Robot Dust Bunnies (Argonauts Book 5)

by Isaac Hooke

  “Yes, boss,” the Argonaut’s AI replied.

  “What are we supposed to do in the meantime?” Bender said. “Hang around uselessly inside our mechs? Cock in hand?”

  “Pretty much,” Rade said. “I want us ready to deploy at a moment’s notice.”

  The Dragonfly docked with its telemetry drone payload in the second hangar bay, and the Argonaut began its pursuit of the enemy. Rade stared at the tactical display grimly, his gaze focused on the red dot of the Nablis class vessel.

  Those Phants had tried to take away everything Rade loved dearly.

  Time to make them pay.

  twenty-seven

  How long until they reach the moon?” Rade asked shortly after the Argonaut began the pursuit in earnest.

  “Thirty minutes,” Lui said.

  “And what about us?” Rade said.

  “Forty-five,” Lui said.

  “Assuming they’re actually heading for the moon, and it’s not a feint,” Tahoe said.

  “Bax, have you informed the moon’s governor of the situation?” Rade asked.

  “I have,” Bax said. “Fret has received a reply, I believe.”

  Rade glanced at the comm man.

  “The governor of Petrograd Colony has replied, yes,” Fret said. “They intend to shoot down the Nablis Class vessel if it attempts to enter orbit.”

  “Do we know the capabilities of that ship yet?” Rade asked. “Other than that they’ve upgraded the missile tubes?”

  “The ship is called the Specter,” Lui replied. “Registered to a small Russian security consulting company. My guess is they were hired to escort a merchant to the free port. The Specter has four banks of close range Vipers, some mag-rails for point defenses, and a couple of missile tubes.”

  “So nothing they can really fire at us, from this distance,” Rade said.

  “We’re definitely too far for the Vipers. But in theory they could lob some slugs from their mag-rails at us. We wouldn’t see them until the last moment. Though damage would be minimal. And they could of course fire another long range missile at us.”

  “And yet they’re holding back,” Rade said.

  Lui nodded. “My guess is they’re saving what they have for the colony. Or it’s defenses, at least.”

  Rade tapped in Shaw directly.

  “How are the twins?” he asked her.

  “Same as always,” Shaw said. “They slept through the whole incident.”

  “Probably a good thing,” Rade said. “Though even if they were awake, I doubt they would have comprehended what was going on.”

  “You’d be surprised at the feelings babies can pick up from their parents,” Shaw said. “I think they would have been terrified, at the least.”

  Rade didn’t like to hear that, the implication obvious.

  “And you?” he said. “How are you holding up?”

  “As well as could be expected, I suppose,” she replied. “I’m ready to resume my station. I want to take down these bastards for what they’ve done to me.”

  “You and I both,” Rade said. “For now I’d like you to remain inside your jumpsuit, with the babies in sickbay. Essentially ready to evac at a moment’s notice. Man the astrogator station remotely.”

  “Got it,” Shaw said. “In fact, I was going to suggest the very same thing.”

  Thirty minutes passed. The Specter wasn’t feinting—it proceeded directly toward the colonized area of the moon.

  “I’m detecting a communication attempt from the defense platform, directed at the Specter,” Fret said. “They’re giving them a warning.”

  “Is the Specter turning back?” Rade asked Lui.

  “Negative,” Lui replied. “They’re accelerating, if anything. It’s almost as if they have no intention of orbiting.”

  “What do you mean?” Rade asked.

  “Well, with their current vector, they’re essentially on a collision course with the colony, unless they start decelerating soon,” Lui clarified. “Though it is possible they intend to bounce off the Kármán line.” That was the point in the lower thermosphere where atmospheric entry began. “Though extremely unlikely, given their current velocity vector, and the atmospheric density.”

  “Is the Nablis Class capable of atmospheric entry?” Rade said.

  “That’s the thing,” Lui said. “It isn’t. Not in the least.”

  “So you’re saying their going kamikaze on the colony?” Manic said.

  “I don’t know what they’re doing,” Lui said.

  “Let’s say they did intend to hit the colony with their ship,” Rade said. “What kind of damage would that cause?”

  “A whole lot,” Lui said. “The ship will break apart before impact, of course, assuming they can get past the defenses.” He paused. “The platform just fired. Lasers have scored a direct hit on the Specter. The ship continues to approach.” Another pause. “The Specter just launched a projectile at the defense platform.”

  On the tactical display, Rade saw the red dot leave the enemy ship. Several moments passed, and the crimson indicator contacted the green dot representing the defense platform. The red marker vanished.

  “What kind of damage did the platform sustain?” Rade asked.

  “Severe,” Lui said. “Micro robots are swarming over the wreckage... disintegrating it... self-replicating.”

  “Has the Specter changed course yet?” Rade asked.

  “No,” Lui said. “They’ve passed the point of no return. They’re definitely intending to enter the atmosphere, for whatever reason. Even if they change course now, the ship is doomed.” A few moments later: “They collided with the swarm that replaced the wreckage. They’ve incurred severe damage to the forward section.”

  “What the hell are they doing?” Tahoe said.

  “They know they’re doomed, so they don’t care anymore?” Manic said.

  “Sort of like a dude we know who made his stripper girlfriend pregnant?” Bender taunted.

  Manic shook his head.

  “Their ship just took a hit from a surface-to-space laser,” Lui said.

  “Any change in their course?” Rade asked.

  “Nope,” Lui said. “I suspect their engines are too badly damaged to change course, even if they wanted to. Wait a second...”

  “What is it?”

  “I’m detecting another projectile launch,” Lui said. “Apparently their missile launch tubes and subsystems are still intact.”

  “The target?” Rade asked.

  “The colony,” Lui said. “It will hit a few seconds before the ship does. However judging from the trajectory, the projectile will fall well clear of the Specter’s impact, smashing into the north side of the colony.”

  “What do we know about that colony?” Rade said. “Is it situated inside an environmental dome?”

  “No,” Lui said. “Seeing as the atmosphere has been terraformed to suit human life. Otherwise, it’s your typical colony. A lot of high rises in the center, surrounded by low to medium rise buildings, with some single family homes near the outskirts.”

  Lui paused. “The Specter has begun atmospheric entry. It just took another hit from the surface to space laser. It’s already breaking apart, probably from the accumulation of damage. The fragments are heating up, several of them disintegrating.”

  Rade accessed the external camera on the Argonaut and zoomed in. He could see what looked like a fiery ball descending into the atmosphere from orbit.

  Rade knew that wouldn’t be enough to kill the Phants. Even after their ship burned up and smashed into the surface of the planet, the inter-dimensional beings wouldn’t suffer a scratch.

  A minute later Lui announced: “The missile just impacted the northern section.”

  Rade zoomed in on the sprawling city and saw the smoking blast crater formed by the projectile strike, nestled amid a neighborhood of medium rise buildings. Foundations were exposed, and water from a broken line geysered. The surrounding buildings showed signs of impac
t damage, with shattered windows and fragments of slag embedded in the exteriors. People were in the streets, fleeing the impact zone.

  Rade saw movement at the bottom of the crater. It looked like black oil flowing upward. He zoomed in farther: a micro robot swarm. Likely the self-replicating robots were feeding on the exposed foundations to swell their numbers.

  A flash momentarily filled the view.

  “The remains of the Specter just impacted near the center of the city,” Lui said.

  Rade shifted the camera angle southward. An even larger crater had appeared, this one near the city core, in the middle of a string of high rises. The skyscrapers on the eastern side were sawn in half where the ship had impacted before striking the ground. There was similar fragment damage to the surviving buildings like the projectile impact farther north, though on a greater scale. Foundations were exposed along the rim of the crater, though in the center there was only blackened ground, where the remnants of the Specter had dug clean through any load-bearing structures.

  People were streaming from the downtown core in droves. Some via airborne vehicles, others on foot. Smoke and flames streamed from the upper floors of a few of the surrounding buildings.

  At the bottom of the new crater, Rade once again saw shapes beginning to amass. That was not blackened ground like he had assumed at first, but in fact micro robots. Multiplying, perhaps using the molten material at the bottom of the crater as fuel: the slag formed from the remnants of the Specter and the impacted buildings.

  He returned his attention to the northern crater, were the micro robots were proliferating, and teeming over the surfaces of the surrounding buildings.

  “Anyone ever eaten ants on a log?” Bender said.

  “Huh?” Manic said.

  “Ants on a log,” Bender said. “You know, a celery stick with peanut butter filling the groove, and raisins pressed into it.”

  “Dude, how can you think of food at a time like this?” Manic said.

  “Bitch, I’m always thinking about food,” Bender said. “Anyway, that’s what those buildings remind me of. Just look at them, covered by those robot dust bunnies.”

  “They certainly look like a swarm of ants from orbit,” Tahoe agreed.

  Rade checked the Argonaut’s location on the tactical display. They were still about ten minutes away.

  “Shaw, I want you to take us into a geosynchronous orbit above the colony,” Rade said.

  “I’ll have to start decelerating soon,” Shaw said. “It’ll take half an hour before I can get us properly into position.”

  “That’s fine,” Rade said. “Do what you can. Fret, get in touch with the colony administrators. Make sure they know we’re coming to help. I don’t really want to be shot down by that surface to space laser...”

  “I wouldn’t like to be shot down either,” Bax said.

  “Back talking AI,” Bender muttered over the comm.

  “It’s done,” Fret said. “According to the governor, the power grid is offline anyway. They won’t be able to fire their surface-to-space laser for quite a while.”

  Over the next several minutes, people evacuated the colony en masse: rockets departed launch terminals, vehicles drove into the outlying districts, people ran into the wilderness beyond the city. Many of the inhabitants probably chose to stay hidden inside houses or apartments, dooming themselves.

  Meanwhile, the swarm grew as the individual robots digested the surrounding buildings and multiplied. The two seething masses expanded, writhing their way across the abandoned downtown streets, joining into a single unit.

  As Rade watched, the combined swarm thrust upward from the surface, forming a robot more massive than any of the individual behemoths the team had faced on the lava planet. Once more it was fashioned after the smaller robots composing it: six legs sprouted from a vaguely insectile body, and from the head a single horn protruded.

  “Unicorn!” Bender said.

  The behemoth directed its horn toward a series of nearby buildings, and a bright green particle beam emerged, cutting a swath through the structures. The robot slowly advanced, repeatedly firing that beam, razing the colony. Its massive extremities remained fluidic, in that no actual feet formed at the bottom of the giant limbs, but the micro robots remained in the swarm state there, their dark masses crawling over nearby buildings and vehicles, digesting the raw materials and further adding to the thing’s bulk. Rade suspected the particle beam also added to its mass in some way, as the behemoth seemed to grow very slightly after each shot.

  Fighter drones finally swooped past—part of the colony’s defenses. They launched a string of carpet bombs that detonated all along the behemoth’s dorsal area. Large blast craters appeared in its upper back, but the holes rapidly filled in as the micro robots swarmed. The behemoth spun its head and tracked the drones as they came in for another run. It fired its particle beam, taking out two of the aircraft. The fighters flew past to regroup on the far side of the colony, no doubt intending to make another run. It was obvious the drones wouldn’t last long.

  Rade stared for several more moments at the devastation inflicted on the sprawling colony, then he dismissed the camera feed, unable to watch further.

  “What’s the population of that colony again?” Rade asked.

  “About five million,” Lui said.

  twenty-eight

  Rade shook his head. “What’s their game? The Phants could have hidden amid the inhabitants. It would have taken us months, maybe years, to ferret them out. And yet they chose to destroy everything. Making it easy for us to find them.”

  “Maybe they figured we wouldn’t stand a chance against that thing,” Tahoe said.

  “Probably an accurate assumption on their part,” Lui said. “Plus, even if we do defeat the behemoth, there’s no guarantee finding them will be easy. They could be operating from the shadows, controlling the giant robot remotely via those quantum Slipstreams of theirs, hidden away within the rubble. It’s a cinch for a Phant to seep into the ground, or asphalt, or the wall of a building, and lurk just out of view. They could simply wait for us to leave, and then hitch a ride on any rescue craft or Artificials that arrive.”

  “It’s certainly possible that they’re fighting from the shadows,” Rade said. “But I’m convinced they wouldn’t want to sit this battle out on the sidelines.”

  “You think they’re operating from inside some sort of AI core in the behemoth?” Shaw transmitted.

  “At least one of them has to be,” Rade said. “From what we know about Phants, they love power. And what better way to feel that power than to possess a super massive robot?”

  “Then why didn’t the Phants possess the behemoths we fought with on the lava planet?” Lui asked.

  “They might very well have,” Tahoe said. “Maybe departing before things got too hectic. As in, our little trip into the lava ocean.”

  “You make it sound like that was a bad thing,” Bender said. “I’m telling ya, that was one of the best moments of my life, baby. When my little Bender grandkids are sitting on my lap, I’m going to regale them about the time I surfed a lava ocean with nothing but an anti-ballistic shield. While masturbating.”

  “You were masturbating while crossing the lava ocean...” Manic said, the disbelief obvious in his voice.

  “Hell yeah,” Bender said. “That could have been the final time I got to ejaculate in my life. Wanted to feel it one last time. Besides, the view was spectacular. Of course I had to touch myself.”

  “I thought the arrangement of your right hand looked odd out there...” Lui said.

  “I’d hate to see what Juggernaut’s cockpit looks like,” Fret said. “Note to self, never hitch a ride with Bender.”

  “Manic was inside my cockpit before,” Bender said. Though Rade couldn’t see his face, he could imagine that Bender was flashing that golden grille of his.

  “I think I’m gonna chuck,” Manic said.

  “All right, Argonauts,” Rade said, drawi
ng their attention back to the matter at hand. “We’re the only ones in range. We’re going to have to go down there and stop that thing. We’re the colonists’ only hope.”

  “Why do we always have to play the heroes?” Fret said. “I mean, come on. Look all the evac rockets they launched. And the vehicles flying away and driving into the countryside. And all those people running into the wilderness. They’ll be fine!”

  “And what about the people who stayed behind?” Rade said. “As many people often do during invasions?”

  “Well they’re the dumb ones then, aren’t they?” Fret said.

  “The boss is right,” Lui said. “We’re the only ones who can help these people. That swarm won’t stop when the city is conquered. They’re going to spread out, I’m sure, and expand into the wilderness area. Perhaps they’ll form smaller hunter-killer style craft, and chase the inhabitants down.”

  “To what end?” Fret said.

  “Paving the way for the other Phants,” Shaw transmitted. “Due to arrive seven hundred years from now. Leaving the moon ready to be converted into geronium.”

  Fret sighed. “Damn it. Well if we’re going to go, let’s do it and get it over with. No more merely talking about it.”

  “Soon.” Rade tapped in Surus, who resided in her quarters in the cargo hold. “You’ve been watching events unfold down there?”

  “I have,” Surus said. “I’m ready to deploy when you give the order.”

  “We’re going to need the telemetry drone,” Rade said.

  “We will,” Surus agreed. “But that particular drone isn’t atmosphere capable. However, we can magnetically attach it to the dorsal section of one of the Dragonflies, and the heat shields of the craft should protect it upon atmospheric entry.”

  “The shuttle will need an escort...” Rade said.

  “You are proposing sending the Hoplites?” Surus said.

  “I am,” Rade said.

  “It will be dangerous,” Surus said. “If you get close to the swarm, or that particle beam hits...”