Part 14 (1/2)
No one in the common room seemed to be listening very intently to this pep talk. They had heard it all before, and it was time to get on with doing things.
The old man was promising everyone more extravagant financial rewards for full success, and offered good reasons why he did not intend to accompany the initial a.s.sault force in their landing. Age and debility perhaps made any other excuses unnecessary.
”I know my physical limitations. I'd just be in your way. And quite likely I would die without knowing whether anything had been accomplished. But I do mean to follow closely on your heels. And be a.s.sured that if you do not survive, I will not either.”
The old man also promised to stand by the people who were fighting for him.
Then he gave an order to his pilot, ands.h.i.+p of Dreams edged away, taking its position at the agreed distance.
The clangor of a full alarm caught everyone in the common room totally by surprise. Harry's first thought was:What a crazy time to pick for the first test of the system .
People looked at each other for a long, blank second.
There came a punis.h.i.+ng shock to the fabric of the wanderworld, briefly overwhelming artificial gravity, so several people were knocked down and had to pick themselves up from the deck.
Someone demanded: ”What the h.e.l.l was that?”
”What was-”
Instinct born of experience had started Harry turning, reaching for his carbine, when another lurch in the artificial gravity sent them all staggering again.
There had been some concern about stray debris from the Gravel Pit, two hours away by superluminal s.h.i.+p, straying at high velocity as far as 207GST. ”One of those motherless rocks has got through the screens and hit us-”
But somehow Harry knew, this time it wasn't just a rock, motherless or not.
People were screaming on helmet intercom, human voices filling the whole range of frequency and terror.
The whole rocky fabric of the wanderworld was shuddering with what had to be repeated weapons impacts, masking the lighter tremor that meant the sudden reflex launching of a superluminal courier.
The second thought that occurred to Harry was that the s.p.a.ce Force might have discovered Cheng's secret enterprise, his private battle fleet which was definitely illegal under several statutes, and were moving to close him down-but no. And it certainly wouldn't be the Templars. Within moments, Harry knew that his first and worst a.s.sumption was correct.
The armored fingers of Harry's right-hand gauntlet were closing on the b.u.t.t of the carbine, but he knew that anything he might be able to do with it would be much too little and too late.
THIRTEEN.
If Harry had not been b.u.t.toned into a full suit of armor, with his helmet on, the concussion might well have cost him an eardrum or two.
Harry wished he had had the chance to distribute a few more shooting irons to his colleagues. Not that it would have been likely to do them a h.e.l.l of a lot of good. The main entry hatch, leading directly into the lobby just outside the common room, was blasted violently open from outside. Harry's eyes and mind registered the stark image of one anonymous person inside going down at once, almost cut in half by fragments. In the next second, berserker boarding machines came pouring in, across the lobby floor and a moment later into the wide common room itself.
From the first crash of the break-in, Harry had never doubted that these were real berserker boarders.
Traditionally such machines were built to the approximate size of ED humans, the better to cope with ED hatches, pa.s.sageways, and controls. No paddies this time, and no fakes-you might as well mistake a house cat for the carnivore used as berserker fodder in the Trophy Room.
Some specific but not enormous number of them were coming in, too fast for him to count, through the main airlock leading to the dock-which might well have been left unlocked, or even with one of the double doors standing open, as it had been most of the time. n.o.body had wanted to take the time to think about defense, let alone spend time and effort on that line.
The enemy bodies came in only a narrow range of sizes, but there was considerable variation among them in shape, and also in the weapons with which they were equipped.
In the midst of deafening blasts and crashes, Harry's thumb was releasing the safety on the force-packet carbine. The weapon was already fully charged-he liked to keep all of his tools that way-and fate granted him almost a full second in which to shoot the nearest berserker three times, smas.h.i.+ng it to rubble, before another machine was suddenly in his face, not dealing death but simply trying to take his weapon away from him. The sound of gunfire peaked around him-he was not the only badlife who had been armed and almost ready.
Harry knew from experience that in a good strong suit and with a bit of luck he might almost be able to hold his own in this kind of wrestling bout-depending, of course, on just what model of killing machine he had to face. His current foe was beginning the match with more arms than Harry had at his disposal, but almost at once Harry was able to even the odds a bit, getting a double grip on one appendage and breaking it off close to the root. The enemy paid no attention to the loss, but in the next instant some other human being had shot it, finis.h.i.+ng it off.
Force-packets from his fusion-powered carbine pulverized and melted the charging machine that got in their way. Fragments of berserker metal went flying back, while other pieces continued forward with the impetus of its charge.
Any man or woman who really knew how to use an armored suit could augment effective human bodily strength to a level very close to that of a berserker machine of human size-but no suit could enable a man or woman to match this enemy's speed. Or its coordination.
Still, Harry had prevailed in the first round of the fight. As the timeless sequence of the combat unfolded, the suspicion flashed through his mind that while he was doing his best to blast and wreck the machines around him, they were only trying to disarm him.
Two more a.s.sailants were immediately coming after him. He fired at darting forms, moving with machine-tool speed, and missed.
Human bodies, some already dead and some still living, went flying this way and that. Screams echoed on the intercom, and there were sounds that Harry could not identify.
Flame flared around his helmet, the glare and heat both baffled by his statgla.s.s faceplate. Harry and one of the other a.s.sault team members who proved to have a knack for this sort of thing, both got their weapons working briefly, and some shattered berserker parts mingled with the other flying debris.
The action in the common room, and up and down the nearby sections of corridor, was fiercely fought, punctuated by violent explosions. There came a moment when Harry had one of the common room's cleared viewports in his field of vision, long enough to be able to see that theSecret Weapon had vanished from its berth at the nearby dock. An entire s.h.i.+p couldn't have been vaporized that quickly, not without someone noticing the blast, so it must have somehow managed to get away just ahead of the attacker's arrival. Who would have been aboard? The Lady Masaharu almost certainly, probably at the controls. There might not have been anyone else, as far as Harry could remember.
The modest hold of theSecret Weapon had just been freshly packed with special, undoubtedly illegal, robots, designed and built in one of Cheng Enterprises' many workshops, especially to kill berserkers.
Whether that hardware was going to work as designed or not, it seemed highly unlikely now that it was ever going to do anybody any good.
There was no time to sight, but at point-blank range it would have been difficult to miss. The white glare would have blinded Harry, or burned his face off, without his statgla.s.s helmet, and the blast in the confined s.p.a.ce might have destroyed his ears.
Something moving too fast for Harry to really see it grabbed the barrel of his carbine. Unable to knock it away, or pull it from his servo-powered grip, it bent the weapon's stubby barrel and tore free its connections to the power supply in his suit's backpack.
Some of Harry's teammates were fighting just as hard as he was. Others had been demolished before they could get moving, and one or two had tried to surrender-without success.
Harry got a good look in through someone's faceplate as the person died, or seemed to die. Doc had at last run out of good advice to offer.
Harry caught a quick glimpse of the bulbous tip of a berserker firearm, a s.h.i.+ny k.n.o.b in which he thought he could sense destruction swelling. But death did not leap out at him. Instead, grippers of enormous power were starting to close upon his arms and legs.
With a surge of effort, exerting the maximum power of his suit, he tore his body free of the enemy's grasp. His suit could help him move, but it couldn't provide him with any place to go. Conscious of the painful slowness of mere flesh and blood, he went scrambling, reaching, diving, rolling over a littered deck, trying to pick up a replacement weapon. He had almost reached the locker in which a box of grenades ought to be waiting for him- Just as his fingers touched the stock of a spare carbine, a berserker's grip closed on his left ankle. At the same time Harry's helmet rang like a gong, its statgla.s.s faceplate reverberating under the impact of a direct hit, vibrations dwindling away to nothingness in half a second. But the plate had saved his face.
Another impact smote his torso. Heavy suit and all, his body went whipping and hurtling through the breathable, carefully humidified air, now fogging with debris and escaping gases.
Blows that would have crushed the life out of an unsuited gorilla knocked Harry down. He was just congratulating himself on managing to hang on to the new carbine when it was gone, somehow torn cleanly from his grip.
He kept expecting some fatal impact to puncture his own suit, come right in through armor and fabric to find the ribs and heart, but so far he was still alive, despite an endless ongoing barrage of incidental and glancing blows, from flying fragments of debris and waves of heat, all of which his armor was capable of deflecting. He had the sensation of being pounded with heavy hammers. Nothing like this could just go on and on. But it did.
While the brawl endured, it seemed, like most fights, to be taking place in some domain outside of time.