The underground quiet of Sub-Bunker 4 was broken only by the steady drip of water drops leaking through the overhead concrete spreading seam and the rhythmic hiss of an oiled bronze bore brush sliding down the barrel of an ARC-7 Mag-Carbine.
Arthur Vance sat on an overturned munitions crate in his olive undershirt, his elbows resting on his knees. Spread across a clean canvas grease-cloth before him were the disassembled components of his weapon. Magnetic gaining speed coils, heavy dark metal recoil dampers, ice-cold injector tubes, and the receiver block. Every piece had been stripped down to bare metal, purged of the gritty ash and sulfur silt blown in from the midday bombardment.
Three feet away at a folding frame stand table, Toby Mallow was engaged in a wild culinary audit.
“Three tins of tightly packed lard,” Toby muttered, clicking the clockwork plunger of a brass tally counter. “Four packets of empty pocket-sealed salt biscuits with an expiration date preceding the Second Border Incursion. Two jars of gray bean paste that smell like fermented radiator coolant. And one tin of spiced beef animal fat that someone in the third platoon clearly dropped in a drainage sump.”
Toby adjusted his wire-rimmed glasses with the back of a chalk-stained hand, glaring at the meager pyramid of tin cans.
