Darkwind - Viewing Topic: Live Fire

Fifth
Fifth Legion
Autodueller
Renegade

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Group: Members
Posts: 480
Joined: Jan 3, 2010

Live Fire
S222317

"I don't see why we have this damn thing," Tomas Minor grumbled over the squad's radio chatter as he maneuvered Bane Sidhe up the dune. "What's wrong with a Seven-Six and a Gatling? Or a pair of Five-Fives? We're in a deathtrap, I tell you, and that pathetic attempt at compensation," he jerked his thumb at the 35-millimeter cannon filling the entire left side of the Windsor II, "is a giant mistake."

Paul Crittenden, who rejoiced in the nickname of "Boom," laughed from the seat behind Tomas. "It'll work, I tell you. I've seen it work." He gave the gun a final barrel-to-butt check, making sure the ten-round magazine was well seated, and tested the rotation in the traverse mount. With the two-meter-long barrel taking up the shotgun seat and protruding out through the windscreen, and the breech and firing mechanism in the passenger-side rear seat, the only way for Paul to fit in a gunner was to shoehorn the seat in behind Tomas, aiming the gun through an array of mirrors and lenses. He was so overjoyed to be able to use what he called a real gun that he didn't care where in the car he sat.
"Oh yeah? Where?"

"Back about three months ago, in the Old City, Omnia Vincit Amor was using one of these in a Windy. Scored a couple kills, scared hell out of the Sabre Dogs."

Tomas snorted. "Yeah, in the city, where I still don't see why they couldn't mount that damn thing in the LandRunner. Be a better platform than a Windy." Paul couldn't see Tomas' face, but could well imagine the scowl directed at the black LandRunner ahead of them, half-glimpsed through its rooster tail of sand and dust. "I still don't know what Cassie was thinking with this."

"How's our turning radius?" Paul swing the gun back and forth again to the limits of its traverse mount, peering through the array of mirrors and lenses through which he aimed the big gun.

"On this sand, not bad. Why?"

"That's why." Paul poked the back of Tomas' seat with his elbow. "A LandRunner, with that bigger turn radius, is better with light guns in the furball. We can turn and maneuver, and keep the gun on target. I hear way before the Solar Storm, they made tanks this way, big gun on a low platform. Stable as hell. Don't worry, we'll be fine."

The dashboard radio cracked into life, Cassandra "Blue" Skelton's voice washed through with static. "Bane Sidhe, start your turn now, set up about ten meters back of me and hold our flank. We're on the Windy." Through the gunsights, Paul could see the LandRunner begin its turn, revealing the blue letters Broadsword on its side.

Tomas picked up his radio handset and responded, "Roger that, Broad." He spun the wheel, throwing Bane Sidhe into a tight turn. Through the right side ventilation slit, Paul could see the rest of the patrol posse: a pair of hulking Apaches belonging to Stucky and the Bit Pigs just beyond Broadsword, and beyond them, indistinct in the floating sand and dust, a gray Pickup from Renshai and a beige Windsor II belonging to the Cheesemakers. He gave the gun one last check-over, making sure the cartridge ejection chute on the far side of the gun was clear.

When Tomas pulled Bane Sidhe into a halt, Paul sighted down the slope of the dune they had just climbed, at the motley collection of cars following them. A Sunrise, a Windsor II, and a Chevalier led the pack, all painted with the jagged crest of the Northern Mutant Alliance. The sand around them was beginning to rise and dance with the SUVs' long-range fire. "The Windy, she said?"

“Yeah. The pretty one," Tomas remarked from the front, and Paul centered the crosshairs on the Windsor II at the left of the lead group.

It is a pretty Windy, he thought absently. The NMA Windsor II had an iridescent yellow nose, shading through orange, red and purple in the middle to blue on the tail. Paul swung the gun lower, lower, leading the Windy, mentally counting down the range as the rest of the line began firing. After a final adjustment, he held the gun in place and yanked the firing lanyard.

The gun spoke with a voice of thunder, a loud crack! followed by the clatter of the spent cartridge rattling against the inside of the armor, the shell flying over the Windsor's roof to detonate in a bloom of fire. Bane Sidhe's hull groaned and rocked with the recoil, but Paul ignored his ride’s outrage to draw the gun further down, leading the NMA Windsor further.

"Try again, Paul!" Tomas shouted back at him. Paul yanked the firing lanyard again, the gun roared, the cartridge clattered, the car groaned, and the fire flower bloomed just behind the Windsor, rattling its back end. The Mutant car jinked to one side and was lost below the curve of the slope.

Paul leaned forward and slapped Tomas' shoulder. "Move us back!" After a moment, he felt Bane Sidhe start to creep backward. Paul counted silently, swinging the gun back and forth, trying to figure where the Windsor would reappear. When the yellow grill appeared to sprout from beyond the lee of the slope, he tracked the gun over to bear directly on the car as it heaved into view. He pulled the lanyard, and a shell slammed into the Windsor's left side, pounding in a dent that Paul could see from twenty meters away.

The next shell sent the Windsor out of control, spinning across the slope, directly into the SUVs' kill-zone. Paul didn't watch, but he heard the machine guns clatter in a renewed blitz of fire into some poor Mutant soul.

"Good shot, Bane Sidhe," Skelton's voice crackled from the radio again. "Symphony to your left. Kill it." Her last words were cut off by a burst of half-coherent chatter from the rest of the squad, and Tomas turned the Windsor to the left, bringing a dark blue Symphony sedan into Paul's view. The Symphony's rifles flashed, and a pair of bullets pinged off Bane Sidhe's front armor.

Paul dropped the crosshairs over the Symphony's quarter-panel and fired again as a grenade detonated next to Bane Sidhe's rear bumper, jostling the car off enough to send the shell wide. He swore and brought the gun back onto the Symphony, glad he didn't have a newbie driver - Tomas was already swinging the nose to follow the smaller sedan around the line's flank. Paul's next shot landed on the sedan's door and threw it backward several meters down the slope. Even over the ringing in his ears, Paul could hear Tomas growl and gun the engine to pursue. Paul glanced at the ammunition counter he'd jury-rigged onto the magazine. Four shells left to kill this motherknerler with, he thought.

Another two shells ripped the Symphony's door open as the cars slid down the slope, and the third threw a gout of black smoke and yellow fire up from the ruptured car. It flipped into the air and landed hard on its wheels at the bottom of the slope. Paul trained the crosshairs on the Symphony's ruptured door and its plume of oily smoke, his hand tense on the firing lanyard, watching the sedan intently for any sign of life.

A short rattle of machine gun fire burst from the ruined door and chimed off Bane Sidhe's front armor. Paul yanked the lanyard, the gun roared, and the Symphony belched smoke and debris. Some of the debris left shining red trails across the golden sand.

Paul turned to the gun and pulled the empty magazine out, busying himself with the work of reloading. A few words of congratulations crackled from the dashboard radio, but Paul ignored them - he did not want to look at the sedan he had violated so badly, or think about the horror he had surely made of its interior.

A tinny cry of triumph came out of the radio, and Tomas pounded a fist into Bane Sidhe's roof. "Holy hell, Paul, look right, check it out!" he cried. Paul craned over his shoulder, twisting in his bucket seat to look out the window behind him. It didn't take him long to spot what Tomas was so excited about - a burning pickup tumbling down the hill, sent on its way by the hammers of the guns at the top of the ridge. The badge of the Northern Mutant Alliance was still legible on its flame-scarred flank.

The radio blared an incoherent noise of warning, and Paul's eyes widened as as a sand-colored Box Van heaved its way over a dune less than a hundred meters away, just beyond the Pickup’s carcass. "Uh-oh," he breathed, taking in the Box Van's Mutant crests and heavy ram plate. A large-caliber machine gun in the Box Van’s cab spat fire, and bullets tore into Bane Sidhe’s right-side armor, heavy metallic chimes sounding right behind Paul.

Bane Sidhe lurched into motion, backing away from the Symphony and turning its nose toward the Box Van. Paul turned back to his gun, bending to pull a magazine from the ammunition storage beneath the gun. “Paul! Reload faster!”

“There’s a limit! Do you want to explode?” Paul replied, as he carefully aligned the magazine with the gun’s well. It wasn’t easy with the way the car was bouncing all around him, but he forced his hands to steadiness despite the adrenaline burning in his veins.

The Box Van’s gun spit a long burst that tore at the Windsor’s front and bonnet armor, just as Paul got the magazine into the well. He slid it down until it stopped, then pulled the slide all the way back, engaging the firing mechanism. He tugged gently on the firing lanyard, gauging the mechanism’s tension. Feels good.

Paul Crittenden whispered a brief, formless prayer to his gun, lined the crosshairs on the Box Van, and yanked the lanyard.
As he yanked, he saw the Box Van slip on a patch of loose sand, and turn slightly to one side, exposing a slice of its broad flank. Then a fire-flower bloomed on its side, just above and behind its cab, driving a deep dent into the armor, and the behemoth turned entirely as the shell’s impact pushed hard on its light weight.

One of the firing slits on the Box Van’s side lit up, a spray of tracers chattered over Bane Sidhe’s roof, and Paul dropped the crosshairs over the slit, and yanked the lanyard again.
Bane Sidhe groaned with the strain of the gun’s recoil, but this time Paul almost heard a note of triumph in the metal’s outrage. The shell impacted just below the slit, the shell pushing a ragged dent in the brittle metal of the Box Van, but the shell was a dud, and didn’t explode. The next shell exploded in the dent, clawing ragged tears in the metal up and down the Box Van’s flank. The Box Van revved its engine, its tires twisting and spinning in the sand, kicking up a haze of golden dust as it tried to bring its nose back to its prey, and pull its wounded flank away from Bane Sidhe.

Paul fired once more, and the tears in the Box Van's side became great gashes left by a giant's claws. The Box Van tipped up on two wheels and slammed down on its side, throwing up a cloud of dust, its belly facing Bane, its tires clawing uselessly at the air. A storm of glowing tracers sailed from the top of the ridge and tore into the Box Van's wounded flank, sending up another gout of smoke and debris. The van's wheels spun faster for a moment, slowed, then stopped.

"Holy hell, we won," Tomas said from the front seat, turning to survey the wreckage of the battlefield: the smoking wrecks spread along the hill, and the other members of the hunting squad, battered but intact, disgorging figures to begin the salvage process. He spun and grinned at Paul in the back seat. "See! I knew it would work!"

Paul shook his head, and ducked into the storage space underneath the cannon, hunting for his rifle. The bulk of the cannon his his grin quite effectively.

......................... vet wv
Posted Dec 3, 2011, 5:26 pm