Dust Devils - A Girls Und Panzer Story

Chapter 80

A loud boom was quickly followed by a sharp crack. Several long seconds of silence elapsed before the same procession of noises repeated, and again, and again, and again. The woods of the USS Algonquin was alive with the thunderous roar of cannon, once unheard of, now quickly becoming a part of the ship's routine. The Dungeness tankery team was in the middle of gunnery practice, with Valarie and Ray supervising and providing guidance where needed. As it turns out, it was needed in a lot of places.

"You're falling short by about twenty meters or so," Valarie informed. She stood right behind the turret on the rear engine deck, a sizeable piece of space as far as tanks were concerned. With binoculars in hand, she used them to observe the fall of shots of the guns as they target a crudely thrown-together target at five hundred meters away. "Falling short with both the 37 and 76."

"Ugh! It's hard!" Roxanne cried. "I get confused by the two gun sights!

"Two different caliber guns managed by one gunner," Valarie tsked. Leaves little to wonder why tanks with coaxial weaponry tend to stick with machine guns."

"What's the deal with that?" Greta questioned. "Why does our tank have two cannons? I mean, we love it, but why?"

"There's something I read about the M6 that talked about this very thing. Give me a minute or two to find out."

Valarie whipped out her phone and paced around the engine deck as she browsed websites on her device to find the information she read once before. She soon settled down and sat at the other end of the tank, feet dangling off the rear. Ray watched with bemusement as Valarie began to faintly rock her head back and forth as if she was listening to music, and since it was Valarie, data about tanks might as well be music to her ears.

Ray sat down on the tank, using the turret as something to rest against. He turned toward Greta and brought his voice down to a whisper.

"Now you've gone and done it. She's probably gonna read every related word to the M6 program, from reports, reviews, articles, the whole thing. This'll take a while."

"Wow...," Greta breathed. "How much does she know about tanks?"

Ray chuckled softly, then quickly stifled it to no attract Valarie's attention.

"Oh man, like you wouldn't believe. She's been a tank fanatic for fourteen of the seventeen years she's been alive. She has read and watched every possible resource she could find about armored fighting vehicles in all those years. It's her passion. It's what makes her wake up in the morning. Less nice people would say she has an obsession...an addiction."

"So, if I showed her a picture of a random tank from the internet, she'd tell me what it was?"

Ray nodded with a huge grin that creased his face.

"She'll tell you the name, the full name of the tank, country of origin, the caliber of its gun, the number of people needed to crew it and their respective roles, hell, I wouldn't put it beyond her if she could also say what factory the thing rolled out of."

"Wooow," Greta remarked with a sense of awe. She looked beyond Ray to glance at Valarie, then back at him. "Are you two dating?"

The boldness of her asking such a question, and it coming from completely nowhere, made him stumble his speech in response.

"W-what-n-"

"Well, is she?"

"She's no─"

"Are gonna get married?"

"Oh my god!" Ray exclaimed. He buried his blushing face in his hands as deep as he could. "We're not dating! We're only friends! Good friends!"