I woke up to knocking on our door. Another morning where I had to get up early and Anne got to sleep in. Shouldn’t have smoked so much last night; I was paying for it now with a headache. Thankfully the hotel staff who woke me up was able to get me a coffee with far too much milk and sugar, so I could drink it quickly. It was almost as good as not having a headache. I was on my horse outside the hotel in only a few minutes, wearing jeans and a black shirt, wishing I had my riding clothes, eating a pie I grabbed for breakfast. I had considered wearing my uniform, but honestly I didn’t want to, I wasn’t a soldier anymore.
A young man in uniform showed up a few minutes after he was supposed to, at least according to my new watch.
“Private Zalgeth?” He asked. I nodded, like I wasn’t tired of people asking that when it was clear who I was, there were no other succubi here.
“Sorry ma’am, I need to see your papers.” I didn’t say anything, instead handing him the papers the professor gave me. He looked over them far too closely before handing them back.
“If you would follow me.”
The route he chose wasn’t too bad, mostly heading away from the coast down major roads. Once we were out of the city it became clear why they sent someone in uniform to escort me to a supposedly secret project, we were following directions to some barracks. They checked my papers again as we went through the main gate, and my escort then led me away from the few buildings to a massive fenced area. It was tall, made of wooden planks, no way to see inside, with barbed wire on top. There was a locked gate, which my escort unlocked for me before handing me the key.
“Is that it?” I asked him
“Yes ma’am.” He still waited by the gate, standing at attention. I guess he was told to escort me all the way and was taking his orders too literally. Inside was a field with patches of trees and some small hills. Miles of fenced off nothing.
A woman was sitting on the ground, leaning back against a line of sandbags. She was wearing a light green dress with gold accents. I didn’t know what to do, she was staring at me, surprised, I think, it was unsettling.
“You’re who they hired?” She asked.
I crossed my arms, “Is that a problem?”
“No, no of course not. I’m sorry I didn’t know the army worked with any succubi.”
“We can enlist.”
“I know that, this is different though.” I shrugged, she continued, standing up and adjusting her glasses before reaching out to shake my hand. To my surprise she was about as tall as me.
“I’m sorry for the bad first impression. I have nothing against demons or succubi, I just didn’t expect the army to be open minded enough to involve someone like you in anything like this. My name is Kidan Alem Yaee, leader of project 187, not that it means much, I’m the only one working on it, well, I suppose you are too now.”
“I’m Zalgeth. So, what is it?”
“Right, down to business, there was a project before this one,”
“186?”
“Weirdly no, I think the numbers are random, anyway, they tried to use magic to make artillery shells more powerful, but that was a logistical nightmare. I can only manage a few grains of gunpowder a day, and with maybe a dozen of us in the kingdom who can manage that, obviously not possible. My family is somewhat prominent among the nobility, enough that I was able to convince the army to let me take the project in a different direction. I pitched it as the witch rifle, but the rifle isn’t special, it’s in the bullets. The only changes to the rifle are some reinforcements in case something goes wrong with one of the bullets.”
“Has that happened?”
“No, I’ve done hundreds of remote firings and no backfire or anything. A few times the barrel has been warped, but only slightly, not in any way that is dangerous.”
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I couldn’t think of how it was possible to warp a barrel with one shot, I was still processing that this wasn’t going to be small arms testing, and I was involved in some truly out there shit.
“I’ll want to check the rifle and see it fired remotely a few times before I use it.” I think I did a good job of sounding confident, professional, like I knew what I was doing.
“You plan to fire it yourself?” She asked, confused, which confused me.
“What else would I do? I was just a private before I got this job.”
“I’ve been asking for a physicist, but when I saw you I assumed, the magic is demonic, what I wrote my thesis on.”
I knew the professor seemed too likable. I can’t trust myself when I feel too comfortable around someone, especially someone I didn’t know. He must have wanted me involved in whatever this is as soon as he heard a succubus was a war hero. At least Kidan seemed not to know who I was, and she seemed like a civilian, unlikely that she would be scheming for the military. It felt like an insult, the surprise she had when I told her I was private, not how someone would act if they wanted me to like them. I needed to find out for sure if she was in on it, and why the professor felt the need to mislead me. I wouldn’t have said no if he implied my demon-ness was why I was getting this job, especially since I was trying to be more comfortable with that part of myself, and if Kidan was some sort of expert wouldn’t I want access to someone like that. None of this made sense.
“So what does the magic do, what’s the goal?” I asked.
“Obviously the army’s first idea was exploding bullets. They were obsessed with it. I had four or five interviews with them about the possibility of it, even though in the first one I told them it was impossible. That was when I started pushing for control of the project. I had just gotten my masters and I needed something to get me away from my family, as I’m sure you know,” I, in fact, did not know, and I didn’t know why she thought I would, “and it took a while to convince them but one of the easier spells, a speciality of mine, is levitation. A bullet that doesn’t curve down, no air resistance, it would be a sniper's dream, and make any rifle far more powerful without needing a higher caliber.”
“What part of that has anything to do with demons?”
“Not you demons, well yes you, but academically demonic means something, or someone, that isn’t magical, storing magic and using it without needing more magic to trigger it. Normally if you want to cast a spell you prepared before you need magic, but there are other ways, like heat, pressure, impact, exposure to air, that can trigger the spell.”
“Things I assume you’ve tried with this project?”
“Yes, but it isn’t working. I wasted a bunch of time getting the spell to trigger with the primer.”
“But with no wind resistance the rifling wouldn’t do shit.”
“It’s embarrassing, I know that now. The bullet would tumble, and the spell doesn’t last long enough for long range shots, so it would end and it was a mess. That is why I wanted a physicist, I don’t really understand why they didn’t tumble every time, only most of the time. I can’t get any consistency.”
“Look, I don’t think anything you’re dealing with is so complicated that you need a physicist, no offense, but it doesn’t seem like you could hit a target consistently with a normal rifle, never mind with these weird bullets, and even if you fix it in place the gun it is going to move a little after each shot, and the wind will change with each shot, and if you can’t hit a target consistently you can’t figure out how well the new bullets are working.”
She pushed up her glasses and rubbed her eyes, “I know, I don’t need to hear that, it’s been keeping me up for a couple months now. Hopefully a fresh set of eyes can help, and it’s your magic.” I scowled at her. “I mean,” she continued nervously, “you live with what I study… it might give you some insight.”
“No, it won’t.” I enjoyed her discomfort.
“So,” she said after a short pause, “I think how we do this is you shoot the rifle a bit, after you are satisfied it is safe, normal bullets. Once you’re used to it I can start recording how far off each is, and just hours of that.” At least I would be spending the day shooting, even if it wasn’t going to be normal target shooting.
The rifle itself was fine, clearly overbuilt, but it made sense with the weird bullets it was made for. I was satisfied it was safe after a few remote fireings so the boring work began. I shot resting the barrel on the sandbags. One normal bullet, one weird bullet, over and over again. They were awful. Felt normal enough when firing but they went wild, the only consistent part was they all went a little high, so I guess in some way the magic was working, but not well enough to make an accurate shot. It was frustrating work, and it didn’t help that my mind went back to the trenches when we were making paper cartridges and desperately trying to keep them dry because they couldn’t get us bullets. What was the point of this, how much were they paying her, it was fucking insulting. She sounded sorry the more I shot, the more it became clear none of them were working and it made me angrier, hurting my shoulder for no fucking reason. Didn’t help that the longer this went one, the more I heard the apologetic tone of Kidan’s voice when another shot went wide, the more I wanted Anne. Somehow my frustration made me want to fuck her, complain to her, cuddle her, be around her, all mixed together in my head in the strangest way. Was this it, would I need Anne every time I felt anything, and it frustrated me more. Can’t I feel anything without fucking needing someone else.
Normally I would care that I seemed angry. I could tell that it was making Kidan uncomfortable, but honestly, it seemed like she wasn’t comfortable around me anyway. It was a little past one when finished, accomplishing nothing. At least I got some cash, a small comfort for the ride home.