The canopy was closed against the rain, and his face was bathed in the monochrome light from a VDU about the size of a laptop screen. The olive-drab vehicle had seen better days, but the modifications it had undergone were state-of-the-art. Mounted on the cab was a high-velocity missile launcher. Known as THOR, it was a four-missile variant of the Starstreak HVM, a high-velocity surface-to-air munition that had not yet seen combat. Top-speed Mach 3.5 – three and a half times the speed of sound – laser-guided and each missile containing three armour-piercing darts. These darts were each packed with a pound of explosive. The weapon’s sights – regular, thermal-imaging and night-sight – could pick up and track targets at a range of more than seven klicks, even fast-moving UAVs behind cloud cover. All in all, a pretty formidable bit of kit. Not the sort of thing you wanted to entrust to some wet-behind-the-ears crap-hat not long out of nappies.Some of the younger guys in camp had a habit of taking the piss out of Luke these days.
