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.
Sandy peered about the corner of the last crate in that row. The GeVo was idling crookedly against the bay's end wall, smoke pouring from turret seams. A small, circular hole had been drilled just above the rotation ring of its turret armour, from which more smoke was pouring. Sandy turned around and looked at the hole in the entrance door. She was little surprised to see a small, female figure stepping through, hefting a massive electro-mag anti-armour launcher over one shoulder, eyes shielded behind a heavy, dark visor to guard against muzzle flash. Ge-Vo armour was damn tough, but as was always the way with military technology, the only technological field to have outpaced the tremendous advances in armour and protection was the physics of electromagnetic projection weaponry. If you fired a projectile at a high enough velocity, even the best military-grade armour was as useless as tissue paper.
Vanessa saw Sandy, and made a face.
"Well, what d'you know," she drawled, with a gesture of the heavy launcher, "the damn thing works. That's the lot?" Evidently knowing it was, for the lack of noise elsewhere in the bay.
"Seems to be," Sandy replied. "We'll do a sweep."
"I'll get it organised," said a wide-eyed lieutenant entering behind Vanessa. Beyond the hole in the entry door, Sandy sensed a mass of ready confusion, many soldiers poised with whatever weapons they could acquire. Shouts echoed behind as orders were given, scanning equipment organised ... better to scan from range than sweep by hand, there was no need to risk lives unnecessarily.
"Oh," Sandy thought to add, "and while you're at it, could you get someone to look for my thumb?"
The med-bay was more spacious, clean and white than any Sandy could remember from her service League-side. It made her wonder if the CDF were truly a real army, and not the self-deluded, soft, undisciplined civilians most of the Fleet seemed to think they were. She sat by the side of an operating table, her left arm extended beneath an obscuring green curtain. On opposite sides of the table, two surgeons in full masks and gowns gathered over her arm. There were various implements in their hands, and various more on a side table-some that they used on normal human patients, and others utterly different. A multimode scanner suspended from the ceiling hovered above her hand.
On a screen to the surgeons' side, if she cared to look, was an intricate high definition image of her hand and forearm. A bio-alloy sheath now encased the bone of her lower thumb where it had been severed at midlength. That was the easy bit-GI bones regenerated just like regular human bones, with some encouragement from introduced nano-tech solutions within the bio-sheath. More difficult was the hole through her wrist, which had severed the tendons to her index and middle fingers, as well as removing a piece of wrist bone and causing other structural misalignments. Full mobility could be limited for a while, the surgeons told her, and she wasn't going to be her usual ambidextrous self for at least a month. She'd also been clipped along the front of her shin, but that had done nothing but remove a centimetre of skin.
And she was alone, save the surgeons, who were utterly absorbed in this rare opportunity to study the inner workings of technology's most advanced synthetic human, and weren't much on idle chit-chat. Her solitude made her feel ... well, glum, she supposed. Abandoned was too strong a word. But her troops were busy sweeping for further security breaches, the admin were busy cleaning up and counting the cost, and any spare friends she had in CSA Intel had now just found themselves with one more large issue dumped on their plate. The sudden storm of activity included Vanessa, of course, who on top of it all was now giving her the silent treatment, now that she'd gotten over the initial relief that her synthetic friend was still alive. Sandy couldn't see how she'd deserved that. Best friend or not, Vanessa's emotional swings remained a source of occasional confusion, and worse.
Movement down the corridor beyond the broad wall windows ... Sandy recognised both Director Ibrahim and Ari easily, despite the sanitised gowns, hair nets and face masks. They took turns at moving through the airlock door, each subjected to a rush of further decontaminating fumes, then the red light above the doors turned green, and first Ari was admitted, then Ibrahim. That much concession Ibrahim granted for their "relationship," Sandy pondered with a raised eyebrow, as Ari came cautiously across the shiny white floor, a relieved smile evident beneath the mask.
"Hi," he said, a more subdued greeting than usual, and put a hand on her shoulder. And she was mildly surprised that he paid the surgeons so little attention. All of his attention was instead focused upon her. "Are you okay?" Behind the concern, tension. Frustration, even. That wasn't good.
"I'm okay," she said, forcing a faint smile as she looked up at him. Ari brushed hair back from her forehead, gazing at her. Ibrahim came over, and Ari stood to Sandy's side, a hand still on her shoulder. Sandy rested her head gently against his arm, and smiled at the sight of Ibrahim in a spotless green gown. The mask did not fit him well. His large nose seemed to be protesting its imprisonment, struggling to make a break for freedom.
"Not a word," said Ibrahim. Sandy's smile grew broader.
"No, sir. This is going to blow out our budget."
"The budget, Commander, is the least of our worries. We have an infiltration."
"Obviously," said Sandy.
"Ari thinks it's rather a bad one."
"Just last night Ari was warning me that someone would try to go after me through this ... damn killswitch thing. That didn't happen."
"It's not good, Sandy," Ari cut in. The frustration was plain in his voice now. His hand vanished from her shoulder to rub the front of the gown, seeking their usual deep pockets as he paced several steps, dark boots squeaking upon the shiny floor. "They got into the maintenance bays, for godsake. It had to be someone inside the CDF. But considering the security protocols we put in place, that shouldn't be possible."
"I wouldn't be rushing to conclusions," Ibrahim told Ari pointedly. Ari didn't look impressed. "Cassandra, I need you to be extra careful. We'll find who did this, but in the meantime, I want you to limit your movements and keep away from equipment bays, or any place where accidents or ambushes can be rigged in such a fashion."
"You want me to be a desk jockey?" Sandy asked, in mild disbelief.
"Sandy, your safety is important to the CDF. It's important to me. If you need to become a desk jockey to maintain your personal security, then that is what you'll do."
"What if I'm mortally wounded in a catastrophic chair-leg failure?"
"Sit on the floor."
Sandy sighed, and glanced up at Ari. Ari's expression was dark. And he was fidgeting absently, as if his attention were elsewhere. Which, given Ari's uplinks were nearly as advanced as hers, was definitely possible. That was definitely not good.
"Sandy," Ibrahim continued firmly, "we really can't begin to guess who might have done it. Certainly it looks like some pro-Earth conservative faction, but we should not assume anything ... there are radical proLeague elements, after all, who see your presence as contributing to antiLeague xenophobia and therefore an obstacle toward ultra-progressive politics on Callay. Or it could be a CDF soldier with a grudge from some history your checks did not detect ... we don't know."
"What does Krishnaswali think?" Sandy asked.
"He's keeping an open mind," Ibrahim replied cautiously.
The senior CDF commander had not been to visit her, nor made direct contact of any kind since the ambush. She hadn't thought their relations had been that bad, personally. Maybe
she'd been wrong.
She took a deep breath. "Sir," she began, and paused, annoyed at the plaintive note she heard in her voice. "I am second-in-command of the CDF. I have a job to do, and I take that very seriously. We have operational concerns that need to be ironed out, Vanessa's supervising the training of a whole new combat squad even now and if I don't have functioning vehicles and weaponry ready for them to use, there's not much point to anything."
"You'll have to try supervising from a greater distance," Ibrahim said firmly.
"Sir, I don't know if that's going to ..."
"CSA Investigations will be assisting the inquiry," Ibrahim cut her off. "Krishnaswali wanted to keep it in-house, but the CDF simply does not have the manpower or skills for a major internal investigation at this point."
Sandy turned her gaze on Ari. Ari said nothing, standing dark and sombre at her side, fingernails drumming upon his chin as if he wanted to bite them, but was prevented by the surgical mask. Usually it was at this point in a discussion that he would jump in with some flippant, pointed observation or remark. Now, nothing.
"Surgeons," said Ibrahim, "what's your prognosis?"
"The hand will be fully functional in perhaps two weeks," came the reply. "The wrist won't have quite the same degree of articulation for months, though-we'll need to synthesise and graft some new bone, ferrous alloy of this kind doesn't regenerate fast or well enough to replace the piece of wrist bone that's missing. It might take a while to procure."
Killswitch: A Cassandra Kresnov Novel (v1.1) Page 8