Compensating
A Thursday Prompt story
© 2021 by Walter Reimer


Prompt: “The diameter triumphs?”
The Violent Vixen is ©  Major Matt Mason



The neatly punched hole in the target appeared a tiny fraction of a second before the loud crack of the shot caught up to the projectile. The heavy-caliber bullet smacked into the heavy berm behind the target as the sound echoed across the desert firing range.

One thousand meters away, a moose wearing goggles and sound-deadening headphones lifted his head from the stock of his Barrett M82 and grinned at the wolf who was squinting through a telescope. “Just a hair to the right,” he said happily, patting his weapon. “See? Bigger is better.”

The wolf shrugged and slipped his own headphones off to sit around his neck before turning his baseball cap the right way around. “That means mine’s better,” he said, jerking a thumb at his Steyr HS 50. “It’s longer.”

“Mine’s heavier,” the moose countered. “Perfect for sending a big load downrange.”

“Careful you don’t blow your wad too soon.” The lupine grinned as the bull scowled. “Still, you gotta love penetration.”

“Oh yeah. Who doesn’t?”

The moose moved his Barrett aside and the wolf started getting his Steyr set up. He checked the five-round box magazine before attaching it to the rifle, and both furs put their headphones on as the moose settled in at the telescope. “Don’t fire too soon,” the bull joked.

“I don’t do premature discharges,” the wolf muttered as he rested his cheek against the Steyr’s stock. He squinted through the sight, drew back and blinked, and said, “Stop shaking the table.”

“I’m not shaking – huh?” The moose looked to his right, his jaw falling open as he watched the water in the clear plastic bottle trembling. He tipped his head back and moved one headphone aside. “What’s that?”

“Huh?” The wolf straightened up and listened. He turned, ears swiveling, and performed a violent double-take.

Creeping up behind the folding table that the two men had set up came a candy-apple red steel monster, its tracks squeaking and crunching across the hard-packed sand and rock. The vehicle was nearly twelve feet wide and easily head and shoulders taller than the moose. Frightening enough, yes, but set slightly to the right of center on the otherwise monolithic glacis plate was . . .

“Holy shit,” the wolf said at the sight of the fifteen-inch wide barrel that projected a full yard beyond the glacis. The cannon’s bore was bigger than his whole head.

“Hi!” The two tore their horrified, fascinated gazes away from the behemoth and looked up to see a smiling vixen looking down at them from the rim of the tank’s frontal armor. She was wearing a t-shirt that read No Kill Like Overkill. “Mind if I play through?” Without waiting for a reply, she ducked down and a series of random, slightly intimidating mechanical sounds could be heard.

Her head popped up again. “Eyes and ears, boys – and you might want to get out from in front, okay? Safety last!” she caroled, ducking down again.

The squat barrel started to move. There was a brief flash of sunlight as the breech opened, the light then eclipsed by . . .

The wolf screamed and ran around behind the tank, followed closely by the moose. They put on their headphones, barely noting that the machine was missing most of its side, top and rear armor.

“Fire in the hole!” came an exultant scream, followed by a BANG! followed by an even louder FOOSH!

The moose craned his head out from behind the vehicle in time to see the projectile, propelled by a rocket engine and trailing a thick plume of smoke, sail past the target that they’d set up and hit something nearly three times farther away. The resulting explosion obliterated whatever target there might have been out there.

“Damn it!”

The wolf joined him as they stood up. The vixen was moving a small joystick that controlled a loading crane for another monster round. “Drifting to the left,” she grumbled, and as the round was pushed into the breech and the block closed she glanced back at the two men. “Was that a Steyr I saw on the table?”

The wolf nodded dumbly.

“And the other’s – what, a Barrett?”

The moose nodded.

The woman known as The Violent Vixen grinned at the two men, cresting so that her teeth were displayed as an unhealthy gleam shone in her eyes. “Mine’s bigger,” she said. She moved the convertible Sturmtiger’s barrel’s elevation wheel and kicked a pedal, causing the tank to jiggle to the right a few inches.

“I feel inadequate now,” the moose whimpered.



end