"Latovinia's basic services are collapsing. We will continuously monitor Latovinia's political situation and stand ready to undertake humanitarian aid at any time. The aid resolution has been submitted to Congress for a vote. Meanwhile, the White House will urge Latovinia's neighbors—Romania, Hungary, and Serbia—to track developments, prepare to receive refugees, and provide necessary assistance. We condemn the rebels' barbaric acts in Latovinia—their utter disregard for the most basic moral principles as they massacre civilians, their contempt for press freedom and diplomatic relations, and their arbitrary executions of American and European citizens inside Latovinia. The White House has decided it will intervene when necessary to preserve Latovinia's place in the free world…"
The hammer struck the primer; propellant in the chamber flashed into flame. Expanding high-pressure gas drove the bullet out past the case neck, rifling spun it, and it flew from the barrel to smash into a target ten meters away faster than the eye could follow. The gunshot instantly drowned out the voice of Vice President Joe Biden coming from the holoprojection TV. It was an election year, 2016; the previous Democratic president had served two terms, and the old man Biden was making frequent appearances to boost his profile. The Latovinia affair made good stump-speech fodder for the Democrats.
None of that had anything to do with the people at the Oxfordshire manor. Lorna squeezed the trigger again and again, only stopping when the magazine ran dry. Bayonetta nodded in satisfaction, then pointed to another gun on the table—Lorna set down the Beretta 92F in her hand, picked up the .50-caliber Smith & Wesson M500 revolver, loaded it deftly, and fired five shots at the target in quick succession. Chin tilted high, she started showing off to Jeanne—until Jeanne picked up an M1911A1. Watching every round Jeanne fired hit the exact same spot, Lorna couldn't stop herself from blurting a word that would make a lady blush.
The witches burst out laughing at her language.
As long as she didn't have to choke down foul-tasting alchemical tonics, her relationship with the witches was decent. Bayonetta had even opened Solomon's gun-collection room to her. Most of those firearms served as reference pieces for Solomon's iterative improvements to bolter and laser prototypes. Today's toys for Lorna included, but were not limited to, the U.S. M200 Intervention sniper rifle, the HK416 assault rifle, the M14EBR designated marksman rifle, the M1891 Mosin–Nagant, the M1903 Springfield, and a range of pistols. Every firearm was cataloged, but none were registered with the police—neither Solomon nor the witch cared about such trifles.
Bayonetta forbade Lorna from using the collection's stockless .75-caliber and .50-caliber bolters and the plasma pistols—those weapons were too dangerous. Of all the Undying City's arms, the only thing Lorna was allowed to carry was a low-recoil laser pistol. Bayonetta preferred that, too, as Lorna's personal-defense arm—simple to operate, easy to carry, and when fired it didn't spray bone shards and blood everywhere, which saved cleanup. In Bayonetta's view, Lorna very much needed a weapon to drop any creep with bad intentions; but the laser pistol's lack of a blood-pumping bang at the shot earned her disdain, and she turned to the classic Beretta 92F instead.
To be fair, the Undying City's laser weapons were excellent. The laser rifle boasted a high-capacity magazine (in truth, a high-energy battery born of alien tech and breakthroughs in physics) that provided over two hundred standard-power shots; and by twisting an output dial on the receiver, one could adjust both power and rate of fire. Against lightly armored targets, a handful of laser rifles could melt a vehicle's hull and kill the crew inside.
Just like now: at an intersection, a towed twin-linked multi-barrel laser spat searing crimson beams at extreme frequency and sliced apart a speeding military Humvee as if it were paper. The heat detonated the fuel tank in a flash, blasting any soldiers not already burned to death into scraps. The soldier standing behind the twin-linked heavy laser merely hunched his neck (helmet or not, no one wanted to test its limits with shrapnel), lifting the armor plate to shield his throat from the ricocheting sympathetic-cookoff machine-gun rounds, while giving the all-weather sight's battery pack beneath it a chance to shed heat.
"Dragan, you idiot!" A middle-aged soldier snarled at the young man behind him. Bound by regulations, he didn't dare actually shout. "I told you—no excessive kill! Take out the crew, don't blow the vehicle! Now we have to go drag that mess off the road! These battery packs'll be emptier than your skull before sundown—what do we do if another truck comes through?"
"Fifty-three percent charge left, Uncle Novak." The young man, Dragan, shrugged and pointed at the number on the all-weather sight, looking unconcerned. "If the royals aren't stupid, they won't try to punch through here. And Milos has a heavy bolter and a crate of rounds. Even if our battery pack dies, the logistics team will get us a fresh one in time."
Dragan was younger, better with weapons training, and more adaptable to the Undying City's high-tech kit, so he handled maintenance and firing. Novak handled reloading for the twin-linked laser; together they made up the weapon team. The middle-aged Latovinian had been a farmer; pressed into service, he hadn't received much training, but he was only a hair worse than Dragan, who was a militiaman as well. Novak had a mysterious, near-fanatical love for the Undying City's weapons that others couldn't quite understand; Dragan had heard that his affection for the towed twin-linked multi-barrel laser exceeded even his love for his wife. When the APC had towed the weapon up to the intersection to emplace it, Novak had insisted on riding on top, watching to make sure it didn't tip over on the rutted road.
Scenes like this weren't isolated. After talks collapsed, Victor von Doom reinforced the roadblocks around the royal city. He sent notices and scattered leaflets, ordering the royal household guard to escort the royal family out of the city and to lay down their arms and surrender. Given that the royals had concentrated all their heavy armor inside the royal city, there were many weapon teams like Dragan and Novak, deliberately deployed by Victor von Doom to the approaches, ensuring any attempt by the royals to escape with armor would fail—the towed twin-linked multi-barrel lasers were technically anti-personnel, but against this world's technology they might as well have been anti-armor. As for heavy armored carriers, the swarms of kamikaze drones circling over the royal city were the best answer.
Victor von Doom wanted as many Latovinians as possible to survive; to that, Solomon had no objection. He merely told his regent that the U.S. military's reliance on technological superiority to wage police actions in the Middle East had led to varying degrees of atrophy in tactics, strategy, and even soldierly courage. If the Latovinian regulars were to fulfill the grand vision of The Unified Truth, they would have to possess the courage to sacrifice.
"In three hours, I'll lead them into the royal city," Solomon said. "Now—begin the bombardment."
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