Mark Tiedemann: Mirage

That should have been impossible, she knew. Eliton was Bogard's primary concern, and only a specifically coded command could change that. Nevertheless, Bogard moved away from Eliton, toward the Spacers. It moved slowly, uncertainly, as if resisting the instruction.

But now, Eliton was exposed. Mia moved toward him, turning around to face the assault. Her heel suddenly caught on something and she raised her leg to step over it, then glanced down at the obstruction; the body of one of the Aurorans. It surprised her; the woman looked like she was sleeping, eyes closed easily, lips slightly parted. Mia shuddered and forced her attention back on the edge of the platform.

Black-masked gunmen leaned against it now, spraying the assembly. Mia began taking them out, one by one, down the line, walking backward as she did, waiting for the inevitable projectile that would stop her.

When it did, she stumbled, falling over, and found herself staring up at the ceiling arching high above.

I'm hit, she thought. I'm dying…

Then she rolled over. She pressed a hand against the soreness spreading across her left side. Her ribs ached, but her hand came away from the bruised 'area dry. She blinked and looked around and found that another body had struck her, its head still in her lap, eyes staring emptily upward. She shoved it away and scooted back.

Far more people than seemed possible still stood, huddling against each other. As she watched, a few more fell, bodies twitching under the deafening gunfire. Mia had never seen anything like this. Training simulations covered lone target situations, energy weapons, area-wide toxins-

Why hasn't the tranq gas been released? she wondered.

The points along the rib supports for the walls and ceiling that housed the nonlethal gas dispensers appeared unopened. The gallery security system had failed; Union Station's positronic Resident Intelligence apparently was not functioning.

"One!" Mia yelled. "Wing Three here! We have systems failure, we have-".

Her earpiece remained dully silent. All com was down. Then she remembered that it also had been routed through the RI for convenience, so the positronic brain could manage all the coordination without the complications of competing com systems. The only com she had was the direct link to Bogard and it, too, had been linked to the RI.

Mia recovered her blaster and got to her feet. She looked for Eliton.

She found him lying in a heap, blood spattered across his chest. Bogard stood over him, immobile. Nearby, she saw Ambassador Humadros, also dead.

She tried the com anyway, scanning the massacre for her teammates. "Wing Two, Wing One, this is Wing Three. Parcel is down! Repeat, Parcel is down!"

All she heard was the faint hiss of a disconnected link.

"Wing One, Wing Two," she called. Nothing. "Bogard, respond."

There was a click. Then: "I-I-I-"

The staccato skipping in the link added to the fear rising in her.

"Bogard, reestablish," she commanded. "Local parameter, Mia respond. Confirm."

"Con-confirm-Mia-I-"

"Bogard, new priority, on me. Omega-five catalogue reset. Respond."

"Priority reestablish-Mi-Mia."

"Discontinue uplink to Union Station Resident Intelligence."

"Uplinking-up-uplink incomplete. Protocol rejected. Discontinued."

Abruptly, the assassins began to retreat. Mia watched, dismayed, as they backed from the edge of the platform. It seemed to her that some of them vanished even as she stared directly at them. They fired their weapons over their heads, driving people away from them, opening paths. She saw one of them grab a man by the arm and toss him against several others, using him as a ram to force his way through. The mound of people crushed together near her still comprised many survivors, the dead sprawled around the perimeter of the huddle as though discarded from its midst.

"What the-?" she muttered. "Bogard, with me. Track assailants. Locate likeliest apprehension."

She felt Bogard alongside her before she saw it move. It towered over her and she could feel its attention directed at the retreating forms.

"Three confirmed." A bright red tracer beam reached out over the heads of the still rippling crowd to identify three figures in black.

"With me," she repeated and jumped to the floor. Her ribcage throbbed.

She struck the edge of the mob and began shoving. It was like trying to do sculpture in water. Panicked faces stared at her, brief glimpses of the hidden parts of strangers that she might never have seen, might never see again, stripped of their calm civility and complacent sophistication. She thought she understood. Their systems had failed them, the world that coddled and protected them now showed them how much they depended on what they could not do for themselves. They were vulnerable, probably for the first time in any of their lives, and there were no rules to follow, no plan, no direction. Hands reached for her, eyes begged her-she seemed the only one acting in all this chaos, able to choose, to decide-but Mia batted and brushed them all aside and forced her way through.

In truth, these people had nowhere to go. They were packed together. As she neared the far wall she saw why. The doors were sealed. The preparatory phase for pacification had occurred and all the exits had been closed, waiting for phase two, the release of the gas.

Suddenly, people simply backed away from her, jamming themselves against each other in renewed hysteria. She glanced back and saw Bogard, right at her heels, its shoulders stretching wide, presenting a visible though false menace.

"Still have them, Bogard?"

"Locked on."

"Great."

Finally, Mia broke free of the press. Before her rose an expanse of wall mottled by the rich veining of blue marble. Off to the right, another wall stood away from the main wall, making a passage which gave access to the service warrens.

The door was open.

"Through here, Bogard?"

"Correct."

Mia hesitated at the service door and peered around. Bogard touched her shoulder gently and drew her back, then moved through the access.

"Clear."

She rounded the edge, weapon ready.

To her immediate right were office cubicles; to the left, storage lockers. Directly ahead, a conveyor ran from a large turntable deeper into a sporadically-lit maze down a short corridor. A confusing jumble of conduit, cable, and assemblages filled the space, hanging from the ceiling or rising from the floor, creating mosaics of light and shadow.

The sound of many feet marching in quicktime echoed around the labyrinth. Mia pressed against the short wall of the first cubicle and waited.

A column of maintenance robots filed by, in almost comic imitation of a military drill. They pivoted precisely at the turntable and continued on into the depths.

"Bogard, do you still have a track on our targets?"

"Faint IR trace on the floor. Clear but fading."

"Lead on."

The robot seemed to flow across the floor, its torso leaning forward into a streamline profile, feet appearing to glide as if on rollers. Soundless. In the mottling illumination, it seemed to alter its shape, and as she fell in behind it, she saw that its angle and configuration could cover her own silhouette.

It turned left down a narrower passage, along a line of ready niches for robots. Many were vacant, but several still contained robots, stiffly cradled like corpses, giving no outward sign of activity.

Bogard stopped. Mia squeezed alongside it, crouching low.

Tables and cargo cubes had been shoved together to open up a fairly large area of floor. Within the loose ring formed, several robots moved in and out of patterns that resembled fighting in progress. They swung their limbs, kicked, ducked, jabbed, rushed and retreated-but none of them ever connected with a blow. Like a dance set to no rhythm, highly-choreographed, they weaved through the mock combat with machine precision.