World building — laser welder

This is the last item I invented for my first book. It’s a laser welder …

I needed a weapon for a character to threaten someone with. But I needed something which was “not really a weapon” but could be used viciously.

I had the idea for a hand portable, rechargable laser welder developed for convenient use by divers and astronauts. It would offer only about a minute’s welding, but was super portable.

It worked by containing about 8 laser generators, each of which developed a heat of about 200C, which could be focused on a point up to about 2 metres away using an auto-targetter.

It wasn’t a particularly efficient weapon — but that didn’t mean it wasn’t popular. It was used by gangs as a vicious way to inspire fear and was especially used in revenge attacks.

It caused really nasty burns, which cautorised the nerves, so was painless, but also silent. The injuries from it wouldn’t heal, and would require something like a transplant or amputation.

That said, it was hard to kill with it, you had to focus it at the right spots. A favourite form of execution would be to focus on the throat, which would become fused with a proper burst. The victim would then literally choke to death — although it was sometimes possible for a quick thinker to apply a tracheotomy.

As back story, Melody’s dad had a huge argument about someone who had one one his construction site. Only construction engineers could own, but gangs were stealing from sites that used them.

All this backstory … but in the end I only needed about two sentences about it. That’s something that happens with world building — you build up all these notes about how something can work, but in the end your reader only needs the smallest part of it!

You can buy Melody Harper’s Moon through Amazon,

In the UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Melody-Harpers-Moon-Meike-Torkelson-ebook/dp/B07GTYY3NL

In the US: https://www.amazon.com/Melody-Harpers-Moon-Meike-Torkelson-ebook/dp/B07GTYY3NL

In Australia: https://www.amazon.com.au/Melody-Harpers-Moon-Meike-Torkelson-ebook/dp/B07GTYY3NL