“What mounting issues?” Mulaghesh asked.
“Well, General…This is a half-ton gun. So the weight of the weapon system itself—especially its barrel motor, fuel tank, and optimal ammunition feed—is extraordinary. We’re working to reduce that—engineering makes leaps all the time—but it’s not easy. But there’s also the issue of propulsion and recoil. The PK features state-of-the-art reduced recoil designs, but we’re still talking about six rotating barrels firing about 2,500 rounds a minute. That puts a lot of pressure on its mounting system. We tried one demonstration integrating what we believed to be a heavy enough vehicle to handle the sudden burst of force, but…Well. It started tipping over, and nearly crushed the gunner.” The officer scratched his chin. “In other words, think of this weapon system as an engine that essentially creates a column of lead in the air, moving at speeds up to two hundred feet per second. That should give you an idea of the physics of this weapon.”
The instant Mulaghesh pulls the trigger on the PK-512, her understanding of the weapon’s physics grows immensely.
The gun whines softly at first, the barrels rotating up to speed—she sees Saint Zhurgut look up at her, surprised—and then the “column of lead” the officer talked about comes into play.
The barrels flare a bright, blinding white, the air is split with a deafening chatter, and Saint Zhurgut is slammed into the ground like he’s had a stack of bricks dropped on him, his body racked with what look like spasms as around fifty bullets strike him every second. But at the same time, the watchtower—which is mostly made out of wood—begins to creak and croak and drift back, like a reed bending in the wind, pushed by the sudden explosion of force from this weapon; which means that Mulaghesh has to raise the aim of the massive gun to keep it trained on the spiky bastard probably now wishing he’d stayed dormant.
This setup, she realizes, has some serious mounting issues. The heat from the gun scorches the floor and rails of the watchtower, licking at the wood and turning it a deep black. Every second threatens to tear the whole watchtower apart.
But Mulaghesh doesn’t care. She hears herself screaming, “Motherfucker! Motherfucker!”
She keeps the massive gun trained on Saint Zhurgut, who is slowly, defiantly trying to stand. It’s like his own personal gravity has tripled. His body rattles and shakes and quivers, and she can see myriad dents appearing in his face, his shoulders, his thighs. Yet still he tries to stand.
The train tracks around him are being shredded. The very ground under his feet turns to pulp. An enormous cloud of dust rises up as the PK-512 continues putting hundreds and hundreds of rounds into the skin of the earth, like it’s a pressurized water sprayer sawing through limestone. She’s aware of the rounds ricocheting off of Zhurgut’s Divine armor: a window shatters across the street, a hanging sign is flapping wildly, struck by countless stray rounds. Hot, smoking casings are raining down around her, the legs of the watchtower lost in a pile of broiling brass. The wooden rails of the tower are smoking and, in some places, even on fire. She feels like she’s dangling over the lip of a broiling volcano.
But Mulaghesh still doesn’t care. She’s screaming, shrieking, howling as this terrific, beautiful, monstrous engine of destruction sings, its own low, guttural buzz the perfect countermeasure to Zhurgut’s serene om. For a moment Mulaghesh delights in this savage victory, and she wishes to scream, We’re better at this than you are! We figured war out in ways you stupid bastards never could!
But she is very, very aware of Zhurgut’s right hand, which is slowly, slowly raising his sword.
She swivels the stream of fire, very slightly, to focus on his sword hand. The PK is about as far from a surgical device as one could ever imagine, but she watches with dismay as even this doesn’t stop the sword’s slow ascent.
She hears the sword begin to sing—a low, defiant note breaking through the rage of the PK-512’s buzz: a quiet om….
There is a rumbling to Mulaghesh’s left. Zhurgut’s focus breaks, and he shifts his head…
…and watches, helpless, as the eighty-ton supply locomotive comes thundering down the track toward him at top speed.
She can tell he wants to leap out of the way. But Mulaghesh positions her never-ending column of lead so that he doesn’t have a chance, pinning him to the ground
Mulaghesh howls in triumph. “Motherfucker! Motherfucker!”
She halts the stream of fire as the locomotive slams into Zhurgut like he’s a toy soldier. She doesn’t even hear the sound of the impact.
But that might be because the instant that the locomotive hits Zhurgut it suddenly derails, slowly tilting off the shredded, pulped train tracks around Saint Zhurgut and sliding across the muddy harbor yard with a terrific, deafening grinding and screeching. Somehow it manages to miss grazing the watchtower and instead goes sliding into a stack of steel beams and wire coils, which all tumble onto its roof and boiler with a tremendous clanging. Then the locomotive tilts to the left very slightly, threatening to tip over, but instead it hangs there, its right set of wheels suspended in the air, churning to an arrhythmic beat, like a half-squashed beetle pumping its legs, unaware it’s dead.
Mulaghesh watches and realizes the destruction seems somewhat distant to her, and she slowly understands that she’s quite deaf from firing the PK-512.
She lets out a breath. She has to force her hand to release the gun’s right handle, then undoes Signe’s brace holding her false hand to the left handle. She steps back from the weapon. Her whole body is shaking, vibrating, like she’s been put in a can and rattled by a giant, and her skin feels like it’s cracked and sizzling, furious from being exposed to so much heat.
She tries to tell herself, “Stop. Stop. It’s over,” but she can’t find the voice for it.
I’m in shock, she thinks. You know this. You’ve been here before.
She looks at the locomotive, lying across the harbor yards like a beached whale. If Zhurgut had happened to stand just a little closer to the tower, and she’d damaged the rails here instead of there, it would have likely pounded through the supports of the watchtower as it derailed like a bullet through a matchstick—a close shave, in other words.
She slowly climbs down the watchtower ladder, then wanders over to the wreckage. The locomotive’s firebox door has fallen open, and a handful of embers have spilled across its metal floor. The whole contraption glows with a cheery yet hellish red light.