Of Terrorists and Territory (& Crumpets)

[Aztech]

Sykes ducked below a small hail of bullets from the enemy, before popping up and loosing a burst of fire at the other side of the mall. For a moment, the dull murmur of the electromagnetic rails increased to a throaty roar and the dust in the air zipped inwards and stuck to the outside of the gun, sizzling and popping in the heat.
The newer versions of the gun had EM shielding, which turned the megnetism that left the barrel back in on itself, preventing exactly this from happening. This gun was either a very old model, or more likely, the junker he had seized it off had found a broken one and "fixed" it with spare parts from his CSV.
Either way, Sykes didn't trust the gun, effective as it may be, and besides, after dropping the spare ammunition box in order to keep up with the charge on the pillar, he had already eaten through almost a quarter of his ammo.

A second after the impact of his burst of fire, a small 'ping' could be heard, then a sharp wizzing sound.
"Ow! Me eye!"
Sykes looked over to the source of the sound. One of the constables was holding his hand over a swollen eye, and a shining peice of metal was rolling at his feet. Sykes picked it up. The small ball bearing was still warm from it's recent flight, and a clear dent could be seen where it had ricocheted off a solid object in the distance. Sykes shrugged a popped it back through the ammo feeding system, where it tinkled into the ammo box.

Sykes checked his ammo belt, then rose up again to provide more covering fire for the teams heading upwards.

Looking down the worn iron sights of his weapon, Sykes applied a slight pressure with his trigger finger. The gun responded with a light shudder, and it's sound deepened slightly in preperation for firing. He scanned left, looking for a target. The terrorists where doing a very good job of finding cover behind the various items inside the half ruined store. He ended his left sweep and started moving his gun to the right, aware that he had already spent too long out of cover. If these men where any kind of profesionals- Sykes stopped. A trick of the light, or was it- No! a man's hand was protruding slightly from behind a thin wooden partition on the enemy line. It looked like he was reloading his rifle. Sykes grinned with and pressed the trigger down fully.

A millisecond after Sykes' finger curled the trigger back, the gun opened up the latch on the ammunition box and the first of seven ball bearings dropped back into the small rail gun. It touched the back of the tube, gathered a moderate magnetic charge and was sent rocketing down the barrel, out the end and on its way across the mall. Each of the ball bearings made a hissing sound as it brushed through the foliage in front of Sykes, then curved a slight arc through the air, looping and turning faster than the eye could follow. The first ball bearing to hit the man's position smashed a table-tennis ball sized hole in the light partition wall and took two of the man's fingers with it as it knocked the rifle out of his hands. He barely had time to scream before the rest of the bearings hit, vaporising the wooden wall. Two hit the man in the back, imparting their full force onto the man's frame as he fell towards the wall behind him. As he tumbled backwards, three of the four aluminite balls that had missed overtook him and shattered against the back wall, rebounding and sending metal shards shreaking through the air back at the man as he fell.

Suffering from deep shrapnel wounds to the entire left side of his body, a collapsed lung, a ruptured valve in his heart, a severly lacerated face and a tenis ball sized hole in his gut, the terrorist collapsed forwards and his body mercifully shut down. The last ball bearing, which had mushroomed against the wall and stuck, plopped off and rolled unsteadily to rest beside his head.

In the distance, a heavy shouldered man with a large, slightly glowing machine gun smiled with grim satisfaction, and ducked back below cover.

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