Re-Coil - J.T. Nicholas Page 0,120

seconds at optimal distribution rates. I shared the analysis.

“Can you keep Bliss out that long?” Korben asked.

Shay shrugged. “Maybe. If you can keep the infected off of me.”

Korben nodded. “Then do it.” He pulled his knives once more. I realized his holster was empty—he had lost his gun somewhere during the fight. I felt a tap and gave Shay a grateful nod as she passed over her Gauss pistol and remaining ammunition. I let go of her and took a half-hop, half-step to put my back against a convenient bit of machinery, making sure I had a clear line of sight to the door. I nodded.

Then, the machinery around us came to life. It was eerie watching standby indicators go from red to yellow to green, feeling the faint vibration thrumming through the deck. As the first molecules of air started pumping through the ship, the faintest sound, so quiet as to be more a memory of a sound than the real thing reached our ears.

Sarah had helpfully popped a countdown into my HUD, indicating the amount of time before the nanite canister emptied itself. Less than two minutes. Based on our success rate so far, I realized it might as well have been an eternity.

I wasn’t sure if we needed the entire canister to be emptied. I’d seen the effectiveness of the SAD nanites firsthand. But I also knew that this battle—the real battle—was being fought on a microscopic scale, nanite versus nanite. We were nothing more than a delivery system. I had no idea what concentration of Bliss nanites needed to escape in order to propagate the AI; all we could do was try to make sure as few as possible survived. Which meant Korben and I had to hold back the infected while Shay fought to keep the ship locked down.

The plasma cutter winked out.

The hatch burst open.

The Gauss pistol started barking—faintly audible as the vacuum filled—the second the door dropped. I wasn’t trying for headshots anymore. The goal wasn’t to kill the infected, just to slow them down. To that end, I depressed the trigger as fast as possible, sending round after round into the general vicinity of the hatch. A few of the ferro-magnetic projectiles went wide, ricocheting off the bulkheads, but most found their home in the ever-expanding pool of cyber-zombies. As the rounds crashed into limbs, torsos, and, less frequently, heads, coils fell to the floor. Most still moving, still progressing, but slower. And they, in turn slowed those behind them.

The Gauss pistol chirped empty. I dropped the weapon and pulled Shay’s from my hip holster. Drawing the new weapon was faster than reloading, and I didn’t think we’d have the chance at a third magazine anyway. The infected had already closed more than half the distance.

Korben moved forward, keeping wide of my line of fire, and threw himself bodily into the fray. His agent seemed to be in full control as his body went through movements and contortions at speeds that no coil operating on its own could have managed. Within the blink of an eye he had cut deep into the enemy, blades flicking and whirling as he claimed arms, legs, and heads with equal abandon.

It was horrific but I couldn’t really process it. The entire journey had been horrific, and now all that mattered was the ticking seconds flashing across my vision. Fifty-eight seconds remaining.

Then the infected reached me. I swung the Gauss gun like a club, smashing it into questing hands even as I tore the microwave emitter from its pocket. My hip screamed at me as I was forced to put weight on it again, but my own nanites had been hard at work. I couldn’t move like Korben, but the leg didn’t crumble under me. The first few infected to reach me went down beneath a combination of heavy blows from the pistol and quick shots from the microwave emitter. I held for five seconds. Ten. Fifteen. More and more of the coils were getting close to me, flowing around the hole that Korben had opened in their ranks. I was acutely aware of Shay behind me, deep in her own battle, fighting to keep Bliss from evacuating the ship.

Then it happened.

I slammed the butt of the Gauss pistol square into the forehead of one of the infected even as I took a wild shot with the emitter at another. But the blow didn’t strike true—it hit the face-shield at an angle and bounced. Just that fast,