Chapter 70: Chapter 70: Infighting Between The Two
Just as December was closing in, the new zone was completed, as well as the first factory in the industrial district away from the residential and commercial area.
Although its called a factory, it was more of an big concrete warehouse that happened to have all the machine tools and raw material inside to create firearms.
After the three men walked inside the factory, they were happy with the tools and material to create their gun. Meanwhile Anna had an smaller room inside the factory to create her own.
Three day after the factory had opened, they showed Yiming and Xiaoyun four different gun.
"Are these the AK-47 in the movies?" Xiaoyun pointed at the three similar gun on the left.
"This is an AKM. All three feel a little weird to touch, maybe because the lack of coating. But its fine." Yiming put the AKM down and pick up another one.
"This one is an AK-47... and this one is AK-74." Yiming held all three of them one by one.
"This AK-74 and is not going to work well, most of the part used here are just bunch of metal replacement part rather than the original required material. Can you translate that?" Yiming asked.
Xiaoyun translate it to Kate as Kate translated back to the three Russian.
"Kate told me that they can only work with the material they have in hand... well this might be partially my fault, but this is the best raw material I can find." Xiaoyun defended himself.
"Well then we can disregard making this one." Yiming put the AK-74 to the side.
"Only the AK-47 and AKM looked closer to its original and looked usable. Well the two are almost the same gun except with few modification."
"What modification?" Xiaoyun couldn't tell the difference between the two.
"Here, this is the AK-47's receiver has its sling swivel, while the AKM has sling mounts to the heel of the stock. Just imagine it as different way of manufacturing and slightly different feel when using it." Yiming replied.
"Then which one is better?" Xiaoyun got a little impatient as he asked Yiming.
"The AKM is definitely a lot better, at least that what a foreign friend told me when I was in military drill with another country." Yiming paused for a second, then continued.
"However, we already have the M16, I don't see the need to transition right now. However it will be handy against more mutants ones as AKM has better piercing with its cartridge size." Yiming gave his advise.
"Okay, then we use this one." Xiaoyun told Kate in English as Xiaoyun pointed at the AKM.
The three appeared unfazed by Xiaoyun's choice and said something.
"They told me that they can produce six rifle a day with enough material. Also they can produce more if you can get more machining tables and people." Kate translated for the three.
"Sure, I will ask Yezi to look for it, and I can hire some workers here." Xiaoyun responded back to Kate to translate.
"Okay, now we done with the thre, let move on to the next one." The group moved to Anna's table where there is only one gun.
"T-this... hm I feel like I seen this before. Oh its the 98K!" Xiaoyun finally remember a game that he had it.
"Its called K98K, not 98K." Yiming pointed out.
"Yeah yeah. Whatever. Man, I always wanted to hold one seeing Penli and Chengyi playing this in games." Xiaoyun picked it up and looked all over it.
The three Russians abruptly began shouting at Anna as though they were hurling insults at her. In response, Anna raised her voice and fired back at them.
Xiaoyun could tell that two group can't even understand each other, but they just kept yelling.
"What are they saying?" Xiaoyun curiously asked as he put down the gun.
"Um, the three saying something about Mosin being better and that Germany lost, while Anna is saying something about AKM being unoriginal and lame." Kate translated the two.
As Xiaoyun translated it to Yiming, he let out a sigh after hearing it.
"Why you sighing?" Xiaoyun face looked confused.
"Well K98K is an German rifle during WW2, what do you think they are insulting each other for?" Yiming explained.
"Oh right I forgot." Xiaoyun facepalmed himself.
"Kate can you please tell the two not feud about the past? People need to move on. It doesn't matter what kind of weapon it is, humanity is facing a massive threat and we have to unite against the zombies." Xiaoyun asked Kate.
Kate turned around and told three Russian and Anna in their own language. After few moment, they seem to had calmed down.
"Yiming, what good about this rifle?" Xiaoyun asked.
"It's can shoot very far, and has very strong piercing. But its a bolt action rifle, so only single shot at a time. But of course with training it can shoot very fast." Yiming explained.
"Well we should definitely keep some in use as well then." Yiming nodded in agreement with Xiaoyun.
"Okay Kate, how much can Anna produce this?" Xiaoyun asked.
"One a day." Kate translated.
"Only one a day? No other way to make it faster?" Xiaoyun asked.
"She told me that she can teach other how to make it, but it will cost extra."
"Sure, I can afford that, how about five food stamp for every student you taught?"
"Okay, she had agreed to it." Kate translated.
"Then we are good here. They produce the AKM, and Anna produce the K98K." Xiaoyun looked relieved.
"Hey Xiaoyun, have you thought of the bullets?" Yiming suddenly brought it up.
"Oh shit you are right, I completely forgot about that. Kate can you ask them why is there no bullet?"
"They both tell me that there is no resource here at all. They need a lot of copper, steel, Charcoal, sulfur, potassium nitrate, and nitrocellulose." Kate translated.
"Nitrocellulose? What? How do you make that?" Xiaoyun couldn't understand what Kate just said.
"Its nitric acid with a cellulose like paper." Kate explained without even needing asking.
"Oh I see, I remember that from chemistry classes. Yeah we can provide all that, but it going to take quite some time." Xiaoyun replied.
Kate explained to the four as they nodded.
"Well we are done here then. I'll go send some people here to help with the production. The material is going to be here by tomorrow." Xiaoyun replied in English to Kate as he left with Yiming.
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Xiaoyun delivered all the material to the factory as promised, as well as asking Yuqi to allocate people who could speak English to the factory to work there. This was to allow Kate be translator between the worker and the four gun engineer.
Xiaoyun also noticed when he cloned all the material to be delivered to the factory, an solid block of copper or steel was much easier to create than something like a hallow steel block.
When the four with Kate saw the materials given, they seem a bit shock at the material looking very similar to each other, but didn't ask any question.
The factory was finally in full effect as it started producing guns and bullets to a new storage room next to it.
"Finally I don't have to worry about ammo or guns, its so tiring producing it everyday." Xiaoyun stretched his arm as he laid on the sofa.
"Well, we are not out of the wood yet. They can only produce few guns and few mag a day." Yuqi paused for a second as she pulled out a record detailing the factory production.
"We really need Yezi somehow find a entire factory and move it here rather than having the workers handcraft every single gun and bullet with the machining tables." Yuqi commented.
"Well we aren't going to find it here. Most factory here are either textile or electronic. We will have to go so far up north to get that." Xiaoyun reminded her.
"Yeah, kind of sucks that its almost across the whole country. Maybe we can build it ourselves at some point." Yuqi proposed a more realistic possibility.
"Yeah." Xiaoyun answered with a single word as the room went back to silent.
"Are we going to do end of the year celebration? Its almost end of December now." Yueyue suddenly chimed in to brighten up the mood.
"Hm, maybe we should do a celebration, we haven't celebrated something for so long now." Xiaoyun agreed with the idea.
"Fine, let start planning it then." Yuqi brought out a new paper as the three started brainstorming.
After planning for the entire day, they finally got a draft for the celebration.