The Deep Dark Well (28 page)

“How many?  And how do
I stop them?”

“I have no idea how
many,” said the computer.  “Weapons will stop them for a time, but the only way
to shut down the system is to take the control room, and then break its coded
lock out.”

“Then that’s what I’ll
have to do,” she said, running forward, sprinting down the hall. 
Yeah
,
she thought,
that’s all I have to do.  Break the code on an unknown computer
system.  How many possible codes?  Billions?  Trillions?

Her brain went numb for
a second, along with her extremities, but her speed carried her through before
her body could collapse.  Wonderful things, those neural induction fields.

Two robots stepped into
the hall to her front.  She cursed as she realized what they were.  Fractuals. 
She would have to destroy every part of them before they would stop trying to
kill her.  She flipped the selector switch quickly and fired a burst of
microgrenades at range.  The explosions annihilated the front ends of the
robots, destroying their weapons before they could bring them to bear.  A
second burst took out another large section of movable cubes from both robots.

Then she switched to
full auto fire, ball ammunition.  She remembered how her pistol rounds had been
enough to take out individual cubes on the first of these she had encountered,
and over half of her drum was loaded with the simple, high velocity pellets.

The rifle bucked with
Newton’s opposite reaction as she fired from the hip, on the run, walking the
bullets like a hose of water over the bodies of the robots.  The air to her
front turned into a cloud of metallic particles as the rounds ate into the
robots.  She fired until the empty indicator lit, then switched to minishapes,
as she slowed to assess her damage through the obscuring cloud that was
settling to the floor. 
They’re toast
, she thought, looking at the
floor, littered by a half meter of fragments.

Heat burned into her
shoulder.  She dropped quickly below the fire and hit the floor, scooting
herself around to bring the robots to her rear under fire.  Sneaky bastards,
coming up behind her while she was busy.  Luckily the suit provided enough
protection to keep the millisecond of beam contact from burning through her,
though she knew she would still have a bad burn on her left shoulder.

The rifle bucked as she
sent a stream of minishapes into the robots.  As she blew the two that were in
sight into immobile hulks, more of the machines came into view, running up the
hall in the strange hopping gait of the creatures they imitated.  They held
pistols in their hands, and from the effect of the other pistol she was sure
they were not stunners.

The switch rotated
easily under her thumb, as she set the rifle for single fire, microgrenades. 
The load indicator showed at least fifty rounds of the small but powerful warheads. 
She aimed carefully at the lead robot and squeezed the trigger, feeling the
short recoil as the low velocity round left the rifle.  As soon as the round
was away she shifted aim and squeezed off another shot.  She didn’t know how
many of these things would come before they stopped, so it seemed a good idea
to conserve ammunition.

The first round struck,
right on target to the head of the robot, driving it into a backward fall.  The
next three took head shots before she missed, the round striking the wall.  Her
next four took out robots, and she noticed that the bodies were falling nearly
perfectly.  The barricade was rising.

She continued firing,
one shot right on the heels of another, as she kept scoring hit after hit, with
very little in the way of wasted rounds.  The pile grew higher, until the
robots following had the crawl over the pile ahead of them.  Crawl over to be
met with a grenade, adding to the height of the pile.  A couple of robots tried
to crawl through the remaining space.  They were stopped in place, completed
the obstruction of the hall. 

Take them a while to
get through that.
 
She checked her load.  Only four left, so she shifted back to minishapes. 
Quickly placing a grenade on the floor, set to motion fuse, she got up and started
to walk over the remains of the fractals.  Until she saw movement in the pile. 
Cubes were still active and were seeking each other out, forming a new robot
from the remains of the two.  And there was a grenade to her back, set to arm
in another five seconds.

A second to back up a
couple of feet, one to run forward, another to clear the pile in a leap.  She
landed heavily on the other side, falling into a roll to take up the impact. 
Time’s
up.
  She kept motionless, waiting for the explosion, but nothing happened. 
She began to low crawl away from the pile of fractal remains, until she thought
she had enough distance between herself and the motion sensitive grenades.

Getting to her feet she
took a quick glance back.  The fractal was starting to grow out of the pile,
moving too slowly and smoothly to set off the grenade.  Until it configured and
took a step.  The pile of Hustedean robots was shifting as the many on the
other side tried to push them out of the way.  She hoped the fractal didn’t
configure until the other robots made it through, so the grenade could take
them all out.  But she didn’t have time to wait and see.

Pandi walked about
twenty yards before taking off into a run, her ears straining to hear the
sounds of the robots attacking the pile of their deceased compatriots.  She
could see the end of the hall now, no more than a couple of hundred yards
ahead.  She pulled in air through her lungs, trying to keep her breathing in a
rhythm, but finding that she was losing the battle to fuel her muscles.  She
was staggering by the time she reached the door, her hand reaching for the
pressure plate, this not being one that opened on approach, when the grenade
went off.

Pandi looked back as
the door opened, seeing the rush of flame coming up the hall, the blast
confined to the oncoming wall of fire.  She ran through the door and hit the
pressure plate on the other side.  The door slammed into place.  A second later
it was shuddering under the assault of the explosion.  But the blast had been
too far away, and the door too strong, for there to be more than an
unsuccessful assault on the opening.

“What’s the melting
point of this door?” she asked as she pulled the laser pistol from its shoulder
holster.

“Beyond the capacity of
that weapon,” said the computer.

“Can it withstand the
blast of a grenade at close proximity?”

“Yes.”

Pandi hit the pressure
plate again and tossed a grenade set on motion fuse a short way down the hall. 
In the distance it looked as if the barrier was still holding.  But from this
far away she couldn’t make out details.  She closed the door behind her and
looked around the room.

“I thought it would be
harder to get in here.”

“This is not the
control room,” said the computer.

Pandi’s heart fell as
she looked at the heavy door ahead of her, like the door of a bank vault.  She
was sure it would be harder to bypass than a mere vault door.  A number pad and
what looked like a modified pressure pad were set on the side of the vault.

“I guess I’ll be safe
if I can get past that, huh?” she mused, moving toward the door.

“It would take heavy
weaponry to get through the door without the proper code,” said the computer as
Pandi put her hand on the pressure pad.  Nothing happened.  “The pad is a palm
recognition unit.  Only the living palm of one authorized to enter will open
the door.  The only way you will gain entry is through the input of the proper
code on the keypad.”

Pandi looked closely at
the keypad.  There were fifteen keys, in five rows of three.  Each was marked
with an unknown symbol. 
Not gonna be easy.  How many different millions of
combinations were there?
  And she didn’t even know how many there were in a
sequence.

“No way you can help me
out with this thing?” she asked.

“I can run probability
programs on the keypad sequence,” said the computer, “based on the
personalities of the last programmers.  But I am afraid it will not be an easy
task, nor a speedy conclusion.”

“Go ahead and try,” she
agreed, pulling up one of the strange looking chairs.  “I’m not getting any
younger sitting here.”

As she sat in the not
uncomfortable chair she thought over her problem.  If only she hadn’t gotten
greedy, she wouldn’t have been here.  Yeah, she could have hidden like a rat,
at the mercy of the two brothers who alternated in running this station.  Or
she could try to get some juice of her own, some power, to gain her own
bargaining chip.  Or she could be killed, by robots following the orders of
people long dead.

And dammit, she needed
to know what was going on here, so she could influence the events surrounding
her.  She would rather die standing up fighting than at the hands of a sadistic
fiend, helpless to save herself. 
I showed him once
, she thought with a
smile, something he didn’t think she had in her.  But he would be more careful
next time, and her pain would be greater.

“Try these keypad
combinations,” said the computer.

A representation of
seven symbols appeared on her visor.  It took her a moment to find all of the
keys matching the symbols.  She punched in the seven symbols in the order presented
on the visor.  Nothing.

“This thing isn’t booby
trapped or something, is it?”

“If you mean will it
set off an alarm or traps if the wrong symbols are punched in, that is an
affirmative,” said the computer.  “Though for safety's sake it will only be after
a certain number of false entries.”

“Any idea how many?”

“That was up to the
programmer,” said the computer.

“Great,” said Pandi,
punching in the next sequence that came up on her visor.  Again nothing. 
Another sequence, another no go.  But what could she do but keep trying?

She had punched in over
thirty sequences, wondering all the while what the programmer was like.  What
were his favorite things in life?  What code would he have used, based on his
life, that would have ensured he didn’t forget the code?  But she had no idea
what the symbols were.  She could let the station computer enter her brain, to
transfer the information she needed to read this language.  But she didn’t
trust it to have that kind of access to her mind.

The heavy thump of the grenade
exploding broke her train of thought.  Something had moved up the hall to the
near side of the door, setting off the weapon.  The room shook for a second as
the walls absorbed the force of the blast.  That something and its companions
were no doubt slag piles in the hall.  But more would come, and quickly.  She
still expected the door to open any minute, revealing a horde of robots beyond
her power to stop.

Another sequence came
up on her visor, as her shaking fingers keyed in the symbols.  Without warning
the door cracked open with a slight hiss.  Pandi jumped back, expecting
something to come out of nowhere and take her to oblivion.  Instead the door
merely opened.  It pulled into the thick wall, moving inward.  Pandi waited for
the opening to clear.  She whistled to herself as the thickness of the wall was
revealed.  A dozen meters, at least, of the strongest substance known to the
science of the future.

The door stopped moving
back and slid to the side, revealing a hall of fifty meters or so, another door
at the end.  She hoped she wouldn’t have to go through the decryption routine
again.  When she was past the open door she hit the pressure pad on the wall. 
The door slid out into the hall, then pushed forward to close off the
entrance. 
Let the robots come now
, she thought.  No way they were going
to get through that door.

To her relief the next
door slid open on her approach.  Slid open and revealed the control room.  Her
breath caught again.  It was not what she had expected.  It was beautiful, with
the grace of a luxury apartment.  There were a few panels here and there, and
the knobs of holo projectors.  Couches and seats were arrayed around the room,
along with shelves holding a variety of exquisite statuary, all representations
of the beings known as Husteds.  The statues showed the aliens in many
different poses, of war and the pursuits of peace.  Even a few showing the
pursuits of love. 

A great portrait took
up most of one wall, of a distinguished looking alien in a military uniform. 
His ribbons and medals, along with the heavy epaulets on the shoulders, showed
him to be an officer of some rank.  The script below the painting gave her no
indication of his name or title.

“OK,” she said, sitting
down in front of one of the panels.  “What do I do to tap into this system?”

*    *    *

“They will be here in a
little over three hours,” said the chief tactical officer.  “Though they will
still have a bit of space to traverse before they come to rest.”
“Just outside of the deadline,” said Admiral Miklas Gerasi.  “A pity.  I would
wish to see them come under the tender attentions of a graviton beam.”

“We are not in any
shape to engage them,” said Captain Midas.  “We don’t have the torpedoes for a
sustained engagement, and are no match for them in a beam to beam battle.”