The lancet stung Junebugs finger as the tiny blade sampled her blood before a tiny drop of sealant sprayed over the damaged capillaries. There was a whirring click as the palm sized unit sequenced her DNA and then printed it onto a small chip the size of a fingernail. Another technician bought forward a shock proof metal case and opened it with a key that hung around his neck from a lanyard. Inside the case was a boxy looking rifle. It was a little shorter than most assault weapons she had handled but thicker around the barrel, with standard holographic sites as well as iron sights for emergencies. It had no ejection port that she could see but a number of integral heat sinks that looked like they could be manually expelled if the weapon got too hot, a design she had seen on some high end vehicle mounted plasma weaponry. It usually didn't matter too much as the kind of rate of fire one needed to maintain to fill the heat sinks was enough to melt and deform the barrel. A standard powercell was set forward of the trigger assembly as well as a bullpup style rear magazine behind it. The whole unit was sheathed in high density plastic rather than metal and coloured in dark green and gray.

“The ACR-18,” the technician said proudly, lifting the weapon from the foam insert inside the case and pulling free the rubber shock pad that covered the butt to reveal several input jacks and chip slots. He slipped the chip into the slot and clicked it home before replacing the cover and handing the weapon to Sayeeda. The weight was surprising especially given the plastic used in its construction. The technician nodded at her slight hesitation.

“We had to use plastic to keep the weight down,” he explained, “the early prototypes were too heavy to be easily man, or woman, portable.” Sayeeda ignored the feeble jest and bought the weapon to her shoulder finding the balance to be to her liking.

“The rounds are…” the tech began but Sayeeda was already stripping the magazine and thumbing one of the brass cartridges free. The round itself was light and to Sayeeda’s surprise hollow, with the rear section open. The interior was smooth and extremely shiny. 

“The plasma generator creates the displacer field,” the technician explained with evident pride.

“The rounds simply serve as jackets to keep it contained till the arrive, once it hits the deformation will destroy the round and everything within about a five centimeter radius.”

Junebug bounced the little brass round on her palm for a moment and then fed it back into the magazine. It seemed to be a simply spring load which was a good sign. Humanity had developed a plethora of advanced weapons in the several millennia since the invention of gunpowder, but the cleverest idea in a lab tended to break down in the dust, mud and general hard use of a battlefield. 

“Are the rounds just brass?” she asked as she clicked the magazine back into place. The technician nodded enthusiastically.

“Sure are, though any metal with a high enough reflective index will do the job, you can create the rounds using any basic metal fabrication unit,” he bubbled. Junebug nodded her understanding, pleased that the rounds themselves were easy to manufacture. Exotic weaponry was often hard to keep operational either because the parts or the ammunition was hard to come by. It sounded like the machine shop on the Highlander would be advanced enough to turn out ammunition.

One of the other technicians took the grenade launcher from Neil’s hands with a lofty expression.

“Better let him keep that,” Junebug told the fellow.

“This isn’t for public…” he began but Junebug arched an eyebrow at him.

“You can discuss it with Lady Graciella, I’m sure she will be interested to know that you are taking steps that decrease the likelihood her fiance will survive to reach the wedding day,” she pointed out reasonably. The tech paused and glanced at the leader who nodded. With evident reluctance the tech handed the weapon back to the pilot who offered him a sardonic bow.

“If you will step this way madam…” the accented scientist said with a surprisingly courtly gesture. The stepped through another set of blast doors and down a short flight of stairs to a long thin corridor, one wall of which was open at waist height to overlook a shooting range. The range ran about a hundred meters and was lit with recessed chemical light behind armored glass. Humanoid mannequins studded firing lanes at various distances, they seemed to be made of some sort of pliable plastic. Damage to the targets was evidently repaired by the simple expedient of replacing the destroyed material with moulds. Slight differences in the dye batches meant that despite the fact the targets were uniformly tan, they were covered in leperous patches that differed slightly from those around them.

Junebug stepped up to the range and flicked off the safety before pulling back the charging handle with a snap. What she had taken for a square of green plastic turned red. Apparently some sort of colometic diode, a better choice than an LED for situations in which stealth or concealment was necessary. A shot clock made of similar diode informed her she had a full thirty rounds in the magazine. Junebug sniffed with a professional disdain, any professional could judge the load in a weapon by the weight to within a round or two, but that was usually lost on civilians. The flicked on the holographic sights and took aim at one of the distant mannequins before squeezing the trigger. The rifle cracked, feeling similar to a chemical variant though there was a slight high frequency hum in the background. The head of the mannequin was suddenly missing a chunk the size of a large orange, excavating the right eye socket almost to its ear.

“Nice shooting mist..” the technican began but Junebug clicked the shot selector to automatic and squeezed the trigger in a long burst, the mannequin flopped to the ground cut in half from the mid section by the sustained fire. Several large perfectly circular divots appeared in the far wall of the range as rounds struck the stone wall, destroying them with as little difficulty as they had the mannequin. The air around the barrel shimmered slightly but the weapon didn’t appear to be having any difficulty with the sustained burst, none of the heat sinks even seemed to have adsorbed a charge.

“As you can see the displacer round has roughly the same effect no matter what it hits,”  the chief technician pronounced proudly. Junebug clicked the safety back on and stripped out the partially expended magazine before she realised she didn’t have a fresh one to replace it with. 

“Very cool,” she admitted grudgingly before passing the weapon back to the technician. He clicked the saftey off and then pointed the weapon downrange, squeezing the trigger. Nothing happened as the weapon refused to fire.

“The genelock seems to be working perfectly,” he said, “I do hope that when your mission is complete you can provide us with some images of the field test?”