a glance at Jebel, 'and he's out of play for a while. I saw one of them stripped down to its carapace only, yet it still managed to bite off the foot of someone who stepped too close. Be warned.'
Helen, the Sparkind, was a tough-looking woman with either snakeform cosmetic alteration or full ophidaption—her skin glinted with small scales and whenever she got a bit excited her fangs dropped into biting position. She became slightly aerated when told to take command of those from station security and the ECS regulars who were experienced in zero-gee combat. The other three members of her Sparkind unit—a man and two state-of-the-art Golem—had been placed in command of other groups. It was a necessary adaptation to circumstances, now that the Prador had cut the power to the grav-plates in the area they controlled. The area where Cirrella's apartment lay.
She continued: 'The pincams are all out and the Prador are jamming scan. Our augs won't function there either and com is limited. We go in, kill anything in a shell, and reinstate cams and grav so the backup teams can follow.' She surveyed the group, noting the rank badges of each individual. 'You ECS regulars, you know what to do. Take corridors 12A and B and go through to the meeting point. You have to check accommodation units, as the smaller Prador can get through the doors. And check your targets. There are still people hiding in there—any you find, send them back this way.' The four station security personnel she sent through the hydroponics tube, perhaps the easier option, if any option could be so designated. Now she turned to Jebel, Urbanus, and the five ECS monitors Jebel had selected from his own surviving personnel. 'You're with me—we go through the factory.'
The other units headed away to their entry points, while Helen led the way to the access stairs down into an autofactory.
'You, Urbanus, will take first lead with me, along with you two.' She stabbed a finger alternately at two of Jebel's men. 'The plates are operating on this side of the factory so until we hit the nil-gee area we use simple four-by-four cover.' Helen glanced at Jebel. 'I intend to run a search pattern through there, so we won't be going in a straight line to the other side. I do not want one of those bastards behind us. When we hit nil gee we go to an axis advance: one by the floor, one by the ceiling, and the other two left and right. Any questions?'
Jebel guessed she had it covered. He glanced at one of his personnel, Jean Klars, who carried a heavy rail- gun. She crossed her eyes at him and stuck out her tongue. He guessed Sparkind possessed more respect for their commanders, though his own people were a good bunch and shouldn't fuck up.
The stair ended at a corridor, one side glassed, running above the end of the factory. Emergency lights lit the place, and Jebel glimpsed the nightmare machine jungle before Helen signalled them to get down. They crawled below the long window, then came upright again beyond it while Helen gazed pensively down another stair to a single door.
'They'll probably have that covered,' Jebel noted, perhaps stating the obvious.
'Com check,' Helen said, her voice also audible in Jebel's earpiece. She gestured back to the chainglass window and took a small decoder mine from her belt. 'Six metre drop. I'm okay with that and, of course, so is Urbanus. We'll go that way, and I'll let you know when the rest of you can use the door.'
Jean glanced at Jebel and raised an eyebrow. He shrugged in reply. Obviously these Sparkind were trained to a level he'd never encountered before. He did not know of any humans, even boosted, who could take a six metre drop in their stride.
Helen slapped the decoder mine against the glass. Immediately it activated, initiating the disintegration of the molecular chains in the glass. The entire window turned white, crazed, then collapsed into a falling curtain of glittery powder. Helen vaulted through, swiftly followed by Urbanus. He heard a muffled «Bollocks» from below and made a slight reassessment of Helen's superhuman abilities. Minutes dragged by, then, 'Okay, you're clear.'
They moved quickly down the stairs, the first two covering the rest as they moved into the shut-down factory. Helen took her three to the first monolithic machine—an enormous powder forge—then moved on to track along beside a conveyer. Jebel brought his three to the forge and they took up cover positions. And so it continued through aisles between moulding machines with micrometrically adjustable moulds, more conveyors, rollers, presses, welding and general-purpose assembler robots. As they moved it became necessary to scan and cover much above floor level as well, because this factory's production lines did not only run in two dimensions. That half the grav-plates were active in here was unusual as such factories were normally zero gee with the machines working in three dimensions. A cage-work extended from floor to ceiling, supporting further machines, robots, conveyers, all the panoply of high-tech, high-speed production. Entering such a place when it was in operation would not have been a clever idea. The AI running it would obviously try to avoid causing you injury, but you might get in the way of some process it just could not stop in time, and you'd get ground up in the cogs.
Halfway across the alloy floor, Helen was one moment walking, then she launched herself into the air, diving upwards to thump against an extruder caught mid-belch of rows of coppery pipes. Urbanus remained at floor level while the other two jumped up and to either side to roughly form the axis pattern Helen required of them as they advanced. When Jebel reached the deactivated grav-plates, he signalled for Jean Klars to remain at floor level, the other two to take the sides, while he launched himself for the ceiling. Almost the moment he stopped himself against the underside of a large crane arm, the firing started.
The hideous racket of a projectile stream slamming against machinery sent most of them ducking for cover, but the ricochets all about made it difficult to locate the source. Jebel thought himself hit, blood and gobbets of flesh spattered him. A laser also fired, the beam not visible except where it struck. Flashes lit the entire factory as if someone were using an arc welder. As he pulled himself up behind the thicker part of the arm, Jebel saw one of those with Helen, tumbling through the air with smoke belching from his body. He bounced against the side of a multipress, scattering blackened pieces, then burst into flame. Jebel felt vulnerable where he hung—not enough metal between himself and whatever lay ahead of them. He pushed off from the arm, coiling himself in a ball while he flew across the gap between the arm and some bulbous furnace. The snap-crack of a laser tracked him, and he pulled himself to cover with a leg of his fatigues smouldering.
'Our commander is no longer with us,' said Urbanus over com.
Jebel realised that now—he saw Helen's remains floating up by the ceiling. 'Have you got that bastard spotted?'
'
Jebel took a quick look at the masses of machinery ahead, then ducked back. By his estimation, the one with the laser hid behind an automated milling machine down on the floor to his left.
'Covering fire,' he ordered, then, upside down, crawled down the face of the furnace until he obtained a better view from underneath it. The racket of weapons fire and the stink of burning filled the air. Movement behind the mill—confirmation. He fired five explosive missiles. Out of the explosion leapt a Prador, bouncing acrobatically from machine to machine. They hit it three or four times, but it did not slow. Of course, with that number of limbs it was much better in AG than humans, and could afford to lose a few. The creature darted between two heavy powder forges.
'All of you but Jean target the other side of those two forges. Jean, concentrated burst this side—just don't stop firing.'
The rail-gun Jean wielded filled the gap between the two machines with a hornet swarm of lethal ricochets and ceramal shrapnel. The Prador hurtled from the other side to avoid this hail. It trailed smoke in the convergence of fire from the others and Jebel enjoyed the satisfaction of seeing three of his missiles slam home. The creature flew apart. Jebel observed one leg stuck to a metal surface nearby, still quivering. Then the second Prador appeared, leaping a gap. Urbanus used the launcher facility on his carbine, pumping grenade after grenade up through a narrow gap from his position below. The Prador tried to jump clear of them but went straight into the convergence of laser strikes. It issued a bubbling shriek, struck the side of a conveyer and tumbled out into the open. Some of its limbs burst open, smoke and flame wreathed it as the concentrated fire did not let up. Jebel aimed to deliver the
Its bubbling screams continued for about a minute—a very long time in such a situation. Eventually it drifted against a wall and tried to pull itself to cover. Only then did Jebel fire his missile launcher, blowing the creature to smoking fragments. The acrid burnt-fish stink filling the air made him gag. It never occurred to him that he would become accustomed to this odour.
Performed at appallingly fast AI speeds, the weapons refit took only two days, and now theOccam Razorstood ready to engage the enemy. However, the idea of updating the rest of the old dreadnought's antiquated
