The last bolt dropped into place with a clean, mechanical sigh. For the past thirty hours the FAWS bay had been a hive of measured chaos — adapters milled, receivers reshaped, magazines tested, and rifles stressed to fatigue. Now, as the first pale light of dawn crept through the high windows, Sirius Blake stood back from his bench and let himself breathe.
He watched the array of weapons laid out like obedient animals: carbines, sidearms, submachine models — every light-class firearm in FAWS' inventory, each fitted with the new modular collar or adapter that accepted his micro-mags. The micro-slugs lined the tray beside them: tiny, dense, balanced rounds that finally matched his original intention.
ARI announced the state of play with clipped efficiency in his head:
> "Mission Log: Retrofit – Micro System Integration — COMPLETE. Status report: Micro-Mag — CHECK. Micro-Slug — CHECK. Retrofitted weapons — CHECK. Resource reserves: nominal. Estimated time remaining before field deployment window: twenty-nine hours."
Sirius felt a grin pull at his face until it hurt. He rubbed the grease from his palms and said aloud, half to the tools and half to ARI, "Time to test my baby."
He slung a repurposed FAWS range vest over his shirt, secured a micro-mag in a belt pouch, and walked toward the training range. The air outside the bay smelled of ozone and burnt wire — the familiar perfume of machines and midnight labor. On the way he passed technicians nodding once, tired but relieved. Loras gave him a brief nod, a look that said more than the word good.
The firing range was a long, cavernous hall lined with reactive target bays. Targets could simulate armor densities, angles, even Hivebug chitin — ARI could tune them to a thousand variables. Sirius set up at lane twelve, slotted a micro-mag into his test carbine, and felt the tiny magazine click home with a satisfying, solid lock. The weapon felt light in his hands; without the bulky magazine the balance shifted forward, recoil more pointer-like and easier to control.
"Power reading?" he asked ARI.
> "Expected muzzle velocity preserved. Recoil dampening improved by 18% due to reduced moment of inertia. Effective rate-of-fire preserved. Ammunition capacity increased by 30% per compact mag compared to standard issue. Stability within acceptable variance under simulated thermal stress."
Sirius grinned and braced his shoulders. He aimed at the first target — a thirty-meter composite target with simulated chitin — and squeezed the trigger.
The carbine answered like a thing with a clean throat. The rounds burst in a tight, predictable cone. The target took round after round with precise, penetrating impacts. The micro-slugs punched deeper than a standard round of that size should have, shockwaves of controlled energy, the tips embedding, the composite buckling exactly where ARI predicted.
He fired three bursts, adjusting aim between strings. Each pull felt smoother, the recoil tugging less at his cheek, the gun returning to the target with a speed that made follow-up shots trivial. He smiled at the numbers ARI flicked into his vision: target integrity down 42% faster, effective suppression window extended, ammo per carry increased dramatically.
The weight savings hit him next. Slinging a standard mag had always shifted the weapon's balance, pulling it down and making long aim tiring. The micro-mag changed that entirely: higher shot count, lower carried mass, less fatigue on long patrols.
"Feels good, ARI," he breathed, pleased.
> "Affirmative. Expected ergonomic improvements realized."
He worked down the lane, adjusting feed timing, testing rapid-fire cycling, and then vied for a controlled full-auto run to simulate suppression. The prototype held. Pipes of laser measurement confirmed the rounds fed cleanly. For minutes the range was nothing but the steady, happy staccato of a test that was going better than he'd dared hope.
And then, mid-string, the carbine hit a dead, hollow click.
Sirius froze on the trigger, the noise dying into a ringing silence. He glanced down at the mag indicator ARI projected — a small, cruel line that had gone from green to empty.
"Out?" he said aloud, more in disbelief than anger. He slapped the mag release and yanked the micro-mag free. He flicked his wrist, grabbed a fresh pack, and shoved it in.
The feed lip slid and locked as before. He took a breath and fired again — a single, crisp burst — then stopped mid-press. Something felt off. Not the gun. Not the ammunition. The reload itself — that tiny, now-crucial action — still took the same microseconds, the same fumbling finger movements, the same second of vulnerability.
ARI's voice kept the calm of a clock:
> "Observation: weapon performance upgraded. Recoil dampening, balance, and ammo capacity enhanced. However, reload latency remains statistically unchanged. Probability of reload-induced casualty remains significant."
Sirius frowned and the grin slipped. He replayed the quick motion in his head: mag out, mag in, press, fire. The micro-mag had improved everything, but the human element — the single moment when a soldier's hand had to remove an empty magazine and seat a new one — had not been addressed. With micro-mags being smaller, soldiers could carry many more of them, but they still had to change them in the open. The time saved elsewhere meant nothing if the reload pause remained an Achilles heel.
He set the carbine down and leaned over the bench, elbows on the steel. A dozen tiny ideas skittered through his mind like beetles under a lamp. He could redesign the magazine release — a quicker latch, a springier ejector; but the core issue wasn't the latch alone. He could add a mechanical assist — but any mechanical complexity could jam. He needed something clean, quick, reliable, and utterly fail-safe in the mud and chaos of a real field.
A slow smile ticked across his face, less childish now and more certain.
"ARI," he said, voice quiet with a man's sudden clarity, "what would it take to make the mag eject itself the instant the last round fires? An automatic ejection that drops the micro-mag clear, ready to be swapped without fumbling."
> "Initiating analysis," ARI replied. Screens of data flickered through his vision: ejector cams, feed lip pressures, last-round detection circuits, micro-actuator endurance. "Proposed sub-mission: Automatic Micro-Mag Ejection. Objective: integrate a last-round sensor and rapid-eject actuator into weapon firing cycle. Constraint: minimal additional recoil, no increase to failure modes, compatibility with retrofitted receiver collars. Estimated prototype build time: three hours. Estimated testing time: one hour. Deployable in controlled batch after QA within eight hours."
Sirius' eyes went wide. Three hours. Eight hours to deploy a controlled batch. He felt something in his chest uncoil — equal parts exhaustion and adrenaline.
"That's it," he murmured. He rubbed his palms on his trousers, then laughed — a short, sharp exhale. "Of course. Make the mag leave the gun when you need it gone." He slid a fresh micro-mag into the carbine while ARI began compiling the parts list into a neat order queue.
The range's targets waited like patient judges. He had verified the micro-slug and micro-mag worked in principle. Now the problem of human reload time would be solved in hardware that took over the last dangerous motion for the soldier. If it worked in the field, a recruit could throw fifty micro-mags on a belt, empty one and have it spit out before the Hivebug could snap his head back. Soldiers would keep firing. Lives would be saved.
He grinned, the grin of a man who'd found the final note of a melody, and bent back to work. The bay around him hummed. Outside, somewhere on the lines, men and women still bled. Inside, in the long, solitary hours of design and testing, Sirius set to build the small piece that could tilt everything.
> "Minor Mission generated: Automatic Micro-Mag Ejection. Priority: Critical. Begin subtask one: Last-Round Detection Circuit." ARI's words were steady, practical, and blessedly precise.
He rolled up his sleeves and picked up a soldering iron. "Let's make it drop," he said, and the metal sang.