‘So now what?’ asked Vila, seeming unsure about whether he honestly wanted to know the answer.
Blake looked up at the damaged building. ‘We’ve got to get as close as we can to the Berserker,’ he said. ‘I hope it’s still looking for Travis. It should leave the two of us alone until he’s dead.’
‘Well, I know you don’t like him much, Blake, but let’s not wish him dead too soon,’ Vila replied, doing his best to smile. He looked up at the wrecked building. ‘Do you think anybody died up there?’ he wondered, gesturing to the floors above with a finger.
‘It’s possible,’ Blake answered.
‘Would it affect the Berserker’s queuing system?’ asked Vila.
Blake had no idea how the AE105 registered deaths in its vicinity or determined which deaths it was responsible for. It obviously had some kind of comprehensive logic programming. He mulled over the possibilities as he opened the front doors of the college and stepped inside. The corridor was clear, undamaged and obviously hurriedly evacuated. Chairs at the reception desk lay on the floor on their sides, drinks that had been dispensed in the small waiting area stood abandoned or spilt.
‘It seems to have some form of sensory data input,’ he said slowly. ‘Perhaps it can scan to determine whether life forms are dead, how long they’ve been dead and how they died. It may only register a kill based on direct contact with its tissue vaporiser.’
Vila thought this over. ‘Or, it might shoot at Travis and miss, because he ducks for cover behind somebody else. Then the person shielding him would die and the Berserker would reset the queue.’
‘We just don’t know,’ said Blake.
‘Let’s hope it’s got a straight aim and no self-blame complex then,’ said Vila. ‘It’ll only kill us if it actually wants to.’ He sighed. ‘At least we’ll be keeping it happy.’
Blake crossed the small reception area to the lift bay. All the lift doors were closed. He pressed the sensor to call the lift but it didn’t light up. ‘The power’s down. Probably a safety precaution. Check the stairwell, Vila.’
Vila darted to a door at the other end of the alcove. ‘Sealed off,’ he called. ‘Probably another safety precaution.’ The sound of a blast roared overhead and the building shook. Cracks that had already begun to appear in the walls grew longer.
*
The AE105 fired and a section of the wall exploded. The life form it was hunting rolled out of the way and ran. The hole in the wall was large enough for the weapon to pass through and it did not waste time heading for the doorway. It followed its prey into the corridor, powering up the vaporiser and scanning all the time. It had extrapolated full details of its target’s DNA, biorhythms and brainwaves. It was a hunter and it knew exactly what it was tracking.
*
‘It sounds like we need to go up,’ said Blake. He gestured at the lift. Vila unpacked his tools and handed Blake a mechanical door lever. Blake set to work and opened the lift doors in a few seconds.
‘You know that shaft could collapse while we’re in there,’ Vila grimaced.
‘One of many dangers we’re facing right now,’ Blake replied, stepping into the lift car and looking for a maintenance hatch. ‘There’s no way into the shaft from here. If we get this lift down we can climb the cables.’
‘We’re on the ground floor,’ Vila said. ‘Where is there down for it to go?’
Blake examined the controls. ‘There’s a pit for maintenance at the bottom of the shaft,’ he said. ‘It’ll just be a few feet deep, but we only need a small gap.’ He stepped out. ‘Can you over-ride the lift control system, just enough to make it drop into that pit?’
‘I think so,’ nodded Vila.
There was another blast and the building shook again. The lift car creaked and Vila shuddered at the thought of being crushed as he set to work.
*
Travis turned a corner and ran into another corridor. There were two alcoves ahead of him, one leading to the lift and the other to the stairs. The weapon wasn’t going to give up, and it was closing in fast.
He darted left, arms out to push the doors to the stairwell open, but slammed into them hard. Winded, he caught his breath and banged on the doors, grabbed the handles and shook them. They didn’t budge. Travis heard a sound from behind him that by now had become uncomfortably familiar: the power-up of the weapon. He ducked quickly and kept his head down as the doors to the stairwell exploded, scattering hot fragments everywhere. Travis’s suit protected him, but he knew it would not save him from vaporisation. He flung himself into the stairwell and bounded down the stairs three at a time. The machine pursued him. Sections of the stairs that Travis had already conquered exploded one by one. He took a huge leap to escape one of the deadly blasts and slammed into a wall. He was disoriented, but he managed to pick himself up. He darted onto the next flight of stairs just as the AE105 fired. The steps in front of Travis disintegrated and he fell into the empty space below, grabbing the banister rail at the last second to stop himself from plunging to the bottom of the stairwell.
The bulbous metal killing machine floated down towards him, charging its vaporiser. Travis had nowhere to go but down. It was a sheer drop through the centre of the staircase, but he could grab another rail on the way down, get to the bottom a few drops at a time. He let go of the rail.
TWELVE
PLAYING GHOST
‘INFORMATION.’
‘Yes, Zen,’ Avon said irritably.
‘LIGHT PROJECTION SYSTEM NOW ACTIVATED.’
‘Let me hear it,’ Avon ordered.
Zen chimed again, and the synthesised voice of Ban Kerralin filled the Liberator‘s flight deck.
‘This is my final command,’ it said. ‘You will relinquish all control of your systems to Kerr Avon and await his orders. You will obey any and every command given you by Kerr Avon. Respond by opening a communications channel to the nearest space vessel.’
Avon nodded briefly. ‘Send it now,’ he said. Then he sat back and waited for a response. He knew he wouldn’t have to wait long.
*
Blake hauled himself up a few more inches of the cable to be level with another lift door.
‘I think the Berserker is on a much higher floor,’ he told Vila, who was hanging on to the cable below him. ‘This is only the seventh. Travis will surely be heading downwards because he’ll want to get out of the building. If we come out here, we might be able to catch them on their way down.’
He pulled the door lever from his belt and used it with one hand, holding himself fixed to the cable with the other. Once the door was open, he clambered through and helped Vila out.
Something exploded nearby, making Blake turn quickly to look behind him. In the alcove adjacent to the one that had housed the lift stood the doors to the stairwell, buckled but not breached. There was another blast and the doors cracked.
‘Perhaps it’s Travis,’ Vila suggested. ‘The Berserker would have blasted through that in a second.’
‘He could be trapped in the stairwell,’ Blake agreed. He drew his blaster. ‘Let’s give him a hand, shall we?’
Get away from me, Blake!’ Travis roared from the shaft, his voice an odd booming echo. ‘I can see you. If you come near me I’ll kill you.’
‘This isn’t a rescue mission, don’t worry,’ Blake answered through gritted teeth. ‘Not for you in any case.’ He pulled the holograph projector from a pouch on his belt. Travis fired his laseron destroyer and shot it from Blake’s hand. The projector plunged to the bottom of the stairwell, a useless molten lump.
‘You fool, Travis!’ Blake growled. ‘That wasn’t a weapon. That device would’ve stopped the machine. Now it’s going to kill all three of us, starting with you.’
There was another explosion that shook the building, knocking Blake and Vila to their knees, and the shining globe of the AE105 came into sight. It floated towards Travis, as if it was coming in close to make absolutely sure it hit its slippery prey this time.
Sudde
nly, there was a booming noise from the sky above them. Blake threw up his hands to cover his ears. Was it a voice? There was something oddly familiar about it, but it was so loud he couldn’t make out the words.
The sound stopped as abruptly as it had started and, for a moment, the Berserker hung in the air, completely motionless.
‘What’s it doing?’ whispered Vila. ‘Why doesn’t it kill Travis?’
Blake stared in confusion as the glowing machine went dark. The humming stopped and the metal sphere dropped past Travis to the bottom of the stairwell, hitting the ground floor with a resounding clang.
*
‘INFORMATION,’ chimed Zen. ‘COMMUNICATIONS CHANNEL NOW OPENED BETWEEN LIBERATOR AND THE AE105.’
‘AE105,’ Avon shouted into the air, exultantly. ‘This is Kerr Avon. Respond.’
‘This is Assault Engine One Zero Five,’ the Berserker answered in a buzzing computer voice a little grittier than Zen’s. ‘I am instructed to take my commands from you, Kerr Avon.’
‘Deactivate your defensive shielding and weapons.’
‘That command cannot be accepted,’ said the Berserker. ‘It conflicts with my core directives.’
‘State your core directives.’
‘Core directive one: I am not to accept the order to self-destruct. Core directive two: I am not to accept the order to deactivate my offensive or defensive capabilities. Core directive three: I am to obey the commands of my creator Ban Kerralin unless otherwise ordered by Ban Kerralin.’
Jenna sighed. ‘You can tell it what to do, but you can’t tell it to do anything that would help.’
But Avon was smiling. ‘AE105,’ he shouted. ‘Can you accept the order to delete, in whole or part, the data in your memory core?’
‘That order does not conflict with any of my programming,’ said the Berserker.
‘Delete the file relating to your core directives,’ Avon beamed triumphantly.
‘The file is deleted,’ said the machine.
‘Now deactivate yourself,’ Avon ordered.
And suddenly there was silence.
*
Blake’s bracelet beeped.
‘Blake, come in,’ Avon’s voice said. ‘I’ve shut down the AE105. I suggest you grab it and get out of there.’
‘I can’t grab it,’ said Blake in annoyance, grabbing Vila and pulling him back into the corridor. ‘It’s at the bottom of a stairwell.’
‘Give me its position relative to you.’
‘About three feet horizontally and ninety vertically,’ said Blake.
‘I’ll come and get it myself.’
The call ended. Blake activated the bracelet again. ‘Cally, bring us up,’ he snapped and, in a moment, he and Vila were gone.
*
In the ruined stairwell, Travis clung to the remains of the stairs, his legs dangling over the drop below.
‘You won’t get away with this, Blake!’ he roared. ‘I’ll hunt you down, and when I find you, you’ll wish that machine had killed you. Do you hear me, Blake? Blake!’
He knew that Blake had gone but, somehow, shouting at his shadow made Travis feel better.
*
Finally resting in his chair on the flight deck of the Liberator, Blake closed his eyes and sipped a drink while Avon explained what he had done.
‘What are we going to do with this Berserker then?’ Blake asked.
‘I was planning to reactivate it,’ said Avon. He enjoyed Blake’s look of horror for a few seconds before adding, ‘Just its computer system and propulsion. Then I can order it to dispose of itself in this system’s sun.’
‘Suicide by star,’ Blake smiled, eyes still closed. ‘How spectacular.’ Suddenly he opened his eyes. ‘Tell me, why we didn’t try out your long-distance plan before I dashed down to the planet with the projector?’
‘I couldn’t be 100 percent sure that it would work,’ said Avon. ‘So you didn’t want to hear about it.’
Blake winced. ‘It seems to be my day for mistakes.’
‘Doesn’t it,’ Avon replied with a sarcastic smile. ‘It’s a shame none of them have been small ones.’
‘Let’s look on the bright side,’ said Gan. ‘We’re all safe. And so are the people on Eurydice.’
‘Will the Federation send anyone to investigate?’ asked Cally.
‘I doubt it,’ said Blake. ‘That would draw too much attention. They’ll probably send someone to clear up and cover up, as usual.’ He glanced at the AE105 again, a memory stirring. ‘Kerralin said that he’d hoped this thing would kill Servalan.’
‘A man after my own heart,’ Avon replied dourly. ‘Although I also hoped it would kill Travis.’
Jenna knew what Blake was getting at. ‘He said he had a plan B, didn’t he? Something Servalan would be unable to escape from.’
‘As I told you earlier,’ Avon said. ‘Anything trying to assassinate Servalan is the least of our problems.’
*
Keelian completed the last of the application forms and pushed the pad across the desk to Servalan, who gave them a merely cursory glance and smiled at her.
Keelian registered that smile in her database of images connected with the name Servalan and the orders in Offensive Program Delta Sixteen. The matches were perfect. It was the final confirmation she needed. She had already checked all other references, voice pattern analyses, motion pattern analyses and absolutely every scrap of data she had on the woman in whose office she now sat. She had been processing the data for quite some time now. It had taken a long time because she needed to be absolutely sure that she didn’t kill the wrong person. That was in her programming. She was programmed to kill Servalan exclusively, with no collateral damage. When her mission was complete she would automatically deactivate herself. Her last act would be the internal distribution of a special energy pulse that would cause her systems to fuse and her computer brain to melt down so that she could never be reactivated and reused. The only thing between her and the completion of the mission now was absolute confirmation of identity, and that came a second later.
Servalan was speaking. ‘Your completed application will be passed through to Administrative Training, and naturally you’ll be selected for fast-track priority by my order. After that, I shall want you on my personal staff, attending to such matters as…’
*
Keelian leapt over the desk and grabbed Servalan’s throat. Servalan started to choke as Keelian squeezed, staring in shock at the young girl’s face. Keelian spoke, but not in her own voice. She spoke in another voice, a male voice, a voice Servalan thought she’d never hear again.
‘You really are a poisonous bitch,’ Ban Kerralin hissed through Keelian’s mouth. ‘Aren’t you?’
Gasping for air, Servalan reached back behind her chair and quickly waved a hand over the emergency ray sensor in the wall. An alarm started howling.
Servalan felt dizzy, the room was beginning to spin as she started to black out.
Suddenly, Keelian’s head exploded in a shower of sparks. Her hand flexed open and Servalan rolled out of her chair, ripping a huge portion of the lower half of her dress as she pulled herself free. The decapitated girl clattered belly-down into the office chair, smoke curling up into the air from her neck. The smoke set off the sprinklers, drenching Servalan and soaking what was left of her dress right through.
The guard that had destroyed the android held out a hand to help her up. ‘Are you all right, Supreme Commander?’ he asked.
Servalan wasn’t all right. She was very upset. On Station Amber, when the AE105 had turned on her, she had known that Ban Kerralin wanted revenge, but after his death she had dismissed the possibility that he might yet get it.
As the guard left, effectively dismissed, she looked at the broken android lying on its side by the door and wondered if this was the last message she would ever receive from Ban Kerralin. It might not have been the only dirty trick he’d planned to play on her.
Gathering herself up, she buzzed for so
meone to turn the sprinklers off and noticed a light flashing on her communications panel. A message from Travis.
Servalan scowled. The last thing she needed at a time like this was to hear more of his bleating.
The message was brief and to the point, a single sentence: Blake has the weapon.
As the sprinklers shut off, the Supreme Commander stood dripping in her torn dress and seethed. That weapon was one of the most powerful things in the galaxy and now a band of ruthless malcontents controlled it. She would have to make a formal report to the President about this. But what could she say? Only that she didn’t think for a second that Blake would actually use it. He was known throughout the Federation to be unpredictable, unstable and possibly slightly mad. But if he was prepared to mess around with the AE105, he would obviously have gone berserk.
COLD REVOLUTION
MG HARRIS
ONE
At dawn, tanks drove into the city. Troops stormed the streets. A handful of Federation supporters were executed on the spot. A dozen more were arrested. The entire affair lasted only a matter of hours. Fewer than twenty people died. Then order was restored, the parliament re-opened. That was the end and beginning of the Cold Revolution.
Blake turned from the screen. He faced the crew with an expression that barely concealed the glee he evidently felt. Avon looked away. This wasn’t something he enjoyed seeing: Blake enjoying a moment of smug condescension.
‘You see? Revolution doesn’t always have to come about through violence. The will of the people is enough.’
Avon raised his eyes to Blake’s. He gazed at him without expression. ‘Almost twenty people died.’
‘Yes, and that’s entirely regrettable, I agree. But now Kartvel is free. The Federation left, eight weeks ago. They signed a treaty. And now there’s going to be an election.’ Blake allowed himself a smile. ‘Even someone with your evident dislike of politics should be able to respect an outcome like that, Avon.’
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