Search Results

Found 1 results for "608f2770267832567c875f7c872833d0" across all boards searching md5.

QM !!apNIqsw84X0ID: 1VKUyTP5/qst/6231851#6236565
5/6/2025, 6:07:40 PM
>>6236563
[3/5]
Jogging the final yards, it's apparent that the bivouac isn't as you left it. The first thing you notice is the dead guy lying in a pool of his own blood. Either he's been here since hours after you left and is starting to decompose, or he hasn't showered in months, or both. It's an average-sized black guy, somehow dressed both raggedly and gaudily at once, with a dark, elegantly stitched half-jacket over a roughspun dark green tunic and trousers. He's also wearing some sort of bandolier with a dozen small, wooden tubes dangling off it by strings. He's obviously dead, with half of his head caved inward and flies swarming him. His weapon lies beside him in the grass, and thematically fits its former user. Some sort of musket, with its rough, dimpled woodwork embellished along the length of its' long barrel by shiny brass bands. You pick up the musket, inspecting it further.
It has "MACHOGO" carved on the stock in hardly-decipherable script. It has been discharged.

The latter fact has you begin a brief hunt for Allie, cursing your tunnel-vision.
She sits cross-legged, embraced by the shrubbery, her eyes closed and body entirely still. Like the portrait of a fancy lady in deep meditation at some vacation spa. Her jumpsuit has a slight gash at one of her thighs, through which you can see an imbedded musket ball. While a proper robo-modder you certainly were not, you figure the damage not to be serious. Her battery ran out, she wasn't disabled.

Looking around the rest of the camp, it seems entirely unchanged. The ration crate was undisturbed under a bush, its' contents unpilfered. The water and water filter were still where you left them, and Allie's case and charging setup still lay in the center of camp. You haul her over and start her to recharging, at least enough that you can get her side of the story before she needs to juice back up for a couple of days.

Your initial anxiety is somewhat offset by the fact that you now have a firearm, even if an archaic one. Trying to recall the details from movies about the First Civil War, you attempt to familiarize yourself with the weapon. It sparks from a flint, isn't rifled, and rattles slightly when you shake it. After a few moments' inspection, you intuit how to load it. The tubes on the dead raider's belt are pre-loaded charges, a touch of powder goes in the pan of the lock, the rest goes down the barrel along with the ball, you ram it home and cock it. Ready to fire.

You point it at a bush about fifty yards away, and squeeze the trigger. BANG! The bush shudders from the thumb-sized ball's passage and a startled bird from within darts into the sky.