STAR HOUNDS -- OMNIBUS Read Online Free

their photonet cross hairs, the drudgery of this assignment would end and the real fun would begin.
    Quickly she slipped the guard’s needle pistol from its holster and ran through the open door into the unknown.
    Immediately she was presented with a choice: three separate corridors confronted her at thirty-degree angles. Tubing and wiring gleamed softly in the corridors’ ambient lighting. The smell was, if anything, even more antiseptic than in the rest of the building, the familiar ozonish taste of electricity in the air.
    Though she did not know which was the correct way, the agent hardly paused. The rubberized soles of her shoes smacked the tile floor of the rightmost corridor almost instantly.
    It took less than thirty seconds to reach a location which, according to her cyborg sensors, was a tapping place. She unscrewed a panel and found the appropriate neural grid. Less than another forty-five seconds later her biotech consciousness was roving freely through the systems, piercing past the macros of the languages the vast computer understood, skirting even the machine codes, and diving directly into endless kilometers of circuitry, understanding their complexities with a power that was beyond analysis, close to intuition.
    At her touch the entire security network shut down. The agent chided herself; her estimates had been wrong. She wouldn’t have to dodge laser beams after all. Damn, and she had been looking forward to some significant exercise here!
    With only a few moments’ pause, her mind intuitively found its way through to the top-secret data banks, tapped what they needed, then sped back to the agent’s corporeal form.
    Dizzily she blinked. Even though she was accustomed to biotech transference, the stepping up of her mind through the macro circuits of the computer, the withdrawal was a heady rush, a sensation of almost druglike intensity. But she had what she needed stored in the nanobanks wrapped around her internal organs, and she had made the necessary adjustments inside the computer; no sense sticking around.
    Quickly she ran back to the security guard, plugged its identity wires back, retraced her path through the other security measures she had passed to get there, then boarded an elevator.
    The Governor of this world lived on the top floor of this massive citadel, in a penthouse restricted to a very few. With her new powers over the controlling computer network, the agent was inside the man’s quarters within minutes.
    He was sound asleep in his bed, snoring.
    The agent walked to his bedside, cocked a forefinger, and placed it against the man’s temple.
    “Bang,” she said. “You’re dead.”
    The man jumped up, startled, but the agent pushed him back, holding him down, fingers nimbly finding pressure points. She laughed.
    “Who are you?” the man demanded.
    “My name, Governor Bartlick, is Laura Shemzak. I am an operative of the Federation. Your security measures have been tested and found wanting. You will receive a report soon on the necessary methods for strengthening them, after my return to Earth from Walthor.”
    The man blinked. “But how did you get in here?”
    “That will all be in the report, Governor.” She released him and stepped back, holding up her empty hands to show that she meant no harm. “Now, may I have a drink? I’m very thirsty”.
    Still bemused, the man put on a dressing gown. The agent—Laura Shemzak—followed him into his office, where she sat quite arrogantly behind the man’s desk and accepted a bottled soda. She also used a few names and phrases that established the validity of her claimed identity. Governor Bartlick was then eager to please this astonishing visitor.
    “I must admit,” the gray-haired man said, pouring himself a drink more alcoholic than soda, “that I am astonished. I personally selected the security chief. I hope you will stay long enough to go over this affair in some detail, so that we can take measures against this happening