Out of the Black - Lee Doty [18]
Releasing only the smallest whimper, which he liked to think of more in terms of a manly groan, his fingers searched desperately for the stud on the hilt. Through the starbursts that filled his vision, hoping that another press wouldn't double the blade's size, he pressed the stud again.
With a small shriek of metal as the blade pulled from the roof, the blade snapped back into the hilt. Relief- then pain that doubled him over. After a few moments of manly writhing- during which he slammed his forehead into the steering wheel at least three times for distraction- he was able to regain his faculties sufficiently to drop the retractable sword onto the passenger seat. He stumbled out of the car and hobbled around in a circle for a while. After a few minutes, he was able to do so without the limp. Finally, he leaned on the car's roof and tried to collect his thoughts.
Macho. If only his father could see him now. He hoped that the other officers wouldn't come up the hill looking for him. He could imagine the enjoyment that Malloy and Rodriguez would derive from his little incident. That part would definitely not go into his report.
He examined the clean, four-centimeter gash in the roof of his car. He ran his finger along the smooth edges and thought about the sharp mystery weapon that had been used to hack Dr. Lutine apart.
He opened the door, reached across to the passenger seat, and retrieved the collapsed sword. He checked the end again. It was still solid with no hint of how or from where the blade emerged. Back outside the car, he pointed both ends of it carefully away from his groin and pressed the stud again.
With the same metallic ringing, the sword shot from the hilt. Extended, the straight double-edged blade was just less than a meter long and perhaps four centimeters wide. Two secondary blades extended out and snapped back sideways to form a crossbar of about three centimeters on each side. He turned the blade and looked at it edge-on. Its thickest point was perhaps two millimeters. The edges glittered with the night's few stars.
"Where have you been all my life?" He said, wondering. Though his guts were still knotted, all was forgiven.
He held the sword comfortably in both hands, then swung it easily through the most interesting parts of the third form for mid-range weapons. Its weight was comfortable, it's mass seemed perfectly balanced. If the blade flexed at all, it wasn't evident. Perfect!
He held up the blade again and examined it, attempting to discover how it folded or disassembled to fit within the hilt. He found nothing. It was a solid, inflexible segment of elegantly forged metal.
He watched closely as he pressed the stud aain. In a fraction of a second, the crossbar and blade retracted. It appeared that the blade simply slid back into the handle. Of course, this wasn't possible as the handle was perhaps one-fifth the size of the blade.
He pocketed the sword and gingerly lowered himself back into the seat. He was careful, but it still hurt. When he finished with the wincing, he picked up his tablet, which still displayed the empty internal scan of the sword. Someone had found a way around the rules of evidence established in 2032. Since then, physical evidence was not entered in court. Forensic scans were easier to present, more detailed, and harder to fake than the actual physical objects. Generally, evidence that was not deemed illegal was never confiscated, just scanned and returned. One of his responsibilities in this investigation would have been to give these objects to the victims' next of kin.
Of course, now the sword would have to go to the lock-up for illegal or dangerous evidence... eventually. He hoped he'd have time to drop this thing by his father's place before then. He wanted to know if Dad had heard