Cassie: Part 20

As the butt of the rifle touched me, I saw everything differently—not in the good and evil sense, but as if I had another sense, one totally devoted to arms and tactics.

For each man with a gun standing in the doorway, I could tell where they were aiming. With a glance, I knew that the glowing man’s golden spider legs were a plasma-like substance contained within a casing he could generate or thin at will.

Not that he was doing much just then.

Sam’s lightning bolt had knocked him to the ground, and it looked like he’d lost control of his limbs. The casing still covered him, but the burning liquid inside had mostly leaked out—or been thrown out by the blast.

The floor around him had melted into a mixture of linoleum, concrete, and puddles of the liquid. The waxy look of the cooling liquid reminded me of the casing.

Unlike when he’d fallen backward in the hall, the man didn’t seem to have hurt or killed anybody—but they’d been standing further behind him this time.

At the same time, he wasn’t unconscious. He moved his leg, and began to push himself upright with his arm.

Crosshairs appeared near him.

I wasn’t pointing the gun directly at him. He wasn’t doing much.

HE’S VULNERABLE! KILL HIM NOW!

No.

At the same time, one of the men behind him began to pull up his gun, and point toward Sam. He wasn’t holding it particularly steadily, but he couldn’t be the only one coming to.

THREAT! BURN HIM DOWN!

This was going to get really old, really quickly.

Can you look scary without killing somebody? Because if you can, do it now.

The front of the gun started glowing. Little sparkles appeared next to it, floating near the barrel, appearing and disappearing.

That’s pretty good.

“Hey! Nobody move! I’ve got an alien death ray, and it says it wants to kill you, but I’m not going to, okay? Don’t give it any reason to fire. Drop your guns, and move over there.”

I pointed the gun to the right of doorway. That wall didn’t have any shelves.

“Stand next to the wall. Do it right now. And tell the seven guys you’ve still got in the hall to come inside.”

The Nine’s foot soldiers gave me odd looks, but they dropped their guns and started walking toward the wall. One of them even shouted down the hall like I’d said.

Maybe they thought I was crazy. Granted, most people don’t claim to talk to alien weapons, but you’d think henchmen would have seen stranger.

You’d think Rod would have seen stranger too because he shot me a very confused look.

The glowing guy didn’t move.

“Hey,” I said, “you too.”

“Give me just a second,” he said, and pushed himself all the way up, managing to stand. He wobbled for a second, and I wondered if he was about to fall over.

Seven more came in through the doorway. I had them drop their weapons there.

One of them didn’t look like a soldier. Fifty-ish, grey-haired, and wearing a blue suit, he didn’t look like a soldier at all.

He stared at the gun, and at me, and said something to one of the soldiers. I didn’t catch it, but the gun amplified it.

“That’s where she’s been? Grand Lake?”

And if there were any question about what he meant, his eyes darted toward Sam and the kidnapees. The lightning bolt must have blown their invisibility.

I didn’t want to let that go, and I didn’t have to. Thanks to Alien-Machine-O-Vision, I could see into the hall, and know that we had everybody. All the people left out there were dead.

“Hey, suit-guy! What did you mean by that?”

His face went white, and he stopped where he stood. The soldier next to him reached for his pistol, and stopped when he remembered I’d already had him drop it at the door.

“Don’t touch him! Move over to the wall. Suit-guy, over here!”

They did, and so that was looking great, but then I heard a hissing noise, and sensed glowing guy’s massive energy spike.

The next thing I knew glowing guy had limbs again, and was moving straight at me. Meanwhile the gun shrieked about burning him down, and I dodged another spider leg swipe.

Hell, no, I’m not going to kill him.

I FAIL TO UNDERSTAND WHY NOT.

16 thoughts on “Cassie: Part 20”

  1. Calm down, Gunney. Hey, there’s an idea. Forget British. If there’s anybody out there who speaks in all capital letters and deserves to voice a gun, it’s R. Lee Ermey!

  2. That last line was just awesome. I really like this bloodthirsty alien gun, it’s built for entertainment even if no one lets it kill anything.

    However, Cassie might have some issues in the future: “Yeah, so um, it turns out that, not only am I cloned from a dude, I might also be an alien. A little awkward?”

  3. Cassie’s hero side needs some common sense, it is ok to use an alien weapon to kill somebody threatening around 20 people and one troll (hey they are an endangered species)

  4. The guy apparently regenerates quickly, too. So, shooting to incapacitate is possible but short-term. Might try it once or twice first and see if he learns.

  5. Sorry, it’s a “no go” on the R. Lee Ermey. Brian Blessed aaaaaall the way. There was an old Blake’s 7 episode (UK sci-fi from the late 70’s) where he played a looney semi-religious dictator on a prison planet. The voice was all in capitals, and he used the same speech patterns as the gun.
    On another note, if the gun is made by the Abominators, who wanted to destroy everything, I hope being in close proximity to there tech doesn’t “flip a switch” in her genetic code and turn her into an anti-hero.

  6. if the guy regenerates that quickly, then blowing a few arms/legs off would be a legitimate way of putting him out of the fight without causing lasting damage…..

  7. Of course, if you only maim him and his plasma generation goes haywire you then have 20 bbq’d old prisoners, one crispy mage ( she’s the one with a staff imprint of the shadow on the wall ), a troll ( though now human ex hero ), 7 bbq’d new prisoners and Cassie waking up wondering what happened with a gun saying “I told you so”

  8. “I FAIL TO UNDERSTAND WHY NOT.”

    As of right now, I am hearing everything ever spoken by the gun as if it came from the mouth of Sheldon Cooper on The Big Bang Theory.

    Now THAT would be awesome, and waaaaaaaaaaaaay funny!

    Hg

  9. Okay I get the whole thing about being a good guy and not dispensing incandescent justice at one’s convenience, but I, too FAIL TO UNDERSTAND WHY NOT. Justifiable self defense, plus you can’t let the villains just call your bluff and get away with it.

    Come on, at least shoot him in the knee. If she can’t wing a charging enemy combatant after fair warning, she has no business in the violent industry of vigilantism.

  10. Jim I’d forgotten who CLASSIC these cliffhangers are!

    I’m with Mazzon all the way.

    And am I the only who cast James Earl Jones as the bloodthirsty alien tech?

  11. The key difference here is whether you shoot to wound or shoot to kill. Self defense is mainly when you shoot to protect yourself or others. You may not intentionally be attempting to kill unless it is the only way to protect yourself or someone else. You are not supposed to kill unless you have no other reasonable alternative. If he’s charging you, it may kill him instead, whatever, the main point is that your intent is not to kill the other person, it is defense.

    If you go into a situation ahead of time planning to kill someone, that tends to be classified as murder. Like if you aim knowingly for the head when that’s not the last resort. That tends to be frowned upon in most cases. In her case, she’s not intending to kill the guy. She’d rather wound him and she does have a choice, in large part thanks to her extraordinary abilities raising the threshold for what is self defense, and the fact that she’s knowingly puts herself in harms way as a superhero.

    She might try to blast off his arm,- excuse me *Pulls out a black circle and tosses it at the ground, jumping into the apparent hole it now is. A moment later, a large bullet crashes down where he had been just before, the kinetic energy crashing down as strong as a bunker buster, but not going through the hole. After the dust settles, he walks back over, munching on a carrot*

    She might try to blast off his arm, but he shifts and it takes his head off. Even then, she’s trying not to kill him and it happens anyway. The gun is suggesting she go ahead and blast him no matter what.

    It’s like that situation recently with the woman and the baby who had guys breaking into her house. She called the police and they told her to do what she needed to do to protect herself and her baby. One of the burglars was shot dead. She obviously didn’t intend to shoot to kill, and it was justifiable. Had she then turned and tried to shoot the guy’s accomplice that was running away, that’d be murder. As it stands, she just fired, without necessarily an intent to kill, and happened to kill someone.

    Sometimes intent matters.

    PS, there is at least one notable exception in state law to most of this about self defense. The Florida Stand Your Ground law makes it legal to use any level of force to protect oneself or one’s own property. People have been shot dead.

  12. As a rule of thumb, firing at the center of mass is always acceptable. You shouldn’t be pointing a gun at ANYONE unless it’s a life or death situation anyway. So, since it’s a life or death situation, you don’t want to miss. Aiming for an extremity (be it limb or head) is a good way to miss and wind up dead yourself.

    From a practical standpoint, you don’t want a wounded intruder in your home to live. They will file suit for grievous bodily harm, lost wages, and emotion distress, and it is depressing how often they actually win.

  13. Bill: James Earl Jones would be great too.

    Gavin: Cassie probably isn’t feeling quite as entertained.

    As for whether Cassie will kill… Tune in next time when… Er… Never mind. Not saying.

  14. Anything in full caps is just Death from the Discworld to me. Even if He does seem to have turned into an alien gun and gone psycho. Maybe thats what he’s like in this reality lol

  15. “pointed the gun to the right of doorway” … the doorway.

    I recall thinking here that the gun is to Cassie a little bit like Goa’uld technology is to Sam in Stargate, in that they’re the only ones who can use/understand it. Of course, that was a trait Sam acquired, Cassie’s seems a bit more genetic, particularly in light of her history and this apparent attempt to have more of her. On the bright side, she seems to be in total control over the “suggestions” she’s getting! For now…

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