Unstable Prototypes (63 page)

"Station records indicate that the
Neo-Luddites are extremely under-equipped, and most of their
existing large-scale weaponry was disassembled for the parts to
create the CME Activators and subsequent fabricated equipment."

"Well that would have been nice to know five
minutes ago. Everybody, clear out. This door is about to get what's
coming to it," Silo said, unstrapping her grenade belt and
beginning to make some choice selections.

"This way my boy," Garotte said, grasping Lex
and pulling him down the hallway. "Here's what you need to do while
we're working at this. Find a spare suit so that we can get Silo
back into the ship for the getaway, or get Ma to pressurize the
launch bay..."

"Please remember that you are now able to
address me directly," Ma stated.

"... then go and wrangle Karter, and get him
to the Declaration. And ditch the rodent," Garotte continued. "I'll
stay here and see to it that nothing happens to our darling Miss
Silo."

"Your referral to my previous incarnation as
a rodent is once again inappropriate in terms of both biology and
etiquette," Ma further objected.

"What happens if I run into soldiers?" Lex
asked.

Garotte tapped the gun in his hand, "Shoot
them. Are we clear?"

"Crystal," Lex replied.

"Splendid. Off with you, then," he said,
slapping the pilot on the back to send him on his way.

As Lex rushed off, Ma spoke through his
radio. "I have begun rapid-pressurizing the docking bay. Please
focus your attentions preferentially on Karter. I will link your
radio to the com panel in the storage bay now."

After a tone, Lex yelled, "Karter!"

"You aren't dead?" Karter's voice responded
with a vaguely insulting level of surprise.

"No, I'm not. Your concern is touching. Are
you okay up there?"

"Yeah. Except for the way the room is
spinning. I don't know if it is the blood loss or the meds, but I
am
feelin'
it right now."

"Well, we've got a ship in the hangar..."

"Me, Silo, Garotte, M-"

"Am I supposed to know who those people
are?"

"You worked with them!"

"Doesn't sound like anyone I'd associate
with," Karter slurred.

"Ma, help me out here," Lex groaned.

"Gladly, Lex. Mr. Alexander is referring to
Sgt. Jessica Winters, the heavy weapons expert, and the variously
named British agent, each of whom had routinely sought your help
until their incarceration."

"Ma? What are you doing here?"

"I am performing my primary function: Keeping
and/or getting you out of trouble."

"Well you screwed up the first part."

"Perhaps if you were a more effective
programmer, this wouldn't have happened."

"Can we do this later?" Lex asked, "I want
very badly to get out of here."

"Yeah. Me too. The food's terrible," Karter
groaned.

#

Silo and Garotte retreated to a safe
distance, and for good measure, ducked inside a separate room.

"That's a hell of a door. It took every
grenade I had. Variables at cross beams, high yield at key
supports. The line between 'get the door open' and 'crack the hull'
is a pretty narrow one. What I did should be enough to knock it
from its hinges. Fuse should blow in five," Silo said before
covering her ears.

The explosion came on schedule, and was the
short, sharp clap of a controlled explosion combined with the odd,
rippling echo one gets from loud sounds in hallways. When the
creaking of metal and the rattle of equipment settled down, and
there was no sudden rush of escaping gas that would have indicated
a hull breech, the pair ventured outside. Every light even remotely
nearby was shattered, leaving them in complete darkness. Garotte
tapped on his helmet-mounted lights and observed the carnage. Most
of the hallway was a mess of twisted, blackened metal, and the
whole wall was bowed inward... but the door was still in place.

"E-
gad
they built these stations
sturdy back then," Garotte mused.

Silo paced up to the door, looked it over,
and gave it a powerful thrust kick. The weakened metal let out a
final screech and the door rattled to the ground like an overturned
turtle.

"I was close. I guess I'm just a bit rusty,"
she said, ducking inside, Garotte hot on her heels.

The interior of the weapons bay was just as
bare as Ma had suggested. Normally it was a machinery-strewn room.
A bit taller than one deck and barely three meters deep, it was
nearly as long as their hallway battleground. One could see where a
thicket of mechanical limbs, conveyors, and equipment had once been
attached with the purpose of feeding ammunition to the primary
weapons systems. Now the cupboard was bare, with the ammo racks and
cases open and empty, and machinery scavenged to build Karter's
toys. Along the floor were three troughs, the only portions of the
bay that were fully stocked and intact, each displaying two
nondescript missiles lying end to end. They were the size and shape
of metallic telephone poles, with panel-seams and emitter heads
scattered sparsely across the surface and a black tiled tip serving
as the only details, and giving it the appearance of a burnt wooden
match as envisioned by a jeweler.

Without wasting time for his usual round of
banter, Garotte drew his weapon and fired a burst of shots. Rather
than striking the CMEA, they splashed against a field of some sort,
vanishing without even a scorch mark. Several additional shots to
the others brought the same effect. That is to say, no effect at
all.

"That's disappointing," he said steadily,
keying the radio. "Lex, have you found Karter yet?"

"Still getting there, but we've got a line
open to him," Lex replied.

"Karter, how do we destroy these missiles you
made?"

"With great difficulty. They're designed to
plunge as far as possible into a
star
, remember?"

"There's got to be a way."

"Well, if you fracture a few of the heat
tiles in the front, they'll burn up before they can do their thing.
Those are ceramic, pretty brittle. Low velocity blunt force should
get through the energy shielding, and enough of it would do the
trick..."

Silo rushed to the tip of one of the
missiles, raised the butt of her recently borrowed rifle, and
bashed at the tip, causing one of the tiles to chip.

"...I wouldn't recommend it, though. It has
automated defenses," he continued.

One of the panels near the center of the
missile popped aside and revealed a small energy cannon, which
fired three random shots that Silo narrowly managed to dodge before
it retracted again.

"Why would you
put
something like that
on there!?" She cried.

"So it would do that to people who try to do
what you did. I design things to get jobs done, even if people try
to stop them. That's the way-" Karter began.

"Someone is accessing the exterior release,"
Ma announced.

"We're out of time," Garotte said.

Silo ran to the damaged CMEA and delivered
another blow, rolling aside and attempting to strike another while
the first one fired. The mechanisms controlling the door began to
grind.

"I cannot stop the door. It will open in less
than a minute," Ma alerted.

"Silo, now! Between us and the crazy woman
with the knife, half of the doors are blown open. Half of this
station is about to be a hard vacuum and you don't have a
helmet!"

"Millions of lives, Garotte! This is the
mission!" Silo proclaimed.

"You can't break them all, we need another
way!"

"I don't care, I have to try!"

"You-"

Whatever sentiment he'd had in mind was cut
short by the apocalyptic wail of air escaping. The spaceward wall
split like a zipper, inching slowly open. Garotte flipped down and
sealed the visor of his suit. Silo dropped to the ground and
grasped the edge of the missile-trough and dragged herself forward.
The flow of air was steadily increasing in intensity. Garotte
looked desperately about until he caught sight of a case installed
on the wall, its door flapping in the growing gale. He barely
managed to reach it before the rushing wind pulled his feet from
the ground. He hooked the end of the strap for his own rifle onto a
brace inside and unhooked the other end, looping it through a belt
on the space suit before finally releasing his grip on the case.
The escaping atmosphere ripped him to the end of the strap, where
he dangled and whipped, a foot or so from the point where Silo ran
out of handholds. He extended his hand to her, and she shakily
extended hers. Loose bolts and fragments of metal were launching
through the bay, gouging into the floor and ceiling. A fragment of
shrapnel slashed across one arm of his suit, breaking the seal. One
or two of the stray soldiers on the deck made a brief appearance in
the bay before tumbling out the door. The rush of wind all but
blinded Silo, but finally her hand met his.

Instantly her grip nearly crushed his
fingers. Hand over hand, she hauled herself down his arm, down his
body, along the strap, and finally into the case. Shielded at least
partially from the wind, but already feeling the effects of the
drop in pressure, she managed to reel Garotte in, and the two of
them wrestled the door shut. In the pitch black and cramped
confines, Garotte found the control pad for his suit and punched in
a command that opened a vent and pressurized the tiny space. It
wasn't until the wind outside gave way mostly to airless vacuum
that they became aware of the voice insistently repeating a
message.

"-is open and atmosphere loss is critical.
Silo and Garotte, what is your status? The door is open and
atmosphere loss is critical. Silo and Garotte-" Ma's voice
droned.

"We're here! We're okay," Silo said,
gratefully gasping deep breaths of the oxygen.

"There was an equipment case for
pressure-sensitive tools and materials. We managed to get inside,
but until you can get this weapons bay pressurized again, we're
stuck here, because Silo doesn't have an intact suit, and neither
do I," Garotte explained. "There are at least four undamaged
missiles."

"Karter, Lex, please report status," Ma
said.

"I got to Karter. It was a little tricky
getting into the transporter room, now that half the floor is
missing, but I got him and the suit out. Now me, M- Uh... Squee,
and Karter are in the next corridor over. There is an awful lot of
creaking and groaning, but I think we're air tight, at least for
now," Lex replied over the radio. "What do we do now?"

"Processing... I have taken full control of
long range communication and external sensors. I am attempting to
prepare a contingency. In the meantime, is your space suit intact?"
Ma asked.

"Yes."

"Has Karter been outfitted with a suit?"

"Not yet, he's being uncooperative."

"Hey, listen. I'm already losing my buzz, and
I'm not in a friendly mood thanks to this hole in my back, which
everybody seems to be ignoring," remarked Karter.

"Lex, you will have to find a way to reach
the weapons bay and prevent the CMEA from firing. Karter, you need
to find a way to detonate the station if Lex fails," Ma
dictated.

"That would kill me, Ma," Karter said, as if
to a child. "We don't do that, remember?"

"It would kill all of us, but it would save a
considerable number of lives. It is an undesirable result, but
preferable to the alternative."

"I seriously messed up some of your
algorithms, Ma," he muttered. "When we get home-"

"The weapons bay doors have finished opening.
There is someone accessing the manual launch controls. Patching in
to communications."

#

In the weapons bay, Purcell was crouched at a
small panel on the floor. The station's gravity had pulled her down
upon her entry, and it was the work of a few moments to find the
manual launch control. Three commands were all it took to drop all
six missiles into launch tubes. Entering the command authorization
for the actual launch was proving to be more time consuming though,
particularly with the bulky gloves of the emergency pressure suit
she'd been forced to use. Unlike its voice counterpart, the code
was easily as cumbersome as the suit, an eighty digit mess that a
less disciplined commander wouldn't have taken the time to
memorize.

"Discontinue your current activities or I
will be forced to take preventative measures," Ma instructed
through the emergency suit's radio.

"You're the one who refused to launch the
missiles!" Purcell hissed, "Who are you?"

"Altruistic Artificial Intelligence Control
System, Version 1.27, revision 2331.04.01, subset 1.2, Designation
'Ma,'" she replied.

"An artificial intelligence? Then there is
nothing you can do to stop me. You are not capable of harming a
human," the commander said, going back to work.

"Incorrect. I am an Altruistic AI. There is
no programmatic safeguard prohibiting that or any other action. So
don't tempt me.
"

"There's no way you can attack me in here.
There is no computer control anymore."

"One of my associates is en route to your
location, and an additional alternative is being deployed."

"Uh..." Lex's voice interjected over the
radio. "I might be a bit held up. There are some soldiers here
still, and they've got me and Karter cornered."

A radio crackle signaled some actions on Ma's
part. When she spoke again, it was only to her allies. "I have
gained control of primary and secondary navigational control. The
damage to the station is extreme, but I may be able to cause a
distraction. Please restrain yourselves."

"Karter, hold on. Okay, done," said Lex,
grabbing tightly to the nearest handrail in the side chamber he'd
taken refuge in.

"This should be good," Karter remarked.