If someone is insane enough to turn it into a viable combat tactic, his mind added, silently. It might just work… once, but it would be comparatively simple, with their knowledge of gravity technology, for the Killers to prevent it from happening again. All they would need to do would be to wrap a gravity field around their craft and any warp bubble would collapse before it could interpenetrate.
“Aye, sir,” the communications officer said. “They’ve got a complete download now.”
Gunn broke in with his customary disregard for human conversations. “We have riots in four hanger bays and panic on all levels,” he said, sharply. “The Footsoldiers and Police Units are requesting orders.”
Mandell scowled. The Community was generally law-abiding, a reflection of how much wealth the human race had under normal circumstances, yet if the social order broke down under the stress, he didn’t have enough units to keep the peace. It wouldn’t matter soon enough anyway, but Asimov had been too quiet and peaceful too long. They’d forgotten the old tradition of ‘women and children first.’
“Inform them that they are cleared to stun and, if necessary, use lethal force,” he ordered, finally. Privately owned weapons were rare in the Community, although there was no actual law against gun ownership; the Footsoldiers shouldn’t have any trouble handling rioters, although some of the rioters might get injured. Bare hands against powered combat armour was a recipe for bloody disaster. “Gunn, how is the evacuation proceeding?”
“We have two million and counting people in starships and heading out of the system,” the AI said. “However, the current panic and chaos is rendering it impossible to continue filling up starships efficiently. Worse, several Footsoldiers have had to be pulled off starships to help disperse riots, allowing the starship crews to escape without taking on their fair share of evacuees. Recalculating; we may be unable to evacuate more than three million at most from the main cluster.”
There was a pause. “I recommend deploying the remaining starships to the other clusters,” Gunn added. “I do not believe that we will be able to pull many more civilians out of this system before the Killers arrive.”
Mandell looked down at the display. The Killers were still making their approach, only four minutes away from entering range. They were blasting everything in their path, even uninhabited asteroids. It seemed like an exercise in wanton destruction to him, maybe even pointless spite, unless they couldn’t tell the difference between a manned asteroid and one that had barely been touched. Asimov’s asteroids were supposed to be impossible to detect, but the Killers — once again — had done the impossible.
Or maybe they just tracked our starships here, or maybe they captured a database, or maybe… he shook his head angrily. It didn’t matter any longer. The hulking starships would complete their task and billions of humans would die.
“See to it,” he ordered, quietly, knowing that he was condemning the remaining population of the asteroid to death. “Bring all the defence systems online and prepare to engage.”
The Killer starships glided into the main cluster and pounded the asteroids with their strange weapons. The weapons didn’t need more than a pair of hits to shatter an asteroid, if that. The complete matter-energy conversion of even a small fraction of a spinning asteroid was enough to blow one apart. Distress messages flared up in his virtual display as asteroid settlements died and humans perished, but he tuned them out helplessly. There was no point any longer. Even if the Killers ignored the escaping lifepods, the escapees would be caught in massive radiation storms, beyond even the ability of their internal nanites to protect them. Their deaths would be slow and lingering unless the Community got help to Asimov in time to save them.
“Opening fire,” the tactical officer said. Lasers, fission beams, fusion beams and energy torpedoes flared out, smashing furiously against the Killer starships — for nothing. The Killers didn’t even bother to return fire against the remote weapons platforms; they merely kept firing on the habitats, completing their task. Mandell imagined, as another asteroid tore itself apart, that he could hear the screams, smell the burning flesh. “Sir…”
“Leave the channels open,” Mandell said. The entire Community would know what had happened to Asimov. “I don’t suppose it matters any longer.”
An energy spike ran through the closest Killer starship. A moment later, a pulse of energy leapt from the Killer ship to the asteroid, striking the hanger bay. The entire asteroid shook as massive explosions ripped the hanger bay apart, completely defeating the best efforts of the safety systems. The asteroids air started to blow out as it tumbled through space, the spin ripping it apart and completing the destruction. Mandell caught on to his command chair as the consoles exploded and the power failed, before a final rumbling series of explosions swept him away into darkness.
“We need to get out of here,” Captain Basil said, frantically. The Family Farm should have been unnoticeable — they were millions of kilometres from the Killer ships — but his panic was almost contagious. The children down in the cabins were already picking up on it. “You, robot, we need to get out of here!”
“Not yet,” Ron Friedman said. “Watch.”
The Killers had blown the main cluster apart. Even with passive sensors alone, it was easy to track the path of destruction, and bear silent witness to the emergency signals and distress calls emitting from hundreds of lifepods. The Killers ignored them, proceeding onwards to exterminate the remainder of the human presence in the system, seeking out new targets as they moved. No, Friedman realised; it was worse than that. They were picking off any asteroid within range, manned or unnamed. It made no sense to him.
“All right,” Basil snapped. “We’ve seen. Now we have to get out of here before they come after us.”
“They’re not going to care about one tiny starship that probably failed its flightworthiness checks,” Friedman snapped, angrily. He just wanted to see — and remember — what the Killers were doing to his home system. The human race had one of their starships now. Given time, he was sure that they could duplicate everything the Killers had… and then there would be a reckoning. “We wait!”
An hour passed slowly as the Killers proceeded, but they ignored the Family Farm, and the remaining starships in the system, unless they came too close. Friedman tracked the deaths of several starships, recording them all in his suit’s memory cells. Someone had to know what had happened to them in the future, even if it put himself and the rest of the crew and passengers at risk. Finally, he’d seen enough.
“Very well,” he said, with the air of one making a great concession. “Get us out of here.”
Chapter Seventeen
Chiyo Prime — as she had started to think of herself — floated within an endless sea of energy. It had been easy to create a personal environment for herself — she’d moved on from the illusion of her own room to creating entire apartment complexes — but she had realised that it would be dangerous in the long run. She couldn’t afford to start thinking of herself as safe, or immortal; if the Killer mind realised that she was there, the Killer would attempt to… well, kill her. Chiyo had no way of knowing if the Killer had AI assistants that could purge the network of unwanted human personalities, but she found it hard to imagine any computer network that didn’t have at least some protection. A human system would have, at least, a semi-sentient antiviral defence system — the mere existence of other humans would have guaranteed that, or defeat.