There was a reason why Montgomery picked me to accompany him on this little tour we were on. Someone had slipped him my file and he liked what he saw. Especially the part about me being a weapons expert. It was true. Off the top of my head I could give a detailed rundown on every modern weapon created by the hand of man or Opak. I could also field strip an MT 89 Fieldsweeper blindfolded with a hand tied behind my back. Given the resources and a day or two, I could build one from scratch. That's no boast. It's a fact. Amazing how a little knowledge on a specific subject could elevate one from an anonymous low-end-of-the-totem-pole functionary to a trusted top level advisor to the most powerful member of the Cabinet.
Jacob Linox led us down a wide vast corridor. The white walls were spotless, the tan vaulted ceiling decorated with geometric indentations. An Opakular architectural design quirk. Post-Occupation Earth had endeavored to wipe out any lingering visual traces of an Opak presence. The attempt was not completely successful.
Jacob stopped at a door marked Viewing Room. He removed a silver card from his inside blazer pocket and waved it over a matching verticle silver strip at the center of the door. A soft ping sounded and the door slid open.
"I think you will be pleased with the progress we have been making so far, Mr. Secretary." Jacob looked back at my boss, revealing a tight smile. Then he glanced at me with that same wan show of teeth.
My eyes narrowed with borderline loathing. The man reminded me of a rodent. He must have picked up on my disdain because his face dropped and he turned away from me as quickly as rodently possible. We entered the viewing room, a medium size space with theater style seating facing a blank wall. Jacob the rodent was about to treat us to a movie.
"You should have brought the popcorn," Montgomery whispered to me as we took our seats in the front row.
"I'll be sure to remember that next time, sir," I whispered back.
Jacob, his entourage, Montgomery, and I spent the next half hour viewing footage of weapons demonstrations. We saw a battle tank the size of a small building demonstrating astounding speed and mobility. The vehicle glided along a tract of grass-covered real estate at an undisclosed location. It's top turret smoothbore spun 360, halted at the one o'clock angle, and unleashed a blinding fusillade of directed energy that sheered away the face of a mountain 75 miles distant. Secondary turret guns pulsed streams of solid rounds in the opposite direction. Five square shaped targets covered with bright red bulls eye markings disappeared in a blaze of high explosive rounds. The targets were a little larger than mid size trailer trucks and had been placed one hundred miles away. Each target was forged out of kularium, a human name for a composite metal created by the Opaks. The aliens might have fashioned harder metal, but on Earth and its immediate vicinity, kularium was the hardest substance known to humanity. The kularium targets were scoured to nothingness as if they were made of tissue paper. The Mega-Avenger--that's what the tank was called--had placed its shots on each target with unerring precision, all while moving at near supersonic velocity. Whoever named that tank the Mega-Avenger, by the way, must have been raised on a steady diet of comic books and old grade B sci-fi flicks.
Other weapons systems shown were equally impressive...as human weapons go. The Epoch Cannon was an orbital attack system that harnassed cosmic radiation, channelling the lethal particles into a destructive beam of light. We viewed footage of an EC platform unleashing a radiation beam from high orbit into the Earth's atmosphere. The scene switched to a sea going vessel of the same dimensions as a pre-Occupation aircraft carrier. The vessel sat stationary in the midst of an undisclosed body of water. The next second a linear stroke of man-made lightning punched through the center of the abandoned ship. The whole thing went up in a whirling firestorm. Nothing was left in its place but a massive column of bubbling black smoke arising from an expanding patch of flame lathered debris.
I peppered the CEO with questions relating to the weapons we viewed. A few he was to able to answer, others he deferred to the engineers in his entourage. We discussed yields and variances and targeting sequentials and a range of technical minutiae in a dialogue only techheads could grasp. Montgomery remained silent throughout. But the mildly upturned corners of his mouth advertised his satisfaction with all he'd viewed so far. He had reason to be. The weapons shown to us were human versions of Opak weapons. In fact every weapon in Earth's arsenol was a copy of an Opak original. Small arms were much easier to duplicate than montrous affairs like Mega-Avenger tanks. This was because during the Occupation the Opak allowed humans--those loyal to them--to manufacture handheld armaments, and to a limited extent, light armored vehicles. The Opak had not yet deemed humans ready to build or operate their heavy weapons. It was their policy to keep the designs for such weapons out of human reach as well. But humans are persistent bastards when it comes to pursuing secrets that don't belong to them. Over the centuries, a modest number of Opak secrets managed to find their way into acquisitionist sapien clutches. Not enough to turn Earth into a universal power. It would take untold centuries for Earth to even imagine reaching parity with the Opakular. But for the upcoming grand enterprise, as Montgomery termed it, human built heavy weapons definitely passed muster. The Opaks never brought their truly big weapons--I'm talking mass destruction, extinction level event-generating big--to our part of the galaxy. Which was just as well. Humans might have blown up the solar system trying to duplicate one of those.
The next leg of our tour took us to parts of the complex where smaller weapons were being designed and manufactured. We stepped into an indoor test range thrice the size of a football field. On one side of the range soldiers were testing anthro-armor suits. Bulky, man-shaped, chrome plated figures pranced through an assortment of obstacles, blasting pop-up targets using rotary wrist guns or chest mounted lasers. The suits were not as streamlined as Opak suits nor were they as quick or agile. But again, they were adequate for what their creators--or replicators--intended them for. Jacob led us to the far end of the range, past urban warfare mockups and randomly placed target posts. A black garbed soldier was firing an assault weapon at a cluster of moving baseball size drones.
My eyes fixed on the gun the soldier was holding and my heart fluttered with desire. "An MT 89 Fieldsweeper," I whispered. My favorite assault rifle.
"We've upgraded it," Jacob stated, smiling impishly at the swoon on my face.
"What are the specs?" Montgomery asked.
The black garbed soldier was kind enough to let me hold the MT while Jacob gave us a rundown of its modifications. "Enhanced target selectors, enhanced multispectrum target imaging, micro-grenade launch feature..."
The CEO's words were muddled background noise as I hefted the rifle to get a feel for its weight. Then I sighted down the firing range. The imager fed targeting data directly into my brain, acquiring one of the drones and bathing it in the red aura of a target lock. I pressed the firing stud. A feather brush of recoil nudged my shoulder as a blue white sliver of particle incandescence flared from the MT's narrow barrel. The drone vanished in a molten mist. I incinerated two more drones before reluctantly handing the rifle back to the soldier. I could've stayed on the range all day at that point.
The soldier regarded me with professional admiration. "Impressive."
"I did a little training with MTs in the Continental Guard," I explained understatedly. I quickly shifted the center of attention from me back to the weapon. "It handles nicely. Accuracy is much improved." What I didn't say was that the upgrade MT was still inferior in quality to the Opak-made original. I've handled an Opak MT and the experience was...well...it was rapturous. Still, the human version, in its upgrade form, was suitable for the task it was meant for. Montgomery beamed. Jacob looked ecstatic, which, in my estimation, made him appear more ratty than normal.
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