Of Fire and Night - Kevin J. Anderson [79]
Several more silver berets fell as the group pushed through the sea of clankers. By the time they reached the control center, Swendsen was stunned to see that only Paxton and three other commandos had survived, along with him and Yamane. Nearly fifty silver berets had sacrificed themselves so the two technical specialists could get through with their patch virus.
Once inside the upload center, the last commandos barricaded the door as Soldier compies threw themselves against it. "How fast can you upload those viruses?" Paxton said.
"No one else could do it faster," Swendsen said, then cringed as a barrage of gunfire echoed around the walls.
"Two minutes," Yamane answered. He started to say something else, but an explosion drowned him out. He blinked, recovered, then repeated, "Two minutes."
"All right, two minutes." Without being told, the commandos barricaded the door. "You better not be exaggerating."
The compies used weapons seized from fallen silver berets to shoot holes through the door. Staccato thuds and clangs rattled across the barricade and stitched a seam of holes along the walls.
Swendsen cringed over the control deck. Outside, a muffled explosion reverberated through the floor. "This is delicate work! How am I supposed to concentrate?"
Paxton gave a disbelieving snort. "Should I go outside and tell the damned clankers to keep it down?"
Yamane was concerned about a more practical matter. "If one of those projectiles destroys the equipment here, we can't install our repeater virus."
"Then I suggest you move faster than a proverbial speeding bullet."
Working in intent silence amidst the background din, the two scientists copied the patch virus into the upload center and fed it into the imprinting transmitter. By design, each compy that received the virus would copy it and dump it to another compy, and another, and another. Once the cascade began, all the berserk robots would shut down.
At least Swendsen hoped so.
Compies shattered the makeshift barricade. Paxton and his comrades fell back and opened fire. "These are your last few seconds, gentlemen!"
"There, that's got it," Yamane said. "Ready to go."
Swendsen hit the transmit switch. The brief but deadly nugget of new programming swept out into the compy factory.
The front robot ranks paused as the signal slammed into them, altering their core programming. They hesitated as the repeater virus was automatically handed off to the next machine and the next. The compies staggered, then froze, shutting down in waves. An expanding current of stillness swept through the clamor of the factory.
Swendsen and Yamane waited at the control upload deck, afraid to speak. The surviving silver berets looked at each other, then at all the suddenly petrified Soldier compies. Robot arms were outstretched, artificial hands ready to tear them apart. They looked like an avant-garde artist's concept of a statue garden.
One of the commandos shouldered a compy aside with a crash. With a growing snarl he knocked another one down, as if clearing debris. Sergeant Paxton and the remaining silver berets got into the vengeful spirit, tossing compies until they had cleared a way out of the battered control center.
Formally shaking hands to congratulate each other, Swendsen and Yamane surveyed the now-silent compy factory with satisfaction. "They'll never find their way out of that infinite loop."
"We still have a lot of work to do," Yamane said. "Simply understanding what initially went wrong could take months."
"Save that for when the emergency's over," Paxton said. "We need to inform the EDF that your patch virus worked. They can start transmitting it to hotspots right now, save some of our battle groups." He triggered his shoulder mike and broadcast his report.
"I'd feel more comfortable if we could just get out of here." Swendsen wiped the back of his hand across his forehead, clearing droplets of perspiration.
"Agreed," the silver berets said in perfect unison.
They made their way back through the frozen compies, amazed by the sheer number of motionless