Spec-Ops

III.

0340. DeJahn bolted up in the narrow bunk. Sleep like deep link cobwebbed his thoughts. Sat there, unmoving. Two days off hadn’t helped that much.

0345. He swung his feet onto the plastipress deck, knew he had to get moving, get to the pod for duty rotation. Didn’t want to be last. Might be scroaches, or chimshrews. Bunk above was empty.

Stennes had midwatch on screens.

DeJahn pulled on a clean poopsuit, knowing he’d need to drop off the soiled ones below before his next duty. Chim-duty was hell on uniforms. Softboots followed the poopsuit, and he fastened the bag with his linkcap to his waistband. Closed the slider behind him and hurried along the dim passageway and up the circular ramp, past electro-ops, and to the spec-ops pod.

0352. DeJahn’s fingers stopped short of the pod access plate. Took a moment before he touched the pad. It sucked the heat from his fingertips.

Entry granted The pod door irised open, and deJahn slid inside. His sensies flicked to the captain standing Duty OpsCon. “Tech deJahn reporting, sir.”

“Take number two, Tech deJahn,” replied the captain.

DeJahn stepped up beside the sensie console and link-pulsed. He was relieving Suares.

The wiry tech didn’t blink. He just stood. “Its yours, deJahn. Scowls, tonight. Best hurry.

They’re in free hunt.”

“Got it.”

DeJahn touched the sensie-seat. Suares left it cool. He always did. DeJahn didn’t know how.

Still, he wiped the seat before he settled down. Once more, no scroaches. He kept the sigh inside, then slipped on the mesh cap, checked the handshake, and linked into the scowls.

He dropped into the third seat, and linked. Tech first Khorbel deJahn.

Accepted. Flash background: Scowls. Initial target: guards, research station gamma three-one.

Primary target: technicians.

Frigging great. He had to pull the scowls off free hunt after they took out enough guards to get an opening for the scroaches and turn them to finding the scientists and technicians who were doing the research.

A sharpness of gray images overtook him, so clear that they were more disorienting than the fuzzy sharpness that came with chimbats. Disorientation through precision. Better that than the looming wavering images and prey lust that pervaded the scroach links.

As Suares had said, the scowls were in free hunt.

Checking the mind sidescreen, deJahn verified the target, a bioware research station. Small, no more than fifteen science types, and twice that many guards. The scowls were priority programmed, as much as a modified owl could be. The guards were secondary. Guards didn’t create biotech and bioweapons. What the station produced or researched, deJahn didn’t know. He switched views from the too-distant shifting composite, to one scowl after another, stopping at one stooping into anattack on a guard post.

One of the guards turned and fired. The incendiary pellets exploded into a cage of flame and fire. The stab of pain ran down deJahn’s back for an instant before he disengaged that link, later than he should have.

Quick-switching again, deJahn caught the feedback view from next owl as it struck the guards arm. Fire-venom from the talons went straight to the guard’s nerves. In instants, the guard was shaking so badly the fire-rifle struck the plastcrete under his boots. In seconds, he was beside the rifle, bones breaking under the convulsive power of his own hyped muscles.

More scowls feathered down. Alarms began to screech, and the second guard sealed the booth.

That would only buy him minutes before the first scroach ate its way through the heavy plastic.

DeJahn switched images. He didn’t need to see what the adapted scorpion-roaches would do. At the next guard post, the sentries were still bringing down scowls, each scowl death a line of flame into his own nerves, but the guards did not see the wave of scroaches close to underfoot, advancing inexorably.

He began to exert pressure, shifting the rodent-prey image, strengthening it, and positioning it to bring the scowls through the failing screens into the technical area. The guards were the initial target, just the initial target.

Primary target was scientists and technicians… primary target…