He blinked. He still couldn’t see. Vision was usually late to return, but he didn’t like being in the dark.
Interrogative status?
Reintegration seventy-one percent complete.
What was seventy-one percent of a tech? He wanted to laugh. He forced his teeth together.
The blackness began to evaporate, and holes appeared in it. One hole showed the recovery medtech looking from the porta-console to deJahn and back again. Another hole showed the dark greenish gray bulkhead of the spec-ops pod.
After a moment, deJahn blinked, then coughed. “Think I’m back.”
“He’s green.” The medtech’s voice was bored, almost disappointed. He stood, nodded, and replaced the porta-console in its case before leaving the pod.
“Just sit there for a while,” ordered the major.
DeJahn glanced around the pod. All the other sensie-stations were empty. He supposed that was good.
Then the shudders began.
It took fifteen minutes before deJahn was ready to stand. He must have been the last. Or the only idiot who hadn’t disengaged fast enough.
He looked at the major. The officer’s cold green eyes showed nothing.
“Thought you said these chimbats were new. They were ready for them.”
“They were new. Some of them got through. About half the station’s inoperative.” The eyes softened, into mere green glass. “Get some rest, Tech. You’re off schedule tomorrow. Check with med on Monday.”
“Yes, sir.” DeJahn took two slow steps to the pod exit station, pressed his fingertips on the pad.
Cleared to depart. Status amber… off duty, pending medical. The exit irised open.
DeJahn took a step into the passageway outside the pod. Each step was deliberate. His balance felt off. Could be the beating his ears had taken.
His poopsuit stunk. Sweat and everything else. Biofeedback was hell on a tech’s personal system, no matter what the newsies said. Especially when your vectors got blasted before you disengaged.
He needed a shower and something to eat. There were still holes in his vision.
II.
“What is the point of a weapon?”
“To defeat someone, or to force them to accede to what the wielder wishes.”
“What is defeat?”
“The surrender of a position, goods, territory, or even a point of view.”
“Who determines defeat?”
“Either total destruction or surrender by the one who’s in the weaker position…”
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…
IV.
You got bioethics issues in chim-ops. Stuff those. Big question, that’s whether mod-techno weapons should be used in war at all… Two soldiers faced off at Waterloo. A bunch stormed beaches at Normandy against another bunch, or even slog-fought in the jungles of Vietnam against a VC bunch. Back then, fighters on both sides died. Lots of them. Different today.
Americans changed it all when they high-teched the Middle East, used biowar in Iran.
Nowadays, the tech-types use chim-ops, spec-ops, remote ops. Nothing touches them. Just like old Greek gods, they throw lightnings, never see what they’ve done, don’t ever experience the horror. Think our special operatives are even soldiers at all? Or just techno-chims themselves?