The skull of the first technician exploded in a red flash that blew her blond hair in all directions like chair stuffing. Hansen aimed for the center of mass of the second and third techs, dropping them both before they’d cleared their own pistols.
The emergency door clanged shut behind Hansen, then started to reopen as the PA system screamed, “The intruder is operating the electronic controls! Close and lock all doors manu—”
The grenade blast knocked Hansen down, but the part-open door protected him from the fragments that shattered the walls and the humans on the other side of it. He scrambled to his feet, pulling a spool charge from his equipment belt.
The door of the Computation Control room slid halfway open and stopped. Hansen leaped through, unreeling the spool charge behind him. His pistol centered on the forehead of the technician straining against the door’s manual control wheel. Only as the door slammed shut again did Hansen fire.
The ballooning horror of the man’s face was echoed by the strip of spool charge which detonated under the door’s pressure. The multi-dogged valve torqued in the explosion, locking itself inextricably closed.
Technicians holding unfamiliar weapons started from their seats. A line of explosive bullets rang on the back of the wedged door and the floor where Hansen had been an instant earlier.
Hansen’s form became that of the headless female technician he’d killed in the hallway. His left hand hurled the last piece of equipment from his belt—a spoofing bomb. It popped, deploying half a dozen miniature projectors.
Black-suited holographic gunmen capered about CompCon, some of them upside down. Technicians gaped and fired. Their bursts destroyed equipment in arcs and implosions, but the blazing gunfire didn’t—couldn’t—affect the holograms.
There were five technicians within the sealed room. As sickly layers of powder and explosive residues quivered at further muzzle blasts, Hansen moved his body only as much as he needed to get an angle on the next target.
He killed each technician with a single shot. The last of them, screaming in disbelief, pointed her machinepistol at the center of Hansen’s chest and continued to squeeze the trigger even as the headless corpse aimed its gun at her left eye. The technician had emptied her weapon before the dancing holograms sputtered and vanished.
“Quickly,” said the voice in Hansen’s brain as the last technician fell, all but the splash on the wall behind her. “They’re starting to drill through the door.”
Hansen was holding his breath in a subconscious attempt to keep from vomiting the acid that was the only thing in his stomach. The renewed threat focused him. He looked for an undamaged terminal.
“In the left corner!” snapped the artificial intelligence.
Rather than reload, Hansen snatched an unfired pistol from the holster of the man he’d killed at the door controls and ran to the indicated console. He could hear tools cutting. They were very fast, very organized, the folk of Ruby; very skilled in the arts of war.
He put his ring against the terminal’s control board.
Ruby wasn’t facing a world of pacifists this time.
Almost simultaneously with the click from Hansen’s finger, the lights in CompCon dimmed and the sound of electronic whispering hushed. He had his gun out, looking for a target.
“I’m shutting down other functions in order to bring up the matching program again,” the AI explained. “It’s no longer in the active memory.”
The sound of computers working resumed at a higher, more insistent, note.
Something appeared in the center of the room—not a tank but the memory of a tank like the one which had ground through the crowd on Diamond while Hansen waited with a chair.
This time he had a better weapon—not the pistol, but the artificial intelligence on his finger which was turning Ruby against itself.
Hansen began to laugh. The electronic ghost disappeared, replaced by a scene from the field where Hansen arrived. Nervous troops were forming a perimeter while officers and non-coms checked the bodies scattered when the APC exploded. A lieutenant had turned over the corpse of Major Atwater. The escort commander had been stripped by the blast, but her features were still recognizable.