Star Force: Trials (SF68) Read Online Free Page A

registering
to him.
    He kept his senses keen, not knowing what was coming
next. If this was a test by Wilson then it was also a signal that there were no
holds barred, for one didn’t mess with water in training situations unless one
had knowledge of it going in. It was very easy to drown when you got dunked,
for with the loss of air also came confusion and disorientation, with the
submerged person not knowing which way was up. Jason’s mind flashed back to his
childhood and the few times he’d dunked others in the pool and got dunked
himself, never realizing how stupid they were being.
    Wilson knew better, and even with Jason’s psionics
this was crossing a line. Even if there were hidden safety teams nearby it
didn’t matter. You did not mess with water in the lungs…period.
    With that realization slapping him in the face Jason
picked a direction and started swimming, his soaked uniform dragging him down
as he moved. He wanted to peel it and his shoes off to make himself more agile,
not knowing what was coming his way, but he relented for the same reason. He
didn’t want to lose his clothes and then need them going forward.
    Jason swam a good ways before he finally saw something
in his Pefbar, coming up on a containment wall that he then followed to the
left. It arced on a predictable curve, but there were no handholds or entrances
within sight. Expecting it to be the edge of a circular chamber he knew to just
follow the perimeter around until he did find an exit.
    Jason spent the next half hour swimming, finding the
‘predictable’ curve to disappear within 100 meters and transition into a twisty
curvy nightmare. He held to his plan and followed the outline, but without a
battlemap he had no way of knowing where he was and the other side of the water
was outside his Pefbar range, so all he could see was the nearest piece of the
wavy wall that had several inlets, all without exits, ladders, or even a dot of
texture. They were sheer and unclimbable without his armor tech, not to mention
blocking his Pefbar…and Ikrid. If there were minds on the other side he
couldn’t sense them, and his Ikrid range was much larger than his Pefbar’s .
    Trying to measure his distance and location by mental
plotting, Jason figured he went all the way around the water at least twice
before the undulations in the wall became familiar. That frustrated him to no
end, having spent the past half hour swimming around in a lumpy circle, but he
knew it was probably part of the test. He’d looked everywhere he could swim, so
what the hell was he…
    Then he realized he hadn’t looked everywhere. Taking a
deep breath he sunk himself below the surface and swam down following the wall
and searching out the bottom of the tank, for there was no way this was ocean.
Too warm and not salty.
    His lungs began to burn mildly before his Hanme kicked
in, and would remain that way letting him know he was on the clock. A second
sensation accompanied them, as if it was a mental progress bar that was slowly
diminishing, which to his point of view felt like a metallic bar that was being
consumed. He could ‘taste’ how much of it was there, which was how he knew how
much reserve oxygen he had. It was the biological equivalent of a status bar on
a helmet’s HUD, and Jason knew he had a few minutes to work with while he was
actively swimming.
    That bar got below half before he finally found the
bottom. As soon as he did he used his telekinesis to push the water around him
out in such a way that a little bit of it vaporized and created an unbreathable
atmosphere around him that he then sealed inside a bioshield. Releasing the
Lachka and holding the shape with the shield only, his buoyancy pulled him up
quickly, enhanced as he changed the shape of a shield into a cone to give him
less drag.
    When he got back to the surface he let go the shield
and began to breathe in healthy gulps of air to recycle what was in his lungs
as well as to start refilling his