The Freezer (Genesis Endeavor Book 1) (19 page)

Jack was playing with the PDP, and saw that it had all the
same functionality of his datapad. “Uh, actually a little girl taught me how to
use my datapad this afternoon, so I think I know most of the functions.” Teague
chuckled at this, the irony not lost on him.

“I will give you a rundown and explain anything she missed
later.” He pressed some buttons on his datapad and a wireframe model of the
cryogenics facility came on the big screen. “Here you see the layout of the
facility. I imagine it looks familiar.”

Jack looked at it and nodded. It was definitely the site
that he built. “What’s the reason you are sending me there, Teague? I mean, I
want to go and am happy you are letting me, but you have to have a reason in
mind.”

Teague smiled and said, “You’re just tagging along. The two
that will be with you are there to collect some new candidates. I wanted you to
see the facility in person, partly to get you thinking about design and
logistics, and partly to see if it stirs up any possibility that you made more
of these for the military”

Jack hadn’t thought about that. It was possible that other
projects he worked on had been used for the same purpose, and finding another
would be a good thing. “I could probably point out the other sites that I
worked on right now, but I would still like to see this one first hand. The
last thing I remember, it was just a big hole in the ground with only the
lowest level in place. I want to see how we finished it and what it looks like
now.”

After discussing the specifics of the trip and a short
tutorial on features of the PDP, they headed to another door in the large
classroom, this one opposite the one they came in. Once again, Teague put his
eye near a lens in the wall and there was a beep and a click. The door led them
to a long but somewhat narrow room, with lockers lining both all the walls. The
center of the room was occupied by a series of tall, narrow tables that
paralleled the lockers. The space just in front of the lockers was occupied by
a long bench. About halfway down the wall to the right was a door. They headed
in that direction.

As they entered the next room, Jack was surprised to find
Chuck standing there, proudly wearing a big shit-eating grin. Next to him on a
table was an object Jack could only believe was a futuristic weapon. It was
nothing like he had ever seen or used, but there was little question that it
was made for killing.

“Hello, Jack. How’s life treating you?” Jack couldn’t help
but smile. Chuck’s smug look told him what was coming next.

“It’s been an interesting couple of days Chuck. I feel like
it is about to get a whole lot more interesting.” He looked down at the weapon
on the table. The only thing about it that resembled a rifle was a barrel
barely poking out one end and a trigger that he could spot near the middle of
the weapon.

Teague spoke up, “Chuck will get you outfitted with the
standard exploratory gear. Don’t get excited, just because you will be well
armed doesn’t mean we are expecting any trouble. This is all just for safety
sake.” Jack just nodded, his attention solely on the gun.

Chuck got right down to business. “So I hear you were in WW2
and Korea. I am guessing you carried an M1 Garand?”

“I didn’t see any action in the big war, but in Korea the M1
was my lifeline. Helluva rifle.” He finally looked up from the weapon on the
table and met Chuck’s eyes, holding out his hand.

Chuck met his gaze and shook his hand without hesitation;
his grip firm but not overbearing, a sign that he was both welcoming Jack as a
friend and neither threatened nor intimidated by him. “Thirty aught six, one
hell of a wallop. I would hate to be on the receiving end of one of those.”

“You and me both. It was a heavy weapon to hump around but
if you hit the enemy with it, they weren’t getting back up. I have a feeling
what you are about to show me is just as deadly and a hell of a lot more
friendly to carry around.”

“I think you will be impressed. But before we get to that I
would like to hear more about your weapons experience.”

“I mostly used the M1 and my 1911 sidearm in combat, but
toward the end of my career I got some time on the M14. I would have to say of
every rifle I have used, that would be my favorite.”

Chuck was nodding, “Did you ever get to use the M16?”

“I heard about it, mixed opinions, but I never shot it
myself.”

“Well, this,” he picked up the rifle from the table, “is no
M16, and I can tell you right now that your opinion of it will not be mixed.” The
smug grin was back, and Jack could tell that he was very proud to have the
privilege to present it.

“This is the M74 assault weapon. Developed during the war, in
about 2025, near as we could tell, it is by far the most advanced infantry
weapon ever made. The weapon itself is incredibly impressive, but it is the
platform that really makes it incredible. It fires a .202 caliber round that
has a small bundle of titanium flechettes imbedded in soft lead and jacketed in
a copper alloy. While the caliber sounds small, the Muzzle velocity is fifty
eight hundred feet per second, which gives it more kinetic energy than the
rounds you fired with your M1.” He handed Jack one of the rounds. It looked
like just a bullet, not an entire round. “When the round hits a target, the
lead mushrooms like the ammo you are used to, but the flechettes spread out and
continue on, tearing through just about any kind of armor you can imagine. Soft
targets just cause the flechettes to sprawl through the body and cause maximum
damage. The ammunition magazine holds two hundred rounds and weighs less than
the twenty round magazine of the M14. The casing is only three quarters of an
inch long and the entire round is a little over an inch. It uses a chemical
that burns eight times faster than gunpowder and expands over fifteen times
more. The reason the round is so small is because the chemical propellant is
solid and doesn’t need a shell. It is completely consumed when firing, so nothing
to eject. The gun uses a hybrid closed bolt system that completely contains the
explosion, routing the excess energy to power the action, and even to help
counter the recoil.”

“Fifty eight hundred feet per second? Even a bullet that
small needs a heck of a lot of energy to get moving that fast. This thing must
kick like a mule.”

“Actually, the action on the weapon uses a shock absorber
filled with a magnetic fluid that changes viscosity depending on what the fire rate
is set to. If you fire a single round, it softens up to make recoil almost
nonexistent. If you go automatic, it stiffens up to increase the cyclic rate. The
weapon itself is made of composite carbon fiber and titanium alloys, with a
frictionless surface in the barrel and on all moving components. It’s a bitch
to clean because each piece is like wet ice, but it almost never needs cleaning
because nothing will stick to any part that matters.”

He paused, probably just to take a breath. “The rifle itself
uses a bull-pup design to keep it perfectly balanced for maximum control while
firing, and can be fired from any orientation, under water, covered in mud, or
frozen solid in ice.”

Jack was immediately skeptical of this by nature. Most
automatic and even semi-automatic weapons were usually incredibly susceptible
to dirt and debris, and to fire one that was muddy or dirty was almost
certainly going to cause a jam. To fire a gun that had water in the barrel was
a quick way to blow up the gun and cause yourself a really bad day. “I would
really like to see that, from a distance of course.”

Chuck just smiled, “I understand your reluctance to believe
it Jack, but weapons have come a long way since your time. Even in my time you
could build a fully automatic gun that could fire reliably in just about any
condition. This thing takes that to the next level though.”

Jack didn’t have anything to say to that. He would just have
to take Chuck’s word for it. The man certainly seemed to know his way around
guns.

“The barrel has a built in suppressor so it can’t be heard
more than a half mile away over the flattest land and doesn’t need hearing
protection to fire safely outdoors. The sight is a green laser that is
invisible without the filter, so you look through the lens and you see the dot –
wherever the dot is, that is where the bullet goes. The weapon has a computer
processor on board that controls the recoil and adjusts the laser sight
dependent on the range of the target in your sites as well as environmental
variables like wind, humidity, and temperature. On the side of the weapon is a display
you can flip up showing whatever the weapon is aimed at. You have a choice of regular,
thermal, or night vision. The screen can also flip to the side so you can hold
the weapon around a corner and still see what you are aiming at.”

Jack was completely in awe. In the last few days, he had
been shown technology that only existed in science fiction stories when he
died, but this, by far, was the coolest thing he had ever seen. “Can I hold it?
Is it loaded?”

Chuck nodded and said, “It has a full magazine but is not
chambered. The safety is here, the fire selector is here, and the bolt is
here.” He pointed to them respectively and handed the weapon to Jack. He took
it and his eyes got wide.

“It hardly weighs anything!” He held the weapon to his
shoulder and thumbed the laser. It was the most comfortable weapon he had ever
held. The bull-pup design meant the ammunition magazine was between his grip
and his shoulder, and the receiver was just in front of that. In fact, the
balance was so perfect that he needed almost no adjustment to his aim to put
the green dot wherever he was pointing. It was as if he had been practicing
with this weapon his whole life. “Where can I try it?” He was anxious to fire
the weapon to see what it could do.

“This way.” Chuck gestured toward a door on the opposite end
of the room. The two men were like teens who had just purchased a bag of
fireworks. When they got to the door, Chuck handed Jack a set of very small ear
plugs. “Put these in, they are electronic and they cancel out the noise from
the weapon but let everything else through. We could hold a whispering
conversation while firing the weapon fully automatic.” Jack felt like a kid on
Christmas.

The room they entered was a firing range, about a hundred
feet long by ten feet wide, with two lanes. There was a target set up fifty
feet down range. “The target is paper in front, then a material about the
density of bone, then a material the equivalent of half inch plate steel.” Chuck
said. They lined up on a lane and Jack put the ear plugs in, worked the bolt to
chamber a round, selected single shot, then shouldered and fired his weapon. It
had less kick than a .22 rifle, and with the ear plugs, he never even heard it
fire. He looked at the weapon for a moment, then at Chuck.

“Did it misfire?” he asked. Chuck laughed and motioned for
Jack to follow. Jack flipped the safety on and followed Chuck down the lane,
keeping the weapon pointed away from both of them. His jaw dropped when he saw
the backside of the target. The hole was about two inches in diameter with
jagged chunks of metal-like material peeling around the edges.

“Pretty impressive, eh?” Chuck was beaming. “Now go try full
auto. It’s gonna kick harder the further you pull the trigger. The trigger is
variable, so you get anywhere from thirty rounds per second to two hundred. If
you pull it all the way and are not braced properly it will put you on your
ass, so squeeze gently the first time.”

They walked back to the lane and Jack reached in his ear and
carefully extracted the ear plug. “I want to hear this without the plug first. He
turned off the safety, shouldered the weapon, and fired a single round. He
might as well have been lighting firecrackers instead of shooting a weapon that
could punch a large hole in a half inch of metal. In the closed space it was
just loud enough to make his ears ring. It was quiet enough, however, to hear
the sound of the bullet passing the sound barrier and the ‘thwapp’ of it hitting
the target. He put the ear plug back in, selected full auto, shouldered the
weapon, leaned in and squeezed. The recoil gently but firmly pushed him back
about a foot before he let off the trigger. The display just below the optics
showed he had fired nearly a hundred rounds in just under a second. The target
had a large hole in the middle that narrowed as it climbed up about seven
inches, looking like a teardrop. Jack had fired quite a few fully automatic
rifles in his time, and every one of them had climbed off a target twenty feet
from him by the third round. Unless it was anchored by a bipod, it was only
good for throwing a lot of lead out in a hurry. With this weapon, his grouping
had remained relatively close at fifty feet while firing a hundred rounds per
second!

Jack looked at the folded screen, which was tucked into the
side of the weapon at the moment. He flipped it up so it sat on the top of the
sights. The screen showed the area in front of him with a cross hair in the
middle. Chuck reached behind them and pushed a button, turning out the lights. The
screen took on a green tint and in it Jack could see everything in front of the
weapon as if it were in bright daylight. He shouldered and fired a small burst
again. The muzzle blast was about two feet long and the flame was light blue
instead of the yellow Jack was expecting. He turned sideways, flipped the
screen to the side, pointed the gun down the second lane, holding his arms out
in front of him with the rifle perpendicular to his body. He thumbed the
selector to single shot, lined up and fired three rounds. The weapon barely
moved in his hands despite him having almost no leverage to hold it still. He
had just shot around the corner while only exposing his hands to the wrist! Chuck
turned the lights back on and Jack turned back to the target, thumbed the
selector to auto, leaned in deep and squeezed all the way. The last eighty six
rounds were out of the barrel in less than half a second. It felt like a horse
had kicked him in the shoulder, but the spot on the target he was aiming at had
a hole the size of a watermelon in it.

He thumbed the safety, worked the bolt to make sure it was
clear, and handed the weapon back to Chuck. “I think I’ll name her Charlene”
was all he could say. Chuck laughed wholeheartedly at this. He hadn’t lied;
Jack had found a new best friend.

“Now let’s go see to some body armor.” After the long day of
learning, Jack just followed. His brain could no longer process anything new.

They spent twenty minutes getting fit for chest, shoulder,
arm, groin, hip, and leg armor. He was given a full body suit that fit skin
tight and was very thin and flexible, much like a wetsuit for diving. “This is
made of a material that is very resistant to small arms fire, although a direct
hit from an M74 round will penetrate it. The armor segments will stop any light
weapon’s fire and most forms of shrapnel, but if something hits you between the
pieces of armor, it will hurt like hell. You might break a bone but unless it
hits dead on it will glance off.” He was fitted with skin tight gloves and
socks, lightweight boots that were surprisingly comfortable, and finally a
helmet. The clear shield on the helmet had a heads up display that showed him a
small view of what was behind him in the top right. There was an overlay
display that showed night vision over the top of what he was looking at, and he
could switch back and forth on the fly. There was a button on the M74 that fed
the video and ammunition count to the helmet so he could see it without using
the screen on the gun.