Without Law 18 by Eric Vall (most difficult books to read .txt) 📗

with four large wheels, which was good for us considering we needed to move them. They were painted a deep green color symbolizing the time in our military’s history they came from, and as I inspected them, I realized how old they really were.

I’d only seen one a few times, and it had been like the ones in front of me now, a display piece. I’d never seen one fired in real life, but I’d need to figure it out.

The machine had an area for the gunner to stand, and there were lots of switches and buttons to operate the weapon. Surprisingly, most of them weren’t worn out like I would have expected them to be. I could clearly see the symbols on the majority of them.

“So, how do we turn this thing on?” Anna asked as she walked around one of the Skysweepers.

“It’s got to be over here,” Paige said, and she moved to stand next to me so she could look at the controls as well.

“It seems pretty straightforward,” I said. “There’s the firing switch.”

“Yeah, I see that,” Paige said, and she bit her lip. “But damn, there’s a lot of buttons and stuff here. Altitude adjustment? How the hell are we going to manage that?”

“The machine will do that,” I explained. “The first anti aircraft gun was invented around 1910, so this is a few generations after that. It’s intended to make things incredibly easy for the operator.”

“So, the gun does all the calculating for us?” Paige asked.

“Right.” I nodded. “It locks onto the aircraft, calibrates, lifts itself to where it needs to be, then all you have to do is fire. At least, that’s how it should work. I’ve never actually fired one of these things before.”

“You haven’t?” Tara asked, and her jaw fell slightly. “What do you mean you haven’t fired one before?”

“They’re ancient,” I chuckled. “They weren’t exactly seeing any action by the time I was in the service.”

“That makes sense,” Paige said.

“Shouldn’t you have to, like, fire a bunch of different stuff like you made us do?” Tara asked.

“Well, yes,” I answered. “But this wasn’t on that list.”

“Well, shit,” the platinum-blonde laughed. “Guess we’re gonna have to figure it out.”

“I think so.” I nodded.

“Sooooo,” Anna said, and she raised an eyebrow at me. “How do we start this thing?”

“I don’t know,” Paige said. “I can’t figure it out.”

“Isn’t it this switch right here?” Tara asked, and she pointed to a switch on the top right of the board that said ‘ON’.

“Well, damn.” The brunette pursed her lips.

“What are you waiting for?” Bailey asked with a smile. “Turn it on.”

“You seem optimistic,” Paige said, and she looked at me and let out a long breath. “Let’s hope that optimism pays off.”

“Let’s hope so,” I said, and I reached out and flipped the switch.

We were all quiet as we waited for something, anything to happen, but after a few seconds I hadn’t heard anything.

“Is it on?” Anna asked.

“I can’t tell,” I said, and my eyebrows furrowed as I looked at the machine. It wasn’t making any noise, and I didn’t see any lights or anything.

“Try another button,” Bailey suggested.

“That’s the on button,” Paige said.

“Yeah, but if you hit something else maybe it will make a noise or move or something,” the blonde said. “You said it’s supposed to adjust itself, right?”

“It is.” I nodded. “I suppose that’s worth a try.”

“What button should we push?” Paige asked.

“Does it matter?” Tara asked, and she reached over and pushed a random button.

“What are you doing!” Paige hissed, and she grabbed Tara’s hand and pulled it away from the machine.

“What?” Tara asked with a shrug. “It’s not loaded.”

“Oh, right,” Paige said. “Well, what did you push?”

“I don’t know,” Tara said, “I just pushed a random button.”

“Just push another one,” Bailey said, and she reached around and mashed down on a couple of buttons. “Did that do anything?”

“I don’t see anything different.” Anna frowned.

“Do you think it’s not working?” Bailey asked, and she bit her lip.

“I don’t think it is,” I sighed. “It definitely needs a power source, and there is a good chance it’s totally out of commission.”

We needed at least one of these damn things to work for us, otherwise we wouldn’t have any way to gain air superiority over the MiGs. We could try and shoot at them with the howitzer, but it wasn’t meant to take down aircraft, and the precision we’d need in order to be able to fire it at a moving fighter jet was beyond human capabilities.

“Fuck,” Tara cursed. “What do we do now?”

“There’s still one more to try,” Paige said.

“Yeah.” Tara nodded and shrugged. “It can’t hurt, I guess.”

The platinum-blonde didn’t seem very optimistic about our chances of the second skysweeper working, and I had to admit that right then I wasn’t feeling great about our odds, either. We had a fifty-fifty shot, though, and those odds weren’t absolutely terrible.

I stood up and walked over to the second machine. This one had a large cable running to what I assumed was a power generator. We added some diesel from a can in the jeep to the generator, and I turned on the old generator, and it loudly began chugging along. I didn’t think the generator would work, either, but the fact that it did gave me some hope that the Skysweeper did, too. I reckoned that they might have kept it in working condition for demonstrations or shows, and that might just pay off big time for us.

Paige crouched down next to me again. Some flyaways framed her face as she pushed her glasses further up on the bridge of her nose and turned to look at me.

“Here goes nothing,” she said, and she