The Sergeant appeared that he could shoot Endy at that moment. In his life, Endy had met a lot of lunatics, but Colburn was at the very top of that list. The Sergeant could break his neck without much ado or remorse. Usually, Endy would avoid such people but here he did not have much choice. “Sergeant, could you give me a hand with this?”
“It’s high time you started using that big head of yours. Turn around now, so I can put on the upper part of the breast protector.” He quickly repeated all the steps to strap the armor similar to the one for the big cannon and then handed Endy the helmet. “Put this on and turn to the others!”
Then Colburn started to explain each part. “This is the armor for the mortar, with an Elkah plasma grenade. As you can see, it’s considerably simpler than the heavy armor of the Khak cannon. The mortar weighs about 27 pounds, and it would be difficult to handle without this armory; it could literally dislocate your shoulder.”
He bent down, picked up a smaller mortar from the desk and presented it. “As you can see, the mortar is simple. It consists of two barrels, a launch mechanism at the end and a trigger like the Khak cannons on the top. You may see that the lower barrel is three times wider than the upper one and in it, there are four cylindrical grooves.” He turned the mortar towards the group so that they could all see it better and pointed to a groove. “The mortar plasma grenades go in here. They are three times smaller than the ones we use, but they still have the same destructive power. You can put four charges of eighty-five plasma grenades in each barrel. Believe me; it’s deadly.”
He attached the mortar to Endy’s forearm. “Attachment is simple on the forearm.” When he had completed attaching the mortar, commanded Endy, “Put down the visor.”
He did, and Sergeant Colburn asked, “Have the green signs appeared?”
“Yes, they have.”
“Now turn around, look towards the command bridge of the destroyed cruiser and tell us its distance.”
“Distance is 1773 yards.”
“Well then, I want you to shoot at it with a single grenade.”
He lifted the visor and said, “But I haven’t got any grenades.”
The Sergeant tapped him on the shoulder, happy with his observation. “It seems that you were listening to me while I was working with Vandor. As for the grenades, I’ll put one in the mortar. Now turn to the cruiser, lower the visor, and I’ll take care of the rest.”
“I’ve got it.”
Sergeant took a cylindrical charge from the heavy desk. As he carried it, its metallic gray color glittered in the sun. He put the grenade into one of the barrels and asked, “Can you see how many charges there are in the cylinder?”
“Just a minute… There are fifty-six.”
“Look at the trigger. There’s a small handle on the upper side and a small lever on the right.”
Endy turned the barrel at an angle to see it better. “What do I have to do with it?”
“Now it’s in a neutral position. Push it down!”
“I’ve done it.”
“That’s the position for triggering a single grenade. The lever’s lowest position is for a burst of grenades.
“This thing can send out a burst?”
“Yes, Endy.”
Endy smiled and tapped the mortar with his left hand. “If this is as deadly as you’ve said, I think it could become my pet.”
“We’ll see that right now,” Colburn said. “Have you aimed at what I told you to?”
“Yes.”
“Then fire one grenade at the cruiser! I want you to be one hundred percent precise when you fire the grenade into the command room.”
“Alright, Sir.”
For a couple of seconds, Endy aimed then gently squeezed the trigger. His hand jerked back noticeably, but the greater part of the recoil was absorbed by the main mechanical joint. The grenade fired with a loud scream, which we could hear all the way till it crashed on the cruiser.
First, there was a big greenish ball as the explosion blew off parts of the command bridge’s rusted hull and then the fierce brunt of the green flames could be seen enveloping the hull. Soon they all heard a loud sound echoing like thunder around them, and Endy jumped with joy. “This is awesome.” He lifted the visor and addressed the Sergeant, who was carefully watching the effects of the explosion. “May I have a taste of burst firing?”
After thinking a second about it, the Sergeant nodded. “Alright, but only a short burst. The target is the same.”
While Endy was making the adjustments for the short burst, the Sergeant warned him, “You have to be careful. The recoil will be much stronger this time.”
But Endy was much too enraptured with the mortar to pay attention to the warning. When he aimed and squeezed the trigger the shrill sounds of the firing made everybody cover their ears, while Endy’s howls in pain was muffled by the much louder noise of the grenades. His eyes were soon filling with tears most of it involuntarily from pain and he hardly saw the explosion.
The Sergeant walked up to him and yelled, “Didn’t you hear me tell you to be careful with the recoil?”
With his left hand, he lifted the visor. “I think… it has dislocated my shoulder. It hurts like the hell.”
“Let me take off the armor, and I’ll see what it has done to your shoulder.” With trained movements, Colburn took out the rest of the charges, laid them on the desk and then took off the mortar. Major Vallery and Henry came closer as he took off the breast protector and Endy grimaced.
“Is his shoulder dislocated?” Henry asked.
“I reckon it isn’t. He was lucky. Most of it was dampened by the armor and the mechanism; his ligaments and sinews must have taken a hit. He’ll have to rest in the in-patient clinic for a couple of days.”
“That will be a useful lesson for you. These are things which will help you stay alive.”
Endy touched his shoulder and tried to move it slowly but it didn’t to budge. He still wanted to give a feedback, “Sergeant, I like this weapon, it’s so powerful. Though my shoulder was almost dislocated, I think I can take this one as my companion.”
The Sergeant yelled, “You fool, it could tear your hand off and then you can stay immersed in self-pity for the rest of your life.”
“But…”
“Shut up! Not one more word from you.” Colburn looked at the troop and explained, “I think you’ve all understood that handling of these weapons can be dangerous, and that’s why you must listen to each of my instruction.” He pointed behind him with his thumb, “Don’t be like this fool. These weapons aren’t funny. They’re for killing if used correctly, but if you make a mistake in using them then rest assured that they will kill you. The Brigadier ordered me to make real soldiers out of you and that’s what I am going to do. Pain or otherwise, you will be disciplined.” Then he called to the doctor, who was standing by an antigravity military car and arranging the contents of his bag. He rushed to the Sergeant. “You need me, Sergeant?”
Colburn pointed to Endy, “Take a look at that lunatic!”
“Right away, Sir.”
As the doctor went over to Endy, Sergeant Colburn asked Henry, “Shall we continue?”
“Go ahead; I’m enjoying the demonstration.”
The Sergeant called Mark Bontovic, “Now it’s your turn!”
Mark looked at the Sergeant. “Do you speak… to me? Are you…”
“Are you pretending to be stupid or is it just me? Come over here. Don’t make me use a method you won’t like!”
Mark instantaneously ran up to him with a confused look on his the face. Colburn put a hand on his shoulder and pressed it him down; Mark bent under strain.
“Didn’t you want to try the Khak cannon a little while ago?”
Mark laughed and straightened up. “Yes, Sir!”
The Sergeant picked up a helmet from the desk and another miraculous weapon, which consisted of a single wide barrel, is nearly two foot long, with
a simple trigger attached to the butt. It seemed rather shapeless compared to the other weapons. At the front of the barrel was a short handle attached to a shining silver-grey ring, inside which the solar cells were grouped like a honeycomb. The weapon looked like a smallish cannon, although it didn’t have a container.
The Sergeant approached Mark and gave the weapon to him. “This is the newest model of the USZO-230 cannon, and I think you’ll like it. It seems a little bulky but it’s perfect, and you’ll see why shortly.”
Mark looked at it with admiration, examining it from all sides. “But where is its container?”
“That’s hidden at the butt-end.”
“And how is it powered?”
“Cannon is powered by solar cells.”
“What does it use when there’s no light? And what grenades does it fire?”
“When there’s no light, it uses an energy battery, and it doesn’t fire any grenades. It fires highly modulated ultrasound waves and solar energy sphere.”
Mark laughed, “I like it. May I try it?”
“Later. Now I’ll show you how to use it.”
He handed Mark the cannon and waved to the others to come closer so he could show it to everybody and explain all its characteristics. “These cannons are incredibly destructive, and that’s why soldiers call it Destroyer. It is the most effective weapon up to one hundred yards with its ultrasound impact and up to three hundred yards with its solar sphere. The target can be aimed at through the visor, and it destroys everything with one hundred percent precision. Has anybody got any questions?”
Keniko, who had been listening very carefully, asked, “How does it affect living things?”
“The ultrasound impact destroys everything in its way with an acoustic shock so strong that it can penetrate reinforced concrete 2 foot thick, and devastate the internal organs of enemies. When it is replaced with the solar sphere, it burns up everything with fire sphere. Its barrel may be rotated using these handles. Turning it left or right enables increased or decreased hit power and distance. I can show you.”
Sergeant Colburn put the helmet on and activated the cannon by pressing a thin plate on the top of the butt. With his finger, he pointed to a simple wall of piled stones of various sizes. “This is going to be our primary target. Watch the wall carefully – it’s perfect for a demonstration of the strength of this type.” When he squeezed the trigger, a screeching sound tore the air for a moment. The brunt made a large hole in the middle of the wall and threw the stones twenty yards away, breaking them into very tiny pieces. The gaping hole stayed for a while before, the wall caved in and blew up a cloud of dust.
Colburn fired off more charges. The circular shape of the shock wave was visible because of the dust. When the dust had settled, there was no longer any wall. It was scattered all around, far from where it had been.
The Sergeant switched to solar shooting and fired off several fire spheres at a dry tree to the right of the place where the wall had been, turning it into an inflamed torch. Then he turned off the cannon. “I think you can see how mighty this weapon is.”
Mark, who was looking at the entire destruction around him, asked delightedly, “May I try it now, Sergeant?”
“You like it?”
“Oh, yes, very much.”
Sergeant Colburn handed him the cannon, placed the helmet on his head and pointed to a dummy some seventy yards away. “Hit that dummy!”
“I’ll do it with pleasure, Sir.” Mark aimed at it and fired, but his brunt wave didn’t tear it. It merely swayed and fell over on the spot where it was standing. “What happened?” he asked.
“Nothing happened because the dummy was too far away and the brunt wave was too wide.” He approached Mark and turned the barrel to make the brunt wave’s strength narrower. “Try it now, but this time, aim more at the left side of the dummy.”
“All right, Sir.” This time, the hit was more precise, and the dummy flew many yards away as if it had been thrown physically. Mark shouted, “I did it! I did it!”
The Sergeant tapped him on the shoulder and gave him a new order. “That was it. Now adjust to a narrower jet and hit it on the ground.”
Mark adjusted the wave and aimed at the dummy, which was lying some ten yards back from the place where he had fired at it the first time. A new brunt wave blew it off the ground, and he fired again to lift it higher into the air.
Colburn was stunned with Mark’s precision and happily exclaimed, “Bravo, Mark! How many times have you shot with a similar weapon before?”
“This is the first time.”
For someone who had never held such a weapon before, Colburn had to admit that Mark was very good. “But how did you learn to shoot like this?”
“I learned in computer games.”
Colburn couldn’t believe him. “Are you serious? You can’t do something like that with simple sharpshooters.”
“Yeah, I know but then here I am doing the shooting. Before I went to Hades, I was a champion of the Deadkill game.”
Only Vallery and Henry knew that. The others looked at him surprised; they hadn’t met a Deadkill champion before. The players fought their robots in huge halls, and the fights were a genuine attraction. Preliminary matches were played in thousands of lesser arenas, before the big final game. The games were brutal, but nobody, save for the robots, were killed. Game champions were truly inspiring.
Sergeant Colburn adored Deadkill and watched every game that his working hours allowed. Nevertheless, he had never met a player who actually took part. “What was your player name?”
“My name was T-Borg sir.”
Colburn thought something was amiss. He felt Mark was lying and he did not like liars. “You were T-Borg? A month ago I watched a game you took part in. You were a little rusty and by the way, it couldn’t have been you since you were serving a sentence in Hades.”
Mark let out a sigh, “That was my noble friend Jordan, I believe that he enjoyed taking over my creation once I was out of circulation. My Hades sentence allowed him the luxury of using my creation and it was a sweet revenge as I had beaten him always till then.” He looked sorrowfully at the Sergeant. “What would you think, Sergeant, if I told you that the hacker who took down the main memory of the Central Bank was T-Borg?” He broke off for a moment to remember the details. “My friends often broke through website defenses merely for fun, and I, wanting to be a big shot, decided to get into the Banking system. Unfortunately, it all went wrong. I accidentally destroyed the Bank’s whole memory and was caught before my final Deadkill match. As I had never appeared in public, I promised to publish my identity after victory in the final round, but they mistook Jordan for me because he played as T-Borg when I was taken to prison.”
The Sergeant watched Mark carefully for a couple of moments then said, “I adored T-Borg all through its lifetime, until the last match.”
Mark looked at him, not believing what he had heard. “But he won the final!”
“It seemed to me a little setup.”
“So I’m not the only one who noticed that.”
“I’m sure that final hit couldn’t have totally disabled the opponent. It fell down as if an energy bomb had struck it. I liked the previous fights more. The last one simply missed the finesse of T-Borg. That fight seemed somehow raw and without spontaneity; it seemed like they knew every move in advance.”
“Judging by all that, it was definitely so.”
“That last fight was incomplete and out of ideas. Before that, you could never tell what T-Borg would do.”
“Sometimes it’s necessary to use moves your enemy don’t expect. Real fighters know that, but Jordan wasn’t ready yet. I doubt he will ever be. He was told what to do at that moment. He had to win that fight. It’s still unclear to me whether Energan agreed to a compromise.”
Colburn patted Mark on the back. “It’s all about money. They were probably given some money to lose.”
&nb
sp; “That might be so but now it is history. One thing is sure; T-Borg will lose the next championship.”
“Hmm…” Colburn agreed. “That could be true. Now let’s get ourselves on the same page on one other matter.”
“What matter?” Mark looked at him, unable to comprehend what Colburn was meaning.
“While you are training in this camp, the fact that you were my Deadkill hero won’t mean anything?”
“I don’t doubt that, Sergeant.”
“Great. Then tell me, do you like the cannon?”
“It’s perfectly simple and deadly, and it suits my style,” answered Mark with a smile.
“Okay, then that becomes your weapon of choice but for now lay it on the desk.” Sergeant Colburn was satisfied with his presentation. “In the next couple of days, all of you will get to know how to handle the weapons lying here. You will have to know every detail about each set. How long you survive where we’re going will depend on your readiness and skill.”
Henry knew that Colburn was enjoying his own speech, although that was not surprising given his seriousness towards his work. He saw a wild radiance in his green eyes when he looked at him. Henry smiled and went to look for Major Vallery, who was talking to the doctor as he dressed Endy Van de Mort’s shoulder with an elastic bandage. She noticed Henry coming closer to them and looked at him inquisitively. “Do you need something, Commander?”
“Nothing much. You take over the commanding duty here. I have some papers to look over at my office. I hope you can manage things around here?”
“Not a problem at all, Sir. The Sergeant is very good at taking care of the prisoners, and there’s no need to change anything.”
Henry looked at Colburn over his shoulder – he was presenting every detail of an Ansker laser knife, holding it in both hands. “Yes, I agree.”
“I think he adores weapons! He’s an excellent instructor.”
“It’s an understatement when you just to say that he adores his weapons…” he stared into her big green eyes. “And besides, I don’t make mistakes in choosing my men.”
Godeena: SF Novel Page 12