Killswitch by Joel Shepherd

floor.
    Heavy cannon fire tore into the container from the end she'd entered, a shrill roar of disintegrating metal. Sandy was up and running at full speed along the aisle, finding that it ended abruptly to the right where that row of CDF shipping containers suddenly ceased, and there were instead a number of newly acquired light armour vehicles awaiting integration into CDF ranks, and, oh holy shit, she hoped whoever was behind this mess hadn't rigged one of the tanks as they'd rigged the AMAPS ...
    A massive explosion shook the bay, Sandy riding the impact into a forward dive and roll as debris ricocheted at deadly velocity, followed by secondary explosions cracking like firecrackers at Chinese New Year ... Sandy raised her head beside the last of the right-side storage crates, her brain in overdrive, and surveyed the row of light tanks on the open square of floor in the maintenance bay's far corner. The damn AMAPS were powerful enough for limited operations, but they weren't incredibly bright-Federation legislation prevented the installation of any sentient Al in a military unit's CPU, even the League hadn't been keen on the idea of city-levelling hovertanks with sentient free will. Like any non-sentient computer, the AMAPS were very bad at guessing. After all, the cargo crate probably contained ammunition, that would possibly explode if fired upon at close range ... but then if there was also the very high possibility that the crate also contained the AMAPS' target, and the AMAPS' entire existence revolved around the elimination of that target, then surely the risk of an explosion was justified? League software programmers Sandy knew had been very impressed with their risk-analysis and awareness simulations, the usual set of amorphous calculations that she entirely failed to trust ... how could one mathematically calculate "risk" as an objective concept, after all, in a mostly random universe? Her own brain, or that of any sentient, was vastly superior to any nonsentient computer at calculating such vague, abstract concepts, but still she struggled. The AMAPS, now no doubt flat on its back and badly singed in the continuing explosions, was now possibly reflecting (if AMAPS could reflect) that the bright-eyed little techno-geek who'd programmed its CPU hadn't known half as much about the universe as he'd thought he had.
    All of this and more passed through Sandy's mind in the fraction of a second following her recovery from the explosion, which was fading now as the secondary explosions trailed away, and the crates stacked on top of the exploding one smothered the blasts. And in that continuing, drawn out time-dilation, Sandy found further time to be impressed with the design standards of that particular batch of ammunition, that only perhaps five percent had detonated, and a critical mass of explosive detonations had not led to a total chain reaction ... which would not have taken out the entire bay, because any fool knew to disperse ammunition crates at even distances throughout any storage facility, but even so, she could well have been dodging large pieces of falling ceiling right about then. Ahead of her, her various sensory receptors registered one of the armoured vehicles activating full systems-engines, weapons and all. Please God, she thought, don't let it be one of the Ge-Vo hovertanks.
    But of course it was.
    With a throbbing din of repulsorlift engines, the Ge-Vo lifted slowly into a low hover. The turret made its characteristic vis-field acquisition wobble, protruding quadruple cannon levering up and down ... Sandy had seen enough, rolled to her feet and ran back the way she'd come, through the choking smoke of the ammunition explosion. All her sending frequencies were tuned to full, but still she received nothing-the maintenance bay was too solid, and she was totally cut off from the outside network. The main doors had been secured. Doubtless those outside would break through in a few minutes, but those were