some time, it's not that difficult to alter them or set your own parameters, tie them to specific verbal phrases, functions in your omnitool, and the like. And if you got one of my Neural Interfaces, you can even adjust them completely on the fly!"
"How's it work, though?" her mother asked, genuinely curious because this was one of the few areas where she was knowledgable enough to follow Revy's explanations.
"Well, most mass accelerator guns already have a computer that calculates the necessary projectile size and acceleration to hit its targets based on distance, weather conditions, gravity, and whatnot. I just tweaked that a bit so it could be set to different parameters, and then perform its usual calculations from there.
Of course, that changes the performance and behavior of the weapon significantly depending on where those parameters are set, so I re-purposed the self-folding mechanism to shift and adjust components within the gun, instead. Moving stabilizers so they can better deal with the recoil, altering the ammo-shaving mechanism to produce different effects, changing the placement of the accelerators and heatsinks, things like that. Then some smart materials for a few parts - like the barrel, so it can lengthen or widen as necessary - and because the gun no longer needs to fold there was a lot of space in some spaces, like the stock, so I expanded the ammo-block and added some extra heatsinks and a system for cycling them, so they can fire for much longer without overheating or running out of materials despite the increased usage."
"Well, that certainly sounds impressive," Hannah had to admit.
"So, you agree that carrying around half a dozen weapons is a stupid idea?" her daughter asked slyly.
Despite herself, Hannah couldn't help but laugh.
