The ball hit the target before the sound reached it.
Torin heard the crack of ignition — flat, sharp, a sound the world had never made before this year — and then, a half-second later, the thud of lead striking oak. Fifty meters. Dead center. The ball punched through the inch-thick board and embedded itself in the stone wall behind it.
He stood behind the testing cradle, ears ringing, the residue smoke curling upward in the dawn light. The range officer — a Human sergeant named Hollis, who had been assigned to Ironhold's weapons testing facility because the Marshal's Office required a witness for all Sovereign Eyes Only demonstrations — stood four paces to his left, stylus frozen over his wax tablet.
Hollis said nothing. His eyes moved from the cradle to the target. From the target to the hole in the oak board. From the hole to the dust still falling from the impact crater in the stone behind it.
"Again," said the voice behind them.
