A few hours ago, a large shipment of surplus gear and arms had arrived from the Heart to the VSEA base in Lenkerk. Obs'rt had asked Koldin to evaluate some of it. There were rifles, field radios, boxes of webbing gone green with age, cracked cartridge pouches made out of ground-up and compressed tiplod shell, respirator filters, and spare barrels for weapons nobody in the garrison seemed to possess anymore. Things that had existed somewhere else first and had afterward been declared useful enough for Tilmuhl.

When Koldin found some free time he carried one of the wooden ordnance boxes into a workshop at the base.

The box bore nothing but the emblem of House Ivenmoth stenciled in black on one side and several lines of block lettering loosely describing the contents. Weight. Lot number. Handling precautions: 

DANGEROUS ARTICLE. KEEP DRY. 

The wood itself was old, splintering, and smelled faintly of tar or oil.

He set it down on a worktable that came almost to his chest and reached behind the table for a crowbar.

The first nail came up reluctantly.

He leaned against the bar with both hands and most of his weight until the wood gave a dry cracking sound. One ear folded back at the noise. He worked along the edge, pulling loose nails free and laying them on the table rather than letting them fall where somebody might put a boot through one later. When one side was finished, he turned the box and did the other.

The lid finally came away.

Inside lay a large object wrapped in brown butcher's paper so heavily layered with wax that the paper had become almost translucent in places. Grease had soaked through it in dark islands.

Koldin stared down at it.

"Right."

He hooked his claws beneath the package and lifted it out.

Heavy.

He set it on the table and cut through the paper with one claw. Wax flaked loose beneath his fingers. He peeled the wrapping away in strips.

The weapon underneath looked miserable.

An automatic gun of some kind, copying some outdated Peshtulan design. Short barreled. Open bolt. Stamped receiver. Wooden shoulder stock with a varnish job that had been applied with either great haste or personal resentment. A thick drum magazine sat beneath the receiver, and another had been packed alongside it. Both looked hand-fitted. Numbers had been scratched into the magazine bodies and into the weapon itself with an engraving point.

17

Koldin picked up the spare magazine and tried fitting it.

It went in halfway and stopped.

He frowned.

He rotated it slightly. It seated.

He took it back out.

There was no interchangeable-magazine doctrine here. There was barely a magazine doctrine.

The weapon had been manufactured somewhere beyond the industrial heartlands in the Heart, perhaps in some little-known vassal state or one of the hundreds of small enclaves which produced machinery by copying machinery that had itself been copied from something older. A gun built from dies maintained past their intended life and drawings recopied by others who had never seen the original drawings.

Somewhere along the line somebody had looked at the result and decided that it met a military standard.

Then somebody else had bought several thousand.

Then somebody else had stored them.

And now one had found its way to Lenkerk.

Koldin lifted it.

The balance was terrible.

The drum magazine dragged the front of the weapon downward while the stock pulled oddly against his shoulder. It was too large to be a proper firearm for a yinglet and too cramped to have been designed for a human. He looked at the grip and saw that somebody had rasped away part of the wood by hand. 

It was a scav-piece.

That was what weapons like this were called. Not officially. Never officially.

The phrase had survived from an older century when half the weapons in yinglet hands had been things cut down, filed apart, shortened, bent, rewelded, or otherwise persuaded into shapes their makers had never intended.
The term had become almost affectionate over time.

Almost.

Koldin worked the charging handle.

It moved perhaps three centimeters and stopped.

He pulled harder.

Nothing.

He looked at it for several seconds.

Then he put the weapon down.

"No."

He found a rag and wiped his hands. Then he turned the gun over and examined the receiver.

There was venzine or something like venzine packed around every moving surface. Not simply applied to the weapon but entombing it. Brown preservative grease had hardened in the seams like old resin.

He pushed a takedown pin with a claw.

Nothing happened.

He pushed harder.

Still nothing.

He found a brass punch and small hammer.

The pin moved.

"Finally."

He tapped it through.

The receiver opened with a reluctant metallic sigh.

Inside was the history of several manufacturers.

There were machining marks on the bolt. Hand-file marks on the sear. Two springs made from visibly different grades of wire. One component bore a manufacturer's stamp that did not match anything on the receiver. Another had no marking at all.

Koldin leaned closer. His ears tilted forward.

Someone had repaired the extractor.

Not replaced it.

Repaired it.

A tiny piece of metal had been brazed onto the original part and then filed down until it approximated the correct shape.

There was a recoil buffer at the rear. It was made out of compressed fiber that was slowly beginning to fray.

Koldin took out the bolt and held it beneath the worktable lamp.

This was not a weapon anymore, he thought.

It was an argument.

Every piece of it testified to some previous owner's refusal to throw the thing away.

Koldin put the bolt back in and began cleaning the weapon.

There was no point evaluating a gun that could not move.

He worked without hurry, scraping away hardened preservative grease with a wooden pick and wiping every component clean. The workshop around him had gone quiet except for the turning of a ceiling fan and the distant hammering from the motor pool. Outside, quolas screamed in the trees beyond the perimeter fencing.

Koldin's ears twitched at a insect circling his head.

"Get. Agh, go, go away."

He flicked one ear. The insect disappeared.

He went back to work.

There was an inspection card beneath the wrapping paper. He found it only after lifting the box lining.

VAL SALIAN ROYAL ARMY ORDNANCE RESERVE

The date was twenty-three years old.

Below that was another stamp.

TRANSFERRED FOR VAL SALIAN EXPEDITIONARY ARMY SERVICE

Below that another.

REFURBISHED

He turned the card over.

A handwritten note occupied the back.

FUNCTION ACCEPTABLE

He looked at the gun. Then at the card. Then at the gun again.

"According to who?"

Nobody answered.

After cleaning it he reassembled the weapon and tried the action again.

The bolt came back.

It traveled with a long scraping sound and locked open.

He released it with a pull of the trigger. 

Clack.

Koldin worked it several more times.

Clack. Clack. Clack.

Ugly, but functional.

He tested the safety, then the trigger. Magazine retention. Stock. Sights.

The rear sight was a piece of folded sheet steel with two apertures. One had been stamped crooked.

He put the stock against his shoulder and looked through it.

The front post appeared somewhere near the edge of the aperture.

He lowered the gun.

There were bad weapons and there were weapons which demanded philosophical questions.

This one belonged to the second category.

Somebody entered the workshop behind him.

Koldin heard the footsteps long before the door opened.

Human. Heavy boots. Slow pace.

He continued examining the weapon.

A corporal from stores leaned through the doorway.

"That one of the submachine guns?"

Koldin looked over.

"I zhink so."

"You think?"

"It has most of zhe required characteristics."

The corporal came inside and looked at it.

"Ugly bastard."

"Yes."

"Work?"

"Probably."

"That's encouraging."

"No. It is not."

The corporal laughed.

Koldin picked up one of the drums.

"Do we have ammunition for zhis?"

"Six boxes came with the shipment."

"Six?"

"Six crates of seven six two by twenty five rounds."

Koldin stopped.

He looked at the gun again.

The corporal shrugged.

"Apparently we've got three hundred of the things."

Koldin slowly turned his head.

"'Zhree hundred."

"Two hundred ninety-six, actually. Four were condemned before shipment."

"Only four?"

The corporal grinned.

"You want me to bring you ammunition?"

Koldin looked through the crooked sights again.

"Yes."

The range sat on the far side of the vehicle sheds where the base opened toward a low embankment of red earth. Beyond it began scrub and then jungle. The air smelled of wet leaves, gun oil, fuel, and hot dirt.

Koldin stood behind the firing line with the weapon resting against his shoulder.

Someone had found the ammunition.

The cartridges were old but clean.

He had loaded thirty into the drum.

Loading it had taken almost five minutes.

The mechanism required the spring to be wound with a small folding key and the cartridges inserted along a spiral track. Too much tension and the follower caught. Too little and the gun failed to feed.

The drum currently installed in the gun was number 17.

The weapon was also number 17.

Koldin had decided not to introduce number 17 to any other magazines until he understood the nature of their relationship.

Obs'rt stood several meters behind him.

The baxxid's segmented body rested low against the ground. Six dark eyes watched the weapon independently.

"So," Obs'rt said.

Koldin kept the muzzle downrange.

"So."

"Is it terrible?"

"I have not fired it yet."

"You have inspected it."

"Yes."

"And?"

Koldin thought.

"It has survived many opportunities to stop existing."

Obs'rt made a low sound which passed for baxxid laughter.

"That is not necessarily criticism."

"No."

Koldin pulled the bolt back.

The metallic scrape sounded very loud beside his ear.

He let it go.

The bolt remained open.

He settled the stock against his shoulder.

The weapon had no selector markings except three stamped symbols worn nearly flat. He had determined through experimentation that one position was safe, one semiautomatic, and one automatic.

Probably.

He selected semiautomatic.

A paper silhouette stood fifty meters downrange.

Koldin breathed out.

Pulled the trigger.

The gun fired.

The report struck him like a board swung beside his head.

His ears flattened automatically.

The bolt slammed forward, fired, recoiled, and remained open again.

A small cloud of old preservative oil smoked from the receiver.

Koldin did not move.

He blinked.

Somewhere beyond the ringing he heard Obs'rt say something.

"What?"

"I said did it hit?"

Koldin looked downrange.

There was a hole in the target.

High left.

He fired again.

Another hole.

Lower.

He adjusted his grip.

Third shot.

Closer.

Fourth.

Closer still.

The gun kicked strangely, not hard but in several directions at once, as if the mechanism itself had opinions about where the muzzle should be.

Koldin lowered it.

"Semiautomatic works."

"Automatic?"

Koldin looked at Obs'rt.

Obs'rt looked back.

One of the baxxid's forward limbs made a small gesture which could only mean proceed.

Koldin turned toward the target again.

He moved the selector.

Automatic.

He leaned forward.

There was a very brief moment in which nothing had happened yet.

Then he pulled the trigger.

The weapon became an event.

The first three rounds struck somewhere near the target.

The next several climbed rapidly upward.

Koldin dragged the muzzle down.

The drum rattled beneath the receiver. The stock vibrated against his shoulder. The weapon fired with the frantic industrial violence of a machine trying to disassemble itself while being forcibly prevented from doing so, causing Koldin's vision to gray out for a moment.

The jungle returned the sound in fragments.

He released the trigger.

Silence.

Then ringing.

A leaf drifted down somewhere near the berm.

Koldin stared at the gun.

Smoke curled lazily from the barrel jacket.

Obs'rt spoke behind him.

"Impressions?"

Koldin waited until his hearing returned enough to be sure he had understood the question.

"It fires."

"Good."

"It is extremely enzhusiastic about firing."

"Also good."

"Zhe sights are decorative."

"Less good."

"Zhe drum is unpleasant. It's heavy. It's complicated. It appears to be individually married to the weapon."

Obs'rt's mandibles moved slightly.

"Can soldiers use it?"

Koldin considered the question.

That was different.

He looked at the stamped gun in his hands.

There were three hundred of them somewhere behind the stores building. Three hundred guns assembled in some distant place by workers who perhaps had never imagined Tilmuhl. The people who made them might be dead. The factory might no longer exist. Yet here they were.

Things persisted.

Sometimes longer than their purposes. Sometimes purpose came afterward.

He imagined a convoy driver carrying one beneath his seat. A radio operator defending a headquarters. A cook firing from behind sandbags while somebody screamed that the perimeter had broken.

He looked down at his own hands.

The grip was uncomfortable but usable.

For a yinglet, it was miserable but functional. For a human, it was probably tolerable. The cartridge was weak enough that almost anyone could control it with practice. At close distances, the sights scarcely mattered.

And if somebody needed a gun badly enough then complaints about craftsmanship became abstractions.

"Yes," Koldin said.

Obs'rt tilted his head.

"That sounded reluctant."

"It is a bad weapon."

"But soldiers can use it."

"Yes."

"Then perhaps it is not a bad weapon."

Koldin looked at him.

"Zhat is not how zhat works."

The baxxid made that low laugh again. Obs'rt was usually grimly serious and was a stickler for order, but he seemed to be enjoying today. 

Koldin removed the drum.

The metal was warm.

Stamped into its rear surface beneath decades of scratches was a maker's mark he had not noticed earlier. Not a royal arsenal. Not even a proper company crest.

Just the name of some little workshop in a province he had never heard of.

ISTULA COOPERATIVE METALWORKS

Below it: FOR HOME AND COMMON DEFENCE

He ran one claw across the letters.

There were wars inside objects.

Not metaphorical wars. Real ones. Old budgets. Old shortages. Frightened committees. Men arguing across desks. Workers smoking beside stamping presses. Somebody deciding that tyura-wood was too expensive. Somebody deciding that two screws could become one. Someone somewhere saying it only had to work.

And then the object survived all of them.

It crossed the Jraci sea.

It came to Tilmuhl.

Koldin set it on the bench beside him.

"Give zhese to vehicle crews," he said.

Obs'rt's posture changed slightly.

"Not infantry?"

"No."

"Why?"

Koldin looked toward the target.

There were perhaps nine holes in it.

He had fired twenty-seven rounds.

"Because if you give one to an infantryman he may begin believing it is a rifle."

Obs'rt considered this.

"Fair."

"And mark zhe magazines."

"They are already marked."

"Mark zhem more."

"Very well."

Koldin picked up the weapon again.

One cartridge remained somewhere inside the drum. He could hear it moving when he tilted the magazine.

A tiny metallic click.

He stared at number 17.

There was something obscene about how much civilization depended upon things like this. Not the gun itself but the agreement surrounding it. That this object was a weapon. That the uniform made him a soldier. That the line through the jungle was a border. That the men beyond it were enemies if somebody far away signed the appropriate paper.

All of it seemed solid until one examined the fasteners.

Then there were file marks everywhere.

Koldin placed the drum beside the gun.

"Functional," he said.

Obs'rt looked at him.

"Acceptable?"

Koldin glanced at the old inspection card he had carried out with him.

FUNCTION ACCEPTABLE

Twenty-three years later the words were still correct.

He hated that.

"Unfortunately."