Dominant Species by Michael E. Marks Read Free Book Online

to see what was hidden beneath.
    "Don't even think about it." The icy tone stopped Jenner in mid-reach.
    The private snatched his hand back as though from a snake. "What, what?"
    Briggs eyed him with a flat, cold stare as his square jaw worked steadily on the cigar. Several seconds passed in dead silence. Jenner had become familiar with the tactic; authority figure trying to decide if a lecture was warranted. In his mind Jenner paced off a silent cadence.
    One thousand one, one thousand two--
    At one thousand six, the sergeant spoke. Jenner felt a twinge of relief when Briggs went straight into the answer without a nagging preamble.
    "Detonator."
    Any onset of relief vanished in an instant. "Detonator?" Jenner's tone jumped a full octave, "you mean like for a bomb?"
    In mute reply, Briggs reached forward and tapped a switch on the dash. With a soft hiss of compressed air, the back wall of the cab slid open to reveal a sizable compartment, as wide as the vehicle and roughly a meter and a half tall. The inner walls were lined with yet another layer of armor plate, keloids of welded metal marking the seams where panel edges met. The left and right walls carried an impressive array of electronics. In the darkness, a myriad of tiny diodes flashed in ever-changing colors.
    "You're looking at a sleeper cabin before the MIL-spec mods." Briggs slid into another bout of technical show-and-tell. "I made the bunk bed myself, rigged it together out of an old G-couch. These babies were designed to protect fighter pilots from the stress of all that violent hot-shit maneuvering."
    Jenner looked incredulously at the huge piece of equipment and couldn't imagine how Briggs wedged the damn thing there in the first place. The slate-grey couch looked like it was made out of a smooth, high-impact plastic. A braid of cables stuck out from one end, clipped nubs splayed like multi-color porcupine quills.
    "The main block isn't powered but I got Delkins in the motorpool to run a low-voltage line to the gelpacks. Talk about a bed that fits like a glove. A fellah lookin' to goldbrick for a few hours would be hard-pressed to find a better hiding place."
    Briggs rolled a critical eye at Jenner. "Only don't even think about pulling that shit on me ‘cause that's the first place I'll look."
    Jenner nodded his concession, seeing no gain to be made with a verbal response.
    Briggs continued in an offhand tone. "Anyway, some of that commo shit back there is pretty hush-hush, stuff they don't want falling into enemy hands. If you look under the G-couch you'll see how serious they are about it."
    Jenner craned his neck to get a look beneath the gloss grey frame. Nestled in a coil of heavy black cable sat a bundle of bricks that looked like off-white plasticine clay. Each brick was wrapped in clear cellophane and carried the bold designation THERMALITE. A narrow metal cylinder, about the diameter of a drinking straw, had been driven through the wrapper and deep into the center of each brick. Wires ran from the exposed ends to a tight bundle that swept back behind the couch.
    "That, boy," Briggs said, "is a twenty-kilo package of military-grade incendiary. As ‘cindies go, Therms' the real deal. It'll do zero to three thousand degrees in a hundredth of a second. That's enough heat to turn steel into steam. If things go south in a big way, the last thing we're supposed to do is hit the magic button and the whole rig goes up in a puff of smoke."
    Jenner's sense of comfort, much like a puff of smoke, evaporated. A foul edge crept back into his mood as he peered at the stack of incendiary. Three thousand degrees.
    "Technically," Briggs continued with an utter lack of concern in his voice, "you could still sleep back there, but any more I just use it to store extra gear and supplies. It's amazing what you can scrounge up when you look."
    As if to emphasize the point, Briggs hooked a thumb back towards the compartment. "See that?"
    The crumpled mass of violently