The Pilot of Wrath

Chapter 35 – Range Time

Hours had gone by since Matt and had brought the pilots around to meet Tobias and hand off the projects. He was hoping that Lisk would get his shotgun, but Tobias was having a hell of a time getting his ammo pouch to produce something in smokeless powder. For the time being, Tobias was able to part together a pump action shotgun for him. A shotgun that he wasn’t all that sure about until he saw it held 7 rounds in the magazine tube and was much faster to fire.

The experiment with the construct cannons was much simpler. All Tobias had to do was pull the projectile out of one of the cartridges and then find a nice number that its weight was evenly divisible by. Given the weight of each bullet was 2.5 kilo’s, they opted to go for 25 projectiles nestled in a buffering medium. Tobias did have to play a little with the case length and making a small cap to give enough length for the steel ball bearings. The pilots were still confused about the purpose of these special rounds, but Matt assured them that the effects would be perfect for their needs.

After all the pilots were sorted with their last-minute weapons alterations, Matt got a look at his special request. The 25-millimeter round was fully assembled but he instantly spotted the difference in the projectile that sat in the case mouth. It was a dull copper color but had a series of segmented lines along its surface. Picking it up, Matt got a look at the tip and saw a cavity within it. He was going to ask the details, but Tobias handed him a schematic to look at.

“This is partly a penetrator and partly a fragmentary projectile.” Tobias began. “There is a steel post inside but that’s mostly to give the jacket something to adhere to when we made it. In simulations, this expands rapidly and loses most of its energy very quickly. The center rod will continue on a little way but there is hardly any overpenetration since it tumbles so violently.”

“So, this is my soft target option?” Matt asked.

“For the most part yes. There isn’t much I can do unless I invent another type of explosive.” Tobias explained. “The twenty-five just doesn’t have the payload to do much more than what you already have.”

“It’s really ok, I was just looking for a little help with things that had a lot of health but not a lot of armor.” Matt said, waving away any doubt in his satisfaction. He really was pleased with the result and knew that it was only the start of their specialty weapons.

Tobias led them out and back to the training room where the rest of the commandos were finishing up getting fitted with the armor. Emnath was just closing his notebook and putting away his measuring tape. He had already stored the hide it since Matt didn’t see it anywhere. The armorer bowed to Matt and promised to have the completed sets back in 2 days. Matt waved him off, saying it was perfect and to stop bowing. With not another word, Emnath scurried out of the room leaving Sari behind, making her chase after him all the way back to his shop.

Matt did a quick touch base with the commandos that had been fitted for armor. The pilots went off and, with help from Tobias, figured out how to pair the new ammunition with their constructs. Once everyone was back in the same room Matt unveiled the rack of weapons that he had been keeping covered up. The group all had gathered round to see what was under the cloth and a collective gasp escaped as they took in the sight.

12 rifles nearly identical to the one that Matt used, and 4 much more boxy weapons stood on their stocks along a rack. A second rack was uncovered and held the magical pouches that generated magazines along with sets of load bearing equipment. Matt was actually rather impressed at what the tailors had been able to put together from a few designs that they had been showed.

Walking down the row or weapons, Matt described what they saw. “Rifles, just like mine except for some details like lasers. Machineguns, belt fed variants of the rifles used for suppression.” Then he moved to the second rack. “And the most important part. LBE or load bearing equipment to carry all the ammunition around with you.” He got a lot of very skeptical looks from the group, but Tobias was the one to explain.

“If you don’t have a way to efficiently carry and manage ammunition you will be much less effective at fighting. The weapons are useless if you cant keep them fed.” Tobias lectured them. He used a gentle tone but was deadly serious to carry his point across.

Matt saw the wisdom sink in and then had them gather round where they could all see. Tobias acted as his teaching aid to demonstrate everything while Matt lectured. They spent the rest of the afternoon going over the proper firing positions and how to operate the different guns. They did have to dedicate a little extra time to Lisk in order to cover the use of the pump action shotgun. He was thankful that he wouldn’t need to cover application since the codex had already given them all that knowledge, saving him literal weeks of time.

The following day had all 16 commandos back at the training room bright and early, interrupting Matt and Tobias having breakfast with Echo on the lawn. Matt finished up his coffee and got to organizing the group for the day. He wanted to get going quickly this morning since there would be a little field trip.

“Alrighty class, we are headed out the gate today.” Matt began. “I found a nice place for us to do a little shooting.”

“Why don’t we just find a place to go inside the walls?” Jess asked.

“Good Question.” Matt began. “Mostly because we don’t need the attention and partly because its generally not a great idea to use a flat stone wall as a back stop.” Seeing the look of confusion, he promised to show them what he meant and then led the way out the gate. He was in the mech with Tobias and had the other 4 pilots bring theirs as well. The rest had to go on foot, nothing he could do about it, but they didn’t complain.

A short walk and a lot of curious looks as they went had the group outside the wall in one of the less often used areas. There was a clear line of sight for a several hundred meters until the woods and the sloping hills. Matt had picked this spot since the hills provided a good backstop incase, they had any ricochets. He then pulled out a series of targets he had spent the better part of the night making.

Simple wooden frames with a bit of painted cloth over top. They were free standing and could be placed just about anywhere the ground was mostly flat. The targets were a simple 10 centimeter black square on a 1 meter square white cloth but it got the job done, especially at the starting distance of 50 meters. Matt set out the targets while Tobias arranged the commandos in a line running parallel to the line of targets.

“We are starting close up and will be moving it back as we go. I had hoped for steel targets, but the cost was a little too much for just something to take shots at.” Matt explained. He really regretted not having a target that gave hard feedback, but he only had so much to work with. Still, he would make the most of what he had.

The training went pretty smoothly, with only a few hiccups. The first was the group was not prepared for the concussion from the firing of the rifles, being used to a much softer, deeper tone from their previous arms. The second hard part was convincing them to use the optics on the guns. Each one was equipped with a simple red dot optic since it was the most cost effective at the time. Having never used one before and with the new guns, the commandos were having a hard time focusing on the target and not the little red dot in front of them.

The machineguns were another eye-opening experience for them with the even higher rate of fire. Fortunately, there were 5 people that took to it like a fish to water. They only had 4 of the belt-fed guns so Matt was planning on having them distribute them with 1 to each team. It ended up working out this time, but he would have to keep in mind the issues they might have in the future if they tried to implement this across the board. That wasn’t part of Matts ideal plan for the city, but he couldn’t predict the future.

After getting the basics, Matt pushed most of the targets farther out and had them just get used to shooting for a couple hours. Lisk was having an absolute riot with his new shotgun and especially loved the rifled slugs and greater accuracy. He did spend a good portion of his time working with Tobias before on how to get a different powder for his ammunition. Matt then moved to the main event, the one he looked forward to the most.

“Jess. Your up.” Matt said. “Im going to set up some targets while you get set up in your construct.” He then went down range to 50, 100 and 200 meters to set up a series of targets in groups. His goal was to demonstrate the benefit of the cannister rounds he had made for them.

When Matt returned, Jess was fully set up in her construct and Matt told her what to do. She inserted one of the canister rounds into the breech of the cannon and closed the action, the snap of the breech slamming shut cutting through the air. This was Matts first time seeing one of these fired and he was curious to see how it went. She leveled the gun at the 50-meter targets and fired.

25 Iron ball bearings ripped through the air with a cloud of smoke and shredded wadding. The signature of the cannon firing was almost as impressive as the series of dirt geysers shooting up from behind the targets. Of the 5 targets in the array, only the middle 3 had any hits, indicating that the spread was reasonable for their used.

Matt had her fire at the 100-meter target next and saw a similar effect as the first time, but the shot column was much more spread out. The targets all had at least one hit, but he could tell that the beaten zone was more oval due to the angle the shot was fired from. He turned to see Lisk absolutely vibrating with excitement.

“Can I test mine? I haven’t had a chance to fire it yet.” The Demon pilot asked.

Matt didn’t have any issues and told him to go for it. Like a flash, Lisk shoved his blue skinned self into tis cockpit and closed the hatch. Something was nagging at the back of Matts mind and not in the System notification way, he got the feeling he just opened a can of worms that would be the source of much humor and suffering. Jess had stepped back and opened her hatch to talk with the other pilots, so Matt wandered over to chat with them.

“It was way better than I expected. The debris and smoke from the shot isn’t as bad from the viewing device.” Jess was telling the other 2 pilots. “Its honestly pretty effective, I would bet that even if we went for half the size of shot, we would have great results on small opponents.”

“Well now you know why I wanted to make these.” Matt said. “If you guys are cooped up in your mechs, you cant do much against the bugs when we go take on the mines.”

Jess and the pilots fully agreed, and they chatted a little more before Lisk was finally set up and ready to fire. Matt watched as he shoved a pair of 70-millimeter diameter cases into the breech of his massive shotgun. He leveled the gun off at the 50-meter targets and fired.

Matt saw the shot fired from the left barrel and heard the report of the shot, much duller in tone than Jess’. He then saw most of the 50-meter target array turn into confetti. Without missing a step, Lisk aimed at the 100-meter target array and fired the right barrel. This time the stands mostly fell over, but they were in rough shape, with much of the wood being splintered.

“Holy fuck.” Tobias muttered.

Matt was forced to agree as he watched the giant shotgun break open and eject 2 giant cases onto the ground. 2 more were slotted in and Lisk fired one at the 200-meter target stand. The other barrel was just fired into the wood line, where it took a few branches down. Matt walked up to him as he stepped back and knelt down, popping open his hatch. Matt didn’t know how many people were on the planet, but he was pretty sure Lisk was the happiest out of them all.

“Well, lets go survey the results, though I don’t think we need to look at the 50-meter line very much.” Matt said as the demon hopped down from the construct.

The whole group walked out to the 100-meter mark to survey the results. Matt grabbed one of the targets as they passed the 50-meter line, inspecting the fabric as he walked. There were 2 sizes of holes which prompted him to ask about the shot size for Lisk’s shotgun. Turns out that it was about half the size of the ones they had made for the normal cannons.

Matt briefly wondered about making adjustments, but the purpose of the shot shells wasn’t to replicate the effect of the shotgun as much as it was to penetrate multiple targets at once. The storm of rounds fired from all the constructs would be devastating if done as a volley. When they got to the 100 meter berm, the targets had been ravaged by both canister and shot.

“I think that works very well for a simple conversion.” Tobias said as he picked up one of the partly broken targets. “The carapace of those smaller bugs shouldn’t be able to handle this at any distance.”

Matt agreed and looked out toward the last row of targets and began to wander out there. Half of the commandos following along with him. The last 5 targets had been similarly peppered by the massive shotgun. All of the targets had multiple impacts across the fabric. Matt compared the spread briefly and noticed that even at this range the pattern would easily work for human sized targets and possibly even smaller. Having seen enough, he collected the targets and walked back to the firing line to pack up for the day.

“All I wanted was a little feedback, bounce a few ideas off you.” Franklin was telling Tobias and Matt as they sat at a small table in one of the dining halls. Matt thought the food was just as good as anywhere else but the stuff they were trying to pass off as ale needed work.

“Ok, Frank. We can help you out, but this is your city, we just live here.” Tobias said. “If you want to do something then just go for it. Only time other people need to be involved is if it affects everyone.”

The orc gave Tobias a look that said ‘your full of shit’ but didn’t comment on it. He had been waiting at the forge for when Matt and Tobias got back, practically begging them to give him some advice. It did surprise Matt that there was a special menu for settlements, but he decided that was par for the course with this System and its special classes. He had wanted to know the details of the rewards and the new quests but was playing it cool to not look like a mad man.

“So, you were not even looking at the menus for the past few weeks?” Tobias asked. “Like, the system didn’t send you a notice or anything?” The situation was odd to Matt as well, so far, he found the notifications to be rather persistent. Also, they seemed to be rather well timed and on topic for the special one offs he had received.

Franklin looked rather ashamed for a moment. “Well, uh, the thing is I might have silenced the notifications.” Seeing the clearly unimpressed looks from both the humans, Franklin quickly explained himself. “I was getting the same notifications over and over about needing to start growing faster to stay on pace. Quests that we couldn’t do anything about, and it was all getting rather depressing.”

Matt understood the sentiment and could see where he was coming from. He might not have done the same, but his circumstances were different, and his mentality was not one to avoid confrontation with commanders that thought they knew better. “Look, Frank, I don’t blame you and totally get why you did that.” There was a look of relief on Franklins features as he heard the words and saw Tobias nodding along.

“I truly am glad to hear that.” Franklin said, bowing slightly. “It would still ease my conscience if you would at least give me your thoughts on the current situation and maybe help me make some choices about how to develop.”

Matt stood and gestured to the door. “Lead the way.” He was anxious to get the show on the road since he noticed that Echo was slowly stalking up to a plate of grilled meat that wasn’t being watched by its owner. I better get some for the road or I will never hear the end of it. He thought, making his way over to the counter to order more and sending mental images to Echo about getting him a snack. He really wanted to get on the road before there was an incident.