Point of Documentation: Marshall, Phoenix 11
The sudden rush of seeing all the resistance that had seemed to have appeared far too quickly made Marshall’s head spin slightly. There were a lot of targets ahead of him, and even more dangers on the sides. It seemed as if these raiders were specifically geared towards raiding and looting people like the ones he had become acquainted with over the past couple days. Even if he had only really seen the inside of the quarantine room for the majority of those two days. He could only imagine what would happen if some of those armaments actually hit the Mule, Betty.
Captain, as he had only been called up to this point, shifted some controls over to Marshall as he beheld what was ahead of them. Marshall saw the gun controls come onto his screen. It wasn’t much; a 37mm that seems to be a Swedish design was slung under the mule, a 14.7mm heavy machine gun on the back that seemed to be an old Russian design that fired a bit more above its weight class than others of the same variety, and the front facing gun seemed to be showing as just ‘mortar’. While all of that was very nice and well descriptive, Marshall had fuck-all in the way of knowing what they would be effective against in this setting. There was no ammo count, no ammo description, no effective range, and no–
A small smiley face appeared on the top right of the display he was looking at. A voice floated from the speakers attached to the center-most screen. “Hello Marshall. My name is Gwen. We can have pleasantries later. I’ll work on getting the video feed to display a form of ‘HUD’ for you to use for firing the guns.” A small trill of notes came, and the screen flickered and came back to life. Suddenly, there were dozens of new numbers and trackable items on the screen now that had not been there before. “... and done. Let her rip, fly-boy.”
The Captain pointed up at his display as his other hand was seeming to be typing items into his keypad. “Focus on the little ones and the emplacement first. The larger one needs to get closer first. That is a Rail-Lance on its back. They don’t have the energy needed to launch the thing far on these Mules.” His attention went back to his screen as he finished saying this. A plot map was on it with items being created. Triangles and squares of red dotted it. It seemed he was making a battle plan and a movement plot out of an initial sighting alone.
Marshall’s attention went back to the screen as another explosion rocked Betty, causing some dust to come from the ceiling above and flake the monitor. Gwen’s voice came from the speakers again. “We just took a hit to the back right leg. The emplaced gun seems to be firing explosive capped. If that hits us, we’re dead. Suggested first target.”
His hand swiveled the display to face the emplaced gun on the hill. Marshall never really paid too much attention to old Terran history farther back than a hundred years before the end of greater civilization on it. So this gun looked almost archaic to him. Old history or not, the danger of this thing was very, very real. The gun that had the best shot on it was the mortar, so he aimed at that first. With Gwen’s help, he was able to range it in pretty much instantly and sent a shell from the barrel. It had some travel time before it landed, seeming to be a very heavy shell at that. When it hit a second later it caused a detonation like what he had seen when out in the field just earlier. A crater formed where the emplacement used to be, shrapnel flying in the air mixed with limbs and dirt. Four killed, and more still to go.
Gwen flagged on his display movement from the thermals and visual displays combined, showing where more individuals were even outside of the field of view from the monitor. She labeled seven as carrying anti-armor weapons and told Marshall to prioritize them. He did just that, using the HMG on the back of Betty to pick them off one and two at a time. As Marshall finished with the more immediate threats, he would notice something odd with the displays that he was seeing. While he hadn’t noticed since the visuals were enough to go by and his vision was tunneled; the markers and displays were seemingly a second or two off from where the individual actually was. Were the sensors out of date enough that the monitors were having issues keeping up? Or was that another issue entirely?
The Captain began moving Betty forwards towards the other Mule. The sparking barrel on its back now seemed to glow slightly red from the heat it was generating. Whatever it was charging before was now ready to fire. Marshall acted with his instincts, those honed in the years he trained and operated a fighter before screaming for him to act. His hand moved the aiming stick and, in turn, the 37mm to focus on the legs. The aiming reticle focused on the joints where the legs rotated for movement and settled on a small section of armor that seemed to be broken and malformed. It wasn’t on the front legs, but the back ones instead. The lazy bastards must have thought that no one would fire at the rear legs since it would always be charging AT something instead of away.
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A thud vibrated Betty again as the 37mm spat out a round at the back left joint. The first shot ricocheted off the armor slightly left from where he aimed, causing it to redirect and land in the dirt behind it. Marshall cursed and aimed it again and fired after a couple second’s delay for the reload. This one struck true, causing the joint to jam and break apart. Before it had time to react, or as Marshall saw it as waking up, he swiveled and fired off another one into the other back leg’s joint.
Marshall felt hair stand up on the back of his neck as the round impacted directly but did nothing more than scratch the paint on it. A direct hit, but the armor must not have been as weak as the other leg. He scanned the other four legs and found no other such weakness present on them either. He had only knocked out one leg, which was not enough to destabilize it or make it topple. So now he had to figure out where to hit this up-armored Mule to knock it out.
Gwen began suggesting things in a panic to the Captain, who seemed far too relaxed given the situation they all were in. Marshall wondered if the sweet aroma was coming from an inhibitor that made him that way.
Wait… that was it. Inhibitors! They didn’t need to stop it from firing, all they had to do was throw it off and inhibit its ability to aim properly! Marshall quickly aimed the mortar towards the Mule and centered on its left cheek. As Gwen panicky yelled at the Captain to do something or think of something, the Captain instead looked to Marshall. He said not a word, but instead looked at Marshall's display and gave a nod. “Yes… I like it.” were the only words he spoke before grabbing Betty’s controls. He spoke into the intercom in a calm voice “All hands, brace for impact.”
The weapon on the enemy Mule seemed to come to life as a charge came from the back of it and started traveling up it. Marshall squeezed the trigger as they barreled at the thing, a shell leaving the mortar and soaring towards the Mule. It impacted on the face of it, doing little to no damage. That wasn’t the important part, however. The shockwave caused the Mule to lurch back and, without two stabilizing feet to stop it, lurched too far back and to the left. The shot came from its barrel and arc up and wide of Betty. The control panels all began flickering, and an alarm rang out somewhere inside of Betty as the ball of plasma grazed past them. Marshall could see on his display that the Mortar had been hit by it enough that it was very much out of commission. Betty, however, had survived the blast.
The Captain gunned it forwards and dipped the head, the cockpit, down slightly and then brought it back up swiftly. There was a loud clang as metal hit metal, then a thunderous shuddering as the enemy Mule toppled over from the impact. The Captain looked to Marshall and gave another nod. “May as well make sure it’s dead.”
The words had an implication to them that Marshall was not all too unfamiliar with. A sour taste was left in his mouth as he turned the surviving 37mm to face down at the toppled Mule. A faded ‘HMW Ambridge’ was on its side, just like Betty was on their Mule. But this one instead had a large name painted next to the faded one. ‘Cain’. Marshall fired a shot into each of the sections of the Mule, detonating inside of it and, most likely, killing any occupants in it. After that was done, Marshall swiveled the gun backwards and shot the mine that they had defused some ways back. May as well not let them have that, either.
The Captain continued on, moving past the defeated Mule to the area beyond it. As they came past the blocking hills to more flat land, the Captain turned and faced Marshall, leaving the autopilot to keep going on their course. “We do what we must to make sure that they could not hurt us or our kin. Even that of crews we do not know. If that Mule survived, then it could have hurt others.” He paused, looking Marshall over. “Though you look more accustomed to this sort of thing. I won’t bother explaining further. I’m sure you’ve had to do the same in other places.”
Marshall thought on his words as they went. Had he done the same before? The more he thought, the more he realized why he was able to do it so coldly. Yes, he had done that before. Whilst man struggled on Terra, so too did man struggle in the stars.
Marshall got up and decided that his humanity would be better spent checking on Robert and Cadence.