Discussion
Writing => Novels => Drive (ongoing story) => Topic started by: Daen on August 08, 2022, 07:14:24 AM
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Feeling encouraged at her presence, Moss worked with the others over the next few hours at perfecting this new stone thrower design. Or not stones, he reminded himself. Metal balls, as Char insisted. They would have to be spherical, and smaller than his brilliant knife design. The idea of propelling a dagger into an approaching jun group and spilling flammable liquid all over the open ground was appealing and cool, but she was right. It wouldn't work in reality.
Rax clamped onto the idea and even nicknamed it. They would be small, and numerous. Ball-ets, as he claimed. He insisted that they start building molds for these spherical projectiles right away, but the twins overruled him. They still had the tube to design, and the right liquid fuel to measure and test.
Apparently liquid wasn't the right fuel, as Char explained to the rest. At least she was coming out from behind her burns for a bit. It clearly wasn't her comfort zone, and she retreated into her usual isolation as quickly as possible, but a little progress was still progress. No, the fuel she had in mind was a powder. Some mixture of sulfur she'd cooked up a year ago.
Before long a workable design was in production. They'd have to test it rigorously, but two more groves had been destroyed this morning. They had to get these ready and in place quickly!
That hammered his documentary reasons back into the foreground of Moss' mind. When he'd been brought into this project, literally, he'd been tasked with saving the Union. A broad job description to say the least. Designing machines to make their lives easier was all well and good, but the recent attacks had dried out his enthusiasm.
He was building weapons, now. Tools of destruction and harm, not of mobility or creation. Granted they were for the defense of him and his people, and much more importantly, grove Praska. But still, he didn't like his new career path. That was why he was recording everything. He'd gotten permission from Aysa, and enthusiastic involvement from Rax and Tobor. Even the twins had seemed amenable to the idea. People would want to know what he was feeling as he built these machines of destruction.
Maybe he wouldn't inspire future youths, so much as terrify them.