Of Fire and Night - Kevin J. Anderson [22]
In the same instant, the other compy lunged toward the second sensor operator (Stromo still couldn't remember the young man's name). The military robot rammed a polymer-sheathed metal fist into the crewman's sternum with the force of a jackhammer and exploded his heart. He fell to the deck before blood could even seep out of his smashed chest.
No more than two seconds had passed. While the Admiral sat unable to believe what he had just witnessed, the bridge crew erupted in panic. The green priest almost knocked over her potted tree, but caught it in time.
The two compies turned from their initial victims toward Stromo and Ramirez, as if homing in on rank insignia. Ramirez dove for the command chair, shoved the Admiral away, and fumbled with a side compartment.
While the first compy lunged forward like an asteroid on a collision course, Sergeant Zizu threw himself against the other one. Despite the military robot's greater mass, the security officer knocked it off balance.
Ramirez finally succeeded in activating the thumb-lock and withdrew a twitcher weapon, a sidearm that delivered a powerful stun impulse to take down unruly humans. She adjusted the output to maximum and fired a disruptive impulse directly into the first compy's face. Though it was not meant to affect circuitry, the pulse was enough to disorient the compy's programming.
By now the tackled compy had recovered its balance. With a single blow, it knocked Zizu aside and plowed forward with the Admiral in its sights. Stromo scrambled away from the chair.
Ramirez did not hesitate. With cold fury in her eyes, she played the twitcher beam over the second compy's core as it lurched toward them. She continued firing the beam until smoke and sparks boiled from the implanted circuits. A meter away from them, the military robot collapsed into a petrified metal-and-polymer statue.
Then the first attacking compy straightened as its systems reset themselves. It reacquired its target and began to move, still orienting itself. Sergeant Zizu detached the metal chair from a bridge station and, yelling at the top of his lungs, brought the chair's shaft down like a club on the compy's neck. The robot's head bent, neck cables snapped, and Zizu struck again and again. The compy shuddered, then dropped like scrap metal to the deck.
Stromo backed to the other side of the bridge until he bumped against an empty station. Rattled and wheezing, he shook his head. "This is not possible! Simply not possible."
The crewmen stared at their two slain comrades. Ramirez recovered first, double-checked the second compy to make sure it remained inactive. Her face was flushed, her brow furrowed. "Admiral, remember when King Peter warned us about the Soldier compies and the Klikiss programming? He tried to shut down the factory."
Stromo mopped his forehead. "That was just a false alarm. Everything worked fine. No problems."
"Admiral, there is definitely a ‘problem.'"
"Maybe these two were just flukes," Stromo said in a watery voice, expressing a hope that even he did not believe. Ramirez gave him a withering glance that came close to crossing the line into insubordination.
"We just saw a Klikiss robot on the screen. What if it sent some sort of signal?" Zizu suggested.
Stromo made himself sound strong and confident. He knew Ramirez was going to make the suggestion herself, so he decided to say it first. "Extreme precautions, Commander. Let's switch off all the Soldier compies until we can figure out what went wrong here. No sense in taking chances."
"That's what I was hoping you'd say, Admiral."
However, when Stromo reached to activate the full-ship intercom, Ramirez cautioned him. "Do you really want to let the Soldier compies know what we intend to do? They might switch into defensive mode. Instead, let's dispatch specific teams to isolate and deactivate the compies."
Knowing