When the Devil Dances

“No,” Elgars said and frowned. “At least, I d-d-don’t thin’. P-p-papers s-s-say Th-th-Thirt’-Third. Then uh S-s-six hunnert.” She frowned again and snarled, bearing even, white teeth. “S’all wrong.”

Harmon looked over at Wendy with a lifted eyebrow. “You didn’t mention that.”

“She’s on ‘detached duty,’ ” Wendy said with a shrug. “Hospital detachment. I don’t know if they’re going to put her back through training or what. But it makes sense for her to re-learn the basics.”

“Uh huh,” the weapons instructor grunted. “Makes as much sense as anything else that has happened to me in the last six years.”

He cleared the chamber on both weapons and rolled over to a locker. “Get her a set of earmuffs and I’ll set up the range.”

* * *

Harmon extended the Glock to the captain and watched her hands carefully. “The weapon is not loaded, but you never take a person’s word for that. Keep it pointed downrange and keep your finger off the trigger.”

Elgars took the pistol with a puzzled expression and rotated it from side to side. The indoor range had been set up with man-sized targets placed at various distances between five and thirty meters. She glanced in the chamber and cocked her head to one side like a bird then picked up one of the magazines. “S’fam-uh… famil’ar. Kin ah lock an’ load?”

“Go ahead,” said Harmon watching carefully.

Elgars swept the unloaded weapon back and forth keeping it pointed downrange. “Th’somethin’ wrong,” she said, turning to look at the instructor. Following her body the pistol swung to the left and down. Directly at the wheelchair-bound range-master.

“Up!” Harmon said sharply, blocking the swing of the pistol up and out. “Keep it pointed up and downrange! Go ahead and pick up the magazine and seat it, then lock and load. This time, though, keep it pointed downrange, okay?”

“S’rry,” Elgars said with a frown. “S’all wron’. S’righ’ an’ wron’ a’ same time.” She picked up the magazine with a puzzled expression, but there was no fumbling as it was seated and she jacked back the slide.

“Uh, ‘The firing line is clear’?” Wendy said with a grin.

“ ’Re’y on uh lef’?” Elgars muttered with a frown.

Harmon smiled. “Ready on the left? The left is ready. Ready on the right? The right is ready. Firing line is clear. Open fire.”

Before the former police officer’s chin could hit his chest all five targets had taken two shots in the upper chest and one in the middle of the face. The sound was thunder, a series of blasts like a low speed machine gun, then the magazine dropped to the ground and the weapon was reloaded. He had never seen her hand move to pick up the spare; the weapon seemed to reload itself by magic.

“Bloody hell,” Harmon muttered while Wendy just stood there with her mouth open.

“Was that okay, sar’nt?” Elgars asked in a shy little voice.

“Yeah, that was pretty good,” Harmon said, waving away the cordite residue. “Pretty good.”

CHAPTER 7 Rochester, NY, United States, Sol III 1014 EDT Sunday September 13, 2009 ad

“I think this is goin’ pretty good,” Colonel Cutprice opined. He ducked as a stray railgun round glanced off the shot-up piece of combat armor shielding him. “Could’ve been worse.”

“Would’ve been worse if it hadn’t been for that late shipment of Bouncing Barbies,” Sergeant Major Wacleva grumped. “And the Spanish Inquisition.”

“ ‘I’ve got a list, I’ve got a little list,’ ” Sunday said, belly-crawling over to their position. “We could use a few Bouncing Barbies out here, sir.” He popped his head up over the armor and ducked back down. “There has been a fine killing, but it could always be better.”

Cutprice shook his head. “You know why they’re called ‘Bouncing Barbies,’ Sunday?”

“Yes, sir,” the sergeant replied. “They really ought to be called Duncan’s Folly. But they call ’em ‘Barbies’ because it is alliterative and, like Barbie, they just up and cut you off at the knees if you get anywhere near them. You know she would. The cold-eyed bitch.”

The M-281A anti-Posleen area denial weapon was one of the few commonly available bits of “GalTech,” the technology that the Galactic Federation had first offered then been unable to supply in any significant quantity.

The device was the bastard child of a mistake, a mistake made by one of the members of the 1^st Battalion 555^th Mobile Infantry. In the early days of the conflict, Sergeant Duncan, who was a notorious tinkerer, had tinkered a Personal Protection Field into removing all its safety interlocks and then expending all of its power in a single brief surge.

The surge, and the removed safety interlocks, had created a circular “blade” that cut through several stories of the barracks he was in at the time. And, quite coincidentally, through his roommate’s legs.