Monday, November 06, 2006

5077 words

Posted by: Greg @ 12:48 AM.

Previously

For what seemed like the hundredth time, Kiroshi went over what she knew about robots. They had been a part of daily human life for the last hundred and fifty years, but had only within the last twenty reached the point where they were humaniform in design. Supposedly their processing power was doubling ever five years, though their physical capabilities were still fairly limited. But that last assumption had proven to be wrong. The robots on this ship were not quite top of the line, but they were close. And they had moved almost as quickly and fluidly as humans. She had never noticed that ability before. In the past year since she had been here, the robots had moved very similarly to humans, but it had always been noticeably mechanical.

Unfortunately, there were no overriding controls on the robots like the earliest designers had hoped for. She vaguely remembered something about a group of scientists and engineers from about forty years before she had been born who had titled themselves the Three Laws Men, and had tried to get such controls adopted by all the robotics companies, but had failed for some reason.

Even with their high processing power, robots were always built with only a single specific function in mind. And while they could learn to do new thing and different things related to that function, you could not teach a robot whose function was to maintain a spaceship's engine to be a nanny to a child. That was pretty much the only industry wide standard, and had been adopted only because early roboticists had learned that a robot who could do many different things was often not happy doing just one. Kiroshi never understood why they always used human emotions to describe robots' reactions. It was not like they had emotions. But none of that seemed relevant to the question of why these robots - all Venusian Robotics Networks model 83-IP - had somehow gone very far outside of their originally programmed function.

Lost in thought, she stared out the bridge's viewport. Her thoughts drifted away from thoughts about the robots much as the ship drifted away from its intended route. Though the ship's engines had been cut the day before, the ship was still moving at near maximum velocity due to the low inertial drag of the interplanetary vacuum. The thin band of the asteroid belt was just becoming visible. On a normal return trip, the ship would have made a slight adjustment upward at this distance, to angle up over the belt. But that wasn't necessary now. The ship was definitely not going to cross the border into the domain of the Core Alliance.

But despite all the navigational calculations she had performed once she knew their heading, she couldn't figure out where they were going. Their current path would not pass close to any of the populated outer areas or any of the notable asteroids. Of course, by now, both the Core Alliance and the Union of Outer Planets would have noticed their extended silence and would have sent out patrols to try to locate them.

Assuming the patrols had been sent out within twenty-four hours of their last contact, unless one of the two alliances had a military presence in the area, it would have been at least another day before a ship would have been able to reach their last known location. And they would have sent several other ships out to scan for them in a circle around that same location with a radius of the maximum distance they could have traveled in those same two days. But it had now been nearly five days and none of the navigational systems had detected any approaching ships. That fact worried her even more than the chance of not taking back the rest of the ship. For some reason, she had the highest level of trust in Staley. He reminded her of the men she had originally trained and served with - quick-thinking and quick on their feet, and highly capable in any situation. Despite that, she had not told him her concerns about the lack of contact with rescuers. She did not want to weigh him down with extra concerns that were not of immediate relevance to his duties.

And then, as if by thinking of him, she had summoned him, the figure of Cooper Staley resolved itself in the corner of her eye.

"Ma'am, I thought you would like to know that the men finished burning their way though the door. We are ready to begin the attack."

She stared at the viewscreen for another moment before turning to face him. "Thank you, Staley. Go and rejoin the men. I will be with you in a moment and accompany the third squad."

She smiled slightly when he did not react to that. She knew he did not think she should risk herself as the only officer remaining on the ship.

"I don't expect to be in any danger. I am sure you will have things well enough in hand, Staley."

"Very well, ma'am. I'll be moving out with the first squad in fifteen minutes."

He turned and went back out of the bridge, unslinging his FCP and checking its settings and condition as he disappeared around a corner. Kiroshi picked up her own FCP, her fingers closing around the smooth contoured grip. She checked its power settings and fire type before pulling the strap over her shoulders and slinging the gun across her back as she followed Staley off the bridge. In truth, the feel of the gun in her hands and under her fingers as she examined it and the weight of it pressing between her shoulder blades comforted her. Despite her words to Staley, she was hoping to get a chance to use the gun. It had been so long since she had last used one in real combat that she missed the excitement of battle.

* * *

Staley shook his head once again. He could not believe that the navigator had decided to risk herself, but that was not something he could control. All young officers, everywhere, always felt the need to get a chance to fight. So he focused on repeating his instructions to the group of armed men. There were twelve of them total, divided into three groups of four. As he finished up, he saw Kiroshi quietly join the third group. He checked his watch and said, "OK. Time to go. At the first split, Mister Clark, take your squad ahead and down to the docking bay. I will lead my squad to the engine room. Miss Kiroshi will be leading the third squad, waiting at the split for either of the forward teams to radio in for assistance."

Crouching behind the man he had stationed at the corner to watch the doorway, he waved the first squad forward and followed them through the hole in the door. As the squad moved down the corridor, the men checked each room for sign of the robots' presence. It was slow going, and it took them thirty minutes to reach th the split in the corridor. Staley radioed the second and third squads to move forward and join them as he arranged his men in defensive positions at the corners of the split.

As the rest of the force arrived, the grim faced passenger he had put in charge of the second squad, Stephen Clark, formed up his squad to head down to the docking bay. Staley was pleased to see Kiroshi instruct her men to slide into the defensive positions that his men had already assumed. He looked over at Clark.

"You know what to do. Move out, and good luck."

Clark just nodded and sent his men forward.

"All right first squad. Let's go."

* * *

The wait was beginning to wear on the men. They were shifting in their positions, trying to stretch muscles that were sore and beginning to cramp. They had been waiting for over an hour as the other two squads moved forward searching the rooms along the corridors as they progressed toward the engine room and docking bay. Kiroshi ordered her men to stand up and move around and stretch out their muscles. There was not much chance that the robots had snuck by the two patrols to attack them here. She sighed and leaned back against the smooth metal wall.

As she watched the men stretching, the radio crackled to life again, with the voice of Stephen Clark coming over it. "We've just entered the docking bay. There does not seem to be any sign of the robots here. We are working our way through the personal craft now."

"OK. Thanks for the heads up, Clark," responded Staley. "We are just outside the engine room. They closed the door, but it is not sealed. We will be going through in a minute. Once you are done in the docking bay, rejoin Miss Kiroshi and then come to join us. Three robots in this one area is going to be tough."

"Got it."

"On our way when Mister Clark gets back," replied Kiroshi. "OK guys," she continued to the men around her. "Let's get ready to go. I hope everyone remembered to use the bathroom before we left."

A couple of the men laughed and she smiled gently at them as they finished stretching out and lined up, waiting for the arrival of the men returning from the docking bay. They did not have to wait long as Clark soon led his men into view at a jog.

"Give your men a few minutes to rest," she instructed him as she cast a critical eye over the men who were flushed and breathing deeply. "We don't need them to be too tired to fight. And we will have to fight, I have no doubt about that."

She was about to ask him if there was any sign that the robots had ever been in the docking bay, but was interrupted by a burst of static and Cooper Staley's voice over the radio.

"We are under heavy attack. Two men down. I and my other men are trapped in a room just outside the engine room. Acknowledge, over."

His statement was punctuated by the sound of FCP guns firing and hitting metal. Kiroshi waved her men forward as she responded, heart thumping as the adrenaline surged into her system. "We are on our way, Staley. Clark's squad just got here. Be there as soon as we can."

She broke into a run as she finished and moved to the head of the line of men. From the way he had called in, she knew now that Staley was definitely former military of some sort. Unslinging her FCP as she ran, she hoped her own training was not as rusty as she felt it to be. She was soon able to hear the whine, impact, and sizzle of the weapons fire ahead of her, and skidded to a stop as the corridor reached the final turn before the entrance to the engine room. Leaning against the wall, she snuck her head around the corner, trying to see the situation.

As she looked, a series of FCP bolts spat out of a doorway on the right and splattered against the far wall. Two mangled human bodies lay in the corridor and blood was splashed and smeared on the walls and floor. There was also the twisted wreckage of a robot laying halfway into the room that the gunfire had come from. Other than that, the hallway was clear. The door into the engine room was just a black rectangle.

She turned back to the men, selected two and instructed them to assumed covering fire positions at the corner and then another two men to move into the two doorways closest to the corner. They nodded, gripped their guns, and darted around the corner as the first pair fired into the blackness. Poking her head around the corner, Kiroshi gasped as a thin metallic object came flying out of the engine room. It struck the second man in the side, spinning him around. He screamed as a shower of blood arced through the air as the first man dove through the first doorway on the left.

That man recovered quickly into a kneeling position and began pouring bolts of plasma into the engine room. As she watched, another metallic object came flying through the darkened doorway at an angle toward the wall. It ricocheted up, off the way, hit the ceiling and again bounced away before slamming into the floor where the man had just been kneeling. She had been so amazed by the flight of the object that she had not noticed the man scrambling his way back into the room.

As she pressed herself back against the wall, she looked at the men with her. She realized that there was no way they could get into the engine room without armored and trained men without suffering extremely high casualties. And she could not be sure that they would even succeed.

She radioed Staley. "We are going to provide covering fire. Clear your doorway and close the door. We are going to cause a FCP containment collapse. After it happens, it will be up to you to clear the engine room while the robots are incapacitated."

"Understood. Will do." Staley's voice was calm.

She called out the same instructions to the man alone in the left hand room. Turning back to the men with her, she saw that their faces were white. Smiling grimly, she said, "I guess Staley told you about what happens when you cross two FCP beams when he had you burn through the door."

The men nodded.

"Good, I won't waste time on the details. You will all secure yourselves in the room right here," she motioned to a doorway into an engineer's cabin. "The engine room is about twenty meters away. The shockwave will definitely knock us around back here. But I don't know about the plasma wave. If it does reach this far, you will be safe in there." She paused and looked them over. "I do need one volunteer, though, to fire the second gun." She was not surprised that Clark said that he would do it. "Ok, the rest of you, go."

She checked to see that the doorway with the man in it was closed, and saw that the robot which had been blocking Staley's door was gone. She looked to Clark. "Set your FCP to continuous, just like with the door. You will just have to hold yours still, and then I'll bring mine to intersect it. Hopefully inside the engine room. It will cause the electromagnetic field around the beams to collapse and the plasma will explode outward. It will definitely at least disable the robots." She could not help but let the stress enter her voice. She was trained and experienced in combat, but this was not something she had ever been taught about beyond the devastating result.

She settled into a kneeling position. Clark stood behind her. On her command, he began firing. Taking a deep breath, she pulled the trigger. The two beams sliced into the darkness of the engine room. Slowly, she angled her beam upward. The beams seemed to waver as they neared each other. Then they intersected. A backwash of energy surged along the beams, causing the guns to rock in their hands. But the beams, bending, stayed connected for what seemed like seconds but lasted only a split second. And then they exploded. The shockwave raced down the corridor lifting the bodies of the three dead humans. It slammed the bodies into the wall as it tore around the corner. She felt suddenly weightless as she lost contact with the floor and was then slammed into the wall behind her and lost consciousness.

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