The Dark Edge Chronicles - Clan War

Re-Armed

"Which would rat us out as soon as we moved." Naryan nodded, her appreciation of her old friend's strategic and tactical skill growing yet again.

"Nicely done. But we're back on track now, yes?"

"Yes," Lash confirmed. "Which is why we're checking the status of our fabrication. I want our assets to have some familiarity with their new gear before we're on the ground."

Again he looked at the label on the plastic container he had retrieved. Then he was picking it up to hand to her.

"Starting with you."

A brow lifted in curiosity, Naryan accepted the container, which turned out to be significantly heavier than it appeared. A frown appearing on her lips, the Force Recon captain stepped to the bench and put the container down. Locating its latch, she opened it and smiled at what she saw inside.

"A Shiva of my very own!" she exclaimed, lifting out the future tech machine pistol to give it a good look.

"Everybody except Ellie and the liliths will get one," Lash indicated. He then looked over at Fiadh, who was looking on with interest.

"But I won't be leaving the Night Mistresses without protection. In addition to the armor package that we'll all be wearing, I have something special for you three."

Stepping back into the bay, he headed straight for the gunship's assets armory, the onboard store of all the weapons a Qos Viran team would need to complete an operation. A run through the biometrics suite and he was opening a locker with different sized sliding racks.

Grabbing the top one he pulled a good part of it out, revealing a number of sidearms in different configurations. He quickly selected a sleek handgun along with its holster before stepping back into the galley. The rack he left extended for those operators in the bay that watched him pull it from the wall and had come to investigate.

"This," he began, holding up the weapon for Naryan and Fiadh to see, "is a class four non-lethal personnel deterrent sidearm we, in the Qos Viran, affectionately call 'the Stinger'."

Fiadh took the Stinger from Lash and slowly turned it over in her hands.

"It isn't very heavy," she observed. "How does it work?"

"Just point and shoot," the big vampire replied. "It comes loaded with a twelve round magazine of charged high-volume capacitor flechettes, each capable of delivering a sixty thousand volt, five amp jolt that, for unarmored opponents, will instantly overwhelm their nervous system and knock them out."

"And against an armored opponent?" Naryan asked, suddenly extremely interested in the non-lethal device.

"Depends on the composition of the armor," Lash indicated. "High resistance material will cause the flechette to discharge on impact, throwing the target back with a compression wave up to five meters. Medium or low will create a hybrid effect, with varying amounts of pushback and dazing."

"Dark Father's fuzzy nuts, that's cool!" Naryan exclaimed.

"Yup," Lash said with a grin. "Most of the operators liked them because they were, what's the human term Dee explained to me? Ah yes, a 'get out of jail free card'. Because, in a tight situation, they could quickly create space for themselves, knock opponents out of the way, slow pursuers down, on and on. In certain situations they can even be used to knock holes through walls and punch out doors!"

"Oh, I'm definitely having a couple of those in my load out," Naryan said with a delighted laugh.

"And they won't shock the user?" Fiadh asked, eyes narrowed as she continued to examine the Stinger in her hand.