Sky King II: Reborn

Chapter VI

Outside of the air field building, dressed in a white t-shirt and green slacks, Kuujiro watched Harold hobble over to her with one of the heavier black boxes over his right shoulder. He had a red ball cap on his head to shade his face from the sun, a blue v-neck long sleeve, and jeans that were slightly worn at both knees. Nothing out of the ordinary from his usual fit.

In front of the young woman was two wooden boxes stacked on top of one another to serve as a wide table or shooting position, judging from the circular red painted targets in the sand. One was closer, one midway between the first and last, and one at the treeline of the forest, all spaced accordingly. The sun was bearing down on them with no remorse, Kuu knowing the heat would probably make her impatient and irritated.

Harold set the box down next to her with a loud groan, the weight of the object throwing puffs of sand out from around it. He undid the fastenings and lifted the top open, four rifles lining the center and ammunition for each under it in small cardboard boxes.

"KNm18. Standard issue rifle for the Syncaire army from the second great war and onward. Model 18 Bolt Action, five round internal magazine, and is accurate up to 700 meters with a good scope, without, I'd say around 400 meters," the old man picked one of the rifles up and handed it to Kuu, "made by a man named Kamalov Nagant from Siddia,"

"Siddia?" Kuu asked, almost dropping the rifle from its weight. It wasn't actually that heavy, but carrying it for too long would make her arms sore. She wondered how loud it would be and how badly the recoil would bruise her shoulder. The young woman had never shot anything before, but she had seen plenty of movies and shows where soldiers were using rifles, so the gist of it was in her mind. Though translating only viewing to actual experience more than likely wouldn't work very well.

"Siddia is a smaller country to the south of ours.They've been our allies for as long as I can remember," he explained while she inspected the weapon, "Allies, but neutral to our conflicts, something we will always respect of our allies if the problem was solely created by us,"

"Didn't you say the last war was because we were taking our own land back that the Islands took from us? Why wouldn't they help then?" Kuu messed with the bolt but couldn't get it to pull back, giving up until Harold decided to start instructing her on how to use it.

"Well...it was land they owned first and we conquered it during the first great war. Continued fighting over it in the second, then we took it all back when your father was dueling Hellot pilots. We lost all of it during the third war, including our own country as you know, It really was our doing in the first place I suppose," Harold said, lighting his pipe and puffing out smoke from his lips, "the Siddian First and Second Orders helped us during the first and second great wars because they had merchant ships that got destroyed by both the Hellot Islands and the Xeras Empire, but the third war was between us and the Islands, nobody else. There was no reason for them to help us,"

"We would have won if they had," Kuu muttered, aiming down the sights of the rifle at the closest target, finding it very hard to keep the barrel from swaying off center.

"Maybe, but the past is best left where it is," the old man walked up next to her and motioned for her to hand him the rifle. He flicked a switch on the back of the bolt and handed it back to Kuu, nodding for her to mess with the bolt again. Now, she was able to lift the bolt up and pull it back. It stopped once and clicked before being able to move back further, the black haired woman raising her eyebrows at the old man as if to silently ask 'what was that?'

"Before the click, the bullet casing is ejected. You only pull it back past the click when loading more bullets into the magazine," he reached into the black box and grabbed one of the smaller cardboard ones, handing Kuu one of the bullets. It was just slightly longer than her middle finger and thicker too. On the bottom, etched into the circular casing, was 7.62x54mm, apparently the caliber of this bullet. A thin red tape was tied around the casing just below where the bullet itself emerged, indicating a certain type that this ammunition was.