Page 87 of Sins of Arrogance

The scarcity and cost of the prod­uct ma­te­ri­als dic­tates min­i­miz­ing the hard­est to source com­po­nents. Keep­ing the weight of the gun down is im­por­tant too.

But the ul­ti­mate is­sue here is ef­fec­tive­ness. Too much cool­ing of the bar­rel and there’s not enough force be­hind the bul­let.

It has to do with the en­ergy ex­change. I don’t care about the why though, only the re­sult.

“We also had to tweak the phase-change gel layer in the grip, but we’ve got it di­aled in now,” Hex says. “You can fire up to seven rounds with­out com­pro­mis­ing the struc­tural in­tegrity of the gun.”

“How long be­fore you can reload the clip and shoot again?” I ask.

She doesn’t flinch. “Three-point-seven hours.”

So, ba­si­cally four. Not bad, but not a weapon for long fire­fights. This is for stealth tar­gets and pre­ci­sion hits. Not the bat­tle­field.

“Is there an in­di­ca­tor on the weapon to let the user know when it is ready for reload­ing and use?” I ask.

Hex points to a black strip along the back of the bar­rel. “Color shift dis­play. Each shot will nudge the pig­ment. Af­ter seven, or if you over­heat it early, it’ll turn deep pur­ple.”

“Like a mood ring?”

She winces at my sim­pli­fied anal­ogy, but nods. “A sim­i­lar con­cept, yes. The gun should not be fired again un­til the sec­tion of the cas­ing has turned en­tirely black once again.”

“What hap­pens if the shooter ig­nores those in­struc­tions and tries to reload any­way?” As sol­diers in the midst of a fire­fight are go­ing to do.

“The ma­te­ri­als swell mi­cro­scop­i­cally from heat,” she says. “Enough to lock the mag­a­zine re­lease. Won’t budge un­til the in­ter­nal temp drops be­low the thresh­old. We de­signed it to pro­tect the user, even if they’re not smart enough to pro­tect them­selves.”

I nod. “Good.”

She lifts one shoul­der. “Even if it over­heats, the grip’s lay­ered with that phase-shift­ing gel. Worst case sce­nario? The fir­ing mech­a­nism fuses long be­fore enough heat trans­fers to burn your hand.”

I pick the gun up. Light. Cool. Deadly.

“Nice to know it won’t ex­plode un­til af­ter I’ve used it prop­erly.”

Hex grins. “You break it, you buy it. Oh, wait, you al­ready did.”

I al­most laugh. Al­most.

I knew we got the right woman for the job.

Whis­per guns will change the play­ing field – not just for us, but for the en­tire global arms trade spe­cial­iz­ing in stealth weapons.

We’ll dom­i­nate un­til the other arms deal­ers catch up. And their chances aren’t good for do­ing that any­time soon. They don’t have Hex work­ing for them.

Back-en­gi­neer­ing will only take an­other weapons de­signer so far. Even fig­ur­ing out the ad­just­ments have to hap­pen at a mi­crom­e­ter level will be a hur­dle be­cause it’s so far out of cur­rent weaponry sci­ence for per­sonal weapons.

“Okay, let’s do this.” I pull back the slide and lock a bul­let in the cham­ber.

A soft click fol­lowed by three low beeps comes through my ear­piece be­fore I can fire.

Adren­a­line spik­ing, I clear the cham­ber be­fore hand­ing the gun to Hex to fin­ish un­load­ing. “Re­port.”

“Sen­sor trip. Sec­tor 3G. Ex­ter­nal ap­proach tun­nel. No au­tho­rized traf­fic.”

The FEDs have not found the Bunker in over a hun­dred years. The last breach by an­other syn­di­cate was over thirty years ago. Ac­cord­ing to Bro­gan, ev­ery­one in­volved was elim­i­nated.

Does some­one know about the whis­per guns?

“How many?” I’m al­ready mov­ing to­ward the lab door.