Piranha

“Hey, Boss,” said McNally as Da

“Looked like he was searching for a boat.”

“Can we shoot down his plan next time? Razor guys say they had it nailed at twenty miles.”

Da

McNally stopped him, saying a message had come for him while he was with the Admiral.

“Just leave it in my cue,” Da

“Actually, it was a voice message, uh, your wife,” said McNally. “She decided to talk to me.”

“And?”

“Says she’ll be out here this afternoon, Said something about a hotel.”

“Okay,” Da

Put himself up too.

“Surprise that she’s coming?” McNally asked.

“Not a surprise, no,” Da

“Boss, you can take off for the next few months as far as I’m concerned. You earned it.”

“Thanks, Billy.” He tapped his radio and then his beeper, wordlessly telling his lieutenant to call if needed, then headed toward the handheld-weapons lab.

A

“Hey, A

“Hmmmpphhhh,” she said without looking up.

Da

“Hardly.” She pushed herself up from the chair. “You’ll want your helmet, I suppose.”

“If its convenient.”

“Convenient? Captain, you’ve added a new word to your vocabulary.”

“I even used it in a sentence,” said Freah.

“I’d be curious as to your definition,” she said, begi

The carbon-boron vest that Da

“What’s the cushion?”

“Styrated aluminum,” said Klondike. “Actually a carbonized alloy, but mostly aluminum.”

“Aluminum?”

“It bears only a passing resemblance to the material used in soda cans, Captain, not to worry,” said A

“Does the next upgrade come with a built-in nurse?”

“Your helmet is this way,” said the weapons expert tartly. “Have I ever told you, you have a big head?”

“All the time.”

Da

“We have bowed to popular demand and added a standard radio link,” a

“By anyone outside of the NSA and Dreamland?”

A

“This’ll do,” said Da

“I imagine it would.”

Da

“Yes, I know,” said Klondike, sighing though Da

“You’ll get it right, A

“Hmmmph. The shape-recognition program is finally operational and so we have added it. It defaults to ‘on.’ I find it a