THOOOM!
The hypersonic slug blew the first bot’s AI core apart, and went on to tear a hole through the second one’s power cell. Of course, the recoil sent me flying backwards even faster, but that was where I wanted to be anyway. I flared my thrusters again to adjust my course, and a second later the hatch I’d just come through was closing behind me.
I tried comming Mr. Desh again, but there was still no answer. That was ominous. I tried Chief West.
“I’m a little busy right now, kid,” he answered.
“I’ve got intruders in Vehicle Bay 17,” I reported. “Cargo bots armed with big anti-bot guns. They tried to kill me when I showed up to evacuate the passenger.”
“Shit! Hang up and get out of there, kid. Another me will call you back.”
The connection dropped. I was halfway back to the lift shaft, but I couldn’t afford to stop moving. Now that I was actually looking for them my sonar showed me more bots closing in on the other side of that hatch.
Should I take them out? This gun would shoot right through the hatch, so it wouldn’t be hard. But blowing holes in the ship wasn’t going to make the captain happy, and I couldn’t tell how many were back there. Better to keep moving.
Lugging forty kilos of gun around would slow me down too much, so I broke off the trigger and left it floating at the top of the lift shaft. I left a thread of attention watching through the security cameras, ready to use the lift field to throw it at the first bot to show its face.
By then Emla was leaving the cargo bay. Good, at least something was going right. I sprinted for my room, and turned another thread of attention to the cameras in the vehicle bay. The ones in Bay 17 were all dead, and more were already going out. But I could see bots spilling out in all directions. More big ones like the two I’d fought, and little ones with lots of limbs. That didn’t look good.
How many warbots did Chief West have? Hopefully a lot more than I’d seen so far.
Naoko commed me. “Alice? Are you well?”
“I’m fine. What about Mr. Desh, though? Is he making these bots? Why would he do this right when we’re being attacked?”
“He must be working with the pirates, Alice,” she pointed out.
I checked the exterior view again. Somehow we already had four interceptor drones roaring towards the incoming missiles, blazing away with their lasers and mass drivers. That was a relief, but there were still an awful lot of missiles on the way.
“Pirates? Wouldn’t pirates be trying to capture the ship? These guys are trying to kill us, Naoko. If they blow up the ship he’ll die too.”
“He may well be under someone’s control, Alice. Now please, try not to worry too much. Our protectors are quite capable, and I believe they were prepared for this ambush. Just stay away from the fighting, and help the techs if you can.”
“I could help with the bots, Naoko,” I suggested.
“Absolutely not, Alice. You don’t even have proper armor! Stay away from them, and let Chief West do his job.”
Part of me really wanted to argue. I hated having people think of me as a helpless little civilian who needed to be protected. But she was my superior right now, and somehow the idea of disobeying orders in the middle of a fight felt even worse.
“Aye aye, ma’am. I’m stopping by my cabin to get my gun and the dragons just in case, but I’ll stay away from the fighting.”
I stopped running, and grabbed a handhold next to a sealed hatch. Most of the missiles were gone now, but the thirty that remained were just about at attack range. I turned most of my attention to the exterior view, hoping I was deep enough in the ship to be safe.
The missiles dodged frantically, their plasma barriers and armor ablating away rapidly under the fire of our point defense lasers. Our fire was quickly getting more accurate as they closed in, and light speed delay was no longer enough to throw off the aim of our targeting computers. But fourteen thousand kilometers was getting into viable range for laser warheads. A missile died, and then another. Why weren’t they attacking? Twelve thousand kilometers, and only twenty-six missiles were left. Ten thousand kilometers. Eight. What were they doing?
At a measly six thousand kilometers the last eleven missiles finally detonated, and I discovered they were shotgun warheads. Instead of producing plasma jets or beams of x-rays, each ten-megaton nuclear warhead propelled a spray of solid slugs toward the Square Deal. A fog of metal particles and hot gases accompanied them, hiding most of them from our sensors momentarily.
Six thousand kilometers away, and the slugs were coming in at seventy-three hundred kilometers per second. The debris clouds thinned out quickly as they expanded, and it wasn’t long before our fire control started picking the projectiles out of the haze. But that left a mere seven hundred milliseconds for the point defense lasers to work, and there were thousands of them flying towards us. Eighty lasers that could fire in the right direction, twelve milliseconds to vaporize each slug and two more to orient on the next target - it wasn’t enough.
Thousands of slugs made it through the point defense fire, sailed through the thin gas of our plasma barrier and crashed into the shield protecting the top of the ship. It slowed them down considerably, but they were still traveling at over four thousand kilometers per second when they struck the ship a moment later.
This time the ship lurched violently under the flurry of impacts. Each slug blasted a huge crater in the Square Deal’s armor, and some of them penetrated into the machinery beneath. Red warning labels blossomed all across the damage control display, some of them two or three decks in from the hull.
I took a few more milliseconds to assess the damage. Thirty point defense lasers were out of action, as well as two missile launchers. Three more shield emitters and several clusters of attitude jets were knocked out. Deflector strength was down twenty percent, and one hit had penetrated the starboard shuttle bay.
Bad, but I bet the enemy was expecting a lot worse. A civilian ship would have been gutted by that strike, but the Square Deal was a tough old lady. These guys were about to have a really bad day.
As if to confirm my thoughts, a salvo of two hundred missiles suddenly erupted from our remaining launchers. A swarm of attack drones launched at the same time, ejecting from ready racks fore and aft of the main shuttle hangars. Then the big 10cm mass drivers fired, sending a shudder through the ship as they hurled cluster rounds at the enemy attack drones.
We were still in this fight. Time for me to do my part. I let go of the handhold, and sprinted for my cabin.
Chapter 14
I’d barely finished strapping on my pistol when I got my next call.