Re-Coil - J.T. Nicholas Page 0,102

around me, enfolding me in her embrace. I squeezed her back, aware on some level of the strangeness of her musculature, of the fact that she was taller than I in our respective coils, but also, somehow, feeling the woman that rode my mind’s eye in that embrace. I was aware, on some level, of the security team moving throughout the room, some taking positions on the hatch while others moved more equipment from the shuttle that must have docked without my notice during the fury of the battle. I was aware that the… blank… coils all seemed to be down, whether casualties of the crossfire or directly targeted by the infected, I had no idea. I was aware of Korben cleaning his blades with a casualness that could not quite mask the exhaustion in his own movements and then turning to search among the dead for his discarded firearms. I was aware of it all, but at that moment, it didn’t seem to matter.

Then someone was tapping me on the shoulder.

I released Shay and turned. One of the Genetechnic security stood there, a duffel dangling from one arm. His visor wasn’t polarized, and the in-helmet lighting illuminated the expression he wore. Gone were the questioning looks we had received when we first boarded the shuttle. Instead, I saw a newfound respect in his eyes. “Yes?” I asked. I trusted Sarah to find the right comm channel to make sure the man heard me.

“Ammo, sir,” he said. “And oxygen.”

“I’ve got to get to work,” Shay said, moving away and heading toward the bank of consoles. I noticed that she was carrying a satchel over one shoulder, the kind used to protect the heavy-duty, industrialized tablets people employed when an agent alone wouldn’t have enough processing power. She may have been cut off from trying to hack the ship on a remote signal, but now that she was aboard, she was determined to try again. I smiled at that.

“Sir?” the security officer said, hefting the bag slightly.

“Thanks,” I said, taking the heavy weight from him. “Give me a hand with the O2?”

“Of course, sir.”

As the Genetechnic operative—who, I reflected might well have been trying to kill me a week ago—helped switch out the oxygen modules on my suit, I started transferring magazines from the duffel to the various pouches and pockets on the web gear and VaccTech. I could scarcely believe that I’d gone through an entire combat load, something in the order of three hundred rounds of ammunition. Until, that was, I looked at the bodies.

It was hard to tell which were victims of the initial nanodevice Korben had deployed and which had charged the bridge after we gained entry. There had been over a hundred when Korben’s device went off. I estimated there were dozens more of them now. Maybe as many as thirty or forty. Plus the ones outside, that meant that Korben and I—well, and his hunter-killer nanite virus—had accounted for something close to a hundred and fifty of the crew and passengers. The thought made the bile rise in the back of my throat. Those numbers were unreal, but also an inevitable consequence of an enemy that just kept walking calmly into your fire, hoping that weight of numbers alone would overwhelm you.

No. That wasn’t exactly fair. The AI’s first plan had been to prevent entry to the ship at all, with the cyber-zombies that attacked on the hull acting as more of a shell fired from an anti-boarding weapon than as any type of military or security force. Regardless, Bliss would certainly have been successful if Shay hadn’t managed to slag all the external airlocks. Plan B had been to flood our point of entry with enough bodies to ensure that we couldn’t make it into the ship in the first place. Which, I thought, would also have succeeded, if not for the countermeasures Genetechnic had provided Korben with. It wasn’t until the first two options had failed that the AI had resorted to sending a horde after us, and even then the tactics had changed. Evolved. The coils had been armed with makeshift weapons, the kinds of things you could readily find loose aboard a passenger ship. Knives. Bits of conduit. Chair and table legs. Improvised weapons, to be sure. But weapons, nonetheless. Thank God the bastards didn’t seem to have access to guns.

Yet.

AIs by their very nature were heuristic, self-learning entities. I could appreciate that in the abstract. When it meant the tactics