It was a cold night.
Somewhere in Northern Russia, there was a military base. Stationed were five-hundred soldiers, twenty tanks, several all-terrain jeeps, and forty Arm-Slaves.
The base seemed split in half: one side dedicated to vehicle and Arm-Slave storage and refuelling, massive hangars lined up across from each other containing the fully fueled ones, with three massive fuel tanks beside them for refuelling. On the other side were barracks, mess hall, and other soldier resting places. Each soldier, however, had training in the use of the mechs.
Savages. That's what the USSR Arm-Slaves are nicknamed. Appropriate, considering the bulk of each one. Along with the damage they could cause. Surprisingly light armoured, they were fast and carried some deadly armaments, these beige Russian mech warriors. They weren't perfect, but they did the job. However, so did others.
Surrounding the base was a forest, thick with evergreen trees that concealed the base from any land view. The trees, however, looked white as the snow caked itself onto their branches, weighing them down, even snapping several. The trees, however, couldn't do anything about it. They could only stand there and grow, no way to protect themselves from this blistering cold.
However, someone else could.
This person was laying behind a natural snow bank, covered by it and the wind. Had one come up behind this person, they might have mistaken them for a half-buried corpse, a poor sap who'd done someone wrong and ended up out here, in frozen Hell.
However, no one was there to view said person from behind. No one could view them from the front either, at least thermally. Said person was wearing quite special clothes, well-sealed to keep the cold air outside and reflecting their body heat back inside. This gave any thermal imaging device a picture of an oddly human silhouette. However, with the cold wind blowing and blustering, those happened everywhere.
As with an event they'd like to forget, a soldier viewing this would discard it as the weather and push it from his mind, focusing more on how the base was under supplied in one area: long hoses. Of all the things, hoses were their weak point. Fuel depots were kept close to the tanks and the Savages so that the hoses the base had could reach and refuel the mechs and vehicles.
This meant the base had a massive weak spot for an opposing force to hit. Perhaps with a rocket launcher, mortar fire, or even another Arm-Slave.
However, the person in the snow bank was the only opposition in the country. Said person looked through the goggles in their mask, a mask specifically designed to take the breaths of someone and extract the carbon dioxide, exhaling it out into the air, masking one's thermal footprint even more. This gear was expensive, but success sometimes meant paying a pretty penny.
Zooming in on the fuel depots, the position of the Arm-Slaves, and tanks, it would take only one well places shot to send half the base sky-high in a firing blaze. Thankfully, the person carried such a weapon. Reaching back, they pulled a compressed item from the small of their back, about the size of a text book. However, the weapon shifted, changing, plates shifting until the opposition held a rifle.
Matte black, the stock fitted squarely against the shoulder of this opposition, one hand on the grip, one finger off the trigger. The rifle itself had what looked like the opposite of a barrel; where the barrel should have been was merely a top and bottom half, empty between. On the back of the top half, a small screen lit up a cool blue colour, showing charge percentage and amount of ammunition left: two. There was only two per magazine, otherwise the rifle was too bulky with clips.
The opposition aimed, pointing his weapon at the twenty Savages lined up in succession right in front of the fuel depots, side by side. The other twenty were facing the snow bank, their backs to the depots.
The person took a deep breath. Steady.
One shot.
One hit.
Then the big bang.
The Savages were being refueled, as well as the tanks. It was now or never. The person pressed a button above his right index finger, before laying it on the trigger. The rifle started charging, the "barrel" was now slightly glowing, rings of light beginning to spiral out, towards the base.
10%
15%
20%
No need to go too far, only to penetrate.
25%
The opposition inhaled
27%
Took aim
29%
Finger poised to pull
30%
They fired, a rail of light slashing through the lined up Savages, though each fuel tank, before hitting the depot, triggering the imminent explosion.
It was big.
Each Savage blew up, one after the other as the depots burst, burning soldiers, melting metal, making tanks and jeeps alike burst as if they were mere balloons. Those that weren't refuelling were rolled by the shockwave, damaging them to the point that repair would be the more expensive option. The base had gone from Hell frozen over to just plain Hell.
Chunks of flaming metal rained down after the initial explosion, doing even more damage, albeit less than the main event. Half the base was in flames, all vehicles were destroyed or damaged, and all Arm-Slaves were destroyed entirely. Soldiers pushed to the forest, rifles at the ready, dogs barking, attempting to get a scent.
They came across the bank where the shot was fired, but there was no sign of life. The bank had snow shifted over it, but that was like the rest of the area. There was no hint of anyone being there in the first place.
However, in the trees, the person climbed from branch to branch, staying above the soldiers and their dogs, the rifle condensed onto the small of their back once more.
Mission accomplished, the person leapt from branch to branch silently, and without hesitation. They went into the night, disappearing out of sight, and out of mind.
"And as you can see captain" Andrey Kalinin handed the young captain several photos "Half of a Soviet base was wiped out within seconds." Teletha Testarossa sat in her captain's chair, examining the photos before her. One was a spy satellite photo of a completely intact Soviet base. The next, most of it was ablaze. The time stamps read merely a second apart.
"It would have to be a precise shot through all of the gathered Arm-Slaves" she pointed to the photo that showed the base intact. "here." Her finger showing the line of Savages.
"You're correct Madame Captain." Kalinin confirmed. He pulled a third photo, handing it to Teletha. "This is that precise shot, a millisecond behind the second photo." Teletha examined the photo. It was of the base intact, like before, but a stark white line went through the Arm-Slaves and into the fuel depot. Captain Testarossa was quiet for a moment, pondering the events.
One second all was fine. The next, the base went to hell.
"What kind of weapon has a projectile to go through all those Savages and into a fuel depot and still hot enough to detonate it?" she finally asked.
"That's the troubling thing, Captain. We're not entirely sure, but we're looking into it." He reassured the young captain. Teletha was perplexed. Not only by the weapon, but by the who.
Who benefitted from this? Who did it? Who had a weapon that could do that much damage in one single shot?
This wasn't a person to take lightly, Teletha was certain on that.