Part 29 (2/2)
”Her current whereabouts are unknown.”
Bren took stock of their losses. Pythagoras sat still at the edge of the hangar. The machine had crumpled forward onto its folded front legs. Smoke and sparks flickered out from three small holes in its chest. Six marines shared its fate, bleeding out on the hangar floor. Bren forced himself to look at the mess of blood that ill.u.s.trated the vulnerability of human bodies. Medics were working on clearing away the first group of dead and wounded.
Bren checked the mission chronometer in his tactical pane. They'd been in Synchronicity for less than an hour.
”How did the Reds get in there? I didn't see one come in,” Bren said. He began searching through the visual feeds of other machines trying to spot one.
”There are holes in the hangar that weren't there when we first got in,” Henley said. ”I think they may have used the molecule cutters to create murder holes in the walls.”
Bren hadn't heard of a murder hole before, but the name spoke for itself. The Reds must have cut openings in the metal wall so they could attack from cover.
Bren watched a fresh team of engineers open a simple plastic crate on the bloodied deck. It held dozens of round metal spheres. More grenades, Bren thought. They dumped the weapons onto the floor. Bren guessed there were a hundred or more of the devices.
”This is a surprise some of our guys whipped up since we're low on mines,” Henley said. ”We've targeted these grenades for a spinner. All we have to do is give the order and those things will roll out looking for a spinner to glue down. We have five incendiary grenades, as well.”
”Why didn't we do that when we arrived?” Bren asked.
”Those things can't go far, and we didn't know if the Reds would be waiting. They're mostly payload, without much battery power. I think they could travel maybe three or four hundred meters to a target. We'll use them to secure the bridgehead.”
”Unless they get hacked by a Red and reprogrammed,” Bren said.
”All our weapons are hackable, but it would be hard. They each have their own set of one-use codes.”
”I hope so. These creatures are advanced. We have to store and deploy those codes without tampering.”
Bren browsed through data in his PV for fifteen minutes while the marines tried to clean up the bay and secure it. He thought the job could easily take half an hour, but no one wanted to wait around and give the enemy any longer to figure out how to counter the UNSF incursion.
He found a camera feed from a small reconnaissance robot that Henley sent out toward the main concourse. The concourse served as a transportation artery that ran the circ.u.mference of Synchronicity. The tracked vehicle stood lower than an average human, with several visual sensors and a pair of thin graspers that each had four fingers and a thumb. Bren was struck by how humanlike the movements of its hands were as it manually actuated a door handle. The robot pushed the door open and went inside.
The camera view peeked around a corner. Bren got the feeling that the robot could look around corners without moving its body into the open. It crept through an empty machine shop and a locker room before coming to an exit out onto the main station concourse. Bren hadn't seen any people or machines. He hoped all the people had gone to hide in their quarters as the UNSF broadcast order had instructed, but he doubted they all had, since they seemed controlled by the Reds.
Bren watched as the scout rolled out onto an open walkway in front of a Pho restaurant. All the food must be takeout under the new station rules, he thought. The machine panned its camera to peer inside, but no one was visible through the front windows.
The scout rounded the edge of the store entrance and looked farther down the concourse. Bren spotted a round robot with two short arms bearing weapons. Bren recognized it as a Circle Four. The security machine rolled closer on wide treads, traveling straight down the main walkway. He didn't have a good enough view to tell exactly how it was armed.
The feed went dead. Apparently, the Circle Four didn't take kindly to visitors.
”Stop! We're not ready to move on!” Henley transmitted. Bren s.h.i.+fted his attention back to the a.s.sAILs. He saw from a tactical viewpane in his PV that the a.s.sault machines headed toward the concourse.
”We should engage now before the enemy reaches full concentration on the concourse,” Meridian said. Bren didn't object. It made sense that the Reds had organized a response using the concourse, since it was the quickest way around the circ.u.mference of the station.
”If you have information about the enemy disposition, then why haven't you shared it with us?” Henley demanded.
”The situation is fluid and complex,” Meridian said on the marine and a.s.sAIL channels. The machines were still moving as it talked. ”We have data that would appear fragmented and unrelated under a shallow a.n.a.lysis, but we can act with some degree of confidence. I suggest you remain here and prepare your defenses in case we have to fall back.”
Bren sighed. The a.s.sAILs were less than a minute from the concourse.
”I guess we've lost control of them,” Henley said to Bren on a private channel.
”Probably not. At least not yet. But I didn't bother trying to stop them because if I did, it would cost us ... I think it would solidify an impression of human weakness to the AI cores. Let's let them do their job. We may yet be able to issue a couple of orders if it becomes critical.”
”Have you ever thought about it the other way? If we keep them on a tight leash, they may think we know better. Now I complained to them, they explained themselves, and we accepted it. Showing them that we aren't on top of what's going on.”
”I think the tight leash would work a short time,” Bren said. ”But then it could get worse fast when we forced them into a snafu. Then they'd see how bad we are at warfare without them.”
Bren watched Meridian approach the concourse entrance. A couple of humans in gear sniped at the machines from the opening. They scrambled when a glue grenade shot out past them onto the rubberized roadway beyond.
Bren lost sight of the people. The a.s.sAILs charged out into the concourse and immediately started to fire.
Boom. Boom. Boom.
Bren couldn't see the targets from the camera feed. A tactical view of the machines indicated that three machines were facing in each direction and firing.
”Circle Fours coming in from both sides,” Bren noted.
Boom. Boom.
Meridian fired and dodged behind a support column. A person in gear darted out from the other side of the column and shot Meridian with a projectile rifle then rolled back behind the cover. Meridian responded by launching another glue grenade, banking it off the wall so it went hurtling around the column.
”Plato is heating up,” said its handler. ”Some of its optics went out.”
Bren accessed the base schematics looking for the nearest laser emplacement. Sure enough, there was a security hardpoint sixty meters down the concourse equipped with a heavy laser.
The tactical showed Plato had retreated into a travel store to remove itself from the line of fire. Bren a.s.sumed that one of the a.s.sAILs would knock out the laser any moment with their 12mm cannons.
”Fractures,” two handlers said in unison.
”Patton,” one continued.
”Pandora,” said the other.
Bren heard the kah-wump of glue grenades going off. Glue tendrils whipped past the view on Meridian, but he couldn't tell who tried to glue whom.
Boom. Boom.
Bren sighed and watched the tactical. He'd lost track of the sniper that had engaged Meridian, but he a.s.sumed the person wasn't a major threat to the a.s.sAILs.
Nothing I can do but watch, he told himself again.
”Pandora's down,” a handler said. ”I'm putting in for a transfer.”
Bren wasn't too concerned. The handlers could screw up and cause trouble for a mission, but trouble in a mission didn't mean they had screwed up. Still, the handlers were serious about their jobs and often took it personally when their machine was killed. Much as Hoffman exhibited the opposite reaction-pride-when Meridian survived time and again.
Boom.
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