Killswitch (8 page)

All of this and more passed through Sandy's mind in the fraction of a second following her recovery from the explosion, which was fading now as the secondary explosions trailed away, and the crates stacked on top of the exploding one smothered the blasts. And in that continuing, drawn out time-dilation, Sandy found further time to be impressed with the design standards of that particular batch of ammunition, that only perhaps five percent had detonated, and a critical mass of explosive detonations had not led to a total chain reaction ... which would not have taken out the entire bay, because any fool knew to disperse ammunition crates at even distances throughout any storage facility, but even so, she could well have been dodging large pieces of falling ceiling right about then. Ahead of her, her various sensory receptors registered one of the armoured vehicles activating full systems-engines, weapons and all. Please God, she thought, don't let it be one of the Ge-Vo hovertanks.

But of course it was.

With a throbbing din of repulsorlift engines, the Ge-Vo lifted slowly into a low hover. The turret made its characteristic vis-field acquisition wobble, protruding quadruple cannon levering up and down ... Sandy had seen enough, rolled to her feet and ran back the way she'd come, through the choking smoke of the ammunition explosion. All her sending frequencies were tuned to full, but still she received nothing-the maintenance bay was too solid, and she was totally cut off from the outside network. The main doors had been secured. Doubtless those outside would break through in a few minutes, but those were minutes she did not have. The one saving grace, she reckoned, was that she was trapped in a warehouse stacked with weapons. Time to find one.

Sandy accelerated down the aisle between five-metre-high stacks of crates, hearing the Ge-Vo manoeuvring for a clear shot through smoke that would not bother its sensors. She leaped high and to the right where a gap between shipping crates presented itself, and smacked into the metal wall and clung. The gap between crates was narrow, and if she extended both arms out to the sides, she could hold her own weight with ease as her feet sought toe-holds on the rim of the lower crates ... the slim gap descended four metres to the floor below and if she fell, she knew she could get wedged. She inched forward, awk wardly, hearing the Ge-Vo now accelerating cautiously down the aisle, sensors sweeping ... but she knew the tank's own engines would interfere with its sensors' reception enough to hide any small noises or signatures she might make.

An automatic scan of her own memory files revealed that she did not possess an inventory list of the bay's current equipment. There could be anything in the crates around her, from armour suits to AP grenades to new uniforms. The odds of finding something useful by tearing crates open at random were not great, and the noise would draw fire.

A burst of fire ripped through the metal walls behind her and she simply dropped, catching her weight again two metres down the crevice as elecro-mag fire tore through crates and their contents. She wondered as she accelerated her awkward, spread-eagled progress, if the Ge-Vo pilot was also automated ... or not. A rush of jump jets, and the second AMAPS landed with a heavy crash, legs straddling the divide, twin weapon pods angling downward at its trapped quarry. Sandy let go and fell to the floor, taking the impact, then exploding full-power off the floor. She shot five metres up and slammed into the AMAPS's underside just as the gun muzzles began to spin. The AMAPS staggered awkwardly, gyros readjusting for the new weight that clung to its belly. Sandy didn't waste time with a punch, but rather grabbed one weapon pod arm with both arms, got her feet against the AMAPS's leg, and twisted its torso sideways. The AMAPS's servos whined and cranked in protest, the machine's bird legs shuffling to retain balance as it lost its centre of gravity ... one more shuffle and Sandy timed a hard kick at its leg, that landed with a crunch that might have broken heavy-duty hip suspension, and the metal foot came down on the gap rather than solid metal.

The AMAPS fell sideways, its right pod slamming into the lip of the gap as the right leg fought and kicked in empty air. Sandy maintained her steely grip despite the impact, and dangling from the AMAPS's shoulder joint, got one hand onto the lip of the gap, and thrust hard upward with the other. Alloy-myomer muscles and perfect technique propelled all three tons of AMAPS up and backwards, then off the edge of the row of crates entirely. It fell, gracelessly, and Sandy propelled herself after it, catching the rim of the crate overlooking the open aisle as the AMAPS completed a three-quarter somersault and landed face first with a booming crash. Down the aisle, a visual adjustment allowed her to see the first AMAPS picking itself up from within the smoke from the ammunition explosion. Surely its sensors and CPU function had been jarred by the blasts.

Sandy swung from her perch and fell five metres to the ferrocrete floor, taking the impact with a comfortable jolt through her legs. The fallen AMAPS was kicking now, struggling to climb to its feet ... and seemed, in that extended fraction of a second, to be somewhat confused between which action had priority-getting up, or acquiring its target, which was now standing an infuriating two metres to its side. It then appeared to realise that its weapon pods were not articulated enough to acquire its target from a prone position. The legs folded almost flat, seeking to get its broad, padded feet beneath it and rise. Further down the aisle, within clouds of drifting smoke, the second AMAPS was already upright, and turning to face its target. Sandy watched, calmly unmoving, and wondering if all the machines were quite as target-fixated as these two appeared to be.

The first AMAPS raised both weapon pods just as the second began to rise at Sandy's side. Sandy leaped for the top of the opposing wall of crates, as low and flat as she could calculate. The first AMAPS's fire tracked her up the wall of metal, but not before first riddling its companion with high-velocity fire. The second AMAPS, already bent and dented from its fall, staggered and wavered on unsteady legs, one weapon pod crashing to the ground trailing a long ammo-feed, thin trails of smoke rising from multiple precise holes drilled across its angular torso and limb assembly.

Sandy sailed over the rim and rolled comfortably ... and was promptly fired on by a third AMAPS standing eighty metres away on an adjoining line of crates. Sandy rolled desperately as rounds whizzed and cracked around her, then fell into a narrow gap between crates, bracing her arms against the sides and nearly slipping as the left hand failed to brace properly ... a glance showed her the reason-her left thumb was missing, and a further round had gone straight through her wrist, severing some of the nerves and tendons to her fingers. GIs were built tough, but not that tough. If she caught a burst from one of these things directly, or even took a freak round to the head, she was dead. Her limp, uncooperative hand left a smear of red plasma upon the metal wall as she pressed.

Jump jets roared as she reflexively tried to analyse the sound and figure which AMAPS was airborne, and where it was headed. Then a heavy burst of fire that could only have been from the tank ... except that from the sound, they were not aimed anywhere near her vicinity. Even an automated gunner would not miss by so much, nor fire needlessly in an evidently dangerous environment. Surely someone else was ...

"Hi, Cap," came a familiar voice in her inner ear. `Just like old times, huh?"

There was a crash from nearby as an AMAPS landed with a roar of jets.

"Hi, Rhi," she replied, experiencing a sensation that was difficult to identify past the combat-reflex, but she consciously reckoned must be relief. "There's an AMAPS walking just about on top of me, could you please distract him?"

She made a reflex transmission before she even realised she'd done it-a GI-specific tac-net that unfolded across her inner consciousness. The new, graphical vision of the maintenance bay flickered and buzzed as their antagonists tried to jam transmission between the two GIs, but GI frequencies operated on modulating sonic variations that were almost unjammable, at least with Federation technology. Rhian's presence interfaced with the tac-net, and suddenly Sandy knew everything Rhian knew-saw with her vision, pinpointed her position, and registered her physical condition and armament (two electro-mag assault rifles, she was relieved to see).

Running down an adjoining aisle between crates, Rhian simply leaped, took a booted kick off one wall of crates three metres off the ground that corrected her trajectory so that she just cleared the upper rim, and fired a short burst in midair, which smacked cleanly into one of the AMAPS's weapon pods. She fell back to the ferrocrete, and continued to make up ground along what the tac-net visual now insisted was the left flank. The third AMAPS, across the bay, turned to fire at Rhian, but was too late. The second, finding its left-pod abruptly damaged, also turned, stupidly, to meet the new threat. Sandy leaped from her cover, got both feet planted and sprang for the adjoining aisle, flying low as the third AMAPS fired long range and again too late. Sandy hit the opposite metal wall, and fell gracelessly to thud onto her backside upon the ferrocrete. Then she was up and sprinting toward Rhian, who was likewise sprinting directly toward her. And, despite the deadening combat-reflex, she could have sworn she saw Rhian give her a brief grin as she came.

Rhian tossed the assault rifle in the air as they closed, and Sandy took it with a one-handed snap as they passed, neither decelerating, headed now in opposite directions. The Ge-Vo that had been chasing Rhian appeared directly in front of Sandy, its quad-barrelled turret swinging rapidly into line. Both GIs sprang abruptly into gaps in the metal wall on Sandy's left, and Rhian's right, and the hovertank's fire tore through empty air, ripping the jagged ends from transport crates, metallic debris scattering down the aisle with a thundering, echoing roar.

"They all machines?" Rhian asked as they ran, reflexively coordinating. The second AMAPS was between them on top of the stacked crates. It was next, Sandy didn't even need to transmit for Rhian to know it.

"Yep," said Sandy. Rhian leaped straight up a vertical five-metre space between crates, caught the rim with one hand and fired a short burst into the second AMAPS's right-hand weapons pod ... and Sandy saw the two-legged weapon platform stagger, trying to turn and meet the new threat, but Rhian dropped from sight immediately. Then Sandy stopped by the next aisle space, and also leaped vertically. She caught a grip on the rim with her left arm, not daring to trust the left hand for anything, and found the bewildered AMAPS's back turned directly to her. Her trigger finger vibrated-a burst of five into the right hip, another into the left and the same for each knee, all in less than a second. The AMAPS staggered-electro-mag fire was not a match for AMAPS main armour, but if you knew where to put it ... Another staggered step and it fell. Sandy put another single-fire burst through the holes Rhian had made in the right weapon pod, her index finger blurring, then released and dropped to the ferrocrete fractionally before the third AMAPS shredded the spot where she'd been. The AMAPS crashed against metal as she fell, then something exploded (ammo, to Sandy's hearing) and blasted small pieces of AMAPS all over the maintenance bay, embedding many jagged shards in the ceiling and walls over a hundred metres away.

"It's not fain, is it?" said Rhian. And Sandy somehow found time to wonder at the irony of two artificially constructed humans, gloating at their superiority over inferior machine-intelligence. One GI, unarmed, had been in difficulty. Two GIs, sufficiently armed, was another story entirely.

The remaining AMAPS realised its predicament, perched on top of the cargo containers with no view of the ground and little support, and jump jetted down. The Ge-Vo continued its blind charge along the adjoining aisle, like a giant, lumbering predator enraged and frustrated by a pair of small, darting rodents. The machine's limited tactical coordination appeared to arrive at a basic plan-the tank would charge, and flush its prey into the AMAPS's field of fire. Except that Rhian and Sandy simply ran down the adjoining aisle, then darted once more into the gaps between cargo crates as the Ge-Vo reached the end wall and made a slow, idling turn in the cramped space. Rhian leaped high, and Sandy moved to the corner of a crate, back pressed to the metal.

Rhian aimed fast over her rim, put several holes in the AMAPS's forward sensory armourplate, ducking back as the AMAPS twisted back and sideways to fire upwards ... and Sandy immediately ducked around, aiming with the weapon muzzle braced upon her left forearm, and put thirty rounds through the same two-centimetre space in the AMAPS's right weapon pod, directly above the ammunition feed. In a fractional second, the spinning machine-gun jammed, fragmented pieces of ammunition belt crushed inwards as the weapon's chain-feed drove them together, and one of the cartridges exploded. The rest followed, and the AMAPS disintegrated with a deafening roar of firecracker explosions that hurtled pieces of debris from one end of the cavernous bay to the other.

"That's a weak spot," Rhian observed.

"Once upon a time, people thought machines like that would take over the battlefield," Sandy replied, checking her weapon for heat stress. "But now the most effective machines have ended up imitating people."

"You're so philosophical, Cap."

"And AMAPS aren't. That's why we win. "

The Ge-Vo came shrilling back down the aisle the two GIs had come from. Sandy and Rhian leaped into the adjoining aisle and ran with it for a while, giving it enough signature of their running footsteps to draw it down to that end of the bay, and up against the wall where its options would be further limited. Plans changed, however, when the massive armoured entry door abruptly exploded inwards, showering torn fragments, and leaving behind the distinctive twometre peeled hole of a shaped charge. Sandy and Rhian stopped and reversed, but the Ge-Vo continued to the end wall, decelerating to make the U-turn back up the next aisle.

No sooner had it exposed itself to the new hole in the entry door than a projectile-contrail whooshed across the end wall, staining the air across the end of Sandy and Rhian's aisle, followed by a loud metal crash and a deeper, echoing thud! The tank's shrilling engine whine slowly wound down from its high pitch, to a long, slow grating sound that seemed to Sandy's ears to be armourplate against a wall. She and Rhian exchanged glances. They jogged down their aisle, Rhian deferring to Sandy by long habit.