The revolver didn’t hold as many rounds as an HandK Tactical pistol, but it was a kind of talisman for Howard, and he was more comfortable with it.
As he reholstered the gun, he noticed his right shoulder felt sore.
Well, no, not so much sore as… tired somehow. After one draw? Seemed like he’d been tired a lot lately– “Not bad for an old man,” Sergeant Julio Fernandez said.
He was in the next shooting box at the indoor range, making a lot of smoke and noise with his beat-up old Army-issue Beretta 9mm.
“Reset,” Howard said. He grinned.
The mugger vanished. Had it been a real attacker instead of a holoprojic target, the frangible bullets would have each dumped 550 foot-pounds of energy into the man and, because the rounds were designed to fragment on impact, would have shredded the attacker’s heart into mush, and they wouldn’t have over-penetrated and gone on down the street to maybe kill some little old lady out walking her dog. This was a very important consideration in an urban scenario.
Of course, frangible wasn’t good for shooting through solid walls or car doors, but the next two rounds in the cylinder were standard jacketed hollow points that would do that just fine. If the mugger had been in a car, Howard could have cycled past the first two rounds, or, in a hurry, just pulled the trigger twice to get to the jacketed stuff.
“Morning, gentlemen,” he heard somebody say behind him. The wolf-ear headphones he wore amplified normal sounds, but cut out anything loud enough to damage his hearing.
He turned.
It was his boss, Alexander Michaels.
“Commander. What brings you to the range on a Saturday morning” Michaels patted the taser clipped to his belt on his right hip.
“Requalification. Thought I’d come down when it wasn’t too busy.” Howard gave him a small smile and shook his head.
“Not a fan of the kick taser. Colonel?” Michaels asked.
“No, sir, not really. If a situation is dangerous enough to require a weapon, then it ought to be a real weapon.” “I am given to understand that the taser has a ninety-percent one-shot-stop rate, whether it penetrates clothes or not. It will defeat standard Kevlar vests, and there aren’t any bodies to be clean up afterward.” Howard could almost hear Fernandez grin.
“Sergeant, you have a comment?” ” “Well, unless the guy you shoot has anything real flammable about his person, sir. Then he might just burst into flame. At which point your non-lethal weapon turns your guy into the Human Torch. It has happened a few times.” bar “The sergeant is correct. However, the biggest drawback, bar sir, is that you only get one shot,” Howard added.
“Everybody is required to carry a spare reload or two. I’m told an expert can do that in about two seconds–snap off, snap on, be ready to fire again.” “In which time somebody just average with a handgun would have shot your taser expert four or five times. Or his buddy would have–if there is more than one of him.
Sir.” Michaels grinned.
“Well, you know how it is with us desk jockeys, Sarge. The weapon is more a formality than anything.
We don’t get out into the field that much.” “That’s not what I hear, sir,” Fernandez said.
Howard held his grin. Whatever Michaels said, he had faced an assassin who had snuck into HQ and he’d shot her dead using her own gun. That had earned him a bit of respect in a lot of opinions, including Howard’s own.
“Besides, I have dedicated and trained men like you to do all my light fighting,” Michaels said.
“Good thing,” Fernandez said, but quietly enough so Michaels probably didn’t catch it.
“I’ll let you get back to your practice,” Michaels said.
“Have a good day, gentlemen.” He walked to the end of the long row of shooting boxes and began to set up for his session.
Sarge shook his head, then looked at Howard.
“Tasers, nightgowns, sticky foam, photon cannons, beanbag shooters, what are the feebs gonna come up with next? Sugar-and-spice spray?
Flower-petal launchers? Seems like a lotta effort for not much gain.” “We live in politically correct times. Sergeant. Subgunning a mob is bad PR, even if all of the people in the mob are terrorists with pockets full of hand grenades. It looks bad on the evening news.” “Bleeding-heart liberals are gonna take all the fun out of being a soldier someday, sir.” “I expect they will. Sergeant.” “You know the definition of a conservative, sir?” “I am afraid to ask.” “A liberal who’s been mugged.” Howard grinned.
“Light up your target. Sergeant, and let’s see if you can shoot as well as you talk.” “Little side bet. Colonel?” “I hate to take your money, but if you’ve got so much you can afford to lose it, you’re on.” The two men laughed.
At the end of the row of shooting boxes, Michaels heard the colonel and sergeant laughing. Probably at him and his laser.
Well, not everybody was a soldier. His father had been a career Army man and that had been enough to sour Michaels on it He knew he could kill somebody, if it was self-defense, or to protect somebody he loved.
He had done so when the assassin had slipped into Net Force HQ and used Toni to ambush him in the gym’s locker room. He’d shot the woman known as the Selkie after she had shot him and tried to stab Toni. It was necessary, but it was not an experience he wanted to repeat.
He set his computer for a practice run on the taser qualification scenario, checked to make sure the spare compressed gas cartridge holder was on the left side of his belt, and then pulled the taser and inspected the weapon to make certain the cartridge in it was still active. It was. He re clipped it to his belt, took a deep breath, and blew it out.
“Activate,” he commanded the target computer.
“Two to thirty seconds, random start.” The new-model taser was wireless. He wasn’t sure he quite understood exactly how it worked, but supposedly the twin needles were essentially small but highly efficient capacitors.
Powered by a simple nine-volt battery, each needle was slightly thicker than a pencil lead.
The pair carried high voltage, low-amperage charges, somewhere around a hundred thousand volts, and when they both struck a target, a circuit was completed. The compressed gas propellant –nitrogen or carbon dioxide, depending on the model–would spit the needles up to fifty feet with enough force to penetrate clothing.
At normal combat range, about seven or eight yards, the weapon delivered a knockdown jolt virtually every time. There was a tiny, built-in laser. When you squeezed the handle, the little red dot from the laser showed you where the needles would bracket when they hit. If you missed, the backup feature was a pair of electrodes in the handle that would allow the laser to function as a stun gun–if the attacker got within range. What the device looked like was a long and skinny electric razor, or maybe one of the old Star Trek: Deep Space Nine phasers.
Operation was easy enough. You pointed the laser at a target, squeezed the handle, lined the laser’s dot up, and thumbed the firing stud. If everything went right, half a second later your attacker was jittering on the floor in electrically induced convulsions, and any interest he might have had in harming you was the last thing on his mind. Recovery after a couple of minutes was virtually total, but you could do a lot in a couple of minutes to an assassin sprawled helplessly on his back.
Of course, such a device could be used by the bad guys too.
To counter that, all lasers were required to carry taggants in their propellant, thousands of tiny bits of colored or clear plastic that would identify the registered buyer. There was no way to sweep all these tags up after a laser was fired– A mugger appeared and ran at Michaels. The mugger had a crowbar in one hand. He raised the bar of steel as he ran-Michaels pulled the taser from his belt, pointed it, and squeezed the handle. The little red dot danced up and down on the mugger’s leg, but that didn’t matter. Anywhere on the body was good.
He thumbed the firing stud– A splash of yellow light flared on the mugger’s leg, but he kept coming.
Shit–to Michaels grabbed the laser’s cartridge with his left hand, pressed the two buttons that ejected it, rumbled for the spare cartridge, but it was too late. By the time he got the thing reloaded, the mugger was on him.
A loud buzzer blared. The mugger froze.
Damn. He should have tried for the stun-gun backup.
The computer image to Michaels’s left strobed the letters FTS-G in bright red. Failure to Stop–Gotcha. The tiny image of the mugger on the proj showed the reason why. The needles were designed to spread apart, to make the circuit’s arc big enough to work. At the distance he’d fired, the leg hadn’t been a good target. The left needle hit the mugger’s thigh square on, but the right missile had been ten inches to the right–a clean miss. He must have jerked his hand when he touched the firing stud. It didn’t take much to screw up the shot.