Chương 46: Chapter Forty-Two - Shot Grouping

"My range is the best around, it's single-proprietor, and I take a great deal of pride in keeping it clean and in tip-top," Clemus said as he walked Sharp and I towards the main shooting gallery.

"Which leads me to being a smidge curious, you see?"

"Curious about what, Mister Clemus?" Sharp asked. She was walking next to the older gentleman. He wasn't moving fast, relying on an old wooden cane to help with every step.

"Oh, the usual. What's a young lady like yourself doing here?" Sharp shrugged.

"I need to learn how to use a gun properly. Uh. For self-defence and stuff. You know. It's scary being a girl in some places." Clemus nodded along.

"Do you know how to handle a firearm?"

"Not really?" Sharp said.

"Tell him that you've heard that he's the best. That he was a legend back in Paris."

"B-but I heard that you were the best to teach that kind of stuff. That you were a legend in, uh, Paris?" Clemus didn't even have a hitch in his step, but he did change directions ever so slightly.

"Let's get you set up. Now, don't worry, the cameras are mostly for show. Got them set up to turn off at the flick of a switch." He led us into the range. Being a converted barn, the interior was rather sparse. Wooden walls, with several metallic racks and parts of what might have been a feeding system mounted to the ceiling. There were some rooms to the back with padlocked sliding doors. The place smelled like hay and gunpowder, but it was almost impeccably clean.

The business side of the barn had several stalls, likely meant to hold... cows or something. I wasn't a country girl. They had wooden sides and a small counter at the front with a pair of wooden panels serving as covers that could be removed to give the shooter a nice view downrange.

"Do you have hearing protection?" Clemus asked.

"Yup!" Sharp said. She stepped into the third stall as he pointed it out and set the duffle we'd brought down. Opening it, she pulled out the guns within and placed them on the counter, along with all of the munitions we'd brought.

"Well, you came prepared. Now, I'm not a very curious kind of man. That's what's kept me alive all this time, I think, but I've got to wonder about the cat."

"Oh, uh, she's... a service animal."

"I see," he said. There was a twinkle in his eyes before he lowered his bushy brows and I couldn't see them anymore.

"Well, that's something then. Let's see if you can't plink a few rounds into the twenty over there, hmm?" Sharp started with the handgun, though what she started with was her choice. I think she picked it because it was the least intimidating. Clemus watched as she fumbled with the magazine, slipping rounds into it one at a time with some mild difficulty, then she loaded it in. She'd seen movies here and there, and maybe a game or two, so it didn't take her too long to figure out how to rack the gun.

The safety took longer. And then she aimed down the sights, closed one eye, bit the tip of her tongue, and missed her first shot by about a mile. Sharp squeaked at the noise and almost dropped the gun.

"Hmm," Clemus said.

"Now, having watched you a little, I think you might need a little... polite coaching. Let's start by actually putting that hearing protection on, yes? It's nice to have it on hand, but better to have it on your head. Heh!"

"Oh. Right. What about you?"

"Hmm? Oh, I have hearing aids already," he said.

"I already hear a buzzing like one of those old CRTs in my head, can't make it much worse now. Good, get those muffs on. Hmm, now, let's work on that stance." Clemus stood nearby, never approaching or touching Sharp except to use the end of his cane to poke her arms up a little and then tap the side of her handgun to make sure her grip was steady. I watched and listened as he told her to keep both eyes open and her tongue in her mouth.

He was smiling through the entire thing, and I think instructing Sharp was genuinely amusing. Sharp took a few more shots, emptying the magazine before Clemus had her shift to the shotgun, then the rifle. He nodded along and had her switch back to the start.

"There's some value in plinking with the same gun all day. There's more in switching it around. You get complacent and familiar otherwise." This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon. Clemus didn't stick around for too much longer. He nodded a few times when Sharp finally reloaded the handgun without fumbling it and put three out of seven shots into the target. At twenty metres that was... well, it wasn't good but it wasn't terrible.

The target was stationary and so was Sharp, and she had plenty of time to aim between shots. Still, the initial improvement was noticeable and fast. There was a base level of competency with using guns that didn't take years to achieve. A few hours of shooting and nearly anyone could be 'good enough.' Mastery would take years, at a minimum, but I wasn't looking for Sharp to be a master.

"This is kind of nice," Sharp said.

"But I think my hand's going to be sore, and my shoulder." She rubbed between her neck and shoulder, over her clavicle.

"That's normal. Keep in mind that on the job, you're rarely going to find yourself emptying magazine after magazine. Most jobs only require three shots."

"Three?" she asked.

"One to kill, the next to make sure, and the third because redundancy is never a bad idea." Sharp giggled, as if I was telling her a joke. Silly girl. The shooting continued. We had only brought a hundred or so rounds but that was fine. Once she was down to her last quarter or so, I was going to have her slow down and focus on actually aiming each round. Learning the feel for the shooting was important, of course, but there was no point in shooting without hitting.

So I planned on having her switch her focus eventually. Sharp was not that bad. An hour in and she was clearly getting comfortable with the three guns. I noticed that she seemed to prefer the handgun, which was entirely fair. A small, concealable weapon was ideal for the kind of work that I did. Rifles could be nice, but they were very situational, and in this day and age, it was best to set up a rifle on a device that let you aim and fire it from afar, which required a whole different set of aiming skills.

Still, knowing how to shoot a rifle and shotgun couldn't hurt. Getting a hang of the different ballistics was useful, at the very least. We were interrupted as someone came in. A young woman, with a long all-black bag. She was tall, with long, mussed up hair tied in a dirty ponytail, and was wearing the kind of clothes I'd expect to see on someone out for a mid-afternoon jog.

The girl was bobbing her head to the beat of some music we couldn't hear, and I noticed that the inside of her ears had the tell-tale marks of having some cybernetics plugged in. Sharp was momentarily distracted, but a quick meow had her refocusing on the target. The girl stared for a moment, chuckled as Sharp put three quick rounds into the dirt next to the target, then she casually pulled out the parts to a long rifle and assembled them.

A minute later she was installed at the first stall, the little barrier wall removed so that she could lay down on a blanket on the floor. In the distance, about a kilometre out, a small plate moved up on a metal arm. It was about the size of a person's head. The girl shot, and the plate fell, only to rise back up a moment later. Sharp stared until she remembered that she was here for a reason and she continued to shoot, taking her time between shots.

The girl continued to fire, and I noticed that every dozen or so shots the target's size would become smaller. Eventually she was hitting a target suspended on a piece of string that was about the size of a ping-pong ball. I could barely make out the metal arm holding it in place, let alone the chartreuse target. Sharp eventually ran out of ammo, and we decided to call it a day. A good, productive day.

"I got a Combat level," Sharp muttered.

"Well done!" I said. That was good progress! On the way out, Sharp paused to stare at the sharpshooter girl. I bit her ankle when I noticed that she was mostly focused on the girl's legs and the way they moved with the recoil of her rifle. The idiot was going to die at the first honeypot she ran into, I swear.