Nasty little brute.

From Communion of Dreams, Chapter Six:

Navarr smiled slightly. “Yeah. Here.” He picked up the weapon, passed it over to Jon.

It was large, ugly and very functional looking. He handled it, felt the heft and the balance of the thing. There was a palmkey sensor on either side of the grip.

“Nasty little brute, isn’t it? Uses the new generation of ceramic-lattice rounds.” He handed over a magazine with one of the white bullets showing. “Lots of mass for punch, and on impact the lattice collapses, causing the volatiles to fuse. That creates a mini jet of plasma that’ll cut right through ballistic cloth.”

Jon slid one of the rounds from the clip. Designed to offset advances in body armor, the plasma jet would carve right through ablative material and high-tensile cloth that would stop normal slugs or even high powered lasers. Where the jet came in contact with tissue, part of the tissue was vaporized, creating a steam explosion that caused considerable damage. “Anything stop it?”

As mentioned recently, my next article on guns.com concerns selecting a good self-defense ammunition. Here’s the lede:

You need to choose self-defense ammunition for your gun. Simple, right? Just get the biggest, the baddest, the most powerful ammunition in the correct caliber for your gun, and you’re set, right?

Wrong. Wrong, on so many levels. For a whole bunch of reasons. We’ll get to that.

Check it out, pass it along, let me know what you think with comments here or there.

Jim Downey

(Cross posted to the my personal blog.)