Shadow Tyrants

FIFTY-EIGHT

Carlton listened to the calm voice of the woman in disbelief.

“How was the self-destruct activated?” he yelled, jumping out of his chair.

“I don’t know,” Chen said as he frantically tapped his screen. “This shouldn’t be possible.”

“Deactivate it immediately!”

“I can’t. It has locked out the abort order. Gupta must have installed a secret command in the system.”

“Can Colossus deactivate it?”

Chen shook his head. “The system is designed to be completely separate from Colossus so that it couldn’t countermand the order.”

Carlton was seething. “There must be some way to stop it.”

His phone buzzed again. It was Colossus.

It can be disabled manually.

How? Carlton texted back.

At the source in the hold. Lionel Gupta’s files revealed how to do it.

Carlton showed the text to Chen. “Is that right?”

Chen shrugged. “I was only involved in designing Colossus, not the self-destruct system.”

Can you show us how to do it? Carlton texted.

Yes, Master. Chen Min has the expertise required to follow my instructions.

What about the other ships?

If it is deactivated on this ship, it will send an abort code to the other ships.

“Colossus says it can show you how to do it.”

Chen frowned. “If we shut it down, there will be no way to trigger the self-destruct again.”

“So?”

Chen looked at the microphones and telephone receivers scattered throughout the bridge and motioned for Carlton to follow him into the office. He shut the door and unplugged the phone, then spoke in hushed tones.

“Colossus has been listening to us. It’s only been running for a few minutes, and its progress is far beyond anything we predicted. Can’t you see? It’s taking the initiative to act without our input. As it keeps learning, it may outgrow our ability to control it, just like Mallik feared. Without the self-destruct to disable it, it may run amok.”

Carlton scoffed at Chen’s worry. “You’re too cautious. Progress can be risky. Besides, you heard how it called me Master. It knows I’m the one in charge.”

“It does now. How long will it continue to obey?”

“Enough! We are not destroying Colossus… Bondarev!”

His new bodyguard flung the door open from the bridge. The big Russian came in with pistol drawn.

“We are escorting Mr. Chen down to the hold, and he is going to deactivate the self-destruct. If he refuses, shoot him in the knee. We need him alive.”

Bondarev nodded and trained the pistol on the Chinese scientist’s leg.

Chen sighed, then nodded and walked out to the bridge in front of Carlton and Bondarev.

“Colossus,” Carlton said, “show us how to disable the autodestruct.”

Another text.

Go to the hold, Master. Colossus will show you.

As Eddie and his team assembled all twenty-two of the prisoners in the workroom and briefed them on how the evacuation would occur, the woman’s voice said over the speakers, “Eight minutes to detonation.”

Some of the prisoners were in ragged shape, and Raven and Hali were going to help two of the weakest make the journey while Eddie would lead the way and MacD took up the rear. They also gave pistols to three of the prisoners who were veterans, including David, a former U.S. Army captain.

“Before we go,” David said, “there’s something else you should know.”

“Time is precious right now, David,” Eddie said. The security team could arrive any second.

“That self-destruct can be switched off.” He pointed to the speakers overhead.

“How?”

“Before you arrived, I noticed Colossus assessing threats to its survival on my terminal. It came to the conclusion that the self-destruct could be disabled manually at the location of the explosives on Colossus 5.”

Before Eddie could relay that information to Max, MacD, who was in the observation room, looked up from the camera feed showing the halls outside and shouted, “We need to go now!”

Eddie went out the door and saw two guards racing down the corridor from the direction of the superstructure. They went down with two salvos from his P90.

He motioned for David and the rest of the prisoners to follow him. If they could all get to the next fire door, they could jam it behind them. Then, the guards would have to go up to the deck to intercept them.

The woman’s unemotional alert came again. “Warning. Evacuate to lifeboats. Seven minutes to detonation.”

While they moved out, Eddie called Max and told him that Juan had a big problem.

Linda had to submerge to avoid gunfire from the deck of the Colossus 5. Juan’s team was just about to move to a new exit position when Juan stopped at the cabin door. “Are you sure?”

“That’s what Eddie said,” Max replied. “If Carlton is able to deactivate it, this whole mission has been for nothing.”

Murph and Linc, who heard Max’s call, looked at him with grim determination.

At least they had the layout of Colossus 5, which would show them the shortest route to the hold. He told Murph to bring up the deck plan on his tablet.

“The odds are against us. There’s just three of us, no matter how we count,” Juan said. “We just have to delay them.” He pointed to a catwalk overlooking the cavernous hold. “We can take up our position there and keep them from reaching those red boxes holding the explosives.”

“What about when the explosives go off?” Linc asked.

“From our view of the Colossus 3, it looked like the force of the blast was directed horizontally, not vertically, to blow holes in the hull below the waterline.”

“So you’re saying there’s a chance we can make it off the ship after the detonation,” Murph said with an appreciative nod. “I like those very unspecific odds.”

“Just think of this as the world’s most exciting roulette table,” Juan said with a tight grin. “Let’s go.”

“Six minutes to detonation,” the warning voice reminded them.

Juan radioed to Linda that she should get ready to recover them when they went overboard, and they exited the suite in a tactical formation. The entrance to the catwalk in the hold was three decks down.

They had to avoid some guards and got caught in two fights along the way, costing them precious time. Carlton had lost three men by the time they reached the door to the catwalk.

“Three minutes to detonation.”

They edged along the catwalk and spotted men huddled around the red box on the other side of the vast space. It was déjà vu seeing that this hold was identical to the one on the Colossus 3.

Juan recognized Carlton, holding a gun on a Chinese man who was tinkering with the bomb. It had to be the chief scientist, Chen Min. Four guards stood behind them, holding their weapons on Chen.

The tangle of large pipes and conduits made getting a clear shot on the group almost impossible, but at least they could disrupt their progress.

Juan crouched down next to Linc and Murph on the suspended metal grating, took aim, and said, “Fire.”

They let loose with their P90s, and the men in the group dove to the floor, out of sight, behind the large vat. One of the guards went down with a bullet in his chest. The others escaped injury.

Four more guards charged through a door onto another catwalk on the opposite side of the hold and opened fire. Juan took cover behind a pipe, while Linc and Murph ducked behind one in the other direction.

Now they were pinned down with no effective sight line on Carlton, who shouted for Chen to get back to work.

Juan had to create a distraction. He looked at the bank of computer servers at the far end of the hold. They had to be critical to the operation of Colossus. If he started taking potshots at it, that might get a reaction.

He aimed for the first column of servers and unloaded a magazine at it.

It seemed to get their attention.

“Stop him!” Carlton cried out.

The disembodied woman calmly announced, “Two minutes to detonation.”