Gavin Smith - The Age of Scorpio

Vic detached the P-sat in its combat chassis, a heavier and more armoured weapons platform with increased targeting and sensor capabilities. Vic immediately started receiving feed from the P-sat ’faced directly to his neunonics.

Vic went one way at a corner, the P-sat the other. Vic reached his destination first. He was standing before a plain metal door in a plain metal corridor. The door opened somewhat unexpectedly. The Church Militiaman, thankfully without armour on, stared at Vic in his full combat armour. Vic didn’t hesitate. He threw the dead feline at the human male. The Militiaman staggered back.

Vic was aware via the ’face feed from the P-sat that it had launched tiny AG-driven, hunter-killer smart rounds. They were designed to seek out and kill automatons and other autonomous weapon systems like ship-controlled P-sats.

Vic had to do as much damage to the ship’s company as he could in as little time as possible before the security systems caught up with him. He stepped into the bunk area. Everything seemed to slow down. Men and women, mostly human, mostly base gender, raced for their personal weapons. Vic drew his triple-barrelled shotgun pistol with his top left arm. With his lower right he pulled the six-barrelled rotary strobe gun from its clips on his back and swung it forward, assisted by low-powered AG motors designed to help with its weight.

The head of the guy he’d thrown the feline at disappeared as a 12-gauge slug entered it and then exploded. Another slug took a Militiawoman behind the dead guy trying to bring her ACR to bear. He moved his upper torso to the left and fired the final barrel of the shotgun. A reptile Militiawoman dived out of the way as her bunk exploded.

With a thought he triggered the strobe gun, bathing the bunk room in a flickering hellish red glow. The sound of superheated air molecules exploding ran together in a constant staccato. The rotating barrels allowed for them to cool, which meant a higher rate of fire than single- or double-barrelled laser weapons. It looked like a constant red line bisecting the room.

Red steam from boiling blood turned the room humid as the laser all but sawed people in two. Vic holstered the now empty shotgun pistol with his upper left arm while his upper right grabbed the reptile disc from its holder over his shoulder and threw it, activating its autonomous hunter-killer program. A ’face feed from his tactical neunonics would keep the disc out of the way of his other ordnance.

His top limbs grabbed his advanced combat rifle from his back as he dropped the strobe gun. The gun’s four-legged spipod unfolded and the weapon went looking for more victims.

Meanwhile, the P-sat had taken out two crewmen it had met in the corridor with neurotoxin-coated flechettes fired from a suppressed spit gun. It had just attached a thermal seed frame to the reinforced door that led to Command and Control in the centre of the frigate.

The strobe gun was advancing, its barrels swinging back and forth, firing nearly constantly, its targeting systems finding victims sometimes with the help of info ’faced from Vic’s own neunonics.

Vic fired the six grenades from the ACR’s under-barrel launcher. The first one was a controlled-replication, flesh-eating nano-swarm. The second was a viral grenade. Both were high end for the black market, but Vic had suspected when loading them that the St Brendan’s Fire ’s countermeasures would be able to cope with them. The remaining four were flechette grenades which filled the air with high-velocity needles.

Vic’s two lower limbs drew his double-barrelled laser pistols. His upper and lower torsos counter-rotated as the ACR and the lasers fired, mopping up whatever the heavier ordnance had missed.

Through the ’face feed from his P-sat Vic was aware that it was now in C and C. The command crew died quickly, taken out by the P-sat’s swivel-mounted auto-shotgun firing frangible fragmentation rounds designed not to harm any of the instruments. A measured laser killed those the shotgun didn’t. The P-sat left one crew member alive in C and C.

The ACR’s magazine was solid-state, each bullet assembled in the barrel. Its bullpup magazine looked like it was being eaten as the weapon was fired. The last of the magazine disappeared up into the weapon. Vic slid another magazine home almost immediately but didn’t fire.

A Militiaman died as the strobe gun cut the bunk he was using as cover in half and then near enough did likewise to him. Another almost got his ACR to bear on Vic, but the disc cut his throat.

More than fifty were dead now. Everything was red. They hadn’t fired a single shot. Then Vic’s sensors warned him that the ship’s alarms had started to broadcast to the crew’s neunonics. Any remaining passive security systems were now active.

With a command from Vic, the spipod leaped up onto one of the few remaining bunks and fired into all the bodies to ensure they were dead. It was little more than red-light butchery.

Vic caught his returning disc and clipped it back onto its shoulder mount. He left the bunk room and made for C and C, his ACR at the ready, his lower torso swivelled so his bottom limbs could cover his rear. A few crew members showed their faces in the corridors, but bursts of bullets and beams discouraged them from getting involved. Only one fired back. Small-calibre spit pistol bullets flattened against Vic’s armour. Vic killed him to make a point. If the guy got cloned then maybe next time he would be able to work out the difference between bravery and stupidity.

As he approached C and C, Vic started getting armour integrity warnings ’faced from the suit to his tactical neunonics. It appeared that the armour was slowly being eaten away by a weaponised nano-screen turned nano-swarm. Vic sped up. He stepped over the still-glowing hole in the door to C and C, and turned to look at the tank.

The navigator looked through the green water and transparent tank wall at Vic. The dolphin had been extensively augmented with hard and soft tech. Most people also assumed that Church navigators had a degree of S-tech in them as well.

Vic’s armour was seriously malfunctioning now. He could see part of it dissolving. Soon the nanites would find a weak point in the armour, break through and start eating him.

‘I don’t have much time. Surrender control of all systems to me now,’ he ’faced on an open channel.

‘Just a moment and I think it’ll be over,’ the navigator told him.

Vic was already moving. He liked to think that he’d given the dolphin the chance to be reasonable. He opened the airlocked delivery tray, unclipped the case that Scab had given him and, steeling himself, opened it. The Scorpion was already up, its sting arched, its body language that of impending violence. The Scorpion scared Vic and always had. It was unpredictable and hateful S-tech. It could just as well decide to murder him.

‘Don’t do that. Let’s talk about this!’ Even modulated and ’faced, Vic could hear the fear in the dolphin’s voice. The nanites were through his armour. Vic screamed as they started to eat him alive. Vic dropped the Scorpion into the tray and slid it shut.

The navigator thrashed around so much that he injured himself and red clouds appeared in the water. Vic fell to the ground, his armour now all but dissolving, his exoskeleton starting to do the same.

The thrashing from the tank stopped. The St Brendan’s Fire ’s systems opened themselves to him. He only just had the presence of mind to deactivate the nano-swarm while he still had flesh and components. The pain stopped almost immediately as his own systems flooded his few remaining biological organs and his mind with numbing narcotics. His systems were starting to rebuild. He would find some more raw materials in the frigate’s med bay to help him rebuild himself before the rendezvous.