Wasted ammunition

[t0l]

Tal stood by as she overtook him with confidence, or at the very least, more confidence than he had with regards to navigating around the place, making sure to maintain a decent amount of standoff between the two of them as he loosely trailed behind her. Despite his lax attitude and mannerisms, he still maintained a bearing befitting of a professional, and the last thing he wanted was for some random suit-and-tie official to think he was creeping on the Captain’s half-sister or something, a surefire way to get kicked off the planet and blacklisted.

“Trust me, I know. It’s why I ended up pursuing contractor work when I got out of the Liberty Marines; there’s a lot less bullshit between you and just wanting to do your job. I get afforded a lot more, uh, how do I put it, autonomy down at Port Jackson than our BAF partner units do, and it shows.” He hushed down his tone of voice as he continued, not wanting to offend a stray passer-by. “I never understood the hard-on Bretonians have for this formal officer nobility stuff, either. Hell, when Captain Hall first contacted me on a private Neural Net channel offering me this assignment, I must’ve spent a solid, what, two or three hours just sitting in my room writing a little script full of big words and good manners to use in my reply. It worked, but if she knew how I was really rockin’ and rollin’ I probably wouldn’t be here right now.”

He’d intentionally failed to acknowledge her offer to get drinks later, hoping his little tangential tirade would blow it over and that she’d forget the idea wholesale by the time they were done training for the day. Not that he didn’t appreciate it, but he didn’t exactly have the best track record with alcohol, becoming first intimately acquainted with the substance during probably the lowest point in his life, and managing to kick the habit for five, six years now had definitely changed him for the better.

For what it was, the range at Chateau d’Or was perfectly adequate for his needs, featuring wide lanes, reprogrammable targets, and an adjacent arsenal that’d been inventoried and restocked by the occupying force. Tal made entry first, squeezing past her and looking around for his belongings—ah, there they were, in the very distinct tan-colored high-impact oblong crate. While they allowed him to bring his own weapons and gear for the purposes of demonstration, the local administration were adamant on storing them under lock, key, and guard inside the firing range’s arsenal room at all times, and so he had to take a second and a knee to reunite himself with all of his equipment. There were no building policies on empty pouches and belt mounts, including the two rifle magazine ones on his left hip, and so he first filled them with full 40-round magazines for his rifle, followed up with the polymer retention holster with his handy laser pistol tucked inside of it, which went back right at home on his right side, snapping into place on the mount by means of sturdy quick-locking hooks. Next came safety glasses and electronic hearing protection, two definite necessities, and then his rifle, a long, unwieldy, attachment-laden Ageira-produced light arm on an old, worn-out combat sling that he lazily looped over his head and under his left arm. Perfect. He was now sporting a shot-for-shot recreation of his appearance during his final days on New London as part of the relief force: low visibility, but practical, with the veneer of an expert.

“The first thing we’re going to work on here today is stance, probably the most important thing to get right going forwards. Humans weren’t born shooting guns, they’re a foreign object to us, so we have to compensate for that accordingly. There’s a lot of...biomechanics, kinesthetics, and other sciences behind shooting people, shit that’s been vigorously studied, researched, and developed since way before the sleeper ships left Sol. It’s nothing like what you see on those weekly Neural Net holodramas.”

Standing up, he walked over to a nearby gun rack, pointing at one of the gold-plated, painstakingly-engraved Corsair automatic weapons. “Hey, check that out. Been shot at by plenty of those,” he remarked to ease the mood, his eyes wandering and eventually coming upon the standard Bretonian particle rifles sitting right above the new-model tachyon rifles that the Libertonians were issuing. “So, I’ll let you demonstrate with this here. Chances are, if you’re here and you get into a combat situation, you’re probably going to be armed with one of these. You ever handle a weapon before? Finger off the trigger until you’re ready to shoot, always keep it pointed downrange, and don’t point it at something unless you’re going to shoot it.”

Carefully, he took the Bretonian rifle off the rack, making sure it was depowered, devoid of a powerpack, and set to safe for redundancy purposes, and handed it to Ward.

“Now uh, say some yala-yala motherfucker just hopped the curb 50 meters down the road that-a-way and you gotta gun his hairy ass to the ground. What do you do? Get your gun up, show me your stance.”

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