Arrival

[The Empire]

Much to Parzans relief, the guards were soon ordered to step down to a 30 minute notice (though he didn't know that part he noticed them relaxing a bit). As Parzan's staff commenced preparations, their guests mainly tried to stay out of the way and taking care of their equipment and the few that still wasn't fit to rise from their stretchers.

A few hours into the preparations, Parzan noticed that the guards had dissapeared from the garden, and brought their odd metal boxes and the black things he assumed to be weapons of some sort when the princess approached Parzan with a new sketch.
This time she had used one of her own ball-point pens to draw a fiering range. For simplicity, she had re-calculated the measurements from meters to paces, showing a range with fiering positions marked with poles at 50, 100, 150, 300 and 800 paces from the targets.
She pointed in a general direction towards an area (that couldn't be seen from inside the garden) a bit outside the village that had recently before the divine ones' arrival been cleared of trees and bamboo and  was originally intended to be planted after the next harvest.
"We are building this over there."
Out in the clearing, the guards had cleared the ground further and was currently erecting an earth wall behind the target line to stop the bullets from overshooting while two of them was measuring and marking out the fiering positions with bamboo poles and string. All of them had their weapon slung across their back or lying within arms reach as they worked.

[Mor'os]

Parzan looked at what was occuring, listened to the alien sounds of the Princess's speech, and nodded. What was being constructed was recognizable enough, a firing range. He'd seen archers practicing on things of the like when he was younger and still lived in the Capital Districts. The memory sparked a moment of nostalgia, of yearning. Soon enough, he told himself, soon enough. I'll be gone from this hopeless boon dock and back where I ought to be! Granted, the measurements were odd, written with odder numerals, and with some wand that seemed to produce ink on the users whim. Parzan reflected that such a thing would be useful in many situations, for its novelty.

Granted, that had been some rather nice land, promisingly fertile. But if the Gods wanted it for their purposes, it was theirs. The rewards for cooperation anyway would definitely exceed another crop of red beans.

[The Empire]

After about 5 hours of hard work, the earth wall was high enough and the guards were allowed to rest, eating some of the last food that had never been a part of this planet's eco system.
An hour later, target dummies made of bamboo, straw, some old sacks and some sheets of paper. The sacks had once held grain but was too worn for that even before they were taken for this new application and the guards were lining up at the 50 pace line with their assault rifles and com-tacks in normal, Imperial BDU(=Swedish M90)
"Anläggning!"
"5 skott i egen takt, ELD!
*Bang! Ba-bang! Bang! Bang! Ba-ba-bang! Bang! etc...*
The shots rang out loud over the village as the 12 guards and the princess fiered away single, aimed rounds one after another for about half a minute.
The colonel was currently holding the exercise and once all 13 had fiered their five rounds, he resumed giving orders.
"Avbryt ELD UPPHÖR!"
"AVBRYT ELD UPPHÖR!" (OOC: According to imperial regulations, a cease-fire order must be repeated by all)
All of them swiched their rifles to safe as the next order came and they started to move towards the targets.
"Markera."
Most of the targets had a nice hit-zone about the size of a RL half-dollar coin though three of the targets, of wich one belonged to the princess had a hit-zone the size of a dime...
The targets was patched up and the guards marched off to the 300 pace line and repeated the process after adjusting the sights for that range.
After this markup, they went to the 800 line where they laied down their assault rifles beside them and deployed the MGs...
By that time, most of the local boys that weren't helping out at home and some of the adults and girls too had gathered to watch and one of them was asked to fetch Parzan for this last event.

[Mor'os]

Parzan, who had retreated back inside to continue his over sigh of the preparations for tomorrow's journey, had heard like nearly everyone in the village the noise and commotion that the imperial soldiers had created as they began their target practice. This was fortunate, as the Princess had found it difficult to get the young boy to understand and execute what she wanted. Curious, slightly panicked that more things were falling from the sky and crashing into the earth, he hurried outside to where he had left the Imperials. By the time he got there, things seemed to have quieted down, and nothing seemed to his relief to have fallen out of the sky again. Just the Imperials waiting there, and the Princess, apparently pleased to see he'd shown.

[The Empire]

however, neither the princess or the other Imperials were looking particularily divine as most of them was lying in pairs, prone on the ground, one of each pair holding one of the green metal boxes in one hand and some sort of black and brass chain that was entering the weapon held by the other in the pair.
As parzan had found a comfortable position for watching the spectacle, the princess nodded to the colonel, she herself was lying down with one of the other, smaller weapons (an AK5 B, a scoped special variant of the FN FAL)
The colonel then spoke.
"Ett halvt band i egen takt, ELD!"
The five machineguns roared in short 3 to 10 rouind bursts, the red lights of tracer rounds speeding towards the targets and before the last one had finished the roughly 25 rounds, seven of the straw targets had caught fire from tracers while three had been felled completely, their bamboo skeleton shot to slivers.

[Mor'os]

The assembled crowd gave an impressed "Ooh!" of the sort that they had been conditioned to give whenever any higher up demonstrated something. By this point it may have even been ingrained in genetics. Peasants who were appreciative of their rulers lived longer, with a better shot at passing on their genes to offspring.

Parzan meanwhile, being the noble that he was, was in no way obliged to make vague sounds to the effect that he was impressed, even if he had to marvel at what was happening. It was loud though, terribly so, and he found himself expending a great deal of energy towards maintaining a cool and collected image, appropriate for one of his caste. He nearly had passed out from the effort when the firing ceased.

[The Empire]

"Avbryt ELD UPPHÖR!"
"Avbryt eld upphör!"

"Gustavsson, Stålhjelm, Släck målen!" (G, S, extinguish the targets)
"MED SPRÅNG!" (At the double)

As two of the soldiers ran off towards the burning targets with steel shovels in their hands, the others put their weapons to safe and rose to their knees, commencing after-fiering maintenance on all the used weapons.
Hanna brushed the dust off her knees and elbows while she rose and approached Parzan.
"Well?" she asked wile making a sweeping gesture towards the range.

Behind her, back by the earth wall, the colonel prepared a last little demonstration with the aid of a melon he unseen had liberated from the kitchen earlier.

[Mor'os]

Parzan slowly nodded, as he allowed himself to unwind. That noise was gone, and he could untense. Still, it had been quite a display. He'd never pondered what sort of power the Gods would have at their disposal were they to ever come to earth. Though he had not asked to know, he now knew anyway. Predisposed himself by conditioning and genetics, he found himself now hatching scheme in his subconscious as how to harness that power for his own gains.

He noticed the colonel manhandling the melon. How long had it been since he had had melon? Parzan couldn't recall, but the season was right for that sort of thing.

[The Empire]

As the Colonel returned, he saluted the princess and spoke.
"Ers höghet, rekvisitan är på plats enligt order."
"Bra överste, se till att vår värd inte känner sig ensam."
"Ja ers höghet"
The princess hefted her weapon and walked off to the now clear 800 pace fiering line, she then calmly removed the scope, adopted a standing fiering position and focused on breathing. The colonel gestured to Parzan to focus on the melon.
Hanna calmly raised her rifle, breathed in a last time and let the iron sights climb along the bamboo pole while gently feeling the trigger's critical point on her right index finger. The melon centered in the sights and her finger gently squeezed the trigger beyond the critical point, releasing the fiering pin to send the bullet on it's way with a silngle loud bang. Half a second later, the 5,56mm bullet struck home, the entrance hole barely larger than a dime while the exit hole being as large as a grapefruit...

[Mor'os]

Parzan could not feel but a little dissapointed as he saw what the intent for the melon was. It really had looked quite delicious. At least it was a good spectacle. That shot was an accurate one, the damage impressive. The gathered mirrored his sentiments with the standard "ooh"s and "ah"s, and this time some applause as well. They felt that it had been lacking a bit too long.

A pause ensued as the whole of them, peasants and Parzan and by now some servants who had spotted an opportunity to shirk their duties, waited in appreciative silence to see if there was more to come.

[The Empire]

Unfortunately, it seemed unlikely as the Imperials started to field-strip their weapons and greasing them up in preparation of the daily maintenance they intended to perform back at the manor.
The now sand-covered targets weren't even smoking anymore and the Imperails shouldered their weapons and lined up in a marching column, marching off towards the manor in perfect order.

[Mor'os]

Their was a collective sigh of sorts. The peasantry and the servants had been hoping for more of  a show, and more importantly a chance to slack from work a bit more. Watching the Gods doing something, that was an acceptable excuse wasn't it? But there really wasn't much of an excuse remaining. The sun was far past its zenith by this point, and it would be time for the evening meal soon enough. Parzan for his part was hungry after seeing the destruction of the melon, and wanted to eat before it was too late. With no wasted time, he hurried back into the manor himself after the Imperials, hoping that the servants would have something prepared for his return.

[The Empire]

The evening was as spectacular as only an unpolluted sunset can be and the guards quicly finished their daily maintenance of weapons, armours and other equipment while the supper was being prepared. Even the princess participated in this, cleaning her own gear carefully and making sure everything was working properly.

[Mor'os]

It was with a certain contentment in his heart that Parzan slumped off to bed that night. Everything it seemed was prepared for the following day. The meal that evening had been nourishing. He almost burst out with excitement, his whole body tingling in anticipation. The Capital Districts...how long he had waited for an opportunity to move up the ranks! He reflected all those hours he had spent calculating and scheming, and all for not. But now his salvation had finally come, and dropped straight from Heaven no less in the most literal sense of the phrase. So excited was he that he worried he'd be unable to sleep, unprepared to leave the following day. This worry made him all the more twitchy, spawning more worry in an autocatalytic cycle that ultimately exhausted him and sent him into a sound sleep.

"Mas sam? Az se."

[The Empire]

The princess had a good night's sleep knowing that all she could do had been done and that all the equipment, weapons and gear had been double checked and assured to be in perfect working order, the fuel supply for the armours had been looked over and distributed so that in a pinch they would have at least 10 hours each at full activity, the ammunition had been counted and divided into equad loads and somehow, it looked like the guards that had come out the worst after the crash had been recovering faster than expected. Somehow, she suspected their hosts for knowing a lot about herbal medicine, the food for the hurt Imperials had had a different aroma than the food and drink she or the other guards had eaten during yesterday.
As dawn came, she had climbed up on the roof, sitting there in her tight inner armour, watching as the sun slowly coated the fields and hills in gold and the darkness of night faded and the manor below her slowly stirred to life.