It had been a long day. Djbril had started before dawn with a detailed briefing on the new gun system, how the VADS held and distinguished a dozen clips with whatever mix of ammunition she chose. He showed her how to open the “turtle shell” to replace the magazines in their racks that led to the crab-arm “feeders” and the control unit, a tiny pocket PC built into the buckle-cover at the front of the harness. Wireless technology linked the microphone headset to the control unit. He had created VADS almost from scratch, with a little assistance from some college engineering students and a twelve-thousand-pound check from Lady Croft.
The bullets themselves came in six flavors: armor-piercing for hard targets, fléchette for soft targets you wished to turn into sausage stuffing, pure explosive, incendiary, illumination, and less-lethal rubber bullets. For maximum destruction, he recommended a mix of armor-piercing, explosive, and incendiary. “A killer cocktail,” he’d said that morning, demonstrating it on a mannequin in body armor placed within an upright freezer.
The Lost Cult, Chapter 2
