Editing Story:ROAD TRIP! (Warhammer High)/Part Five (section)

===It Wasn't a Blank===


As the sun rose the next morning, and the five returned from their workout, Freya halted Alex in their room.  “Babe, do you want to go back to the hot spring today?” she asked.

Alex paused, one hand on the doorframe.  “Sure,” he said, wiping a bead of water out of his eyes.  “When do the others wanna go?”

“I mean you and me,” Freya said.  Alex smiled.

“Yeah…that sounds good,” he said.  “When do we leave?”

“After lunch, no hurry,” she said, flopping down on the bed.  “I spoke to the others after we finished that…abomination of a movie last night, and they’re just gonna check out the firing range today anyway.”

“Is Jake going to be alright?” Alex asked.

“He should be fine, Venus isn’t worried,” Freya said.  “Nice of you to be concerned, though.”

Alex shrugged.  “I gotta say, I didn’t have a whole lot of time for him at school, but he’s good people.”

“And he makes Venus feel like she belongs,” Freya agreed.  She sat up.  “All right…do me a favor before we go, and go grab those towels from before?  I need to arrange transport with Bjorn.”

“Sure,” Alex said, making for the door.

Shortly after lunch, the two were over the ice fields at two klicks, with a pair of Blood Claws providing a discreet escort.  Freya had insisted that they would go with only a small guard detachment, though how much of that was just rationality or lingering embarrassment, Alex couldn’t tell.

As they headed away, Remilia led the others down to the Fang’s massive basement firing ranges.  Equipped with ear covers to protect them from their own lack of Lyman’s ears, the trio arrived at the cavernous room and stared.  From the catwalk overlooking the room, presumably in place to allow Wolf Priests to observe training Aspirants, the channels and lanes looked like rain trenches.  There were already wide puddles of brass in some lanes from skjalds and Blood Claws practicing with buck and slug guns.

“Too cool,” Venus commented into her baffled mic.

“Wonder where they put in Power Weapon training?” Remilia asked, staring at the rows and rows of firing lanes.

“There was a second floor,” Venus pointed out.

A skjald walked up behind them and brushed a fingertip over the microphone in his helmet to draw their attention.  “My Lord, Princesses, welcome to my range,” the elderly skjald said.  The elaborate red and blue marks on his shirtsleeves marked him as the facility rangemaster.  “I’m honored by your patronage,” he continued, bowing deeply.

“Thank you for having us, sir,” Remilia replied.  “You may rest assured that we know how important firing practice is for a Space Marine.  We’re flattered that you would allow us to train with you.”

“Too kind, Princess Dorn,” the rangemaster said, directing them back down to the ground level.  “What would you like to try today, your Highnesses?”

Venus piped up.  “Well…I’m the mood for some pistol, if you happen to have one calibrated for teenagers,” she said with a hint of humor in her voice.

“Certainly, the kaerl sidearm range it is,” the rangemaster said.  The group reached the cement floor, scuffed by millennia of passing boots, and halted in front of an armor locker, where an alert-looking skjald with lean, waspish features eagerly checked out three shiny black pistols.  Jake looked at it a bit askance, but the krakenspawn incident had well convinced him that maybe dating the daughter of a Primarch involved some small risks.

Running through the center of the colossal range was a conveyor belt, reminding Jake incongruously of a people-mover like the ones he had seen in the civil starports of Clymene.  They rode one past rows of skjalds and even some Wolves, practicing their marksmanship, until at last they arrived at their destination: a trio of small booths.  Remilia grabbed the box of ammunition the rangemaster handed her and slid a magazine home, testing the weapon’s balance.

“Hmm.  Venus, where do you think this is from?” she asked.

Venus glanced over her own weapon.  “Mars.  See the two tiny divots in the metal under the safety?”

“Those aren’t traction marks?” Remilia asked.

“Nope.  Mars has two moons, right?  Phobos and Deimos.  That’s them.  It’s the stamp the Mars forges use when they don’t have enough space to stamp a full embossing,” Venus said.  “Half the welding shit in my basement has it, I’d know it blind.”

“Cool.”  Remilia racked the slide, ejected her mag, slipped another slug into the mag, and reclosed it, as Venus showed Jake how to do the same.

“So, you put the other round in so that your first mag has an extra shot in it,” Venus explained.  “Barely matters with, say, an anti-materiel rifle, but with a weapon that fires in bursts it could be the difference-maker.”

“Yep,” Jake said.  “Most good video games let you do that, too,” he said.  He coughed self-consciously.  “Not that they compare to real experience, naturally, but still.”

Venus grinned to herself.  “Uh huh.”

“My Dad said he cooked off a few rounds when he lived on Mars, but he found it to be too boring and dangerous as a hobby, especially once he started thinking about kids,” Jake said.  He hefted his pistol and switched off the safety.  “So uh…”

“Not yet!” Venus cautioned him.  “You wait for that blue light over the lane.  Fire before then and you get thrown out on your ass.”

“Oh?”

“It’s the ‘warning’ light, it means someone’s clearing brass from their lane,” Remilia put it.  “Ricochets kill.”

Jake nodded, somewhat intimidated.  “All right.”  Venus and Remilia moved to their own lanes and took up positions.  The light flashed blue, and three muzzles rose to address the targets.  Jake squeezed the trigger on his pistol.  The flash and recoil shocked him, making him blink and flinch.  “Shit,” he muttered under his breath.  “This is hard…” he looked up at the target and didn’t see a mark on it.  “Aaaand I suck at it.”  He glanced down at the pistol.  “Venus, any tips?” he asked over the mic.

Venus glanced around the partition.  “Yeah, use both hands,” she said.

Jake gripped the pistol with both hands, clumsily meshing his fingers over the plastic grip and firing.  This time, he managed to cut the white paper around the human outline.  “Hmm.  Little better,” he said.

The light over the range turned off.  Jake blinked.  “That was fast,” he said.  He had fired two of the eighteen rounds in the pistol.

Venus stepped around the partition and glanced over his stance.  “Hmm.  Next round, I’ll stand with you, see what your stance looks like.”

Jake chuckled.  “I wonder how that will look to the Wolves, to see their guest learning how to shoot from a girl,” he said with an air of resignation.

“Yeah, nobody in here ever learned from a Primarch,” Venus said drily.  She stood behind him and gently realigned his hands with the grip as the light came back on.  “Try this…”