OOC:

Crest
(A21) Expermental Weapon Tester
First of F4- 0 weeks by 0 posts.

The four passengers of the civilian-use airspeeder sat in silence. Each did something to pass away the time. One tapped out a beat with his fingers, another spent the time reading, another was staring at a photo of an apparent sweetheart, and the last one listened to music. If one listened very closely, he or she could hear the pounding music being played. All four of them had a certain stiffness, as, even in this civilian setting, they sat straight-backed and ready to move in a moment’s notice.

The airspeeder nudged gently down to begin its landing approach, and the four of them, reacting as nearly one, grabbed something as if the airspeeder was about to crash. The driver, looking back at this scene, laughed.

“Don’t worry. It’s not like there are a few trillion people down there trying to kill you all.”

The comment drew snorts. The one listening to the music, somehow able to hear over the music, responded, “It’s not that easy to forget all those times that we have been shot down.”

The one tapping away on the airspeeder augmented the statement, “It was four times, at last count, for me.”

Crest silenced the music and responded, “Speak for yourself; one time was one too many for me.”

“Agreed. Four times was four too many.”

The driver replied, feigning fear, “Now you guys are making me scared. I’m going to have to check for sabotage and keep an eye out for Anti-Aircraft guns at every moment because these people really hate me for ferrying them from their house to the shopping center!”

The statement drew out hesitant laughs. For the four soldiers, being shot down in transit was a mere fact of being on the battlefield. Given a chance, they would do the exact same thing to the enemy.

The driver gently set the airspeeder down on the pad, but no matter how gently he put it down, the reflexes hammered into the soldier drove them to their feet, as if they were on the battlefield.

The driver, muttering something about how the soldiers’ reflexes made him nervous and swearing never to take another soldier on board his airspeeder, waited for the four of them to step off and then turned around to make the long, lonely trip back to the city.

A scientist in a white lab coat walked briskly towards them.

“Ivai Wahk?”

With a finger in his book marking the spot where he had stopped reading, Ivai responded, “Here, alive, and impatient from doing nothing.”

The scientist acknowledged him with a nod and turned back to his roll call.

“Titan Godown?”

Crest responded, “Call me Crest.”

The scientist gave a nod and quickly confirmed the identities of the other two.

“Alright, if you all will follow me back to the lab, we’ll get started on today’s trials.”

As the five of them walked towards the lab, the scientist gave a short introduction of himself and the project.

“I’m Chief Weapons Scientist Dr. Oikj, essentially meaning that I spend all my work time on SX-92 and all my free time managing all the free-minded scientists assigned to me for the weapons project and getting them to work towards a singular goal. I’m sure you all are familiar with the All Terrain-Armored Transport, being stormtroopers, are you not?”

All of them nodded their consent, and Dr. Oikj continued.

“Then you all will also know how it is near impossible to take those things down. What if a human ‘AT-AT’ was created? Near indestructible, making them the perfect soldiers. If an entire army of them was unleashed upon enemies, the enemy would be crushed. The soldiers could act alone, inserting deep behind enemy lines and wreaking havoc, but create a devastating, modernized phalanx when needed. Most of the technology to do this exists; it’s just that no one has done it yet. The Nomad Project, researched by Integral Technologies and funded by the Vast Empire, seeks to do this. There are three main components to this project. The weapon component is the one that is nearest to completion. The gear part of this, a virtual intelligence to support the Nomad on the field, is massive in scope but is proceeding without any hitches... yet. The armor, though—”

A massive column of fire erupted in one of the open testing grounds, roughly two miles away. The resulting shockwave knocked the five of them to the ground. After a few moments of confusion, they got to their feet and dusted themselves off. Dr. Oikj, heading off the many questions the four soldiers had, provided an explanation.

“—suffers from an unpreventable, catastrophic oversurge which causes the destabilization of the nuclear fusion core. The armor uses too much power to use a conventional power source. A nuclear fusion core has too much initial power, and we can’t get the other systems started up quickly enough to divert the inevitable surge. A nuclear fission core would provide a stable start-up and continuous power to supply the armor, if we scale back the needs, but there are too many hazards with carrying radioactive materials plus a problem of supply. But that is enough talk of the problems; let us concentrate on what we are here to do.”

As they reached the main building, Dr. Oikj quickly submitted himself to a DNA scan, and the door opened. Dr. Oikj quickly proceeded through the maze of laboratories, heading for the armory. It took them roughly three minutes. At the armory, there were four empty pedestals, four unpowered dataports, and four rifles.

“Alright, this is the Sniper Experimental 92, our anti-personnel sniper rifle. It is based off the Verpine Shattergun designs, in the fact that it uses magnetic fields to launch projectiles. It doesn’t have a brand name attached to it, so that cheapens the gun a lot. Also, it isn’t compacted as a pistol is, allowing it to be factory-created, which again cheapens it. The weapon is extremely accurate, a trademark of having zero recoil. It can also be loaded with special explosive rounds, if needed, but we’ll get to that later. Today we’re going to find out exactly how accurate this is in human hands.”

Dr. Oikj looked at the four soldiers, waiting for the barrage of information to settle into their heads.

“When do we get to try them, Doc?”

“Oh, maybe right now, Crest.”

The four of them stepped up, and each of them grabbed a rifle, almost as if they were little children and the rifles were the best candy in the galaxy.

The rifle was barrel heavy, and Crest suspected a fully loaded clip would balance it. The scope provided magnification by a factor of twelve. While the scope itself was like a cylinder, it had a rectangular prism attached to it, which appeared to be a camera that would be linked to the virtual intelligence in the later stages of the program. The rifle also had a bipod, which Crest noticed had a small spring at the bottom of each of the legs, presumably to act as shock absorbers if the rifle was roughly placed on the ground. Apart from some minor changes, it looked perfectly like what a normal sniper rifle would look like.

“If you four will follow me, we’ll get this test under way.”

Crest and the other soldiers followed Dr. Oikj out of the armory and out to the firing range. Four stations had been set up, and each contained two clips. One clip was marked with a blue stripe; the other was marked with a red stripe.

“Please choose your station and go to a prone position. Connect your rifle to the given power station and await further instructions.”

It took less than five seconds for the snipers and sharpshooters-to-be-snipers to set up.

“Now, please pick up the magazine marked with a blue stripe, not the red one, please. Insert it into the rifle. You will now find that your rifle is perfectly balanced. The SX-92 fires a nine millimeters by sixteen millimeters round. Because it is not necessary for the round to contain firing powder, the entire round is launched into the air. This provides a fairly heavy and stable slug.”

Dr. Oikj waited a second, signaling the change of subject.

“You will now find one target up at half of a mile. Please shoot it. Remember that this rifle has no recoil.”

True to Dr. Oikj’s word, one target, bathed in green was up. Curious at the simplicity of the test, Crest exhaled and pressed the trigger. Even though Dr. Oikj had warned them that there was no recoil, none of the soldiers were quite ready for the sensation.  A soft puff was the only thing that indicated the round had fired. After the bullet was fired, Crest noticed it reached its full speed after it left the rifle, evidenced by that the explosion of sound, a trademark of reaching the speed of sound in an atmosphere, was farther away than the soft puff, which had emanated from the end of the rifle as the bullet escaped the grasp of the barrel. The only conclusion Crest could come to was that the magnetic fields went past the barrel and continued to increase the round’s speed.

However, the thing that impressed Crest the most was the damage that it inflicted upon the target. The energy and the size of the round made a gaping hole that seemed like there had been a cannonball that had went through the target, not a bullet.

One of the other snipers commented, “Alright, Doc, I think I can speak for all of us in saying we’re impressed. What’s next?”

“You guys do have nine bullets left. Let us put you to the test. Shoot the green targets, which are at one thousand meters. Ignore the blue ones, which can be anywhere. The red target, at roughly sixteen hundred and ten meters, counts as ten green targets. However, all that is still too easy. So, green targets stay up for a second, blue stays up for one and a half of a second, and red...red stays up for a half of a second. Ready? Three... two... one... go!”

As the word left Dr. Oikj, a green target popped up in Crest’s part of the firing range. It was promptly decommissioned with a round through both the target and the support behind it. Then the test started in earnest. Two blue targets popped up, flanked by two green targets. Crest placed a round through the leftmost target, a green one. The right-side green and blue targets were swapping places. Crest placed a round through the slight part of the green target that was still to the right of the blue target, knowing that the green target would go down before he would get a clean shot on the other side. The hectic, creative shooting kept up its frantic pace as Crest spent five more rounds on different green targets. Six new targets popped; one green behind five blue. Yet, Crest’s eye had caught the grand prize. The red target was rising up, and Crest fired one round at it. Crest watched as the target rose to its full height, stayed up for its half of a second, and began its descent.  As the target was inches away from its resting spot, the round hit it broadside...which was from the bottom going towards the top. The round tore clean through the entire middle. Without the middle part to hold it to the support, the two halves dropped to the ground.

Knowing that he had run out of bullets, Crest allowed himself a look at his fellow snipers. All of them had matched his deed. Crest had really liked what the SX-92 had allowed him to do, but the test was not quite over yet.

Dr. Oikj was grinning almost literally ear-to-ear as he saw his project, his weapon showcase a display that even left the four grizzled snipers astounded, but he knew that this next part would make or break a Nomad’s ability to inflict destruction without support.

Barely able to contain his excitement, Dr. Oikj instructed, “Please take out the blue clips; you’ll find that there is a switch on the right side. That switch will release the magazine. Then please insert the red clip.”

The snipers followed the directions. Seconds later they were ready for the next part of the test.

“The rounds you have just loaded into the rifles are the nine by sixteen high explosive rounds. Meet one of the most powerful rounds known to man. This is the same round as you fired in the last test, except it is hollowed out and filled with a highly explosive powder. This test will be a piece of cake or pie, whichever you prefer, considered to the other test.

Dr. Oikj pressed a button and hundreds, if not thousands, of targets popped up, all in a very tight box.

“Unload. Have fun.”

Crest tentatively squeezed the trigger and sent the round on its way. The round slammed into the target and, to no surprise, exploded. What did surprise him was the size of the explosion. Every target within a meter was turned into splinters. Inside a radius of three meters, the targets received a heavy burn, and suffered gaping holes. The destruction tapered down as the radius increased. However, the explosion had just whetted Crest’s thirst for destruction in its purest form. The clip was emptied, and explosions blasted hundreds of targets into splinters and reduced hundreds more to a condition in which they would never be used it again.

A certain overwhelming thrill permeated Crest’s thoughts. He wanted more. Nevertheless, he calmed himself down. It was hard, but it was possible.

Looking up towards Dr. Oikj, Crest asked the question that was on everybody’s mind, “Why even create the regular rounds? Wouldn’t a Nomad be much more effective with just these rounds?”

“For what it takes to create one of these rounds, you could build thirty rifles and give them thirty rounds apiece. For fifty rounds, it is estimated you could create an entire new Nomad, as of current estimates.”

Waiting a second to make sure there were no other questions, Dr. Oikj wrapped up the proceedings, “And that wraps up this test. Thanks for testing; please remember the usual Non-Disclosure Agreement; etc. See you all another time.”

OOC:

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