You are Summoned

Chapter 244. Flappers.

“Get ready to deal with whatever those are,” I said to my minions, pointing toward the dots flying in the distance.

I hit the top of the box containing the MPL turret and watched as it unfolded itself from the roof of the train. The system was a bit like a turret in one of those old bomber movies. I would sit on a short metal stool in the center of the turret, which would rotate at my mental command.

Settling onto the stool, I found it was designed for a goblin and too short to be comfortable for me, so I opted to stand instead. The weapon itself was on a flexible mount that allowed me to raise it into the position I wanted to fire it from. As far as the weapon’s design, it looked almost like a copy of the magic missile gatling guns that had been mounted on the mech’s I’d used when helping Fitzfazzle’s people.

A bit more primitive, this one had a handle on the right side that I needed to crank to rotate and fire the seven barrels the weapon possessed. At the back of the weapon, where the spinning barrels attached to the handle I used to move and aim the weapon, was a glowing red gem. From the knowledge the system had downloaded into me, I knew that this was a mana crystal that powered the weapon.

When the crystal was drained, I had to go through a short procedure to extract it from the weapon and replace it with a fully charged one. Around the weapon were three iron shields, smaller versions of the ones my minions were holding. They would help protect me from any incoming fire.

At the base of the weapon, where the stool was mounted to the turret, were three more of the glowing red stones, they were the reloads for my weapon. I knew the ones mounted by the stool were slowly being charged by the train engine, so returning any empty ones into the holder would be important if the fight became a protracted one.

“They’re coming from the front, but don’t forget to check your other sectors during the fight,” I said to my minions, remembering one of the lessons from Major Finley. With an enemy approaching in clear view, it was easy to get target fixation and ignore other threats that might appear. With seven minions assisting me, we could keep an eye out for any new threats or tricks that might pop up.

As I waited for the enemy to enter range, I took a look at the car in front and behind me. Each had the turret activated and tracking toward the approaching enemy. In front, was the diminutive figure of a goblin, who seemed much more comfortable than me using the provided stool on his weapon.

Behind my car was an orc, a big burly guy who looked absolutely miserable cramped inside the turret. The orc had heavy plate armor and a huge axe slung over his back. I had a feeling that whoever made it past his turret fire wasn’t going to be happy when they made it into melee range.

We were ready, and my minions finished orienting themselves for an attack from the front. I tested out the weapon, giving the handle a good crank to see how it fired. As soon as I touched the handle, a glowing target sight appeared in front of me. I knew it would automatically help me lead any moving targets and wherever the sight was positioned was where the magical bolts of energy would fly.

The crank moved a bit stiffly, and as the barrels turned, what looked like smaller versions of magic missiles flew out. They weren’t guided like a normal magic missile, but with the rather accurate sight, it wouldn’t be too much of a disadvantage. To make things easier, the glowing balls of energy would show me where I missed and make it easier to walk my rounds onto the target, just like at the gun range back on the military base.

Another lesson from Finley popped into my head as I thought about walking the tracers onto the target. Tracers were great to help aim your bursts, but they were a two-way street and just as easily allowed the enemy to also lock in your position. Being atop a moving train, and one of many turrets likely firing at our foes, I wasn’t too worried about being singled out.

The weapon seemed to have a decent range, and when I fired a short burst of three magic bolts at the distant canyon wall, I could see they hit with considerable impact. Maybe not as powerful as a modern military machinegun round, but it seemed to have more than enough oomph to punch through all but the thickest of armor. Even better, the ammo I was firing was magic, so it should be effective against most targets with physical resistances.

I tried to commit every detail of the turret design to memory. This might be something we could use back home after our world was finally integrated. If there’s one thing humans knew how to do, especially Americans, it was how to shoot at things.

How the weapon would hold up to Fail Weapons spells was another story. Its techno mage type of construction might give it a bit more resistance to the spell. I kind of hoped one of our foes would try to cast Fail Weapons, so I could report its effectiveness against the MPL turrets.

As the enemy got closer, I could make out their forms a bit more clearly. At first, I thought we were dealing with giant birds, or bats, or something along those lines. Instead, the attackers appeared to be part humanoid, and part bird. The name harpy popped up in my memory, which seemed a good enough identification for the foe coming toward us.

Unlike most of the other defenders atop the train car, I had minions to help out. If I could, I’d try to help the others, but the harpies seemed to number in the hundreds. If they made it through our combined fire, they were going to swarm the individual defenders. Other than obvious melee classes like the orc on the car behind me, I figured we’d take some casualties.

Each turret operator we lost was going to make us a bit more vulnerable to any follow-up attacks. I knew the turrets had an effective range of around five hundred yards, thank you system downloaded knowledge, and I figured the lead harpies had entered that range as the front cars of the train began to fire steams of magic bolts into the sky.

More and more turrets opened fire as the train’s momentum brought us into range. I gave the number of tracers streams a count, telling me there were eleven cars in front of us, maybe ten if the engine had some kind of turret as well. I didn’t get a chance to count behind me as I was about to be kind of busy.

Lining up my sight, I targeted the nearest harpy swooping toward my car. The harpy had tan and brown feathers and held a bundle of short spears in the claw of one of its legs. When I cranked out my first burst of fire, the harpy reached back with one of the human-like hands at the end of its wing to pluck a spear and hurl it in our direction.

As the harpy reached and threw, its flight became erratic as it lost momentum and dropped several feet before flapping with its arms to recover. The movement threw off my aim, and the first dozen or so bolts sailed over its head. I shifted, tracking my target and before it reached back for another spear, several magic bolts slammed into it.

With a screech, the harpy fell, the pain and damage I’d caused it prevented the monstrous creature from recovering and it slammed into the canyon floor. I peeled my attention back to the task at hand, sighting in on another harpy, this one with a mix of white and blue feathers. This harpy did not have any spears to throw, but the claws on its feet, as well as a respectable set of claws on its hands were probably more than sufficient to gut me like a fish.

Of course, to gut me, the harpy had to close the range, and my next burst of fire put a stop to that. As my second target spiraled toward the ground, I looked for my next victim. Both Glurk and Khurr were now firing their bows, telling me the harpies were getting closer. Swiveling the turret, I found another harpy with blue feathers stop and hover over our car.

Before I could fire, it chanted and pointed one of his clawed feet at Khurr. A bolt of blue lightning shot from its claw, striking my minion in the chest. Khurr dropped onto the walkway, seriously injured but not completely out of the fight. Firing my burst, a half dozen bolts slammed into the lightning chucking harpy. It fell to the ground, and I took a moment to cast Health Bloom over where Khurr lay.

Finding another target wasn’t difficult, but they were close now, and the traverse of my turret was slow. Trying to swivel the turret onto a harpy that was swooping down on Blieek, I barely made it onto my target and cranked the handle to fire. Unfortunately, no magic bolts of death fired out, and glance down showed the mana crystal was dark, it had been completely drained of energy.

Remembering the procedure, I touched the crystal at the top and bottom at the same time, causing it to release. I slotted the expended crystal into an open slot on the charger, which allowed the next crystal in line to release when I touched it. Placing the charged mana crystal into the proper slot on the weapon, it bonded and began to feed the MPL power.

I knew I was too late for Blieek, but I readied to fire and avenge him. To my surprise, Blieek was still alive, and had managed to impale the diving harpy on his spear. His weapon had broken in the process, and he stood there with his dagger out, ready to continue the fight.

Scanning for more targets, I couldn’t see any other harpies near our car. Further to the front of the train, some sporadic firing was still going on, but the number of harpies was dropping fast, and several were already trying to flee the fight. With glowing magic bolts hot on their heels, the rest of the harpies broke off the attack and flew away as quickly as they could, desperately trying to get out of the range of our guns.