The War Machine: Crisis of Empire III

by David Drake

  The two robots backed away, vanishing around a corner of the passageway. Suss had no illusions that they had gone far.

  “What—do—you—want?” The words came from the old man’s voice, but it was a machine talking, in a voice full of hatred.

  “I want the old man to take the helmet off,” Suss said. “Tell him to do it!” The helmet thing needed a brain to work properly, that was obvious. And its power was greatest when both mobile components—helmet and host-brain—were in this room, this hollowed-out bit of the asteroid’s brain.

  Maybe, just maybe, if the helmet stayed out of this central control room and off Jameson’s head, that would weaken it enough to give the assault team a chance. It seemed possible to Suss that the helmet would lose control of its parasites, including the ones running its battle robots.

  “My—robots—are—programmed—already,” the helmet said, speaking through Jameson. “They will—win without—my help.”

  “Then you have nothing to fear by coming off Jameson’s head,” Suss said through clenched teeth. “But can the asteroid brain survive what my explosives will do to it? Make Jameson take you off!”

  Suss watched the decrepit figure, and tried to guess what it might be thinking. Certainly its powers were enhanced inside this chamber, or it would not have struggled so hard to get back in. But even away from it, even off a human head, it had some power—it had gotten itself delivered to Jameson, after all, without Destin wearing the thing for more than a few seconds. It had some weakened ability at mind control when working solo.

  Already, Suss could feel a tiny whisper at the base of her skull, telling her the helmet would win anyway, telling her not to throw her life away in a futile gesture, telling her to disarm the switch. The idea felt like it was her own, but she knew it was the helmet. She fought off the alien thought and tried to concentrate. If being in the control chamber enhanced its power, it was a reasonable guess that even being close to the chamber was some help.

  And, looking through Jameson’s eyes, the helmet would be able to see that Suss was not in good shape. She was injured; weakened and getting weaker. Sooner or later, she would cross the threshold where she would weaken enough that she would not be able to resist the helmet’s power of suggestion. Suss herself knew that was true. Sooner or later, the helmet could persuade her. Cut off from its control of the hundreds or thousands of parasites it was running at the moment, perhaps it could focus more energy on Suss’ mind.

  Suss didn’t know. But she did know what else to try. “Make him take you off,” she repeated.

  After a long moment’s pause, Jameson’s two spindly, wavering arms reached up over his head, moving awkwardly, clumsily. The helmet still was not good at direct muscular control. The palsied fingers took hold of the helmet and pulled it away. There was a low sucking sound and a small splash of blood.

  The moment the helmet left Jameson’s head, he let out a sharp grunt of pain, and his arms spasmed for a moment, almost pulling the helmet back into place. But his fingers jerked apart, and the helmet sailed lazily up to bounce against the ceiling and rebound. Air resistance slowed it down and left it hanging quietly in mid-air, hanging neatly between Jameson’s outstretched hands.

  Suss looked at Jameson and was almost sick. The top of his head was a bloody mess, covered with open sores and pus-swollen infections. She could see the living bone peeking through here and there. His breath came noisily, painful wheezing gasps that seemed not to bring any air into his lungs. Clearly the poor man was no longer able to control his own body. Without the helmet to help control his basic autonomic functions, he would die. He moaned and whimpered, clearly in great pain.

  Suss stared at the dying man with a mixture of horror and pity. All she need do was put the helmet back on him and the pain would fade, his breathing would ease. Such a simple thing, to jam something into the deadman switch, keep it from firing for just a second while she . . .

  No! It was the helmet. The helmet was working on her, reaching into her brain. With a grim anger, she wedged herself back further into the corner. Stay here, she thought. That idea she knew was hers alone.

  ###

  Marcusa had gone down, blown into a dozen pieces by an enemy grenade. Without his skill in controlling the team, the marines lost whatever coordination they had had.

  Now the battle was raging in a half-dozen corridors, and the noise echoed, resounded back and forth down the passages. The robots had sliced the Marine force up into isolated pockets, and were slowly chewing them over, content to let none of them escape and kill whoever might show his head.

  Suddenly the enemy fire slowed, all but stopped. The blisteringly perfect coordinated fire from the robots faded away to a desultory series of repulsor bursts.

  Spencer noticed the change at once. Without raising his head, he looked up the corridor, where a pair of robots had been pinning his squad down, one popping out to continue suppressing fire just as the other fell back around the corner to reload. The timing was perfect and never allowed the marines to raise their head from cover long enough to aim their weapons and fire.

  For the briefest of moments, both robots were out of sight. But that was long enough. Three Pact marines had beads drawn when both robots reappeared simultaneously. They were scrap metal a split second later.

  By some damn miracle or other, the robots had lost their coordination. Had the helmet lost touch with the parasites running the robots?

  With the sudden dizzy idea that all might not be lost, Spencer punched into the all-troops circuit and heard about a whole series of similar robotic mistakes.

  “The damn thing just froze and Luis splattered it.”

  “Sarge, two ’bots just turned and shot each other up!”

  “They turned and started running alluva sudden. Do we go after them or hold here?”

  Two squad leaders, eager to get the hell out of the killing zone, and assuming all the officers were dead, ordered their troops to take advantage of the lull and retreat back to the surface.

  Spencer swore. If they fell back now, all of it would be for nothing. Couldn’t they see that Suss had somehow done it for them all once again, pulled the dragon’s teeth? He fumbled with the unfamiliar comm controls and managed to get on the command circuit.

  “This is Captain Spencer. Belay those orders to retreat! Somehow or another the system that was coordinating the robots has crapped out. Don’t run from them now. Use them for target practice and all combat-effectives link up at—” he glanced at the numbers stenciled at the closest intersection—“location 36-19-4. We’re going in to take this rock.”

  He turned to Tallen Deyi, who had managed to stay with him throughout the chaos of the battle. “Now what do I tell them?” he asked on a private comm circuit. “I don’t know anything about commanding a battle in an asteroid.”

  Tallen grinned wearily. “That’s okay. You didn’t know how to command a goddamned Navy ship either, and that turned out all right. But for what it’s worth, I remember that this corridor runs straight into the central command area.”

  Faster than Spencer would have thought possible, the surviving members of the assault team started to appear. Some of them were obviously wounded, stretching the term “combat effective” pretty far. Spencer wanted to order injured back to the aid station in the air lock, but he knew he might need every man and woman available. He gave them a chance to assemble and then spoke.

  “Nothing fancy,” he said, “but this time we take ’em. If we can get down into that command center before the enemy gets his act back together, we can win this thing. Form up into squads. I want a standard covering advance up this corridor. Let’s go!” Spencer hoped against hope that a “standard covering advance” was right for this situation—and that it meant the same thing in the Marines that it did in the Guard.

  Apparently it did. The troops sorted themselves out and set off down the corridor, one squad advancing, securing a new position and covering it while the next squad took the point
and moved past the first squad. The first squad would hold its position, letting their fellow marines move past until the first squad was in the rear and covering any rude visitors coming up behind.

  Good troops, Spencer thought. Half their number now casualties, and still they worked well, running the maneuver with an easy grace.

  Spencer and Tallen did not move with a squad, but stayed in the center of the formation, where they could keep an eye on point and rear easily.

  A tracer rocket shot past Spencer’s nose out of a cross-corridor. Startled, he made the mistake of looking at where it was going before he looked back to see where it was coming from. The rocket skittered down the empty passage and smashed harmlessly into the ceiling a few hundred meters away. Tallen fired a long repulsor burst in the opposite direction, catching the attacking robot just below the shoulder on his firing arm. Spencer raised his own weapon and blasted the robot’s head off.

  The whole move down the corridor was like that: quick, random exchanges of fire with solitary robots. Now it was the humans doing the herding, the controlling, and the robots doing the retreating, and the dying—if a machine could be said to die.

  Suddenly the rapidly moving column stopped as it began to round a corner, and the occasional stutter of small-arms fire from that point rose to an angry roar.

  Spencer moved to the front of the column, and found two marines, pulled a third back to safety—or at least most of her back. Her leg had been blown off, and was pinwheeling about the corridor, blood streaming from the wound. Spencer looked down at the young woman. Her suit had done its job, constricting shut where it had been hit, clamping down on the horrible wound, effectively serving as a tourniquet. Blood splashed onto Spencer’s suit and oozed over his chest. He forced his mind away from the woman’s injury. If they got out of this alive, sick bay could grow her a new leg eventually.

  Right now Spencer could do her, and the rest of his command, the most good by getting them through this alive. He turned toward one of the troopers who had pulled the injured woman back. “Ambush?” Spencer asked. He read the soldier’s insignia and nametag. Private Cormack.

  “Not exactly, Sir,” Cormack replied. “We just came around that goddamned corner and saw every robot in hell waiting for us. They all opened up on us at once. But they weren’t hiding—just waiting for us to come get them. They’re just standing there, all the targets you’d want, like they don’t care if we kill them or not. But it’ll take time to hack through them all.”

  Spencer nodded. Without the parasites to coordinate them, the robots had done their best, simply linking up as closely as possible to grind the marines down by brute force, rather than hit-and-run finesse.

  Spencer pulled a flexiscope from his suit rack and bent it so it would look around the corner. He opened his helmet visor, knelt down by the bend of the corridor, and put the scope to his eye, cautiously sliding the far end of the scope around the corner.

  Robots, dozens of humanoid robots of every shape and size, clustered in nearly solid ranks, their weapons at the ready. Shoot the one in front, and its place would be taken by the robot behind, again and again and again as the machines volunteered for the meat-grinder. A slow, grim process that did not require sophisticated choreography. Spencer had made a rough sketch map of the asteroid’s interior when they were still in the air lock. Now he consulted it. If it was right, the robots had no way out, no means of retreat—and directly behind them was the command center. They meant to make their stand here. But why? What possible help was it to the enemy for them to put their entire force at risk this way?

  Risk, hell. The robots were doomed. The marines could blast away at them from cover until there weren’t any robots left. Why? What does it gain them?

  Time, Spencer realized. That’s what this is about. The helmet doesn’t mind spending its troops, if it uses them to buy time. It thinks it can regain some of the control it’s lost, if only it has enough time.

  One robot, more alert than its fellows, spotted the scope and took a bead on it. Spencer pulled the scope back out of the way a split second before the repulsor beads ripped up the spot where it had been. The fire stopped the moment he pulled the scope clear. The message from the robots was obvious. Anything we see, we shoot until it dies or retreats.

  All this in the service of the helmet, a delaying tactic for its benefit. If it wants to buy time, then we don’t want to sell it, Spencer thought. It might well be worth the effort, worth the danger, dammit, worth the casualities to punch through fast. “Private Cormack, bear with an amateur CO for a second. We’ve been using mostly lightweight stuff so far.”

  “Yessir,” Cormack replied. “Us and the robots. You don’t want to use high explosives or any really heavy-duty stuff most times when you’re fighting inside a rock. One good blast near a weak seam and you could crack the whole rock open. These robots seem like they’re playing really gentle.”

  Spencer didn’t want to see how the robots played rough. “What have we got on tap just in case some crazed officer type wants to take that chance? Something big enough to flatten those robots but maybe small enough to keep this asteroid together?”

  Cormack grinned eagerly. “Sir, don’t you worry about specs and overpressures like that. We’ll handle it. It’ll take a little coordination, that’s all. But first lemme get Enid here handed back toward the aid station.”

  “Do it fast, Private. Time is the enemy.”

  ###

  DISARM THE WEAPON. TAKE THE HELMET, PUT IT ON. DISARM THE WEAPON. TAKE THE HELMET. PUT IT ON. DISARM THE WEAPON. TAKE THE HELM—

  With a mighty effort of will, Suss forced the pounding words out of her mind. Marshaling all her strength, she found a way to block them out, set up a wall she could hide behind at least for a moment.

  The helmet was through with subtle suggestions, coy insinuations. It no longer even asked to be replaced on Jameson’s head, no doubt sensing that the time was come to find a new steed. It wanted Suss.

  And it was going to have her. She knew that, knew that her will could not resist indefinitely under this onslaught. Already she twice had to keep her own hands from straying, reaching for the wad of fabric that still hung before her eyes. All she needed to do was grab at it with one hand while the other stretched a bit to hold the pliers apart. The free hand would take the fabric, jam it back between the plier jaws. Then she could safely close the pliers, cross the compartment and TAKE THE HELMET. PUT IT—

  She blinked, shook her head, and realized her left hand was already reaching for that wad of fabric. She snatched it back and clamped it grimly around the plier handle.

  “Stop!” she screamed, tears welling up in her eyes. But in zero G tears did not flow. They hung in her eyes, blurring her vision. She shook her head to shake the tears off. “Stop it now or I let the switch go! Stop!”

  She had to let go now, before it won. Better she died than this thing seized the Pact. Closing her eyes, calming herself as best she could, determined to meet the end with dignity, she relaxed her hold on the pliers, released them.

  Nothing happened.

  She opened her eyes and saw that her hands had not moved. But she had felt them move, felt herself let go of the pliers. But nothing was but what was not. The helmet didn’t care what Suss thought she was doing, but it was not going to let her end it yet. It was winning, starting to control her nervous system. A wave of despair washed over her, and Suss could no longer tell if it was genuine, or a fraudulent feeling imposed by the helmet.

  But there were more immediate dangers than her own emotions. Suss stared down at her hands and saw the left one relaxing its grip again. Wrestling against the unseen enemy, an enemy literally inside her head, she forced her fingers back down, demanded that they wrap themselves around the pliers. Reluctantly, her hand cooperated.

  She was holding out for the moment. But she knew it could not last.

  DISARM THE WEAPON. TAKE THE HELMET. PUT IT ON. DISARM—

  ###

  “Nor
mal doctrine is you don’t use fragmentation grenades in a pressurized tunnel,” Private Cormack explained as he started arming the vicious-looking things. His squad mate pulled the grapefruit-sized grenades out of the carrykit and set to work as well. The assault team had broken all records hot-footing the frag-grenades from the Banquo’s hold to the forward point of march. The distance covered wasn’t anything much, just a few kilometers all told—but with such minor obstacles as getting Banquo to lower her shields, asteroid corridors still filled with the floating, churning dust and debris of battle, and the occasional sniper robot still on patrol.

  “The fragments are supposed to be slowed too much by air pressure,” Cormack went on. “The theory is you get more killing power from the shock waves of standard explosives. Well, maybe if you’re shooting at people. But robots can stand a heavy overpressure and not even notice. Now hit them with a saturation fire of these babies and—”

  “Cut the shop talk and get those damn things ready,” Spencer snapped. They were cutting it close, too damn close. He could feel it. Somewhere, and somewhere close, that damnable helmet was fighting back. “Move it.”

  “Uh, yessir,” Cormack said. “That’s fifty of them, set with five-second delay timers triggered by first impact.”

  Spencer turned and faced the rear of the tunnel. “Everyone but the grenadiers and flame specialists, two hundred meters back and take cover. There might be a lot of debris flying.” The rest of the assault team backed away down the tunnel.

  Tallen Deyi looked uncertainly at the small team of troopers preparing the weapons. “Cormack, what the goddamned hell do we do if one of those things caroms our way?”

  Cormack shrugged, an exaggerated gesture meant to be understood through a pressure suit. “I dunno, Sir. Throw ’em back?”