So I'm a bit confused as whether Recoil is cumulative or independent of which part of the phase you fire a weapon (first Simple Action or Second). For example, if I were to fire an AK-97 Long Burst (-5 Recoil penalty) for the first Simple Action and then fire a Short Burst (-3 Recoil penalty) for the second Simple Action, will my Recoil penalty for the second Simple Action be cumulative with the first, a total Recoil penalty of -8?

Every bullet fired after the first adds a recoil modifier of -1. The total recoil will be 8, though 9 bullets are fired. The second Simple Action will have a recoil modifer of -8.

Well, yes and no...

The first shot is at a -5 (hope that you have 5 RC), and the 2nd shot adds +3 Recoil (so you would need a total of 8 RC to have fully compensated it all). However, If you only have 5 RC, then your second shot only suffers a -3 DP penalty because you are lacking the additional 3 RC required to fully compensate the recoil. Make Sense?

The TOTAL RECOIL across the two shots is 8 (5 for the first shot, and an additional +3 for the second). It is not 13 (5 for the first shot and +8 for the second).

Very good, thanks for the clarification.