Cyber Rogues (37 page)

“You think it really is fixing to make exploding drones?” Mary asked as they descended a short metal stairway to the level below.

“That’s what it looks like to me,” Dyer told her. “So that’s what we’re going to find out.”

The buzz-bomb had shown up in the search they had made of the new design data filed by
Spartacus
within the previous couple of hours. The scientists had wondered what could have prompted
Spartacus
to embark on such a venture, or even conceive of such a device. The most likely explanation, Dyer had guessed, was that
Spartacus
had observed the effects of the drones that had exploded during the first firefight with armored models, drawn its own conclusions and proceeded to develop its own special-purpose device in order to be able to reproduce those effects to order. The move was not especially worrisome at that point since the buzz-bombs were still at an early design stage and wouldn’t be in production until a considerable time after the other models which
Spartacus
had partly copied.

They left the production area via a bulkhead door that led through to a short corridor connecting the doors to the Fusion Plant Control Room, Power Distribution Control Room and the local backup station. Once inside the corridor, they unclipped from the floor and launched themselves to sail slowly toward the access shaft for Sector Three at the far end. They were about halfway there when
Spartacus
struck.

A series of muffled explosions shook the walls on one side of the corridor. Dyer and the rest of the party braked hard on the handrail and had barely had time to exchange apprehensive glances when the door to the Fusion Plant Control Room slid open and figures began hurling out shouting and gesturing as they rebounded off the opposite wall. More shouting, mixed with screams and the sound of rifle fire, came from inside the doorway. Whatever was happening in there was obscured by palls of black smoke through which sheets of flame lanced sporadically. Another explosion came from inside the Control Room, this time sounding loud and harsh. Fragments rained on the inside of the walls. A figure halfway through the door convulsed in midflight and skewed around to block the exit. Two more crashed into him from behind to form an instant crush. A jet of liquid flame drenched them from inside the control room and gushed through into the corridor between the bodies.

Mary screamed in horror as Cordelle tried to haul her away. Dyer gripped the handrail and fought back the sudden nausea that came welling up in his throat. Keeping his eyes fixed on the struggling, burning mass of what had a few seconds before been people, he backed off toward where a technician was clutching the rail and nursing a limp, bloodstained arm.

“What happened?” Dyer snapped. The technician’s eyes were wide with shock and near panic. His shirt was torn and blackened by smoke.

“Flamethrowers . . . they cut their way in through the wall . . . they sent crabs in ahead to use as bombs . . . blew them up somehow . . . there’s nobody alive in there now . . . can’t be.”

“
Spartacus
doesn’t have any flamethrowers,” Dyer protested. “What the hell are you talking about? How could it know what to do with them if it did?”

“What else do you think did that?” the technician shouted, jerking his head at the doorway. “It used drones to carry standard-pattern hydrogen torches . . . thermite lances, I don’t know . . . They were everywhere straight after the bombs hit. We didn’t have a chance.”

“Ray, watch it!” Wescott’s voice barked from among the tangle of figures moving back toward the bulkhead. Dyer looked up. The blackened corpses wedged in the doorway were tumbling slowly and sickeningly into the corridor with tongues of flame still flickering about them as they turned. A sphere drone moved out from behind them. Dyer emptied the magazine of his rifle and the sphere drone disintegrated in a shower of pieces. The crab drone immediately behind it ran into a concentrated hail of bullets from Cordelle and Wescott, and came apart in midair. Another crab was already in sight behind it, and behind that two armored crabs maneuvering a pair of gas cylinders attached to a flexible metal hose that terminated in a short nozzle.

“Ray, get out!” Mary shrieked from behind Cordelle.

Dyer grabbed the tunic of the technician, who was still clinging dazedly to the rail beside him, and took off for the end of the corridor. Frank and Danny were already aiming to fire past them. At that instant more figures burst out of the door of the Power Distribution Control Room and were promptly caught from both sides.

A couple of them survived and clawed their way into the throng of bodies all fighting to get through the bulkhead door at once while Dyer, Cordelle, Wescott and a sergeant who had kept his head shouted vainly for order and kept up an intense and effective rear-guard fire.

“They were starting to cut through from the Fusion Control Room,” the sergeant shouted to Dyer as he fired. “We figured it was time to get the hell out.”

“How did you leave the feeder switches?” Dyer shouted back as they slammed the door.

“Fuck the feeder switches!”

The area outside had turned into a field-casualty clearing station. Some of the wounded were in serious condition and others did what they could to help them while Dyer and Wescott used a viewpad to contact the backup station, which was located farther along the corridor they had just left, beyond the Fusion Control Room. The supervisor of the backup station reported the situation from the screen.

“When we heard the trouble outside we figured we’d be better off staying in here. The corridor’s blocked but we can get out to Sector Three through the emergency door. I don’t know how long we can keep running, though. All our readings here are going down.
Spartacus
must be cutting every cable in the vicinity that it doesn’t own. It’s running haywire with the power distribution and comms all over Janus. The backup stations are coming on-line everywhere else, but if we get cut out here this whole part of Detroit will get wiped out. I’ve ordered the guys here into suits. We’ll hold on as long as we can.”

“Get out the moment it starts looking bad,” Dyer advised. “It’s not messing around. We’ve had about ten people killed.” He cut off the pad and turned toward Cordelle, who was using another pad in an attempt to summon the nearest destroyer-equipped kill-team.

“It’s breaking out everywhere,” Cordelle said, shaking his head. “They said all their guys are committed. They can’t get anyone here until reinforcements get through from the Hub. They’re sending ’em in now.”

“They should have been here now!” Dyer shouted. His eyes blazed with frustration and rage. “That dumb, textbook-quoting bastard! We can’t stay here. They’ll be through that door before long.
Spartacus
has started screwing up the support systems and the local backup’s being cut out.” The sounds of explosions and rifle fire from other places around them were by now plainly audible. “Frank, start getting those people moved out. Danny, get me a connection to Krantz.”

Cordelle bent his head and began frantically punching the pad again. After a few seconds he looked up and shook his head.

“No dice.
Spartacus
is not playing ball. Comms are down.”

“Plug into an emergency channel,” Dyer yelled. “Dammit, there must be a socket somewhere near here.” He scanned the nearby walls and panels. There wasn’t.

And then the lights went out.

How they made it out of Detroit, Dyer was never sure. Guided through the maze of insane metallic geometry only by the beams of hand torches, and with explosions, gunfire, shouts, screams and sudden gushes of yellow and orange coming through the pitch blackness all around, they became part of a ragged procession of shadows that came together from different directions out of the darkness. For some reason Dyer remembered the words of Captain Malloy, who had delivered some of the lectures during the training period at Fort Vokes: “. . . we’ll study it until every one of you can find your way from any point on Janus to any other point blindfolded . . .” At least, he reflected grimly, there was something to be said for some aspects of military thinking.

They emerged into the tube terminal of the Spindle to find that the lights there were on. Evidently they were out of the sector that was supposed to be powered by the backup station that had gone down. Casualties were being dispatched up the Spindle in cabs detaching from the waiting line as quickly as could be managed under local control, while more groups of stragglers continued to trickle out of the access doors leading in from Detroit to add to the confusion all around. Medics were trying to group the wounded into cabloads while officers moved around scratching together fireteams to hold the approaches to the terminal. There was no sign of the reserves from the Hub.

Dyer made his way through the throng toward a captain who was talking into a viewpad plugged into an emergency-channel socket.

“All the backups in Detroit are down,” the captain informed him. “Power, light, comms and transport are all out, but the life-support’s holding up. Don’t ask me why. The drones have turned nasty all over Janus but they’re being held in check at the Rim because the ones there aren’t armored. They’re all being knocked out fast. The order is to destroy all drones on sight everywhere now. The problems are in Detroit and Pittsburgh. They’re the only places that have lost backup and have had armored assaults with flamethrowers.”

“Where are the reserves?” Dyer demanded.

“The contingent that was sent is stuck in a tube somewhere in the Spindle,” the captain replied. “They were depowered when
Spartacus
pulled the plug.”

“Why can’t they go to local?”

“They’re in a sector that draws power from a backup that’s gone down. The techs are trying to rig a cable back to the Spindle somewhere.”

“So what about the rest of the Hub?”

“They’re being held there to guard possible exits from the Spindle to the Hub. Orders from General Linsay.”

“Give me that thing! I need to talk to somebody in Command Room,” Dyer thundered. The captain passed the pad across but made an apologetic empty-handed gesture.

“You’ll be lucky to get through, sir. It’s jammed with calls coming in from all over.”

The sound of firing in the approach ramps and shafts around the terminal was getting nearer and becoming more intense. A lieutenant-general who seemed to have assumed charge of things and who was doing a good job of getting the situation under control, climbed up on top of one of the stationary cabs and raised his voice to address everybody within earshot.

“We do not have sufficient destroyers to remain here. Pittsburgh has evacuated its people into Southport and I have just been advised that a secure defense zone has been established there. I repeat—Southport is secure. We have to move out of here faster. I want a second line of cabs loaded up and sent south. Everybody on this side of the terminal form up for south-going cabs. I repeat—everybody on this side get organized to move south. Everybody on that side goes north to the Hub. Casualties and noncoms move first. Combat personnel regroup to give cover for the forward fireteams when they fall back. We need more men at the south end.”

Dyer and Wescott helped with the wounded and waited until the forward teams were back in the terminal. By that time all the available cabs had gone and the few survivors that remained in the terminal deployed into groups waiting with weapons trained on the doors leading in from Detroit. A few minutes that seemed like hours passed by before more empty cabs began returning. But
Spartacus
too seemed to have paused for breath and the expected assault failed to materialize. When enough cabs had accumulated, the rearguard slipped quickly aboard and departed northward toward the Hub.

The two scientists, along with Cordelle and Mary, found themselves sharing a cab with Don Fisher, the begrimed chief engineer of the fusion plant, who was unharmed apart from having collected a number of slight scratches.

“It’s bad news,” Fisher told them, “The fusion plant is running and
Spartacus
has got full control of it. It’s got Detroit and Pittsburgh all to itself now. We’re locked out, unless they can move in from the Hub. Bad news . . .”

“But the fusion plant can be cut from Downtown,” Wescott objected.

Fisher shook his head. “They tried as soon as they heard we were taking real casualties. It didn’t work! When
Spartacus
started ripping out every wire that didn’t belong to it, it must have hit the emergency line from the Command Room.” The others stared at him aghast. Fisher nodded wearily.

“That’s right. The only way to shut that plant down now is from the inside . . . And
Spartacus
is in there. We’re not.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

“Fifty-seven dead and more than one hundred and fifty wounded!” Dyer brought his fist down hard on the table and bared his teeth. “There was no need for it! If you’d had the troops where they were needed, it would never have gotten out of hand.”

“It wouldn’t have made any difference,” Linsay replied through tight lips. “They would have been too dispersed across Detroit to be effective at any one place. The only difference it would have made is that the enemy would now be all over the Rim instead of being contained in the Spindle. As things are, the Rim is secure. All drones in the Hub and Rim have been knocked out and the backup stations are handling the environment okay. All
Spartacus
nodes outside the Spindle are being dismantled. The only parts of it still running are the parts south of the Hub and it’s sealed in there. The enemy has been forced back to a restricted area and we are in full control of the only exits.”

“It wasn’t forced back; we were forced out!” Dyer raged. “Your ‘restricted area’ is all it needs. It’s got Christ knows how many homemade SPs in there, a fusion plant, a manufacturing complex and an extraction plant! It’s got a stock of unprocessed moonrock that’ll keep it growing itself and making drones for days . . . maybe weeks. You could have stopped it grabbing Detroit. That alone would have been enough to cripple it.”

“It wouldn’t have made any difference,” Linsay replied grimly. “What caught us was the surprise. Nobody knew it would come up with improvised flamethrowers. Your thinking didn’t allow for it and my thinking didn’t allow for it. I still don’t know what gave it the idea, but it’s happened. We can’t change it.”