PeterWatts_Blindsight

Peter Watts 197 Blindsight
crosshairs, clinging to the wall of the passageway. It must have
been stunned by the blast of our entry, a classic case of wrongplace-wrong-time.
Bates took a split-second to appraise the
opportunity and the plan was plasma.
One of the grunts plugged the scrambler with a biopsy dart
before I even had a chance to blink. We would have bagged the
whole animal right then if Rorschach's magnetosphere hadn't
chosen that moment to kick sand in our faces. As it was, by the
time our grunts staggered back into action their quarry was already
disappearing around the bend. Bates was tethered to her troops;
they yanked her down the rabbit hole ("Set it up!" she yelled back
at Sascha) the moment she let them loose.
I was tethered to Bates. I barely had a chance to exchange a
wide-eyed look with Sascha before being yanked away in turn.
Suddenly I was inside again; the sated biopsy dart bounced off my
faceplate and flashed past, still attached to a few meters of
discarded monofilament. Hopefully Sascha would pick it up while
Bates and I were hunting; at least the mission wouldn't be a total
loss if we never made it back.
The grunts dragged us like bait on a hook. Bates flew like a
dolphin just ahead of me, keeping effortlessly to the center of the
bore with an occasional tweak of her jets. I careened off the walls
just behind, trying to stabilize myself, trying to look as though I too
might be in control. It was an important pretense. The whole point
of being a decoy is to pass yourself off as an original. They'd even
given me my own gun, pure precaution of course, more for
comfort than protection. It hugged my forearm and fired plastic
slugs impervious to induction fields.
Just Bates and I, now. A pacifist soldier, and the odds of a coin
toss.
Gooseflesh prickled my skin as it always had. The usual ghosts
scrabbled and clawed through my mind. This time, though, the
dread seemed muted. Distant. Perhaps it was just a matter of
timing, perhaps we were moving so quickly through the magnetic
landscape that no one phantom had a chance to stick. Or maybe it
was something else. Maybe I wasn't so afraid of ghosts because
this time we were after monsters.