Unstable Prototypes (59 page)

Lex tossed the suit away and briefly
considered drawing his pistol, but abandoned the idea when it
dawned on him that if he was holding a gun, they might think he
knew how to use it and decide to shoot first and ask questions
later. Sure, the chances were good that it was their general policy
to shoot first and skip the questions altogether, and it wasn't as
though he was going to be able to convince them that he was a
tourist who took a wrong turn, but Lex felt that as long as he was
a harmless idiot, he ought to look like one. Leaving the gun on his
belt took care of the harmless part, and just in case there was any
doubt as to the idiot part, he set off to follow the scampering
critter with a radio strapped to its back who was calling the shots
by acting on a hunch.

#

Half a station away, a single guard was
watching from the other side of a locked cell door as a medic
worked on Karter inside the cell. The inventor had stopped
screaming and grunting in pain a minute or two ago, and now seemed
to have lapsed into a state of delirium from the pain. A patch
attached to his chest was bleeping off the irregular rhythm of his
heart. All around them, the station was echoing with the sounds of
distant battle. The soldier twitched at the sound of each ricochet
like a dog straining its leash. In his hands was the mechanical arm
that had been removed from the scientist, which the soldier was
fiddling with in irritation.

"Listen, hurry up! The first real action I've
had a chance to see besides babysitting this mad scientist is
happening and I'm missing it!" he urged.

"It is going to be a few minutes more. I need
to check if there is any internal bleeding."

"Look, just let him die, right? He did his
job, and he wants us dead."

The medic stood and faced the soldier.
"Listen, don't you think I want him dead? But I've got orders."

"You think it matters how well you follow
orders if whoever is invading manages to blow this place up?"

There was a rattle and crash. The medic
turned to find Karter convulsing, having knocked the contents of
the med pack all over the floor.

"Now you see what you let happen? He could be
going into shock. You want to go fight? Fine. He's pretty far out
of it. I don't think I need you looking over my shoulder and
distracting me."

"Finally!" the eager soldier proclaimed,
throwing the prosthetic limb to the floor and rushing off to find
glory.

The medic crouched and sifted through the
tools scattered on the floor.

"Where did that stim go?" he muttered.

Suddenly Karter stopped convulsing and the
patch on his chest gave a long, even tone.

"God damn it!" the medic growled, leaning low
to check the scientist's respiration and begin pumping his
chest.

In a lightning motion, Karter's remaining arm
whipped around and plunged a hypo-injector into the medic's neck.
The futuristic replacement for a needle blasted a dose of unknown
medication into the hapless medical technician's bloodstream. He
had enough time to lurch to his feet and get out half of a syllable
of a cry for help before he shuddered and dropped to the ground.
Karter sat up, breathing heavy and pouring sweat, and glanced at
the spent vial in the injector.

"Heh, sedative. You lucked out," he
remarked.

He frowned and looked down at the monitor on
his chest, which was still blaring out the helpful reminder that
his heart was not, in fact, beating. He made a fist and tapped his
chest a few times, like a man trying to unearth a decent belch. The
monitor stuttered and began to beep again.

"Let that be a lesson to you," Karter said
wearily, "Never trust an off-the-shelf heart monitor to monitor a
custom made heart correctly."

He tore the monitor off and tried to stand
up, but grimaced and fell back to the floor, clutching his
back.

"Okay, fine," he grumbled, rolling over and
fumbling his hand through the scattered medical equipment until he
came up with the appropriate vial, which he chambered in the
injector and administered to his neck. His eyes rolled back and he
grinned. "Oooh. That's the stuff."

He loaded three more vials of painkiller into
his pocket, then paused and grabbed three more for the road. After
a few seconds to let the painkiller kick in, he grabbed the bars
and hauled himself off of the floor, struggling to the edge of the
cell and reaching around to the keypad that controlled the
lock.

"Another lesson, since you're here," Karter
said, his voice somewhat slurred by the affects of the medication.
"If your prisoner has a wireless datalink built into his eye, don't
put a security camera directly opposite his cell. I tapped into
that baby six hours after I got here. Doesn't matter how many times
you change the key code if I can see you enter it."

He managed to key in the code, causing the
door to click open. The combination of medication, missing limbs,
and injury made retrieving his arm a less than simple matter, but
once it was affixed, he dragged himself to the nearby bank of
lockers until he found where they kept his leg.

"There," he said, clicking it into place and
mopping the sweat from a face that was steadily getting paler.
"Time to cause some problems."

#

Silo and Garotte pounded their way down the
battle-scarred hall. Spitting wires and hissing pipes that had been
torn apart by the rampaging Zerk were scattered across the
walls.

"Now then," Garotte announced as he ran, "We
are looking for a weapon, so it would stand to reason the weapons
bay is a good start. That is three decks down. We should find an
access ladder- COVER!"

Garotte dove to one side of the corridor,
Silo to the other, each cramming themselves as far as possible
behind the bulkhead surrounding a submarine-style
compartmentalization door.

"Four on the left, two on the right," Silo
dictated. "Small arms, energy weapons, lightly modified. I'll
take-"

As she was speaking, a quiet whine had grown
steadily louder, and finally interrupted her as a vicious crackle
of energy. An instant later, the bulkhead a few inches above her
helmet exploded into molten metal. A few drops of incandescent
liquid metal sprinkled on her helmet and quickly began to melt
through. She scrambled to pull the helmet off just in time for the
white-hot drop to fall through into the space that moments earlier
would have been her skull.

"What the hell are they shooting!?" she
screamed, briefly looking through the widening hole left by the
weapon.

Garotte leaned out and took a few shots with
his pistol, causing the soldiers to take cover. A second later one
of the men stepped out and tapped a control strapped to his arm,
two or three behind him doing the same. Garotte aimed and fired.
The bolt of energy hit its target... and rebounded off of a briefly
visible glimmering surface, deflecting into the wall.

"Bad news. I think Karter might have equipped
them with some of his toys," Garotte said with a tremor of nerves
in his voice.

The shielded soldier smiled, squeezing the
trigger of his fully-automatic ballistic rifle without even raising
it to his eye. A deafening sequence of blasts was followed by a
peculiar rattling clatter. Along with the sound came a random
shimmer of shield and shudder of the soldier. It wasn't until the
sound finally stopped and the soldier crumbled to the ground,
perforated with bullet holes, that it became clear what had
happened. The shield was equally good at reflecting projectiles
fired from the
inside,
and from the looks of it, his body
hadn't been enough to keep some of the bullets from making multiple
trips back and forth.

"... Make that half-finished toys," Garotte
amended.

The soldiers who had just moments before
activated their own shields made panicked motions to deactivate
them, while others stepped forward and raised a few more
charge-gun-enhanced weapons. In a well rehearsed rhythm, Silo and
Garotte began to alternately lean out and fire shots. The fire was
enough to keep the soldiers from unleashing their over-powered
weapons, but only one or two shots met their mark.

"This is no good," Garotte said between
shots, "If we don't make any ground, they can get a second squad in
to flank us. I don't want to get into a turkey shoot. The access
ladder is in the no man's land between us. We just need to break
the stalemate for a few seconds."

"Coming right up, hon," Silo said, pulling a
grenade from her bandolier and tossing it into the chamber
ahead.

"Grenade!" came the cry from the soldiers as
they evacuated in panicked unison.

As they moved back, the rescue party moved
forward, striding quickly to the ladder and sliding down. After a
few seconds, no explosion came and the most courageous of the
soldiers stepped forward to find the grenade. The pin had not been
pulled. He rushed to the ladder to find the access hatch closed and
fused. While tools were deployed to release the door and soldiers
were deployed to find alternate routes, Silo and Garotte continued
toward their goal.

#

In her control center, Commander Purcell
looked on. The bulk of her men were facing off against something
that looked like a hurricane of cutlery. The cameras inside the
ship were barely able to register any details beyond streaks of
black and silver. It usually didn't take long before the cameras
and in some cases the power systems for the section of the station
currently playing host to the mayhem were destroyed. Her mind
grasped at possibilities.

"Commander, we need orders!" the tactical
officer urged.

She looked to the ship layout.

"Close bulkhead L3-8 and L3-10," she
ordered.

Two indicators toggled, and on the cameras,
the machine and eight of her men were sealed between the
bulkheads.

"I want those men formed up in the center of
the sealed area," Purcell said.

The tactical officer delivered the orders and
she watched through the one remaining camera as her soldiers, men
who had been delivered into the arms of the Neo-Luddites by the
mind searing psychological scars of having had to face a mindless
machine, valiantly attempted to follow orders in the face of
something that made their past trauma seem like a pleasant dream in
comparison.

"Close bulkhead L3-9 and L3-10."

Two more heavy doors dropped into place,
sealing off five men and Zerk.

"Blow evacuation hatch L3-K. On my
authorization. Command Voice Code Six eight eight three."

The tactical officer's hand hesitated over
the execute command. "I can't execute without two senior officer's
codes."

"Do it, number 2."

"Commander, five of our men-"

"Now!" she cried.

"Command Voice Code Nine four eight four," he
murmured.

A small breaching charge detonated, and the
audio feed from the camera registered a brief burst of sound and
cluster of screams before the air, the soldiers, and the war
machine were all sucked from the chamber. The man at the controls
stared at the soundless screen, watching the silent struggles of
the last man to be pulled out until the dim light of the chamber
and the angle of the camera would show no more. He didn't say
anything. He didn't have to.

"Those men died for our cause," Purcell said
without emotion or apology. "And never,
never
hesitate in
following my orders. Tactical, locate any additional
intruders."

The officer tapped at the controls.

"The machine caused extensive damage to our
power grid. Most visual scanners are down. Based on the last fully
functional sweep, it looks like we've got two intruders, military,
that were heading to the lower decks."

"I want all lower deck soldiers near vertical
shafts to attempt to intercept them."

"We've also got a third intruder, lightly
armed, and... some sort of animal. They were leaving the docking
section. Most of the soldiers from that section of the station were
killed by the machine."

"Redirect one squad from Deck 2."

"Continuing analysis of sweep. Commander,
Karter! He's out of his cell!"

"How did that happen? Where is he?"

"I don't know. It looks like he was heading
to the storage section. Based on system access, he's been
attempting to disengage security on the storage bays. He's finished
one through four, and he's working on number five now."

"Storage bays... Dear God! Any soldiers we
can spare, get them down there, now! I want him stopped, killed if
necessary, before he gets into storage bay eight! Do you hear
me!?"

"Issuing orders now."

She pulled her communicator. "Engineering!
Status!"

"Engineering here. Just a few more minutes
and we can begin downloading the final software routines."

"Get it done, now! Do not stop for
anything!"

#

"How are we doing, Ma?" Lex asked as he
hustled after the little creature.

Thus far, they had been unbelievably lucky.
Only one detachment of soldiers had sprinted by, and fortunately
they had seemed to have better things to worry about, since they
hadn't even slowed down to check the area.

"I am confident that we are approaching him.
I believe I have achieved a level of proficiency in interpreting
the fine pattern recognition capabilities of the funk olfactory
system," she replied.

"You figured out how to smell better?"

"The deodorizing treatment is still
effective. I smell fine, Lex."

"What? … Ma, was that a joke?"

"There is considerable evidence that humor
can have stress reducing effects."

"That may be true Ma, but there isn't a joke
in the universe good enough to do the job right now."

"Acknowledged. This way," she stated,
scrabbling her claws across the grating and bounding down the
nearest ladder.