Story [Issue 20] The Great Comeback: "Flaw"

[Fjelstad1678 186]

The Great Comeback:
"The Flaw"
 

The last few days had flown by. Benny, Terry, and I were up early every morning for testing, and usually were in bed late dead tired and reeking of sweat and oil. Idler was mainly having us test the Railgun on all of the different hulls. So far, we had tested the Titan, Viking, and Dictator. All the difference I could tell from my scope was the slight differences in speed while Terry was bellowing commands to Benny. Something just didn’t seem right though…

“I wonder….” I thought outloud in my bunk as we all were going to sleep for the 5th time since we had arrived.
“What?” asked Benny.
“Well, don’t you just find it a little odd that we are actually getting away with something like this in an as good as enemy occupied country?”
“Idler said that the protection here is insane, yet mind-blowingly subtle. The Germans might not suspect anything at all.” Terry chimed in.
“Sure, but what if they do…” I said back. “What if they are fully aware of this and are… letting us do this?” It was quiet for a moment.
“Well, then we better know how to use ‘em.” Benny said in a calm voice. “Lets just get some sleep and keep working. I’m sure it's all perfectly fine and nobody knows anything.” We decided he was right and were all out in the matter of seconds.

 

The next day, the Russian soldiers woke us up and brought us back to Idler, a routine that was growing familiar.
“Aha! There you all are! Got something special for you lads today! Specifically you, Mr. Deadeye!”
“Um, Deadeye, sir?”
“Sorry! I was just looking at some data we have been crunching and have figured out that you really should have been the gunner on that M4 of yours. You have only missed one shot out of the some 87 you have fired so far. A good 40 of those have been on the move, too! You, Benny, have gotten far better at getting the tank around off-road, and you, Mr. Terry, have done an outstanding job at yelling at everybody! You three blokes are doing bloody amazing!”

“Thank you, sir. Now, about that surprise?” I asked.
“Ah, yes. I noted it was particularly for you, so you can probably guess what it is.”
“Some sort of new gun, I would suppose.”
“Not just a new gun. Probably the most powerful and accurate projectile weapon known to man. If you thought the Railgun was powerful, this might stun you. Oh yes, and as a reward for helping us we’ve actually taken the time to put a tea and coffee maker in this one for you chaps. Take it as a bonus.”
“Well, seems like there is nothing it cannot do!” Benny said with a cheesy salesman grin.
“Well, in our good mood while putting the coffee and tea maker in… we did deliver a pizza to some of our snipers with a low charge blank…” We stopped snickering at Benny for a second and stared at Idler.
“They reported it was a little crisp around the edges, but tipped us for delivery speeds.” We started laughing again as we stepped in the elevator to the surface once again.
 

“I keep forgetting to ask this, but how many weapons do you plan to make?” Terry asked as the lift began to rise.
“Ah, simple. This is our last model. We now have at least one weapon for every circumstance we can possibly think of.”
“So wait. How many guns have you fellas made?” I asked. “We’ve only ever heard of this new one, the Railgun, and the Smoky.”

“We have made a total of 9, including the one you will be testing today, the ‘Shaft’. I’ll briefly describe the others, as we will have you train in them at a later date. First is the ‘Firebird’: a large flamethrower. Then we have the ‘Freeze’: the complete opposite of the Firebird which freezes the target as the name would suggest. We have a couple of plasma weapons as well, starting with the ‘Twins’: a dual barreled plasma weapon that shoots plasma spheres from its dual barrels at a high rate of fire. The other plasma weapon is the ‘Ricochet’: a complicated weapon that shoots plasma balls that bounce off of everything except tank armour on which they explode. The ‘Smoky’ you already know of. The ‘Thunder’ is our other old fashioned gunpowder weapon: a larger and slower firing Smoky that fires High-Explosive ammunition that scatters large chunks of shrapnel that does lots of damage to nearby objects. You know about both the Railgun and the Shaft now. The final and most interesting gun we have made is called the ‘Isida’: a gun that can heal your allies and damage your enemies using nanobots.”

“Wow.” is the only word any of us could get out. That was really an impressive arsenal. It was also the only word any of us could spit out as we saw the Shaft mounted nicely on the prototype Viking. The thing looked evil. I could imagine pointing it even in the general direction of any Axis soldier who would instantly and involuntarily mess their pants.
“Pretty nice, eh? Been working on this beauty for a while now. Feel free to get in and take a look around. I have a feeling this going to be one of, if not the best model we have made. I’ll explain more once you get yourself situated.”
 

Despite how large the turret was, it was rather cozy inside. The large chamber that would normally be a breach that I could only assume charged and held the projectile until firing was quite large and took up at least half the space in the turret and separated it into 2 halfs. I could not see Terry from my station on the right side of the turret and it would have been incredibly difficult to do so at all. I could only assume Terry’s feet lined up with Benny’s shoulders to help direct him through the battlefield.
“Right, you chaps in position?” Idler’s familiar voice crackled through the radio.
“Benny, Eric, and myself, all in position sir.” Terry said back.

“Right. Terry, all your equipment should be familiar and obviously for you Benny since you have driven this machine before. You might need to look things over though, Lieutenant Eric. The light just above your scope will glow green when the gun is ready to be charged once Benny starts her up. At that point, you are going to want to press the red button on top of your control stick. The light will turn yellow when the gun is charged and the excess in energy allowed us to make some improvements to your scope. When your gun is charging, you may zoom the scope and fine tune the accuracy as much as you may need. When you have the shot lined up, simply pull the large red trigger on the front of the control stick as always. You should hear a quick and sharp chirp from the gun rather than a blast, and your shot is away at practically the speed of light. Because of the round velocity, you will require no lead whatsoever, just to let you know. Oh yes! In case of emergencies, you may also fire the gun uncharged, however the pure damage you can do and the armor piercing power of the round is incredibly underwhelming and I don’t recommend it.”

“Thats an awful lot to take in at once but I’ll try.” I muttered as I looked over the surprisingly simple control layout.
“Let’s get her started!” Benny called. No more than half a second later, the large engine roared to life and the metal beast began creeping forwards as Idler led Terry to the target range.
“Right up in that bush, Terry.” Idler finally said after a fairly long trip.
“How far have we gone? Are we even still in the testing grounds?” I asked.
“On the very outskirts, but yes. This is very much a long range weapon, and we are going to test it as such. Now, Terry, there is a pair of binocular telescopes to your right, you are probably going to have to poke out of the commanding hatch to spot targets in this tank.” Idler informed. Terry groaned as I heard him open the hatch. About 45 seconds later he called back in.

“Two M3 Stuarts coming in at 3 ‘o clock towards us, lined up.” The turret groaned as I turned it to face 3 and looked through my small viewfinder to spot the small dots in the distance. I used the range-finding system in the tank to find out in short order that they were over 5 kilometers away, a distance not even a Tiger would engage at!
“Are you sure they are close enough?”
“No doubt in my mind” Idler assured me. “Make sure to line up the shot so one tank is directly in front of the other.”
“Will do, sir.” I said as I looked through the scope and pressed the red charging button. The scope quickly started zooming in on the Stuarts until I could see quite fine details such as a chip in the paint. I lined up the shot just as the light turned yellow.
“Fire!” yelled Terry.
“On the way!” I shouted back as I ripped back on the trigger. There was a loud chirp like Idler described as the entire tank jumped backwards a small distance. When I looked back through the scope, I saw two burning Stuarts with a clean hole cut straight through them. I could tell Benny had stuck his head up through the drivers hatch when I heard him call out: “That was outstanding! Complete overkill!”
“Nice shooting, cowboy!” Terry called.
“You all better get your heads back in the tank, we aren’t done testing yet!”

No sooner had I heard Terry’s commanding hatch slam shut did I hear a loud crack and insane metallic ring as the tank vibrated like crazy.
“WHAT WAS THAT!?” Benny yelled.
“Is something wrong out there?” Idler called over the radio.
“Checking…” Terry called in a calm but stern voice. “We appear to have taken a fairly large hit on our upper frontal plate.
“But, we didn’t set up anything to fire back…” Idler said with concern. He paused. Then, very quietly, he asked the question. “About how large does the system say the impact point was?” I could hear Terry pressing buttons and muttering. He suddenly stopped.
“It couldn’t be…” Idler whispered.
“What!? What is it!?” Benny called. I closed my eyes as I realized what was happening.
“The projectile was around 85 to 90 millimeters, sir. I greatly suggest we find some solid cover.” Terry said with a crack in his voice.
“Agreed. Well, this changes things…” Idler said said slowly. How incredibly right he was.

The Germans had found us.

 

~To Be Continued~

~Fjelstad1678~

Edited November 26, 2017 by Vikingsrallentando

[doduobird 315]

Nice :)

[TankCommando33 33]

2nd and great!

[mc03 0]

3rd awesome

[georgec6101-II 0]

4th

I bet it was Idler, cuz he led them on the "outskirks" of the range

He has to be a spy!!!!!! :angry:  :angry:  :angry:  :angry:  :angry:

 

Good story obviously ;)

Edited February 4, 2014 by georgec6101-II

[donut70 97]

this story is taking shape quite well, keep up the good work :)

[Theawesomecooldude 108]

Nice story my friend. The plot is taking shape well. If only I could write stories this good... ;)

Edited February 6, 2014 by Theawesomecooldude

[Legolover3 91]

Quick, quick! Make another one!