Work Text:
Sturges held his goggles up to his eyes, attentively following Shaun’s progress with the arc welder as he trailed along, leaving near perfect beads of melted metal, fusing the parts they’d been working on together for the past few weeks. When he’d given in and let the young kid salvage old weapon scraps from the bits bin, he hadn’t expected the boy to start tinkering and improving upon the design of the ‘standard’ issue laser musket design.
The boy had pulled parts from several different models of laser rifles and pistols, various bits and bobs from old gutted appliances, and had done a spectacular job of soldering and welding something resembling a gun together. Sturges had taken his time to analyze the device thoroughly, ensuring that the capacitor bank and recharger batteries weren’t liable to explode once fully cranked. The recharger batteries really only worked as intended when left to slowly juice themselves back up, but Shaun had designed something to convert excess energy generated by the alternator in the crank to the capacitor bank for the recharger rifle’s storage without any loss of power or threat of overload.
Pretty brilliant were the words that Sturges used to describe the kid.
Now was the steady part of making sure the thing held together when wielded and didn’t look like a mass of circuitry, copper wiring, and lenses lying in the rough shape of a gun.
The housing was equal parts traditional laser musket and parts from assorted models of AER and Wattz laser rifles that they’d found or gathered from nearby settlements. By the time Shaun had finished the welding line, fastening the Wattz barrel assembly together, it was looking like a proper weapon.
Shaun eagerly pulled his goggles free of his eyes and ogled at his work, “I think we should test fire it!”
“Hold up kiddo,” Sturges placed a broad hand on the gun, holding it firmly to the table, “We’ve got to test it proper, see how it holds charge, what the bleed off rate is, and whether it can overcrank without bursting.” His mind was drawn back to Dani in Lexington. They’d attempted to modify their musket to increase the output and it had detonated on their back as they crossed the city. The battery bank couldn’t hold that much charge for more than a few minutes.
And so they put it through its paces. They cranked it, triggered a bleedoff, left it stored with charge for a couple of days to document the retention and strain on the capacitors, attempted an overcharge event and made a modification to trigger an automatic bleedoff. All passed with pretty solid results; so the day finally came to fire the thing.
Sturges had really and truly tried to dissuade the kid from being the test-firer, but Shaun had insisted. If something went wrong, it would be catastrophic for the wielder, so they started small.
“One crank and then fire,” Sturges leaned over the kid, adjusting his stance and aim, “I know you’ve been getting firearms practice from corporal Judy at Red Rocket, but laserarms are different.”
Sturges fingers tilted the barrel up towards the target, helping the boy level the gun out.
“Rule one.”
“Do not point the weapon at anything I do not intend to destroy,” Shaun recited back.
“Rule two.”
“Every weapon is loaded or charged, especially if they’re not.”
“Rule three.”
“Keep my finger off the trigger until I’m ready to fire.”
“Rule four,” Sturges could see the anxiousness in the kid’s eyes, the kid’s grin was something Sturges was trying to curb and keep under control..
Shaun mumbled and sputtered out, “Don’t shoot without knowing your target?”
“And what’s behind it kiddo,” The kid was excited to give Diane the gun, but he was even more excited to see their project and improvements in action, “Single crank, announce your shot, then fire.”
The kid nodded in affirmation and gave the device a single crank. The recharger banks hummed gently with the thrum of electricity, “Clear the range, hot range.” The kid’s voice cracked.
“Clear the range, hot range!” Sturges bellowed.
With the brief silence that followed, Shaun yanked on the trigger, causing the shot to go high and to the left, searing the top of a hedge before impacting a tree, leaving a seared black spot, “Shit!”
“Language kid,” Sturges flicked the side of Shaun’s safety goggles, “Don’t yank the trigger with your whole hand like that though. Laserarms don’t have much recoil and the best ones have none. Squeeze the trigger with just your finger.”
Shaun nodded and did as he was instructed; a single crank and gentle squeeze of the trigger. The single crank blast now made contact with the target, an old mannequin, searing the shoulder off of the dummy. Sturges hooped in elation at the sight of the gun landing on target and melting the cloth and steel of the mannequin, but Shaun felt a pit grow in his stomach.
This was something dangerous. When he was taught to handle the heavy machinery of the fabrication lab back Home, the engineers had told him the machines didn’t know the difference between flesh and metal and would not care. His hands were quaking with the sudden weight of what he had made and Sturges reached over, a firm and heavy hand on his shoulder and the other taking the fruit of their labors out of his hands.
“Kid, are you alright?”
Shaun was feeling something, the cold tension of a courser passing him in the halls near Reclamation, Dr. Li’s stern gaze whenever she was near, when he first met mom.
The heavy thud of the gun being set down on the table next to them caused Shaun to flinch reflexively and he swiveled towards the sound, seeing Sturges’ concerned face, “You’re alright kiddo. I know you were excited to see it in action and to test it yourself, but maybe we should be done for the day?”
The boy clenched his fists tightly and steeled himself, “We should finish testing it.”
The mentor was torn, his apprentice had been eager to test the full power, but he was also just a kid. His boss’ kid. His boss, whose partner had threatened to break all his fingers if anything happened to Shaun. His boss’ kid who looked liable to break into tears.
Sturges knelt down and pulled his goggles around his neck, “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.”
“Kiddo, we’ve spent the last few weeks together working on something, I know when something’s wrong. What’s wrong?”
He looked to the side wiped away at his nose with a sniffle, “I miss mom.”
A twist of doubt spread across Sturges’ face, “That’s not it kid.”
Shaun turned to the kind faced man and let the tears start to stream, “It’s so scary out here. I was so excited to build something mom would like and it’s scary too. Everything is dangerous. Giant fire ants, super mutants, radiation storms, and my mom. Why is everything so dangerous?”
Sturges was taken aback by the stream of thoughts that poured out between sobs. “Your mom’s not dangerous-”
“She blew up my Home,” his response was cut short by Shaun blurting out something they both knew he shouldn’t have said, “My Home with everyone I knew and loved and trusted and now I’m alone. Here. Where even the drinking water is dangerous.”
A river of silence surged between them, washing away the shared camaraderie that they’d had during the past two weeks. He knew the kid was right, she was dangerous. She may have been doing what he deemed ‘right,’ but there was no denying the mountain of bodies she’d left in her wake. Sturges swallowed the hard thoughts before continuing, “If you want, we can try and talk about what your mom did, but I think she’d be the best person to tell you about it. I can only tell you that she did it only after failing to find common ground between the Institute and the good of everyone out here in the Commonwealth.”
The crack of a distant gunshot punctuated his words.
“I just miss it.”
“I know kid, life is full of love and loss, that’s why your mom does what she does,” he picked up the laserarm off the table, “Your mom is a tool, like this gun. She’s guided by her heart and mind to do what she thinks is best. Tools can be used for good or for ill. That arc welder you were using the other day could cut through someone easily, but you didn’t use it for that. You used it to make something for your mom. Someone you care about. You, me, your mom. We’re just like tools. We guide ourselves where we’re most needed and we try to do the right thing.” He held the gun and saw a weak smile crossing the kid’s face, “I’ll test fire on max power a few times and then you can get some more practice in, how does that sound?”
“Yeah,” Shaun sniffled.
A few days had passed since their test firings of the “Wazer Wifle”, as Shaun had dubbed it, and he’d since decorated it with yellow paint and its name emblazoned with a lightning bolt. Since completing the laserarm, the kid had asked Louann no fewer than three times about radio transmissions from Diane and had been asking to take the wifle out for test firings to practice with it. He’d grown to be a pretty deft shot and gotten over his fears and anxiety over the tool.
It was on a drizzly morning that Shaun had rolled into the radio office and Louann immediately held up a hand with a single outstretched finger to the boy, “10-4, and 10-12 if you’ve got a moment?” Shaun could hear the muffled words on the other side of the headset faintly, “Passing you over.” She held the headset out, “It’s your mom.”
Shaun beamed and grabbed the headset eagerly, “General, we have a situation and require you to return back to base ASAP.” He tried to put melodrama into his request, hoping she would find it amusing.
There was a short pause, “10-9, conditions poor.” It was his mom, for sure, but the static was making it hard to hear her.
Shaun pulled his lips to the side in a pout, “Hey mom, when are you coming home?”
The serious tone of her voice drained out as she recognized his voice, “Hey Sprocket, well Cait and I are currently out near Sunshine, so we’re just a hop-skip-and-a-jump. Maybe a day or two?” He could hear the sound of rain on the metal roof she was taking cover under, “I have some business I need to attend to between here and Concord.”
He missed her, she was the only tie he still had to his old life. He remembered Father telling him that there was only one certainty in this world and it was that his mother would always love and care for him, but she seemed to be constantly away on some mission to an obscure corner of the Commonwealth and only able to radio back for him maybe once a week or so. Father was always right about everything, but he felt like maybe the old man was wrong about their mother.
“Just so long as you come here before heading back out, I have a gift that I think you’ll like.”
There was a pause on the line, “10-4 Sprocket, everything good otherwise? You giving Sturges trouble or are you bein’ good?”
Shaun felt Louann’s eyes judging him from behind, “Uh, well he’s helped me with a new project and we’ve both been having fun.” Louann hummed behind him in surprise, stifling her words. “He’s taught me a ton,” he turned and shrugged at her, apologetically, “I have been bugging Louann more than I should, but I’ll help her around the station though to make it up to her.” Her gaze softened and she turned back to the work she was doing on some old radio backpacks.
“So long as you’re not underfoot, I think that’s a nice thing to do kiddo. I do have to head out though, Mac and Cait are waiting for me. Stay safe, stay good.”
“I love you mom.”
“Sun, moon, and stars, over and out.”
Diane was exhausted. It had been a long few days.
She stepped through the threshold of her home, long since patched and shored up and it felt good. Gorgonzola leapt over the back of the couch and landed clumsily on the cushions, nestling into the small divot she called home there. Cait and MacCready had moved on further down the street to the Big Tree Tavern to blow off steam and enjoy the waning moments of the day.
She rounded the corner to his room, opposite hers in the house and found it empty. She longed to see her son, knowing that she hadn’t seen him in a longer span than she’d hoped and was eager to share some exciting news with him. She heard, coming from the firing range she’d set up in the backyard, the bellowing thunder of a laser musket discharging and took several broad strides through the salvaged house and found her son and Sturges shooting at an assortment of tin cans and other bits of detritus.
The two of them were so engrossed in their work they hadn’t noticed her until she was right on top of them, watching them fire some kind of hodge-podged musket.
“Mom!” The young boy shouted, flicking a switch and bleeding out the stored energy in the musket with a dissatisfied hiss before setting it down and running to her. He flung his arms around her, squeezing tightly, she grunted in discomfort at the pain from her mostly healed bullet wound from the fight she’d gotten into a couple weeks back.
Her arms wrapped around his entire body, holding him tightly to her. Her hands were up in his dark brown hair as she kissed the crown of his head. Though he wasn’t really hers, she still saw so much of Nate in the young boy, “Hey Sprocket, I missed you out there, you know?”
He pried himself away and excitedly said, “It’s great you’re here actually! We tweaked your gift a bit and it’s perfect now!” Her eyes darted to the laser musket and the nervously shifting Sturges next to it. Her son picked it up, keeping the tip pointed to the ground and offered it over to his mom, “Here! It’s a new rifle for you!”
“Oh,” she inspected it, trying to evenly mix her admiration for her son’s work and inserting her displeasure at Sturges, “You made a gun. With Sturges. A gun.” She looked up from the rifle with the slight tinge of venom in her voice, “From scratch. And you test fired it.”
“Yeah! We used the rear assembly from your old musket since you mentioned that nothing ever really fit your hand like that,” he continued on, ignorant of the unspoken conversation that his mom and mentor were having overhead. He was right though, it felt right in her hands. The steel and wood were smoothed and shiny from the many months of wear she put into it before the mechanisms started to fail. She raised it up down the range and looked through her eye into the scope, a simple mid-range scope. Her admiration was interrupted, “And look!” As she was holding it, he unlatched a small snapping mechanism that then swiveled the sight away and left a simple reflex sight.
“Wow, this is really something great kiddo,” her tense voice still indicating to Sturges her displeasure.
The man timidly spoke up, “It’s almost all the kid’s doing. We did all kinds of stress testing and it should be about as perfect as a laser musket gets.”
“You should try it mom!”
His earnest and genuine smile warmed her heart and soothed her anger towards Sturges. She approached the firing line as she sighted, “Sure thing kiddo.”
The alternator crank moved smoothly, gliding with minimal resistance as she gave it the customary three cranks, “We optimized the capacitor banks with some old recharger parts, each crank should equal roughly 2.3 revolutions with a ‘standard’ musket.” Shaun was over the moon at the grin spreading across Diane’s face, “We’ve installed an autodischarge to keep it from overcranking, but it should be good up to six revolutions.”
She gave it another three revolutions and heard the capacitor bank humming with anticipation. She let loose the bolt of energy into her target, the ‘I’ of the Wicked Shipping logo on the makeshift bulletcatch they had set up. She commented coldly, “No real recoil, no heat on the exterior of the laserarm, and it’s got some power behind it.” She inspected the ‘Wazer Wifle’ paint her son had decorated on it, “It’s stunning Shaun.” She’d missed having a weapon with no need to carry extra ammo and this was truly something special he’d made for her. It felt like an extension of her own arm.
They were both beaming at each other, “I’m glad you like it mom.”
As she was getting to work removing the sling from her old rifle and affixing it to the gift, she leaned over to Sturges, speaking in barely over a whisper, “I am going to overlook this, but don’t make a habit of making guns with my son please.”
“You got it General. He was just adamant and I wasn’t going to be able to stop him and-”
She cut him off, “I don’t care. I’m happy he’s opened up to you.”
Sturges felt embarrassment flush his cheeks, “Of course boss.”