Norward was leaning over one of the bodies, staring at a young man through his thick plastic shield. The man suddenly reached up and grabbed his suit on the shoulders, screaming, blood pouring out of his mouth. Norward pulled back, the man rising off the bed.
Norward threw his arms up to knock the man off and the man suddenly released. Norward staggered backward, minus the weight, and fell on his back, knocking over a table in the process.
Turcotte reached down and gave Norward a hand, pulling him to his feet. “You all right?” he asked as he helped him get up.
Norward didn’t answer. He was looking down at his suit. He reached up and pulled off his helmet.
“What are you doing?” Turcotte was shocked by the other man’s action.
Norward pointed to the side of his suit. A foot-long tear ran from his hip along to the middle of his back. The edge of the table that had caused the cut was covered with blood-soaked sheets.
“I can feel the open wound.” He peeled off the space suit, and Turcotte could see the blood seeping through the jumpsuit he wore underneath.
“Doesn’t matter what the vector is,” Norward said. “Air or blood. I’ve got it.”
Sister Angelina pointed toward the door. “You’d better go back to your people.”
Norward shook his head. “I’m going to stay here where I can be of some use. Since I can’t go back into the habitat without destroying its integrity, I’m going to remain here and lend a hand and try to learn what I can.”
“What should I tell Kenyon?” Turcotte asked.
“We just got a look at the symptoms,” Norward said. “I need to get an idea of the timeline of this thing. Interview some of the patients that are coherent.” He looked around the hospital. Sister Angelina had moved off to one of the beds. “Look at this. It’s the way it is all over the third world, where they spend more money in a day on bullets than on medicine in a year. And I’ll tell you something else. I don’t think our modern medical facilities in the United States are going to make much difference when the Black Death hits them.”
“If we can quarantine this here, then—” Turcotte began.
“It’s already out,” Norward said. “You heard her. People ran into the jungle downriver.”
Turcotte thought of the Earth Unlimited rockets waiting to be launched at Kourou. He had a very good idea what the payload in those nosecones was going to be. “Nobody’s going to be safe from this if we don’t stop it now.”
“Why are they going armed?” Duncan asked.
The SEALs had left for final mission prep before loading the shuttle. Kopina had led Duncan back into the large hangar, to an area in the rear. A table held copies of the weapons the SEALs would have with them.
“They’re military,” Kopina said, as if that explained everything.
Duncan was troubled by the advanced technology that was being used in the TASC-suits. She knew one of the biggest concerns of UNAOC was the discovery of Airlia weaponry — she wanted to know what Space Command issued in conjunction with the suits.
“What kind of weapons are they using?” Duncan asked.
Kopina turned to the table. “They didn’t have many options when it comes to stand-off weapons in space. The powers that be have always been more concerned with things like missile defense, Star Wars-type stuff, than actual combat in space. Space Command keeps an eye on all weapons-development programs and tries to see which ones we might adapt and use.”
Kopina ticked off on her fingers. “We checked everything, and contrary to science fiction a lot of stuff just isn’t practical. Chemical lasers are out. They require too much mass in terms of a laser reactant unit. Free-electron lasers offer more promise, but the current level of technology doesn’t give us a powerful enough beam to do more than blind someone if you hit them directly in the eyes. So that’s out.
“Another exotic weapon that’s on TV shows but isn’t even close to being up to specs is the particle beam. Nice idea, but no one’s got it down yet to a workable size, or a beam coherent enough to be functional in combat.”
She turned and waved her hand over the table. “So what we ended up with is here.”
Duncan looked at the items laid out as Kopina picked up what appeared to be a jackhammer with an open tube where the chisel would be. About five feet long, with a thick cylindrical shape that tapered to the end, where the tube was about an inch in diameter. At the other end, there were two pistol grips, one about six inches from the flat base, the other eighteen inches in with a trigger in front of it. The nonfiring end ended in a flat plate. The entire thing was painted a flat black. There was some sort of sighting mechanism mounted on the top.
“This is the”—Kopina paused, thinking how to describe it—“consider this the M16 of space.” She held it out to Duncan. “Its official designation is the MK-98.”
Duncan took the weapon and almost dropped it. “How heavy is it?”
“Empty weight is thirty-eight pounds,” Kopina said. “Each magazine adds about ten pounds.”
Duncan hefted it, hands on the pistol grips. She knew Turcotte would find this most interesting, but it just seemed like a heavy piece of machinery to her.
“It will be easier to handle in space,” Kopina said. “No weight there.”
Duncan put it down on the table with a thud. “What does it shoot?”
Kopina picked up a two-foot-long cylinder that was about the same diameter as the MK-98. She touched a button on the side and a two-foot-long section on the top sprung open. Leaning the end of the barrel against the tabletop, Kopina pressed the cylinder into the well. She swung shut the cover and it latched into place.
She picked up the gun and aimed it at a six-by-six beam set inside of a concave concrete range against the wall of the hangar. The muscles in her arms bulged as she handled the weapon.
“Laser aiming sight,” Kopina explained, flipping a switch. A red dot appeared on the six-by-six. “You also have to turn on the gun’s main power.” She flipped another switch on the side. A loud whine filled the air. “Now we’re ready to fire.” A small light turned green near the switch.
Kopina pulled the trigger. There was no explosion, but rather a loud ping as the gun fired. Splinters flew in the target and then chips flew off the concrete in the rear. Kopina put the gun down and led Duncan to the beam. There was an inch-wide hole in the front that went straight through to the back. There was a three-inch divot out of the concrete retaining wall. Duncan couldn’t see what had caused the damage.
Kopina looked around, then picked something up and held it out to Duncan. It was a shiny piece of metal, an inch wide, six inches long, with both ends pointed. “This is the round. Depleted uranium, very hard.”
“What gives it velocity?” Duncan asked as they walked back to the table holding the gun. She knew that depleted uranium rounds used in the Gulf War were being blamed for some of the Gulf War Syndrome.
“Springs.”
“Spring?” Duncan repeated.
Kopina smiled as she tapped the MK-98. “Yep, you could consider this the most powerful spear gun in the world. The spears are a mite small, but I wouldn’t want to get hit by one. The technical term, of course, is not a spring gun, but a ‘kinetic-kill’ weapon.”
She pulled out the cylindrical cartridge. “There’s ten rounds just like this one, being held under high tension. When you pull the trigger, the spring is released and the round is fired. The barrel is electromagnetically balanced so that the round goes right down the center, never touching the walls and thus not losing any velocity and staying exactly on course. That’s why you have to turn the gun on — to charge the barrel.”
“How fast does it fire?” Duncan asked.