Redline

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Boone fixed A.J. with a hard stare. “All right, kid, in you go. Let’s throw a redline around the immediate area.”

A.J. followed up with a static-mount diff-sensor. He rookie unclipped the stabilisers and set the unit on the floor. He punched in the coordinates and it emitted a sheet of red light.

Okay, everyone hold still now.

The diff-sensor swept for semantic content. A.J. watched the display. The hourglass flipped. It flipped again. After a few moments it rendered: zeroes across the board.

“We’re clean, sir. No material alterations. The text-field is Delta-1 as we left it.”

Boone looked concerned. “Odd. To what significance?”

“To one decimal place, Commander.”

“Okay. Run it to three, soldier.”

The kid re-ran the analytics. The diff binoc whistled and beeped. A.J. shrugged. “Point nine-nine-seven. As good as clean, sir. You could eat your dinner off that.”

As good as clean, but not clean. Interesting. “Recalibrate it, lad. Let’s go find those missing diffs.”

— Hunter Barkley, Deltaview Force: An Opco Boone Adventure