Before she’d be permitted to go on the mission, though, the Head insisted that she submit to some surgery. Her robot body was opened up and its radio transmitter was removed, so she could not secretly communicate with the PCC once she was within radio range of it. In place of the transmitter, a small remote-controlled bomb was planted in her body, capable of utterly destroying her. The control of the bomb would be in the hands of Tresa Clunard; at the slightest sign of treachery, the Puritan woman would be authorized to detonate the bomb and end Lady A’s life once and for all. This, the Head hoped, would give the Empire some insurance against Lady A’s betrayal.
When that surgery was accomplished; Lady A was finally permitted to meet the rest of the team that would make the assault with her. The meeting was far from harmonious.
Clunard looked her up and down with evident distaste. “They tell me you’re the one responsible for having the FitzHugh robot spying on me,” she said.
“I administered the program,” Lady A admitted without flinching, “but the idea was originally the PCC’s.”
“They also tell me you’re a robot yourself.”
“There are far more blessings to be gained from machines than are dreamed of in your narrow little philosophy. Your whole planet was settled because humanity has the ability to cross interstellar space and live on alien worlds. You can choose to live your life of Puritan squalor because machine technology gave you that option. People didn’t consider your idea of a ‘simple life’ so wonderful when it was all they had available to them. You should consider that before you become so preachy.”
Despite the animosity on the team, plans went for ward for the attack on the PCC’s position. At any other time, the Head and his naval counterpart, Lord Admiral Cesare Benevenuto, would have thrown hundreds of ships into the conflict, supplying enough firepower to destroy all the battle stations and the PCC’s asteroid along with them. But circumstances had impoverished them, and an armada of ships could not be spared. Every ship at the planetary bases was needed precisely where it was to guard against rebel attack. Taking a great gamble, Benevenuto assigned thirty ships from Earth’s own defensive array, leaving the mother planet dangerously underprotected. The major hopes of the Empire would ride on this mission. If it succeeded, it would provide a knockout punch to the rebellion’s forces; if it failed, the Empire might never recover its former glory.
The expeditionary force arrived at the coordinates Lady A had given them, not knowing precisely what to expect. Even assuming their enemy had been telling the truth – which was not by any means a foregone conclusion – the PCC’s plans might have been changed with out her knowing them. They could have arrived at the designated site and found nothing but empty space, at which point they could only return to Earth and begin again.
But the information they’d gotten was accurate. Facing the small fleet was a double globe of automated battle stations. The battle stations were heavy, lumbering vessels, not capable of any great flight; their sole function was defense, and they would perform that admirably. And right in the center of the concentric globes of defense, safe and secure from the force the Empire brought against it, was the asteroid that housed the Primary Computer Complex.
The Imperial fleet formed itself into a third globe surrounding the other two. With only thirty ships in the formation they were hopelessly spread out through space; Benevenuto would have needed ten times that number to comprise an effective task force. But then, the Navy’s role was not to smash the PCC itself, but to provide a diversion while the real assault team slipped through a hole in the computer’s defenses.
The automated stations watched alertly as the Imperial ships scattered over the surface of their imaginary sphere, just outside of firing range. The battle lines were drawn and the antagonists waited patiently for the order to begin fighting.
At a signal from the flagship, the imperial fleet began converging on the battle stations, their searing rays blazing forth at the enemy. The Navy gunners were aided by the unusual fact that their targets, for once, were perfectly stationary. The disadvantage was that the battle stations’ shields were so strong they could withstand almost anything the attack ships could throw at them, and still have plenty of offensive power to hurl back deadly beams against their foes. Two or three of the imperial ships acting together might have been able to overpower the shields of a single battle station and destroy it – but each ship was on its own against the fire power of those deadly stations.
The Navy ships dodged and darted as they made their approach to the globes, but the large battle stations – their surfaces bristling with offensive weaponry – kept them in sight with computer accuracy. Beam after beam scored the flanks of the imperial vessels. Their shields held for a long time, but they were not perfect and they could not withstand indefinitely the fury being flung at them by the rebel stations. As their shields failed, the imperial craft raced out of the conflict to avoid being totally destroyed by enemy fire. It was prudence, rather than cowardice, that dictated this action, as the Empire was already short of fighting ships and could not afford to lose any more.
While all this was going on, one imperial ship held back from the fighting and released a squadron of tiny metallic slivers, moving toward the center of the rebel formation so slowly that they were barely detectable on the sensors. The battle stations’ defensive screens would have blocked them out if they were simply torpedos – but they went nowhere near the battle stations, and the automated defenses paid them no attention.
The tiny slivers slipped through the double globe formation as though it weren’t there, aiming for the PCC asteroid. The PCC’s own defenses sprang to life – but as Lady A had accurately calculated, by the time the small vessels were within range of the asteroid they had reached a blind spot in the defenses. The computer could not see anything so tiny there nor fire accurately at them, and the slivers reached their target safely.
As each tiny space needle crashed into the face of the asteroid, it burst open and a spacesuited figure emerged. The Puritan assault team rallied around Lady A and followed her to a spot in darkest shadow along the rocky surface. The lights of their helmets, shining deep into a fissure, revealed a small airlock hatch, sealed shut for perhaps five decades. The team did not bother trying to open the hatch the normal way; they simply dropped a grenade and blew it open,. allowing them access to the inner recesses of the PCC.
As Lady A started inside, the Puritans gathered around the entrance and began their prayers, willing the miraculous powers into their bodies. When they felt infused with the divine force, they got down on hands and knees and crawled through the opening. In this position they couldn’t be surprised by sudden changes in the gravitational field.
They were barely inside the corridor when the ultra grav was switched on, turning the simple hallway into a corridor of agony. Even Lady A’s super-strong robot body had trouble moving in this field. She was on all fours like the rest of the team, creeping forward just as slowly as everyone else. Behind her, Tresa Clunard pushed the bomb along the ground as she crawled pain fully along the designated route.
The bomb had been carefully designed for this particular mission. It had to be lightweight, since in twenty- five gees even a balloon was a major encumbrance. At the same time it had to carry as much explosive power as possible, since SOTE would not have another chance at this mission; this one bomb would have to demolish a substantial portion of the computer to knock the enemy leader out of action. The mission planners had finally agreed on using a miniaturized nuclear warhead. The explosion itself would physically destroy perhaps a third of the computer’s interior – but the electromagnetic pulse that would accompany the nuclear blast would wipe out virtually all electrical activity within the brain. The PCC would cease to exist.
The corridor was in darkness; all the team could see of their surroundings was what showed in the spotlights of their spacesuit helmets. Bare metal floor and walls encompassed their universe.
The optimum point, Lady A informed them, was nearly a hundred meters down the hallway, the full length of a football field. While that was not very far considering the asteroid had a diameter of twenty-five kilometers, it was far enough for a nuclear blast to do the desired damage.
This distance was traversed a centimeter at a time as the group laboriously pulled its way forward across the smooth floor. They did not have to worry about gas, stunners, or blasters; as Lady A had predicted, there were no defenses along this overlooked passageway into the depths of the computer’s brain. All the group had to overcome was the ever-present, oppressive gravity that pulled at them and tested every fiber of their being.