‘That’ll weaken us,’ protested Langstrom. ‘We’re having trouble holding them even now.’
‘Beat a steady retreat,’ Saul instructed. ‘Let the invaders do all the work and take all the risks. You’re not fighting to win, but fighting to buy time.’
‘What are you going to do?’ the commander asked.
‘Something unpleasant,’ Saul replied. ‘That’s all you need to know.’
‘Okay, the team is on its way.’
He moved fast, retracing his route to the transformer room to reach the endcap of Arcoplex One. As he travelled, he watched multiple views of the battle in progress. Lang-strom’s men had remained in their hides around the rimward penetration, strafing the enemy with ten-bores and rifle fire, then suffering under returned fire as the enemy began to get their own heavy machine guns deployed. Langstrom’s teams subsequently began to retreat, squad by squad, taking up well-prepared positions to cover each step of the way. It all began to fall apart as two enemy spiderguns came into play with little to match them – the two Saul had deployed now drifting and twitching, having already been knocked out by pulse weapons. Then the proctors intervened.
Saul saw them approaching fast, six of them having launched themselves at high speed from inside the station. They were all carrying lengths of ceramic scaffolding like staffs, and were nearly upon the enemy, who were spreading along the inside of the station hull, before they were spotted. A ten-bore spat at them, sending two of them tumbling away with chunks flying off their bodies, then EM radiation pulses hit the others, haloing them with pink fire. In the virtual world, Saul felt their serenity – for even the two that had been so severely hit were calmly reordering their body’s resources for survival, each aware of its losses but calculating its trajectory to see how quickly it could get back into the fight.
The remaining four slammed into the inner hull, leaving huge dents – and in one case completely crushing an enemy soldier. Then they were up and into it, thrashing to and fro with their staffs, just about every blow proving a killing one. Why had they chosen to attack with such primitive weapons? Saul did not know and did not try to find out, nor did he try to fathom why they seized two of the heavy machine guns and tried to use them. It was a futile exercise, for the machine guns obviously required some kind of coded link with the gunners operating them.
The wreckage they caused, in both mechanical and human terms, was horrific, but when the two spiderguns turned on them it began to tell. They started to become sluggish, as chunks of their bodies were blown away. One of them managed to snag a spidergun that approached too close, and simply tore it in half. Then, as one, they launched themselves away again, suffering further damage as they escaped. It was enough, though: Langstrom’s troops had meanwhile withdrawn to safer positions – safer still when a multiple launch of missiles intersected the remaining spidergun and blew it to pieces.
Elsewhere numerous firefights were in progress, but the steady retreat was also becoming evident. The assault force was taking heavy casualties, too, and bodies and bits of bodies were spreading out in a steady cloud from the two attack points. The third, and smaller, force of about two hundred men was nearing Tech Central, advancing steadily behind two spiderguns and a line of heavy machine guns motoring across the hull on gecko treads. They were being very cautious, which was good since it gave Saul time to prepare. He exited the asteroid-side endcap of Arcoplex One and began to make his way towards the base of Tech Central, where the fast-response team was waiting, watching robots entering one after another ahead of them.
‘I’m going to let the force above enter Tech Central,’ Saul declared over suit radio. ‘Unless absolutely necessary, you will not engage them.’
‘Seems pointless us being here at all,’ replied one of the twenty soldiers.
Saul swung towards him. ‘I thought you were overseeing the defence, Langstrom.’
‘I am,’ Langstrom replied, ‘but my people are well enough trained and prepared for them to know what to do.’
Saul snorted in apparent annoyance and headed for the nearest airlock, the multi-armed welding robot that had been about to use it scuttling aside. Within the building, he gazed through numerous sensors, and quickly deployed his robots throughout the lower two floors. The main problem here would be the two spiderguns and, once they were out of the way, there would be a slaughter which it was utterly essential that none survived.
He mapped the place in his mind and worked out what would be their most likely mode of attack. The invading force would use the usual methods of urban warfare to secure the place, room by room, working their way steadily downwards. Maybe the spiderguns would be deployed ahead of the troops as they progressed, to take out all readerguns, and that eventuality should be prepared for.
Stepping inside, he sent his orders immediately, in just a microsecond. Construction robots began cutting away sections of cageway, so as to give themselves a wide angle of approach. Other robots with similar cutting gear positioned themselves nearby, because cutting gear was just what was required. It was a simple fact that spiderguns were lethal weapons, but they were also strictly anti-personnel weapons, and as vulnerable to a diamond saw as anything else made of metal. Other robots began concealing themselves for ambush, folding themselves up inside storerooms and cabins, climbing into ceiling spaces or the spaces under floors, behind wall panels or cramming themselves into air ducts, before welding and sealing themselves in.
Saul now issued further instructions. He wanted ten undamaged VC suits, so it would be necessary for ten of the attackers to die very neatly. Robots would have to deploy their ceramo-carbide chisels and drills carefully, for a hole punched into the vertebrae just below the neck ring should paralyse and kill, and not be as messy as, say, a heart puncture. Whereupon the suit should be easy to patch up afterwards.
The crump of an explosion shifted the air of the interior and was immediately followed by the shrieking of a breach alarm. Through cams focused up there, Saul watched a spider-gun leap in and take out the two readerguns. It then shot through the door and headed for the nearest cageway. The troops followed the second spidergun in, carting two of the heavy machine guns dismounted and carried ready for use inside. Saul was impressed by the efficient way they progressed, trying to leave nothing to chance as they checked the many niches and hidey-holes. Some robots they did find and, as a precaution, disabled with pulse weapons, but they missed many more.
‘Nine of you will come with me,’ Saul said to the fast-response team. ‘The rest will remain in Tech Central and
