Warlock of Omaha

By Hemaccabe

Chapter 8 Awkward Beginnings

The raid on the "Fomor," was complete and the bolts were turned in, one way or the other for both.

You'd think I would be at my mental and physical leisure and you would be completely wrong. Aside from the questions Poison Ivy had raised about how I was living my life and whether I could achieve real happiness I had other areas of concern.

First was, what the hell was I facing? The so called "Fomor" at the warehouse were very un-Fomor-like. Jake and I had assumed they were Fomor. Jake had told me during our talks after the fact that he had never smelled Fomor before, so he just assumed they were Fomor. I had read a variety of reports about the Fomor but had never before tangled with them directly. There was the barge and the water monster, very Fomor, but then the guards and Poison Ivy were very NOT Fomor. I knew the Fomor weren't a monolithic force. They're composed of many different internal parties and jurisdictions. It could be I was facing my own happy pocket or something completely different.

I had now had four incidents in my life. White Man, Forest Man, Mob Incident and Poison Ivy. Poison wasn't exactly the same as Forest Man, but I definitely felt like they were related. Poison's thugs were definitely reminiscent of White Man's, but MIBs were kind of a generic look. Were they all connected? Did they just seem to be? The Mob incident was the only outlier. That said, I had always assumed Mr. Albici had acted on his own out of general mobster cussedness. On the other hand, what if he had been manipulated by whatever was otherwise harassing me.

So that was stirring around. Not much I could do until I learned more. But my mind kept gnawing on it, reviewing them detail by detail looking for something that probably wasn't there. Forcing me to review my least happy moments over and over.

In terms of my equipment and load out, I now had some major work to do.

The Svartalves may not have needed the bolts or for all I know they needed exactly five hundred bolts for a specific project. The bolts might have just gone into a reserve hardware library, like at a hardware store or well stocked shop. I had confidence the Svartalves kept a very well stocked shop. Now that they had 5/8" bolts I could imagine being called back in a couple months with a request for ¾".

On the other hand, the Svartalves had taught me a new trick which had improved the quality of my magic. They not only taught me but had functionally assigned me a set of learning practice problems, like an elementary school kid learning math. It had definitely been a wax on wax off moment. That may well have been their objective. The bolts could have just been a learning exercise. Having examined my pistol, they may have realized the low level of my ability. So, they assigned me a job with no purpose other than teaching me a new skill so they could keep me in their virtual reserve hardware library in case more work was necessary. The truth is that to do their style of enchantment took me almost all day for the first bolt in the first batch. After that I had thought the reason I had six months was that it would take that long to do the enchantment work. However, by the last few batches, I was doing it in under thirty seconds a bolt. I had become more proficient not just in the Svartalf magic, but in magic in general. I had substantially better control and finesse than I ever had before.

That meant there was a substantial opportunity to upgrade my gear across the board.

I also had become aware over the last six months of a new generation of CFRTPCs. CFRTPCs are the modern version of things like Kevlar, very tough plastic backed by very strong synthetic fibers. Most CFRTPCs had been rigid up to this point. However, the new generation was supposed to be flexible, and might look like leather if treated right. That implied the possibility of a whole new generation of armor. I hadn't checked on the ceramic, but I wouldn't be surprised if there was a new generation of ceramic as well.

I had already been planning on producing a Baby version two to include a new sighting system. I had debated back and forth about retrofit versus new gun. Retrofit would mean Baby was down for a while, which would have been bad if the warehouse had come up while she was in the shop but would have meant least time used. Baby version two had some redundancy built in and I liked that. I might have huge stockpiles of ammo, but I only had one pistol and one rifle. If something smashed one or one was dropped in the river, welcome to a huge step down while I slowly assembled a replacement. That was a major strategic liability. Building a new Baby for the new sighting system meant I would at least have a pretty good backup rifle if something went wrong. Now I had the new enchantment tool. That mean version two would be a substantial improvement.

My Glock was also ready for an upgrade. My current Glock 20 was mostly stock, with some performance bits, an early version of my barrel and, of course, as much magic as I could pour in.

Updated weapons were on the shortlist, but my highest priority was ammo. With what I had learned about enchantment, the possibility of substantially better ammo was very apparent. I had a short-term goal of 76 new rounds in 10mm and 71 of 50 Beo. It's funny. I had been debating with myself what my ideal combat load out for ammo would be for years. More ammo is obviously better but adds weight and bulk. The raid had settled the question. There was room for flexibility if necessary, but it was good to have it settled for now.

I had been designing the new rounds in my head for some time. I liked the basic construction I already had, but how I would lay down the magic had completely changed and with that I felt a new sorting system was in order. How OC of me.

I would now have stage one, purchased ammo. This category could have a wide variety in it from cheap plinking rounds to high tech man killer rounds to stuff that had not been legal for purchase.

Stage two would be the ammo I produced for public competition. The steel was replaced by poly tips that would not be illegal and easier on the competition targets. My 50 Beo was known to shatter steel targets. I participated in a lot of competitions. Competitions give me a real opportunity for practice, training and testing my skills and equipment. In addition, they're as close to real as I can readily get, so even though going represented a risk, it's also a balanced reward. In fact, there was a major Three Gun match in three months. I wanted my new gear load out to be substantially ready by then.

Stage three would be my standard steel tip without enchantment.

Stage four would roughly correspond to what had previously been stage two and stage five would correspond to stage three.

The new stage six would represent the literal state of my art. I had previously produced different levels. Now I would focus on stage six exclusively and keep stage five in all weapons until there was stage six available.

There was one other major area where I was dealing with something new. I knew in Chicago there were werewolves who had started out human and learned how. There was disagreement in the knowledgeable discussion groups about whether they had been minor talents first or if they were completely vanilla humans. Either way, it was something I wanted. Unfortunately, none of the werewolves had shown up at the Bright Futures Society meeting, or if they did, I had not realized it was them. Further, how does one walk up and ask, "Hi, I'm a complete stranger. You don't know me from Adam. I could be trying to kill you or worse. Would you give me the secret to your greatest strength?"

Then Jake showed up. I doubted he could teach me much about being a werewolf. He admitted, while we talked as he recovered that it had always been there and had manifested when he turned thirteen. He blamed some of his trouble in school on the lycanthropy. He had no idea if it was something possible to teach.

We had agreed before the raid that I would be allowed to examine him afterward. I had, at length, while he was in the bed unconscious recovering. I then worked my own magic in myself to see if I could duplicate what I was seeing in Jake on myself. At first, I kept screwing up. I couldn't make the magic go right. Then I could get it to go right but couldn't hold the pattern. But sitting next to an unconscious person in bed for several days with little else to do, gives one plenty of time for practice. I kept working at it as I worked on the bike, then as I worked the final batches of bolts and eventually could hold the pattern. It felt really good, which helped motivate me to hold it longer and longer. By Thursday, after I came back from Chicago the pattern was holding itself pretty much without any conscious effort on my part.

On Friday morning, I woke in the Den and was crazy hungry. I went to my room, did my morning ablutions, noticing my beard was much fuller than normal as I shaved, and got dressed. Then I went down and had my regular breakfast. When I had finished my regular, already pretty hardy breakfast, this morning with blueberry muffin, Miranda started to clear my dishes. I stopped her by asking, "I'm still hungry can we do it again?"

Miranda gave me a surprised, "Okay," and went back in the kitchen.

She went on to make another breakfast and brought bits out as she finished cooking them. Miranda normally serves a perfectly timed meal in stages. The second round was rougher as she was basically just cooking everything and was running it out as it became ready. I wasn't picky. Despite eating two breakfasts, I was still not all full, but didn't want to bother Miranda any more. I'd already made her late for class, so I went to my shop instead of begging for more food, but it was hard.

As I sat in my workshop, I reviewed my various new projects, did research and planning and made orders. I expected a stream of overnight parcels to start making their way to my home soon.

My first priority was the bullets. Previously there were limiting factors on how magic my bullets could get. I had only so much magic to give and the process had been wasteful, probably 95% of what I was pushing out was burned off into the atmosphere. Also, there was only so much I could wedge in, as I pushed in more magic, each bit took exponentially more and more from me until it approached infinity. Different attributes had minimums as to how much magic they required. Lastly, I couldn't take a week to make one bullet. At the 'Fomor' warehouse, I'd been painfully aware that every time I had pulled the trigger on a stage three, half a day of my life went down the barrel.

I have a lot of experience enchanting bullets and with the new enchantment process but putting the two together wasn't a gimme.

Now, with what I had learned from the Svartalves, I could put in way more energy, both because it took less from me, a much larger percentage of what I pushed out went in and I could push in a lot more before it started getting really expensive. Further, the long production run of bolts had honed my skills to a razor's edge meaning I could do it in minimum time. I only had to finish my design to start production, but the design wouldn't come. My normal design technique had been to sit in the lab and stare at the problem until the solution came, maybe trying a few different things to jog the process along. That wasn't working. These new Stage Sixes would be wicked. At least if I could ever figure out how to do it.

As I sat around trying to create a new bullet design, the clock slowly ticked over to ten am, I had to get up. At first I thought, "I'll take a quick jog around the perimeter." I exercise a lot, so it felt reasonable. But I couldn't settle into my normal pace. I was sprinting. It felt good. Really good. Like being high good. I kept at it for an hour, sprinting the whole time and then decided I needed more. I ran down to and all the way around the nearby University campus and then stopped at the student union. They have seven restaurants in the student union. I ate a big meal at each one. I was still hungry. I also was aware of just how weird I was behaving. I didn't have any of my armor or even my pistol. I was making myself a stupid easy target. I ran home.

I got home around one. A new, very elegant, Stage 6 design had popped into my head and I began production. I had good prototypes fast and began production soon after.

I decided a little celebration was in order, so I called Jake and told him I was taking him to dinner again. He agreed.

I got up from my desk in the shop around four and jogged into the house. I took a shower, got dressed in clean clothes as I normally would for going out. I noticed my shirt wasn't fitting very well. Worse, my armor vest also wasn't going on. I suppose that shouldn't surprise me, I'd been eating like a wild pig. I pulled off my vest and shirt and went to look in the mirror expecting to see a distended gut. Instead, I noticed my stomach seemed flatter than usual. I had been a fairly hard exerciser for the last ten years, but it had never been enough to overcome my earlier life of limited physical effort. Now I was seeing what seemed to be the beginning of an actual six pack! The problem, I realized as I continued to look, was my chest had grown! I wedged myself into my now not fitting so well gear and went to get Jake. I had to overcome the desire to run there.

I got Jake and took him back to Jericho's. I had considered going to a teppanyaki place I like, but meals there were served in seatings. That had never been a problem before as they served a large meal that had always meant leftovers, now I was famished to the point I needed more. Jericho's could get another plate of food in front of me fast if I was still hungry.

Jake and I settled in and ordered. We had some business to discuss.

"So how are you settling in?" I asked.

"Okay." He answered. "Kelly took me over to Nebraska Furniture Mart and we bought a bed and linens. We also got me a TV and a computer. I'm not sure why I need a computer, but Kelly said to get it. I got some more clothes and some other stuff. They delivered the bed."

"Well that's nice. Do you have any plans?" I asked.

"What do you mean?" Jake asked.

"Well, I'm happy to cover your basic expenses for a while. It's not a big deal. But I think you would be happier if you found something to do with yourself." I answered.

"You mean like a job?" He asked.

"Well, yes. Or perhaps going back to school." I answered.

"I'll think about it. Man, you sound like my Ma." He answered looking unsure.

Something about the way he said that felt very present tense.

"Your Mother is alive?" I asked.

"Of course, she's back in Lowell." Jake answered.

"When was the last time you talked to her?" I probed.

"I guess a little before I left with Cassie." He answered uncertainly.

"Tonight. Call your Mother. Tell her where you are and that you are all right." I said with more force then I wanted.

"Hey, don't be so tight. She doesn't worry like that." He tried to shrug it off.

"Call her." I said with finality.

Then, deciding to change the subject as Jake nodded, I asked, "How are you getting along with Kelly?"

"I like her. A lot. But it's so weird." He answered very forthrightly.

"How so?" I asked.

"I was so in love with Cassie up until just a few days ago. Now I'm looking at another girl." He answered looking kind of sad.

"Cassie was just magic. She was working on you. It wasn't real. What we did in the warehouse broke the spell, so it makes sense that's going away. If we run into her again, she'll probably try it on you again. Real feelings for a real person will help you fight it. Make you stronger. Don't be afraid of how you feel about Kelly. Even if it doesn't work out, at least it'll be real." I told him using my older and wiser voice.

"Okay." He answered.

"I'm not sure what your long-term plans are but let me tell you what I'd like. I like you Jake. I'd like you to stay here in Omaha near me. That way, I could look out for you best. We're both small fish in a big ocean full of very nasty predators. We're a lot stronger together than we are apart. If you decide you want to go your own way somewhere else, I'll send you on your way and wish you well. Just let me know what you want."

"Okay. That's reasonable." He answered.

I then continued, "Tell me something about this werewolf thing. I've been trying to figure it out. Lately, I've been crazy hungry, and my clothes aren't fitting is that normal?"

That got Jake to laugh.

"When I was thirteen and it hit, I went from being a 4"8' nothing to this in just a few months. It drove my Ma crazy. She couldn't keep up with the food or the clothes. I couldn't focus on school. Just trying to get enough food to eat. Eventually, it settled down. Just give it time." Jake answered amused and I think happy that he could be the wise experienced one for a change.

I realized that we were both on our third king cut of prime rib and I was still hungry. Oh man.

I had wanted to buy Jake a car before but discovered he didn't have a Driver's license. "I have one in Massachusetts, but it got lost on the night they grabbed Cassie." he had explained.

At dinner I explained, "I set an appointment at ten tomorrow morning with a lawyer friend named Jim. He'll help you get your identity together.

"You mean the boat guy?" Jake responded.

"No, a different Jim. Will you go?" I answered and gave him Jim's business card.

"Yeah, sure. I'd like to have my license again." Jake answered good naturedly but a little embarrassed.

I could have done the research, and maybe I could have made Jake do it for himself, but I had enough on my plate, and I wanted it done and I didn't think Jake would be able to handle it well or quickly. Jim would help Jake get his license and do a bit of background checking for me.

"I'm also going to set up an appointment soon to meet a dangerous guy. When I go, I'll want you with me. Okay?"

"Yeah sure." Jake answered. "When?"

"I'm not sure. I want this werewolf thing to settle down first and to get some other projects done. I'm doing a lot of work on my gear and that could take a bit. We'll see. I'll give you some warning when we get closer."

I had decided to meet DiAngelo. There might be some common ground for us with the Fomor. It would be tricky on several levels. DiAngelo would likely see an overture as weakness. My business was all about security, being seen with the likes of DiAngelo would not be good for business. My business was a strategic asset. It provided access. It provided money.

The next couple days were the weekend. I did more research on a number of subjects including ceramic armor. I called my guy at the place where I got my stuff. They had improved their stuff in the last six months. I had helped them make the jump from level 4 to what they called level 5 armor, was a major investor and customer so I was inside the circle of trust. They considered their new stuff level 5.1 not level 6. They were working on improving, but they didn't expect anything new for another year. They would drop ship me a generic new chest piece Monday along with some samples. It wouldn't be a custom fitted piece like I had now, but having been a size large since age 18, I had bought an extra-large.

On Monday, I went and got my labs up and running again. There are a number of institutions of higher learning in the greater Omaha area. The two largest and most prestigious are the University of Nebraska at Omaha and Creighton. I have a relationship with both. I don't teach. Both got significant donations to their endowments to start. They each get a PhD scientist, at no cost, on their faculty list and when I publish, and I do publish, they get prestige from it which is worth it's weight in gold to an academic institution. My papers haven't been in top of the line publications like Science or Nature, yet. But they have been published in second tier publications. They do get read. They do get cited.

I have substantial lab space and good parking spots at both universities. The girls all carpool to one institution or the other and like to use my parking spaces. The labs are filled with equipment I've paid for. I have a group of faculty advisors who send me over grad students when I ask for them. The grad students are bright, sharp and do a lot of the scut work saving me a lot of time. The grad students learn a huge amount in real world applications. The labs had been dormant while I worked on the bolts and the faculty advisors were glad to have me back. My lab in one university is for materials and the other for computer and electronic engineering. I won't say which is which, like it matters.

By Tuesday the parcels were coming in. The new armor chest piece fit, but it wasn't as fitted as the old one had been. I was still eating like a horse, running like a crazy person and my body kept changing.

I also found myself telling my faculty advisors I was looking for a new intern to work in my computer and electronic engineering lab. They knew what I looked for in an intern. They knew she would have to be brilliant and capable. They also knew she had to be lightning hot. Yes, it's very sexist and illegal, but it's my money and I can get away with it. The advisors accept it because good paying internships are hard to come by and crazy valuable to a school of higher learning. With this intern, I'd be generating an average of one per year. They played by my rules to keep the option. The only problem would be if one of the girls complained, and one can see from my home life, they don't complain.

I also have groups of perfectly normal, well as brilliant as I can recruit, grad students in both labs doing my research whom I mentor. It's a normal academic arrangement which allows them to do some work of their own and have something to publish. My grad students were running tests in my materials lab. I had found there were two examples of the new breed of CFRTPCs that were more flexible, and I now had a sample of the new 5.1 ceramic as well. I got my grad students working on running all sorts of tests on the samples.

After a few days of testing, we found the CFRTPCs, we'll refer to them as Type A and Type B, were not created equal. Type A might be more flexible than 650 steel but wasn't glove leather. More like shoe leather. Type B was more leather-like, but not nearly as bullet proof. Neither had the resilience, fire proofing and other features I wanted, and my current leather substitute had. I should have only had samples, not formulas, but I had stolen the formulas as well. I went to work with the two grad students I had just working on CFRTPCs and we reformulated adding the resilience and fire proofing from the ground up. We did both types of CFRTPCs and we made some wrong turns but came up with some great stuff.

For example, we made me new boots. We used improved Type A for the soles. I still had a ceramic shank, now made from the 5.1 ceramic. I won't bore you with how I made the ceramic toes crush proof. The leather uppers were made from improved Type B. My feet had been a weak spot. The ceramic shank had protected the bottom and the toe, but the body of the foot was exposed, depending on leg armor for cover and that not fully covering. Now the bottoms were much better protected, and the tops had serious armor protection. They still looked like the grey/green suede boots that were favored by many local Air Force guys.

My electronics lab was working on developing a new scope and helmet for me. In the firearms world, they say that the scope, or "glass" should cost as much as the rifle. My time shooting was proving the truth of this sentiment. That meant a major upgrade in glass was in order. Baby has a Trijicon VCOG set for .308 mounted. It's a very good scope and by luck, the .308 markings match up very well to the .50 Beo as I shot it, but not perfectly. The way a standard scope works is there's a cross in the middle, hold that cross on target and if you're rifle is sighted in right and you hold and shoot well, you hit the target. However, bullets drop as they go further down range, though sometimes they also rise do to the relationship of scope to barrel. In addition, there might be wind from either direction pushing sideways. A good scope will have hash marks on the cross helping you keep track so you can adjust one mark for wind a couple marks for distance and bang, you're still on target. With practice, it can be done fairly quickly. I felt electronics had moved on and a new scope was possible.

Companies like Tracking Point had started selling electronic smart scopes. I had one in inventory and had stolen their software. I knew I could do better. I could put a variety of sensors on the rifle. We were at least 20 years past when every good scope should have a laser rangefinder/designator that would give exact range. A micro Doppler radar now existed that would give exact wind velocities in three dimensions, not two. A gyro, not unlike the one in your cell phone, was readily available which could tell what angle the gun was at. In addition, there were other sensors that could go in like a humidity sensor, altitude sensor, etc. This would allow the scope to make the judgment where to put the aim point, improving accuracy and speed by an order of magnitude over the VCOG. All the electronics would be behind a glass lens that was the size of a quarter and cost six digits.

The crowning glory was an insanely capable image sensor. They weren't really available on the market. I was using contacts in Japan just to know they existed. They were being used for things like spy satellites and telescopes and other beyond bleeding edge applications. One cost a lot. They were wholesaled in sets of five, so I bought five.

The scope, based on initial design, would be the size of, and look like, a small rifle mounted flashlight. Nobody would think twice when they saw it attached to the rifle. It would be mounted in the frame below the barrel. I could do that because I wouldn't be looking through it. The image would be wirelessly transferred to my helmet.

My helmet was also going through a major rebuild. I had previously had a clear visor with a very limited head's up display. The advances in CFRTPCs meant a new helmet could be a generation further along in protective ability. My old helmet had mics all around. Microphone technology had advanced a generation beyond what I had before. The big change was what I called my "frog eyes." They were two very big, very capable lenses mounted on my forehead. They were backed by two more of the image sensors. They would provide vision through sealed goggles attached to the helmet. The frog eyes were capable of telescopic vision that was insane, I could watch ants two miles away. It was also packed with high-performance lowlight and infrared. This also put my eyes under armor and the way the muffs protected my ears from loud noises, the goggles would protect from bright flashes.

This kept the top of my head all under armor, especially eyes and ears.

The scope could impose an image on my vision through the goggles so I could see what my guns were looking at and where they were aimed. Among other nice advantages, this gave me the ability to look around corners without exposing my head.

For aiming, the scope could be used two ways. Like Tracking Point, for long range sniping, I could designate a target and the gun would fire itself when aimed true. However, I also wanted to create a short-range system where the scope would keep track of exactly where the gun was pointing taking into account all the variables for you so one could focus on the shot and battle, not hash marks.

I had a goal for all my equipment of three months. There was a Three Gun tournament I wanted to go to, and I wanted my gear ready for that. I already promised the twins to meet them there. There was another motivator. I just knew whoever was behind White Man and Poison Ivy, I had their full attention and they were coming.

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