“What the hell are those?”

It had gone down right to the wire, but the maintenance tech had interfaced all his arrays into the gateway control room network. The RI had been locked out.

“They can’t alter the gateway coordinate,” he said triumphantly. “I’ve isolated the command network, so the system’s fallen back on its internal arrays. Everything will just keep ticking over nicely.”

“Great,” Rob sneered. “What about when they cut the power?” He’d already felt the floor tremble slightly. There’d definitely been an explosion nearby. Some other part of the operation was moving forward. He wished it weren’t so compartmentalized; it was hard not knowing what was happening.

The tech gave him a contemptuous look. He sat down behind the console he’d mutilated, and called up new schematics on the large wall-mounted portals. “They already have, look. The grid supply is just about zero. We’re already running off the niling d-sink. Everything’s okay. We just have to hold out for another thirty minutes.”

Rob’s e-butler suddenly reported it could connect to the room’s cybersphere nodes. Half a dozen calls were incoming, demanding his identity. “Tell them to fuck off,” he ordered the e-butler.

“That’s funny,” the tech said. His eyes were unfocused as he studied the data within his virtual vision. “The cybersphere is clear, someone countered the kaos software, it got flushed out.”

“Is that good or bad?” Rob asked.

“It’s strange. I’d never guessed Anshun’s cybersphere RI was powerful enough to extinguish that level of kaos so quickly.”

“How does it affect us?” Rob demanded. He always hated working with these specialist nerds, they never appreciated the physical side of any mission.

“It doesn’t, really. I mean, CST security can’t physically get in here, or the chamber with the gateway machinery—we control that force field as well.” He scratched at the side of his face. “It might make it a little tougher for us to exit at the end if all their sensors are back on-line. Let me think about that.”

Rob glanced at the other guard, who simply shrugged.

“Oh, wait,” the tech said. He leaned forward as one of the portals switched to a grainy image from a sensor covering the corridor directly outside the control room. “Here we go, they got the lift circuit back.” The sensor showed the lift door closing. Ten seconds later, the remote charge detonated. All Rob saw on the portal image was the lift doors quaking, the central join split apart as the metal buckled. A dense cloud gushed out into the corridor. It was dust, not smoke, Rob realized.

The other guard chuckled. “They’ll never get down that way now, the whole shaft must have collapsed.”

Rob glanced at the metal slab covering the fire door. Security would be down the stairwell that connected to it soon enough. According to the instructions he decrypted that morning, once the lift shaft was out of action they’d be able to leave the control room by the main door. One of the offices off the corridor outside had a utility passage that would take them to the chamber containing the gateway machinery. After that, they had a choice of three exit routes once the force field was switched off. Of course, that had all rather depended on the cybersphere and security sensors being knocked out by kaos.

“Can anyone see in here right now?” Rob asked. He searched around the ceiling for sensors and cameras. There were at least three covering the room.

“Let me review the local network,” the tech said. He suddenly froze, and gaped at the portal displaying the gateway command network. One section was flashing red. “No way,” he whispered.

“What?” Rob demanded.

“The first routing lockout fireshield. It’s down.”

“Once more, in English!”

“Look, the actual fiber-optic cables which carry the network, they’re still intact, still integrated with the local datanet, which in turn is connected to the cybersphere. But the nodes, where the routing is controlled, that’s where I loaded my software in to block contact. In electronic terms, there’s no physical barrier between us and the outside, only the fireshields. I erected five, in sequence, at each node, blocking every channel in, and something just got through the outer one.”

“You told us the Anshun RI cleaned out the kaos,” the other guard said.

“No, I said I didn’t think it could, not that quickly. Jesus!” Another section of the gateway command network was flashing amber. “This isn’t possible, I swear: not possible.”

“Another fireshield?” Rob guessed.

“It’s going to fall, oh man, half the format codes have been cracked already. No way. I mean no fucking way! Do you know what kind of encryption I used for that thing? Eighty-dimensional geometry. Eighty! That should take like a century to break, if you’re lucky.” He seemed more angry than worried by the event.

Rob was starting to get a real bad feeling about the mission. “So what can crack that kind of encryption?”

The tech became very still. “The SI.” His gaze found a ceiling camera that was lined up on his console, and he looked straight into the tiny lens. “Oh, shit.”

The other guard brought up his ion pistol, and started shooting the cameras. “Find out how many sensors there are in here. Now!”

Rob took a shot at a sensor above the main door. He risked a quick look at the portal display as he hunted around for more. The amber warning over the second fireshield was shading into a more ominous red.

The senior gatehouse guard stared out through the window, his lower jaw sagging open as the true nature of the flying objects became apparent. “I’ve seen those things before,” he croaked. “I know what they are. They were on an action drama I accessed years ago. Alamo Avengers. But they’re ancient history.”

“Not anymore,” his partner said. “What do we do?”

“Pray.”

All along the highway to the starship complex, vehicles had halted automatically as the kaos software corrupted their drive arrays. Then when the explosions began and the force field dome came on, people got out to stand on the hot tarmac to watch the spectacle. Several turned as the new sound rumbled up behind them, only to fling themselves down, screaming a warning.

The Alamo Avengers stormed over the highway at barely a hundred meters altitude. When they were a kilometer from the force field, they opened fire with their particle lances. It was as if sheet lightning was bridging the gap between them and the dome. The entire sky transformed into a blinding white maelstrom as the air disintegrated from the tremendous energy discharge. The sound blast alone shattered every window on the cars and vans and buses below; people were hurled about by the sonic wavefront. Ears and eyes ruptured, capillaries tore apart; blood started to foam out of their mouths and noses and ears, unprotected skin liquefied.

The force field dome maintained its integrity under the strike. Right across its surface, air molecules collapsed and punched upward in a seething coronal cloud. From above, it looked as though a small red dwarf sun had become buried in the ground. Huge lightning bolts spun outward from the seething ion cloak, lashing against the surrounding earth. Guardbots, waiting alertly along the base of the force field, their lasers and magnetic rifles tracking the incoming enemy, simply detonated into fragment swarms that vaporized in microseconds as the energy cascade engulfed them. Every scrap of vegetation within four hundred meters of the perimeter burst into flame.

All three Alamo Avengers fired again, concentrating their lances on a single point. Again, the force field resisted, deflecting the terrible energy deluge back out into the tortured coruscating air. Thick cataracts of lightning ripped out, pummeling the ground.

Inside the gatehouse, both guards had dived to the floor at the first barrage. Their entire world vanished in a violent whiteout. Even inside the force field, the noise was tremendous, translating into direct physical pain stabbing in through their eardrums. When the light died down, they risked looking up. Five hundred meters away, where the lances had been targeted, a huge patch of the force field was still ablaze with radiant violet streamers as residual energy swirls grounded out.