"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 taser. 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 reclipped 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 taser 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 taser 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 tasers 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 taser 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—!
Michaels grabbed the taser's cartridge with his left hand, pressed the two buttons that ejected it, fumbled 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.
Had this been a real mugger, Michaels would have been looking at a crushed skull — unless Toni's silat instruction would have let him dance the crowbar and poke the guy with the stun-gun electrodes. And he wasn't good enough at that to trust it yet.
He shook his head in disgust. He picked up a spare cartridge from the supply on the table and put it into his belt holder. He reclipped the taser to his belt. "Reset," he told the computer. "Two to thirty seconds random start." He pointedly did not look at Howard and Fernandez. He knew they'd be smiling.
Toni sat on the lounger her oldest brother, Junior, had given her for Christmas three years ago. He owned a furniture store in a nicer section of Queens — which wasn't saying much — and had gotten stuck with several chairs he couldn't sell and couldn't ship back, since the manufacturing company had gone out of business between the time he ordered the shipment and when it arrived. It was a comfortable chair, but kind of a putrid, mottled green color that apparently hadn't overwhelmed any of his customers. Somebody might as well get some use from it, he'd told her.
She smiled into the phone, a vox-only connection with her mother. Mama had never cottoned to the idea of picture phones. What if the phone rang before she put her face on? If her hair was messed up? If she was in the shower?
"Mama, if you're so worried about how much these calls are costing me, why don't you get an ISDN or a DL and let Aldo hook Papa's computer to it? For ten dollars a month, we could talk over the net as much as we want."
"I don't wanna be foolin' with no computer business," Mama said. "It's too complicated."
"It's not any more complicated than using the telephone. All you have to do it turn it on and tell it my number if you want to call. If I call you, you just have to touch a button when it beeps, and you get audio and video."
"It's too complicated."