Jean glanced at Jebel and raised an eyebrow. He shrugged in reply. Obviously these Sparkind were trained to a level he'd never encountered before. He did not know of any humans, even boosted, who could take a six metre drop in their stride.
Helen slapped the decoder mine against the glass. Immediately it activated, initiating the disintegration of the molecular chains in the glass. The entire window turned white, crazed, then collapsed into a falling curtain of glittery powder. Helen vaulted through, swiftly followed by Urbanus. He heard a muffled «Bollocks» from below and made a slight reassessment of Helen's superhuman abilities. Minutes dragged by, then, "Okay, you're clear."
They moved quickly down the stairs, the first two covering the rest as they moved into the shut-down factory. Helen took her three to the first monolithic machine—an enormous powder forge—then moved on to track along beside a conveyer. Jebel brought his three to the forge and they took up cover positions. And so it continued through aisles between moulding machines with micrometrically adjustable moulds, more conveyors, rollers, presses, welding and general-purpose assembler robots. As they moved it became necessary to scan and cover much above floor level as well, because this factory's production lines did not only run in two dimensions. That half the grav-plates were active in here was unusual as such factories were normally zero gee with the machines working in three dimensions. A cage-work extended from floor to ceiling, supporting further machines, robots, conveyers, all the panoply of high-tech, high-speed production. Entering such a place when it was in operation would not have been a clever idea. The AI running it would obviously try to avoid causing you injury, but you might get in the way of some process it just could not stop in time, and you'd get ground up in the cogs.
Halfway across the alloy floor, Helen was one moment walking, then she launched herself into the air, diving upwards to thump against an extruder caught mid-belch of rows of coppery pipes. Urbanus remained at floor level while the other two jumped up and to either side to roughly form the axis pattern Helen required of them as they advanced. When Jebel reached the deactivated grav-plates, he signalled for Jean Klars to remain at floor level, the other two to take the sides, while he launched himself for the ceiling. Almost the moment he stopped himself against the underside of a large crane arm, the firing started.
The hideous racket of a projectile stream slamming against machinery sent most of them ducking for cover, but the ricochets all about made it difficult to locate the source. Jebel thought himself hit, blood and gobbets of flesh spattered him. A laser also fired, the beam not visible except where it struck. Flashes lit the entire factory as if someone were using an arc welder. As he pulled himself up behind the thicker part of the arm, Jebel saw one of those with Helen, tumbling through the air with smoke belching from his body. He bounced against the side of a multipress, scattering blackened pieces, then burst into flame. Jebel felt vulnerable where he hung—not enough metal between himself and whatever lay ahead of them. He pushed off from the arm, coiling himself in a ball while he flew across the gap between the arm and some bulbous furnace. The snap-crack of a laser tracked him, and he pulled himself to cover with a leg of his fatigues smouldering.
"Our commander is no longer with us," said Urbanus over com.
Jebel realised that now—he saw Helen's remains floating up by the ceiling. "Have you got that bastard spotted?"
"Thosebastards, I suspect," the Golem replied.
Jebel took a quick look at the masses of machinery ahead, then ducked back. By his estimation, the one with the laser hid behind an automated milling machine down on the floor to his left.
"Covering fire," he ordered, then, upside down, crawled down the face of the furnace until he obtained a better view from underneath it. The racket of weapons fire and the stink of burning filled the air. Movement behind the mill—confirmation. He fired five explosive missiles. Out of the explosion leapt a Prador, bouncing acrobatically from machine to machine. They hit it three or four times, but it did not slow. Of course, with that number of limbs it was much better in AG than humans, and could afford to lose a few. The creature darted between two heavy powder forges.
"All of you but Jean target the other side of those two forges. Jean, concentrated burst this side—just don't stop firing."
The rail-gun Jean wielded filled the gap between the two machines with a hornet swarm of lethal ricochets and ceramal shrapnel. The Prador hurtled from the other side to avoid this hail. It trailed smoke in the convergence of fire from the others and Jebel enjoyed the satisfaction of seeing three of his missiles slam home. The creature flew apart. Jebel observed one leg stuck to a metal surface nearby, still quivering. Then the second Prador appeared, leaping a gap. Urbanus used the launcher facility on his carbine, pumping grenade after grenade up through a narrow gap from his position below. The Prador tried to jump clear of them but went straight into the convergence of laser strikes. It issued a bubbling shriek, struck the side of a conveyer and tumbled out into the open. Some of its limbs burst open, smoke and flame wreathed it as the concentrated fire did not let up. Jebel aimed to deliver thecoup de grace, but then put up his weapon. The others continued to fry the creature.
Its bubbling screams continued for about a minute—a very long time in such a situation. Eventually it drifted against a wall and tried to pull itself to cover. Only then did Jebel fire his missile launcher, blowing the creature to smoking fragments. The acrid burnt-fish stink filling the air made him gag. It never occurred to him that he would become accustomed to this odour.
Performed at appallingly fast AI speeds, the weapons refit took only two days, and now theOccam Razorstood ready to engage the enemy. However, the idea of updating the rest of the old dreadnought's antiquated systems was abandoned, for it would have taken much longer to do that than turn out an entirely new dreadnought from the production line. TheOccam Razorhad been built a century or so before when humans ruled and AIs were considered untrustworthy slaves, consequently Occam, the ship's AI, had been built as an adjunct to an interfaced captain who was capable of initiating a system burn to destroy the AI should it get out of control.
Captain Varence, some years before, passed into senescence as a result of his ancient implants decaying and spreading toxic chemicals throughout his body, and because in the end he became old and tired of life. From then, Occam steadily assumed greater control of the ship while the captain faded, and for the steady functioning of the vessel in peace time this was no problem, since during this time it was only used as a passenger and cargo vessel. ECS now required theOccam Razor, the biggest battleship the Polity owned, to be fully functionaclass="underline" capable of reacting at speed, but most importantly, of using its weapons. But the hardwiring originally installed did not allow for the AI to use the weapons without the approval of its interfaced captain.
And in those last years Varence had been incapable of giving his approval to very much at all, and tended to drool on the controls.
Tomalon ached from head to foot—pain contemporary analgesics could not dispel. It was the ache of a phantom limb, of a severed arm, though Tomalon possessed all his bodily parts, and more. Tramping through the cathedral spaces of the ship he supposed that anyone seeing him would wonder at this strange apparition who seemed to be suffering some strange disease cloaking areas of his skin with glassy scabs, but his skin was his interface, and the phantom limb he sought, the ship itself.
An ECS pilot and weapons specialist as well as a student of Al/human synergy (his grand thesis concerned the direct interface between Iversus Skaidon and the Craystein AI, though not the first and certainly not the most definitive), he stood high on the list of applicants for this post. The fact that he was also a student of history swung it, for he learnt its lessons well. Many people, he knew, hated AI rulers of humanity. Others loved them and some worshipped them. He admired and, he felt, understood them. Considering his knowledge of that time before The Quiet War—when the AIs took over—he saw the lot of humanity much improved now. So now, he came to replace Varence and as closely link to an AI as presently possible without having his brain blown like a faulty fuse.