Re-Coil - J.T. Nicholas Page 0,112

and the assassin. I was acutely aware that, even with my bulk, there was a good chance that Shay, in her present coil, could shove me aside by main strength. And I didn’t want to think of what Korben and his knives could do. I deliberately turned my back to the killer; not that I thought he would refrain from stabbing me in the back out of some misguided sense of honor, but I doubted there was much I could do if he decided we’d outlived our usefulness. “What else, Shay?” I asked, keeping my voice as calm as possible. “You blew up a shit-ton of meat-puppets and managed to block the door, or we would be buried by now. But what do you mean by something more?”

The Genetechnic security people were all on their feet now and had gathered in a loose semicircle. They had their weapons at the ready—not that I could blame them. The situation sort of demanded it, regardless of any internal drama. We’d been talking on the general channel so they’d heard the entire exchange. I didn’t sense any malice from them, but they were listening.

After a long moment, Shay took her gaze from the assassin. “I overloaded the processor,” she said. She smiled at the bewilderment on my face. “Remember when you and…” she paused and threw another heated glare at Korben, “he first boarded? He used that device, and then you had a bit of a break in the attacks?” I nodded. It had taken a few minutes for Bliss to launch another assault after Korben’s hunter-killer nanitic grenade had gone off. “Maybe it was because Bliss was afraid of spreading the infection. But, I figure it’s also because a bunch of processors—a bunch of coils—went offline simultaneously. Look, if you have a power load spread out over a bunch of different circuits, and you take those circuits offline one by one, or even a few at a time, the software can manage the load. They can reroute and redistribute it. But if you take a bunch of those circuits offline simultaneously…” She trailed off, a mischievous smile that hung poorly on her new face twisting her lips.

“Then the circuit breakers trip,” Korben said. Then, reluctantly, “Well done, Ms. Chan.”

“Okay,” I said. “Let’s assume you gave Bliss a hell of a headache. It’s still got plenty of coils to throw at us. Even if you ‘tripped a breaker’ we’ve got more coming.”

“Not through that compartment,” she said with a grin. “The gas pouring from those holes you punched in the conduit by the hatch will keep burning for quite a while. Maybe an hour. And since you physically tapped the pipes, there’s nothing Ms. Bliss can do about it without putting actual hands on the problem. There are plenty of other ways for them to find us, but they’re not coming that way. We’ve got our clean break.”

“Then let’s not let it go to waste,” Korben said, voice once more emotionless. Without another word, he walked past us. The Genetechnic security team fell in behind him, leaving Shay and I to stare at one another for a few heartbeats.

With a slight shrug, I snatched my Gauss pistol from the floor, gave it a quick once-over to make sure it hadn’t been damaged in the blast, and dropped it back into my holster. “Guess we keep moving,” I said.

“Yeah,” Shay replied. “I guess we do.”

* * *

We pushed on, moving down the corridors of the passenger liner like ghosts. The fact that we had lost two-thirds of our firepower was lost on no one. I kept my weapon up and at the ready, conscious of the fact that, despite what the sensors were showing, the Bliss-infected could come pouring out of any compartment. I wasn’t sure we’d have the firepower to stop them if they did and I doubted that Shay could pull off the same trick twice. The AI was too damn smart to fall for something like that again.

As the seconds ticked by without an attack, the tension crept ever higher. I could feel it in my upper back, a tightness squeezing my neck and somehow making each breath a little harder to draw. The sensor map Shay had put together showed us free and clear, all the way to Environmental.

“Why aren’t they attacking us?” Shay asked, her own tension leaving her words clipped. I checked the channel—she was using the private link between the two of us, excluding Korben and the