The glider came in over the silent ramshackle sprawl of ZQ to the west, avoiding tall minarets and dodging the wild collection of rattletrap comm towers, wires, and sensor nets the zhee were ever collecting and assembling to subvert normal communications. Bowie was flying by a set of simple controls directly in front of his face while effectively lying on his belly as the glider shot toward the roof of the museum. The koob guard was due to make his next patrol along the roof in less than seven minutes.
The glider danced around the side of a tall dropship parking hangar a few blocks from the museum and lined up for the rooftop LZ ahead. No lights. No catch-net. Bowie switched over to starlight optics and everything became a little bit clearer in the zero dark of not-night and not-dawn. He’d been using night vision and the depth perception wasn’t as good as this new mode. And the perception of distance and depth was absolutely critical for this next bit. The short field landing that needed to be stuck in one go.
Bowie didn’t bring in the passive repulsors until the glider cleared the lip of the building and was whipping along the wide rooftop of the museum. Then he slammed the repulsor braking lever forward a little more forcefully than needed and watched as the groundspeed indicator dropped like a rock. Forty dropped to twenty then ten, and Bowie yanked the nose of the glider skyward, tapping the repulsor batteries to cushion for a full and final stop. The batteries were a one-shot trick. They bled out all the braking and cushioning power they could lend to bring the glider to a dead stop on a dime. And then gently set the light craft down on the roof of the building with little to no fanfare.
Inside, the glider sensors and speed alarms, coupled with the constant traffic coming from Reiser and his ops team back in the warehouse, died in a second as Bowie listened to the composite hull of the glider settle onto the sandy grit of the rooftop in silence. It felt no more than a child’s toy that had finally been discarded.
Jack Bowie lay there for a second, feeling the sudden cascade of sweat erupt inside the smartsuit he was now wearing. It was always that way. Flying the AN-16 was pure danger. Unforgiving in the extreme. And did anyone mention dangerous? Because it really was. You only got one chance to stick her to the LZ and mistakes were often fatal. The sudden sweat always came at the end of every landing as the tense body of the pilot released all the stress and fear they’d been holding in while flying the approach. But it was better than plowing into the side of a dropship hangar on the way to smoke some target. So Bowie just lay there for a second and let the sweat come. Relaxing muscles that had become tension wire tight.
He didn’t have long to think about how close he’d come to death. Nor did he want to. When it came, it would come. No sense in giving it any moment until that final moment.
So, he twisted and popped the canopy along the dorsal fin of the fuselage and pushed himself out of the tiny craft. Satisfied he had his kit, he reached down and flipped the safety cover on the glider’s disintegration packs.
A quick set of numbers activated the arming sequence for immediate destruction and by the time Bowie stood to draw his silenced sidearm, the AN-16 was silently disintegrating in a dull green effervescence accompanied by a soft pop and crackle as aggressive nanites took the vehicle apart at the cellular level with extreme prejudice. In less than a minute, there would be nothing but black dust left of the AN-16.
They were a one-usage item.
Protocols required that the dust be scattered and hidden to the best of the operator’s abilities before the mission could continue. Bowie didn’t think that was necessary. It was just after three a.m. local and the roof was dark. And everyone inside the museum would be dead in the next thirty minutes.
No one would notice the dusty outline of some strange bat lying on the roof.
Bowie made sure there was a round in the pipe of the silenced Nine and whispered a soft reminder of what came next, “Time to clean.”
He disappeared into the silence of the night.
The dark figure took up a position around the corner of the wall from which the rooftop access door opened. Reiser was counting down to the appearance of the koob guard.
“These are good, Jack. Must be like some kind of elite ceremonial guard because they make their rounds on time. So, he’ll show in seven, six, five, four…” and then he went silent as per old protocols from Nether Ops.
The last three seconds were never counted down. Just assumed so the hitter could concentrate on his work. And right on time the door swung open on a whiny note and Jack Bowie heard the soft pad of koob steps coming out onto the grit of the roof.
Bowie followed the forward sight of the Nine around the corner of the wall with three swift steps and watched the laser dot inside his HUD lenses land on the koob warrior’s muscled belly. He’d come in a little low and that had been a problem all during his run throughs. He’d drilled anatomy for as much time as he’d had, which hadn’t been much. And still he’d come in low on his first target acquisition.
A gut shot wasn’t good enough.
Bowie raised the barrel and followed the front sights up in a long movement that was smooth. But to him, as the surging adrenaline began to have its
