The thing thunked into the man’s brain like a crossbow bolt into wood, and before Smith got a chance to clamp down, Saul saw for a moment through his opponent’s eyes, and then through the cams in his immediate vicinity. Smith was making his way along a wide tubeway, four guards surrounding him, all of them suited up for vacuum. Despite his apparent assurance earlier, he was feeing, and Saul realized that, by deploying the robots, he had caught the man out. He now precisely located Smith on the station schematic – in a tunnel over to his left and further down, leading away from Tech Central. And, as Smith struggled to drive out Saul’s probe, he was forced to retract his own from Saul.
Now they were swirling around each other in the network, like immiscible fluids. Feeling the other man’s panic, Saul realized he had a chance to win this. However, it could not be through direct mental confrontation like this, because the steady growth of pain in his head made an eventual loss of control inevitable.
Within a second, Saul punched into Tech Central, grabbing the readerguns, and from that point also spreading out virally to contest for control of additional guns and cams. Smith seemed weakest at Saul’s point of penetration, as was the case in Tech Central itself, yet, even beyond a certain point where the sheer density of data began interfering with Saul’s usurpation, Smith could not seem to hold on. He tried to retain control of the readerguns, but only managed to trip safety protocols designed to prevent the weapons being hijacked, thus crashing their systems and burning out critical hardware. Meanwhile even as he fought for control elsewhere, Saul was focusing through the cameras of Tech Central itself.
Smith had abandoned the staff working the consoles in the main control room, and they were now trying to make sense of what was happening. Outside that room itself, two Inspectorate guards had tipped a couple of steel desks onto their sides and were crouching behind them for protection. Saul gave instructions to the readergun in the ceiling immediately above them, and two short bursts of fire wrote them out of the equation. Then, despite Smith’s interference, he managed to reprogram the same gun, as well as others in the vicinity, to respond only to his ten- digit code. Smith, unfortunately, was not in range of any gun Saul could fire. Time now to finish this, because Smith must not be allowed to escape.
‘Braddock,’ Saul called, as he came to a halt and squatted behind a pallet of sheet metal.
The soldier leapt to one side as shots exploded across the walkway in front of him. He then turned and fired his stolen machine pistol over to the right, emptying it completely then tossing it away. A weapon tumbled away down there, not because its owner had been hit, but because he was desperately trying to fight off the robot which was attempting to tap a twenty-millimetre thread through his back. Braddock retreated fast towards Saul and Hannah, his own machine pistol in his left hand and the missile-launcher in his right. He crouched low beside them.
‘The both of you, head up into Tech Central.’ Saul focused on Braddock, meanwhile sending new instructions to two of his robots. ‘Those remaining there are not armed, and the reader-guns there are now under my control.’
‘You’ve won? You’ve won already, haven’t you?’
Saul shook his head, then quickly wished he hadn’t when it felt as if something began snapping loose inside. He was trying to keep thousands of separate functions open to his conscious perception, striving to keep the pain under control. Smith’s informational assaults on him were constant and it took all Saul’s effort to retain control of the robots and readerguns he had already seized, his attempt to code them to respond only to himself becoming a continuing battle.
‘I’ve got an advantage over him in the immediate area, simply because of the robots and readerguns I control,’ he explained. ‘But I don’t know how long I can hold on to that.’
One of the robots drew itself up into the cage of girders, causing a shudder of metalwork, whilst another passed below on its way towards the required destination. Saul meanwhile replaced the ammunition clip in his machine pistol with the ceramic ammunition clip from the assault rifle, then tossed the emptied weapon away.
‘What are you doing?’ Braddock asked.
‘Smith isn’t in Tech Central, so I’m going after him.’
‘Then I’ll come with you.’
‘Go where I told you to go,’ Saul instructed, before he propelled himself over towards the squatting robot and caught hold of its bullet-scarred cowling. He then focused on Hannah. ‘Justice now, I think.’
Hannah merely nodded, her expression unreadable behind her visor. Braddock’s expression, however, was an open book – the man obviously angry and ready to protest. Saul slung one leg over the robot and jammed his fingers into a row of data ports inset in its upper surface. It leapt from the walkway, claws closing on beams in the latticework, then propelled itself onwards through the internal structure of the station wheel, like some magical lion in a VR fantasy.
The machine exhibited none of the jerkiness associated with robotics of previous ages; instead his metallic mount flowed smoothly towards its destination, keeping him seated safely by choosing a route to ensure he wouldn’t be knocked from its back – or, rather, Saul was doing that himself, because his mind lay as much inside these machines as in the grey fat inside his skull. Through other eyes – or rather sensors – he saw Hannah and Braddock reach the airlock that led up into the entrance block of Tech Central. There they would be safe, at least for a little while.
Finally, his robot mount landed on top of the wide tubeway snaking down and away from Tech Central, and after he had stepped down it joined its fellow in cutting and levering up a section of the bubblemetal ceiling.
Saul hurled himself forward, every instinct now concentrating on personal physical survival. He shouldered the floor and rolled into the gap below the plate the two robots were levering up, then shoved himself downwards. Even as he was falling through he pulled the machine pistol from his thigh pocket, aimed it and fired. Two of Smith’s guards flew backwards just as the missile detonated above, shaking the tubeway violently. As he hit the floor, he initiated the gecko function of his boots and propelled himself forward, firing again to send a third guard spinning and bouncing backwards in dreamy slow motion, vapour jets pinpointing the punctures in his spacesuit.
Behind Saul, an undamaged robot slipped through also, but as it tried to right itself, a robot under Smith’s control hurtled along the tubeway leading from Tech Central and slammed into it, a collision silent in vacuum, yet noisy in interference over com as internal components shorted. Shots tracked along the nearby wall as the last guard tried to regain his balance and get a bead on Saul – but by then Saul was on him. He caught the barrel of the man’s gun and pushed it aside, whilst pulling himself in closer. A heel-of-the-hand blow to the man’s visor, then again and again, air leaks starting to create vapour trails all around it, his gun barrel hot, and vibrating in Saul’s gloved hand, as it spewed a stream of bullets. The guard tried a hook punch, but Saul turned him towards the wall and chopped at the back of his neck – once, twice and then again to feel something break.
