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weapon, the tingle in the grip indicating it was armed and fully charged. “Of course I can. I run things here, remember?” And he fired.
    The handgun wasn’t silenced, so a loud piercing clangggg filled the small office. The depleted uranium pellet shot from the barrel, accelerated by magnetic fields to over six thousand miles per hour, and smashed through the plant worker’s skull. The entry wound was tiny, matching the pellet’s 3 millimeter diameter, but the resulting exit wound wasn’t nearly as neat. The back of Rechichi’s head exploded onto the wall behind him, and his body flew backwards out of the chair, onto a large plastic sheet. A small hole was visible in the back wall, now dripping with brain matter and blood.
    “ Damn , Thao, what the hell is this thing?” Santander asked the security man, looking in wonderment at the weapon.  
    The security man who had given Santander the gun smiled. “Miniature railgun, sir. Made by Strittmaier out of New Berlin. Newest tech on the market. Undetectable to electronic or neuretic scans too. Cost me a month’s pay to afford it.”
    Santander nodded. “I like it. No recoil, that’s fantastic.” He turned it over in his hands a few times. “A little loud though. Gurnett, look into getting some of these. And reimburse Thao for having to buy his own.”
    Thao beamed. “Thank you sir.”
    Santander looked over at Dural, whose wheezing had completely stopped. Even his breathing had stopped as he stared behind him at the carnage that was his coworker.
    “Dural,” Santander said.
    Dural’s head snapped back. “Yes, uh, sorry. Thanks Mr. Santander. He just walked in on me, he shouldn’t even have been on shift. Won’t happen again, I know you need those vials, and I’ll keep them coming.”
    “I do need those vials. What I don’t need are morons working for me.” He raised the pistol again, and fired twice into Dural’s chest. The body toppled over to rest near Rechichi, two holes blown clean through his chest, the chair back, and the wall. The dual clangs reverberated off the ceiling and walls.
    “Hot damn, I love this thing!” he exclaimed, handing it back to Thao. “Gurnett, you gotta get me one. First on the list, hear me?”
    Gurnett nodded. “Absolutely. Sorry again to bother you.”
    “Not a problem, I needed a little release,” Santander answered. “Nice touch with the plastic sheeting, makes cleanup a lot easier.”
    He strode from the room, whistling.

Chapter 4

    The Combat Raven screamed across the sky, a sonic boom trailing its ion wake. Dropping below the sound barrier threshold, its swept-back wings shifted forward, pulsejet engines swiveled vertical, and landing struts extended themselves from the military transport's underside. In a blast of superheated dust and pebbles, it settled on the ceramacrete pad at Las Cruces.
    Space Alley, as this region of New Mexico was nicknamed, was home to the NAF's largest Naval Aerospace Station. Over 3,000 men and women, along with 400-some odd air and space vehicles, called the 100,000 acres of dusty, sandy plains home.   After the rising sea levels destroyed the Kennedy Space Center during the Dark Days, it became the primary orbital launch facility in North America. It boasted eighteen separate launch pads, 56 miles of reinforced ceramacrete landing runways, and hangars for vehicles ranging in size from the single-seat F/A-72 Lynx aerospace fighter to the 180 foot tall Caballo heavy lift rocket. It had the odd misnomer of being ‘naval’ yet completely landlocked, but the Naval Aerospace Force had changed drastically in mission since the late twenty-first century. Very few naval vessels these days ever saw a drop of water.
    Las Cruces had begun life in the early twenty-first century as home to the first private spaceport, with an eccentric UK businessman launching the first commercial spaceflights for rich businessmen and bored playboys. In 2096, shortly after the discovery of wormhole travel,