After spending so much time with Bo, Dan knew that when his partner became surly for no obvious reason the safest course of action was to wait him out.  Even on the best of days, digging answers out of a battle varius was like picking a scab that wasn’t ready to come off; no matter how much good you might think it was doing, it almost always made things worse.

Dan knew that without intervention Bo would eventually broach the subject of whatever was troubling him without being asked, but this time whatever had gotten under his skin felt so toxic that Dan didn't dare leave it alone. In the back of his mind he could sense his mate meandering from place to place, gathering materials for a project he was keeping to himself.

Once Bo finally settled down in the workshop attached to the back of their cabin, Dan gathered a couple of liters of their water ration and a handful of dried fruit and met him there. The varius was sorting through a heap of seemingly unrelated junk on the workbench.  

Of the things he could identify, Dan saw a long, tubular aluminum extrusion, some spools of fine superconducting wire, a jumble of electronics and what looked like a tractor battery.  "Hey," he said, eyeing over the assemblage as he put the bag of fruit and one of the water containers within Bo's reach. "What are you making?"

Although he didn't exactly ignore Dan, the majority of Bo's attention was on the aluminum tube he was holding. "I'm sick and tired of having our well-being dictated by our circumstances," he grumbled, as he used a stylus to scribe marks into the soft metal. "It was bad enough when it was just us running out of pill packs and starting to get sick,” he said. “Now that it’s affecting you...”

Dan caught a sense of the crushing guilt hanging over Bo’s head.  He clearly blamed himself for the sympathetic changes Dan was experiencing.  “If we could catch more of those animals running around here we might stand a chance of finding a source for some of those missing nutrients, but they’re so quick it’s tough even for Lucas to get one.”

"So you’re building a better mousetrap?" Dan asked.

"No," Bo said, uncomfortably. "It's more like...an electric slingshot."

Dan sighed. He’d been more than happy to live in a society without projectile weapons, but it looked as though that short era was coming to a close. "It's a gun," he said, quietly.

"Guns use gunpowder," Bo said, stubbornly.  "This has no gunpowder. Thus, it is not a gun."

"Okay, fine, my little pedant," Dan huffed. "It's a projectile weapon.  Big difference."

"It is a big difference," Bo countered, waving his hands over the pile of pieces on the table. "You can’t conceal something like this, like you can a gun.  Everyone for a mile around will see you coming, and then you're probably going to spend a good ten minutes setting it up before you can shoot it." He pulled a roll of green utility tape out of the pile and used a strip to attach a flat piece of metal to the barrel.  “It’s a useful tool for catching food, not for war.”

As loathe as Dan was to admit guns into their peaceful sanctuary, his curiosity was piqued.  In spite of himself, he was becoming interested. "So how is it supposed to work?" he asked, leaning over the workbench to get a better view.

"You're in my light," Bo complained. He adjusted the lamp around Dan's intruding shadow, then picked up one of the steel balls that had fallen out of the tractor's ruined wheel bearings.  "My idea is that you'll load a steel pellet back here," he held the ball bearing up at the back end of the tube then moved it toward the front, "and it'll get pulled along by a series of electromagnets."

"Like a miniature railgun?" Dan asked.

"Exactly," Bo nodded his head, then hunched his bear-like shoulders over his task.  "Now leave me alone so I can work."

Dan put a knee on the stepstool and levered himself over the workbench to give his mate a kiss on the top of his big, furry head, obscuring the worklight as he did.  He didn't worry about that, any more than he worried about the dangerous-sounding growl emanating from deep within Bo's chest. He knew that this was when his mate was the happiest.  He had a problem, he had a plan, and now he just had to work it out. Alone. "See ya," he said. "Call me when it’s ready."

Dan busied himself helping the kitchen crew chop vegetables until the call came, and then he hustled back to find Bo standing outside the shop in front of a dangerous-looking piece of what looked like futuristic weaponry. Coils of anodized wire wrapped around the two-meter-long barrel at regular intervals, terminating in a thick, armored cable that snaked into a metal box the size of a travel trunk.  "It looks impressive, I'll give you that," Dan said, taking a moment to catch his breath. "Does it work?"

"Of course it'll work," Bo said, sounding injured. "My inventions always work."

"Sure they do," Dan snorted. Bo had the best of intentions, but his creations weren’t exactly reliable.  He pointed at the short, steel rods sticking out from the barrel at right angles. "What are these?"

"Those are sensors," Bo explained, as he manhandled his creation on top of a large tripod he'd borrowed from the surveying team. "As the pellet passes each magnet, the sensor cuts power and moves it to the next magnet in line."

"Oh, right," Dan nodded. "I guess you'd need something like that, wouldn't you?" He shrugged. "Ready to try it out?"

"Ready as I'll ever be." Bo looked around them, searching for a target. "What should I obliterate first?"

Dan pulled a piece of steel pipe off the ground and balanced it on top of a portable table.  "How about this?"

Bo gave him a skeptical look and shook his head. "Too thick.  I don't want a high-speed ricochet to hurt anyone."

"Huh." Dan sounded skeptical, but searched again. This time he came up with a thinner piece of sheet steel tubing used for air handling ductwork. "Try this, then.  If the pellet breaks through the first wall, it’ll get trapped inside."

This, Bo seemed happy with. "Perfect! Now, get behind me!"  Dan scurried to comply as Bo wheeled the contraption around and pointed the ominous-looking barrel at the target.  He didn't want to be anywhere near the action when that thing went off.

"Turn on the power..." Bo muttered to himself, "load the chamber..."  A few more seconds of fiddling and the ‘ready’ light went on. "Three!" he called out, aiming his weapon carefully, "Two!" He braced himself against the inevitable kick. "One!"

Dan winced and stuck his fingers into his ears.  

An instant later, canines bared in eager anticipation, Bo pulled the trigger.

Through his fingers, Dan could hear an insultingly mild sproing, which was followed by a metal ball rolling out of the barrel and dropping to the mossy ground with a despondent *thump*.

Bo stared daggers at his husband.  "Stop laughing."

"I'm not laughing!" Dan protested, trying his hardest to make the words true.  

"Yeah, but you want to," Bo grumbled, staring into the barrel of his brand new gun.

"Stop!" Dan yelped, "Don't do that!"

"What's going to happen?" Bo asked, glaring at Dan acerbically. "It's not like I can shoot my eye out.  My one bullet is safe and sound, rolling around on the ground." He sighed and dropped the barrel. "Nothing to see in there, anyway."

"In where?" Lucas asked, coming around the corner.  

Bo handed over his invention. "In there."

Lucas looked over the mass of tubes and wires with great interest, even though he had no idea what he was looking at.  "What's it supposed to be, anyway?" he asked, staring into the barrel.

Dan crossed his arms and smirked.  "It's a gun."

"Holy fuck!" Lucas snatched the barrel away from his face. "Why didn't you warn me?"

"It's not really a gun," Bo corrected his partner. "It's really more of a bullet dribbler."

"Oh."  Lucas ignored Dan's giggling, concentrating instead on the device in his hands.  He traced a claw along the line of sensors. "You're using these to time the impulses?"

"Yeah," Bo said, feeling more comfortable talking to Lucas than he would have a sapiens.  "As the pellet trips the sensor, the electric pulse moves to the next magnet. It should be foolproof.”

"Hrmph," Lucas scowled in thought. "What's the latency period on those sensors?"

"The..." Bo was stymied. "The what?"

"The latency," Lucas said, handing the device back to Bo. "How long between when the pellet trips the sensor and when the pulse goes out to the next magnet?"

"Fuck if I know," Bo shrugged.

Lucas looked pointedly at Dan. "Does he always fly by the seat of his pants like this?"

"Pretty much, yeah," Dan answered.

"I do not!" Bo protested, but Dan spoke over him.

"What do you think we could do to make it work?" he asked Lucas, ignoring Bo's injured protests.

"This isn't my field of expertise," Lucas admitted, looking skeptically at the contraption, "but I think you should put the magnets closer together and trigger them with an electronic circuit.  If you just assume the pellet's going to be where the next magnet can grab it, you can get a lot tighter with your timing."

"Oh,"  Bo sounded a bit lost. "Can you do something like that?"

"No," Lucas said, thoughtfully. "But I think I might know someone who can.”

"No," Bo groaned, when he saw where they were walking.  "No way. I don't want to deal with him."

"What's wrong with Jon?" Lucas asked. He'd never had any problem with the man.  “He might not have the greatest set of social skills, but he knows what he’s doing where electronics are concerned.”

"He's an ass!" Bo protested. "He thinks he knows everything! If he gets to help with this project, it's not going to be MY gun anymore, it's going to be HIS gun. And," he raised his voice to a ridiculous falsetto, "...we couldn't have done it without HIM!"

"You said it wasn't a gun," Dan reminded him. "And the only reason you don't like him is that he's smarter than you."

"At this one thing," Bo grunted. "Maybe."

"Yes, he's better at this one thing," Dan emphasized. "It's all he's got, so let him have it."  He poked Bo in the ribs with a stiff finger. "Can you imagine if you were only good at one little thing, how threatening someone would seem if they were good at everything else?  You probably intimidate the shit out of him." He studiously avoided looking at Lucas, who was rolling his eyes so hard Dan thought they might get stuck.

"Yeah, maybe," Bo said, grudgingly.  He knew Dan was trying to make him feel better, and worse, he knew Dan was right.  It wouldn't cost him anything to be nice to this guy, or at least to treat him with respect.  And they did need his help.

Dan nodded approvingly at his mate's admission.  As half-hearted as it may seem, that concession was a positive sign that Bo was trying his best to see the world as a less hostile place.  "Do you want to ask him?"

"Yeah," Bo grunted, his mouth turning down at the corner as if he'd swallowed bitter medicine.  “Warn me if I'm going off track." He knocked on the engineer's door, and after hearing the muffled, "What?" from the other side, held it open for the three of them to crowd in.

"You don't look busy-" Bo started.

"You're off track." Dan said, blandly.

Bo reconsidered for a moment, then started again. "You don’t want to starve, do you?"

“I’m out.” Lucas said. He gave Dan a gentle Pat on the back. “Good luck,” he whispered.

Dan examined his fingernails. "Way off track," he told Bo.

Bo sighed and hung his head.  Holding one hand out toward Jon, he waved Dan into action.

show me how it is done sport

“Good morning, Jon,” Dan said, pointedly.  “How are you doing?”

Jon grinned.  Watching Dan put the thumbscrews to his pompous varius boyfriend made him exceedingly happy. "I'm doing just fine, Dan," he said, jovially. He looked at the sapiens man standing in front of him with comic anticipation. "How can I help you?"

"We’re having some design issues." Dan reached for the rail gun prototype that Bo was holding. The instant Dan's hand touched the barrel, Bo instinctively tightened his grip.

"Give it," Dan said, shooting his mate a warning look.  Now was not a good time for Bo to get possessive on him.

“Fine," Bo shrugged and dropped the prototype into Dan's arms.

"Unh,' Dan grunted as the weight hit his muscles.  "Jesus!" he exclaimed, struggling keep from toppling over.  "Did you make this thing out of solid lead?"

"There's a lot of platinum wire in there," Bo shrugged apologetically.

Jon broke in, “That shouldn’t make that much of a difference.  Plain old copper wire would have been even heavier."

Bo looked at Dan and rolled his eyes.

see

this is what he always does

"No," he corrected, with a long-suffering sigh engineered to put idiots in their place. "Platinum's almost three times heavier than copper."

“Then why are platinum voice coils a third lighter than copper ones?” Jon asked.

“Because the platinum wire they use in them is superconducting, so they don’t need nearly as much of it.”

"Right," Jon smirked, pulling his data pad toward him. He didn't usually take the time to back up his arguments, but in this case he'd make an exception.  He was almost always right anyway, so why bother?

Only in this case, he wasn't.  A few flicks of his fingers on the surface of his pad brought up his material reference tables, and he was shocked to find that for once the dog-man was actually right. Copper's specific gravity was around 8.9, and platinum's was over 21.  John harrumphed. "I was probably thinking of palladium."

"You'd still be wrong," Bo crossed his arms and looked bored. "Palladium's twelve."  He tried not to gloat, but it was so hard! His instinct to chase someone to exhaustion in an argument was every bit as strong as a feral canine's instinct to chase a running animal.

Jon checked his chart and raised an eyebrow.  "Not bad," he admitted, surprised that his erstwhile opponent had gotten it right.   He scrolled through the list. "Plutonium?"

"Nineteen point eight," Bo said, confidently. He turned back to Dan. "If I'd wanted to make it super-light, I would have made it out if magnesium,"  he angled his head toward Jon but didn't turn his eyes, "...one point seven...or beryllium...one point eight." each number was lobbed at Jon like rotten fruit thrown at an actor who wasn't as good as they thought they were.

"Nice trick," Jon admitted, flicking his pad off and tossing it onto the corner of his desk.  "You still smell funny, though."

"And you’re arrogant,” Bo quipped. “But I," he said, drawing himself up regally, "can bathe."  

"Fine, fine," Jon chuckled, and pointed at the contraption Dan was still holding in his arms.  "Did you need help with that thing, or are you just taking it for a walk?"

"Thank God," Dan said, dropping the gun on Jon's desk as gently as he could. "This thing's getting heavy.  I didn't think the two of you were ever going to get tired of pissing on each other's shoes."

"Do furries do that?" Jon shot a suspicious look at the hulking varius in his workroom. “I run a clean shop.”

"We need your help," Dan said, interrupting Bo's annoyed retort before it could get rolling.  He briefly explained what they were trying to do, blocking Bo with his body every time the varius tried to interrupt.  Before he was finished, Jon was twisting the sensors free of their mounts.

"No way in hell that was going to work," he muttered, loosely coiling the sensor wires and putting them aside dismissively. "You need an electronic circuit to time the pulses."

"The whole idea behind a proximity trigger was to make it less sensitive to the mass of the projectile," Bo explained.  

"Oh," Jon looked thoughtful for a moment, rocking back on his heels to consider Bo's words. Dan thought that this was a considerable improvement.  Ten minutes ago, Jon wouldn't have bothered listening to Bo at all.

"Won’t work,” he said, finally. "I think I understand your rationale and I can't find anything wrong with the theory, except that you’d need really fast sensors and switches to make it work, and we don’t have any of those.

He rooted around in a nearby parts bin, retrieving several of the modules they'd salvaged from the wrecked ship. "Can we specify the mass of the projectile so they all weigh the same?”

“Maybe,” Bo chewed his lip for a moment.  “Here’s a thought… can we calculate the mass by timing how long it takes the bullet to go between the first two sensors, then using that to determine the timing of the following pulses?”

Jon raised an eyebrow. “That might work.” He bent over the device and fiddled with the electromagnets.  "Where can we borrow some really big capacitors?”

At that point the conversation escaped Dan’s interest and he tuned them out.  He found a quiet spot to sit down, pulled out his comm and found his bookmark in the noir mystery he’d started the night before. Fifty pages later Bo and Jon weren’t even close to stopping, so Dan packed it up.  “I’m going to go be useful somewhere,” he told the two inventors.

“Okay,” Bo mumbled, distractedly.

“Yeah,” Jon added, without looking up, “black with two sugars.”

Dan let himself out and left the two men to their play.  He returned several hours later, considerably dirtier and carrying three meal packs, three bags of water and two cups of coffee.  Neither of the men had moved from where Dan had left them, but the pile of equipment around them had grown substantially. Dan took this as evidence of progress.

“Finally!” Jon exclaimed, spying the beverage. “How long does it take you to get one cup of coffee?”

Dan made a show of checking his chron. “five hours and twenty minutes,” he said, “if I put in a half day carrying river rocks.”

Bo looked up. “Why were you carrying rocks?”

“A crew’s covering the outside of the main dorm in river rock, so I pitched in.  Besides,” he added,” One of us has to be on a labor crew if we want to eat this evening.

Bo harrumphed.  “We should have just made the whole thing earth-sheltered and been done with it.”

“Yeah, you already suggested that,” Dan reminded him. “Great for insulation, but nobody wanted to live like mole rats.”

“Would you two shut up for a minute?” Jon interjected. “I’m trying to find that damned beeping.”

“What?” Dan asked.

“That beeping noise?” Jon waved his hands vaguely at the piles of material surrounding his workbench. “You can hear it, right?”

Bo twisted his ears into their upright position and concentrated. “It’s... huh.”  He gently displaced Dan and moved into his spot. “I think it’s coming from down there,” he said, pointing to a pile of disassembled junk that didn’t look different from any of the other piles of disassembled junk.

“I’m not going to touch any of your stuff,” Bo said, holding his hands up in surrender.

Dan’s eyebrows raised in surprise.  Clearly the two had made progress while he’d been gone.  He almost passed out when Jon waved off Bo’s concern. “Go ahead,” he said. “I don’t mind a bit if it helps you find that damned beeping.”

Bo rummaged through the pile, but the beeping had disappeared.  

“Damn it!” Jon yelled in frustration.  “The little fucker beeps four or five times, then disappears.”

“But I know that sound,” Bo said, as he carefully dug through the pile.  “It’s from a… what do you call it?” he asked Dan.

Dan narrowed his eyes and looked into Bo’s mind for his intent. “Civilian beacon?” he supplied helpfully.

“Close,” Bo said, clicking his fingernails in the varius version of snapping one’s fingers.  “What’s currently driving you insane is a Civilian Defense Force radio, manufactured by The Golden Duck Corporation out of liberated Shenzhen, China.”

Jon looked baffled. “That’s weirdly specific. How do you know this shit?”

Bo shrugged. “I’ve spent half my life in government-owned vehicles of one sort or another, and most of the transports we came out here with are surplus from one service or another.  This is like telling you a story about my crazy uncle Larry.

“The government issued these radios to every ship in the fleet about a hundred years ago.  Kinda made sense at the time, but a few years later the comm network was completed and they weren’t really needed anymore.” None too gently, he liberated a green, metal box from the bottom of the scrap pile. “Military surplus stores can’t give these things away.”

He turned the box over in his hands, extending a claw to unscrew the battery door.  “Most of these died years ago. They’re almost useless and there’s no way to test them,  so as long as they stay quiet, everyone just ignores them.

“This one,” he said, looking at it with a critical eye, “appears to have beaten the odds by living this long.”  The ‘ready’ light was out and he was about to kill the beep by yanking out the exhausted battery when the “RECEIVED” window caught his eye.  Instead of the “0” he had seen in the front window of every other CDF radio he’d touched, a “1” peered silently back at him.

“1.”  It made him stop and think, mostly about whether there was any possible reason for the number to not be zero, other than the obvious.  

Unfortunately, he came up with nothing. “This one’s been tripped,” he told them,as he poked around the receiver. “But… this is weird”

“What,” Dan asked, “did you find something?”

“I don’t know,” Bo said. He showed Dan the window. “This thing says it’s received a message, but nothing’s coming out.  There was probably a lot of radiation flying around when the ship fucked up the gate. Maybe enough to trigger the counter, but anything that did that would probably have fried the radio, too.”

“Huh,” Bo said, doubtfully. “Maybe.”  He examined the old power cell without removing it. “Memory in these things is volatile.  Jon? Got a seventeen volt power supply?”

Jon thought he must have misunderstood. “Seventeen volts?  What runs on that?”

Bo grimaced.  “A Golden Duck radio and not much else.  For extra credit, care to guess who’s the only company who makes seventeen volt batteries?”

Dan didn’t need their link to guess. “The Golden Duck Company?”

Bo displayed the radio as if it were a grand prize. “Yup!  The Golden Duck Company. Almost a century after these little bastards were issued, you can still buy batteries from the factory, but only in packs of twelve.  The cells discharge even when they’re just sitting on a shelf, so by the time it’s all said and done each battery ends up costing a couple hundred credits.”

“It’s a hell of a scam,” Jon said, admiringly. “Wish I’d thought of it.”  He pulled a regulated power supply off his bench. “This should work.” He verified the polarity, ran a wire to each side of the power cell and slowly raised the voltage until a nerve-jangling klaxon startled them all to silence.

A calm, British voice rolled out of the speaker, instantly mesmerizing them all. It seemed like years since they'd last heard a recorded program, and this calmly-delivered, masculine voice engendered a sense of calm and comfort that was all too short-lived.

After the box had delivered its message, the only sound in the room was the breathing of three shocked men. None of them wanted to break the silence, but eventually Jon could stand it no longer. “So...now what?”

“First things first,” Bo said, taking Dan’s shoulders firmly in his large handpaws and staring his mate in the eyes.  “Are you okay?”

Dan took a slow breath as he considered. “Not really,” he admitted. “but this message is over two months old.” He looked grim. “No matter what happened back then, there’s nothing we can do about it now.”

Jon’s voice was unsteady. “Is there any point to telling anyone else?  I mean, it wouldn’t do any good.”

This question surprised Dan. “This isn’t the kind of thing we can keep quiet.”

“It’s going to kill morale,” Bo warned.

Dan shrugged. “Maybe.  But if we don’t tell them, they’re eventually going to find out on their own.  And when they do, they’ll definitely ride us out of town on a rail.”

“Why are we even worrying about it?” Jon asked. “It’s not our problem.  If Bartram’s so hell-bent to lead the colony, let him take the heat.”

Bo’s lip curled. “I don’t give a shit about taking heat, I only care about what’s best for the colony.  Panic won’t help anyone.”

Dan disagreed. “No matter how much they might act like it, they’re not children.  They have a right to know what’s happening, even if it does end up scaring the shit out of them.”

Bo shrugged. This wasn’t an argument he could win and he knew it.  “Whatever. I’ll back you regardless. So we let Bartram handle it?”

Dan wasn’t entirely convinced, but he nodded his head.

“He’ll want proof.” Jon said, turning to a small digital recorder and pushing a button. The machine obligingly spat out a plastic wafer the size of a cracker and he handed it to Dan. “That’s a data dump of the entire transmission, complete with verification and time stamp.” 

Ten minutes later the three men faced Charles Bartram across his desk, Bo on one side of Dan and Jon on the other.  As soon as Bartram’s assistant closed the door behind him, Dan spoke.

“The aliens have returned.”