Augustina: Vespa

Augustina Rossignol quietly snuck about the darkened military storage unit, tools slung across her back.  Decades of unused weaponry and vehicles loomed around her, but she was after one particular combination of the two.  Row after row she slunk through, shining about a flickering flashlight at the walls, passing everything up, until she found…

A smile lit up her face.  Right before her sat a row of dark green, slightly rusted vespa scooters, with recoilless rifles attached to the front, right where her readings had indicated.  The fleet probably needed a fine-tuning before deployment, but she wasn’t here just to admire them.  She shrugged the pack of tools off her back and went to work on one of the vespas.

They were fine machines, and would probably still work with a little bit of fine-tuning, but there were still design flaws.  ”As you would expect,” she muttered to herself as she scraped a few flecks of rust off with a rag.  Under normal circumstances, these things would have to be deployed in pairs, so one could carry the ammunition and reduce the load on the other.  Of course, these things were meant to be anti-tank weapons, while she was out for more personalized weaponry.  A few alterations to the barrel and ammunition would allow this one to work on its own.

Alterations to the lack of on-the-go firing would have to wait.  Not only did she lack the parts for setting up even a reliable iron-sights (never mind an automated targeting system - she’d have to go to Jerome for that), but she also didn’t have any time.  She’d made quite a bit of noise getting in here, and the guards were sure to be coming around the corner at any minute. No matter.  All she needed now was to make sure this thing had a little bit of gas in the engine, and she’d be good to-

"There’s a light down this way!  Come on!"

Looks like the newly modified Vespa 150 TAP would have to make a test run here and now.  Augustina slung her supplies back over her shoulder and hoped on the scooter, testing the engine.  Seemed like it had enough to at least get her out of here.  Maybe not enough to actually get away, but she’d worry about that later.  Kicking it into gear, she nudges the vehicle out of line with the others, and turned to face the aisle properly just as several guards came rushing towards her.

Now or never.  She reached over and squeezed the trigger on the rifle, sending a round out towards the guards.

That turned out to be a bit of a mistake.  She’d made enough modifications to allow for another vespa’s ammunition to be carried on this one, but that was a sloppy fifteen minute job.  Replacing the HEAT rounds with normal bullets was an arduous task that would take days, if not a whole week, of work.  As such, firing with a HEAT warhead still in the chamber resulted in a massive explosion that shook the whole facility, and probably killed a fair deal of the guards instantly.  Now she had to actually worry about getting away.  Great.

Pushing down on the gas, Augustina sped through the flaming wreckage and tried to ignore the shouts from the other side of the building.  Just get to the exit and get out of here.  If anyone spots you, just slow down and point the barrel at them; they’ll get the picture.  Go around the fires, not through them.  Don’t even try to push the speed on this thing until you’re outside.  And most importantly, she thought to herself as bullets ripped through the air behind her, don’t get hit.

For a military vehicle that had been out of commission for several decades, the vespa handled like a charm.  It may have been a sloppy job, but even her sloppy jury-riggings still worked out pretty well.  The scooter swerved around corners and skittered past flame like… OK, not a dream, but about as well as you could expect out of a French military scooter.  Still enough to get her to the exit she’d made in the wall for her entrance, and out into the stormy French countryside.

Huh.  Looks like her cohort got caught.  She’d have to break him out of jail at some point.  For now, though, Augustina Rossignol sped on past the dazed guards and through the slick mud, hoping against hell that she had enough gas to pull this off.