- Location
- Germany
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=} Professors in Uniform {=
=} Professors in Uniform {=
To see Oliviero Belluci, Extra-ordinary Professor of Wartime studies, was to see an academic at war. Like nearly all of Belém he had joined the cities defense league, having enriched his straight pants and loose collared shirt with an infantryman's jacket and a helmet that was resting on his desk as he faced the filled auditorium: students, newly mobilized conscripts, volunteers, Algerians and even the occasional Spacian joining his lecture series on the tools and implications of the current age of warfare. Today's exhibit was easily visible to those who were seated close enough and those in the back at least got to see the diagram projected on the wall. From the curves of its body to the rather slender silhouette and compact shape it was easy to identify the origin of the firearm in question and if this had been in doubt, Professor Belluci stressed it right away:
"What you are looking at is the Kyohaku Model 220 - a lightweight assault rifle with durable ceramic parts and impact-resistant plastic parts."
For the benefit of the audience he lifted it with one hand and give it a little wiggle, more than someone could have done with a standard semi automatic rifle which tended to be more on the heavy and longer side of things, while the 'assault' rifle seemed to resemble an oversized submachine gun more than anything else. Gripping it with both hands next and lifting it before himself, he lightly grasped the grip and showcased a few positions for the hands, continuing to talk as he fell into a simple shooting position: "As you can see the magazine is large enough to stick out visibly and is neither placed on top the receiver nor in front of the trigger. Instead this is a design that the Spacians call bullpup - integrating the magazine into the shoulder stock for increased stability and movability of the shooter."
Putting the weapon down again and instead unlatching its magazine with one swift motion, the professor held the slightly bent shape for everyone to see - before triggering another pin and letting a swarm of bullets drop into his hands. Holding them up one by one, more and more till the whole hall was whispering, he called out triumphantly: "30! I repeat: there are 30 bullets in the magazine of this weapon. With their 5.56 mm they might be deceptively light, but their range is superb and as anyone deployed with the newly armed infantry brigades can tell you, they sent mondist scurrying into any shade and shelter they could find."
Clapping his hands at the laughter that was spreading through the room - and the grim looks of those who had indeed seen such sights, he instead held up one of the bullets. As his assistants spread a few more throughout the audience to take a look he continued: "As you can see the Spacians aren't used metal for the casing, indeed they are using something far more akin to the nylons of the women among us - merely hardened and shaped to be used as casings. A decision that saves both material and weight - and leaves little for the enemy to find as the polymer casing is turned gaseous by the second little trick the spacians built into this gun: electricity!"
With another wave the presentation jumped forward, showing a rough drawing of the process that was going to take place inside of the weapon: "Not a mechanical impact, but rather the small and sharp application of an electrical current fires the weapon upon pulling the trigger. Together with the burning polymer shell this gives spacian weapons the tell-tale blue glow that terrorizes the mondist invaders at the frontline.", turning it around again, he showed the onlookers a small switch on the side: "You might have presumed the Kyohaku 220 was a semi-automatic rifle with a particularly oversized magazine - or you might know better as you have seen or even handled this assault rifle before. While it can be used for single shot fire, a flick of this switch can also set it to full automatic mode, allowing you to empty its whole magazine into the direction of the enemy in a matter of seconds."
Holding up a hand at the noises coming from the audience he specified: "This is presumed to be used in close quarters, be it in ruins, jungles or urban environments. While we are producing the first magazines in Belem ourselves, most of our stocks still come from various orbital traders and allies of our proud republic."
Giving the pat of the weapon another pat, he hummed amused "For now we shall head down into the trenches for some practical exercises. I do hope that everyone touched up on their optics lessons for the collimator sight! If we are in luck, someone from the brigades that are currently getting trained on these new weapons will introduce us to the Kyohaku 250 variant, the heavier battlerifle with something the spacians call an underslung grenade launcher. An variant evolved from the Rifle grenade known to our own weapons industry."
Clapping into his hands after handling the rifle to an assistant he called out: "Now! Everyone who needs a passing grade in this class needs to talk with my assistants and schedule some practical exercises for later this week. If you are to march before this, please come and see me in my office hours today!"
=} News of the Republic {=
The 83rd "Oscaso" Brigade had - in better days - honed their skills in digging on archaeological dig sites. Each member is able to dig a search trench perfectly straight with immaculate profiles - and an eye for any kind of rust or wire that might herald the presence of a pre- or shortly post-catacylsm mine or explosives that was left behind by conflicts past. Today they still have use of these skills, but the origin of the weapon or closer and far more modern - while they get to use them in reverse too, burying mines and planting explosives to make sure that the push of the mondist, the steady thumb of a thick headed skull hitting a flexible wall, continued to bloody them as their advanced slowed to a crawl. But while the thunder of artillery and the tell-tale hiss of the spacian small arms was ubiquitous in the background, something else had their attention today or as Sílvia Guedes Passos had to find out as her small car came to a stop in a muddy clearing: the hunger for news was even greater than she could have expected.
Her boots barely had time to sink into the rich soil of the southern regions, an area where heavy excavations had made space for larger scale farming between the ancient ruins, before she was already getting crowded by the men and women of the 83rd, the light curved spacial rifles slung over as their hands and eyes went eagerly for the truck bed. Trying to diffuse the storm on the boxes with a small laugh and a firm clapping of her hands as she walked through what have must been an ancient irrigation system that the soldiers excavated as protection for the rear area, Sílvia wondered if she had been chosen to head to the front as a reward or because she proved too capable in meeting up with the Algerians. Right now she could only pull herself up on the truck bed, eager hands pushing her up by the belt of her uniform, with tired but eager faces looking up to her from all around the car.
Popping the lid of the first crate, she raised the first magazine - its glossy pages wrapped in a protective little paper bag like a butter bread - and called out: "From the Student Association of Natural Sciences at the University of Belém: A new Age of Electronics - The Algerian Dream and Spacian Advances! Five of them in color and two hundred in monochrome but with nonetheless sharp representations of newly rediscovered circuitry! A look into the future we are fighting for and the past we are fighting on!", thankfully this quieted the soldiers around her a little and before too long small groups were huddling together, talking with one another, before sending representations forward that swiftly took the offered magazines with great care and spread them among those interested - which in a unit like the 83rd was just about anyone who had ever dug out the fused and rusted remnants of ancient circuitry and still had the energy to wonder what they might have once been.
With the first, more calming round out of the way, Sílvia leaned her feet on the next crate, before opening it and those around her in rapid succession, heaving out large stacks of wrapped up papers with both arms and small grunts that saw two more soldiers jump onto the truck bed with her and help lugging the papers into the arms of their comrades, where the bundles were cut open and quickly spread out as hundreds upon hundreds of papers were making their way through the brigade, comrades sharing and looking at the news or the sports parts - with many concentrating on the image of countless ships arriving in the harbor of Belém with strangers in uniforms marching off the ships with weapons and heads held high: THE ALGERIANS HAVE ARRIVED! was the simple and fitting title after all.
"The Amazonian sends its respect and congratulations to its brave readers in uniform! While the issue might be dated by now, I have driven it to you as fast as the front allowed it! And the messenger service is making sure that more are arriving as quickly as they can reach you! The Republic stands because of you and no one in Belém will ever forget this!", she shouted out to a small smattering of cheers, holding up the next page, showing the trenches of another fighting unit among the outskirts of Belem: "Our homeland is endangered by the Tyrants invading us! But our allies are arriving from all over the globe! The Federation has broken the mondist blockade! The Algerian Comrades have sent countless brigades and mobile suits to bolster our defenses! Even the unions of Applegate have decided that they can't watch the mondists crimes any longer! The Fascist Invaders push has been turned into so much dust by the Seraphim patrolling above our capital! Our new weaponry has them in fear and each day new mobile suits arrive at the frontline bearing the tricolore of our republic!"
It was all in the paper, but reading it out made it real and with each new fact the smattering applause grew into a roaring crescendo that gave new energy to the weary and bolstered those who had been fighting for their home for months now. They had pulled back, they had retreated, they had let the enemy push deeper and deeper - but they hadn't broken. And with the news coming in it was getting clearer and clearer that this had been the time the republic needed, that their sacrifice had allowed for reinforcement to arrive, for new mobile suits to be brought online and for humanity from those on earth to those in space to see the righteousness of their defense and the perfidy of the mondists! It was the right kind of mood to hand out the pamphlet "Tonight's eight different silent ways to kill a man." of the physical education department.
But as the cheering slowly died down again, Sílvia put on a more serious expression, holding up bundles of small cheaply made pamphlets held in a somber burgundy cover: "The Club of Exiles has published an information brochure called "Tears of Gran Columbia". While we are fighting against the utterly brainwashed masses of CanMexico, we should not forget that the bloodhound princess has long bled her own people before her fellow Tyrants had set her loose upon us! Together they had drowned the Republic of Gran Columbia in blood and are now attempting to do the same with us! The Exiles see that you are protecting all of our freedom! But beseech you to show mercy to those Gran Columbians that have been misled, while showing none to the royalist fascists! Their pamphlet offers you a variety of ways to account for regional dialects when asking for surrender or offering medical attention. It also holds multiple printed poems and speeches of republican martyrs to broadcast and read out to enemy and prisoner alike. You are soldiers and defenders of democracy and they can only hope that their freedom will one day rise from the charnelhouse the Mondist have turned their home into!"
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