Part 24 (2/2)
”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.”
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