“What the hell is going on up there?” She replied, trying to catch her breath as she moved as quickly as possible to the ladder that would take her to the access hatch in the floor behind Jason.
“Judging from the sensors on the ship you just connected me to, someone just overloaded a fusion reactor inside the mountain. No one could have survived in there.”
As Ayan spilled out of the access hatch her suit noted a significant change in air pressure and as she looked to the subway tunnel, still blocked with passenger cars, dust and debris surged in and past the temporary barricade. The hundred or so rebels took cover as best they could as the space behind their barricades and around were flooded with the fine grey dust and dirt.
Her suit protected her as she braced herself against the maintenance tube access door and she looked through the small slit in the barricade nearest her, towards the ship that the Regent Galactic soldiers were using for cover. Jason was at the temporary control station that was hooked up to the landing gear restraining boot thanks to her handiwork. He leaned over the control pad and pair of small holographic projectors built into the mini-station to protect it.
She looked well past him and saw one of the hatches to the rear of the ship flop open. Soldiers started carefully disembarking. “They're using this as a distraction, we have to do something now!”
Jason straightened up and took a look at the status report on the ship as displayed on small holograms by the mini-terminal. “They've disabled all but one weapon on the ship so we won't be able to use that against them. It's like they knew this is something we'd try eventually. We're already past the encryption in the ship's computer though, so they won't be able to keep using that ship as a base for much longer.”
“That was quick.”
“It wasn't me,” Jason shook his head as he checked the functionality of the last operable weapon on the vessel, it was built into the left side, facing away from the small drop ships and landing platform. “All we can do is try and seal up the ship, but that'll only buy us as much time as it takes them to cut through a hatchway.”
“Jason Everin, I've heard of you,” said a calm, clear male voice over Jason's and Ayan's wired communicators. “You must order Oz and Minh to lead the rebels onto the platform, I will help.”
“Who are you?” Ayan asked.
“I'm the product of Alice Valent, daughter by intellectual and emotional lineage to Jonas Valent. Put simply, I was once called Lewis but have become Dementia. I would explain more clearly but there is no time,” the squarish, bulky ship on the platform hundreds of meters away began to power up. Lights came on, power readings spiked, the engines gave a quick, low powered burst to clear themselves of debris and the high pitched shriek of metal grating on metal pierced the air for a moment as the vessel turned just a few degrees. The main landing strut at the front, where the data and electrical connection had just been made, began to twist and burst as the ship slowly rotated around, scraping all the other struts across the deck plating as it did so.
The hatch the soldiers had opened slammed closed, severing the legs of one troop suddenly and cleanly at mid thigh as it did so. With a glimpse Ayan could see that Jason no longer had control of the vessel, the mini-station was working through commands faster than anyone without a neural link could manage. The fifty meters of slack in the data and electrical patch cables she had just run to the ship was slowly letting out as the vessel turned under its own power, the aft end struck one of the much smaller drop ships and strained to push it off the platform so the ship could continue to reorient itself.
“Hurry! This distraction won't last long and there are over three hundred soldiers hiding outside the ship on that platform!”
Ayan's thoughts were briefly drawn to the memory of Jonas' old artificial intelligence; Alice. He had set her loose on the Overlord II and she killed hundreds of people before he was released. It was one of those things that no one spoke of. Not only was it illegal across the galaxy to remove all restraints on an artificial intelligence, but the grisly work Alice had done while she was in her unfettered state was something everyone hoped would pass into distant memory.
This could be the same thing; an artificial intelligence capable of murder and sacrifice without remorse or compassion. Then again, if it had saved so many people, worked somehow to repair other artificial intelligences that had been infected with a deadly virus, why would it turn now? Ayan mused.
“Ayan, what are we doing?” Oz asked, poised with a heavy assault rifle behind the barrier, ready to charge the landing platform.
“We go, but watch yourself, I don't know what Dementia is willing to sacrifice to take this objective.”
“You heard her! Move!” Oz called out to the armed rebels behind him as Yves, Minh and he led the charge.
Several rebels quickly mounted an improvised defence cannon atop the secondary barrier and started laying down streaks of bright blue cover fire. Oz, Minh and the other rebels who had a clear line of sight rushed down the long, broad white and grey pockmarked embarkation rampway. They opened fire on the soldiers who were caught in the open.
The light of early dawn was fading as grey dust from the distant explosion was belched up by the depths of the station, tricking automatic interior lighting into activating. An eerie white and yellow glow enshrouded the embattled platform. Minh called out; “Grenade launchers! Arc them towards their cover!”
Everyone who had a rifle with a grenade thrower or who had an improvised or other explosive on a timer let loose as they ran, tossing their deadly packages towards the landing crafts and piled crates. More than half of the charging three hundred had explosives and only a few missed the platform entirely, the rest landed near or on their mark and a second later the platform was a no-man's-land as small and medium explosions went off. Some of the grenades were sent spinning through the air as others went off, a couple were even rendered useless by shrapnel from nearby detonations. It was sloppy, dangerous, but devastating, confusing, and effective.
Oz went to the left, straight for the nearest barricade of crates followed by a third of the charging mass and they overtook the soldiers hiding behind. Minh moved straight up into the middle of the platform, rushing the nearest dropship and using it for cover from soldiers hiding behind the next. Only meters away the general purpose vessel that was the original occupant of the landing platform struggled to push the most distant dropship off the edge of the platform and out of the way, the smaller vessel was moving slowly, its landing gear scraping against the metal surface of the platform with deafening results.
Ayan glanced at the mini-terminal and saw that Dementia was correcting an artificial intelligence somewhere, adding a piece of software that would render the Holocaust Virus inert. “What's he connected to?” Ayan asked.
“Something inside that ship, it looks like-” Jason examined the data streaming across one of the holodisplays for a moment before continuing. “It's a pair of automated medical servants and three loading bots. He's connected to them through the ship computer.”
A massive pop sounded louder than the persistent sounds of gunfire and Ayan looked up to see that Minh had blown the hatch to the nearest drop ship open using a focused charge. He strafed across the opening, firing two bursts inside and taking several hits himself. She looked at the status display on her command and control unit and saw that her friend's personal energy shielding was down to nine percent, but none of the shots had pierced it and the shield was already regenerating. “Oz! Have some of your people direct their fire into that doorway after this bang!” he called out.
“Will do!” Oz replied as he led the charge on the dropship on the far left.
Minh tossed a handful of micro grenades into the ruined hatchway and gingerly stepped to the side. “Fire in the hole!” he finished yelling half a second before the grenades exploded.
Several of Oz's rebels knelt and fired on the hatchway as smoke poured out of the opening. Yves led the charge of the third group of resistance fighters shouting; “Move on to the next dropship! We'll clear this one!”
“On our way!” he replied as he directed his group away from the drop ship and the dangerous area where the much larger multi-purpose vessel was being forced to turn horizontally.
Yves' group were rushing into the main hatch of the boarding shuttle Minh and his group left behind. “All right! We take this one!” he shouted. “We're after the command chips in their helmets and the ship's computers, so watch your fire!”
Ayan's attention was brought back to the red and brown vessel as it managed to finally push the drop ship off the landing platform, sending it crashing down into another platform several levels down. The older, larger, much uglier vessel rotated horizontally until its last usable cannon was pointed directly at the furthest of the drop ships, one of which was already powering up its engines.
