Maauro raised her left arm and fired with the stunner built into her left hand. All three dockers fell to the deck, twitching. We followed her past the fallen dockers into a personnel corridor into the floating base. The passage was empty save for one woman who looked at us and ducked behind a door with a yelp.
Two wheeled robot carts appeared in the hallway, crowned with multiple jointed arms atop their green and white boxy midsections. They sped toward us.
“They’re shielded,” Maauro said.
Before I could fire my laser, Maauro blurred forward and leapt upward. She landed atop the first machine before its arms could move, then slammed a fist downward into the boxy body, which emitted a shower of sparks and white smoke. The other machine managed to latch on to both of Maauro’s arms and one leg, for a moment. Maauro spun like a top, tearing the loader’s arms off as she lashed out with her free leg. The other machine ruptured spewing parts.
I grabbed Diralia and pulled her against me as I turned my back to the spray of shattered plastic and metal, which banged off the walls around us. A few pieces struck the armored panels of my jacket. One slapped painfully on the back of my thigh raising an immediate welt.
Diralia gasped then looked up at me. “Thanks.”
I spun back to see Maauro climbing down from the wreck, motioning us forward.
Someone is reacting quickly with these cargo-loaders, I think, as I leap off the second machine. Wrik and Diralia are coming forward with commendable speed, but in my combat perception mode they seem to be wading through mud. This gives me leisure to recon the area ahead of us through those systems I have hacked into. Unfortunately it is difficult to simultaneously use the systems and attack them.
We advance to the junction of the corridor ahead, which leads to the lab levels. Security troops are scrambling out of a railcar to oppose us.
“Down, Wrik,” I order as I accelerate to full combat mode and into a storm of weapon fire. I leap upward to draw fire away from my friends. Either they do not know what I am, or they are concerned about firing heavy weaponry this close to the station’s exterior. Most of the weapons fired at me are stunners. These annoy me with their high-pitched vibrations and cause some degradation in my targeting as I return the favor from my left hand.
I realize one of the men on the far side is lifting a high-velocity rifle. My shot at him is blocked by the falling bodies of his stunned comrades.
A laser lances by him. In the same moment that I leapt upward, Wrik threw himself forward, instantly firing both of his weapons while still in the air. Cleverly, the unaimed shot causes the HV gunner to flinch. His shot at me misses. I am now at the ceiling and thrust off the overhead beam, bending it as I fling myself down into the middle of the detachment, firing single flechettes from my right hand to disable weapons or wound limbs. I am moving too fast for their reflexes. Three are down, stunned or otherwise hit. One is fleeing. A fourth man clutches his bleeding arm as a laser falls from his hand. The last man with another HV weapon is good; he’d leapt back, giving him distance to get a bead on me. I realize that he has too high a probability of hitting me with a HV shot at close range. I must kill this one.
A beam lances into the man’s shoulder. Wrik again, a hasty shot as he hit the floor. Given human reflexes, Wrik must have selected him as his target immediately upon seeing them. I am pleased with his performance and must tell him so later. The man loses his grip on the rifle and staggers. I land in front of him, snatch the weapon away. As his eyes widen in shock I twist the weapon into a loop.
“Boo,” I say.
I spotted the security troops in their white railcar just as Maauro leapt forward.
“Down,” I shouted to Diralia, throwing myself forward with both weapons in front of me.
Time seemed to slow for me. I could see every detail of the guards, their uniforms, the expressions on their faces as they scrambled out of their railcar in an instant. The guards, all humans, wore dark-green coveralls. They pulled stunners, lasers and rifles as they yelled, targeting the onrushing Maauro instead of us, doubtless what she intended. She went down into a forward roll and in a flash was up at the ceiling bouncing off it and heading for them. Two guards raised HV rifles. One fired wildly from the car, almost hitting his own people.
I fired at the first rifleman as I leapt forward in the air. The laser beam lanced by him, my stunner at this range may have made him woozy. Chunks of ceiling fell, but simultaneously, bright blood spurted from the first rifleman’s arm as Maauro’s flechettes hit.
The other guard had an orange-red mustache and ferocious blue eyes. His lips were pulled back over his teeth. He was backpedaling from the others, who were blocking his shot as he raised a high-powered rifle. Something about him said top professional.
I hit the floor with enough force to drive the air from me. The stunner buzzing in my hand was aimed generally at the car, Maauro was between us, but it wouldn’t affect her. I kept my finger down on both weapons waiting for the laser to cycle and fire again. It could only have been fractions of a second but seemed forever as I slid across the cold, slick floor.
Bodies were falling all around the railcar, stunned or dead, I couldn’t tell. The blue-eyed man was again bringing up his HV rifle on Maauro. The laser pulsed in my hand, recycled at last, and the beam lanced into his shoulder. He slumped back against the wall unable to hold the weapon with his trigger hand. Maauro landed in front of him and snatched it away, standing over him as he slid down the wall, glaring at her.
“Boo,” she said, to his astonished face.
She reached down and snatched his sidearm out of his holster. Four guards were slumped over the car; one held his wounded arm, weaponless, keening in pain.
I climbed to my feet and advanced, holding both weapons ready.
Maauro looked down at the mustached man, who was holding his cauterized shoulder.
“Stupid to fire HV rounds in a contained atmosphere,” she said.
“Damn you!”
“How many additional security forces are there?” she demands.
He looked at the other wounded man and the pile of bodies by the railcar. His eyes narrowed. “Go to hell.”
Maauro emitted a horrible grinding noise that made me jump back. Her delicate face distorted; serrated teeth appeared in her widening mouth. I’d seen that face once before, turned on me after we’d been shot down back on Kandalor. I’d ejected, she’d been trapped in the ship and crashed. When she reactivated, only her base functions were active. She’d seized me by the throat; fortunately the rest of her brain came online before she buried those teeth in my throat. It was a chilling reminder of what lurked beneath the calm mask she usually wore.
The man pressed back against the wall.
“Tell her for God’s sake,” I snapped.
“I said, ‘go to hell,’” Blue-eyes repeated, his voice shrill.
Maauro put a hand on his shoulder in an eyeblink, but the gesture had no violence in it. He stopped struggling as her face reverted to normal. “You are brave. I approve. Tend to your comrades. Your weapons are destroyed, your communications fried. Do not seek to further oppose me.”
He looked at the others. “Not…not dead?”
“Nor will be, unless you interfere with me again. I have no more leisure for small mercies.”
He edged away from her toward the other wounded and bleeding man.
I remembered Diralia and looked over my shoulder. She was peering out from the corner of a cleaning closet she’d ducked into, staring past me at Maauro. The look she gave Maauro was far different. She’d seen below the cute semblance of a human female to the war machine.
“Let’s go,” Maauro said.
I moved up. For a second, I wasn’t sure that Diralia would follow. Then she visibly drew herself together and nodded, trotting after us.
We formed a wedge behind Maauro as we raced forward
, though she could have outpaced us in a heartbeat. Doors and hatches ahead of us would begin to close or drop then would grind to a halt, or even reverse as Mauro fought the computers of the station for control of the section we were in.
One door caused us to pull up short. Maauro frowned at it. “Move back,” she ordered us. Her right hand glowed with the tremendous heat of its internal plasma torch. The door was cut free in seconds, a job my laser would have needed hours and reloads for if it did not burn out entirely. A kick, almost too fast to see, from a shapely leg, sent the door banging off the far wall. We ran through, flinching from the residual heat.
We raced up levels. At one cross-corridor Maauro raised her arm. Shots cracked from the left. I expected her to release a storm of counter fire, but she merely waved us forward. I heard shouts and the sound of a pressure door falling. Clearly Maauro was gaining more control of the area by the second. Despite the physical battle, the quantum computer that was her brain was more than up to waging an electronic war as well.
Maauro pointed to the right. With groans, Diralia and I flogged ourselves after the speeding and indefatigable android. Another minute’s run and we faced a corridor. She pulled up. “There are two guards with a crew-served heavy laser set up.”
“Any way around?”
She shook her head.
“Can you do something to their weapon?”
“I have been trying, but no.”
“A frontal assault into a 10cm laser?” I shook my head.
She smiled. “I think I can manage more subtlety than that. Remain here and do NOT expose yourselves to danger.” She turned back to the corner and stuck her right hand around it. I leaned forward, despite her order, to see what was going on. A jet of liquid fired down the corridor almost instantly converting to thick white roiling smoke. Yells of alarm and the laser flashed. Maauro ducked back as the beam swung in her direction and I fell back on my butt. She squatted down faster than a human could move and fired more of the liquid smoke, which billowed up.
In a stomach-churning move, Maauro dropped to all fours and reoriented her limbs in a spider-like fashion. Diralia gave a small scream. Maauro ignored her as she sped around the corner on all fours, barely a foot off the ground. The laser hissed over her, fired blind into the smoke at waist level. Seconds later we heard brief, cut off screams, then a sound of metal being torn apart.
“Wrik, Diralia, advance. It is safe,” Maauro called.
I grabbed Diralia’s hand and led her into the rapidly dissipating fog. Maauro was a shadowy shape at the end of it, standing over the wrecked weapon and two bodies. I didn’t look. I preferred not to know for certain.
“This is the central computer lab,” Diralia said, breathless and frightened. “Eldfaran and the science teams should be in there. There won’t be any weapons. Please don’t hurt anyone.”
Maauro looked back. “Their safety is predicated on their cooperation with me.” She reached forward and sank her hands into the door. With a groan and screech like a living animal, the door rolled backwards and we strode into the lab itself. Grim figures of slaughter, breaking into a place of science and reason.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
We gain the secured room that holds the multiverse predictor. Behind us, smoke and sparks rage. I am uncomfortable leaving Wrik and the unarmed Diralia to watch the doors, but I must concentrate here. Their relative vulnerability still causes me great anxiety.
A group of technicians and scientists, mostly humans, stood gaping at us in shock. Only one Ribisan is present, his environmental suit badge says ‘Eldfaran.’
“There it is,” Diralia cries, pointing to one of the largest computer stations I have seen. Primitive machines compared to me, but the bank upon bank of units adds up to impressive computing power. The scientists and techs cringe before our weapons. I ignore them as I advance on the predictor. The central core of it is a pile of computer data chips of a nonstandard design under a cleaplast dome. The arrangement of the silicon and crystals is not logical, that is, not machine-logical. Clearly, they have served some purpose in Ribisan evolution. Nature’s handiwork, while adequate to its modest aims, is also haphazard.
I raise my right hand and the monofilaments of my intruder hardware slip out of my fingertips. Wrik always likens them to waving fronds of sea coral.
An older human male steps forward, hands raised. As he cannot harm me I do not destroy him, although Wrik switches the aim of his weapon to him.
“No, please,” the man pleads. “You don’t know what you are doing. This is the last Ribisan brain with the capacity to see the future. We’ve barely stabilized it. If you destroy it that ability could be lost forever.”
“Did it ever occur to you that might be a good thing?” Wrik demands.
“When is ignorance and blindness ever good?” the man shoots back. “I won’t let you destroy it. You’ll have to kill me first.”
“Alexi,” Diralia shouts. “Don’t be a fool!”
I look at him and deduce that he must be Doctor Malich. “Yes, please Alexi, do not act foolishly. You cannot impede me, and if you try, it will be necessary to stun you. It will be unpleasant for you and pointless. I have, in any event, not made any determination regarding the predictor.”
“Shon,” he spits. “I can’t believe you of all people would betray us.”
“Do not judge betrayal so swiftly,” Eldfaran says. “There is a duty to all life that exists now or in the future, which must be weighed here.”
“Eldfaran,” Malich says, stunned. “Surely you’re not a Traditionalist?”
“I am a being that fears we are meddling in things we do not understand, cannot control, and may be more dangerous than we have any idea. We are working here without sanction of the full government. Threatening civil war—”
“We do not have time to wait for consensus. If we don’t save the last predictor than the issue becomes moot.”
“Maybe it should be,” Wrik says.
“Who is to judge?” Malich snaps.
“That will be me,” I say.
Malich glares at me, then at Wrik. “Enough with the ventriloquism, which one of you is controlling this machine? We saw it on the monitors tearing through the station.”
“Talk to her directly,” Wrik says. “Maauro is not a mechanism and no one controls her.”
“That is true,” I add. “The specifics of my origin are not your concern, nor will I divulge them. I am an artificial life-form of greater complexity than anything you know of. For your purpose, Wrik and I represent the Confederacy.
“You are engaged in a scientific experiment that has implications for the security of the Confederacy. I am authorized to rule on whether that project proceeds or stops.”
“I do not recognize your right. We are in Ribisan space here.”
“The Ribisan government is an associate member of the Confederacy, but I will not debate legal principles with you. I represent force majeure if nothing else persuades you. You suspected your operation would not meet with Confed approval or the extraordinary lengths you have taken to hide the operation would not have been employed, including the multiple attempts on our lives.”
“I…I know nothing of that.” Malich says. “I mean, we passed on the information on the approach of enemies to our backers.”
“And what did you think they were going to do with it?” Wrik challenges. “They tried to shoot down Maauro and we have been attacked here and on Star Central before we even took this assignment.”
“I didn’t know,” Malich says, turning with his hands spread, to face the others. “Our backers said they would handle it. I didn’t know violence would be employed. Our backers are merchants.”
“He may not have known,” Eldfaran adds. “They may have misled him.”
“Immaterial now,” I say.
“My naval contact tells me that a considerab
le force of Traditionalists has recently moved into the area.” Eldfaran says.
“We’ve been found?” Malich gasps. “They’ll nuke this station.”
“Unlikely,” Eldfaran says, “unless they feel they have no other choice. The regular military has kept them at bay for now. All is balanced on a knife’s edge. I think it best that we cede control of this lab to the legitimate Confed military representatives. I will so advise both the Reformers and Traditionalists when needed.”
“I have not made a determination on whether your project is a threat to the Confederacy or not,” I say to Malich. “But I must do so now. The tactical situation is deteriorating around us. In any event, please recognize that there is nothing on this station capable of stopping me. Yield to reality.”
In the face of my calm demeanor his angry defiance fades. I take his arm and move him gently but irresistibly to the side. I see that he still regards me as machine. That, and his tiny defiance, seem to satisfy his need to defend the predictor. I am glad it is not necessary to stun him. He seems brave.
I turn back to the machine and stretch out my hand. My intruder software kicks in and I quickly locate the interface and dispose of any software that seeks to bar my entry. Now I am in a universe of electrons and information. I need no longer slow my interface to the speed of biological comprehension. The vast support computer of the predictor is slower than my own processing, but quite capable of immense data shifting. I intrude, scan and absorb.
I come to a vast block of data that is not capable of being so processed. As I search for entry I realize I have reached the biologically created part of the machine. These silicon arrays are what is left of the original silicon brain of the once living Ribisan. While it works much faster than most biological brains, I must slow again for something like conversation.
“Who are you?” a voice-analogue reaches me.
I send back a compressed data file description of myself: history, purpose, nature and relevance to the current situation. I struggle with impatience – this exchange is consuming entire seconds.
Against That Time Page 30
