Read Merkiaari Wars: 01 - Hard Duty for Free Online Page B

curiosity too. He had pretended to be one once, he remembered. Long ago. It had been a cover for an assassination op. Not his favourite type of gig, but the guy had really pissed Burgton off by proposing to demobilise the regiment a few decades after hostilities with the Merkiaari ended. The guy’s suicide had been big news back then.
    Eric turned toward the opposite end of the barren room and located the interface. It was a small pedestal about waist height with a simple keyboard and card reader. He inserted his card and typed the password Ken had given him in his download.
    Velox et mortifer.
    It was the regiment’s motto in Latin. Swift and Deadly. Vipers were definitely that among other things, but at their most basic, swift and deadly described them well.
    The password was accepted and the sounds of machinery starting came to him from beyond the far wall. The wall was grey and featureless except for a panel painted with black and yellow caution stripes about a metre square. A minute went by. The brightly painted section of wall slid out into the room attached to a steel bench or table with a metal box sitting on it. Eric opened it and surveyed the contents.
    There was duffel like the one he already had and containing many of the same things. He pulled everything out and quickly inventoried what he had. Uniforms, toiletries, minicomputer, three wands topped up with funds each drawing on different banks, a Raytheon .50 semi auto pistol and a pile of loaded magazines, a small stash of hard currency in the form of platinum wafers—platinum was still universally accepted even if frowned upon by governments—and a shoulder rig for the pistol.
    He eyed the weapon unhappily, not having time to strip it now, but he did a quick visual on it. It was battered and old seeming, but that would be camouflage. He worked the action listening to its smooth sounding mechanics and nodded when he pulled the trigger. Eric knew Ken would not have supplied an inferior weapon, and Raytheon made good ones, but a slug thrower no matter how good wasn’t his preference. They had limited ammo capacity compared with pulsers, very limited when they were large calibre like this one, and had a low recycle rate. Vipers could pull a trigger repeatedly on the order of 0.18 to 0.25 seconds apart and do it all day if necessary. If he tried that, the Raytheon would jam. The regiment’s custom made weaponry was designed to stand up to such punishment; this thing would fire one round and break.
    Pulsers were more forgiving. They were generally fully automatic and a single trigger press could fire a three round burst or empty hundred round magazines in seconds depending upon settings. His new toy’s extended capacity magazines only held ten rounds. The standard for this weapon was six rounds he seemed to recall. He was pleased to have any weapon since he came here unarmed, but had to wonder at Ken’s choice. Maybe there was a reason for it, but give him a good pulser any day.
    Eric quickly unsealed his uniform, letting it hang from his hips, and put on the shoulder rig. It wasn’t a convenient way to wear it, but he wouldn’t go around blatantly displaying the rig either. He loaded the pistol and chambered a round, before holstering it and pulling his clothes back into order.
    He stuffed the clothing and toiletries back into the box along with the unwanted duffel, and swept everything else into his own already bulging duffel—he didn’t want to carry two. He wanted his right hand free. He slammed the lid closed and went to retrieve his card from the consol. The moment he did, the vault’s hidden machinery activated and the box slid into the wall to be whisked away to storage.
    Eric summoned the guard with a quick press of the call button next to the door, and moments later he was led out of the vaults and back to the bank proper.
    “Will there be anything else, sir?” the guard asked when they reached the main floor of the bank.
    The guard’s hand