Joe Haldeman - Future Weapons of War

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…

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?

Thursday before breakfast, deJahn had to shower. Sometimes, dreams were almost as bad as infiltration spec-ops themselves. Even flying the scowls with the scroaches following had been bad enough. He needed a long shower, but water was one thing a forward base had. Surrounded by it. He dressed deliberately. He still had enough clean poopsuits. He’d finally reclaimed enough fresh ones for the days ahead.

He felt cleaner, for the moment, before he headed down the passageway to the tech mess and breakfast. Softboots whispered on the deck. Hard to believe that fifty yards up through the overhead was what looked like marsh and reeds in the river delta.

Tech mess was an oval room with five tables and dispensers and formulators. He tapped out his selections on the formulator, then set them on the tray, and carried the tray to the table where Meralez and Castaneda sat. Castaneda was the butch that Meralez fronted being.

Castaneda gestured. “Look like shit, deJahn.”

“You, too, Castaneda.”

“All of us look like shit, all right?” Meralez laughed. “Good thing nothings up but surveillance today.”

DeJahn liked her laugh. Warm, sort of sexy, not in-your-face.

“You’ve got a thought-look,” Meralez suggested.

After swallowing a mouthful of bagel burrito, deJahn nodded, then took a sip of coffee, bitter.

One thing formulators didn’t do well, along with tea and chocolate.

“Well?”

“Was a time when special ops meant guys with guns dropping on chutes into jungle,” replied deJahn. “Some ways, more honest.”

“Honest? Strange word, think you?” Meralez brushed back mahogany hair too short to move.

“Strange?”

“Snuffed is snuffed,” replied Meralez. “Back then, it was lead, steel jackets, osmiridium, metal projectiles at high speed. Now, we’re using J-wasps, S-wasps, scroaches, scowls, biogaters, snators.

They’re using phonies stuffed with ultra-ex, semiclones with biopaks. We text envirosave, and they text reclaiming their heritage and defeating imperialism. Some of us get snuffed, and some of them do.

Back a century, it was the same. Any more honest then than now? Don’t think so. Back then, the officers ordered. The senior ones lived, the junior ones died like techs, and lots more techs died than now.”

For a moment, deJahn considered her words. They were hers, what she thought, and that was good.

“The senior officers, brass balls and iron tits… all the same,” snorted Castaneda.

“All the same, what?” A cheerful laugh followed the words.

Castaneda looked up. So did deJahn.

Vielho stood there, then set his tray down and slid into the vacant space beside Castaneda.

“Anytime you’re talking balls and tits, Castaneda, got to be worth listening to.” He grinned disarmingly, then took a swallow of his tea.

So far as deJahn knew, Vielho was the only tech who drank tea. Or what passed for it. Then, Casimir was the only other person deJahn knew who drank it for breakfast. Where deJahn’s brother had picked it up… who knew? Casimir couldn’t even explain, but he also couldn’t explain why he liked teaching.

“Just jawing about officers. Little good that does.”

“Better than holding it inside.” Vielho sipped the tea.

“You ever think about being a teacher?” asked deJahn.

“Me?” Vielho laughed. “No way. Got as much patience as a scroach seeking a Seasie. Why?”