Insidious. Part 24

The machines clanked out of the Guts.

Bren grabbed his usual view from Meridian's camera. As he watched the a.s.sAIL approach the breach corridor, he wondered how many more times Meridian could be the first machine in and remain intact. The view bobbed with the movement of the machine's head. Bren could have corrected for the movement, but he found the swaying helped to put him in the moment. Something primitive in his mind connected with the motion and made him feel like a partic.i.p.ant instead of the bystander he was.

Meridian pa.s.sed through the bulkhead and entered Avalon. Bren saw a wide concourse that presumably connected the s.p.a.ceport into the main transport arteries of the station. Bren hadn't had time to study the details of their intelligence on the layout of the station. Conveyor belts ran in each direction, separated by waist-high dividers. Benches lined the off-white walls between batches of airscrub gra.s.s. Banks of flat panels rested on the walls. If Bren had been in the concourse or even watching a civilian camera view of them, they would be showing him ads. The UNSF cameras didn't allow any virtual ad traffic insertion for security reasons.

To the right, Bren detected movement, but it was only a mobile trash receptacle. It looked like a barrel rolling along on inch-tall tires. He was instantly wary of it, but decided the cores in the machines would be able to a.s.sess the danger better than he could.

Bren noted from his PV tactical pane that the other machines had emerged behind Meridian. The last two faced toward the station while the other five, including Meridian, headed toward the s.p.a.ceport.

Up ahead, a group of people in familiar black gear came into sight on the conveyor. The camera zoomed in to inspect them closely. Bren counted five or six in a tight cl.u.s.ter.

One of the locals pointed out the a.s.sAILs. They raised their fists and became agitated, crouching slightly as if aware of danger. Then as a group, they charged forward.

Bren wondered about the reaction. Had the devices in their helmets caused uncontrollable anger directed at the machines? Or was every single movement of the people controlled by the Reds? Bren suspected the former. If the people were complete puppets, there would be no need to raise their fists or crouch. Those were completely human movements.

He watched canisters fly toward the attackers, flung from the a.s.sAILs' manipulator tentacles. Several loud popping sounds came through from Meridian's microphones. A second later, the entire group lay scattered about on the floor, immobilized in the new glue the UNSF had supplied. Unlike the creeping tendrils of the usual glue grenade, this glue splattered everywhere and hardened instantly.

The people weren't moving. The new glue was a lot stronger and took a long time to remove. The only thing that might save those people from asphyxiation would be their gear, Bren thought. It might keep the glue from covering their faces and suffocating them.

Meridian tilted slightly and started to fire. Bren was startled.

Is he executing the civilians?

A plume of smoke erupted from down the corridor, across the conveyor lines. Bren couldn't see it over the waist-high guide walls that separated various concourses.

"It was a h.e.l.l Hound," Hoffman said. "It's down."

He meant a smaller security machine used by the European Union. The colloquial name h.e.l.l Hound came from the robots' size and speed, as they were designed to chase down fleeing criminals rather than ambush burglars or face angry crowds. The EU split the cost and manufacturing process among the member nations, making them common in the West.

Just the type of machine the a.s.sAILs were built to handle. If only they were all we faced.

"h.e.l.l Hounds and Circle Fours confirmed on base," Meridian said.

Bren wondered how Meridian knew there were Circle Fours. He a.s.sumed the machine had intercepted some communications or had found some records to that effect.

"Did you get that, Major?" Bren transmitted to Henley. "h.e.l.l Hounds, Circle Fours."

"Acknowledged," Henley replied.

Bren heard more chatter on the channel as a group of marines moved out to join the two a.s.sAILs guarding the s.p.a.ceport concourse. Meridian and its four companions continued toward the s.p.a.ceport.

Something bothered Bren about the feed. Was Meridian's gait different?

Then he figured it out. He couldn't hear the footfalls. He switched to the next machine in line. The clanking sound was louder.

"Hoffman. Meridian's microphones are misadjusted," Bren said.

"They pa.s.sed prelaunch checks," Hoffman said. "Maybe some of the glue got on the pickups?"

"Could be," Bren said. He loaded a clip in his PV from before the grenades were fired. He listened to it for about ten seconds. The footfalls were still m.u.f.fled.

"Same before the glue was used," Bren told him.

"You want me to halt him and check it?"

"No. Too minor. We'll get it later," Bren said.

Bren saw the concourse expand into the terminal proper in his PV. The conveyors cut through the center of a wide expanse of smooth, white marble floors with a gentle arched ceiling. Luggage carts moved sluggishly by on each side, scanning the expanse for travelers who needed their service.

Bren couldn't see any hostile natives or machines in the area. But his view remained obscured in places by kiosks, huge pots of airscrub gra.s.s the size of small cars, luggage racks, and the occasional support column.

The machines stepped gracefully off the conveyor and fanned out across the floor to cover the s.p.a.ceport.

Bren went to the edge of his seat. Those in the crack'n'pack a.s.sumed that they would be engaging more Reds. Bren tried to deny a deep sense of worry. He figured they'd only have a fifty-fifty chance of winning against two Reds, and if there were three or more, he believed they'd fail to take the station. What would happen then? Would they be killed? Taken alive and enslaved?

Meridian altered its course across the s.p.a.ceport atrium.

"They've found something," Bren said aloud in the Guts. Three of the a.s.sAILs were closing in on a long luggage rack with a tall purple and gold kiosk on one end. Bren saw some locals hiding behind it.

"Looks like a bunch of-"

Meridian sidestepped three times. Bren raised an eyebrow. He couldn't remember seeing this type of a.s.sAIL movement, even in training runs.

Grenades rolled out from underneath a luggage rack and detonated on the other two a.s.sAILs. Meridian had been standing at the same spot only a second ago. The machines were instantly engulfed in writhing tentacles of glue. The substance bound the machines to the floor in long ropy strands.

Meridian launched a grenade across the atrium in one direction and fired its cannons on another angle. It moved in the direction it had fired its 12mm weapons.

"Whatever it was, Meridian thinks it's been neutralized," Hoffman remarked.

Bren watched the screens. The two a.s.sAILs broke free of the glue and moved around the luggage rack, although it looked as though many of their sensors had been covered and would need to be cleaned up or even replaced.

Bren watched as Meridian approached a support column next to the side of the concourse. The wreckage of a security machine lay scattered behind the column. The shape looked familiar to Bren.

"I see the target of the twelve millimeter fire. It was a Circle Four," Bren noted aloud. "That was nice. These older cores are better. It looks like magic to an outsider, as if they really can tell what's going to happen before it happens."

"Only Meridian knew," Hoffman said. "The other machines didn't see it coming."

"Meridian has been up as long as the others," Bren said.

"We're receiving an all clear from the a.s.sAILs in the s.p.a.ceport," Henley announced to his marines. The channel chatter became more p.r.o.nounced as teams leapfrogged one another to move in and clean up.

In at least one way, the clean up was literal. Bren watched through Meridian's cams for several minutes as a team of engineers in gas masks used solvent sprayers to clean the glue off two of the a.s.sAILs' sensors. The s.p.a.ceport had been cleared of opposing combatants, so the other a.s.sAILs waited by the breach. Bren kept watching through Meridian's cams, waiting for a flash of the spinning attacker he felt must be out there.

"These people have Gauss Systems security equipment," Bren heard on the marine's channel. He focused on the channel to learn more.

"Yep, they had Gauss glue grenades and stun sticks," another marine verified. "Some sonic protection in their gear as well."

Bren wasn't happy to hear it but he wasn't surprised. Somehow, the stations were able to communicate through the UNSF electronic scrambling, and they were learning to defend themselves better. Of course, most of these arrangements were nothing compared to the combat power of the Reds.

"We've secured the s.p.a.ceport. The a.s.sAIL units can proceed," Henley transmitted. The three clean machines moved out. Marines scrambled to finish removing the last of the glue from the other two a.s.sAILs.

"I have new orders." It was Jameson. "All the civilians who have obeyed our warnings are now safely in their quarters. Anyone inside the s.p.a.ceport is to be considered hostile. Tell your men to shoot to kill. Shoot on sight, any automated or human presence."

Bren's eyebrows came up. Jameson had taken the a.s.sAIL advice seriously. He nodded. The leaders.h.i.+p of the mission understood the seriousness of the stakes.

The marines started shooting.

"Already? They're taking it seriously," Bren said aloud to himself.

"Oh my G.o.d-"

"What the h.e.l.l-"

Bren heard the marine command channel chatter go way up.

"We're taking fire!"

"Where?"

Henley's voice came through on the a.s.sAIL channel.

"We need more a.s.sAILs in the s.p.a.ceport. Our men are being mowed down," the major growled.

Bren saw the a.s.sAILs had already responded. Meridian's group marched back toward the port moving quickly. Bren's lips tightened to a thin pale line. He could tell from the summary graphs in his PV more than ten men had already died.

Bren added cams from the machines being cleaned back in the s.p.a.ceport to his PV. The views were from Nemesis and Orion. Both machines were firing and retreating.

"Fractures detected front and starboard on Orion," the a.s.sAIL's handler reported.

That means at least one spinner is there. At least now, we can detect the microfractures and report them to the cores.

"Frontal fractures on Nemesis," said Nemesis's handler.

"Bren, the a.s.sAILs are leaving, and my men are dying," Henley barked.

Bren kept his voice calm. "The others are coming, less than a minute away. The two are falling back to meet the others." He didn't mention that Nemesis and Orion now had compromised frontal armor. If they stayed to engage the Red, they'd probably be dead in seconds.

"d.a.m.n. They've never gone for the marines before," Hoffman said aloud.

Bren accessed more data from the marine's channel. He watched footage from small cameras on the marine's gear. He moved to visual feeds from before the attack.

The men had crumpled where they stood without warning. Then there was blood. Trickling out of their military skinsuits at the hands, feet, and collars. Huge welts of it appeared on their faces as well. Bren hadn't seen any shrapnel or ricochets from whatever weapon had killed them.

"It's the armor cutter molecules," Hoffman said. "They cut through marine armor even more easily than the a.s.sAIL's."

Bren thought Hoffman was probably right. He knew they had no countermeasure for such an advanced weapon. They had only managed to put in a detection system to sense the fractures when they occurred in the a.s.sAIL cha.s.sis. He switched back to a current view of the action in the atrium.

The marines had spotted something behind a stairwell tube that rose alongside a structural beam. They started to fire slugs and glue grenades at the stairwell.

Their weaponry was designed to suppress people, not destroy alien cyborgs.

Holes appeared in the blackened material in a regular pattern growing from the center. a.s.sAIL fire, Bren thought. He switched back to Meridian's cam and saw that the machines had already stopped firing.

"Did we get a kill anyone?" Bren asked, unable to remain patient.

"Negative. I don't see anything."

"Negative."

"Negative."

The marines' fire stuttered to a halt as well. a.s.sAIL units trotted past marines lying on the floor. Bren saw that some of the men were huddling for cover and others were dead.

Meridian's camera moved around the stairwell. Bren saw debris that resembled pieces of ultralight concrete and metal from the station.

The machines lined up to enter the stairwell. But they stopped short.

"It's not here. Somehow we missed the Red," Henley said. "I don't think the a.s.sAILs should go down there. They'd get picked off one by one in the stairwell."

"The station inhabitants call it Claw. It already left the s.p.a.ceport through shuttle access five," Meridian told Bren.

Bren pa.s.sed the information along to the command channel. "The Red is called Claw. It left the s.p.a.ceport by moving outside the station."

"An advantage they have over the a.s.sAILs," Henley said. "Our heavies can't go outside as easily."

Bren thought it was true enough. The a.s.sAIL cha.s.sis did work in the vacuum of s.p.a.ce, but it took a large airlock to accommodate them. Most stations only had three or four locks that they could move through. The Vigilant had a couple of locks they could use as well, but if the smaller, more agile Reds could move quickly through any lock, then they'd have many more routes in and out of the station.

"Well, the a.s.sAILs think it has left the s.p.a.ceport, so you can get the wounded back here."

Henley belted out some orders on the marine's channel. It sounded to Bren like the men would be returning the wounded as well as hardening their positions with more of their supply containers. In previous training exercises, Bren had seen the bathtub-sized containers linked together in short stacks to create makes.h.i.+ft fortifications.

The a.s.sAILs stayed in the atrium as the marines secured the area. He thought about the Red. Could it be moving back in from another angle right now? Or had it accomplished its purpose and retreated to another ambush site? Bren thought it might even enter the Vigilant, given that all the a.s.sAILs were beyond the breach and unable to intercept. He knew two laser turrets and dozens of marines guarded the breach tunnel, but would that be enough to stop the cyborg if it decided to force its way on board?

The marines unpacked three mine-laying robots and activated them. The machines patrolled the perimeter of the atrium, positioning smart mines in the service corridors and stairwells. The marines could come and go as they pleased, but if a hostile came within several meters of such a device, it could deploy stunning sonics or armor-piercing explosive devices.

The next phase of the board and control operation involved seizing the executive living areas. Bren knew that once the marines felt more secure in the s.p.a.ceport, Henley would send the a.s.sAILs onward.

"I wonder if the men who went into the s.p.a.ceport will stay there or if they'll remain at the vanguard," he transmitted.

"The engagement in the s.p.a.ceport has damaged the survivors' morale without giving them any useful experience," Meridian answered. Bren winced. He'd meant to make the comment aloud in the Guts, not transmit it on the channel. "Therefore, it would be better to use a new force to seize the living areas."

"You no longer believe that the marines should be held back?"

"I believed before that Admiral Jameson held their lives at a higher valuation," Meridian continued. "His decision to send them in anyway indicates that they are now considered more expendable than was indicated in the pre-mission module."

Bren didn't have an answer. He sweated it out for a couple of minutes in silence until Henley transmitted.

"We have the s.p.a.ceport. The a.s.sAIL units should proceed to the second objective. I'm dispatching a new marine unit to back them up. They'll deploy through the breach in the next five minutes."