Biowar

19

Malachi Reese grooved on the Blink 182 cut, bouncing at the edge of his seat as he guided the tiny spaceship toward its destination. Called a “vessel,” the craft looked like a foot-long section of copper pipe, the sort you’d find in a home water system. It had steering fins that were “ignited”—in layman’s terms “extended”—by a small canister of hydrogen, allowing Malachi to steer it with the aid of the keyboards in front of him. In some ways, the vessel was nothing more than a ridiculously expensive space-launched dump truck; in about thirty seconds Malachi would hit a red button on his console and shower his target with motion and sound sensors about the size and shape of a flattened penny. Once deposited, the sensors would transmit their data back to the Art Room for the next four hours.

“How are we doing?” asked Telach.

“We’re just about on target.”

“I have a man in there and he’s been knocked out,” said the Art Room supervisor, her voice strained. “I need to know what the hell is going on.”

“Hey, like, I’m doing six times the speed of sound, you know what I’m saying?”

That was an exaggeration — the vessel was actually moving at about Mach 4.

Malachi was a ReVeeOp-a remote vehicle operator or, more bureaucratically, “flight control specialist class three,” the highest designation below supervisor status — controlling the spacecraft from a bunker a short distance from the Art Room. He made a slight course correction, then got ready to pickle his sensors.

“I’m sorry,” apologized Telach.

“Not a prob, Mom.”

He checked his course again, jacked the volume on the Mp3, and watched his screen for the cue.

“Baby,” he said as the timer nailed down to one. His fingers danced quickly on the board.

“Got a good spread,” he told the Art Room through the headset sitting over the buds for his stereo player. The vessel had dumped its load of sensors on and around the castle where Dean was being held.

“What’s that in the background?” asked Telach. She reminded him of his third-grade teacher.

“Christmas carols,” said Malachi.

“You’re a bit ahead of the season, don’t you think?”

“Never too early to celebrate.”

He tickled the buttons, monitoring the vessel’s flight on the pseudo-3-D terrain map at his right. He wanted to crash the now useless pipe into a wooded hill about two miles from the target, which was a large castle on a hill in northern Austria. The course had been preset, and as soon as the computer beeped to confirm they were on beam, he went back to the keyboard at the extreme left of his work area, punching the two preset keys at the right. The screen above the board changed, putting up green dots and squares to show whether the sensors were good.

He had a full board. Kick butt.

Had to be the music. Blink ruled. From now on, Christmas songs every flight.

In July. They’d love that.

“Malachi?” asked Telach.

“You’re up and good,” he said, punching the bar at the very bottom of the board, giving control of the feed over to the Art Room.