“We’re back after that short break." Slide Bite smiled. "We can’t discuss what happened but…here we are again, Gizzy, you were saying you designed the Mikro, Mid-mission apparently?”
“Oh yea. Way into the medusa missions. Now, when some people bitched about the 20-50 Reaper being too big, and I had to develop the Mikro Reaper, I HATED the idea. At first. See to me this was neutering the gun, removing the 20mm option, fucking 5-8 inch barrels, limited optics, It’s really just a shitter, weaker gun, BUT technically so is the pistol. Until you consider the Mikro as a sidearm. See now I got my main gun with the full big dick energy, and I can back holster The Mikro, toss the stock entirely, now I got a pistol with a 12 round shotgun and a 30 round pistol mag as powerful as the Scythe. I really found the silver lining there. So for easy missions where most carry a sidearm only, I just had a better sidearm, and when shit hit the fan I could primary a full reaper, or even dual wield Mikros. It ended up being a big benefit to have handy.
"Over here is the setup the robot preferred, that’s a weird story. But a smaller, heavier soldier, really benefitted from the Mikro.
"50 cal over 5mm Magnum. Double suppressor over the muzzle brake for the blackout rounds. You know the 300 and 8.6 blackouts…like that, but 50 caliber. 800 grain subs, hits like truck, but silently. 5mm because just a shitload more ammo, extended mags for extra shitload. The robot really came in clutch for cover fire, handling smaller targets in large numbers, high rate full auto, neural integrated targeting, so that laser on both guns, just interfaced right into the vision cortex. Custom inlay. Pretty simple.
“So you had a small robot for missions.”
“More classified spoiler territory. Sorry, I can’t get much into that. But, kind of yes. This table here: My main man Jack. Now you’d get along. Real nice guy, runs construction jobs mostly, black ops on the side for me. He went big and didn't went home. I mean, he's fine, we cloned him back.
Tactical camo, bipod, full framed reaper because he’s not a fuckin…child-sized candyass. The man loved his 50 caliber options. Always had a 24 inch drop-in 50 barrel and magnified optics, but he ran 50 cal on both barrels.”
“So why would he do that, exactly? What’s the advantage of using a dual caliber system for the same caliber twice?” Slide asked.
“Good question. Jack preferred to start with the 50 barrel in the top, and then he said it’s easier to ditch the barrel and run 20mm than to have to dig out a 50 barrel in combat to drop INTO 50 cal. He had a spring-loaded muzzle compressor added so if he dropped the bolt to unscrew, it just shot the damn 50 barrel out, and he was already loading for 20mm. He carried a drum of 50 barrel burners in the gun, standard 50 and standard 50 grenades in his pack with the 20mm and shotgun drums, and kept the lower barrel in 50 blackout. He also carried 50-9mm sabot rounds for the lower barrel so without taking eyes off target he had the hardest hitting AP rounds we had, and the quietest option, both ready. If lighter armored targets presented, he could mag drop and reload sabots, he could drum swap and run grenades or shot, and if shit hit the fan, ping that 50 barrel out and run 20mm HV genades. It was really about the speed and range of versatility. Jack was always thinking in steps and stages of how bad shit could get and how to escalate quickly to match it. Since the pistol was his less preferred option, and he had the 9mm sabot for the rifle, he ended up on 6mm standard for the high capacity. Jack is a hell of a shot. The man just does not miss often. He’s not just good for a human, he’s one of the best in general, and the fact that he’s human is what makes that even crazier.”
“How many humans were on the team?”
“Full blooded and unmodded humans, just Jack." she shrugged.
“Wow. That’s a little depressing. Borderline racist.” Slide sighed.
“Well usually humans are the weakest and lest effective species on damn near everything related to combat or physical power, but before you feel like the redheaded stepchild of the universe, let me show you why it gets worse. THIS table is the captain’s setup. No, I was not the captain. That’s a…different story. Yes, this truly, just absolute Malibu Barby, cotton-candy frufru bullshit is what our valiant captain actually took into combat. The exact copy of this, and yes, the damn pink and purple camo.”
“That might be the first of your guns I can actually say I don’t love. If I’m getting this, how culturally offensive would it be to spray paint it literally any other kind of camo?” he asked.
“Oh, I am with you 100 percent. Kill that bubblegum grape shit with fire and go classic charcoal. The thing is... in space, there is no camo. Every planet and ship and situation is random as hell, and therefore any color scheme is equally camo somewhere. You could land on a pink and purple rainforest for a mission, and this was the selection. Not only was the 50 watered down to a 50Mikro low recoil caliber to avoid... injuring the captain, but the 5mm and 6mm secondary was chosen purely for recoil control. Everything about this sucks. Tamed down gun, and tamed down even more with tamer ammo. There’s a reason we don’t have a reptile division in our military. They fucking suck at combat. Yea you get night vision but so does the robot, me, and the damn scope Jack had, so…you just have a gummy-frog struggling to kill anything. The fact that I wasn’t promoted up to captain…let's not get into that. It’s bullshit and we know it. It’s a castrated and candy sprinkled kit for a crew captain whose ability to use a weapon was equivalent to e-Reptile dysfunction.”
“Nice. No little blue pill for this gun. Standard Scythe I see. Still a lot of firepower in a pistol, with a powder coat and grip tape I’d be happy. Can’t say I would bring it to the range in that color. Just a little too gay.”
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“Fucking rubber-boned reptiles. Make a 120 pound child the tactical leader…I swear. Now over here we have an example of doing it correctly. 130 pound skinny female crewmember, kinda human, mostly. You see any butterfly stickers and padded princess pillows on the stock? No. That is built for high capacity murder, and I’m there for it.”
“What…is that color scheme?”
It’s a blend of urban rust and shark attack, we called zombie apocalypse. If you knew this crew member, getting fully soaked in blood was kind of a guarantee anyway, so we just made the gun already look like it was surgically removed from something living. Laser guided, full sized reaper, slimline drums front and back, no iron sights, red dot only, she really liked seeing red. Same 50 over 50 configuration as Jack, but favoring shotgun and blackout for the top barrel and 7mm inserts on the bottom with the quick release, she went high capacity 7mm and 50 power, so the lower barrel and pistol ammo was interchangeable, which was smart. 7mm Brut, just like my pistol, except gorier and with a laser. Shit hits the fan, high capacity drum of 50BMG, heavy grenade. I mean the versatility range is covered, that’s the setup of someone born to murder things. You see the difference? Bloodthirsty soldier versus lizard bullshit. Still annoys me. Anyway, that’s the crew we can talk about. Now delving back to the 3 guns on this table. 3 standard reaper Mikros. 17 inches cropped and folded, 28 with the 12 inch barrels and stock fully out. It’s adjustable, folding holo-sights.
Now similar to the big reaper, but with just one ejector port, the way you unlock the barrels to change caliber, you have to pull the bolt handle outwards and turn it. The simple up and down that unlocks the Big Reaper, toggle-changes modes to upper and lower barrel on the Mikro. So we had to rethink that mechanism a little. It’s awkward, but you get used to it quickly. We have here the Mikros configured in the 13mm Mikro caliber, like a 50BMG but 58% of the powder because that collapsible stock apparently feels very comfortable with softer shooting rounds, but it flexes with full 50BMG rounds and I hear the vibration is pretty bad. I wouldn’t know because I use this as a handgun and use an adult rifle when I want a shoulder stock, but whatever. We dropped the power a little. 775 grain monolithic steel solids. The second one is insert necked-down to 11mm5k, 488 grain brass solid, and the third one is 9mm3k insert adapted. We’re gonna let you shoot all 3 and see what you prefer, and we’ll 3d print you a set to your likings, color, barrels, the works. Anything but the purple, purely because I refuse, and honestly if you can't handle the 9mm3k with a stock, just…throw your penis away and join the coast guard. I’m not even bothering. The bottom barrels have 9mm 7mm and 5mm sleeves.”
“I’m an Air Force boy, Special Ops. I’m used to just standing there and taking a wall of abuse, let's do the big bastard first.”
He stood, locked and barrel down, waiting for the go.
“Ballistic torso 50 yards, 13mmOSR Mikro.” He said, firing the shot. The Camera changed to a slow-motion zoom of the target, as he narrated after the fact.
“Wow. That is just psychotic. It’s such a deceptive gun. Like you can see the flash on impact, you can see the massive bullet just come out the back of the torso tumbling, and that cavitation. All the ribs are broken, huge permanent cavity, you could put your hand through that. Devastating”
“How was the recoil?” Gizzy asked.
"Honestly, for a small gun this light, that’s the thing that’s so deceptive. That impact looks like a 50 BMG, the damage is like a 50, the flash was horrendous, but the gun was way quieter than you’d expect, and the recoil was not terrible. Bout like a full sized SCAR 308. Stout but controllable. What is that I’m seeing with the ribcage movement?”
“Oh that’s the bullet twist. The reapers run a 1-2 or sometimes 1-1.5 twist rate so you’re getting a lot of kinetic energy transfer from the spin, that’s why we run steel rounds and brass solids a lot. FMJ’s and bonded HPs tend to break up, especially in the higher velocity rounds. It’s spinning so fast, the centrifugal force alone will just POP a standard FMJ. We adjust the alloy so that it’s pulling with 95 percent of the force needed to explode the round, so on impact, it kinda just does. So even that armor penetrator is nasty on soft tissue. Try one of the 500 black.” She said as the camera cut to Slide firing the gun, torso splattering, turning slowly with an ear-to-ear grin.
“Okay I’m sold. That's my favorite. I want 5 of these.”
“They’re 2 million each.”
“Just the 1 free one is good too. Do I get to pick my ammo? I want more of that.”
“Dude, you barely moved.” The camera guy muttered.
“That was so quiet I thought something went wrong. There was almost no recoil on an 800 grain round and look at the target. It’s still carnage. That is sick.”
“Try the top barrel on the armor plate. You’ll want earplugs for that.” Gizzy suggested.
The shot rang out with a sharp hiss and a loud clank as he recoiled a little and approached the target.
“No way.” He chuckled.
“Yea, 5x5k. That’s a round the size of a 22lr, stacks like one in the magazine. 70 rounds of ammo in that gun.”
“Little recoil, but not bad, similar to an 556, did it just go through that AR500 target?”
“Monolithic steel, 5,000 feet per second 5mm needle.” Gizzy grinned.
“Dude, that’s a laser. And I can just…” he said, shouldering it, firing one loud boom, a nearly instant light puff after, flipping the selector up, and another sharp hiss. “...switch ammo in a second. Holy hell, it’s like a cheat code. It just runs."
“Yea, I make a good gun for 2 mil. Any questions?”
“I’ll definitely have just a full spectrum list of questions about the guts and materials, I just, as a military man I feel the need to ask the questions nobody is asking, for the security of humanity. The questions that could help us defend against the actual hostiles out there.”
“It’s already funny, but go on.”
“This is just…devastating shit. What exactly were you expecting to find, that with your level of body armor, you felt the need for this level of, quite frankly absolute insane overkill. What were you facing or hoping not to face that needs this much firepower to put down?”
“Classified.” She nodded.
“Well, how can we prepare if we don’t know what we could be facing?”
“Oh prepping would just be pointless. You don’t wanna know what’s out there.”
“I’ve chatted with some of the other Tubers you’ve had here in…Arizona. Braden said there was a concerning joke about 300 pound spiders?”
“Oh yea, those are everywhere. Space is just fucking full of spiders, other space bugs too, centipedes, spiderpedes, dog-sized, jeep sized, everything in between.”
“And you need this level of kit to take them down?” he asked.
“Oh no, the pistol will splatter those shits. That’s… that’s not the classified horrors I can’t talk about. Everyone knows about space spiders, those are the warmup hostiles. God I WISH that mission, I wish the worst shit we had to deal with was a few 300 pound spiders. Easy mode. No, honestly we developed the 50 barrel burners because 20mm grenades at 3700fps were not cutting it, and we needed higher magazine capacity BADLY. You people are not ready to know what’s out there. These are the dumbed down guns we brought to pass for human tech, that is a joke compared to our classified guns, and there is shit out there you can't pay me to take on with anything we have. Your worst nightmares are the miniboss they put in the game to make you feel falsely confident. There are players out there even we don’t dare mess with. Just pretend 300 pound spiders are as bad as it gets, and that gun right there has your ass covered. Leave the rest to the adults.” She said as a horrified look glazed over his face and an automatic blinking response wafted out.
“Well there you have it. This episode of Slide bite…existential crisis and, imminent lack of sleep.”
“Nah, don’t worry, we’ll memory cone that last part out. I just wanted it for my footage. It won’t go online.”
"The Memory what?"