But neither have you, Sten.
Sten chanced a bravo's fflp, tossing his blade from right to left hand—and the Emperor attacked. Sten damned near lost the knife, reeled back, cursing himself for even thinking of a grandstand play. Again he slashed at the Emperor's wrist, recovered, slashed, blade slicing off a long curl of die plas, and Sten's hand flashed to the deck, came up with the pistol, and the Emperor underhand-cast the plas, and it cut into Sten's shoulder, muscle spasm on the trigger, round going somewhere, missing, pistol flipping out of his hand from recoil and...
Darkness.
The voice was calm. "I have determined that the intruding organism is more dangerous to my assigned duties than the aberrant one that was created. His termination will be given priority."
Jesus. It hurt. Sten put his knife between his teeth, clenched on the machined crystal, and pulled the long shard from his shoulder. Waver of pain. Put the plas down. Wipe blood from your fingers. Feel the wound. Bleeding? Some. Badly? Not to worry about. For a while. Pain?
Sten mumbled the mantra he had been conditioned with years before, back when he had been a Guards trainee, and his body forgot the pain. He went prone on the deck. Slowly let his fingers move across the deck, looking for mat pistol. It could not be far.
Across the chamber, a clatter.
Laser aircrackle blast as the round hit somewhere. High, and left.
Sten's fingers touched something.
The pistol butt.
Clot. So the Emperor had a backup gun.
"Stand by," the voice announced. "I have the intruding organism located. Prepare to fire."
Twin lights flashed on, glareblind, and Sten shot twice, explosion, dying into darkness, the Emperor shooting a little late, the bullet smashing down where Sten had been a few seconds earlier.
All right, you bastard, Sten thought, and, concentrating on where those lights had been, sent five rounds rapid into the general area, rolling and spinning as he fired.
If the Emperor shot back, Sten didn't know it, as thunder rocked the room and alarms screamed. Sten thought he heard a shout. That strange voice that had to be the ship itself? The Emperor? He didn't know. Smoke boiled, fire flashed, lights strobed. A panel was sliding closed; Sten snapped a shot through it, buckling the door.
Sten started after the Emperor, trying to stop him before he got to whatever nasty surprise he was heading for in this, his ship. Stopped, damned himself for a fool, and headed for his spacesuit He tugged it on, but left helmet and gauntlets clipped to the belt. Before he sealed the suit's chest opening he touched his medkit to his arm, and the box clicked, clicked, feeding painkillers and disinfectants into the wound. He sprayed a dressing across it, then buttoned up.
Take your time, he thought Better to let him get a bit of a lead rather than stumble into something.
"Ship," he panted, feeling very much a damned fool.
The voice did not respond.
Sten blew two more rounds into the biggest wallcrater. More alarms, and the flicker of flames, and the hiss of extinguishers.
"Ship! I will not harm you," Sten lied. "You can continue your mission."
Toneless: "Does not compute. Organisms other than the created organism are hostile and to be destroyed. Basic program applies."
Okay, try to kill me men, Sten thought. If you can.
He went to the buckled doorpanel and started to kick it open. Stopped, cursing himself for still not having his head oil korrect, picked up a chair and hurled it through the plas. Gunslam, and an AM2 round blew the panel away. Remember, that could of been you.
He sent a doubletap down the corridor for confusion's sake and went through. He was about to go after the Emperor when a thought struck him.
He aimed back into the ruined compartment and blew five carefully aimed shells into the deepening hole in the wall. He flashsaw metal peel/girder strips/smoke boiling into another chamber and then the smoke and fire closed in as a new alarm DEEdawDEEdawDEEdawed...
This one he knew. This one was standard—Ship holed/ Atmosphere being lost.
His ears popped as the ship lost air. Sten scrabbled for his helmet He had it on and was ready to slam the faceplate when pressure returned to normal. The ship was self-repairing. Having given the ship something to busy itself with, Sten ran down the corridor after the Emperor.
He understood none of the rooms he searched, any more than he had the first time through. Some were tiny, yet packed with consoles and equipment. Others were huge and completely bare.
It was in the first of those that the ship tried to kill him, as the McLean generator went off, and Sten floated up toward the ceiling, and then gravity slammed back on, but you didn't wait enough to let the fall kill me, as Sten dropped back, landing cat-quick on his feet. He put two rounds, out of spite, straight down, into the deck. One worry he did not have was ammo—the ammo tube contained five hundred of the Imm-diameter AM2 rounds in their Imperium X shield.
The blast tincanned the decking, and Sten looked down, into another level. He quickly ran a three-D prog in his head. The Emperor would probably be farther along this deck I'm on, so if I can get down there and circle up behind...
Sten dropped through the hole.
"The intruding organism is now on Golf Deck," the voice narked. "Proceeding toward medical station."
Clot. He looked around, to see if he could spot a telltale eye to shoot out. Nothing.
Okay. Bad idea. He would just as soon be back where he had come from. Idea. He stepped into the middle of the passage, the rent in the decking just above him, and the ship took its lead and spun the gravity yet again, sending Sten falling "up" toward the hole he had come down through. But as he fell he thumbed a bester grenade out. Heard it tink against the passageway's upper deck. He fell through the hole toward the overhead deck now twenty meters above/below him, locking a bootheel under a curl of debris, and gravity went back to normal as the grenade went off.
Sten waited—but the voice said nothing about his return. Did the time-loss grenades operate against it? Improbable.
Now what? The Emperor could be anywhere in this great polygon of a ship/station. He would have a spacecraft decked somewhere—probably in the same place that ships would be parked the Emperor would use to begin his return journey.
This is his turf, not yours. Exactly. And it is his to defend.
Therefore:
Return to your first plan. Except you don't just want to turn off the AM2 now.
The control room is... Sten reoriented himself... one deck up. And back a short distance. We'll do it the easy way. Don't worry about the ship—just don't let it get you into wide open spaces, and it can play up with down all day long. If that's the worst it can manage, it wasn't that great a danger. Sten wondered why it hadn't been built with some sort of robot guncars or something—and then he realized the ship would have to be suicidal to allow shooting in its own "body." But he still worried—this last bastion wasn't well defended at all.
A few seconds later, the ship made its first real attack.
The corridor was long. Closed hatches led off to unknown compartments at periodic intervals. Somewhere down near its end, Sten thought he would find a stairwell leading up to the control deck. He heard a sound, like a hundred locks banging closed. Then he saw the far wall of the corridor was coming toward him. As was the near one, he saw, glancing behind him. We'll just divert through this hatch... which is bolted. As were the next two he tried. Sten knelt, held a two-handed firing stance, and sent four rounds slamming into the four corners of the oncoming wall.
Blast, smoke, fire... but nothing else. The "piston" kept closing in the cylinder.