“Clarify yourself, Sergeant. Did you watch the videos on my report to my superior?”

He paused. “We received word of an arachnid gigus infestation alert, and were directed to go address it. We have full tactical maps in place for-“

“Ten thousand Shadow-class Spideroids?” I finished for him.

Suddenly he got kind of quiet.

“I don’t know who your superiors are, but I always assumed the Juris Tactical Squads were the smart, professional types... What I see is meat snacks waiting to be fed to a Class Three or Two Shadow Spideroid Great Colony, i.e. a city of bugs bigger than you are.

“You don’t even have the right gear. I could understand the lack of gyros because you don’t want the explosive rounds to damage the infrastructure, but pulse lasers? You’re going up against Shadow-class vermin. They’re inundated in Gloam. Sure, they’re vulnerable to lasers in areas of illumination, but this is a whole freaking colony eight hundred feet under your boots. There is no light down there. They won’t have light vulnerability, and your pulse lasers are going to lose half their killing power the instant they leave the muzzle.

“Unless one of you guys is a photokinetic, and given the amount of cyberization I’m seeing in each one of you, that number is zero, you’re going to need to empty half a clip into one of the adults to kill it. You’re looking at a minimum of a thousand adults, ten to twenty percent queens, and an unknown number of queen mothers and the Empress Spider behind it all, who is powerful enough to cut open an industrial-strength sewer mainline, meaning durasteel six inches thick, which she is using to feed her brood.

“Who the fuck dispatched you without adequate situational review?”

They were all listening to me now, especially when I raised my Band and downloaded my report to them.

They did take the time to go through it now, and I waited patiently while they did. They were experienced at scanning data, got the key points, headed to the vids, and zipped through them.

There were some quiet curses inside that armor, especially when they got to the point where I looked out the lift tunnel at the webwork that went on and on into the underground distance.

“So, do they not teach dispatch officers what a potential Class Two colony nest even means?” I inquired archly. “Hey, guys, I’m sorry to tell you, but if it was a problem that only took the twelve of you, the Termites could have handled it. We do this for a damn living. We just would have hit and run and drawn them out into traps, and taken them down. Sure, you could have waded in with armor and got it done faster, but we wouldn’t NEED you.

“But a Class Two or Three? By regulation, we have to call you in. What Class did they grade this as? A Six? I mean, shit, who the fuck is gonna call in Juris Tactical for a Six?”

I could see I had general agreement on that.

“Your observations are noted, Agent Sama Rantha,” Sergeant Charlz said, giving me the verbal upgrade from insect to human being. “We’ll be handling this properly. Your contributions are noted, and will be recorded. You may leave now.”

“One minor point.” He was just starting to turn away when I raised my hand, and he turned back. “Spideroids are vibration-sensitive. You probably noticed I’m Skating. They could not feel me coming. So if you start pounding around up here in heavy power armor, they are going to feel you coming from some distance away. That may not be a huge concern to you lot, but it means it gives them time to run away.”

“Noted, Agent Sama Rantha.” And then he did turn away, I was dismissed, and I stepped back, turned, and skated away.

I noted the mission profile on my Band changing a minute later, saying I was relieved of guide duty and the operation was being moved to a higher level. I should, however, be bonused for alerting the city of the threat during the course of my duties, and certainly there’d be all sorts of news when they actually deployed.

While they retreated and regrouped, I still had other spideroids to track down and kill...

And because I was the overly smart paranoid sort, I looked at the time, and sent a blind notice off to an account which would only exist for the next ten minutes: What kind of an idiot sends out a Juris Tac Squad to put down a Class Two Shadow Spideroid colony?

Because no, no, there was no kind of corruption in Janus Prime, perish the thought.

---------------

“Hey, Miss Harring.” Because nametag, see, learned her name. Also, on the Boole for the office, ahem, in case I forgot. I shook the queen spideroid thorax on my shoulder. “Drop these off? Victim remains for DNA processing.”

“Of course, dear.” She waved me in tiredly, noted there was another idiot in the gutter getting stripped to his skin, and then some, as organleggers weren’t exactly picky about the sources of their material. She glanced at the time; the TC cleaner should be through in an hour or so...

I headed into the disposal room, and started unloading the heads of dead people and some possible identifier belongings.

There were over a hundred. There ended up being four groups of spideroids, and they were busy.

I had them charted individually on my Visual File, downloaded them to my report in order, and lined them up that way.

My Queen was standing in the doorway watching when I turned around and yawned. “There was an office two miles from your last location,” he informed me in the same monotone.

“I needed the exercise, and he didn’t need to take credit for something you’ve been helping me ram through. Fucker probably would’ve nixed me for not bringing in the spider heads.” Which was standard procedure, so I was probably correct.

The manager didn’t even grunt, despite the fact I’d brought him a lot of work. I had gone into my previous file and noted that he’d actually contacted a known relative of all the victims, even if it was only a brief message. So, he followed through, and he deserved whatever notice came out of all these kills, and any attachment to what I did.

“Come to my office,” he said, in the same voice. I lifted an eyebrow and followed him out.

His office was right around the corner, with rows of paper filing cabinets along one wall, his own remote server for his computer, which was surprisingly up to date if I had the model and dual flat/holo display correct, and brief knickknacks alluding to time in the field, such as a stuffed giant rat, the tooth of a sand wurm, a not-quite-human skull with a shattered cranium from a gyro round, and a few other things of interest.

Interesting he had so much paper laying around...

He had me sit on an understuffed chair that creaked under my 3g weight, and I had to invoke my lightfoot hastily to let off my mass.

He folded his big hands, looked at me over his mustache, and studied me for a second. I looked back at him and waited politely, ready for a spiel.

“Termites have four levels of business they do,” he began in that same flat monotone, as if he’d said this hundreds of times. Probably had. “The lowest level is above-ground, hunting things that make it in from outside, or from down below. It’s the lowest because anybody with a weapon can walk down the street and kill a rat or slicer beetle, and go home for supper.

“The second level is the ‘real’ Termites, those who work down below. They go into the guts of the city and clean out infestations. Some of the creatures down there are very dangerous, and the Morlock tribes are kill on sight.”

I nodded. I was familiar with the two levels. The burrowing Termites were considered the elites. Had a much higher death rate, too.

“The third level is Specialists. They are rated for duty Outside, and Special Requests.” I inclined my head. There were rumors about Termites who did that stuff, but nothing on the official site or boards. They probably had private boards they posted on.

“The Fourth Level is Black Night Specialists.” He waved his hand at stacks of files mounded up in the corner, and then at the old-fashioned file cabinets occupying the wall. “Cases that are removed from the Boole and electronic files, either labeled unsolvable or too sensitive to be addressed, and left to fade away from memory.”

My eyes lit up. Those sounded interesting. I wasn’t sure I had britches big enough to go after them, but I definitely had aspirations!

“I reviewed all your files and videos, and I have deemed you ready to advance to a real Termite. You’ll be heading down into the Underspire for some of this work.”

Well, he wasn’t even making me an offer... but that was okay, because the kill bounties on Underspire stuff were higher, and there was hourly pay if you were assigned a task.

“Cool enough,” I nodded. “But, little bit of a break needed here.”

He picked up a delivery box off the floor, set it on his desk in front of me with a slight grunt. “Your Disk parts.” He then picked up a lighter box, set it down next to it. “Ordered shirts from the Office Site, and pants, took them off your bonus.”

Convenient. I opened the box and pulled out the first t-shirt, fairly good synthicotton, all black, bug with circle through it, and TERMITES DO IT IN THE DARK.

Uh-huh...

I stripped off the Mentat rags I was wearing, pulled it on, and he didn’t blink at the sight of my flat chest. I dropped them into his trash receptacle. New skinpants followed, but these didn’t have any innuendos on them, just the logo on the front pockets.

“Works. Let me get a working Disk just in case.” I also needed to start on an actual ranged weapon, too. Let ’em laugh at my hand Autobow, with an underslung laser... and maybe a grenade launcher, once I could afford Citizenship and buy the license.

He flicked a finger and a mission popped up on my Band. “Return when you’re rested.” And we were done.

I gave him the full curtsey and skated out the door. There were a lot of new zeroes in my account. I could even head Upspire and get some actual decent food maybe...

And what was this about renewing the zoning distinction for Habberblok over there? Looked like a gimme mission for nothing...

----------------

I didn’t leave the office, I moved into one of the side meeting rooms that sometimes got used by Termite teams to meet up and plan a joint infestation removal. It wasn’t reserved, and likely hadn’t been for a month, so I had no problems.

The slats of carved Energized Titanium, i.e. Mithral, tumbled out of the box. I measured them by touch and eyeball, good enough for work. There was only carving the psionic circuits and flushing them with Energized crystals until Resonance kicked in, they empowered, and I set the draw and stuff properly.

Hah, and here I originally thought my Smithing Ranks would be worth nothing but Sword damage for Profound Artisan. Hur de hur...

I began the carving with an extended talon of my Claw, which, being adamant hard, had no problem etching into the butter-silvery metal. Definitely have to Slake this for, um, stealth reasons, or at the very least not so much flash.

The Pcircuits were pretty basic to draw, basically establishing a mild telekinetic pull, and a stronger geomagnetic repulsion. They were in slat form so they could be disengaged lotus-style, folded up and stowed, instead of having a meter-wide circle following me everywhere. Detail and depth drove QL, QL raised the limit of complexity and empowerment the Disk could handle, which in turn would lead to it carrying more weight.

A basic Disk that could be finished in a day could carry two hundred pounds. Not nearly enough, but I had heaps of spideroid nexals to feed to it. I wanted it able to handle a minimum of a ton, and multiple tons would be better, just in case...

I concentrated, Focused, stacked a small pile of black nexals on the table, and began to get to work.

-------------