Perilous Waif (Alice Long Book 1)

by E. William Brown

  Others didn’t have any obvious destination, though, and that made it hard to predict where they’d go. I waited around a corner for one group to bumble on by, hoping they wouldn’t turn in my direction.

  They didn’t.

  Alright, two more decks to go, plus a few corners. I started to ease forward, and froze. The bots were coming back.

  They were shooting out most of the cameras as they went, but as much noise as they made it wasn’t hard to keep track of them. They stopped at the intersection for a moment, then moved on. Were they patrolling?

  No, wait. There was a whisper of radio traffic that hadn’t been there before. Encrypted, so I couldn’t tell what it was, but the amount of data was about right for a camera feed. I spread my arms, and concentrated on the signal.

  It was coming from something on the floor, right in the middle of the intersection.

  There was another signal coming from down the hall, where the bots had stopped. A third one popped up as I listened, from further down the hall. They were planting cameras.

  Great. I couldn’t afford to get into a big shootout with who knows how many bots. Now what?

  Circle around to a different hallway? No, the team that was planting sensors would get there before I could.

  Rush past it? No, there were too many bots roaming around. They’d intercept me before I could get to the breaker panel.

  I sighed. This was really embarrassing. But there was only one way to get the job done as quick as I’d promised Lina. I swept my finger down my spacesuit’s sealing strip. Smoke and Ash watched in obvious confusion as I peeled it off.

  What do? Ash asked.

  “You guys wait here and guard my stuff, okay?”

  Grr! Guard!

  Good thing they weren’t sapient. I had a feeling a smarter bodyguard would get upset with me over this, but it was the only way. I just wish it wasn’t so cold down here. I already had goosebumps, and it would only get worse. The temperature was barely above freezing.

  How was I going to make my stuff stay put? No time for anything fancy, but I had a roll of duct tape in one of my suit pockets. I tore off a strip to stick my suit to the wall, peeled off my panties, and then stuffed them and the tape back into a pocket. Yeah, this was going to suck. Better get it done quick.

  I went into stealth mode, and drifted around the corner.

  Sure enough, there was a little box in the next intersection, stuck to what would be the floor if the gravity was turned on here. I could make out the lenses of cameras facing in each direction, but no active sensors.

  My skin was as cold as the wall behind me, and my active camouflage made me virtually invisible on any wavelength from the near infrared to far ultraviolet. If I was right, and that was just some civilian-grade sensor package, I could probably float right past it without being seen. But if it was a military model…

  There was no lidar or radar. No floating cloud of micromachines, or manipulator field being used as a mass sensor. No change in the radio activity either. It couldn’t see me. I breathed a silent sigh of relief, and pushed off the wall to send myself floating down the passage.

  I passed a second sensor box at the next intersection, and a third when I swung into the lift shaft leading down to my destination. Still no alarms.

  I didn’t feel as cold as I’d expected, either. Oh, sure, my skin was pretty much ice at this point, but my internal temperature was fine. I had a lot more energy stored up than I ever had before. I could probably do this for twenty minutes, and I didn’t need anywhere near that long. I was already almost to the breaker panel.

  Then I emerged from the lift tube, and almost ran into another bot. That’ll teach me to woolgather in the middle of a sneak. I managed to stop myself in time, and froze.

  This was a smaller bot than the ones I’d run into before, but it was pretty nasty looking. There was an oval central body maybe twice the size of my dragons, with eight long limbs that had a lot more joints than any animal. There were blades mounted along the sides of the limbs, and a nozzle on the front of the body that was probably designed to spray acid or something. It looked like an ugly metal spider, designed for killing things up close and personal in zero gravity. Not exactly military, but to a girl who wasn’t wearing armor those blades were no joke.

  It lit up the hall with a radar ping, but that was easy to fool. I sent back a return that looked like an empty hallway, and waited for a second. Was it going to move?

  It did, and for once luck was with me. It was moving away from my destination. I let it get a few more meters of distance, and then eased out into the hallway and launched myself into a long zero-g dive. Six seconds later I was grabbing a handhold to stop myself at the breaker box.

  Hmm. There was a big access panel covering the power junction, and there was no way to open it without making some noise. But there was also a toolkit stored in the service compartment. Good enough. I dropped stealth so the lock could ID me, and opened the panel.

  Radar pings lit up the hallway from both directions.

  The cramped closet-sized space behind the panel was mostly filled by the junction box. Rows of conduits ran up and down from the box, vanishing into the floor and ceiling. Those would be the superconducting cables that carried power for this part of the ship, and the row of mechanical switches across the front of the box controlled the circuit breakers. I took hold of the lever for Bay 17, and heaved it up.

  Metal limbs scrabbled against metal walls in both directions, warning me that company was on the way. Both bots had their radar on now, giving me a clear picture of themselves and everything else in the hall. They weren’t the only things moving out there.

  I grabbed the laser cutter from the tool bin, flipped it to max power, and burned the handle off the circuit breaker. While I was doing that with one hand, some instinct led me to reach for the little power outlet in the corner of the panel with the other.

  A slender prong of superconducting wire popped out of the end of my pinkie.

  I stared at it for a few milliseconds. Yes, that really was a standard android charging port.

  The smart move would have been to drop the laser cutter and go back to stealth mode, but I was curious. Instead, I plugged myself in.

  A river of warm, sweet power ran up my arm to pool in my heart. Naoko was right, I had a power cell. Systems I’d never felt before lit up with the influx of life-giving energy, and I could feel my growth go into overdrive. Wow, I was actually heating up. How much power was I pulling?

  Sixteen megawatts?!? Great googly moogly, I was going to melt myself in a few seconds at that rate. I wrenched my finger out of the socket, and spun back to the hallway.

  Bad side: There were two of those nasty spider bots almost close enough to jump me, and I was way too hot to go back into stealth mode. Heck, my hair was actually glowing. I’d never realized each hair had a heat exchanger wrapped around the radio antenna that formed its core. That was kind of neat, but it was going to make slipping away hard.

  Good side: I’d sucked down enough juice to bring my manipulator system online. The field emitters in my arms and legs were warm with the heat of flash building the last few control connections, but the new software that was integrating with my motor centers told me they could run a lot hotter if they needed to. My power cell could only run them at full power for a few minutes, though, so I’d have to play this smart.

  A jump off the breaker panel launched me out into the corridor just before the bots could reach me. I bounced off the wall and down the hall, out from between the enemy. The closer bot tried to spray me with a jet of liquid as I rocketed past, but I just pushed it away with a wave of my hand.

  Thanks, Mom. You really came through for me this time.

  The liquid must have been one of those nasty nanotech superacids, because it ate into the bot with a hiss and sizzle that reminded me of frying bacon. It faltered, but the other one was still chasing me. I gave myself a good push to get away from the thing, before it deployed some
other weapon.

  A shot rang out from well down the corridor, but I’d seen the loading bot taking aim. I jinked out of its line of fire just before it pulled the trigger, and the heavy mass driver round tore past me to blow a hole in the wall.

  “Hah! Can’t hit me, slowpokes. See ya!”

  I ducked into the lift tube, and threw myself up it. This was so awesome! Here inside the ship I could practically fly. I’d be back to my suit in no time.

  Now if only there weren’t so many bots converging on me. How many of these stupid things did Mr. Desh have time to make, anyway?

  Industrial fabricators can work pretty fast, and we’d left him alone for hours. If he was smart about it he made more fabricators first, and he’d been churning out several bots per minute by the time I cut the power. Bet he was going to be mad about that.

  I bounced around a corner right into the bots I’d seen laying out sensors earlier, but I’d known they were there. Their big mass drivers thundered uselessly, as I dodged around their lines of fire. I grabbed one by the carrying handle as I flew by, and braced myself against the bot’s head for a split second to pry the weapon out of its grip. With my manipulator field augmenting my muscles I was stronger that the bot, and the weapon popped free easily.

  A hard push off the bot’s back sent me on my way before the other one could get a shot lined up, and then I was flying down the hall away from them. Could I work the trigger on this thing with my fields? Yes, and I could adjust course to aim it too.

  Thooom! Thooom!

  Two bots down, and the recoil really sent me flying. I ditched the big gun at my next turn, though. Lugging it around would slow me down too much, and my pistol was just a few meters away now. Around another corner-

  A lance of pain carved a smoking wound deep into my side.

  There was a little disk-shaped bot hiding against the wall just around the corner, and I hadn’t seen it until it was already firing. The laser built into its top wasn’t very powerful, but it was enough to cut through my skin and cook my right kidney. If I was human I’d already be dying.

  Instead it just hurt really, really bad. But the pain didn’t keep me from focusing. I pulled the thing off the wall, and ripped it apart with nothing but brute strength. The metal casing cut into my hands, but I was too mad to care. I ripped out the power cell, and crushed the thing’s AI core in one bleeding hand.

  Ow. Ow ow ow ow. Careless idiot, getting ambushed by a bot with the brains of a mouse. What good are all these fancy sensors if I’m not smart enough to actually pay attention to them?

  Spacesuit. Medical pack. Right, just get it on and get out of here. The laser wound was already cauterized, and the cuts on my fingers only bled for a second. I’d be fine, my damage control said I could heal this. Just don’t get shot again.

  Alice!

  Smoke’s concerned transmission caught me by surprise. I’d almost forgotten he was here. He jumped off my spacesuit to look around the corner at where I’d come from, and Ash took to the air to inspect me close up.

  “I’ll be fine, guys. Multiple enemies inbound. Guard me while I suit up, and then we’re getting out of here.”

  Yes! They agreed in unison.

  It was good to have some backup, but there were an awful lot of bots coming. I could track the ones that were moving even around multiple corners, by the sound and radio noise. Too bad my boys didn’t have sensors like mine. Wait, didn’t their manual say something about a combat information link?

  I pulled my suit off the wall, and started to work my foot into the left boot. Yeah, there it was. I opened my own connection to their shared battle management system, and found myself with a new appreciation for good software. These little guys might not be sapient, but they had some solid tactical instincts. I started dumping my own sensor feeds into the workspace, and in the space of a few milliseconds they’d worked out the correlation of forces and planned a neat little ambush to cover my retreat.

  But they thought at least one of them was going to have to die to get me out of here.

  Well, they didn’t know what I could do, and there wasn’t time to explain it all to their little bot brains. I stuffed my arms into the suit’s sleeves, ignoring the pain from my side. The first of my pursuers were almost here, but at least they were all coming from one direction. By the time they could circle around to try and surround us we’d be long gone.

  A spider bot came hurtling into view. It bounced off the wall and jumped at me, but Smoke intercepted it before it could get near me. He tore into it ferociously, ripping it apart with his claws and teeth while easily dodging its flailing limbs. Hah! Cheap bots can’t stand up to good tech, can they?

  The next thing to come around the corner was a grenade.

  I squeaked, and smacked it away with my manipulator field. It promptly blew up.

  Fortunately it was just a chunk of chemical explosive wrapped in metal, and not a plasma grenade. I managed to focus my field enough to keep the fragments away from my exposed face, and the ones that struck my suit just bounced off. I got a chunk of metal stuck in my belly, though, and it was full of attack nanites. Ouch. That was going to keep my immune system busy for a few minutes.

  The blast sent us all tumbling slowly back along the hallway, but my dragons held up pretty well. Ash laid down a wall of sensor-blocking smoke across the hallway, while Smoke finished making sure the spider bot was out of action. Then they both fell back to where I was untangling myself and trying to finish putting my suit on. Ash even grabbed my helmet for me.

  I plucked the fragment out of my belly with a grimace, and tossed it away. The bleeding stopped in a few seconds, though, and by then I finally had all my limbs properly in place. I sealed the suit, and reached for my helmet.

  “Here’s your package, Alice!”

  Emla’s cheerful announcement was the last thing I expected. I’d been so focused on the bots that I’d barely noticed the friendly IFF ping coming up the corridor behind me. But her timing couldn’t have been worse. The enemy bots had just marched into Ash’s smoke cloud, and they couldn’t see a thing. But their audio sensors still worked.

  A hail of fire erupted from the smoke, along with a pair of grenades.

  Emla’s eyes went wide, but she didn’t hesitate for a microsecond. She let go of the box she’d been carrying, and threw herself on top of me.

  Chapter 15

  The explosions were deafening. The first blast sent us drifting down the corridor, and then a big mass driver round tore a chunk out of my shoulder and set us spinning. Two more explosions and a hail of smaller bullets left me completely disoriented. But my dragons were on the job. I heard their roars behind me as I smacked into a wall, and stuck. But Emla…

  Oh, no. Emla.

  Her cheap bot body was never meant to take that kind of punishment. It was completely wrecked. Both legs and one arm had come off, and the power cell in her torso had been torn apart by bullets. The whole side of her head was gone, and I could see her exposed AI core. The armored box was wrenched half out of its socket, the interface plug warped completely out of shape. A starburst of cracks radiated away from the broken connector.

  No, not Emla.

  Her body was dead. She might be, too, if the damage had triggered whatever tamper proofing was built into her casing. Stupid android makers and their stupid copy protection schemes.

  Suddenly I was madder than I’d ever been in my life. At myself, for screwing up and letting this happen. At the bots, for their stubborn attempts to kill us. But mostly at that treacherous bastard who had given them their orders.

  Everything faded away but the fight. Enemies, allies, resources. Locations and vectors. Angles of attack, probable responses, weapon effects and performance limits. My fears washed away on a tide of icy rage, and I knew what I needed to do.

  The box full of equipment she’d been bringing me had come apart, sending a spray of odds and ends drifting around the corridor. But everything I’d queued up for fabrication had been
rugged, military designs. Most of it was still intact. I jumped into the cloud of debris, silent as a ghost, using my field to put everything where I wanted it. Smoke projectors on my shoulders and hips. Grenade launcher peeking over my left shoulder, with the big magazine of grenades on my back. Spare magazines for my pistol lined up along my waist, down both thighs and across my chest. A second pistol for my left hand, and a big power cell snugged into the small of my back.

  Twelve hundred and fifty-seven milliseconds to get everything properly secured and plugged in. Then I leaped into the smoke cloud with both guns blazing.

  The smoke blocked all vision, and the thin nitrogen atmosphere of the maintenance tunnel degraded my sonar performance pretty badly. But these weren’t proper military bots. They made all kinds of noise as they thrashed around trying to fight, and they didn’t have active sound suppression. The whir of motors and clank of metal limbs against the walls filled out my sketchy sonar picture beautifully, letting me know exactly where they were and what they were doing.

  I shot out their little bot brains and power cells in a flurry of movement, bouncing back and forth off the walls too fast for them to track. Then I was off, sailing down the corridor towards the vehicle bay.

  I fired off smoke grenades as I moved, keeping a barrier of obscuring fog between me and the rest of the bots. The smoke projectors wrapped me in my own personal cloud, and I held it around me with my field as I moved. The first group of bots I passed were all destroyed before they even figured out what was happening.

  The next group opened fire blindly through the smoke, but that just made more noise to firm up my sonar image. I tracked the muzzles of their guns and stayed out of the line of fire, letting the heavy mass driver rounds whiz past me while I blew them away.

  The group after that was bigger, and had grenade launchers. That was annoying. I had to use one hand to shoot the grenades out of the air while I took care of the bots with the other.