After Kowalski made it to their position, both he and Moriarty departed on a beeline for the security grid. Their defensive concerns were not many, as it was not likely the enemy would send yet another man in to attempt to destroy the security grid so soon. As they arrived at the site, Kowalski began surveying the area to consider all the best strategic spots to camp himself. He turned to the engineer and asked,
"So, ah, you gonna need to turn these things off?"
"Couldn't tell ya, but most likely, not for the moment. I'm gonna have to learn them while they're on. From what I hear they're not very interactive, so that part shouldn't be too much of a problem."
They rounded the corner to approach the guns, with Moriarty trailing in the rear. As Kowalski showed his profile, immediately both turrets (hidden in the corners of the room) swung around rapidly to track his figure. Suddenly, he straightened up, stopped midstep, and spun around to face where Moriarty was just approaching the corner.
"STOP! STOP NOW! DON'T MOVE! GET AROUND THE CORNER!"
He didn't have to say it twice. The scream in his face made him jump back a few feet anyway.
"Heh, ah, almost forgot. You need one of these if you're gonna work with this stuff," as he gestured towards a small pocket on his lapel. He pulled out what looked like a pillcase.
"This thing gives off electronic pulses on the net's transmission frequency. The net isolates the source, ignores it, and then processes the signal bouncing off everything else in the vicinity to get a clearer picture of the area. That way, when one of us is around, the signals are at their highest rate of efficiency. If you aren't the source for a bunch of signals, you're toast. These things are hard enough that they'll withstand anything but a rocket hit...in which case you won't be needing it anyway. Of course, all of this might be bogus, I'm just telling you the gist of what the bot told us."
Moriarty nodded in understanding. "Is there any way to get around it?"
"Not really. If you don't have a 'pill' you can't get near it. I'll give this to you and swing around up top. It will mean a less advantageous spot for me, but I've dealt with this sort of thing before. Keep in contact. Catch you on the flipside."
He tossed Moriarty the transmitter and disappeared. Oh well, he thought. Let's get to work.
With the pill in his gun sling (he thought it would be safest there), he turned the corner to the guns, not without a little apprehension. Again, the guns immediately swung around to point directly at him, then tracked his movements as he approached. When he was in five feet of the first gun, a red light reflected off the wall behind the gun. Auto-disable. He put down his railgun and took a closer look.
It was much simpler looking than he had anticipated. The guns consisted of a large-bore chaingun (apparently a portable one, it had a pistol grip and several handles) mounted on a hydraulic bipod. The bipod was attached to a thickly greased wide-toothed gear which formed the mounting plate for the gun, and then attached just forward of the trigger and joined the two short hydraulic pistons which controlled vertical movement. A spiral grooved piston which turned the gear mounted on the base of the chaingun. These two pistons were mounted fore and aft of a large pivoting post which allowed the gun almost 30° of vertical span, and the third was off to the side and came in contact with the gear. Interesting idea, that. Probably not very efficient though. I wonder how well it tracks a fast target. Yet another plate formed the base for these pistons, and the post continued through the plate to the floor to act as a central stabilizing point for the three tripod legs extending from the edges of the bottom plate. What he presumed to be the computer running the whole thing was rigged up inside a black-box of sorts to keep its sensitive components working. It seemed absurdly small for the amount of computer circuitry it should've required, but he didn't see any way to open the box. Another larger heavily armored box stood behind the entire setup, with a chain of large shells, each with a shiny brass casing and polished brass bullet with a lead tip. There weren't very many, but it was obvious that the accuracy and efficiency of the gun would most likely use only a few bullets per target. Just like an old artillery gun, there was a thick layer of armor mounted on the barrels protecting the workings of the gun. Only the 6 barrels of the chaingun projected past the wall of armor. Really, the only vulnerable part of the whole setup was a conduit going from the black box to the second plate and then to the hydraulic motor which was protected by the gun itself. It would be interesting to see how well they withstood a direct attack from a machine gun or rocket launcher... or even a railgun. A slug might penetrate that armor and mess with the aiming systems, or even the firing mechanism.
On the back of the gun was a small 4-inch green and yellow screen with a grid overlay. Obviously it was the sensor grid and it's map of the area. On one part of the screen, there was a yellow circular sector projecting from the bottom center and aimed at a seemingly arbitrary point on the top of the screen. He took a wild guess and looked at it like an aircraft radar output -- the center line was the gun's center, the next one to the left was 22.5° off to the left of center, the next was 45° off, and so forth. He looked at the corresponding degree measure off the gun and found it pointed directly at the other gun. This guy did his homework. It's impossible for them to fire on each other. Not bad at all.
His radio crackled, and the fuzzy voice of Kowalski came over the speaker.
"How are things coming? Everything's pretty slow up here, not that I'm complaining."
"Well I think it wasn't meant to be tweaked. The circuitry is all sealed up inside a pretty tough box, and that's pretty much all I can get at. Apparently this is 100% automatic, and it's either gonna work just great or not at all."
"Hmm. Well, seems like you're the only one who's going to take an interest in those things, valuable to us as they are. Do what you can, and I'm sure it'll mean something."
"I'm kinda looking at this hydraulic system. It seems like the gun would have to turn awful slow if it's being rotated by a hydraulic pump. Maybe there's some way I can work with on that."
"Like I said, do what you can. You know, there's an interesting story behind those chainguns."
Moriarty rolled his eyes. He'd heard stories of long-winded snipers who passed the time away with idle radio chatter from some of his Army buddies. Apparently he'd just found himself one. And a Polish one, at that.
"It was on one of our first attacks against the opposition..."