The Weapon by David Poyer

just above the waterline down to the turn of the bilge. It was marked
HY 80 30 CM.
    He frowned. HY 80 was a shipbuilding steel. High yield strength, 80,000 psi to be exact. It had been used in U.S. submarine hulls for years. And thirty centimeters was nearly a foot thick.
    The black overcoats linked arms and began herding the guests away from the buffet. Some around the Stoli booth resisted, but were shepherded back toward the gangway. The crowd turned and began streaming up onto the embankment, Dan and his associates with them.
    â€œNot a risk-free launch,” Henrickson muttered.
    â€œI’m thinking, this isn’t the real thing,” de Cary put in.
    â€œWhat do you mean?” said Dan.
    â€œThat’s not the Shkval. Can’t be. It’s only half the size.”
    â€œDemonstration vehicle?”
    â€œReduced scale. A test bed.”
    Dan had to admit, it made sense to demonstrate on a reduced scale, especially in the middle of a city. No Western capital would have permitted live ordnance testing smack in the middle of its downtown, where an errant turn could send a couple of tons of high-speed weapon up a slanted bank and down a commercial avenue. He looked around for Siebeking, but the attaché was gone in the crowd.
    The audience spread out along the riverside, staring down at the launch barge. Which the techs, too, were leaving, jogging across a quickly lowered, bouncing gangway, taking their prospective customers’ places near the buffet. Putting a few more yards between themselves and the launch platform. Where now only the supervisor, and one orange-suited tech remained, the latter at a stand-up console, the former a few feet aft of the tube, talking into a cell. Then he flipped it closed and stuffed it into a pocket. He swung himself onto the gangway and jogged shoreward.
    A prolonged hooting came from the distant guard boats. The spectators fell silent. The orange-suited tech clamped on a hard hat, ear, and eye protection. He looked over his shoulder, down the river, then crouched. His arm moved once, to the right, then suddenly back to the left.
    With a sudden deep thud, then a hiss of released air, the whole barge recoiled. A cloud of vapor shrouded the tube, cloaking but not quite obscuring the burrowing splash of something long and heavy wallowing deep into the river. The water closed again in a clashing swirl of foam. A half-ring of white plastic skipped across the surface, somersaulting through the air in slow motion. For a moment there was nothing more.
    Then something ignited, deep below.
    The light came up like a glowing apparition beneath the river, turning the chill gray a murky, tropical, opal-huedgreen. Within it a lance of pure white radiance burned beneath the Moskva. Dan felt heat on his cheeks and forehead, and only just kept himself from stepping back. Instead he leaned forward, straining his eyes for every scrap of information he could gather.
    But the heat-pulse lasted only a second. The white-hot light began to move. Then from one instant to the next vanished, absorbed by the turbulent river as the angle between it and his gaze increased.
    A creamy froth surged up, boiling and spiking queer peaked pyramids of water that blew apart, showering the barge. The wind picked up the spray and carried it over the audience, which recoiled from the river’s edge, shouting and slapping at their coats and faces. Dan and Henrickson and de Cary stood without moving. He sniffed, trying to extract information from the mist, but it just smelled dank, like steam and river. No; there was an undertone. For a moment, almost like coffee beans. Then hot iron. Metallic? Or more like dirty old socks? It slipped away even as he sniffed again, the freshness of new sensation vanishing as nerve endings accommodated.
    The spectators surged again, aiming cameras and field glasses up the river. Dan blinked through the spray. But so far, nothing. The river rolled on. The barge, the red flag