Providence - Max Barry Page 0,55

unmanaged. Weapons is online but unmanaged. Environmental scanning is online but unmanaged.”

“Do we have them or not?”

“They’re functional but the AI isn’t controlling them. Everything we want to make work, we have to do ourselves.”

There was silence. “All right,” Jackson said. “This is a manual alert. Crew to station. Let’s see what we can do.”

He felt reluctant to leave the board, but she was right: He could do more from station. They departed Eng-5 for the corridor. The mass of crabs lay still, an ankle-deep carpet. They began to wade through it. So many crabs, Gilly thought. Apparently the ship hadn’t recycled them after it finished rebuilding Materials Fabrication. It had decided to keep them around.

Ahead, a column of crabs leaped into the air, slapped the ceiling, and fell back down.

They froze. “Uh,” Beanfield said.

The crabs didn’t move again.

Beanfield prodded one with a boot. “Is this how they wake up?”

“No,” Gilly said. He had seen something like this before, though. When he’d watched the previous attack on playback, the time the salamanders got close enough to cause some real damage. You couldn’t see the huks themselves—they were too small and fast—but you could see the destruction that followed them. You could see when one passed through a room, because everything that wasn’t nailed down was tossed into the air like confetti.

“Shit,” Jackson said. “Move!”

Behind, he heard another small explosion. The clattering of crabs hitting the ceiling.

“Anders, attend station! This is not a drill. We’re under attack!” The corridor branched and Jackson headed for Command while he and Beanfield made for the ladder shaft. In Gilly’s ear, Jackson called for Anders, with no response.

“An attack?” Beanfield said. “Now?”

He had to bring up Armor. He would have to do it manually, because the AI wouldn’t complete cold restart in time. If they were already taking fire, salamanders were close. They were way too close.

“Anders!” Beanfield said. “We need you!”

They reached the ladder. He threw open the hatch. Here they had to part ways: Beanfield up, him down. If the movement system was inactive, she was in for a climb. He turned to her to say this and the hatch was pulled out of his hands. The wall burst open like ripe fruit. Huk, he thought. We’ve been hit. There was an excruciating force, like something trying to pull him via his forehead. He reached for something to hold on to but everything was falling to pieces and there was nothing.

8

[Anders]

THE ENEMY

Anders loved guns. If Camp Zero had been nothing but close-combat training, he would have stayed there forever. But by the time he got there, Service didn’t do that; instead, it did Providence-class battleships that could kill things from five hundred thousand miles away. He’d asked once, stuck up his hand and said, “Sir, when do we get to the close-combat training, sir!” and the drill sergeant came down the line and eyeballed him and said, “Candidate Paul Anders, you want to know what to do upon close contact with the enemy?” and he said, “Yes, sir! Want to know the best way to kill them, sir!” and the sergeant said, “I appreciate your enthusiasm, Candidate Anders! Now bend down and grab your ankles! Get right down there! Now, Candidate Anders,” said the sergeant, once Anders had complied, “commence kissing your ass good-bye!” This turned out to not be a joke. The sergeant waited until he made smacking sounds. “Candidate Anders is demonstrating correct protocol in the face of a close encounter with the enemy,” said the sergeant, “because, by God, if any of you shit-stains let them anywhere near your personal being, you deserve everything that will happen to you.”

Anders hated the ship more than he could say, but he liked its guns. He’d seen an early concept video while riding the bus, and those laser batteries crawling around the hull, converging into place, locking in, swiveling, lining up, and discharging the collective wrath of the human race in one direction . . . he’d replayed that over and over until a crazy idea took hold in his brain: that he might want to make crew. It was crazy because he