Of Fire and Night - Kevin J. Anderson [30]
Eolus clenched his hands into fists. "I will get to the bottom of this bullcrap." He turned to the comm officer, raising his voice to thunder level. "Give me all-ship intercom. Immediate reports! Has anyone seen--"
Before the Admiral could complete his sentence, a staccato of alarms went off. Intercom channels filled with shouted accounts of strange behavior, compies suddenly going rogue, as if they were all on some sort of timer. Rossia let out a low moan, already knowing what must be happening.
Eolus got to his feet. "Green priest! You sure about this?"
Rossia nodded, yanking his fingertips away from the nightmarish images in telink. "Yes. Absolutely, yes. They're slaughtering crews on grid after grid. I think most of the green priests are already dead. Oh, I've never seen so much blood. The compies are just attacking and attacking."
Eolus whirled to the comm officer. "Word from our ships?"
"Every Manta reports the same thing, Admiral! We're losing contact--"
"Immediate crackdown, by God! No time to lose."
Rossia did not know his new commander well, but he was sure that this bulldozer of a man would not back away from a fight. Eolus hammered his big-knuckled fist down on the all-ship intercom again. "This is an emergency, and I expect everybody to act instantly. Stop the compies. Don't bother trying to deactivate--just blast them into pieces. Many, many pieces."
Since hand weapons were useless for fighting hydrogues, the Eldorado carried only enough twitchers to subdue brawling crewmen or quash an attempted mutiny. Even if sufficient weapons had been available, Rossia wouldn't have known how to fire one.
Only one compy was stationed on the Juggernaut's bridge. When it began to move erratically, Eolus yelled, "Sergeant Briggs, use your twitcher!"
The security chief was already responding. He pulled his stun weapon and fired a scrambling blast. The compy jittered and crashed forward, its arms outstretched as if reaching for bones to break or windpipes to crush.
Rossia held on to the treeling's ornate pot, trying to shield it. The bridge crew stared at each other in skittish shock.
The comm officer looked sick, her skin pale and gray. "Admiral, two of the Mantas don't respond! I got a garbled signal that sounded like screams and fighting, then static."
Eolus's swarthy face turned ruddy. "Our ships are being hijacked!" As if to prove his fears, the two silenced Mantas changed course and began to withdraw from the battle group.
The Admiral scrambled with his controls, scrolled down the numbers, then looked up in dismay that gave way to frustrated anger. "Dammit! We just got out of drydock and refit, and they didn't even give me the right guillotine codes! Stupid upgrades--never work the way they're supposed to." Eolus stalked around the bridge and hit the intercom again. "Consider every Soldier compy an enemy. Get rid of them before they get rid of us. Do something interesting for your service records." He shouted to the security chief, who was unlocking a small sealed vault. "Sergeant Briggs, you are responsible for protecting my bridge. No matter what, do not let compies take control of this Juggernaut."
Briggs withdrew more twitchers, giving one to the Admiral and distributing the others to a pair of crewmen he considered competent, while he kept a projectile weapon for himself. "Twitchers aren't necessarily the best bet against Soldier compies, sir. Those robots are hardened against attack."
"Lucky us. Ideas?"
"Not off the top of my head, sir."
The comm officer blurted, "We've got a flood of transmissions, Admiral! Difficult to process everything. The compies are going renegade simultaneously, deck after deck. They're overwhelming our crew!" Each of the rebellious compies could easily take out five or six human soldiers before being brought down. There weren't enough people, or weapons, on board to stand against this uprising if it continued to grow.
"Casualties?" Eolus said.
"Officially unknown . . . but I can tell it's a lot."
Rossia frantically sent reports through telink so everyone else would