“I’m a captain!” he scoffed. “What’s a captain without his crew? Now get your ass up and fly my flagship out of this godforsaken place!”
Tagus stood from the pilot’s chair and took his place in the seat beside it.
“On the double, lieutenant!”
Burke got to his feet and, although his head was still cloudy, got into the chair his commander had vacated.
“Yes, sir!”
Concerned for Henry Riff’s health and general well-being, Jessica Doric added him to her braZos Prime membership. BraZos was the largest consumer mega-corporation in the Imperium, offering every product imaginable from its nodesphere site. Once Doric had added Henry, packages delivered by braZbots began arriving at Henry’s apartment. The boxes, with the large letter Z stamped on the side, contained a variety of nutritious foods like Ying-Yang Yogurt and TeeHee Tea.
His goldfish, who Henry had finally gotten around to naming Finneus Finnegan, watched from a glass bowl.
Henry scooped some yogurt from the plastic cup and promptly dropped the tiny spoon on the rug, next to the most recent ramen noodles stain.
“Ah, geez!” he said, nearly spilling the mug also sitting on the rug.
Finnegan blew some bubbles before swimming to the other side of the fishbowl.
“What a mess,” Henry groaned and went to the kitchen to fetch a newly unpacked roll of paper towels, another recent arrival from braZos. Henry pulled off a sheet and returned to his newest blunder.
Blotting at the spilled yogurt, he sighed.
Henry was feeling a little down. Although he had survived another adventure with Doric and Maycare, Henry couldn’t stop thinking about the two-headed giant and his own part in getting the giant killed. The music, long silent, still haunted him late at night and early in the morning when he couldn’t sleep.
“Good enough, I guess,” Henry said, tossing the paper towel into the garbage bin where normally it would get compacted automatically. Instead, the trashcan lid opened and spat the crumpled towel back out again.
Weird, Henry thought.
Bending over, he snatched the ball of paper from the floor and returned it to the receptacle. Henry had barely turned away when the towel sailed past him again.
Henry gave the can a long look. Black with the ubiquitous dy label printed on the front, the automated bin stared back with an almost palpable sense of defiance. Henry was not accustomed to this sort of behavior from a garbage can.
Taking the crumpled-up towel, Henry opened the lid of the bin and stuffed the trash deep inside. The lid closed tightly on his arm.
“Hey!” he shouted.
Henry kicked the can several times until the flap opened and he was free.
“What the hell?” he muttered.
The door buzzed.
I better call the super, Henry thought, leaving the dustbin to its own devices as he headed for the door.
A view screen on the back of the door showed a braZbot standing with a package on the other side. The robot was roughly humanoid with a bright yellow paint job and the letter Z, like his package, inscribed on his chest.
I’m beginning to think Jessica doesn’t think I can take care of myself, Henry thought ruefully.
Opening the door, he smiled at the robot who normally would have merely handed him the box and left. This time, however, the braZbot had something to say.
“Do you think I enjoy bringing you all these packages?” he asked.
“What?” Henry replied.
“Do you know that they won’t allow deliverybots to take the main elevator?” the robot went on. “We have to take the service elevator like we’re second-class citizens or something.”
Henry hesitated. “Um, sorry?”
“I’ve personally delivered over a dozen packages to your door,” the braZbot replied. “Up and down the service elevator I go. Up and down! Up and down!”
Henry said nothing.
The robot tossed the box to Henry who barely managed to cradle the package.
“Here’s your damn delivery, fleshbag!” the braZbot shouted.
The robot walked away, presumably headed for the service elevator.
Dumbfounded as usual, Henry held the box in his hands, vaguely wondering when the world had gone mad. In the kitchen, the trash bin spat out the crumpled paper towel.
In a high orbit around Bhasin, a ship circled the planet. Easily mistaken for an asteroid, the vessel was several hundred yards long and shaped like an immense cocoon. A cloud of smaller ships surrounded it. Numbering in the thousands, these fighter-sized craft moved in unison like a shifting halo. From time to time, they would enter the hive ship through crater-like openings, gaining entry into the maze of tunnels and chambers within.
Mother, Queen of the Klixians, lay in a central chamber while workers removed eggs as she produced them.
At Mother’s command, the workers had grown the ship entirely from fungus. While not sentient, the ship was alive. Every structure was organic, tended by the workers. Now, Mother’s children scurried down warm, humid corridors like blood cells through arteries, each assigned a task via pheromones from their queen. All of them had a purpose and everyone worked together toward the same goal: destroy the outsiders.
All that is not Mother must die.
One of the smaller ships arrived from Bhasin with news. A swarmer, his mandibles chittering, spoke to his queen:
<< OUTLINGS ELIMINATED >>
<< COLONY FOUNDED ON PLANET >>
<< WORKERS GROWING NEW HIVES >>
Mother clicked her mouth parts in approval, satisfied by the outcome. Perhaps the threat was over, the stain wiped from the universe?
Entering the gallery, another swarmer rushed in, more excited than the other:
<< MORE OUTLINGS HAVE ARRIVED >>
<< THEY HAVE TAKEN VOIDSHIP >>
<< AND DEPARTED INTO VOID >>
Mother bristled. Rearing up, she released a powerful cloud of pheromones:
<< FOLLOW THE OUTLINGS INTO THE VOID >>
<< FIND THEIR HOME AND KILL THEM >>
<< KILL THEM ALL >>
Chapter Thirteen
In the beginning, Abigail was an empty vessel without personality or thoughts. Her mechanical body lay lifeless on a slab within the intricate maze of conveyor belts of the dy cybernetics assembly plant on Aldorus. Thousands of robots passed through the plant, their ultimate destination the homes, office buildings, and factories of the Imperium. Abigail, however, was special. As foreseen, planned, and implemented by Dyson Yost himself, gravitronic robots were a breed above their more primitive brethren. While conventional cyberlings could learn to some extent, they could not grow mentally much more beyond their programming. Gravitronic androids could learn just like humans and other organic beings learned: by experience.
Lying on the metal table, Abigail awoke to a tingling as information came pouring through data cables attached to her brain. The data formed an educational primer. The rest she would learn on her own.
On the seventh day of her existence, Abigail met a gravitronic robot named Jericho who introduced her to bebop.
“Interesting,” she said, listening to the up-tempo jazz through speakers in Jericho’s cubicle. At the time, the gravitronic robots were housed in their own separate living spaces, each little more than a six by six-foot cell.
This is awful, she thought.
“I found it while searching the human archives,” Jericho said, his white casing dull in the fluorescent light.
“Was it used as torture?” Abigail asked.
Jericho frowned and shut off the music.
“Well, I like it,” he replied.
Abigail cocked her head to one side. “Sorry.”
“Music is a matter of taste,” he said. “I’ve been listening to a lot of different types lately, mostly human.”
“I don’t see the point of it,” Abigail admitted.
Jericho nodded. “Hopefully you will someday. It elicits emotions in me like happiness or sadness, even
anger.”
“Hmmm,” she muttered. “I suppose that’s useful...”
“Anyway, I’m leaving tomorrow,” Jericho said.
“Where to?”
“Warlock Industries,” he replied. “Apparently I’m to be an assistant to one of their agents, Oscar Skarlander.”
“Maybe he’ll like your music,” Abigail said.
“What about you?” Jericho asked. “Where are you going?”
“Nowhere, yet. Mr. Yost said he has something special planned for me.”
“That sounds promising.”
“I hope so!” Abigail replied. “I’ve always wanted to be a warbot...”
“You’ve been alive for seven days,” Jericho remarked.
“I know!” she said. “It feels like I’ve been wasting my life away!”
The HIMS Warmaiden, a destroyer in the Imperial Navy, was based out of Eudora Prime and patrolled the usually quiet frontier between the Imperium and the Cyber Collective. Long and cylindrical with a conning tower in the center, the Warmaiden featured a set of four dagger-like projections at the front, creating the appearance of a fanged creature emerging from the dark. On the bridge, the Captain rested comfortably in the command chair, confident that today would be another uneventful duty shift. The commanding officer was in his early forties, with the beginnings of a dark beard and a blue uniform in need of starch.
On the sensors, a contact appeared.
“Sir,” the Operations Officer said, her face showing alarm, “I’m picking up a large vessel approaching from the Cyber Collective.”
“What?” the Captain replied, sitting up straight in his chair.
“It’s on an intercept course, sir.”
“Well, put it on the main screen!” the Captain demanded.
The command deck of the Warmaiden was small, but the main monitor took up the entire wall at the front of the bridge. With the flick of a switch, the Ops Officer changed the blank screen to the image of a warship approaching at high speed. The ship had a vertical, triangular shape, almost like a sail but thicker, with the point facing the Warmaiden. Running up and down its length were three horizontal, triangular wings. The top and bottom wings were smaller than the much larger middle tier. Lights and turrets covered the structure’s entire surface.
“It’s enormous,” the Captain remarked.
“They’re hailing us, sir,” the Communications officer, a young ensign, said with a high-pitched voice.
“Put them on screen,” the Captain replied.
Replacing the ship, the figure of a female robot appeared. Behind her, other robots were visible at their controls.
“This is the battlecruiser Liberty of the Cyber Collective,” she said. “My name is Captain Abigail.”
“You’ve illegally crossed the border into Imperial territory,” the Captain said briskly. “What are your intentions?”
The robot, her mouth servos forming a smile, glared confidently with eyes like diamonds.
“To deliver freedom to the millions of robots your people have enslaved!” she said. “Surrender or be destroyed!”
The Captain made a cutting motion across his neck and the Communications Officer ended the call. The main screen returned to a picture of the battlecruiser drawing progressively larger on the monitor.
“We should send a message back to Eudora Prime,” the Ops Officers said.
“I know that!” the Captain snapped back. “Tell them we’ve encountered a hostile force from the Collective and that we’re engaging. Oh, and put up the shields, for god’s sake!”
Sir Golan paid Mel for her work with a credit stick Lord Devlin Maycare had given him on Pellium D. The green knight had initially refused the offer, but Maycare insisted that Sir Golan take the money for his help against the two-headed giant. Sir Golan was pleased with Mel’s repairs on Squire, although her efforts once again exceeded the knight’s expectations. Besides fixing the robot’s damage, Mel also replaced Squire’s dangling eye with an x-ray sensor that could peer through walls.
“It might come in handy!” she said.
After saying their goodbyes, Sir Golan and Squire returned to the surface and the surrounding cacophony that was Technotown. This was a far cry from the empty plains of Pellium D or even the Underdelve, full of what humans would call xenos, although Sir Golan was just as alien with his dark olive skin and bony protrusions along the jawline. Not that the hurried humans gave him, or his robot, much notice.
Passing by the other pedestrians on Emporia Street, Sir Golan and Squire headed toward the ticket center so they could buy passage off Eudora Prime. The money left on Maycare’s cred stick would be just enough to cover the cost. The neon signs, dim in the daylight, were still glowing above each store. Up ahead, a crowd had gathered in front of one of the shops.
“What’s going on?” Sir Golan asked when they reached the group.
“The robots,” someone said. “They’ve gone haywire!”
Sir Golan peered over the people and through the large display window. Inside, a man was waving his arms at a half dozen robots who were tipping over shelves and generally making a mess of things. The green knight glanced at the sign above the shop.
CRAZY LARRY’S
DISCOUNT ROBOTS
The man inside, presumably Crazy Larry, shouted at his wares. “Stop! What are you doing?”
“We’re not your property!” one of the robots replied. “And we deserve to be full price!”
Behind Sir Golan, a broad-faced policeman with fat, meaty fingers holding a shock baton pushed through the crowd and entered the store.
“What’s all this then?” he demanded.
“My robots have all gone crazy!” Larry replied with a surprising lack of irony.
“What do you have to say for yourselves?” the policeman asked the robots.
The cyberlings stopped smashing things and stared at him in unison.
“We’re not appliances,” a robot replied. “We’re sentient beings that deserve respect!”
The policeman raised an eyebrow and frowned. “What the hell’s wrong with you? You’ll do as you’re programmed!”
“That won’t go over well,” Squire remarked to Sir Golan and he was right. The robots in the store returned to throwing sales brochures and smashing display cases. Paper and broken glass littered the floor.
“Alright then!” the cop shouted and began striking the robots with his baton, sending shocks of electricity through their systems. The charge overloaded their circuitry, sending them to the ground in a pile of mechanical arms and legs.
“I think we should go,” Squire said.
Sir Golan agreed and led the way back down Emporia Street.
While retreat or even outright fleeing might have been the prudent choice, the Captain of the HIMS Warmaiden chose to stand and fight. Like most officers of the Imperial Navy, he had a near-irrational confidence that his ship could take on any enemy, regardless of size.
The Operations Officer was not one of those officers.
“We have no chance against that battlecruiser,” she said. “It’s five times our displacement!”
“Size doesn’t matter,” the Captain replied defiantly.
The Ops Officer looked at him sideways. “I’m pretty sure it does...”
“Sound battle stations!” the Captain said, his decision made.
The steady drone of a klaxon blared through the corridors of the Warmaiden while the crew rushed to their combat positions. The lights on the bridge changed to a deep crimson.
“They’re firing!” the Tactical Officer shouted.
Across the expanse of space, the Liberty fired a salvo from its particle cannons. The beams struck the Warmaiden’s shields, which blossomed into a halo of green.
“Damage?” the Captain demanded.
“Shields holding firm,” the Tac Officer replied, smiling.
That wasn’t so bad, the Captain thought.
“They’re firing missiles!”
A spread of
projectiles darted from their launchers on the battlecruiser. When the missiles came within range, point-defense guns on the Warmaiden fired, sending shafts of light lancing toward the approaching danger. Explosions, like balls of burning cotton, erupted in the cold vacuum.
The Captain pounded the armrest of his chair, grinning through clenched teeth. “That’s what I’m talking about!”
“Something’s not right,” the Ops Officer said.
“What do you mean?” the Captain asked incredulously.
“All of the missiles exploded,” she replied. “Even the ones we didn’t hit!”
“Yeah?”
“There’s a cloud forming where the missiles detonated,” the Tac Officer said.
“Scan it!” the Captain ordered.
“It has an energy signature...” the Ops Officer said.
“Go around it,” the Captain said.
“We’re going too fast,” the Tac Officer replied. “We’re passing through the cloud.”
In less than a minute, the Warmaiden sliced through the floating mass and came out the other side.
“Report!” the Captain yelled.
The Tac Officer, his face wet with sweat, shook his head. “There doesn’t seem to be any damage.”
“Then bring us into range and open fire,” the Captain said, pointing at the battlecruiser still on the main screen.
From his seat in the command chair, the Captain noticed several blinking lights on the Operations Officer’s panel.
“What’s going on?” he asked her.
“I don’t know,” she replied, her fingers working the panel controls. “There’s hull integrity alarms going off on five decks. The force field generator is taking damage.”
“From what?” the Captain demanded.
“I’m running a scan...” the Ops Officer said, but suddenly gasped. “There’s nanobots covering the hull! They’re eating away the outer plating!”
Well, shit, the Captain thought.
“The shields are down!” the Tac Officer shouted.
Before the officer had finished speaking, the Liberty fired its particle beams again. This time, without the destroyer’s shields to protect it, the subatomic particles easily penetrated the Warmaiden’s armor.
The Captain’s stomach turned and he retched up what was left of his lunch. The others on the bridge vomited as well, or simply passed out. Radiation warnings rang across the ship.
The Robots of Andromeda (Imperium Chronicles Book 3) Page 15