Chapter 1: "Arms and Arming"
Part 1: Time Lapse
After a bit more than seven months, I'm still trapped in Equestria. I have no idea how to get home, no idea if I'll ever see Earth again. In that time, I've become as adept at pizza making as I've ever been, but I've also begun to apply my knowledge of firearms into general tinkering and, of course, weapons design.
Why weapons design? The fight with Discord. The idea that there's danger out there that we didn't realize. Examining the Royal Guard showed me that while the Royal Guard may have some forces, they don't have an edge. Equestria is evenly matched with all of its potential opponents, despite the violence actually being very tame. I've taken Discord's words to heart - I know I'm going to end up corrupting this pure place with my humanity (both the good and bad sides), but I feel that I might be able to turn some of humanity's more destructive tendencies towards something positive.
Humans, after all, are the masters of warfare.
With Celestia's blessing, I set up a workshop in Applejack's barn. It grew into a small foundry, and I've managed to somewhat duplicate the FEG PA-63 in form and function. It's a simple blowback design, so, not that much needed to be done to re-create it. I named this after an Earth war hero, a lesser-known Cavalry officer from the American Revolution, "Light Horse" Henry Lee (interestingly, the father of the more famous General Robert E. Lee of the American Civil War). It's almost an exact duplicate, but since Ponies don't have thumbs, I deleted the slide lock and release lever, which also eased manufacture.
The Lee Mark I's (EP-1 Mk. I Lee) also did away with trigger guards in favor of squeeze levers. I got the idea from an old paintball gun a friend once let me toy with, that had a trigger designed for three fingers. I decided trigger guards would be unwieldly, so the Lees are Double-Action Only designs with eight-pound triggers.
From this, I'd expanded into making something that looks like the original Mauser Cavalry Carbine - the PA-63's straight blowback mechanism adapted into a rifle, firing a longer cartridge with spitzer (pointed) bullets. It gets about 4MOA at 100 meters, which is "minute of murder" more or less on anything pony or full horse sized. Since it's still using what amounts to pistol powder, it might be better thought of as a Pony rendition of the old M-1 Carbine, but with spitzer bullets instead of round nosed ball ammo.
Equestria's technology level has me stuck at the late 19th century level of industrial capacity, mixed with pre-Industrial Revolution decentralization. This has hampered my progress in getting the barrels to be more cohesively uniform and, therefore, more accurate. Hand-made barrels come out better, and improve accuracy by a significant enough margin that I made the first "sniper rifle" using one of Twilight's old telescopes, and Rarity's impressive knowledge of gem crafting to make a blue-tinted magnifying lens of about 2.4 power. Enough for 300-meter engagements.
I named the rifle for another Earth hero - the Sherman Mark I (ER-1 Mk. I Sherman). Sherman was a man I respected, militarily. He took his mission and damned the consequences. He screwed the enemy in the ass with railroad spikes and gave no fucks.
Fucks, yes, I've ended up curbing my (already fairly mild) cursing habit. Fluttershy doesn't like those words.
The rifle is a traditional layout, with a lengthened grip area to account for hooves, and a large push-bar or "lemon squeezer" trigger instead of a standard scoop-like one finger design. They're ponies. Even if they can generate a mild telekinetic field that allows them to hold odd objects, a finger-sized and shaped trigger is a bad idea in combat.
The Wonderbolts.. I had to design special arms for them. Their Shermans were modified into ER-2 Mk. I Mitchell Carbines (Billy Mitchell, look him up). These had metallic stocks that slipped over the whole foreleg, allowing them to fight in the air without having to worry about holding their guns. For Close Air Support, I made simple weighted bombs with contact fuses.
All this, in just a few months. The designs were ready to build, and I had started to hand assemble frames from parts. The biggest problem was getting barrels for the weapons - I had 30 Shermans, 10 Mitchells, and 40 Lees assembled, but with no "production quality" barrels or ammunition. I managed to make exactly three rifle and two pistol barrels with standard cut rifling - which is basically running a drill bit down a barrel multiple times until the rifling is fully cut. Since the drills were manually powered, this took ages to do.
As for ammunition, I could get the parts I needed - cases, primers, bullets, and powder - as separate parts, but I had to put them together myself. I had to actually construct a machine (also manually powered) to seat the bullets and place the primers and all that. Again, a one-man operation won't do. I could make some ammo by hand, but not very much at one time.
Getting the wood for rifle stocks wasn't an issue at all - the majority of these first weapons had wood from around Ponyville. The frames weren't terribly difficult, but I sourced them from five different places, each one creating a few of the parts. Magazines were simple enough stamped steel - Equestria did have steel stamping machines, but most were manually powered.
Mass production wasn't available, yet, but that would come VERY soon.
Magic helped. A lot. That and having the unlimited backing of Celestia. She had a feeling that, if I was here, and I had such expertise, she would be remiss to dismiss the coincidence.
Today, I was going to see the pony that had helped me the most - he had been the only one available to actually make barrel blanks, and cut the rifling. I was going to see him about finally getting both barrels and bullets for this project.
[End of Part 1]
Part 2: Arms from the Ground Up
DATE: 7 Quartus 1001 C.S.
I arrived in Manehattan by train with Applejack. She came with me as I set about trying to find a place to build a true military arsenal.
Applejack: "Y' know, hun.." She eased out of her seat as the train stopped. "..I'm wonderin' if this is jes' a big worry over nothin' an' all.." She shrugged.
K: "Maybe it is." I stood, and patted her shoulder. "But, then again, it might not be. Remember, Discord may have been playing around, but he refused to send me back even when I nearly killed him. There's got to be a reason why - my real expertise being with warfare and weapons? Celestia thinks something is going to happen."
I was wearing clothes that Rarity made for me. Twill tan pants that were a bit thicker than I'd like, but very durable. A button-down black shirt that.. actually properly fit me. A proper leather belt, black. And new boots, also leather. I hadn't asked the source.
Applejack: "Whul'.. if'n it does.. we'll figger it out." She nodded to me.
I had a stack of papers that Spike had transcribed from my cell phone, containing weapon designs and calculations and material lists put together by Twilight. The seeds for growing a military.
We exited the train, and strolled from Grand Central Station to the nearest carriage yard to take us to Brooklyn. I was meeting someone there that would be producing components.
The carriage ride took an hour, and it was almost the afternoon by the time we got to the site I was looking at. The two of us went to the office of the pony I'd been speaking with previously, Dandelion Filly.
His office was.. a very small time thing. The room was quite large, and he did have a nice desk, but he kept no secretary, and his other desks were clearly there to assemble small devices.
K: "Mr. Filly?" I stepped on in.
Dan Filly: "AH! K! Please.. uh.. please come in." He gestured.
Applejack gave me a questioning look - like, why was I trusting this guy? She didn't have confidence in him.
I made my way into his office, and looked over at the new Button Rifling Machine he'd assembled.
K: "You FINISHED it!" I exclaimed, and went over to it, to give it a look.
Dan Filly: "Sure did." He nodded to it, and came over from behind his desk. Nodding to Applejack, he smiled. "You must be the pretty mare that caught K's eye."
Applejack: "D'aww, shucks, sir.." She giggled, though.
K: "She's smarter than she looks, too." I beckoned her over. "See this thing, hun? It's called a Bullet Button. It's the reverse image - or, negative - of the lands and grooves inside a barrel, in a very small point. One pass through a barrel, and all the lands and grooves are perfectly cut. Mr. Filly came up with the idea to internally thread pipes for plumbing."
Applejack: "..s'yer tellin' me, this here doohicky c'n make a gun barrel right quick, proper, an' all kindsa tight?" She looked to me.
K: "Exactly." I nodded.
Dan was a bit impressed.
Dan: "Ah, yes.. ah, K. I wanted to ask if that image you gave me of the revolving gun was.. a gift?" He produced the drawing.. then he produced a revolver from the table.
K: "I.. hadn't realized the image was in there, Mr. Filly." I hefted the revolver. "This is really well made.."
Dan: "I had to come up with my own way to keep the bullets in the cylinder, since the design seemed to be for a completely different kind of bullet than the samples you provided." He nodded.
K: "Wait.. you chambered this in 9mm Makarov?" I popped the cylinder, and realized, it was.
Mr. Filly, without my assistance, came up with a spring-actuated "lip" to the stem of the revolver cylinder. This allowed the rimless 9x18mm round to slip into the charge holes (the bored-through holes of the cylinder), and be extracted when the ejector rod is pressed - the little lips would come up under spring tension and slide into the rim groove, extracting the round.
Unlike how the name implies, "rimless" rounds actually do have rims, but the rims are the same diameter as the casing. "Rimmed" rounds have a rim that's larger than the casing.
Dan: "Sort of. You realize that the bullets you handed me.. weren't truly nine millimeter in diameter, yes?" He grabbed one of my "sample" bullets.
K: "Yeah.. ah.. 9mm Makarov was made, actually, to 9.27mm diameter." I shrugged.
Some said it was done this way so it wouldn't be accidentally loaded into .380ACP (9x17mm Kurz) pistols owned privately by some officers, others said it was so we couldn't use Soviet 9x18mm ammo in NATO 9x19mm pistols. Whatever the reason, they weren't actually 9mm, unlike Western 9x19mm NATO or 9x17mm Kurz rounds.
The Czechoslovakian "9-82" ammo I had was designed specifically for the Czech Vz. 82 pistol, and was a 69.4 grain (4.5gm) bullet fired at about 1350 feet-per-second (412 meters per second), giving it 383 joules of muzzle energy - it was the spiciest 9mm Makarov-type ammo on the surplus market. While it CAN be used in the FEG PA-63, it tended to beat the gun up with prolonged use. Uncle specifically loaded them only for self defense, and practiced with standard velocity 9x18mm ammo, which was much lower velocity.
Dan: "I.. had to change it to true nine millimeter." He shrugged "I apologize, but I couldn't get dies and parts in that odd measurement."
K: "No, no, it's fine." I nodded.
Dan: "As a result, all the barrels for the weapons you've ordered from me, are in true nine millimeter. I don't advise using the ammo for them, in your own pistol." He nodded.
Applejack: "So's, that mean you made some improvements?" She smiled a bit. "Y'all seem full'a surprises."
Dan: "Well.. somewhat." He nodded, and took us over to a reloading table that had.. well.. some small sand bags around the edge. He nodded to a splattery hole in the wall above it. "Had a bit of an accident trying to assemble some of the ammo, so.." He nodded to the small sand bags. "Anyway.. what I did was, I increased the bullet weight." He nodded. "The rounds are made of high temperature compressed iron, right?"
K: "Yeah.. ah.. as I said before at one time, bullets are usually made of lead with a copper or brass jacket." I shrugged and looked to AJ.
Dan: "Well.. these sintered iron bullets are okay, but I had to move to lead. I increased the weight to 6.25 grams, but got the velocity up to 350 meters per second. And I remember you said that doing this would require a jacket.. I managed to get the jacketing issue solved." He nodded with a smile. "Tin!"
K: "Of course!" I nodded with a bigger smile. "Tin-Can Rounds." I looked at AJ. "A long time in the past, we used unjacketed bullets all the time, but they fouled barrels. Some early jackets did, too. Someone came up with the idea - in my country - to use tin to jacket the rounds." And, interestingly, this load Dan designed would have the same muzzle energy as the Czech stuff.
Applejack: "Oh! S'pose it's good, then?" She tilted her head, looking at the partially assembled ammo.
K: "It can be. Actually, a better material would be gliding metal.." I looked to Dan. "..copper and zinc, 95/5."
Dan: "OH! Oh.." He nodded and took some notes.
K: "Sorry I didn't bring it up before.. I didn't realize you were this far in the process." I shrugged.
Dan: "Well. I am." He nodded. "Now, I just need the money to start up a larger factory. The floor below this one is still producing only some of the individual parts you asked for." He shrugged. "I can get the first three rifle and two pistol barrels to you by the end of the week."
K: "Yeah, I know." I nodded slowly. "The problem is, getting you properly paid, besides the Grant money."
Applejack: "Whul.. why not sell 'em to ponies?" She looked at me. "You know we's a responsible bunch. B'sides, tryin'a be accurate with'em is a heckuva challenge." She nodded with a grin. "Ah c'n see ponies tryin'a be better'n each other all th' time. You know, competition!"
K: "Hey, that's a GREAT idea!" I stopped, and.. "Oh, wow.." I looked at Dan. "Call it Filly Arms." I had just created 'Colt' in this world. So, the saying would be 'Celestia made all ponies, but Dan Filly made all ponies equal.'
Dan: "You think people would buy them?" He shrugged.
K: "Sure. I mean, Unicorns have magic, but Pegasi and Earth ponies don't - there's still dangerous creatures out there that Ponies need protection from, and, as Applejack said.. sporting competitions." I nodded. "Think you could design a simple single-shot rifle based on the rifle round?"
Dan: "I sure could!" He beamed and tapped his hooves. "A little marketing, and I'm sure people would be interested in these. Thanks, Applejack!"
Applejack: "T'wern't nothin!" She beamed.
Dan: "Hey, K.. when you get that Shot Gun idea worked out, let me know." He nodded to AJ. "I'll make her a custom one."
K: "Ohh.. I appreciate that, Dan, but if anyone's gonna give my girl a custom gun, it'll be me." I smirked.
Applejack: "Aww.. honeybun." She blushed a little.
Dan: "So. I think we have all the major issues worked out, now." He nodded firmly."
K: "We do. I'll get you the initial grant to set up a small factory for low rate production." I shrugged. "Once we have a military factory site worked out, and constructed, I want you to oversee the training of its personnel." I nodded.
Dan: "Sure!" He beamed a grin.
Applejack: "Ahh.. Mr. Filly-"
Dan: "Just Dan, please." He nodded to her.
Applejack: "Dan. Uhm. Don't mean t'get personal, but.. whats'cher Cutie Mark?" She tilted her head.
I mean, well, he WAS wearing pants.
Dan: "Ahh.. it's a screwdriver and a drill bit." He shrugged. "I've always been mechanically inclined.. when K came along and asked about some of the small machines we make here for watchmakers and such.. well.. it clicked. Everything. I started feeling even more at home than I ever had before." He smiled a bit.
Applejack: "Hun!" She poked me, kinda impressed.. it being a cultural thing, I didn't quite 'get it' other than knowing she was happy with me.
K: "I guess I helped?" I shrugged. "Anyway, Dan, I'll get back to you with the Government Grant officially within a week, but start lining up suppliers and things tomorrow." I nodded to him.
Dan: "Darn straight I will." He beamed a grin.
K: "Alright.. well." I shrugged. "Hon, let's.. go have dinner and catch the evening train, eh?" I smiled. "I'll be back in a few days, Dan."
Dan: "I look forward to it." He smiled.
With that, we left, and had dinner in a cafe down the street. They served mainly Griffons, and I'd eaten there before. They had a nice salad for AJ's pleasures, and I had a grilled ham steak. We caught the evening train back.
Applejack: "Y'know.. hun.." She snuggled into me.
K: "Yes, my dear?" I put my arm around her.
Applejack: "Ah'm start'n t'see.. well.. ah guess.. other ways you's helpin' folks out." She shrugged a bit. "Besides me." She kissed my cheek. "Maybe you comin' here wuzza best thing t'happen t'us."
K: "Well.. I got YOU out of it, didn't I?" I leaned in and kissed her on the lips.
Even if I never went home again, I had Applejack.. I had a girl that cared about me. Loved me, even. And that love grew stronger every day.
I didn't know it, but my very arrival disrupted the events that "should have" happened in the meantime. Quite a few things in these first few months, simply did not occur. Others, as I found out, were delayed. The fluttering of butterfly wings and all that.
As I became accustomed to the world around me, the world became accustomed to me. Ponies became familiar, names and individuals.. and slowly, friendships.
{End of Chapter 1}
