***
After breakfast the unit was assigned weapons training, their first day without a scrimmage in over two weeks. They were each experts with a pistol, real-world combat simulations make you good with whatever they give you, but the pistols and grav sticks were their only weapons. Now it was time to test their duty in the unit.
Every talked about how weapons training had organized them. Every unit member was given a day on a number of different weapons. A full day on range to work with the weapon, get the feel of it, and then submit to a test. Some were obvious, guys the size of Cooper and Biloxi usually ended-up with the heavies – either a Broadrail or a Sweeper. It took people their size to handle that kind of stuff with any speed.
No, the stories that were always interesting and sometimes surprising, were the rest of the unit’s weapons. The medium range rifles – projectile or force. The long range cover weapons, slender, deadly accurate weapons that could put a hole in something miles away. Or there was the BB, the door buster, close combat, designed to knock an Earther marine off his feet with one shot.
On the field, Bri started with a medium range force weapon, shorter than her arm, probably three pounds with the energy cell loaded halfway down the weapon. The balance was good and Bri liked the idea of medium range. In the scrimmages she liked the perfect blend of time and tactics available at medium range. You had time to think, but not too much before you had to move.
She dropped to one knee on the hundred yard and burned through half an energy cell. The weapon had a little kick but was silent. The only sound was the trigger mechanism. A click, the weapon jolted a bit, and the target, a square box of metal, looked like it had been hit by a dozen hammers, a long row of fist-sized impacts that left the metal crumpled.
Bri thought of what the weapon would do to a marine. What it must feel like to get hit with it, the force blasting into you, crushing you against the suit as your thrown back. Horrifying.
Kat was in the lane next to her, working with a BB, the short, rounded barrel launched a handful of heavy gauge projectiles via a rail system. She walked down the firing lane unloading on target bots that stepped out from behind cover. The weapon shredded them. Every shot Kat fired sent a piece of the target bot flying into the air.
“Like it?” Bri called over while Kat was reloading.
Kat looked back through the force field that separated their firing lanes, a light blue haze of energy barely visible really. “It hits hard, but you have to be close and paying attention.”
“This one’s nice for accuracy.” Bri brought the weapon to her shoulder and her overlay came to life, giving her a magnified view from the end of the weapon. She placed the crosshair on the farthest target and pulled the trigger.
“Nice shot,” Kat said as the target down range crumpled and fell over, torn from the baseplate that held it.
The following day Bri stepped up to the table that held the long range choices. They didn’t look like she expected. Instead of the typical load and delivery design, these looked more like small, gray cases. The one on the left read, Api Projectile, and the right label was Jen VForce. The cases were so similar she almost didn’t know which to pick, but she remembered the feel of the force weapon, the way reacted and so she chose the Jen.
She picked it up and moved the case around looking for a latch or a handle. It was frustrating, the thing simply had no distinguishing gun-like features, it could have held books or supplies, it was a case. But she found a small handle along one side and when it fit into her palm, the case came to life.
Without a sound the metal seemed to slide and grow, shifting from the rigid shape of the case to the long, slender weapon that fit her grip like it had been made for it.
Bri’s heart jumped. She brought the thing to her shoulder and starred down the thin, gray barrel. It was so light, almost too light. Her overlay disappeared as she stared through the optics. Suddenly she could see the 1600 yard marker.
“I had a feeling you were going to like that one,” Arles walked up beside her. “It was too light and slow for me, but something told me you’d like it.”
Bri smiled. “I think you may be right,” Bri chuckled, “there’s something about it.”
On the range, she couldn’t believe how accurate she was. She brought the weapon up, set the crosshair in the center of the target, adjusted as the optics indicated, held her breath, and fired. The weapon jumped a bit, and each energy cell only held twenty or thirty rounds, but the destruction each delivered was like hitting the target with an invisible spike, a spike capable of piercing six inches of tridium steel armor.
She fired the last round in her cell and people started clapping. Turning, she found a small group of soldiers had gathered behind her range and all were smiling and clapping. She had the only perfect score on the line.
After not missing a single shot on the static range, she moved over to the field exercises. Most usually went from the range to target bots, but Bri wanted to see what the position felt like. She wished they were in a scrimmage and she could use the rifle, but the field was close enough.
A light at the gate flashed green and Bri dashed to large boulder. The training field was a few hundred yards wide by a thousand yards and littered with cover and enemy droids programmed to converge on your position. The object was to stay alive with whatever weapon you brought. Of course, this put Bri at a disadvantage being alone and stuck with a sniper’s weapon, but that was why she had chosen it.
She stepped to the edge of the boulder and brought her sight up. One droid, a clumsy, large unit carrying a heavy auto was running between a shed and a small cluster of trees and rocks. Bri set the sight on his chest, led him a bit, and fired.
The droids head disappeared in a violent spray of angry orange sparks.
Every other droid in the exercise began looking around. Her overlay shifted so she could see any energy beams they fired. Orange streaks peppered the boulders around her, but they were wild cover fire, a rain of inaccurate terror.
She dropped to one knee and sighted along a tree until the droid pivoted into view. Click and his head rolled off into the weeds. A smile crept across her face but then a projectile ricocheted off the boulder beside her.
Fear cut through her. There were too many. She lowered the weapon and looked over the field. There were eight along the back, and four moving toward her through the grass. She fired on two, dropping both, but gave her position away.
Suddenly, she was under fire. Projectiles dug into the earth as the droids unloaded with their Api’s.
Bri got on the ground and belly crawled backwards using the boulder as a wall. She wished she had a pistol, or a BB, something she could use when they got close.
“Run!” She heard Pauly’s voice behind her. “Stick and move!” He was right. She grabbed her rifle in the middle and got to her feet. Two orange bolts cut through the air in front of her, visible on her overlay.
She ran for the stack of supply crates. Her heart was in her throat.
When she got there, she looked over and saw Pauly and Little at the gate cheering her on. Pauly pointed and she lifted her rifle and sent a droid flying off.
It took her a few minutes, but she began to understand the rifles strength. At long range she was unstoppable but at medium and close, she could still hold her own if she switched off the Jen’s optics and used her overlay instead.
But she didn’t finish the field exercise. There were two droids left and Bri had slipped into a small building that had only one way in or out. Of course she didn’t know that until it was too late and, as she stepped up to the doorway to get a shot on one droid, the other had been waiting.
The first shot felt like a bee sting, like someone had pulled a stick out of a campfire and poked her in the belly with it. Then the second one hit. Another burning sensation, another poke under her fourth rib, but this one felt like it was cutting through something, something tough and thick.
Before she could
look down to investigate, the pain hit her. All at once, her brain cramped. The wave of pain was too much to even feel, everything just hurt everywhere and all at once. She dropped the rifle and fell to her knees. Her overlay immediately flashed a schematic of her body and showed the two projectiles inside of her.
Bri closed her eyes and laid back. She screamed out in pain and then the med bots were hovering around her, their tiny lights and scanners working across her midsection as a little cloud of nanos washed across her uniform. The pain slowly disappeared.
“You did really well.” Bri looked up and saw Pauly and Little’s face. Both were smiling.
“No one’s ever scored that high on their first day.” Little’s big blue eyes glittered above Bri.
Pauly helped her to her feet once the med bots had zipped back to wherever it was they came from. She felt weak, like every muscle in her midsection was cramping all at once, but she moved through the initial pain and walked back to the line.
“I think we have our sniper,” Andrews was waiting with a few other smiling 37’s.
Bri put the rifle down on the table and sat down. Andrews was right, of all the weapons she had tried, the Jenny was her favorite. There was something about the way it felt, the swing of the world magnified through the optics. The gentle kick when she sent the bolt. It hit hard and with accuracy no other weapon could achieve. And if she was going to kill soldiers on a battlefield, she wanted it to be painless. As painless as possible.