Chapter Forty-Eight – Push My Red Button

Chapter Forty-Eight – Push My Red Button

“What’s the big red button do?

Why don’t you push it to find ou– wait, don’t actually push!”

–Transcript of a Recording of the Russian Incident of 2025

***

There was this strange thing that happened whenever something big and unique was going on.

I’d first seen it a few years back. A large cylindrical truck had swayed around something on the road and rammed into one of those metal guardrail things on the roadside.

The cab was totalled. The driver was very dead. And then some other truck drove right into the first’s rear. They’d had time to slow down a little, so it wasn’t nearly as big of a bang, but I could still remember the sound of it.

I’d been a block or so over, and I knew that the noise didn’t come from gunfire. It was too… crunchy? Anyway, I’d wandered over to find that people had split into three camps. Two or three guys were checking on the driver, looking for a pulse, trying to get him out of the truck’s cabin. I might have been tempted to help, but by the time I arrived they were already giving it up as a bad job. Dude’s brains were across the dash anyway.

The other two groups were much more populous. The truck was transporting fresh water. The people in the second group had grabbed buckets and were stealing all they could. Water was expensive. Clean water moreso.

The last group, the one I’d been part of that day, just milled around a dozen metres away. Rumours spread, someone who might have seen the accident repeated their story a dozen times, and we all partook in some head shaking and complaining about whatever shit had caused the accident.

It wasn’t a memory I called up often, but the moment felt pretty damned similar.

The Big Gun was done.

Major Tinwhistle was standing tall and proud, hands on hips and eyes stained red by strain and stress. “It’s done,” she announced to Grasshopper.

There were only two groups this time. The onlookers, composed of all of the engineers and soldiers who’d been roped into the project, and the samurai. Well, some of us, at least. A few had contributed what they needed to, and were just milling on the edge of the much bigger onlooker group.

“Stray Cat, Gomorrah,” Grasshopper said. She smiled at the both of us, then started towards the very back of the Big Gun. Or was it the front? The bit where the shooting would start, in any case, not the end with the exit portal.

That part of the gun was like a small shack. A well-built, brutalist’s ideal of a small shack. The walls were foot thick concrete poured over inch-thick metal plates.

The inside was a cramped little space that I was pretty sure came from one of Tankette’s catalogues. There were a few small adjustable seats in front of a complex set of screens and buttons. All analogue, at least on the surface. I did notice a few ports for data-jacking into the gun, like connecting into the Mesh.

Grasshopper went to the furthest seat and sat, then she gestured to the other two. One was next to Grasshopper, the other at an angle near the rear of the room.

“What are we going to open with?” she asked.

“You mean what are we shooting first?” I asked. “We need to make a solid first impression.”

“Something with good penetrative power might be best for now,” Gomorrah said. She looked across the screens and muttered something I didn’t catch, probably to Atyacus. They lit up. Diagnostics flashed by, and then a long list of status readouts. It looked like we were green across the board.

There was only one item that was flashing. Hypervelocity Round Missing.

“What about that Casaba-Howitzer?” I asked. “You’d mentioned those, Grasshopper, and I looked them up. They’re hot as hell.”

“That should carry some amount of penetrative power,” Grasshopper agreed. “Load it in!”

I blinked, then looked to my left where there was a heavy metal breach held closed by a chunky looking handle. “Oh,” I said. I tugged the handle back, exposing a hole that was in a block of iron a foot and a bit wide and tall. A small engraving on the plate said INSERT SHELL HERE, which was pretty self-explanatory. “Myalis, got a casaba-howitzer for me?” I asked.

Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

Certainly. Only two hundred points for one designed to fit into the Big Gun.

I winced. Only my ass, that wasn’t cheap if we were going to be firing once an hour. Maybe we’d go for cheaper rounds later though, we did want to start with a literal bang. “Fine fine,” I said.

A shell appeared by my feet. It was in the usual cat-themed case, though this one had handles to better be able to grip the shell within. I opened it up, grunted as I pulled the bullet out, and then wondered which way was meant to go in first. The bullet was a cylinder with flat faces on either side and was made of what looked like polished steel.

The right end goes in first.