The big fat koob made a face and then began to laugh. Doubling over and clutching his immense belly.
“You told him to have the first bite,” said the voice in the team leader’s ear. Even the translator was laughing at him.
“Place the emphasis on the last click in each word.”
The team leader repeated the phrase and punched the final clicks on each word.
Still bellowing with laughter, the giant koob elder followed the team leader back to his transport sled. Then the man opened the rear cargo door.
Along the rooftops koob warriors were changing position, ready to hurl down ancient slugs, feathered darts, and sharp spears if any monkey-business was tried.
The chieftain didn’t seem much worried and was still chuckling to himself.
The team leader was still worried.
A moment later as the doors swung open on the racks and racks of brand-new, matte-black, state-of-the-art battle rifles, the chieftain suddenly hissed in awe.
“Tell him,” began the translator in the team leader’s ear. “That these are for him and his people.”
Then the translator fed him the Kublaren words and the team leader did his best to get them right-ish.
Finished, the team leader pulled a new rifle off a rack, and without performing a systems check, handed it as fast as he could to the tribal elder.
They’d all debated that point at length. Best to get the weapon into their leader’s hands quickly. Less margin for error. Less of a chance for the koobs to think he was going to shoot them down.
Without waiting for a translation, the team leader began to tell the koob chief what it was he’d just been handed. He’d practiced this bit a bunch in the lead-up to what was about to happen next. He used a mix of Standard and Koob.
“This is a fully functional automatic battle rifle manufactured by Black Leaf Arms. She fires a kinetic assisted six-point-five-millimeter projectile at speeds of up to two thousand five hundred miles per hour. Average magazine holds forty-five rounds and can empty it in three point nine seconds. Semi, burst, and full auto modes available at the shooter’s discretion. You can make big die with this. Big die. We’re here to arm you to fight back against the zhee. And, we’ll fight alongside you. Make big die of the donks. Friends then.”
The koob’s eyes went wide as he held the brand-new rifle and then turned it over and over once more.
The team leader produced a magazine of uranium-depleted six point five, and shuddered a little bit without showing, thinking about the side effects and sickness that came with this ammo despite what Team Nilo said it would do to mitigate those effects, and helped the chief insert the mag.
It was an effortless insertion.
Magnetic assisted, the munitions carrier practically seated itself in the bottom of the rifle. Everything about the rifle was user-friendly and dumbed down. It worked under the most adverse conditions. And it was powerful. Very powerful.
The guard and trigger were spec’d for the Kublaren’s slender three fingers. Through pantomime, the team leader showed the village elder how to point, aim, and fire the weapon.
The old koob seemed suspicious, but followed along anyway. Then the team leader directed him to aim at a sled down the street.
Clicks and croaks erupted and the chief had his own way all of a sudden. Instead of drawing a bad aim on a sled, he turned and landed the barrel on a dead zhee lying in the street.
For the brief second the team leader had to see if the target and improvised range was clear, the world along the streets of the koob district grew silent as everyone collectively held their breath.
Then the old warlord squeezed the trigger and was rewarded with a steady burst of suppressed rounds streaking away from the already smoking barrel like ballistic missiles outbound through the atmosphere.
The old koob’s aim was bad. But the effect displayed did wonders as koobs along the rooftops began to shout and cheer. Lightning rounds streaking out from the barrel smoked away and tore up the duracrete street like it was just some flimsy tablecloth. Flinging chunks of the heavy-duty building material off into the sky.
The team leader had loaded this mag with tracer rounds for that effect, specifically.
But that wasn’t the most stunning aspect of the sudden display of high-tech modern firepower from this state-of-the-art chemical projectile firearm, a thing the galaxy hadn’t seen in mass production in hundreds of years if you didn’t count the Savages.
The most stunning part was what the rounds did to the inert zhee body lying in the street.
They tore it to shreds in a second once they found their mark. Suddenly there were explosions from the entry holes, massive projections of bone and congealed blood from the exit holes.
One round would have been enough to kill anyone. Hits were taking off limbs and destroying whole sections of the targeted corpse. The corpse was torn to shreds in a mere single burst.
Imagine what they’d do in a firefight, every koob had to be thinking at that moment. Even something behind the most solid of cover had little chance.
In the silence that followed, the team leader spoke. “Rated to take down even a legionnaire. That fancy armor won’t stand up at all. Courtesy of Mr. Nilo. A recognized inland tribal chief. Friend of Pekk and all the Kublaren tribes. Your friend, too.”
26
Bowie knew there was no way he was getting out of the AO without a fight. Too many of the donks were ahead of his course track and able to cut him off. He stopped for a moment, weighing his options. Trying to see if he had any more than the few that seemed apparent.
Out there across the new boomtown that was the rapidly-expanding Soob City, fires and violence were underway and well out of control. Armored sled convoys escorted emergency services vehicles to various locations, each one more desperate and in dire need of attention than the last. The sound of
