“We’re sealed,” Anna announced. There was a high degree of satisfaction in her voice. Her round face smiled brightly, despite the situation down on the ground. Her eyes and mouth were heavily OC tattooed, producing a filigree of slender gold and platinum lines that flickered in and out of existence on her skin. Hands and forearms were also covered in the same lines, which crawled around her fingers and wrists as she pressed her fingers against a console i-spot.
“Good job,” Wilson told her. He didn’t strictly approve of such flamboyance; his own OCtattoos were completely nonvisual. But he had to admit, her performance so far was exemplary. It was Anna who had organized the surprised and nervous technicians into working parties to go through the life-support section and physically close the big solid emergency locks with power tools and their own muscle—one of a dozen jobs he’d given her that she’d conducted flawlessly. The air conditioners were up and running, fans stirring the heavy atmosphere, backup lighting rigged to portable power cells. Now she was organizing personnel into damage crews, ready for anything.
While she’d been accomplishing that, he had spent the time frantically reviewing what systems the starship had in anything approaching operational status. It hadn’t taken him long. Given the vast quantity of equipment that had been installed so far, only an alarmingly small percentage of it was available to him. And almost none of that was of any practical use to their current situation. Their one major success was using the assembly platform’s emergency communications system to reestablish a link to the planetary cybersphere. Through that, Wilson had been in touch with the SI continually since he reached the starship. He was gratified that the SI was taking a much greater-than-usual interest in the attack.
“The Anshun special forces squadron will be able to deploy around the complex perimeter in another seven minutes,” the SI told them. “First echelon security reinforcements from CST will arrive at the station four minutes after that; their deployment should be faster than the local forces. Commonwealth Security Directorate forces are also being mobilized.”
“And even if they can get inside the perimeter force field, do any of them have anything which will kill those goddamn Alamo Avengers?” Wilson asked. He was aware of Anna giving him an anxious glance. Tiny slivers of gold rippled out from her eyes as she realigned her virtual visual display to access the security data directly.
“I do not believe so,” the SI said. “One of the causes of the Alamo Avenger’s enduring reputation is the sheer power contained within it. They were hugely cost-ineffective to build, had a poor range, and limited tactical ability. Yet their effectiveness against United Federal emplacements was almost one hundred percent. The Single Star Republic came very close to its goal of turning Austin into an Isolated.”
“You mean we don’t have guns inside the complex big enough to take them out?”
“No. But the Security Directorate does have the necessary firepower, especially given the age of the Alamo Avenger force field generator design. However, you will have to wait until they arrive. Their Anshun deployment should start in twenty-five minutes.”
Wilson took another look at the display screen. He and Anna had set up their command post in a crew office that had several network systems and arrays installed, though precious little else. The walls and flooring were still raw structural panels; ducting ran across the ceiling like a pair of dull-silver serpents twined in a mating position. So far, three console screens were set up to show crude representations of the starship’s internal status, while the remaining two were being fed images from the cameras around the assembly platform. There hadn’t been a repeat of the explosion in the assessment room beyond the gateway, but that wasn’t what he worried about seeing now.
“Are they under the perimeter yet?” he asked the SI.
“Most definitely. The volume of earth they are ejecting behind them has not decreased. Our best estimate already puts them one hundred and eighty meters inside the force field. They will probably surface soon.”
“How long till they reach the gateway?” Anna asked. Her OCtattoos had sunk into quiescence. She was looking directly at the screen that showed the camera image covering the gateway from inside the assembly platform.
“The shortest time is six minutes,” the SI said. “To derive that, we are assuming they will continue underground until they are underneath the complex’s buildings before surfacing. That tactic means they will not have to expend any energy breaking through the building wall’s force fields.”
“Okay, let me have it straight: Can the Alamo Avengers break through the gateway force field?”
“If their original specifications have not been downgraded, our estimate is that it will take at most two shots from a particle lance to break through the gateway force field’s cohesion.”
“Son of a bitch.” Wilson growled it through clenched teeth. He kept telling himself that it wasn’t even dying in this body that frightened him—there was enough bandwidth in the satellite link to download his memory into a secure store right up until the last instant. No, it was being unable to defend the project from some bunch of half-assed anarchist terrorist freaks. The project didn’t deserve this; they were trying to achieve something noble and right with the starship. No piece-of-shit trendy-cause rebel outside the political process had the right to screw with that. Not to mention the time and money and—goddamn it!—lives which had been poured into its construction.
“I can probably route some additional power from the ship to the platform’s force field generator,” Anna said. Platinum spirals were rotating slowly around her eyes as she studied a network schematic within her virtual visual. “One of the niling d-sinks is partially charged; that should give us enough power to last for hours. I think I can route it through the superconductor cabling; we just have to reprogram the umbilical junctions to reverse the flow.”
“Can you help us with that?” Wilson asked the SI.
“From our analysis of your resources, your power output is actually capable of exceeding the force field generator’s designated input,” the SI said. “However, the generator was never designed to withstand the kind of stress inflicted from a particle lance. One Alamo Avenger could break through relatively quickly. Two in combination will require less than ten seconds.”
“Fuck it!” Wilson raged. “You have to close the gateway for us. They cannot be allowed to destroy this starship.” He wanted to add: It’s not fair, the Second Chancedeserves her shot at history, she shouldn’t die like this, not stillbirthed.
“The fireshields erected around the gateway network are proving exceptionally resolute,” the SI said. “We have so far broken three. The fourth utilizes one hundred and sixty dimension geometry encryption. It will take us several minutes to crack it.”
“We don’t have several minutes!”
“Our calculations are not in error.”
Wilson twisted his body to look at Anna. She was floating in front of the console, gazing at the screen that displayed the ship schematic. Her hands pressed tight against the console i-spot; gold glyptics chased slow strange patterns across the stretched skin of her forearms.
“Is there any kind of weapon installed?” he asked desperately.
Her virtual hands were pulling data out of the array as if by brute physical force. “No, sir. Nothing.”
“Goddamnit!” He punched at the nearest surface with his free hand, sending his body into a nasty twist, which strained the hand he was holding himself in place with.
“Any sign of them breaking surface yet?” He was just going to have to leave it all to the SI, and pray it could break the fireshield in time.
“No,” the SI said.
“Okay. Will you please set up a store to receive the memories of everyone on board. If you can’t close down the gateway, they’ll have to be transferred to the clinic which performs the re-life procedures.”