Time/Date Error (Damned of the 2/19th-Book Six) - Done

Fire

2/19th Special Weapons Group Area
Secure Area, Alfenwehr
West Germany
30 October, 1987
0300 Hours

The group staring at me screamed as the doors crashed open and they got a good look at me in the light of their lanterns and waste-basket fires. There was a good dozen of them, all dressed in BDU's, most of them without even a field jacket. All of them had minor frostbite signs, all of them were unarmed, but three of them had hunks of roasted meat in their hands.

I didn't bother saying anything. There wasn't anything to say.

I leveled the ejector and clamped down on the trigger.

The flamethrower wasn't Vietnam Era. It was one of the few advanced weapons that had been shipped to us that hadn't been stolen. New ejector system, new pressurization system. New binary tank format. New fuel. High pressure system using thickened fuel enriched with oxygen, magnesium and thermite enrichment system. The fire was hotter, burned longer, and stuck to what it was supposed to.

Technically it was supposed to be used to incinerate bodies, destroy contaminated buildings and cattle, and to clear bunkers by rapidly consuming all the oxygen in a building.

It had a maximum effective range of 75 meters, and if you arced the jet high enough you could splash targets as far away as 100 meters. Rain down clumps and drops of fuel that could melt steel into a puddle.

I'd used flamethrowers before. On the dead. On the living.

Those who had been alive had tried to plead with me then, too. Four of the ones across from me were holding their hands out now, pleading with words and body language.

The ejector clicked home, fire gouted from the ejector, and washed over the group as I pulled the fire from left to right, washing it across them.

The screams stopped. At the corner of my vision a telltale flicked from green to amber as the suit systems detected the drop in oxygen level.

The armored J-Suits had a lot of good systems, ones that you had to know how to use. Onboard systems that would detect chemical levels, radiation hazards, oxygen levels. Keep track of my fuel status, my bottled O2 levels. To use them at full capacity required training, experience, all the things that I'd learned at MOS training.

The amber light was flickering as I washed it back across them.

They were already crumpling, already on fire, already melting. Bone doesn't melt, but the flesh it was clad in would turn to carbonized meat.

I turned slowly, watching my balance, my left knee weak, the brace still working despite the fact it was home-made.

I knew how it looked. That slow turn in an armored J-suit. Implacable. Remorseless. Inhuman. Add in a live flamethrower and I became an object of fear, of terror.

...I'm from the government, I'm not here to help...

Four were stumbling to a stop in the doorway between the Supply Room and the Storage Room. They were in BDU bottoms, boots, and brown T-shirts. Their mouths were working, but if they were saying anything I couldn't hear them over the fans in the suit and my own breathing.

There was more beyond them, more moving around. More standing up, more getting up, more realizing that something was going on.

The ejector hissed, the trigger went back, and I waved it over the ones in the door, letting off the trigger at less than a half second.

It was enough to cover them all in liquid fire.

The one on the right, who'd only got a little of it, was turned into a flaming, jittering, screaming scarecrow of fire.