HarperMadi
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- RP Date
- YE 45.8.22
- RP Location
- YSS Koun
YSS Koun
Volumetrics bay
Spark had been very careful about her selection of personnel to train on how to use Duskerian weapons. A few points she has considered were how likely an MOS was to have their own weapon in a situation, how likely it would be for them to be near a Duskerian trooper when one did go down, and how likely it would be for them to be able to learn.
So she looked over the assembled group of Star Army Medics, technicians, and low ranking infantry with a small smile before clearing her throat and letting her battle roughened voice sound off. "Alright, folks, you know the drill. I'm Sergeant Pine. You can call me Sergeant or Spark. I am a Duskerian Legion Power Armor Infantryman, I started the Duskerian Legion Bioweapons Rehabilitation Program, I am one of the last surviving members, and the last still serving, of the Bravo prototype strike team, I am a founding member of Bravo Strike field testing unit, and I served a year as a drill sergeant instructing new soldiers. Beside me as she has been since I joined the Legion in YE38, is my copilot, Ancilla. She became sapient in YE 42. We are an officer exchange soldier pair whose one and only job on this ship is to teach all of you how to work with an allied fighting force, on allied equipment, and potentially use the gear provided by that ally. In this case, the Duskerian Legion. Today, we'll be training on the Storm Rifle Mark 2, Alpha variant. What are your questions?"
One of the technicians raised his hand, asking "so why is half the Engineering department here?"
"Good question. I'll answer it with one. If I get killed protecting you, can you use my weapon to keep protecting yourself? Because if not, that leaves you looking for a Star Army issued weapon that you haven't fired since Basic." She cocked an eyebrow to the engineer, who nodded. "Anyone else?"
Ancilla stood beside Spark, arms behind her while standing at the ready position. Ready to help Spark train those in front of them, to be better. “I want to add, It's always good to prepare yourself, to know the weapons. Not just Star Army ones, i mean, say your in the field, or in our case in the ship and the future dinner-i mean Mishuu, had brought along some kind of Weapon, or perhaps the greedy money loving shits, Kuvexians, know how their weapons work? How can you take control so that our enemies can’t use it? For us at least, this class will teach you how our weapons work. So there won't be delays trying to grab Star Army weapons, when the one in front of you is just as good.’ Ancilla said.
To Alice it makes sense to train everyone on as many guns as possible. After all, basic training had only gone over the common weapons they’d be equipped with; and the only one the instructors expected most engineers to use, thus the only one they spent a decent time with on the range, was the standard issue service pistol. A perfectly fine weapon for normal circumstances but considering the Koun seems to get into circumstances beyond normal on the regular, it’s always best to be sure that everyone at least knows where the safety is on the weaponry typically given only to combat specialists.
She’d also be lying if she said she had no interest in NDC tech of course. While a ship engineer specialist at heart she’s heard of just how insane the handheld railgun is; she’d hardly be able to call herself a techie if she wasn’t at least somewhat interested in what made it tick, or go boom, or whatever the noise this particular gun makes. But that does bring up another question, one that is a little concerning. The short engineer raises her hand, standing at the back as she is she has to go on her toes to make sure she’s seen.
“Uhmm, I understand it’s typically a heavy anti armor weapon.” She says, waiting a moment for a couple of engineers between her and Spark to move out of the way before continuing. “Won’t we be blasting holes in the walls of the ship? I know they’re rated for most of the infantry portable weaponry we have, but if all of us are taking shots with it something will break eventually.” With that she tries to move back behind a couple of engineers, slightly nervous about causing any offense. After all, it’s her first posting and she’s basically asked a senior member of the crew if they thought about the quite obvious chance of causing a hull integrity failure if too many gun happy engineers hit the same spot on the wall. Albeit, in more polite terms.
"Excellent question!" Spark gave a chuckle, lifting her weapon out of the crate by her feet and hefting it in one hand. "The S6-HAR1-2A Storm Rifle is a nuclear powered, gas operated quadrilateral rail blow through railgun with a break action release and a helical inline magazine. It fires five by thirty millimeter flechettes of fin stabilized armor piercing discarding sabot type at a rate of one thousand eight hundred rounds per minute, in ten round bursts or fully automatic. It has an engineered hardlocked maximum range of one thousand and two hundred yards firing normal ammunition. Which brings me to my point. While this weapon could easily punch a hole in the side of the ship, and is, in fact, the reason I am missing an arm, we'll be firing blanks. Same kick, and Koun can read a hit or not from the training lasers and plasma trails. Speaking of. Hoshi-MEGAMI, could you please run my volumetrics program?"
Instantly, the group of medics and technicians found themselves at an outdoor firing range, several tables in front of them as Spark casually started lifting weapons crates and setting them on tables. "Doesn't mean I won't treat this as a live fire exercise. Practice your weapon safety and nobody goes to Medical with my boot somewhere it shouldn't be. Now. Take a weapon, and there's a manual in the box to field strip it to clean. Take this opportunity to inspect your weapon and ask questions. You will not be allowed to fire if you did not field strip and correctly reassemble your storm rifle."
Ancilla watched and listened, though paranoidly she was worried about her addition to Spark’s speech, was it good wise? She didn't know instead all she knew was that she wanted to help Spark give the lesson. As the environment changed, Ancilla moved causally, lifting up crates, like Spark had been doing.
"Excellent addition, by the way, Ancilla. Yamatai is tiny. In a sea of hungry sharks. And for the record, each of the weapons you are handling is serialized. Yes, I'm handing y'all real storm rifles."
Alice nods in response to the explanation, blanks make sense and in the kind of situation where she’d have to pick up one of these guns, the enemies are probably close enough for bullet drop to not matter anyway… Or would it technically be flechette drop? Well, either way it wouldn’t surprise her if the advanced weaponry didn’t already have some kind of compensation feature for max range shooting anyway, after all a rangefinder with automatic scope adjustment is hardly far future tech.
The orange haired engineer takes one of the crates, letting out a quiet grunt upon lifting the heavy box up; sure, she’s hardly a weakling considering the nature of her job but it’s still heavier than she thought. Upon opening the box Alice mentally commands her cybernetic lenses to flip down, the thick rimmed teal coloured panes covering her eyes. A moment later the scanning equipment inbuilt into them creates a blown up image of each part of the weapon to be stripped, beaming it direct to her cybernetic optics. She lets out a low whistle as the specs of the parts pop up in her vision, the nuclear power cell output is ridiculous for a device that size; but she quickly pushes the stream of data away for now. As much as she’d love to take this thing properly apart, down to the nuts and bolts so to speak, she’s only here to field strip it. Which she does easily enough, the custom “dumb” AI in the lenses highlighting sections to take apart automatically, once she sets it onto the task.
Soon enough it’s been taken apart and put back together again, her diagnostic tool having even noticed a fault in one of the supercapacitors that’ll cause a slight leftward spin to projectiles fired after 200-300 thousand rounds have been put through it, but she pushes it aside for now. Something to mention after their little training session. “Sergeant, I believe that’s a job well done?” Alice flashes a smile at Spark as she steps back from the weapon left on the table, the lenses flicking back into place atop her head as she does so.
"Excellent work, Santo Hei Ward," Spark approached, picking up the rifle and going through the functions check. "Your cybernetics seemed to help you out, there. Help the others till you don't need them for me, okay?"
Ancilla watched as the crew worked, some seemed to manually strip the rifle down while others stared at them. That's when she noticed the change to their eyes, and she realized they had cybernetics which also helped them. The thought of Cybernetics made her think of Spark, and the arm she had.
She flashed Alice a smile, using her volumetric shroud, and turned her focus to the other crew members participating in the lesson.
Alice seemed to puff her chest out a little at the praise, seems she’s the type to let compliments get to her head quickly. She nods and heads off to go help a couple of the other engineers with their work. Despite technically cheating with her gun, she did dutifully not use her cybernetics for the next couple; in fact she managed to get them done, while of course working with the other personnel she was helping, faster than her own after learning what to do with hers. Seems her confidence in her own skills isn't misplaced.
Nodding approvingly, Spark made her round of the tables, listening carefully for the pop. There was always one. Just as she had been that one, there was always, in every group, someone who forgot to--POW!
There it was, and Spark casually made her way to the recently electrocuted Nekovalkyrja, helping her up. “Do you know what went wrong, Santo Hei?”
“I tried cleaning live rails,” she groaned in response, flexing her fingers.
“How do you think I earned the name Spark, Frizzle?” Spark gave a soft laugh, looking up from her face to her rumpled and electricity frizzed hair. “Those rails are sitting at 550 Kv. Don’t touch. I’ll show you how to turn them off, okay?”
Spark picked up the weapon, setting the buttstock against the table and pressing her finger into the breech well to push aside a contactor. “Now read the manual and take the rails off before you touch them.”
Ancilla gave an audible gasp when she heard the pop, and as she turned to look at the next victim, she widened her volumetric eyes. “Oh my” she said, as Spark spoke to the newly named Frizzle.
A little patience and compassion always yielded good results as the electrified Neko pushed through her field strip and repair, before Spark offered her a genuine smile. “You fire last, okay?”
Sacre was the non-training medic on duty for this class. She came over to Frizzle and looked her over to make sure there wasn't any serious damage even though she knew there shouldn't be. Seeing everything was fine, just the normal shakes and tingling from a mild electric shock, she remarked in a serious sounding tone that Frizzle would want to find a job sweeping floors because they were clearly too clumsy for dirty dishes. Frizzle laughed softly before returning her attention to the class again.
Standing, Spark addressed the others. “Once you finish your field strip and inspection, take your weapon and line up at the ammo point. You will each take three full magazines, one set of ear pro, and one set of eye pro. I don’t give a shit your species or augs, standards are standards. Line up at the firing line. Ancilla and myself will be at either end of the range. Treat these as though these weapons are live fire. No flagging, keep your break open until ordered to load. This is considered weapons green. You will move to the firing line with a battle buddy. Both of you will set your weapon on the blocks and then step back. When I say Condition Yellow, you will load your first magazine and close the breech. Move to the prone firing position and build your house. When I say Condition Red, you will be authorized to select semiautomatic only. Your weapon safety is ambidextrous. Press in with your thumb, keep your finger off the trigger. Push the selector slide forward and lock it in the down position. When I say weapons free, you will fire on your target three rounds. You will then have your sight picture adjusted to improve accuracy. Each magazine holds eighty shots. You will use the first magazine to zero your optics and familiarize yourself with the weapon. Your second magazine is for a standard 40-20-20 paper qualifier. If you pass, you will be allowed to spend your last magazine in full automatic on moving targets. The top ten qualifying will be allowed to qualify on the Revenant Mk 3 Power Armor. It’s about to get loud in here, folks!”
Ancilla silently moved to her new position at the range that Spark specified, and once more watched. As she did, she adjusted her audio receptors, since she knew how loud it would get,
Following the instruction, Alice headed over to the ammo point. She grumbles a bit to herself after seeing the eye protection, something about “This isn’t even rated for half of the force my eye protection is….” But nevertheless she dutifully picked up the ear and eye protection and put them on. That done, she grabbed her designated magazines and went to lay her gun down alongside the three magazines in a neat row standing up next to it. Next to her as her “battle buddy” was another engineer she was at least on acquaintance level with, despite being new to the Koun, having played cards with them for several hours on one particularly uneventful damage control standby shift.
With the current set of instructions followed, Alice stood back away from the weapon and waited for the next set. She started bouncing slightly on the balls of her feet, obviously impatient to get started using the rather exciting looking high tech weapon.
"Verify your battle buddy's ear and eye protection is being correctly worn!" Spark's voice carried and amplified by the programming of the volumetrics bay, instructing the trainees who had received their A, B, or C designations at the ammo point to perk up. "Alpha! Step forward, enter the prone supported position, and build your house. Weapons yellow!"
She then started walking the line of firing positions, observing each battle buddy pair assembling a comfortable support for the weapon as they laid on their belly and acquired sight pictures.
When she reached the end, she turned around and started back. "Alpha! Weapons red!"
The sound of inertial dampers coming online sounded as the storm rifles made ready to fire. "Range is hot! Weapons Free!"
Kra-THOOM!
The last of her breath was cut off by the sound of five Storm Rifles firing with the thunderous sound of a lightning strike that set the outer hull of the Koun ringing.
The process repeated until Spark's Geist connection to the program read all five range slots had correctly zeroed their weapons and were hitting where they were aiming with acceptable variance.
"Alpha! Weapons Green!" Break actions opened at her command, magazines fuelled by liquid gas and spring pressure launched the now useless magazines over the shooters and behind them.
"Alpha! You will now return to the benches and send Charlie up to the line. Bravo! Take your weapon, enter the prone supported firing position, and build your house!"
Ancilla observed those who have joined to train in NDC Weapons, her eyes focused on how they held the Storm Rifles. Those who were of concern, would be stopped, as she sent what she’d seen to Spark, through her Geist. She didn't focus so much on the targets they were shooting, as how the weapons were held, or miss held as it were. She knew the danger these weapons can wield if unfocused, or doing it wrong.
Alice followed the instructions as smoothly as could be expected, considering her complete lack of experience with long guns; besides one very short primer with a few of the standard issue rifles the Star Army issues out. Nevertheless she managed to get into a comfortable position in a decent enough time, with a bit of shuffling around to make sure the rifle is properly seated into her shoulder. While she might not have known much about target shooting, she did know how much kick this thing’ll put out and she wasn’t in the business of breaking her collarbone anytime soon.
She barely resisted the urge to let out a laugh after firing that first shot, the thundering noise of a powerful weapon going off in her hands igniting that primitive part of most humans at the excitement of firing a really, really big gun. After firing twice more she, rather reluctantly, got up to return to the benches. Once her range buddy was properly set up, Alice headed back to do a quick check over her rifle to make sure nothing had broken during firing.
While nothing had broken, she could hear Spark moving through B group, then sending B back to the bench so that Alice's group acted as the firing buddies for C group. Then Spark called out "Alpha! Place your 80 shot magazine on the shot block once you have built your house. Myself and Ancilla will brief you individually."
And so Spark moved between the ranges, checking each shooter's position before finally taking a knee next to Alice. "Enjoying yourself? Nekos don't get that giddy smile when firing a high power rifle. It's just a thing. Tuck your heel into your inner thigh to make a wider footprint and make yourself more stable. But don't let yourself get uncomfortable. Forty shots like this, then prone unsupported. Pop up targets, watch your lane, a target can come up at any range at any time but will stay up three to ten seconds, randomized depending on range. If you hit it, it'll go down. If you miss, let it go. Not worth a second shot. You got this." Spark gave Alice a pat on the hip before moving on with that all too human smile.
Ancilla noticed Alice’s smile after firing the weapon, but she chose to let Spark handle it since she was capable as much if not more than she was. So she turned her focus on another shooter, and before they could fire the weapon, she made them adjust their posture.
“Ahhh uhmmm, yeah I guess it’s pretty fun…” Alice let out a short nervous laugh at the question, unsure if she’d just gotten herself in trouble. Luckily it seemed to just be an innocent question, so with a slight sigh of relief to get rid of the knot in her stomach she didn’t realize was there until just then, Alice shifted around to follow Spark’s suggestion on shooting posture.
She waited patiently for the targets to start popping up and started taking shots, at first flinching a bit at the sound of the rifle going off and messing up her aim but tried her best to get back into the swing of it after sending half of her first few shots wide.
After cycling all three groups through, Spark called out, "Alright! Final exercise! When directed, you will take whatever position you prefer and move the safety forward and up to access full automatic mode! For two minutes, moving targets will appear in all lanes, hit as many as you can. This is not scored, this is to familiarize yourself with the full automatic feature of your weapon. You will spend your entire magazine. Alpha, build your house and signal to your range buddy when ready."
Ancilla blinked her volumetric eyes at Alice’s words. She was unsure if shooting guns should be fun, but she supposed it was a Nepleslian thing. The Infomorph noted Sparks’s words, so she decided against trying to correct their training recruits for this training class. She though it was good for them to learn.
Like before, Alice walked up to the line and got into position with the rifle resting on a low sandbag. As much as she’d have loved to fire with just her hand to support it, her wrist was already killing her with just the 20 shots she took earlier and she wasn’t in a hurry to have it aching for the rest of the day after firing another 80 shots like that. With everything in position, her range buddy stood back and Alice waited for the green light to start firing. Now as much as she’d have loved to just hose 80 rounds through the rifle as fast as possible, of course a completely natural desire for anyone with Nepleslian blood, she did only intend fire short controlled bursts at the targets as they popped up, to make sure she had enough ammo to last for the full exercise.
But the exercise didn't end. A sharp beep alerted her she was out of ammunition and almost as fast, Spark was there signalling Alice's range partner to get in and stressfire, signalling Alice to run with her weapon safed back to the bench and send the C shooter down.
It wasn't another five minutes before the roaring of automatic rail fire subsided, and Spark ordered all shooters to line up at the tables for weapons inspection and turn in. As each passed her to turn in their weapon, she gave their name, their score in both the shoots. Most seemed to pass. A few got marksman, or even expert. Very rare few got the dreaded words one Neko heard. "Tari Sanke, you scored thirty of eighty in the qualification and twenty five hits in the automatic. You did not pass this course. You will report for retraining.
She had just finished sending Spark her observations, to add to Spark’s assessment and now with her hands behind her, she stood beside Spark as she spoke to the trainees.
"Alice Ward," she said next. "You scored fifty six of eighty, and hit three hundred and thirty seven times in full automatic fire. Well done, marksman."
When Alice received her "marksman" grade she was more than surprised, after all she could count the number of shots she'd fired through a long rifle before this exercise on her fingers and toes. All she'd really been aiming for was to not fail and to end up with a pretty good score… It was certainly difficult to suppress the feeling of pride to maintain at least a somewhat professional demeanor. Still there was a slight worry in her mind, if she did too well maybe they'd force her into the infantry? As much as she enjoyed firing the rifle on a nice clean range, she can't say she'd be excited at the prospect of getting shot at for a living.
"Don't worry if you think I'm gonna push for you to go infantry. Your skill in Engineering is far more valuable to this ship, the Star Army, and most importantly, yourself. Even if you did shoot better than a few of these Infantry folks. I'll have to go through the scores, but if you qualify, would you like to go through the power armor qualification course? Ancilla, she qualify for the advanced marksman course, should she want it?"
“Power armour qualification huh?” Alice mused for a moment, sure she knew her way around fixing most of the mix of power armours used by Yamatai and its allies, but she’d only ever done very basic training on actually using Mindy power armor and not much else. “Yeah sure,” she nodded with a slight smile on her face “like you said, best to at least have some idea on how to use all the equipment the Koun carries, right?”
“Hell yeah, Power Armor is amazing, and I'm not biased at all even though I'm a Power Armor AI.” Ancilla said with a grin, which grew wider as Alice stated her agreement. “Hey Spark, we letting her use ours or theirs?” Ancilla asked as she moved from her position.
"Excellent. You qualified with a Mindy in Basic. Even if you're not expected to use it. And I'll arrange for you to go through the training at your convenience. I just got the email that we’re expecting five training model Revenant 3s and tooling in. Could use your help getting the armoring bay moved around to accommodate.”
“Ah of course! Although at this rate of picking up all this non-standard equipment, if we ever get an inspection it’ll be an uhh….. Interesting meeting for the captain to explain it all.” She flashed Spark a quick grin. “Can probably move a bit of this and that around though, it’ll fit somewhere.” She mused, a hand up to her chin as she thought about the “how” of the whole process. Sure, she wasn’t actually in logistics, but she did know power armour needs constant maintenance to make sure it’s ready to work perfectly at a moments notice; so they’d need to make sure they’re accessible to work on, rather than being bunged away in some overful storage room.
Ancilla noted that Spark didn't respond to her question, but at least they were getting some training power armor to use. “Teehee” she said simply to Alice’s words and moved to stand beside her. “True, but the captain seems cool to me, '' she said, though she hadn't been around him too long.
Remembering Ancilla had asked her a question, Spark's brows furrowed for a moment. "I'm not using live fire equipment to train and qualify people. Anyway. Good talk, Alice. Gotta get the rest of these dumbasses through. Come find me later. I'll be in the lounge after dinner chow. I hear Ali's doing some old Nepleslian dish. Don't remember the name."
Alice nodded in response to Ancilla’s statement. “Yeah, he seems pretty down to earth so to speak. Not like some higher ups I’ve dealt with in the past for sure.” As Spark spoke, Alice went about packing her rifle away securely in its case; although not handing it back over before she dug through one of the seemingly endless pockets in her coat to find a roll of only slightly ragged looking bright yellow tape with ‘DEFECTIVE’ stamped along it repeatedly in block lettering. She wrapped a short bit of it around the handle, before holding it out to the taller woman. “Ah Almost forgot! When I gave it a scan earlier I found a fault in one of the capacitors, not something that’ll come up any time soon but eventually it’ll start shooting to the left a bit. I guess the scope can compensate for it until it gets real bad but still, any risk we can avoid is a risk we don’t have to deal with in the future, right?”
With that she turned to leave, although stopped as she realised she hadn’t actually responded to Spark’s offer for a meeting in the future. “Ah yup, sounds good! See ya around Spark! This was pretty fun honestly, maybe I’ll have to swing by again next time you’re doing one of these.” She flashed Spark a quick smile before disappearing off, already running a little late for shift change on standby duty.
Volumetrics bay
Spark had been very careful about her selection of personnel to train on how to use Duskerian weapons. A few points she has considered were how likely an MOS was to have their own weapon in a situation, how likely it would be for them to be near a Duskerian trooper when one did go down, and how likely it would be for them to be able to learn.
So she looked over the assembled group of Star Army Medics, technicians, and low ranking infantry with a small smile before clearing her throat and letting her battle roughened voice sound off. "Alright, folks, you know the drill. I'm Sergeant Pine. You can call me Sergeant or Spark. I am a Duskerian Legion Power Armor Infantryman, I started the Duskerian Legion Bioweapons Rehabilitation Program, I am one of the last surviving members, and the last still serving, of the Bravo prototype strike team, I am a founding member of Bravo Strike field testing unit, and I served a year as a drill sergeant instructing new soldiers. Beside me as she has been since I joined the Legion in YE38, is my copilot, Ancilla. She became sapient in YE 42. We are an officer exchange soldier pair whose one and only job on this ship is to teach all of you how to work with an allied fighting force, on allied equipment, and potentially use the gear provided by that ally. In this case, the Duskerian Legion. Today, we'll be training on the Storm Rifle Mark 2, Alpha variant. What are your questions?"
One of the technicians raised his hand, asking "so why is half the Engineering department here?"
"Good question. I'll answer it with one. If I get killed protecting you, can you use my weapon to keep protecting yourself? Because if not, that leaves you looking for a Star Army issued weapon that you haven't fired since Basic." She cocked an eyebrow to the engineer, who nodded. "Anyone else?"
Ancilla stood beside Spark, arms behind her while standing at the ready position. Ready to help Spark train those in front of them, to be better. “I want to add, It's always good to prepare yourself, to know the weapons. Not just Star Army ones, i mean, say your in the field, or in our case in the ship and the future dinner-i mean Mishuu, had brought along some kind of Weapon, or perhaps the greedy money loving shits, Kuvexians, know how their weapons work? How can you take control so that our enemies can’t use it? For us at least, this class will teach you how our weapons work. So there won't be delays trying to grab Star Army weapons, when the one in front of you is just as good.’ Ancilla said.
To Alice it makes sense to train everyone on as many guns as possible. After all, basic training had only gone over the common weapons they’d be equipped with; and the only one the instructors expected most engineers to use, thus the only one they spent a decent time with on the range, was the standard issue service pistol. A perfectly fine weapon for normal circumstances but considering the Koun seems to get into circumstances beyond normal on the regular, it’s always best to be sure that everyone at least knows where the safety is on the weaponry typically given only to combat specialists.
She’d also be lying if she said she had no interest in NDC tech of course. While a ship engineer specialist at heart she’s heard of just how insane the handheld railgun is; she’d hardly be able to call herself a techie if she wasn’t at least somewhat interested in what made it tick, or go boom, or whatever the noise this particular gun makes. But that does bring up another question, one that is a little concerning. The short engineer raises her hand, standing at the back as she is she has to go on her toes to make sure she’s seen.
“Uhmm, I understand it’s typically a heavy anti armor weapon.” She says, waiting a moment for a couple of engineers between her and Spark to move out of the way before continuing. “Won’t we be blasting holes in the walls of the ship? I know they’re rated for most of the infantry portable weaponry we have, but if all of us are taking shots with it something will break eventually.” With that she tries to move back behind a couple of engineers, slightly nervous about causing any offense. After all, it’s her first posting and she’s basically asked a senior member of the crew if they thought about the quite obvious chance of causing a hull integrity failure if too many gun happy engineers hit the same spot on the wall. Albeit, in more polite terms.
"Excellent question!" Spark gave a chuckle, lifting her weapon out of the crate by her feet and hefting it in one hand. "The S6-HAR1-2A Storm Rifle is a nuclear powered, gas operated quadrilateral rail blow through railgun with a break action release and a helical inline magazine. It fires five by thirty millimeter flechettes of fin stabilized armor piercing discarding sabot type at a rate of one thousand eight hundred rounds per minute, in ten round bursts or fully automatic. It has an engineered hardlocked maximum range of one thousand and two hundred yards firing normal ammunition. Which brings me to my point. While this weapon could easily punch a hole in the side of the ship, and is, in fact, the reason I am missing an arm, we'll be firing blanks. Same kick, and Koun can read a hit or not from the training lasers and plasma trails. Speaking of. Hoshi-MEGAMI, could you please run my volumetrics program?"
Instantly, the group of medics and technicians found themselves at an outdoor firing range, several tables in front of them as Spark casually started lifting weapons crates and setting them on tables. "Doesn't mean I won't treat this as a live fire exercise. Practice your weapon safety and nobody goes to Medical with my boot somewhere it shouldn't be. Now. Take a weapon, and there's a manual in the box to field strip it to clean. Take this opportunity to inspect your weapon and ask questions. You will not be allowed to fire if you did not field strip and correctly reassemble your storm rifle."
Ancilla watched and listened, though paranoidly she was worried about her addition to Spark’s speech, was it good wise? She didn't know instead all she knew was that she wanted to help Spark give the lesson. As the environment changed, Ancilla moved causally, lifting up crates, like Spark had been doing.
"Excellent addition, by the way, Ancilla. Yamatai is tiny. In a sea of hungry sharks. And for the record, each of the weapons you are handling is serialized. Yes, I'm handing y'all real storm rifles."
Alice nods in response to the explanation, blanks make sense and in the kind of situation where she’d have to pick up one of these guns, the enemies are probably close enough for bullet drop to not matter anyway… Or would it technically be flechette drop? Well, either way it wouldn’t surprise her if the advanced weaponry didn’t already have some kind of compensation feature for max range shooting anyway, after all a rangefinder with automatic scope adjustment is hardly far future tech.
The orange haired engineer takes one of the crates, letting out a quiet grunt upon lifting the heavy box up; sure, she’s hardly a weakling considering the nature of her job but it’s still heavier than she thought. Upon opening the box Alice mentally commands her cybernetic lenses to flip down, the thick rimmed teal coloured panes covering her eyes. A moment later the scanning equipment inbuilt into them creates a blown up image of each part of the weapon to be stripped, beaming it direct to her cybernetic optics. She lets out a low whistle as the specs of the parts pop up in her vision, the nuclear power cell output is ridiculous for a device that size; but she quickly pushes the stream of data away for now. As much as she’d love to take this thing properly apart, down to the nuts and bolts so to speak, she’s only here to field strip it. Which she does easily enough, the custom “dumb” AI in the lenses highlighting sections to take apart automatically, once she sets it onto the task.
Soon enough it’s been taken apart and put back together again, her diagnostic tool having even noticed a fault in one of the supercapacitors that’ll cause a slight leftward spin to projectiles fired after 200-300 thousand rounds have been put through it, but she pushes it aside for now. Something to mention after their little training session. “Sergeant, I believe that’s a job well done?” Alice flashes a smile at Spark as she steps back from the weapon left on the table, the lenses flicking back into place atop her head as she does so.
"Excellent work, Santo Hei Ward," Spark approached, picking up the rifle and going through the functions check. "Your cybernetics seemed to help you out, there. Help the others till you don't need them for me, okay?"
Ancilla watched as the crew worked, some seemed to manually strip the rifle down while others stared at them. That's when she noticed the change to their eyes, and she realized they had cybernetics which also helped them. The thought of Cybernetics made her think of Spark, and the arm she had.
She flashed Alice a smile, using her volumetric shroud, and turned her focus to the other crew members participating in the lesson.
Alice seemed to puff her chest out a little at the praise, seems she’s the type to let compliments get to her head quickly. She nods and heads off to go help a couple of the other engineers with their work. Despite technically cheating with her gun, she did dutifully not use her cybernetics for the next couple; in fact she managed to get them done, while of course working with the other personnel she was helping, faster than her own after learning what to do with hers. Seems her confidence in her own skills isn't misplaced.
Nodding approvingly, Spark made her round of the tables, listening carefully for the pop. There was always one. Just as she had been that one, there was always, in every group, someone who forgot to--POW!
There it was, and Spark casually made her way to the recently electrocuted Nekovalkyrja, helping her up. “Do you know what went wrong, Santo Hei?”
“I tried cleaning live rails,” she groaned in response, flexing her fingers.
“How do you think I earned the name Spark, Frizzle?” Spark gave a soft laugh, looking up from her face to her rumpled and electricity frizzed hair. “Those rails are sitting at 550 Kv. Don’t touch. I’ll show you how to turn them off, okay?”
Spark picked up the weapon, setting the buttstock against the table and pressing her finger into the breech well to push aside a contactor. “Now read the manual and take the rails off before you touch them.”
Ancilla gave an audible gasp when she heard the pop, and as she turned to look at the next victim, she widened her volumetric eyes. “Oh my” she said, as Spark spoke to the newly named Frizzle.
A little patience and compassion always yielded good results as the electrified Neko pushed through her field strip and repair, before Spark offered her a genuine smile. “You fire last, okay?”
Sacre was the non-training medic on duty for this class. She came over to Frizzle and looked her over to make sure there wasn't any serious damage even though she knew there shouldn't be. Seeing everything was fine, just the normal shakes and tingling from a mild electric shock, she remarked in a serious sounding tone that Frizzle would want to find a job sweeping floors because they were clearly too clumsy for dirty dishes. Frizzle laughed softly before returning her attention to the class again.
Standing, Spark addressed the others. “Once you finish your field strip and inspection, take your weapon and line up at the ammo point. You will each take three full magazines, one set of ear pro, and one set of eye pro. I don’t give a shit your species or augs, standards are standards. Line up at the firing line. Ancilla and myself will be at either end of the range. Treat these as though these weapons are live fire. No flagging, keep your break open until ordered to load. This is considered weapons green. You will move to the firing line with a battle buddy. Both of you will set your weapon on the blocks and then step back. When I say Condition Yellow, you will load your first magazine and close the breech. Move to the prone firing position and build your house. When I say Condition Red, you will be authorized to select semiautomatic only. Your weapon safety is ambidextrous. Press in with your thumb, keep your finger off the trigger. Push the selector slide forward and lock it in the down position. When I say weapons free, you will fire on your target three rounds. You will then have your sight picture adjusted to improve accuracy. Each magazine holds eighty shots. You will use the first magazine to zero your optics and familiarize yourself with the weapon. Your second magazine is for a standard 40-20-20 paper qualifier. If you pass, you will be allowed to spend your last magazine in full automatic on moving targets. The top ten qualifying will be allowed to qualify on the Revenant Mk 3 Power Armor. It’s about to get loud in here, folks!”
Ancilla silently moved to her new position at the range that Spark specified, and once more watched. As she did, she adjusted her audio receptors, since she knew how loud it would get,
Following the instruction, Alice headed over to the ammo point. She grumbles a bit to herself after seeing the eye protection, something about “This isn’t even rated for half of the force my eye protection is….” But nevertheless she dutifully picked up the ear and eye protection and put them on. That done, she grabbed her designated magazines and went to lay her gun down alongside the three magazines in a neat row standing up next to it. Next to her as her “battle buddy” was another engineer she was at least on acquaintance level with, despite being new to the Koun, having played cards with them for several hours on one particularly uneventful damage control standby shift.
With the current set of instructions followed, Alice stood back away from the weapon and waited for the next set. She started bouncing slightly on the balls of her feet, obviously impatient to get started using the rather exciting looking high tech weapon.
"Verify your battle buddy's ear and eye protection is being correctly worn!" Spark's voice carried and amplified by the programming of the volumetrics bay, instructing the trainees who had received their A, B, or C designations at the ammo point to perk up. "Alpha! Step forward, enter the prone supported position, and build your house. Weapons yellow!"
She then started walking the line of firing positions, observing each battle buddy pair assembling a comfortable support for the weapon as they laid on their belly and acquired sight pictures.
When she reached the end, she turned around and started back. "Alpha! Weapons red!"
The sound of inertial dampers coming online sounded as the storm rifles made ready to fire. "Range is hot! Weapons Free!"
Kra-THOOM!
The last of her breath was cut off by the sound of five Storm Rifles firing with the thunderous sound of a lightning strike that set the outer hull of the Koun ringing.
The process repeated until Spark's Geist connection to the program read all five range slots had correctly zeroed their weapons and were hitting where they were aiming with acceptable variance.
"Alpha! Weapons Green!" Break actions opened at her command, magazines fuelled by liquid gas and spring pressure launched the now useless magazines over the shooters and behind them.
"Alpha! You will now return to the benches and send Charlie up to the line. Bravo! Take your weapon, enter the prone supported firing position, and build your house!"
Ancilla observed those who have joined to train in NDC Weapons, her eyes focused on how they held the Storm Rifles. Those who were of concern, would be stopped, as she sent what she’d seen to Spark, through her Geist. She didn't focus so much on the targets they were shooting, as how the weapons were held, or miss held as it were. She knew the danger these weapons can wield if unfocused, or doing it wrong.
Alice followed the instructions as smoothly as could be expected, considering her complete lack of experience with long guns; besides one very short primer with a few of the standard issue rifles the Star Army issues out. Nevertheless she managed to get into a comfortable position in a decent enough time, with a bit of shuffling around to make sure the rifle is properly seated into her shoulder. While she might not have known much about target shooting, she did know how much kick this thing’ll put out and she wasn’t in the business of breaking her collarbone anytime soon.
She barely resisted the urge to let out a laugh after firing that first shot, the thundering noise of a powerful weapon going off in her hands igniting that primitive part of most humans at the excitement of firing a really, really big gun. After firing twice more she, rather reluctantly, got up to return to the benches. Once her range buddy was properly set up, Alice headed back to do a quick check over her rifle to make sure nothing had broken during firing.
While nothing had broken, she could hear Spark moving through B group, then sending B back to the bench so that Alice's group acted as the firing buddies for C group. Then Spark called out "Alpha! Place your 80 shot magazine on the shot block once you have built your house. Myself and Ancilla will brief you individually."
And so Spark moved between the ranges, checking each shooter's position before finally taking a knee next to Alice. "Enjoying yourself? Nekos don't get that giddy smile when firing a high power rifle. It's just a thing. Tuck your heel into your inner thigh to make a wider footprint and make yourself more stable. But don't let yourself get uncomfortable. Forty shots like this, then prone unsupported. Pop up targets, watch your lane, a target can come up at any range at any time but will stay up three to ten seconds, randomized depending on range. If you hit it, it'll go down. If you miss, let it go. Not worth a second shot. You got this." Spark gave Alice a pat on the hip before moving on with that all too human smile.
Ancilla noticed Alice’s smile after firing the weapon, but she chose to let Spark handle it since she was capable as much if not more than she was. So she turned her focus on another shooter, and before they could fire the weapon, she made them adjust their posture.
“Ahhh uhmmm, yeah I guess it’s pretty fun…” Alice let out a short nervous laugh at the question, unsure if she’d just gotten herself in trouble. Luckily it seemed to just be an innocent question, so with a slight sigh of relief to get rid of the knot in her stomach she didn’t realize was there until just then, Alice shifted around to follow Spark’s suggestion on shooting posture.
She waited patiently for the targets to start popping up and started taking shots, at first flinching a bit at the sound of the rifle going off and messing up her aim but tried her best to get back into the swing of it after sending half of her first few shots wide.
After cycling all three groups through, Spark called out, "Alright! Final exercise! When directed, you will take whatever position you prefer and move the safety forward and up to access full automatic mode! For two minutes, moving targets will appear in all lanes, hit as many as you can. This is not scored, this is to familiarize yourself with the full automatic feature of your weapon. You will spend your entire magazine. Alpha, build your house and signal to your range buddy when ready."
Ancilla blinked her volumetric eyes at Alice’s words. She was unsure if shooting guns should be fun, but she supposed it was a Nepleslian thing. The Infomorph noted Sparks’s words, so she decided against trying to correct their training recruits for this training class. She though it was good for them to learn.
Like before, Alice walked up to the line and got into position with the rifle resting on a low sandbag. As much as she’d have loved to fire with just her hand to support it, her wrist was already killing her with just the 20 shots she took earlier and she wasn’t in a hurry to have it aching for the rest of the day after firing another 80 shots like that. With everything in position, her range buddy stood back and Alice waited for the green light to start firing. Now as much as she’d have loved to just hose 80 rounds through the rifle as fast as possible, of course a completely natural desire for anyone with Nepleslian blood, she did only intend fire short controlled bursts at the targets as they popped up, to make sure she had enough ammo to last for the full exercise.
But the exercise didn't end. A sharp beep alerted her she was out of ammunition and almost as fast, Spark was there signalling Alice's range partner to get in and stressfire, signalling Alice to run with her weapon safed back to the bench and send the C shooter down.
It wasn't another five minutes before the roaring of automatic rail fire subsided, and Spark ordered all shooters to line up at the tables for weapons inspection and turn in. As each passed her to turn in their weapon, she gave their name, their score in both the shoots. Most seemed to pass. A few got marksman, or even expert. Very rare few got the dreaded words one Neko heard. "Tari Sanke, you scored thirty of eighty in the qualification and twenty five hits in the automatic. You did not pass this course. You will report for retraining.
She had just finished sending Spark her observations, to add to Spark’s assessment and now with her hands behind her, she stood beside Spark as she spoke to the trainees.
"Alice Ward," she said next. "You scored fifty six of eighty, and hit three hundred and thirty seven times in full automatic fire. Well done, marksman."
When Alice received her "marksman" grade she was more than surprised, after all she could count the number of shots she'd fired through a long rifle before this exercise on her fingers and toes. All she'd really been aiming for was to not fail and to end up with a pretty good score… It was certainly difficult to suppress the feeling of pride to maintain at least a somewhat professional demeanor. Still there was a slight worry in her mind, if she did too well maybe they'd force her into the infantry? As much as she enjoyed firing the rifle on a nice clean range, she can't say she'd be excited at the prospect of getting shot at for a living.
"Don't worry if you think I'm gonna push for you to go infantry. Your skill in Engineering is far more valuable to this ship, the Star Army, and most importantly, yourself. Even if you did shoot better than a few of these Infantry folks. I'll have to go through the scores, but if you qualify, would you like to go through the power armor qualification course? Ancilla, she qualify for the advanced marksman course, should she want it?"
“Power armour qualification huh?” Alice mused for a moment, sure she knew her way around fixing most of the mix of power armours used by Yamatai and its allies, but she’d only ever done very basic training on actually using Mindy power armor and not much else. “Yeah sure,” she nodded with a slight smile on her face “like you said, best to at least have some idea on how to use all the equipment the Koun carries, right?”
“Hell yeah, Power Armor is amazing, and I'm not biased at all even though I'm a Power Armor AI.” Ancilla said with a grin, which grew wider as Alice stated her agreement. “Hey Spark, we letting her use ours or theirs?” Ancilla asked as she moved from her position.
"Excellent. You qualified with a Mindy in Basic. Even if you're not expected to use it. And I'll arrange for you to go through the training at your convenience. I just got the email that we’re expecting five training model Revenant 3s and tooling in. Could use your help getting the armoring bay moved around to accommodate.”
“Ah of course! Although at this rate of picking up all this non-standard equipment, if we ever get an inspection it’ll be an uhh….. Interesting meeting for the captain to explain it all.” She flashed Spark a quick grin. “Can probably move a bit of this and that around though, it’ll fit somewhere.” She mused, a hand up to her chin as she thought about the “how” of the whole process. Sure, she wasn’t actually in logistics, but she did know power armour needs constant maintenance to make sure it’s ready to work perfectly at a moments notice; so they’d need to make sure they’re accessible to work on, rather than being bunged away in some overful storage room.
Ancilla noted that Spark didn't respond to her question, but at least they were getting some training power armor to use. “Teehee” she said simply to Alice’s words and moved to stand beside her. “True, but the captain seems cool to me, '' she said, though she hadn't been around him too long.
Remembering Ancilla had asked her a question, Spark's brows furrowed for a moment. "I'm not using live fire equipment to train and qualify people. Anyway. Good talk, Alice. Gotta get the rest of these dumbasses through. Come find me later. I'll be in the lounge after dinner chow. I hear Ali's doing some old Nepleslian dish. Don't remember the name."
Alice nodded in response to Ancilla’s statement. “Yeah, he seems pretty down to earth so to speak. Not like some higher ups I’ve dealt with in the past for sure.” As Spark spoke, Alice went about packing her rifle away securely in its case; although not handing it back over before she dug through one of the seemingly endless pockets in her coat to find a roll of only slightly ragged looking bright yellow tape with ‘DEFECTIVE’ stamped along it repeatedly in block lettering. She wrapped a short bit of it around the handle, before holding it out to the taller woman. “Ah Almost forgot! When I gave it a scan earlier I found a fault in one of the capacitors, not something that’ll come up any time soon but eventually it’ll start shooting to the left a bit. I guess the scope can compensate for it until it gets real bad but still, any risk we can avoid is a risk we don’t have to deal with in the future, right?”
With that she turned to leave, although stopped as she realised she hadn’t actually responded to Spark’s offer for a meeting in the future. “Ah yup, sounds good! See ya around Spark! This was pretty fun honestly, maybe I’ll have to swing by again next time you’re doing one of these.” She flashed Spark a quick smile before disappearing off, already running a little late for shift change on standby duty.
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