Synthesis - James Swallow [123]
White-Blue nodded. “I understand.”
“Try not to get hurt,” Ree called after her as she made for the door. “I’ve had some of your blood on my talons once today. I don’t want any more.”
“You and me both,” she offered.
Outside, the alert indicators along the walls of the corridor pulsed back and forth, the siren finally falling silent but the red warning color remaining. She hesitated, listening for movement, and turned as a contingent of three guards rounded the corner with Chief Dennisar at the lead.
He didn’t wait for her to ask for a status report. “Commander, we have an estimated eight to twelve intruder mobiles on this deck. Lieutenant Denken is sweeping forward. We’re moving aft.”
Vale made a beckoning gesture at one of the noncoms, signaling the security guard to hand over his weapon. The Bajoran man’s dark, serious face bobbed in a nod, and he presented the phase-compression rifle to her, drawing his backup hand phaser at the same time. The rifle was one of the newer post-Dominion War models, compact and blunt-nosed.
They began moving again, and Vale checked the charge as Dennisar went on. “From what we can see, they’re trying to isolate and hold node points for key ship’s systems.”
“Have you engaged them yet?”
“N’keytar has,” said the burly Orion, indicating a pale, thin-limbed Vok’sha female hovering at the back of the group.
The woman brushed her straw-blond hair from her angular face, fixing the commander with bright blue eyes. “Just got off a few shots, ma’am,” she said. “Couldn’t draw a bead. They swept the corridor with a lowresonance antiproton pulse, knocked me on my backside.”
“Describe them to me,” said Vale.
The security guard made a ball shape with her fingers. “Different models, but most of them were this shape, metallic, like bronze. They float across the deck, pop manipulators or weapons out of concealed hatches. I couldn’t determine any sensory apparatus, just a colored—”
“A colored band around the circumference?” Vale finished for her. “Those are Red-Gold’s drones.”
“Commander?” said the other guard, a gruff Napean man with a craggy face.
“One AI mind, multiple remote units. Those spheres, they’re all Red-Gold. He’s the instigator of this rebellion.”
“Mister Keru issued us one of these,” noted Dennisar, tapping a cylindrical module attached to the front of his heavy rifle. “A dekyon-pulse emitter.”
“Just one?”
“Aye, ma’am. And it gets better. This thing has a slow fire cycle; it needs a few seconds to recharge after each pulse—”
As he spoke, the group reached a junction in the corridors, and Vale caught the acrid stink of singed components on the air. She turned in the direction of the smell, bringing the rifle up to her shoulder as a glitter of gold flashed around the corner of a branching passageway. The lights down there were flickering, as if something were interfering with power nodes. Dennisar and the other crewmen saw the same and instantly fell into combat stances.
The spherical drone emerged and drifted to a halt, extending four sinuous limbs that snaked out and tore at an access panel. A second drone was coming up behind it, and with that one came a unit of different design, something like a diamond shape on four legs.
“They’re digging into one of the intercom nodes,” said the Napean.
Vale leaned into the rifle. “Open fire,” she snapped, and pulled the trigger.
A storm of bright blue lightning stabbed out and creased the surface of the closest drone, for a second sparking off the halo of a defensive shield before the power of the combined barrage blew through it. Vale and the crewmen kept up the salvo, giving Dennisar the vital seconds he needed to charge the pulse weapon.
The diamond drone rotated and opened along its length, producing a nest of beam emitters that released fans of searing emerald energy. The security team broke for cover, but the Napean was clipped by the antiproton surge and snarled in pain as he fell, collapsing against a stanchion. He paled and passed