Vanguard Word Update

2k words

***

He flicked off the safety, then squeezed off a shot. There was a loud, electronic crack as the muzzle of the gun rocked, Cadell swearing he could hear the hiss of a static chasing after. The paper target flittered as a hole punched through the lower corner. Marek wasn’t kidding, the recoil had felt like a solid punch to the arm.

Cadell adjusted his grip and tried again, this time knowing what to expect. Now the electronic shot was chased by a direct hit to the chest of the target. A few tweaks to the sight, and he was landing center-mass shots one after the other.

Soon the coilgun made an empty click, Cadell dropping the empty magazine into his hand. As he replaced it with another, he turned to see how the rest of the squad was faring. There was a war going on in Hunter’s booth. They’d been advised to stay on the semi-automatic setting, but Hunter hadn’t wasted time in going full-auto, firing from the hip like some kind of action star. Slotted into the mag well of his coilgun was a drum magazine, allowing him to spray the range uninterrupted.

“Private Collins!” Marek shouted, standing behind his booth. “I told you not to burn out your barrel! If I see you spraying like that again I’ll ram those heat sinks down your throat, you understand me?”

Hunter meekly dialed down his firing solution, the sinks lining the barrel of his gun burning a fierce red. The risk of losing a finger would be a constant worry over the coilgun platform, but the sheer power more than made up for the fact. There wasn’t any armour in the world that could stop a tungsten shell going at such high velocities, except for maybe C-loys, which was probably what the material at the end of the range was made of.

Kurtis was firing in three round bursts, careful to keep his heat sinks out of the red after Hunter’s reprimand, bracing his gun on the bench using a bipod. Beyond him were the Balokarids, there feathers bristling in what he knew to be agitation as their weapons kicked and their shots went wide, though this wasn’t because their weapons were oversized or heavy.

Cadell searched for Marek, but the Lieutenant was hawking over Hunter and wasn’t paying the aliens much attention. Switching the safety and ejecting the mag, he put the weapon and down and wandered over to their booths. Samiha was the closer of the two, and she gave him a bitter glance at his approach but said nothing.

“You’re not holding the barrel properly,” Cadell noted. “Your hand needs to be further forward. Here, like th-”

The Balokarid rose one hand to his chest, not close enough to push him away, but her intent was obvious. “Didn’t ask for your help,” she muttered, her tone made cold because of her poor shooting, or his presence, or a combination of both.  

Cadell was used to this kind of attitude back on Manildra – most ranch hands were all too eager to prove they could do a task without being told how. Usually he would just strongarm his way through the defensiveness and they’d both come out of it the better, but he felt no such inclination now with Samiha.

“Fine,” he said. “keep shootin’ around the target, eagle eyes, see if I care. So much for being physically superior.”

Samiha’s grip on the weapon tightened, the plastic creaking in complaint. She looked two steps from breaking it over her feathery knee.

Kazlu responded better to his approach, grinning back at him as she dropped one empty magazine for a fresh one, looking accusingly down at the weapon as though expecting the problem to appear before her eyes.

“How’s it goin’, Kaz?” he asked, sliding into the booth beside her. She took up most of the room with her giant wings, Cadell’s shoulder just grazing the wall as he came forward.

“It’s going… interestingly,” she replied. “I’m about twice your size, but out of both of us, I’m the one who can’t handle the kick of this thing.”

“Strength’s got little to do with it,” he replied. “How you hold it, how you’re standing when you’re pulling the trigger, that’s what really matters. Want a hint?”

“Only one? I could do with twenty.”

“I’m sure it won’t come to that,” he said. “you’ve trained with weapons before, right?”

“Yes. Most of the Clan are familiar with light-based rifles,” she replied. “but they’re as far removed from coilguns as you can get.”

“So when you’re firing a laser at a target, you’re trying to keep your sights on it as much as possible, right?”

“That’s how the heat from the beam is transferred, yes.”

“Well coilguns don’t work that way. You can’t hold your aim dead on your target all the time. You can’t fight the recoil either, but you can control it to make it smoother. Try using the bench as a brace, that’ll help stabalise your shots.”

Kazlu got down to one knee, following his instructions as she leaned the barrel of her gun on the table, making sure the heat sinks weren’t touching anything.

“Don’t put too much thought into lining yourself up,” Cadell advised. “Take a brief moment to think about your aim, and trust your gut.”

“Gut?” she asked. “Like my stomach?”

“It means your instincts,” he corrected. “Keep your shots short and sharp, two heartbeats max. Don’t try to cut out all movement, just focus on the end of your sight and the target. Go for it.”

Kazlu braced the weapon, closing one orange eye as she lined herself with the sights. After two seconds, she squeezed the trigger, and a gap appeared next to the head of the target. Technically a miss, but it was closer than the rest of her shots.

“Almost got it,” Cadell said, Kazlu’s feather roiling in anticipation. “Try exhaling instead of holdin’ your breath, you might find that smoother.”

The alien readjusted herself, and this time she only took one second before pulling the trigger. The next shot landed square between the shoulders of the target.

“There you go!” Cadell cheered.

“My intestines have aimed me true,” Kazlu breathed, flashing him a grin. “I was skeptical at first, but the coilgun has a few perks over a laser rifle. I can’t explain why, but it feels good in my hands.”

“I know the feeling, trust me,” he said. “Just remember not to squeeze the trigger so hard. You don’t need more than a feather’s touch.”

“Oh, I get it, because I’m an avian, right?” she asked, a bored look on her face. Cadell stammered out an apology, but the alien broke out laughing, cutting him off. “Relax, Cadell, I was only teasing. I do have a few mammalian jokes in mind, however, so don’t push it.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” he chuckled.

He guided her for a little longer, and soon her target was shredded to pieces, and a replacement fluttered down from the ceiling. From the corner of his eye, he saw Samiha stealing glances at her counterpart’s target, and her expression was anything but pleased.

Kazlu didn’t appear to notice, turning to him with her beak turned up in a grin. She didn’t possess lips, not exactly, but she had enough control over them to make it look like she was smiling.

“I had my doubts, but compared to the laser rifle, I’d say the coilgun platform wins out,” Kazlu said. “Thank you for the crash course, Cadell. You make a good Kith’sla.”

“That’s more than could be said for Samiha,” he said, the two glancing over at the struggling Balokarid. “I tried to help her just a minute ago, but she just gave me the cold shoulder. Like always.”

“She’s proud for a Balokarid,” Kazlu replied. “maybe to a fault. She was much the same when I first met her.”

Perhaps this was his chance to get some insight on Samiha, Kazlu and her seemed to go way back.

“Makes me think why’s she’s even still here,” he wondered. “We all eat and sleep together, but she’s always off to one side, like she doesn’t even want to be here.”

“We’ve been stuck on our carriers since the colony fell,” Kazlu explained. “This program was the first real opportunity to experience gravity, train ourselves, prepare for our payback. Wouldn’t you take that same chance, in our position?”

“Sure,” he said. “but what’s with the attitude? It’s like no matter what I do, she’s always having it in for me. You remember that whole thing with me being squad lead.”

“Samiha has had… difficulties, since leaving Dur’shala,” Kazlu explained, though it wasn’t really an answer. “but I know that’s no excuse for her behaviour. You, Hunter, Kurtis, you’re not bad people.”

 “What difficulties? Was she injured during the attack or somethin’?”

“Not in the way you are thinking,” she replied cryptically. “I wish I could tell you more, Cadell, but discussing her personal life without her permission feels wrong. Just give her time, and she might come around.”

Cadell wanted to say they didn’t have forever to wait on her, but instead he said: “I get it, we’ve all got our problems. I just hope it doesn’t affect our place in the program. I better get back to it, Marek’s comin’ this way.”

“Of course. Thanks again!” she added cheerily, waving at him as he left the booth. It felt good to know that not all the aliens were so irritable, but he wasn’t much closer to figuring out why Samiha was so hostile. Samiha as had difficulties since leaving Dur’shala, that was what Kazlu said. Could that be related to what he’d seen Samiha doing in the airlock, when she stuck that needle in her arm?

-xXx-

“Alright, elevens, I’ve seen enough,” Marek said, observing them for ten or twenty minutes. “Recruit Samiha, I don’t know how, but you put more holes in the wall than the target. Since you lack any form of shooting prowess, I want you to stay behind at the end of the day.”

Samiha glowered between her feet, fists clenched by her sides. If she didn’t have feathers, her face would be burning hot. Cadell allowed the corner of his mouth to lift. If only she had taken his advice, she wouldn’t have been singled out like that.

“Now let’s get you into the workshop. Bring your weapons,” Marek added.

The Lieutenant led them out of the range and back into the armoury, moving to the far end of the room where only a few other troopers were milling about. Marek had them form up around a bench large enough for all of them, then took his place at its head.

“Firing a coilgun isn’t going to cut it,” Marek announced. “You must be intimate with every component, down to the last piece. Only then will it become a truly effective weapon on the battlefield. Before you are basic dismantling kits. Open them up and pay attention, I shouldn’t have to repeat myself, nor am I going to.”

Like before, Marek went through the steps of pulling apart a coilgun, using his own rifle as a demonstration. This time, however, he used some basic tools to separate the pieces into its smaller components, Cadell blinking at how messy his section of the bench became. The carbines he was familiar with had about eighty parts in all, but the coilgun had around a hundred and fifty.

Marek’s demonstration felt like it went too quickly, and before Cadell knew it, his coilgun was back into one piece. “Now it’s your turn,” Marek said. “I’ll give you five minutes, then I’ll come around and check your progress. What are you waiting for?”

The squad hurriedly picked up their tools, getting to work on pulling apart their guns. Cadell was lost. It wasn’t that he was inattentive, he could take apart the barrel and the stock, but he struggled to get much further at a decent pace.

Hunter and Kurtis were on his left and right, but the bench was so messy with all the parts it was hard to tell what stage they were at. It wasn’t exactly like Cadell could ask them for tips, either, Marek was pacing behind them, and the squad was silent under his gaze, the low clatter of moving plastics and clicking tools the only sound apart from the distant shot from the range.

“Private Cadell,” Marek said, peering over his left shoulder. “Mind walking me through what exactly you’re doing?”

“Taking the battery out from the charge handle, Sir,” Cadell replied, losing a little confidence with each passing word.

“I’d commend you – if that was the charge handle, and not the bolt carrier.”

There was a snort of laughter, Cadell looking up to see Samiha quickly covering her beak with a hand.

“I told you I don’t like repeating myself,” Marek continued, Cadell moving aside as he took up the pieces. “What’s your angle, Private? Think you have a better way of dismantling it?”

“No, Sir,” Cadell replied, knowing it was better to take it on the chin than try and find an excuse. He tried to ignore the gloating Samiha, watching him be tutored by the Lieutenant while she went about her own task without help, but he felt flustered all the same.