Hammerfall

[Rusty]

The floorspace was certainly adequate. In fact, it was a bit on the excessive side.

Rusty didn't mind, necessarily, but the abandoned warehouse they had set up shop in was easily large enough to fit the makeshift smithy he had thrown together, plus about a hundred more just like it. It really was massive, the sort of thing a large company might use to store goods being shipped across a star system. Overkill didn't begin to describe it.

[member="Laguz Vald"] had managed to secure a two week lease on the place, as well as assurances that they wouldn't be bothered. How she had managed to do so, Rusty didn't ask. He was pretty sure he didn't want to know, and she probably wouldn't have said anyways. Trade secrets, don'tcha know.

All the usual equipment was present. There was a gas fired forge, foundry, a selection of hydraulic presses, a power hammer, an anvil made out of stuff that the seller had assured Rusty could handle the strain of shaping beskar, as well as a wide variety of hammers, tongs, files, and other assorted hand tools. Though it was all high quality, most was secondhand. The seller guaranteed his stuff, but he also made no bones about sourcing it as quickly and cheaply as possible. More often than not, that meant used.

The stuff had all been packed in a durasteel shipping container about the size of what one might see on the back of a speeder truck. It was ten meters long by four meters wide by four meters tall, and had been absolutely full when they unloaded it. A large chunk of that mass came in the form of a heavy duty power generator. Rusty had expected to make due with what was available, but the seller had gone above and beyond. The generator was noisy to be sure, but it was fully capable of supplying power to all the equipment. Hell, it probably could have served as a backup to the entire warehouse if the Shard had felt like going through the trouble of wiring it into the grid.

Once the container was cleared out, Rusty set about setting up a makeshift sleeping area for the Mando smith. There was a simple yet comfortable cot, a washbasin that would continuously filter and recycle water, a small entertainment system with absolutely no network connectivity but a decent library of programs for the off hours, and chemical toilet. There were also several strategically placed explosive charges. If the Mando became a problem, he could be locked inside and safely disposed of.

He hoped it wouldn't come to that. Though only passingly familiar with the concept of sympathy, the Shard was aware of the toll the sort of suffering the Mando had been through could take on the body and mind. Stubborn though the fellow had been, he had acted with honor. He doubted the man's clan would be terribly happy to find their secrets given away, but from what he gathered, they'd see his capitulation for the sake of his female relative to be an honorable act rather than base betrayal. Mandos were funny about stuff like that.

It was a little after 0900 local time that the Mando, and the raw beskar ore, were delivered. He'd been cleaned up and, from the looks of it, given a dunk in a bacta tank. His wounds were no longer raw and ragged. Most of them had closed up nicely and were beginning to scar over. The smith was clearly drugged up, probably a cocktail to kill the pain and mellow him out for compliance. He didn't look happy, standing there in a clean jumpsuit with shackles around his ankles and an explosive collar around his neck, but he didn't look nearly as ornery as he had the day before, either.

"Shall we begin?"

 

[Rusty]

The first step was to smelt the raw beskar ore.

Smelting was always one of Rusty's favorite parts of the whole process. Watching the raw ore liquefy under intense heat was, in a way, therapeutic. Most cultures had always held that fire was a destructive force, but the Shard had come to see it differently. In his eyes, it was a cleansing thing, and nowhere was that more obvious than when watching the slag rise to the top of the crucible.

The heat was incredible, far greater than what one would normally use for iron ore, but thankfully, the days of wearing heavy leathers for protection were long gone. The Shard wore a portal heat shield on his belt that served much the same purpose. It would allow him to work around the fire as much as necessary, though it wouldn't protect him from direct contact with a hot object.

Once the slag had been drawn off, the smith instructed Rusty on the correct way to add the other chemicals to the crucible that would give the beskar its characteristic strength. Pure balls of graphite provided the carbon content, once enough oxygen had been drawn away from the crucible that they wouldn't combust on contact. There was a bit of chromium, some molybdenum, nickle, even a little tungsten. A surprising amount went in, though not nearly as much as one would expect, given the freaking slurry that got added in to make regular durasteel.

Eventually, the mando was satisfied with the mix. He instructed Rusty to dump the contents of the crucible in a bucket of cold water. That seemed counterintuitive, but the smith assured him that if the stuff was allowed to cool naturally, it would be far too hard to work with later on down the road. The flaws and cracks that would result from cooling it quickly were necessary, and would be worked out during the forcing process.

Once the metal had hardened into a series of clumps called blooms, the smith had Rusty take them out and, once they were dry, run them over the belt grinder. The belts were specially made for the hardest materials, and had far and away been the most expensive part of the shop. Rusty was pleased to see a shower of sparks shoot off the bloom.

"What you're looking for is how bright the spark is," the smith explained. "The brighter the spark, the higher the carbon content and, generally speaking, the harder the steel."

Rusty nodded, and got to work sorting the blooms out by relative hardness.

 

[Rusty]

Once the blooms were sorted, it was time to make them into billets.

A different furnace was fired up, this one geared towards heating metal to critical temperature rather than melting it. Rusty carefully stacked the softer blooms in first and let them heat up until they glowed painfully bright. Once they were hot enough, he fished them out with tongs and took them over to the hydraulic press. He carefully mashed them together over and over again, turning the billet as needed. Slowly but surely, the lumps of metal were formed into a solid bar. It had to be reheated several times in order to make sure the metal stayed hot enough. Beskar took a lot of energy to heat, and while it didn't exactly radiate heat all that efficiently, once it dropped past the critical temperature it just refused to be worked with.

Once the billet was formed, Rusty placed it inside a stasis field that would hold it locked in time. With ordinary durasteel, it wouldn't matter if it cooled off. It could always be reheated later. With beskar, once it reached room temperature, it was nearly impossible to work with again.

The process was repeated with the harder blooms. This was actually quite difficult, as they required almost constant heating. The portable furnace could barely get them up to temperature. Rusty's own shop furnace could have handled it well enough, but he wasn't in the shop. Still, he managed, and once the billet was formed, he put them in the stasis field as well. Robot or no, he needed a break, and from the sounds of it, so did the press.

"Until you get the hang of it, almost all of your stuff will have to be damascus," the smith explained. "If you want differential hardening, you're just gonna have to deal with a hamon. This stuff isn't like normal steel, where you can forge weld two chunks together to get two different levels of hardness. There's a technique for it, but it takes years to learn. You're not there yet, and I don't have time to teach you."

Rusty accepted the proclamation readily enough. He was a decent smith, but nowhere near master level. And besides, he liked the look of damascus steel.

 

[Rusty]

Once he had rested up, Rusty took the two billets from the stasis field, stacked one on top of the other, and placed them back in the forge. The intense heat got them back up to workable temperature, but it took time. Once the smith declared they were hot enough, Rusty took them over to the power hammer and let the massive machine whack them together over and over. It took much longer than it would for ordinary durasteel, but eventually the two pieces became one.

At that point, the Shard began drawing them out, until they were twice the original length. The bar was heated up again, cut using the powerhammer and a chisel made of a synthetic crystal that, so long as you hit it exactly right wouldn't shatter, folded over, and drawn out again. Two layers became four, and then eight, and then sixteen.

In between each folding, the bar was coated in flux, a mixture of water, borax, and a few other little odds and ends that would keep oxygen out and allow for a better weld.

Once again, the bar went into the stasis field. The process of folding and cutting and folding again had taken nearly six hours, and not only was the smith tired, Rusty was as well, and the power hammer was running dangerously hot. They'd need to take at least a few hours' break to let everything reset.

 

[Rusty]

The time spent waiting for the machinery to cool down wasn't wasted. The smith spent a great deal of it instructing Rusty on the steps that would follow.

Most of the rough forging could be done with the power hammer, but a lot of it would still be good old fashioned hammer and anvil work. And that required special technique.

"There's no one right way to do it," the Mando explained. "Each clan does things differently, and near as we can tell, it all comes out to about the same result. The secret is the smelting, quenching, and tempering. A lot of smiths will purposefully use softer billets to make life easier during the forging part, and then harden everything up at the end. That way works, but in my experience, there's a greater chance of catastrophic failure during the quench. And believe you me, you do not want anything make of beskar to crack during the quench. Normal steel you can melt it back down and start over. You try that with beskar and you'll ruin the metal. Some extra work on the front end will save you a whole lot of heartache on the back end."

Beskar, according to the smith, had some peculiar properties, especially when heated. It retained mechanical integrity surprisingly well, to the point that even a long, thin piece like what one would use to make a sword wouldn't droop, but there were ways to make it behave. You had to hit it just right. Too soft and you wouldn't make a dent. Too hard and the metal would resist. Finding that sweet spot was the first order of business.

The frequency of the blows was also important. There were powerhammers with the ability to strike multiple times a second. Those were best avoided, as they could set up a harmonic resonance that could shatter the metal. That weakness would work itself out once the metal was quenched, but in this heated state, it was definitely a problem.

Another thing that would make life difficult was the fact that, like any weapon, most of the finishing work would have to be done after the weapon was tempered, otherwise you risked ruining the blade. That would be difficult enough, but there was only about a four hour window in which you could work. During that window, the metal was still settling into its crystalline structure, and could be sanded and ground, albeit with some difficulty. After that, all bets were off. If you had an ugly blade, you had an ugly blade.

"Best to work quickly, then."

 

[Rusty]

Now for the fun part.

Upon removal from the entropy field, the Shard once again got the metal up to its critical temperature. It was now time to draw the metal out into the the shape that would eventually become the sword.

Careful, measured blows from the power hammer lengthened and thinned the metal, each one incrementally bringing the project closer to its final form. Rusty had to carefully gauge the strength of each blow to make sure it was in the sweet spot. The hammer was operated via foot pedal, and the speed and intensity was determined not only by the pressure on the pedal, but on the angle one pressed on it. There was a lot of finesse to be had out of what appeared outwardly to be an instrument of brute force, and it could take years to learn to use one properly.

It took a couple of reheats before the blade was more or less in the right shape. At this point, Rusty took a fullering swage and hammered in a fuller, colloquially known as a blood groove. The popular notion was that the fuller gave the blade a channel for blood to run down, or kept the flesh from sealing around it when stabbed into someone, but the truth was far less gruesome. In reality, it gave the weapon additional geometry that made it sturdier, and also allowed it to be lighter.

The end result was a piece of metal roughly 13 inches long and shaped vaguely like a dagger. Now it was time for hammer and anvil work.

On the anvil, Rusty was able to more precisely hammer out the shape of the weapon, adding a bevel for the edge and straightening it out. He found that once he settled into a rhythm, his artificial muscles had little trouble hitting the sweet spot with every blow. He had expected the somewhat less precise nature of his HRD to be a hindrance, but in retrospect, Mando smiths did this their entire lives without the aide of mechanical limbs. So really, it was no surprise that he should be able to do it, channeling his own decades of experience.

It still took time, but time they had. The first day was drawing to a close. The next day, they could start on the grinding and polishing, or at least the parts that could be done before the quench.

 

[Rusty]

The Mando was up and ready to go the next morning by the time Rusty unbolted the door to the container.

It wasn't every day that the Shard had to lock up someone who worked with metal for a living, and he hadn't a doubt in his mind that if the Mando could cause trouble, he would. So working from that premise, he had made the inside of the container comfortable, but austere, with nothing that could be used as a tool, while the door was bolted shut-literally. 40 half inch thick bolts secured the doors, and each one had to be taken out with the help of an impact wrench.

This process was quite noisy. If the smith had somehow slept through it, Rusty would have been impressed. As it was, he wasn't quite bright eyed and bushy tailed, but hey, awake was awake.

The process of profiling and polishing the blade was a laborious one. This would have been true of an ordinary steel blade, but for different reasons. With ordinary steel, you had to take care not to get the blade too hot. Doing so could cause it to take a half-assed temper, and that was a sure way to have it shatter against the wheel.

That wasn't an issue with beskar. With beskar, the problem was that it was so damn hard that, even without the temper, grinding it was a son of a [beep.] The wheels and the belts were all purpose made for working with industrial strength materials. Beskar was a bit tougher than the normal fare. That's not to say that the equipment couldn't handle it. Rusty just had to exercise extreme care to keep from breaking it though.

By lunchtime, the blade was thinner, lighter, and something approaching shiny. It looked like a proper blade now, and by the standards of ordinary durasteel, was quite hard. However, it was only a fraction of its true hardness. Now it was time for the temper.

 

[Rusty]

The tempering process went thusly: Rusty heated the blade up to ungodly temperatures, and then dunked it in a special oil.

Let's rewind a bit.

The purpose of this exercise is to bring the blade to its peak hardness. Heating it up to a specified temperature does this by one, allowing the weapon's crystalline structure to set, and two, by allowing all the molecules of the steel to normalize. What that basically means is all the little pockets of materials spread out evenly throughout the blade. To the uninitiated, it was a process akin to magic. To a smith, it was a right pain in the [bleep.]

Rusty got the forge up to the required temperature, then stuck the blade in with tongs. Now it was time to wait. For an ordinary blade of this size, the process took just a few minutes. For beskar, it took over an hour.

Once it was hot enough, and at over 2,000oC, it was certainly that, Rusty removed it from the furnace, again with tongs, and quickly dunked it in the oil trough.

The oil was largely carbon based, with a multitude of other trace elements required to give the metal its characteristic strength and resilience. It was also, one would note, highly flammable. Once the blade was below the surface where oxygen couldn't get to it, that wouldn't be a problem. The surface, on the other hand, flamed up like, well, oil with a chunk of white hot metal stuck in it. If it wasn't for the heavy leathers he was wearing, Rusty's HRD body would have been quite badly burned.

That was pretty typical for a build like this, actually.

The Shard ignored the flames. They were expected, and also utterly irrelevant. He was focusing all his attention on the tongs. If there were any imperfections in the blade, they would be exposed by a rather distinctive pop or ping. That was the metal cracking. That was bad.

Fortunately, there was no bad here. Rusty was an amateur at beskar, but he knew forging. The blade was well done.

Once the blade was relatively cool, there were a few crucial seconds where any bends could be worked out of it. There was a bit of one, and Rusty took care of it just in the nick of time.

The next step was where the blade got its actual temper.

See, in its current state, the metal was hard. Almost as hard as diamond, in fact. But that made it brittle, and prone to shattering. It had to be softened a little bit. So again the blade went into oil, this time a special silicone based version that was thoroughly nonflammable. It was heated to about 500 degrees, and the blade would sit in it for several hours as everything evened out.

 

[Rusty]

For the first time, Rusty allowed himself to think he might actually pull this off. The blade was removed from the oil, and quickly cooled to room temperature. Now he was in the four hour window to get the finishing touches.

The first step was to add an edge. The blade would be absolutely if it looked pretty but was too dull to kill anything. He used a belt grinder to put in a hollow grind, lightening the blade further and adding more structural stability. Not that it needed additional stability, it was just something one did with a dagger like this.

The edge ate up a full two hours, but once it was done, it was time to polish. The Shard used a series of progressively finer grinding wheels to buff the blade to a high sheen. That ate up another hour. It was almost done, but time was running out. There was still one crucial step if this was going to be a decent fighting blade.

That crucial step was drilling a series of holes in the tang, three to be precise, so that it could be fitted with a grip. The Shard knew full well he could use epoxy to fit the grip to the tang, but he always felt better if it was tapped and pinned. So that's what he did. The grip was made of a dense synthetic woodlike material that had excellent shock absorbing capabilities and was also quite heat resistant. Once it was trimmed and drilled out, he slid it over the tang and, using diamond bits on a drill press, tapped the holes for the pins all the way through.

With a bare 15 minutes to spare before the metal firmed up and became impervious to just about anything, the Shard quickly dunked it in an acid bath. That would etch the blade somewhat, making the damascus pattern stand out more boldly.

 

[Rusty]

With the addition of a simple brass handguard and pommel, the blade was nearly complete. All it needed was some final finishing and polishing for the non-beskar parts.

Once everything was set, Rusty allowed the Mando to inspect it. The smith ran it through a series of tests, checking for strength, durability, sharpness, and finish. That took the better part of the afternoon, but finally, covered in sweat and surrounded by chunks of neatly sliced debris left over from the warehouse's former life, the smith proclaimed the weapon worthy.

"It's a good blade," he said. "You should be proud of it."

"Thanks," Rusty replied. "I should think you'd be happy to die by it."

"If it's all the same to you I'd rather not," the Mando said ruefully. "But what choice do I have?"

"None whatsoever. And before you get any cutesy ideas, remember: there's a sniper in here, and it's not too late to hunt down the little miss."

"Bastard," the Mando said, but there was no venom in his voice.

Rusty spread out a plastic tarp and led the Mando over to it.

"Whenever you're ready."

The smith took a few deep breaths, then picked up the blade. Rusty could see the beads of sweat forming on his head as he gathered his resolve. The poor fellow probably didn't want to die, no one truly did deep down, but he was probably ready for the suffering to end. He placed the blade against his throat.

"So long, and may my kinfolk hunt you down and return the favor tenfold."

There was muted draw of breath, the sound of something wet splattering against the tarp, and the sound of something heavy falling. Then there was silence.