Night Watchman by Douglas R. Turek

Night Watchman

by Douglas R. Turek

In the first three milliseconds, I scanned my own memory for any reference to bombs, timers, clocks, and explosives.
Having found little material to work with, I tapped into a passing satellite for a connection to some expert databases. After another three milliseconds, I had gotten all major works on explosives and their timing devices.

Data integration took another five milliseconds. During that time, I also prepared my eyes and fingers for disarmament processes. My visual resolution shot up to twice normal with an additional set of my undedicated processors working on enhancement for motion, color, heat, and ambient particle movement. Fingers got dedicated motorcontrol and their own heat-sensors switched on.

After data integration, I realized that I was dealing with a Schiffnessen Mark 6 one-ton mininuke. The timer was a hackjob of two different timers, one a Seitashi digital timer and the other a Microclox digital schedule-keeper primary chronoprocessor. I quickly proceeded with an analysis of the hackjob. As it was a homemeade construction, there was hardly any chance that a major database would carry any pertinent info; still, I made a tap of the usual clearinghouses for homemades.

Primary analysis took two whole seconds. Moving my body is not as easy as operating my mind. Analysis coincided with a tidbit from a hackhouse regarding Seitashi timers as booby traps. Basically, they prevent explosion rather than cause it. It was the cheap Microclox that would blow this thing sky-high if I took it off. I removed the Seitashi according to an integrated report my paraconsciousness prepared during my last tap. There was one pattern of wires that I had to leave alone. I did.

One and a half seconds later, I had cut the Seitashi out, excepting one wire that I had not seen and could not account for. I reclaimed the main process from my paraconsciousness and deleted all previously tapped info that was unrelated to this specific device. I simultaneously made another tap to account for the extra wire.
It took fourteen milliseconds, but was worth the wait. This was based on a design by a now-defunct terrorist group from downside Germany. I suspected I didn't know as much about the Schiffnessen mininuke as I should. Made a sweep for a satellite that could connect me right into two German hackhouses. I found one and spent one of my precious one-time-only encrypted passwords to gain access.

It was all I needed. The extra wire was a decoy. It wasn't even a wire. It was a radiating switch for the bomb. If I yanked it, I would have set it off myself. If I'd been human and grabbed it, body heat would've set it off. I wasn't human, though, and my handcovering was an effective enough shield against whatever heat I might have in my hand.
I reached into my tool kit for the first time and got out a smartliquid kit. I set it to generate a shielding and cooling liquid that would solidify and drop in temperature when exposed to oxygen. I sprayed the first layer on, then gassed it with O2, repeating the process until I had built up a big lump of cold shielding material around the entire unit.
I cut out the section of wall the bomb was attached to and carried everything to the station's lifeboat section. That took a minute. I adhered it to the cargo floor of a small boat, spun the door closed, and fetched its stationbound remote control.

I remoted the boat towards the sun on medium speed. I didn't want it to go on anything but gasjets until it was far enough from the station.
At the appropriate distance, some two minutes away, I remoted the boat to fire up its zaps and increase internal temperature-control to maximum. I saw the brief blue flash of the zaps kicking in, and the small white flash, seconds later, of the nuke going off as all that shielding melted and evaporated.
Elapsed time, three minutes, six seconds, five-hundred twenty-five milliseconds. Not a bad bit of work. I turned from the lifeboat launchbay and headed up the corridor to a bank of elevators; time to tell my bosses there was a bomb onboard. I'd let them deal with the paperwork for the Department of Atmospheric Protection, but I spent six milliseconds preparing a full report with visuals and schematics, including timecode references for the security camera logs.
What can I say? I'm a show-off.