Scattered Suns - Kevin J. Anderson [247]
Tasia hadn’t thought her throat could go any drier. If the Soldier compies rampaged through the rest of the battle groups, the crews would certainly fight back—and be slaughtered. By now, suffering from insufficient personnel, the EDF had allowed Soldier compies to take over countless basic functions. It would be a complete massacre.
Tasia felt helpless anger boiling inside her. She knew she was doomed. Now that they had taken over the sixty rammers, the Soldier compies had no reason to keep any of the dunsel human commanders alive. She had absolutely nothing left to lose.
Her muscles coiled. Tasia didn’t think she could cause much damage, but maybe she could throw herself onto the nearest Klikiss robot, knock off its headplate, use her fists to smash out its optical sensors. She hoped the Soldier compies didn’t rip her apart until she inflicted some real damage.
Before she could spring, though, EA surprised her by taking a step closer. “Do not resist, Tasia Tamblyn. It will only cause your death. I do not desire that.”
Tasia blinked, shocked that the Listener compy had spoken voluntarily. “Why shouldn’t I go down fighting, EA?”
“You uploaded many of your general diary files into me. You told me that Roamers cling to the thinnest threads of hope.”
Tasia sagged. “This is a damned thin thread, EA. My Guiding Star just collapsed into a black hole.”
Smaller hydrogue spheres emerged like sweat droplets from the large warglobes. They docked against the lead rammers, looking like clustered soap bubbles.
Soldier compies closed in around Tasia, taking her prisoner.
“Where are we going?”
“You will be delivered to the hydrogues. You must go with these compies,” EA said, translating. “I will accompany you, if they allow it.”
“To the drogues—shizz, this just keeps getting better!”
With the Listener compy following, the Soldier compies manhandled her to the bridge doorway and escorted her down to the small pressurized docking bay where one of the glassy hydrogue spheres waited for her. A holding cell? Tasia feared that the moment she allowed herself to be sealed inside the small globe, she would become a specimen, a prisoner, with no chance of escaping.
Not that she had a real chance anyway.
“It is not much cause for hope, Master Tasia Tamblyn,” EA said, “but it is all we have. Believe me.”
EA accompanied her into the transparent sphere, and the amorphous door hatch sealed over it, flowing like liquid putty until no mark showed. Powered remotely, the confinement vessel rose from the metal deck, and the landing bay doors opened, violently dumping the atmosphere. The Klikiss robots and Soldier compies stood undisturbed in the cold vacuum, needing no air.
As her tiny holding cell propelled itself from the rammer toward one of the intimidating warglobes, Tasia pondered the depth of the trouble that the Terran Hanseatic League was in. The Soldier compies would rise up in a lightning strike across all ten grid battle groups and seize the EDF ships in a single stroke.
The nearest hydrogue vessel loomed in front of her, a huge wall of diamond behind which swirled murky mists and the lair of her enemies. In defiance, she turned to face the opposite direction, away from the warglobe that would soon swallow her. Before her holding bubble was absorbed into the huge alien sphere, she saw the engines powering up on the sixty stolen rammers.
Commanded by Klikiss robots, the specially designed kamikaze battleships moved away from Qronha 3 and launched into space.
Chapter 127—PATRICK FITZPATRICK III
When the cargo escort landed aboard his grandmother’s old-model Manta, Patrick Fitzpatrick was greeted with a hero’s welcome. For so many months, the Hansa had thought he and his fellow prisoners were dead.
Wearing a hard expression, he pushed past the cheering guards and landing crew. He had a crisis to handle. “I need to see my grandmother before this gets any worse.”
On the Manta’s bridge, the old captain