Of Fire and Night - Kevin J. Anderson [86]
Realizing he had stopped shooting, Lanyan blasted another military robot that came up behind one of his trainees. Three members of Childress's team already lay motionless on the deck. Lanyan didn't count the time, didn't count the number of targets, simply focused on any machine that was still moving.
When the mutinous robots had been eliminated, the sudden calm felt eerie. Childress shot three more blasts into a clanker already sprawled on the deck.
Unable to believe it was over, Lanyan looked at his forearm display, checked the external pressure, and saw that the air was still breathable. He cracked open his faceplate and took a deep breath. The bridge smelled like smoke, ozone, burned circuitry, and spilled blood. Even so, it was better than the inside of his helmet.
The Goliath's bridge crew lay dead, mangled human bodies discarded under the control stations. The captain and bridge officers had put up a decent fight, but were overwhelmed.
Lanyan studied the exposed circuitry modules on the captain's chair. "We've got some housekeeping to do. Get our best computer specialists up here so we can reactivate this Juggernaut's systems while other cleanup crews go deck by deck and clear out the rest of the clankers. And I want an inventory of all the robot bodies you find, so we can keep a halfway accurate tally."
"Some of them are in too many pieces," Childress pointed out.
"And some of them might be still hiding out in the air ducts," Lanyan said. "I'd rather not get an unpleasant surprise."
Though he tried to make his voice stern, he could not prevent a grin from creeping onto his face. All around in the open gulf of space, the rest of the hijacked Grid 0 battle group waited for him. But this Juggernaut was his again. A good start.
"We've got one of our ships back. I'm proud of you all, but it's going to be a long day yet."
49
BENETO
Beneto watched the hundreds of towering verdani seedships preparing for war. With their thorn branches outthrust, he could sense the pulsing drive, the anger toward their mortal enemies. Gathered now, these organic battleships were ready to destroy the hydrogues after the holocaust ten thousand years ago.
But it wasn't the only war. The worldforest thrummed with the last cries of green priests trapped on EDF vessels as berserk Soldier compies slaughtered every human they found. Desperate telink reports splattered like hot blood across the verdani mind. The seeds of this current treachery had been planted long ago. Through worldforest memories, Beneto knew how Klikiss robots had used that previous war to set up a betrayal that exterminated their creator race. Now it seemed that Soldier compies had done something similar to humanity, taking advantage of the greater conflict. And there was nothing he or the worldtrees could do to assist the EDF.
Knowing the inevitability of the upcoming clash with the hydrogues, and aware of his special responsibility, Beneto stood before the nearest landed treeship, which thrust up to the sky like a many-tipped spear. He had been created as an avatar of the worldforest, a link between the tree mind and the human race. He had to understand these incalculably old organic battleships.
A part of him knew that he had to go inside. The gnarled trunk was covered with golden plates thicker than the bark of a normal worldtree, as impenetrable as a dragon's armor. Beneto pressed his wood-grain palms against the overlapping bark scales, and a vertical perforation appeared down the trunk, parting for him like a wooden mouth. He entered the giant treeship, and the wooden portal closed behind him.
The winding interconnected passages were smooth, as if made by a giant burrowing beetle. Beneto went deeper into the core, trailing his artificial fingertips along the walls and feeling where he should go.
The vessels had taken flight ten millennia ago, drifting on the cosmic winds. They had traveled far from where hydrogues had once fought the worldforest, where wentals