Grover's Corners is VERY well estimated as to size in acres vs. dimensions, Bob.
www.agric.gov.ab.ca/app19...ndarea.jsp
gives a radius of 1862', giving a diameter of 3724', for a 250 acre circle. That's close enough that I'm not going to quibble - I'm going to thumbs up and cheer.
The stated 3900' diameter, radius of 1950', gives a 274 acre chunk, which is fine too.
Hephaestus, at ten acres of Alaska, is 700' x 622', for an exact ten acre chunk. I have to admit, though, I stoled the chunk of land that forms the 'prow', so my measurements are a bit off.
S. Hoffswalsh Field, being a residential parcel, doesn't seem unlikely at 155' x 270', giving a .96 acre postage stamp - this is what you would get if you horked my current home out of the ground, land and all, only smaller. Wire Geek - Burning the weak and trampling the dead since 1979Wire Geek - Burning the weak and trampling the dead since 1979

I've been driving myself bonkers today, punching down cat5 and juggling Fenspace tech, and here are the results. Pending societal disapproval, here is the basic tech Hephaestus and the Boys are based on, and a couple of our products.
Please be gentle on any shoot-downs, it's midnight or thereabouts, and I'm exhausted, but I can't sleep.. stupid Muse.
Any designs are 'copyright' to Hephaestus - we need a term for this, since Copyright has legal implications in the real world, and I think we would be wise to have a way to indicate intellectual property that is for sale, as opposed to open source, in the Fenspace. I suggest 'Commercial design' versus 'Open design'.
Open Design
Carbon Fiberweed
The original fireweed plant was staked to and around a carbon fiber rod, dusted with carbon fiber, and painted with base strain 'wavium. We ended up with a plant that grows signifigantly more and signifigantly higher than a 'normal' fireweed, is much darker (dark DAARK green leaves, near-black green stalk, and gloss black flowers) than normal, and is capable of doing 30 feet of height in an Earth environment. First-gen Carbon Fiberweed cannot survive unprotected in space.
Environmental Plants
These Devil's Club plants were a 'lucky shot' handwave. The original smells very pleasant and grows anywhere, on anything. It is the devil. The waving process began with 'shaving' a Devil's Club, removing the hurty parts from the stem. The plant was jacketted in a thin plushy layer of velour, dark green in color, and subjected to a 2-week tape loop of environmental propaganda on the role of green plants in restoring oxygen to the environment. Watching right along with it was a can of base 'wavium. At the end of the time period, we repotted the Devil's Club in the 'wavium, and we ended up with a low-slung plant that has no thorns, grows swiftly, produces oxygen like gangbusters, and, indeed, _requires_ carbon monoxide or dioxide in fairly good quantities to thrive. The environmental bay on Hephaestus is equipped with smudge pots for this very reason.
Quirks: Environmental Plants require lounge music, the schlockier and more '70s the better. Research into this has indicated that the velour fabric intended to make a more 'cuddly' plant was from a late 70s manufactured pair of pants. When asked further, Raven indicated that yes, the pants were 'very funky'.
With _too_ clean of an atmosphere, Environmental Plants will stop growing and shed leaves to minimize themselves.
Cuttings of these are available from Hephaestus.
EzCode Parsing Error: size=5]Commercial Des
Adjusted Mass Reactionless Rotor[/b]
The Adjusted Mass Reactionless Rotor is a design based in part off of the Firefly engine seen in Serenity. in the Hephaestian version, the rotating shell contains a stationary crankshaft, with a strange handwaved material in its lobes. The shell contains control electronics and a similar and complimentary handwaved emitter, which repels the material in the lobe of the crankshaft.
The rotor can be made in a myriad of shapes and output levels, with no upper or lower limit in sight. So far, the control system has been built into the shell, and we've no plans to move it out.
An astute reader may have noticed that the rotor itself just.. rotates. This is true, and the second part of the Adjusted Mass Reactionless Rotor is the Motivator. The Motivator is an ingot of the same strange handwaved metal used in the rotor, with similar emitters either static mounted or on armatures surrounding the ingot. While the _material_ is the same between the Rotor and the Ingot, the emitters have a totally different purpose. In the Rotor, the emitters push, and the static crankshaft is the 'reactionless newton-cheating sumbitch', to quote my father on the subject. In the Ingot, the emitters are the fulcrum, the electricity is the lever, and the Ingot actually transmits the force of movement to the vehicle.
For instance, the rotor in any of the Suburbans is inside the engine compartment, where one would normally expect it. In the initial buildup, the propulsion ingot was placed where the transfer case was. This ended up being too cramped and too far forward for the appropriate 'center of movement', and it was moved backwards, making room for a larger generator plugged into the back end of the rotor.
In cars like V and Millie, again the rotor replaces the engine, and a 'propulsion ingot' replaces the transmission or is mounted into the car's frame at an appropriate location.
In conclusion - the Rotor develops, through reactionless repulsion, rotational force, which is used to turn an electric generator. The available electricity is pushed through 'waved emitters and generates reactionless repulsion via the Ingot. When a 'pure' road style is needed, all Hephaestian vehicles can use in-wheel electric motors to crank right along, and keep a few high-grade resistance coils in the design for 'generative-wastative braking'.
Functionally speaking, the rotor/ingot combo provides a single-point vector introduction capability. On a single-ingot rig like the Suburban, the force generation is nowhere near as efficient in 'rotation' as it is linearily. This is due to the single-point factor, and one of the reasons V is so agile. With a smallish Ingot replacing each of her differentials, she can push her front end and back end at different vectors.
'Clean Queen'
The airlocks in the shuttles and shops of Hephaestus are composed of 'waved Visqueen. We setup a spooler that rolled the visqueen through a trough of liquidized 'wavium, and it came out signifigantly tougher, better insulating, and nearly optically clear. The stuff is not very strong against piercing or cutting attacks, however, and even a hardtech small handgun could penetrate it.
Airlocks
The airlocking system used by Hephaestus are based off of a 'queen sheeting, and the fasteners are 3-inch wide strips of velcro, with a central zipper. The Velcro/zipper is glued on with a 'waved adhesive, which appears to now bond on a molecular level. The velcro has been painted with liquidized 'wavium, as well as the zippers. They hold well, pressure testing would pop the visqueen sheeting before the seal would leak.
The Really Right Stuff
The glue used to assemble the airlocks is a mix of liquid 'wavium and 'right stuff' RTV rubber gasketting adhesive. The resultant stuff is less gooey and more liquid than the original RTV, but can still be applied from a 'squirt gun' with care, or brushed on. On non-metal surfaces, it produces a molecular bond. On metal surfaces, it's a powerful adhesive, but fails under any force harder than 'signifigant'.
Battle Steel
Hephaestus is setup to produce steel, among other finished metals. The steel bar stock is sometimes melted back down, and a specific stain of 'wavium is mixed in, and vaccum-cooled. The resultant product is slightly lighter than conventional steel, resists corrosion, and so long as there are active 'personell' (as opposed to just people)maintaining it, maintains it's strength. Battle Steel is _signifigantly_ stronger than conventional steel plate, resists corrosion per stainless steel, and has to be cut with either overwhelming force or special tooling/drill bits/saw blades. Laser cutting requires either overwhelming force or a 'wave collimated focussing system.
Quirks: When confronted with 'overwhelming' force, Battle Steel tends to shatter, due to the sheer amount of energy imparted to _cause_ a rupture. A Reaver 'impact breacher' would bounce if on anything but an exact perpendicular, but if it does get that perfect angle, it stands a good chance of either cracking the panel or sending a 'spall' shard bouncing across the space inside the violated panel.
Silver Handwavium
Silver Handwavium was a conventional strain mixed with silicon and graphite dust, automatic transmission fluid, wd-40, and fed several hours of infomercials on the benefits of high-grade lubricants. The resulting thick-oil-paint type liquid can be aerosol sprayed, painted from a can, or squirtgunned onto a bearing surface. On a non-frictionized surface, this strain merely flakes up and powders away. On a surface that requires lubrication (bearings, hinges, latches, locks), the 'wavium soaks in and provides a near-perfect interface. The interface is not frictionless, but it's as close as can be obtained by solid work.
Quirks: The strain requires occasional Exuberant Appreciation! of it's Amazing Effectiveness! and Economical Pricing! to maintain its lubricity. Thankfully, you'll notice it stop working nearly as well before it 'goes away' and requires a new application.
Black Handwavium
Black handwavium was produced from several 'high performance' classic car mags, a can of base strain, and a tape-loop of documentaries on internal combustion and nascar race engine design. The 'wavium _knows_ what makes internal combustion tick, and likes the idea. Application of this can be as simple as an oil change, or as in depth as a teardown and parts soak. Naturally, the more effort you put into it, the more benefit you will get out of it.
An engine exposed to an 'oil change' level of Black Handwavium will reseal it's cylinders, stop clattering, run somewhat better than factory (depending on level of damage/neglect), and fill several oil filters with gunge in short order.
A full 'teardown/parts soak' will result in an engine that is signifigantly structurally stronger than stock, with all that implies. If an ECM or carbeuration setup is adjusted properly, higher RPM range, more boost, higher compression, more agressive timing, all can be sustained. A stock engine given this treatment will not run that much better than stock - even if everything under the lid is right, the programming/design is aiming for a particular performance level.
Ultimate performance gain from 'Wavium black is in the high performance internal combustion engine, where treatments will cause oil to flow smoother, fuel to burn better, and motors to last longer. Wire Geek - Burning the weak and trampling the dead since 1979Wire Geek - Burning the weak and trampling the dead since 1979

Clear your calendars, folks.
Global: @Jimmy Amp
"Broad-minded is just another way of saying a fellow's too lazy to form an opinion." -- Will Rogers

This is in direct response to some people's vocal disapproval of my character coming up with a weapon. One of these people has said that "blowing up stuff for great justice" shouldn't be allowed; I think that the agreed-upon setting already allows it. Here is some of my reasoning:
First, on weapons in general: There's been some discussion about what the first major crossover storyline is going to be. Some people have taken to calling it "Fenspace: Season One". It's a war. More specifically, it's a war initiated by the SOS-dan. If "blowing up stuff for great justice" isn't allowed, then how the devil do the SOS-dan expect to be able to fight a war? Forbidding weapons necessarily makes the entire Convention thread non-canonical, by my logic.
Second, on 'waved weapons: Hulls treated with 'wavium are extremely resilient, to the point that they resist mundane weaponry. (They used to be inpenetrable, but that notion was out-voted.) Reavers attack ships for loot and prisoners. Ships that hit objects at the fractions of lightspeed that we've agreed ships use in Fenspace are destroyed, releasing energy in the megaton-equivalent range. A necessary corollary to these three data points is that reavers do not ram ships. If there are no weapons more powerful than mundane weaponry, then what are reavers using to reave?
Third, on 'wavium: As has already been shown in accepted Fenspace fic and mentioned in the above point, every 'waved ship is a weapon. As has been discussed, 'wavium is not intelligent. A necessary corollary to these two data points is that 'wavium cannot prevent itself from being used as a weapon. (Aside: I'll point out that I suggested putting a statement into the rules saying any 'waved weapon was a one-shot deal, but I was out-voted.)
In short, I can't reconcile "reavers" with "no weapons". We've already seen reavers in Fenspace - they underpin the first major story thread - so...

-Rob Kelk
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

OOC: For the purposes of the event, 'today' is Sept. 24th, 2009. Anyone who's in comm distance/receiving distance of Hephaestus, currently outbound to the Belt, is welcome to participate. At the end of my post here, I'm on the surface of Hephaestus whacking golf balls into space for one of the Boys to fetch with, and I have voice-only comms through a few KW of 900mhz radio, mediated by Hermes.
Edit: Added OOC descriptor, changed title to indicate RP, changed comm from 'The Jason' only to all interested parties.
September 23rd, 2009
We're up. Thankfully, atmospheric containment is holding, at least underground. We rigged some of air compressors and pulled the dome empty, basically giving up on the plants.
Pulled the plastic back onto rolls and left the fiberweed frame up. No air, no friction, no drag.

I love it up here. The three of us loaded into one of the Boys this afternoon and just poodled around. Hermes says the orbit is stable right now, we've got a couple of days before we need to do anything to maintain it, and I've got her working a trajectory to the Belt. Nothing to it but to do it, and I want to get full holds before we start thinking of what next.
September 24th, 2009
More on the dome. On our way up, we took a burst from the gun on a USAF interceptor. I'm not sure why he fired, honestly, and I'm not honestly that worried about it.
Seriously. Noone was hurt, and the dome was a LOT less reliable than we thought, so better to find out now.. I guess.
I still wonder why he fired, but I haven't heard anything on the radio, and, well, you can hear a _lot_ up here.
So the dome was punctured, and one of the fiberweeds was snapped, by a bullet. It chain-reactioned out quite a few more, and the structural and atmospheric integrity were compromised. We managed to patch up the rip before we lost much air, but the environmental plants were working overtime, before we locked off the dome and pumped the air out of it.
Repair was going to happen - we would have a dome, come hell or high water, but it wasn't going to happen soon enough to make keeping the shreds of the existing one pressurized make any sense. The 'Carbon Fiberweed' we'd developed had failed utterly, succumbing to the cold of space, most likely. The dessicated carcasses were still fairly tough, but didn't have the tensile strength needed for this.
Hermes lit up the motor at 2am and pointed us at the Belt. I wasn't very amused, but she just looked at me and reminded me how much I'd fretted about liftoff.. Is it possible to lobotomize an AI?
(Edit: No. Not once she's had this long to backup components and put them where you don't know about them, boss! -Hermes)
So we're well on the way to the Belt, and Hermes says she's identified a couple of likely candidates. Today we fashioned airlocks out of 'waved plastic sheet, velcro, zippers, epoxy and 'Wavium. We then updated our design to include painted surfaces, since near-optical quality plastic sheeting ended up being more of a pigeon-into-glass situation than a man-through-the-lock one.
Hephaestus looked strange from the top now. The bright-orange airlocks were very visible, against the grey-green background of dead and dying plant life.
"Hermes, you found anything on the radio bands from 'folk yet?"
"Quite a bit, boss. Private conversations are happening all over the place, with different encryptions and codings, there's some sinusoidal carrier at 1.8ghz that seems organic, and a lot of public stuff in 400 and 900 meg UHF."
"Logical, that. Antennas for that can be very small and simple. Pick a public frequency you like and open me a channel, broadcast."
"You're on, boss."
I looked at the display, Hermes sitting in an old-school Trek workstation with an Ohura earbug sticking out the side of her head, and sighed.
I picked up the handmike and pressed the button.
"This is HSF-000 Hephaestus, KL1XD 'Wire Geek' commanding, and while I'm not, I repeat not, calling an emergency, I'm pretty bloody close. We lost dome containment on the way up, and we're not going to be able to restore it. If there's anyone in the sound of my voice or anyone you know who is a dab hand with domes, or a dab hand with plants.. "
I let up off the mic and considered a moment. Hermes glanced at me inquiringly from the monitor, and I winked at her. There were a couple of responses, and I smiled as I picked the mic back up again.
"Again, this is HSF triple zero Hephaestus, KL1XD 'Wire Geek' commanding. We just got off the dirt and into the Out Here, and we're headed for the Belt. We're a full-service refinery and asteroid mining operation, and dome or not, we will be open for business. Hit us up on this frequency, and we'll be happy to help you with pretty much anything that can be described as 'metal', aside from the music. We also have a few tons of raw organics, a few thousand gallons of basic 'wavium, and a couple of homebuilt strains that you might just be interested in. I'm turning the show over to Hermes, the nice young digital lady who actually runs the place, and lets me push the buttons and look important. She'll tell you where we are, where we're going, and answer any questions you might have."
I put the mic back in its holder, and the TX light clicked back on the radio console as she took over. I smiled at her on the screen as she busily pushed buttons and flipped switches on her console. She looked over at me, still busily working.
"Couple of live wires here, boss, the closest seems to be a gentleman who calls himself "The Jason". He's actually _in_ the Belt now, so I've already altered course to meet him."
"You, my dear, rock. Is the prow pointed forward?"
"does the Pope shit in the woods?"
I grinned, rising from my seat. "I'm going Outside, me and Raven are gonna go play fetch-golf with a couple of the Boys. Keep an ear on the radio, and if someone seems chatty, patch them through to my suit."Wire Geek - Burning the weak and trampling the dead since 1979Wire Geek - Burning the weak and trampling the dead since 1979

Anybody who's ever worked with me on a group project knows that I'm something of a frustrated CG artist and when I get bored enough to be inspired, stuff like this happens:

And for a more artistic arrangement:

I can't say when (or even if) the next picture will happen, much less what it'll be, but for now let this be the designated Art Thread. Reference pictures, fanart, whatever, post it all here. The Commisar Has Spoken.---
Mr. Fnord
http://fnord.sandwich.net/
http://www.jihad.net/
Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery

FenWiki - Your One-Stop Shop for Fenspace Information

"I. Drink. Your. NERDRAGE!"

This isn't exactly fanfiction, but ... well, imagine Bubblegum Crisis without boomers, hardsuits, or beautiful women....
(Edit: This isn't a story, per se, but background for a potential story.)
Is anything here too improbable?
Historical Overview
In the early to mid-2030s, the Russian government collapsed. So many ethnic Russian refugees took up residence in New York City that the city acquired a new nickname, all but universal though never officially accepted: Novii Yorkgrad.
In the early 2040s, what developed into World War III broke out. Although professing neutrality, Peoples China in fact sponsored and provoked much of the conflict, particularly the India-Pakistan nuclear exchanges and the brutal guerilla war between the Union of Arab Africa and the Lagos Pact. With Japanese (mostly financial) assistance, the Chinese had developed bio-regulator weapons, allowing epidemics targeted against specific genetic groups. The worst atrocity of the war came when Peoples China simultaneously sold such weapons to two opposing religious extremist factions: a Muslim group which arranged for its weapon to attack those with the genetic markers for blonde hair and/or blue eyes, and a Christian group which sought to destroy Arabs.
The results devastated both sides. The Middle East was almost completely depopulated, between the effects of the targeted epidemic and the missiles launched by dying nations desperate to take their foes with them (any surviving Muslim extremists may have taken a bitter comfort in the fact that the State of Israel had at last ceased to be). Scandinavia, by some estimates, suffered over 90% fatalities, while the rest of Europe lost between 50% and 60% of its population. Australia and North America were hit nearly as hard as Europe. Even those of European descent who didnt actually have blonde hair or blue eyes often had enough of the genetic markers to doom them. Likewise, the exceedingly loose parameters of the epidemic against Arabs killed many non-Arabs of North Africa and the Middle East. Berbers, Kurds, Iranians, and Pashtuns and Jews were all too often close enough to Arabs to die of the plague.
Governments crumbled. France had managed to establish the most effective quarantine, and had the most survivors of any nation with a high percentage vulnerable to the epidemics. In the aftermath, French forces swept out to restore order in the rest of Europe. Unfortunately, restore order, as the enraged French now interpreted it, involved the suppression genocide, in fact of all Muslim elements (as well as several Jewish, Hindu, and even Sikh populations). By the opening of the 22nd Century, Europe was the French Empire in fact though not in name. Only Iberia, the Balkans, and Turkey retained most of their independence (Greece, in fact, refused to let the French cross its territory to attack Turkey). Berlin, London, Moscow, Rome, Stockholm, and Vienna were now French cities. But the Sixth Republic was overstretched, exhausted by its efforts, and unable to project any significant power beyond Europe.
The United States of America split into regional administrations, not as a result of secession but simply because the central authority had collapsed. Most of these claimed to be the sole rightful U.S.A. Eventually 4 U.S. governments coalesced. The northeastern was nicknamed The Empire, the southeast Dixie, the region between Chicago and the Rockies became known as Heartland, and the Pacific Coastal U.S. acquired the sobriquet Pax. (The Empire, Heartland, and Pax also included some Canadian territory Canadas central government had broken down as well, and border areas more-or-less merged as people refused to simply stand by watching their neighbors, no matter what flag they flew, starve or be murdered by bandits. The Canadian regional governments which developed likewise included some formerly U.S. land.) Although none of these nations at first recognized the others as legitimate, all were unwilling to attempt reunion by conquest. The joker in the deck was the near-fascist regime of Texas, which aggressively sought to unify North America under the Lone Star rather than the Stars and Stripes.
The motivation of Peoples China in selling the designer plagues to fanatics had been to deplete populations which could then be more readily overrun by Chinese colonists. The secret was not kept as closely as it should have been, however, and discovery of Chinese culpability actually came while the epidemics were still running their course. The Indians and Pakistanis didnt so much put aside their differences as independently decide to launch the majority of their remaining nuclear weaponry at China. Although this did notable damage to southern Chinese transport and power systems, far more significant was a biological attack, one of the last actions of the United States as a whole. Not targeted directly at humans, this instead wiped out the Chinese rice crop. Peoples China had enough food sources other than rice to have fed the entire pre-war population of the U.S.A. The Chinese pre-war populace, however, was more than 5 times the size of the American. Wracked by famine and accompanying disease, China descended into warlordism.
Japanese complicity in the development and sale of the bio-regulator weapons wasnt discovered until approximately 20 years later, by which time the governments most affected had ceased to exist. What international outrage still arose was mitigated somewhat by the quite evident outrage the Japanese displayed. Televised images of high officials dragged from their limousines by their own angry people and forced to commit seppuku muted any calls for Japan to suffer the same fate as China. Still, Japanese citizens in several other countries were rounded up and deported en masse. Armed picket ships (later robots) took post around the Home Islands of Japan to ensure no Japanese would ever again leave. Nor could any commerce enter. Cut off from the levels of food, fuel, and other resources needed to sustain a thoroughly industrialized high-population society, Japan decivilized with horrifying speed. Satellite imagery showed entire cities aflame.
With Europe, North America, China, and Japan no longer in position to be world leaders, Brazil, Indonesia, and, to a lesser extent because of the damage it had suffered, India became the big winners and rising powers. Africa, for all its resources, was too divided and ravaged after more than 70 years as a battleground to lead anything, and instead continued in its pattern of victimization.
Because those who used the plagues had been religious extremists, religious faith fell into some disrepute, especially in the former United States and Europe. U.S. politicians in the early part of the 21st Century had been rather obnoxiously prone to trumpeting their piety as part of seeking votes. Now, however, open religious belief, whether Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Wiccan, or whatever else, came to be regarded as, at the very least, in the worst of taste, a gross social error. By the end of the century, while it wasnt actually illegal to be religiously observant, it also wasnt illegal in most parts of the former U.S.A. to fire an employee without notice simply and solely because he or she was found to be an active churchgoer (synagogue-goer, mosque-goer, coven member, etc.).
By the mid-to-late 2090s, Dixie was skirmishing with both Texas and Brazil for influence in the Caribbean, and the 4 U.S.A.s were making slow and unsteady progress toward merger. Corporate policymakers in The Empire, their catspaws or outright accomplices holding many if not most high government positions, worried that reunion might bring greater regulation of their robber-baron activities. They manipulated the government into an attempt to seize strategic territory in Central America while the main powers of the region were distracted. The Texans and Brazilians were not nearly so preoccupied as the corporations had claimed. The war swiftly degenerated into a meatgrinder, going on, and on, and on. And the corp-rats made out like bandits, selling overpriced and usually shoddy equipment to the military, and preying upon the poverty-stricken civilians at home.
In the early 2110s, after some 15 years of war, Empire units 2nd Fleet Force (Joint) in Central America discovered how the corporations which instigated the war are prolonging the conflict both to profit from it and to keep troops from returning to their impoverished homes and agitating for political refom. The command formed Coup de Main, composed of troops listed as killed in action, and sent them Stateside (supposedly with crippling physical or psychological injuries) under the names of actual dead personnel with no families. Under the cover of being a mercenary assassin force, the team identifies and kills corporate policymakers responsible for the present corruption, often planting false evidence to indicate that the latest victim had on past occasions hired Coup de Main to murder his/her competitors. More such groups were planned (such as Schwerpunkt and Force Majeure), but for reasons of operational security, Coup de Main has no confirmation of their existence.
COUP DE MAIN
Call sign Panzerblitz (MSG Vasil Damiani)
Standard armor (comparable to early 21st-Century Interceptor body armor)
Weapons: MAE 95 semi-auto UHV flechette rifle (35-round magazine) with underbarrel 8-chamber grenade revolver
Texas Armaments ATM-12 fire-&-forget anti-armor missile in backpack launcher
7 x hand grenade
Very large knife (almost a machete)
Punch dagger
MAE 95 stands for Manufacture dArmes de Enfield model of 2095. France makes most of the finest infantry weapons of the late 21st and early 22nd Century. Almost all of Coup de Mains weapons and equipment are foreign-made, not only because of their quality but to support the cover story of being international mercenaries free-lancing assassination. In the case of Brazil (IMBEL) and Texas, the weapons are from nations actively hostile to the U.S. The grenade revolver typically holds a mix of UHE shaped-charge, UHE frag, thermipalm, and/or direct-fire flechette spread, and can be set to skip every other chamber when firing. The rifles targeting computer can set frag and thermipalm grenades to airburst at a selected range.
Call sign Overwatch (GySgt Zindor Baricki)
Flight armor
Weapons: IMBEL M472 laser rifle
H&K USP large-caliber semi-auto pistol (12-round magazine)
Field knife
Flight armor includes a VTOL rocket system with enough thrust to lift 100kg at 1 meter/sec for 55 seconds. If merely hovering, duration is slightly greater, and almost 90 seconds if only used to slow descent. Further, the wearer can quickly don or remove an battery-powered ducted-fan wingpack: a 1-person glide-capable airplane with nearly an hour of powered flight. The wingpack is not used for aerial combat or strafing, but merely as transportation. Weight constraints make the laser rifle the primary weapon. The laser isnt powerful enough to do significant damage to flesh (due to the ablative effect of water in the tissue), but it transmits an electric jolt selected to be lethal or incapacitating along a path ionized by the beam. The lethal version also acts like a directional EMP to disrupt electronic systems. The laser does serve as an effective cutting tool against non-living material.
Call sign Total (PO1 Edyth Ellis)
Standard armor
Weapons: MAE 95
ATM-12
7 x hand grenade
Field knife
Stiletto
Call sign Magnafire (SSG Brack Saint-Steele)
Heavy weapons armor
Weapons: Ultimax 120 Mk3a LMG/sniper rifle firing ramjet bullets (120-round magazine) with underbarrel Metal Storm Personal Cannon
2 x ATM-12
12 x hand grenade
Replacement barrel for Personal Cannon or 5 x breaching charge
Field knife
The most readily available loads for the Personal Cannon are UHE frag (5 per barrel), directional-fusion plasma (5 per barrel), and binary-UHE FAE (3 per barrel). The frag round has approximately 8x the lethal radius of the revolver-launched frag grenade and 5x that of the hand grenade. A DFP round has about 6x the armor-penetrating power of a rifle flechette, 4x that of a revolver-fired UHE shaped-charge grenade, and perhaps 2/3 the punch of the anti-armor missile.
Call sign Jackknife (SSgt Arvin deLancey)
Stealth/recon "spooksuit"
Weapons: Daewoo DP87c non-metallic compressed-gas large-caliber semi-auto pistol (10-round magazine & gas cartridge)
Daewoo DP101 non-metallic compressed-air pistol firing Hypnotene darts (2 shots double-barrelled)
Monomolecular glass shortsword
2 x monomolecular glass dagger, balanced for throwing
Scarf garrote
More effective than the standard chammies, the spooksuit renders a motionless or very slow-moving wearer virtually invisible under all but the clearest viewing conditions.
Hypnotene produces near-instant but short-term unconsciousness, voluntary-muscle locking, and, upon waking, no memory of the last few seconds before losing consciousness. It is thus excellent for operations in which the commando wishes to conceal his penetration of the area.
Call sign Strafe (SGT Lera Deane)
Flight armor
Weapons: IMBEL M472
PAMAB 07 small-caliber semi-auto pistol (20-round magazine)
2 x hand grenade
Punch dagger
Call sign Bodycount (CPL Moss Trant)
Standard armor
Weapons: MAE 95
ATM-12
7 x hand grenade
2 x field knife
The team also uses voicemask technology. Voiceprint ID would indicate they are, from the top, actor James Mason, newsman Walter Cronkite, singer/actress Lacey Devereaux, President Colin Powell, President John F. Kennedy, actress Nichelle Nichols, and actor Fletcher Somerset.
-----
Big Brother is watching you.  And damn, you are so bloody BORING.

I've had a thing that's been bubbling in the back of my head that's been bothering me, and I finally figured out what it was.
We've got the US military (mostly the Air Force) going after people who are trying to escape the gravity well, using lethal force.
These people are US citizens (at least briefly) and aren't posing a threat to the Constitution (they're leaving, and likely won't be back.) Now, they're breaking a variety of laws, so having the FBI, SWAT Teams, and so forth going after them is reasonable, if perhaps a little excessive, but that's not what's going on. We're intercepting them with USAF assets.
I could credit an administration being anti-wave enough to give the order... and I could credit that you'd have people who would obey it, but you're also going to have officers - a *lot* of officers - who declare that the order is unlawful, immoral, or unethical, and refuse to fly. It's mostly going to *be* pilots that do it, too - and generally the young, unmarried idealistic types. So... what does the administration do *then*?
(mind you, this is not going to be as extreme as it otherwise might be - military leadership is pretty smart about basic psychology of military people, and there will likely be a system where they basically tweak it so that the folks going after the handwavers are volunteers - but it'll happen some. It'll certainly happen more than once, and if the nation is more 60/40 on handwavium than 90/10, it'll happen quite a bit. In our system, 60/40 is still a mandate, and 70/30 is an impressively strong one.)

September 13th, 2006
Not more than five days into being home from the U, and I need a new pair of pants. Seriously, it's just my luck to try and hike my way into the city through a few clicks worth of forest and end up nearly cracking my head after tripping on a novelty paperweight. What the hell it was doing out here, I have no idea.
My first impression was that someone had dumped one hell of weird special edition Gamecubes - mostly because it was about that size - but as much as it was a cube, it was also smooth-walled and ...
... I was likely seeing things, but the first time I looked at it, there was some sort of circuitry design on it. Then it was just a plain, flat black.
The corners weren't smoothed either - one of them caught on my pants and now they were sporting a tear from the knee down. I just figured I was lucky enough that it didn't mess my leg up in the process. That would have sucked.
I decided to pick the thing up and haul it back home - it was surprisingly heavy for its size. Maybe some sort of rock? Unlikely. Still, it looks nifty, and doesn't seem to be leaking anything - perfectly solid if you ask me - or to be anything but smooth and dry. Nifty.
If nothing else, I thought it'd make a good conversation piece.
September 20th, 2006
Amusing note - whatever the paperweight's made of, the cat likes it. Just about as close to being a seal of approval as possible, I think. Also, it seems to be a great coaster ...
September 23rd, 2006
I forgot I'd left a half-full mug of coffee on the paperweight for the last two days. Picked it up today.
It was still warm. Not 'lukewarm', not 'room temperature', but 'just got done with being too warm, good to drink now'.
This requires further study.
October 1st, 2006
I'm keeping this thing, whatever the hell it is. Apparently, my laptop's battery is shot. I found out when I carried it out of the room and it suddenly stopped working. I carried it back and it suddenly had power again.
It didn't take me too long to come up with a working theory of 'the Cube did it'.
Testing with my console, a TV set, and various electrical appliances proved ... interesting.
October 5th, 2006
A few hours before I was set to go back over the border and to the U, Pops brought back the electricity bills.
It was a busy few hours.
October 18th, 2006
In other news, I'm trying to get into the daily grind of lectures and labs again.
Also, I'm pretty sure that whatever the hell my new paperweight it is, it's related to what's filtering onto the various forums online ... miracle goop? Chemical X? Yeah. That stuff that got yanked off the web a few days after it was first put up. That was a few weeks ago, actually. Nowadays, there's a few sites about it, but nothing quite as detailed as that initial posting, wherever it came from.
I tried sympathy and contagion out two days ago, set my PS2 on it. Results less than promising.
November 21st, 2006
Spoke too soon. Woke up to see the Cube glowing. Also, with a chunk of my manga collection now labeled 'Missing Presumed'.
Admittedly, this is more than just mildly concerning.
The upside being, my PS2 is now a universal media player when confronted with exposure to Sisters of Mercy music.
Have acquired headphones and Jade Empire for ... further testing.
December 1st, 2006
I checked and checked again ... the Cube _is_ bigger. It's also glimmering pretty much steadily as well as running my refrigerator ...
December 24th, 2006
Back home for the holidays and a funeral. Don't want to talk about it.
The Cube's back to its original size since two days ago, when the surface cracked and fell off. The shell looks vaguely crystalline, and I kept most of it for further study. A chunk doesn't seem to do anything by itself, other than act as a relay for the primary unit, which could be very useful in the future.
Also, caught cat licking Cube yesterday.
December 25th, 2006
At midnight, I had a very interesting conversation.
With my cat.
In the morning, I found out it wasn't just a dream. Mom just about freaked when she demanded salmon and went on a tirade about how little she appreciated getting spayed a few years back.
I think I'll sit this one out.
At this point, I'm pretty damn sure it's _that stuff_. Current term seems to be Handwavium. Catchy. Bets on whoever came up with that name being inspired by Keiyurium?
January 13th, 2007
Bleah. Dear flu virus, fuck you. Sincerely, me.
I was down for around a week, interesting fever dreams though.
Anything that leads you to cobbling together the bits and pieces of Solid, as I'm calling it now, into something that floats in the middle of your dorm room isn't necessarily a bad thing, even if it does suck at the time.
The weird thing is ... I'm getting _ideas_ all of the sudden. I don't know why, but they seem to be working, too. More often than not. I've never been much good at hardware, but somehow I pried apart and then put together a sort of universal remote out of a broken piece of the Cube's shell, an old and defunct mouse, and my spare console controller.
February 17th, 2007
You know, I've never wanted to own an automobile before. Didn't really have a reason to.
Sitting in a hoverchair I'd gotten to work last night, watching Youtube clips of jets and choppers, I think I've found one.
Then I hit the space-shuttle launch clips ...
March 2nd, 2007
Home again, and lugging excessive amounts of baggage ... pretty much every bit of functional and non-functional kipple I've managed to put together over the last few months.
Also, one backpack's worth of Cube shell.
I think ... no, I'm pretty sure that I have an idea that's going to work ...
Now all I need is a framework.
I'm cutting the hedge when my uncle's pocket cruiser catches my eye standing on top of its trailer in the back of his property.
In my mind, I'm already working on a sales-pitch.
May 10th, 2007
This is it. I can feel it in my bones as I breathe in the salty air of the seaside.
It didn't take more than two weeks to get everything aligned and ready. I was even pretty sure the boat wouldn't fall apart - the Cube had been working on overtime. Apparently, the cat could convince it to grow and shed, given salmon bribes aplenty - since hovering seemed to work alright.
The week before I got started on that I sold one of my initial projects through a security consulting company. Wonder how far they'll get on reverse engineering that kinetic shield before they come to 'and here, magic happens' on their charts.
What?
Well, I'd always been a bit of a Herbert fan. Since I'm dealing with force-fields mostly, putting one of those together had seemed an appropriate test.
The money got me the boat.
My Cube's sheddings gave me the means. Placed throughout the boat, acting as relays and projectors.
Common sense made me take a long drive with it for this final test.
Two laptops, one of them a truly ancient Toshiba with a P75 processor, an LCD display on the forward bulkhead. A couple of webcams on rotating mounts up on deck. My universal remote, two trackballs, a stack of maps. What passes for working controls.
The first field snaps into shape, tying the whole array of Solids together and, incidentally, making sure the boat stays in one piece. The second one just humms, making the air feel charged for a moment before it fades out into background buzz. I can hear it, though. It's still there. We have containment.
Third field. For a moment, it's like somebody poured ice-water down my back, the boat lurches ...
... and everything is still.
Slowly, giving the altimeter I'd scrounged up at an army surplus store a look, I roll one trackball back ...
... I don't feel anything.
The camera, though, is now showing sky.
Inertia control? Didn't expect that. I'm keeping the safety harness on for now, though.
My other hand reaches for the second trackball. I roll it forward.
And, in a moment, my uncertainty is gone.
I'm well and truly flying.
When tact is required, use brute force. When force is required, use greater force.
When the greatest force is required, use your head. Surprise is everything. - The Book of Cataclysm

Just a thought that occured to me. One of the rules is 'play nice', and 'don't break the universe'.
Well, on first blush, it appears that Hephaestus and Rockhounds, Inc. are operating in the same ball park, trying to play the same game, on the same field, at the same time.
This is an incorrect assumption.
As written, Rockhounds, Inc, produces some of the finest in asteroidal living and working habitats, Space Rocks ranging in size from FrigginHuge to Hey, did I calibrate the radar right?
Hephaestus nibbles through the asteroid field, converting smallish asteroids, the size of schools, football stadiums, car dealerships, into processed, pre-waved and unwaved 'stock', and profit.
I'm certain that if Hephaestus runs into a rock big enough and round enough and suitable for Space-Rock-a-forming, Rockhounds is gonna get the call.
That is all.Wire Geek - Burning the weak and trampling the dead since 1979Wire Geek - Burning the weak and trampling the dead since 1979