Veil of Shadows (Book 2 of The Empire of Bones Saga) (13 page)

Of course, she could also bench press an astonishing amount. Every time he saw her do that, it made the hair on the back of his neck stand up. He didn’t know if he’d ever get used to that.

Kelsey’s eyes flew open. “Holy crap!”

He leaned forward eagerly. “What did you see?”

“It’s not what I saw, it’s what I felt. I felt
Best Deal
. It was as if I could sense her. It wasn’t sight or sound. It was some new sense that I can’t put a name to. Without asking, I just seemed to know all kinds of facts about her. How far she was away from us, how big she was right down to the metric ton, what her speed and course was. All kinds of other stuff, too.”

“Tell Zia exactly what you’re sensing. Tell her the speed, mass, and anything else that you can determine.”

The two women quickly exchanged figures. Zia turned and nodded to him. “She’s right on the money, Captain.”

“Okay Zia, go to stage two.”

As soon as she touched her console, Kelsey spoke up. “
Best Deal
just activated a weapon. I think it’s a missile defense railgun. They’re targeting us.” She gave him a confused look. “Can you actually shoot somebody with a railgun?”

“If you’re in their face and desperate enough. The metal slugs can detonate a missile at close range, but a ship wouldn’t be in much danger. Were you still watching them?”

“Not really. I was looking around the rest of the system.”

“Where’s the flip point?”

“The normal one? 037 by 255, range 122,000 kilometers. Well, not exactly. It’s 122,473 kilometers.” She pointed. “It’s that way. I’m not seeing
Athena
. Did she already go back?”

He nodded. “I can hardly believe I’m seeing this. That’s amazing. It’s like you have a 360 degree view and you’re paying attention in every direction.”

“It’s really spooky. It’s as if I have eyes in the back of my head. Wait a minute. I see something else. There’s an artificial device under thrust in the asteroid belt. It’s changing course.”

Zia laughed delightedly. “I can’t believe you spotted a pinnace at that range. It’s not even accelerating that quickly. Its grav drives are way below the threshold at which
Athena
could detect it.” The Tactical Officer looked at Jared. “That right there is enough for me to consider getting implants of my own.”

Jared raised an eyebrow. “Seriously?”

The Lieutenant shrugged. “Someone’s going to have to be the first willing implantee. I’m not committing right now, mind you. And you know, Captain, we should all be thinking about it. That type of connection with the ship might save our lives on the way home.”

She looked back at Kelsey. “In a few years, there’ll be a lot of people following in your footsteps, Ambassador. Your experiences are going to help all of us.”

Jared had been thinking about it. The idea emotionally repulsed him, but his rational side knew Zia was right. It was the future, as well as the past. And who knew? If he had implants, he might keep command of
Courageous
. At least for a while.

“Well, whatever we do, we won’t be doing it today. It’s time to take the shakedown cruise to the next level. Pasco, head into the asteroid belt to recover the pinnace. We’ll test out the weapon systems while we’re there.”

Kelsey stood and set her headset on her seat. “While that sounds very exciting, Senior Sergeant Talbot and I have an appointment in the gym. Don’t blow up anything important.”

Chapter Fourteen

Talbot wasn’t in the gym when Kelsey arrived, so she found something else to occupy her attention. Lifting weights was somewhat pointless, but the delicacy it required still proved challenging.

As ridiculous as it seemed, she could lift more weight than they could safely put on one of these bars. At least she could if she allowed herself to work at full strength. The trick of what she was doing now was gauging what level of power she needed to accomplish the task. No more, no less.

She added weights until she was certain she was getting near the maximum the bar would hold. Then she squatted and grasped the bar. She eyed the weights and adjusted her internal strength controls. If she got it right, lifting this would be a strain but doable. If not, she’d be falling on her ass. Again.

Kelsey took a deep breath, gripped the bar tighter, and brought the weight up to her chest, still balanced in a squatting position. She wobbled, but didn’t fall down. With a mighty thrust of her legs she stood and shoved the bar over her head. Kelsey grinned at her success before letting the weights fall to the floor with a loud clang.

A slow clap at the hatch drew her eye. Senior Sergeant Talbot stood there smiling. “Very nice. I think you’re getting the hang of this, Princess.”

“I count it a win when I don’t fall and drop it. So, you want me to do a few more reps?”

“Nope. I have something much more exciting in mind. Come on.”

He led her to a part of marine country that she hadn’t been in before on
Courageous
: the range. It looked big enough to crash land a cutter.

Talbot opened a wall locker with this thumbprint and took out two pistols and two rifles. He set them on the firing rest beside hearing and eye protection. These were old Empire weapons.

She picked up the oddly shaped pistol, the one with the solid barrel. “You got this working? What the hell does it do?”

“You’re a commando. You tell me.”

She queried the pistol. A table of information popped up in the corner of her vision. “This is a neural disruptor. Depending on the setting, it can either stun or kill. Appropriate armor can block its effects. Well, not the armor, but a mesh built into the armor. It’s not a long-range weapon, though. Fifty meters max, though it’s most effective under thirty. It can fire about fifty times before the power pack needs to be swapped out.”

The information indicated that the weapon could interface with her implants, so Kelsey told them to link. A weapon status screen replaced the diagram. The pistol was fully charged and read as operational.

Kelsey shook her head. “This is surreal. I can tell that it’s ready to use.”

“And this other pistol?” Talbot handed it to her.

This one fired projectiles, but if her memory served, they were just darts. She dropped the magazine and looked at one. As before, it was a long, thin dart with stabilizing fins imbedded in a clear gel. Unlike the last time, these popped out easily when she pushed one with her thumb.

“You found usable ammo?”

“Actually, one of Doctor Cartwright’s people figured out the formula and re-created the discarding sabot. Let’s see, how did he phrase it? “An interesting challenge.” He said it would be easy enough to salvage the ammo and restore it. Two of our guys will start learning the process tomorrow.”

“And these things work?”

“So I’m told, but I’m not sure how he tested them. He only brought them down yesterday. If you think the weapon is safe, why don’t we give it a try?”

Talbot touched a keypad next to the firing rest and a human shaped target appeared in the air about fifteen yards away. In fact, it looked like a real human. Her blood ran cold as it sank in that she was looking at a Pale One.

It snarled and raised its hands as it charged her. Without thinking about it, Kelsey raised her pistol, turned off the safety, and fired. The small hypervelocity dart had a substantially larger effect on the target than she would’ve expected. The thing’s head literally blew apart. Virtual blood and gray matter scattered everywhere and the target dropped before it disappeared.

“Very nice,” Talbot said, “but don’t you think you should’ve put your hearing protection on first? It isn’t as loud as I expected, but it could have been.”

Trembling, she set the pistol down before rounding on him. “You bastard.”

He nodded. “Sometimes. I could’ve made it a different target or warned you, but I needed to see how you handled the weapon when you weren’t thinking about it. I’m very sorry. I won’t do that again. If it’ll make you feel any better, we can go back to the gym and you can punch my lights out.”

“Tempting…but no.” She took several deep breaths. “You
are
going to make it up to me though. Why did we have to go through this theater?”

“How good of a shot are you, Princess? You just took an unfamiliar weapon and blew someone’s head off. Literally. How did you do that?”

She started to snap at him that she just did it, but she stopped. Yes, she’d fired a pistol before, but never one of these. The safety was similar to those she’d used before, but not exactly the same. Without consciously thinking about it, she’d known how to turn off the safety, aim the weapon, and fire it.

Not only that, she’d held the pistol differently than Talbot had trained her to. Not a whole lot differently, but enough to be noticeable.

“Put up another target. Not a Pale One, just a regular target.”

It took Talbot a minute to figure out exactly how to do that with the controls, but he got what looked like a standard target up. She aimed at the target’s head as best she could and pulled the trigger. She couldn’t see the result, because she missed, but her implants told her that she shot low and to the right.

“Okay, why did I miss that time?”

“If I had to guess, I’d say you were on autopilot the first time, just like during the fight at the Parliament building. Your implants put you in the right stance and selected the aiming point.”

Kelsey lowered the weapon and closed her eyes. She took two deep breaths and snapped the pistol up, firing as soon as she spotted the target. Still a miss. “I’m definitely going to have to practice more.”

Talbot took the pistol from her. “Yes, you will, but it’s good to know that you can hit what you’re aiming at if you really need to.” He tapped his hearing protection. “I know this thing isn’t as loud as a regular pistol, but you really should put on some hearing protection.”

“Actually, I don’t think I need it. I bet the implants in my ears are canceling out the noise. Eye protection, on the other hand, is something I think I need to use.” She put on a pair of shooting glasses and stepped back to let Talbot shoot.

He took a good stance and fired three times. “No wonder you keep missing. This thing has almost no recoil. Talk about point-and-click.” He snapped off two more shots. Both of them struck the target center mass.

“That is so unfair.”

He grinned at her. “Whoever told you that life was fair lied to you, Princess. I’ve been shooting firearms for longer than you’ve been alive. Sure, this is new, but it won’t take me long to adjust. And man, those little darts really blow somebody up. How fast are they going?”

Kelsey focused on the weapon again and brought up the diagram. “The gel comes off almost as soon as it exits the barrel. The pistol fires a standard 4.5 mm tungsten alloy flechette at 2,000 meters per second.”

Talbot whistled. “Mother of God! How the hell does a little pistol like that get something moving that fast? No wonder it has such an extreme impact on a target. I’ve got to get me one of these.”

She thought back to when the elderly scientist had showed these weapons to her just after they’d found
Courageous
. “Doctor Cartwright guessed that they used electromagnetics, but he was wrong. It has a tiny grav generator, similar to the ones we use to create artificial gravity. That’s why there’s very little recoil. I had no idea such miniaturization was even possible. Let me have that again.”

Kelsey took the pistol from him and ordered her implants to show where she was aiming. A dot appeared in her vision off to the right hand side of the target. She took a two-handed firing stance and put the red dot on the target’s forehead.

She fired twice. Both flechettes hit exactly where she aimed. The barrel had gone up not because of recoil, but because she’d jerked expecting recoil.

“That’s a lot better,” Talbot said, taking the pistol back. “What did you do?”

“I told my implants to put up a targeting dot,” she said smugly. “It’s a hell of a lot easier to shoot when you know exactly where the bullet’s going to go.”

“Isn’t that the truth?” He took the magazine out of the pistol. “It looks like it holds about twenty flechettes. That’s great in a pistol this size, especially with that kind of firepower. The doctor delivered several thousand flechettes. We’ll get on making more of them as quickly as possible. Especially if we can get several hundred of these pistols and rifles refurbished.”

Kelsey took the pistol from him and reinserted the magazine. “These pistols are mine. You can keep the rifles until I need them.”

Talbot nodded. “I’ll make sure and get you half a dozen magazines and plenty of ammunition to train with. I got a belt and holsters in the locker. It looks like the marines wore the flechette pistol on the right side and the neural disruptor cross-draw on the left.”

Kelsey set the flechette pistol down and picked up the neural disruptor. She brought it up and aimed at the target. Instead of an aiming point, she saw a circle about four feet across. She focused on the pistol and discovered that the aperture was adjustable. The tighter the focus, the more intense the effect. She also discovered that she could control the intensity of the beam through her implant.

An internal safety demanded her override to set it to lethal. She ordered it to, just to make sure that she could, and then reduced it back to stun. Her implant indicated that a narrow beam would stun a human being for up to four hours. If she took it to its widest aperture, it would stun anyone in a 90° arc in front of her for about half an hour, though that drastically reduced its range.

She could see how something like this would be very useful. Especially for someone like the police.

Next, she examined the flechette rifle. It fired the exact same ammunition as the pistol, but had a significantly longer range and greater capacity. “The generator in the rifle is bigger and uses the same flechettes as the pistol. One magazine holds a hundred flechettes. The velocity is boosted to 3,500 meters per second, though. Over ten times the speed of sound.”