“You will be compensated for all damage,” he promised, although he wasn’t sure if that were actually true. The Community would do what it could, but even if Asimov was the only system under attack, resources would be stretched to breaking point. They might find themselves hunting desperately for a safe place to hide, let alone make repairs. “Your life support is rated suitable for fifty passengers in the main compartment. If we had the time, we would ditch your cargo and pressurise the holds to make room for more evacuees.”
He ignored Basil’s cry of pain. The Family Farm was carrying a thousand bottles of Rigel Brandy, among other such luxuries, and if Basil managed to sell it properly, it would bring him thousands of credits. The Community’s economy placed a high premium on real foodstuffs and the brandy should have set the family up for a very long time. Losing it to the Killers would be a serious blow, but they’d survive.
“And we definitely don’t have the time,” Basil said, looking over at the tiny display panel showing the live feed from System Command. The five Killer starships were still advancing on the main cluster, picking off smaller mining stations and settlements as they moved. It might have been a mistake to have that on the display, Friedman concluded. It wasn’t conductive to calm thinking. “If they get within two minutes of the asteroid, we’re out of here.”
“Please don’t,” Friedman said, calmly. “I would have to use deadly force to prevent you from abandoning the evacuees.”
“You can’t be that much of a robot,” the wife protested. “You’ll die too! You could come with us and be safe!”
“I know,” Friedman said. “I knew the risks when I took the job and…”
He broke off as a message came in from Gunn. “Our set of evacuees is coming towards us now,” he said. “Please open the hatch.”
Basil looked mutinous, perhaps resentful, but reluctantly complied. Normally, there would be safety fields all around the starship, preventing air from leaking out or any accidents from damaging other starships, but now all such precautions had been abandoned. Friedman linked into the hanger’s main processor and looked through the monitoring systems, spotting a large group of children advancing towards them, escorted by another pair of Footsoldiers.
“Children!” Basil’s wife snapped. “We didn’t bargain on children!”
Friedman said nothing as the first children entered the starship, to be shown to their positions. They weren’t all children, he realised suddenly; their ages ranged from five to eighteen, with a handful of older children providing supervision for the younger kids. A handful of them had defocused eyes, suggesting that they’d been pulled out of VR worlds and helped to join the evacuee groups.
“This is unacceptable,” Basil’s wife continued, eyeing one of the teenage girls. “This is totally…”
“Shut up or I will stun you,” Friedman snapped, silently glad of his armour. The two Footsoldiers would have to sleep in their suits until they reached safe harbour, but at least it would provide the ultimate sanction to their decisions. “If you can’t be civil, at least be tolerant long enough to get them somewhere safe and out of the line of fire.”
He watched though the armour as the final children boarded and the AI cleared them for departure. Basil leapt to power up the engines and lift the starship out of the hanger and down towards the exit. Friedman had never been so glad to see stars in his life, even through the suit kept him calm and focused. It was more than could be said for the children. The younger ones seemed to think that it was all a game, but the older ones knew what was happening… and that they might have left their families behind forever.
“Course laid in for safe harbour,” Basil said, as the starship emerged into open space. It was filled with hundreds of starships seeking escape, or in rare circumstances trying to land to pick up more evacuees. It seemed impossible that they wouldn’t succeed in evacuating the entire system, but Friedman knew the maths. They wouldn’t have a prayer of saving more than a handful of evacuees. “Jumping out… now!”
Behind them, the Killers opened fire.
Chapter Sixteen
Captain Jeff Zeitlin braced himself as the Firelight raced towards the Killer starship at speeds that would have been unimaginable before humanity encountered the Killers for the first time. Twelve destroyers could normally handle any merely human threat, but the Killers were simply too powerful for the entire Defence Force. Destroying even one of their ships would require a miracle; indeed, Zeitlin had seriously considered recommending that the Footsoldiers attempt a second boarding, this time with antimatter mines. The sheer ruthlessness the Killers had displayed as they advanced, blasting everything that might even remotely have proven a threat, suggested that it would have been futile. The destroyers were on their own.
The Zeitlin Family had given lives to the Defence Force before — the family history stretched all the way back to Old Earth and the national armed forces that had existed there — but none of them had perished in such hopeless battle. Zeitlin wondered about retreating, knowing that no one would blame him for deciding to leave the battlezone and preserving his ships for another day, but dismissed the idea before it had fully formed. If they could buy System Command a few more minutes to evacuate women and children from the main cluster, it was worthwhile. He refused to consider any other alternative.
“Load torpedo bays,” he ordered, calmly. Now that he had made his decision, a new sense of perfect calm descended over him. He was proud of his ship and crew. “Prepare to engage the enemy at extreme range.”
The squadron spread out, abandoning mutual support for the additional security provided by distance. Even a glancing blow from Killer weapons would destroy a human destroyer; their only safety lay in speed and randomness. The AIs were already computing completely random courses that would defeat the Killers ability to predict them — in theory. In practice, the Killers knew that the human ships would either have to come closer to them or do nothing beyond minor pinpricks. Once they opened fire, it would all be over very quickly.
“Weapons ready, sir,” his tactical officer said. “Entering firing range in one minute, seventeen seconds.”
The Killers were already firing, picking off tiny stations and remote sensor platforms. As Zeitlin watched, a freighter jumped into the area… and was picked off before its commander even knew that it was under attack. The senseless slaughter had an air of inevitability around it, as if the only thing delaying the Killers from finishing the job was the sheer number of possible targets. They didn’t seem to be discriminating between asteroid habitats and unmanned asteroids either; if it came into their sights, they blasted it. It would be a colossal waste of firepower for any human ship, yet the Killers seemed to have power to spare. They didn’t even seem to be enjoying themselves; calmly, methodically, they were taking the entire system apart.
“Open a link with Sparta,” he ordered, as they closed in for final approach. “I want them to see everything that happens to us.”
“Aye, sir,” the communications officer said. “They’re getting full telemetry from all of our departments.”
Wonderful, the sardonic side of Zeitlin’s mind thought. They’ll see our deaths in great detail.