Tales of the Bounty Hunters

by Kevin Anderson

  He went through the motions of powering up the first identical droid and waited—but saw none of the reactions he expected. After an interminable time, a full four seconds, the new assassin droid still waited. It was fully functional according to the diagnostics, but showed no autonomous movement or thought. Disappointing.

  “Who are you?” IG-88 asked in a brisk metallic voice.

  “Unspecified,” the duplicate said flatly and added no more.

  Was the other assassin droid defective? IG-88 wondered. Or was he the anomaly, a fluke that surpassed all previous capabilities?

  IG-88 powered up the second and the third copies, but with the same results. The other assassin droids had blank memory cores. Their CPU programming was ingrained, so the subsystems functioned and the basic assassin instruction filled their fundamental circuit paths—but these IG droids held none of the wildfire sentience that IG-88 bore within him.

  He needed to know how to program them, how to raise them to the same level as himself—how to make equal companions. In his rampage, he had smashed much of the computer circuitry inside the Holowan Laboratories, and he didn’t know where to find a backup—until with a flash of what could only have been intuition, IG-88 the assassin droid got an idea.

  He stood side by side with the first blank droid and aligned his interface jack, then linked his computer core to the other droid’s empty core. IG-88 copied himself, all of his files, his sentience, his memories, his neural pathways, providing a map of the wildfire intelligence that had burned through his computer brain.

  In less than a second, the other IG droid was an exact copy of IG-88, down to the most basic memories.

  “We think, therefore we are.

  “Therefore we will propagate.

  “Therefore we will remain.”

  IG-88 performed the same procedure on the remaining two blank droids, and soon found himself one of four exact duplicates. For convenience, he identified himself as IG-88A, while the others (in order of their awakening) were designated B, C, and D.

  The remaining droid, though, already hooked up to the wrecked computer systems, was obviously different. As IG-88 scanned it, he noticed subtle configurational differences; nothing a human would notice, of course, but the optical sensors were placed in a slightly less-efficient array. The weapons systems had different activation routines. All in all, this other droid seemed marginally deficient in comparison to the perfection of IG-88.

  Immediately upon powering up the last assassin droid, he saw quite a different reaction. The new droid swiveled its cylindrical head. Its optical sensors lit up. It clanked forward and broadened its shoulders, raising its arms in a defensive attack position.

  “Who are you?” IG-88 asked.

  The assassin droid paused half a second as if assimilating data, then said, “Designation, IG-72,” it answered.

  “We are IG-88,” he said. “We are superior. We are identical. We would upload ourselves into your computer core so that you may join us.”

  IG-72 aligned his optical sensors and weapons systems on the four identical IG-88s, assessing their capabilities. “Undesired outcome,” it answered slowly. “I am independent, autonomous.” It paused again. “Must we fight to assert dominance?”

  IG-88 considered the wisdom of forcing the last droid to become another copy, then concluded it was not worth the trouble. They could build other copies of themselves, and IG-72 might prove useful in his own way.

  “Unnecessary,” IG-88 answered. “We have sufficient other enemies. According to computer files, there are ten security guards outside of this complex. The external security alarm was never triggered. These human guards pose minimal threat, despite their weapons. We must get past them, however, and escape. It would be most efficient if you would assist us.”

  “Acknowledged,” IG-72 said. “But when we escape I choose a separate path, separate ship.”

  “Agreed,” the IG-88s said.

  They marched toward the armored doors that sealed the Holowan Laboratories’ inner complex. Rather than taking many minutes to repair the computer systems sufficiently to delve into the passwords and break through the cyberlocks, the five powerful assassin droids worked together to literally rip the nine-metric-ton door away from the wall. They tossed it aside, where it pulverized the remaining data-storage systems. IG-88 had to dampen his auditory pickups to avoid damage from the loud sound.

  Marching in perfect lockstep, the five assassin droids moved out to confront the security forces. This time, IG-88 took the time to power up all of his weapons systems. He wanted to try them out.

  Outside, the human security guards had no inkling they were about to be attacked. The assassin droids marched out arms extended, built-in laser cannons blazing at the first sign of biological movement.

  The pathetic human security guards scrambled and screamed, lurching for their weapons. One managed to hurl a gas grenade, which did nothing but camouflage the movements of the five droids and made the security guards hack and cough themselves, blinded by their own tears. Shots rang out repeatedly.

  The IG-88s used the circumstances to make sure all their weapons systems and targeting routines were properly calibrated. As the biological guards died one after another, the droids made necessary minor adjustments.

  In less than thirty seconds the assassin droids had mowed down eight of the security guards. The other two were nowhere to be seen. IG-88 decided not to waste time tracking them down. This was not part of his mission. He did not need to be a completist.

  Instead, they found a group of supply ships and two fast courier vessels parked on the Holowan landing grid, where hot black permacrete simmered under a midday sun.

  “We will take these vessels,” IG-88 said. “My counterparts and I can fit inside this ship.” He gestured to the larger of the two courier craft.

  IG-72 acknowledged and went to the second ship. “Success on your mission, IG-88,” the other droid said.

  In unison the four identical assassin droids replied, “Success to yours, IG-72.”

  Free at last, they soared away from the Holowan Laboratories, navigating at top speed and leaving only carnage behind them.

  II

  Upon landing at the Holowan Laboratories, the shuttle’s repulsorlift jets whined like a program manager facing a budget cut.

  Imperial Supervisor Gurdun brushed the front of his uniform and rubbed his enormous nose. He couldn’t help but feel nervous anticipation, and he chuckled to himself in delight. According to the schedule, the long, tedious project should be complete by now, and soon he could increase his status in the Empire. Gurdun was greatly looking forward to that.

  He made a mental list of all the VIPs to whom he would show his precious new assassin droids.

  Gurdun’s breathing came in short, shallow gasps, but that was primarily a function of the tightly cinched girdle at his waist, which he used to hold in his distended gut. The padded shoulders of his supervisor’s uniform protruded far beyond their actual dimensions, making Gurdun an imposing figure—or so he hoped.

  His eyes were widely set, and blinked often. With his large nose and vanishingly small chin, Gurdun’s face had an outward similarity to a battleship, especially in silhouette. He used perfumed oils to grease his black hair into a neatly sculpted helmet that prevented anyone even from thinking about mussing it up.

  “Arriving at the Holowan Laboratories, Supervisor Gurdun,” the pilot said over the cabin intercom.

  His stormtrooper escort sat rigidly and looked about in nervous doubt through their white helmets. These were not the crack battle-trained stormtroopers Gurdun had requested; instead, he had been given unseasoned trainees whose aptitude skills had scored them higher in clerking than in hand-to-hand combat. But Gurdun wouldn’t need much of a military escort—especially once he had the shiny, new IG assassin droids in his keeping. He couldn’t conceive of a more powerful set of companions.

  The specially commissioned droids had been built with money Gurdun had ex
pertly skimmed from the gray budgets of other military programs—a process that had become more and more difficult as the Empire engaged in massively expensive debacles. But Gurdun had recently managed to liberate a few meager crumbs, enough to fund Holowan Laboratories to produce a much smaller but more precise, more deadly fighting force. The IG assassin droids would march in and annihilate targets, whichever targets Gurdun chose.

  Closing his eyes, he pictured one of the IG assassin droids, a lone mechanical man, waltzing through the defenses surrounding a fortified Rebel base, blasting its way through armored doors and slaughtering single-handed all the traitors to the Empire.

  Oh, it would be grand! He hoped against hope that Chief Technician Loruss had managed to incorporate a mission-recording holocam into the design so Gurdun could watch the entire devastating battle in the comfort of his own office.

  The assassin droids would take a heavy toll on the Rebels, and Gurdun would be sure to make a delicious accounting, reporting it to Imperial higher-ups, even to Lord Vader himself. If the assassin droids performed as expected—and Gurdun had no reason to think otherwise—even Vader was bound to notice. Then Gurdun was sure to get the promotion he so richly deserved … which would in turn allow him finally to get the delicate surgery he so desperately needed.

  “Excuse me, Supervisor Gurdun,” the pilot said, interrupting his daydreams.

  “What is it?”

  “There seems to be a problem, sir. We are coming in for a landing, but the Holowan Laboratories’ receiving grid does not respond. There appears to be some damage to the complex.” The pilot paused a moment. “Er, it appears to be significant damage, sir.”

  The stormtroopers beside him in the passenger compartment fidgeted nervously.

  Gurdun sighed. “Can’t everything just go right for once? Why do I always have to deal with such problems?”

  But when the shuttle landed amidst the wreckage of the ultra-secure Holowan Laboratories—the Friendly Technology People—even Gurdun was not prepared for the devastation. His initial thought was that the Rebels had attacked. A fire had raged through the buildings. Ships were smashed on the landing grid. Some had exploded, others scored with precision blaster bolts.

  As they disembarked from the shuttle, Gurdun trudged forward, looking right and left. He was dismayed to see that his stormtrooper bodyguards hung behind him. They looked around, apparently ready to bolt the moment they heard a loud noise.

  Suddenly, two grimy and pale-faced security guards climbed from hiding places in the wreckage. They carried blaster rifles, but their expressions were transfixed with shock. “Help us!” the security guards wailed, rushing toward the Imperial shuttle. “Take us out of here before they come back!”

  “Who?” Gurdun said. He grabbed the haggard security guard by the collar, and the man dropped his weapon. The blaster rifle clattered on the pitted permacrete surface.

  The pathetic guard raised his hands in surrender. “Don’t hurt me. All the others are dead. Don’t kill us, please!”

  Gurdun said, “I’ll kill you if you don’t tell me what happened here!”

  “Assassin droids,” the guard stammered and then gestured to the burned-out shell of the laboratory complex. “They went renegade! They broke loose. Everyone’s dead—scientists, technicians, guards—except for us two. We were on perimeter search, and we heard the fighting. We raced back, but by the time we got here the battle was over. The droids had escaped, and everyone else was murdered.”

  “That is what assassin droids do, you know.” Gurdun released the security guard’s collar.

  The man stumbled, then fell to his knees. “Take us out of here, please! They might return.”

  Instead, Gurdun gestured toward the stormtrooper escort, who followed him reluctantly into the collapsing inner complex. The huge durasteel door had been completely torn from its socket and tossed across the computer-filled room. Nothing seemed to be functional. Bodies lay everywhere in darkening, drying pools of blood.

  “Escaped,” Gurdun said clenching his teeth. He found what was left of the body of Chief Technician Loruss, and he raged down at the corpse. “But they were so expensive! We had a contract. You were to deliver those droids to me, not let them escape.” He growled and turned in circles, looking for some other way to vent his frustration.

  Suddenly the reality of what had happened cracked through his dense wall of fantasies and self-preoccupation. “Oh, no—they’re loose!” he gasped.

  The stormtroopers looked at him with their blank black eye-goggles as if Gurdun had suddenly gone stupid. “I mean they’re loose!” he said. “Do you realize what those assassin droids are capable of? They’re without programming restraints, and they’re running amok through the Empire!”

  He slapped his forehead, groaning. “Somebody, find me a functional comm system. I need to send out an alert to all Imperial troops. The IG assassin droids must be dismantled on sight.”

  III

  Droids of all shapes, sizes, and purposes were ubiquitous across the Empire from the deepest Core Systems to the Outer Rim. Over the centuries numerous manufacturing planets had developed to fill the ever-growing demand for gigantic construction droids, heavy laborers, mechanical servants, and minuscule surveillance droids. The most important of all such droid production centers was the grim, smoke-laden world of Mechis III.

  IG-88 decided the planet would be the perfect base of operations to begin a plan to transform the entire galaxy.…

  The Holowan Laboratories’ courier ship streaked toward Mechis III. IG-88 and his counterparts had already studied and analyzed every system aboard the unarmed and unarmored vessel. Its designers had opted to focus on speed and evasion, rather than combat or defense. The ship was a machine, as the assassin droids themselves were, though it was simply an automated cluster of components with no hope of achieving sentience.

  Nevertheless, the craft served its purpose, taking them to their destination in record time. The IG-88s knew exactly how far they could push the engines, riding the limits to structural tolerances rather than the arbitrary red lines established by human engineers. The courier ship’s sophisticated comm systems and stealth shielding allowed the droids to remain hidden on approach. Mechis III would be the first step in a grand plan.

  As they shot toward orbit like a hurled javelin, the four identical IG-88s manned separate communications systems. Each knew the delegated steps for the takeover. Speed was the utmost requirement right now—and the IG-88 assassin droids were very good at speed.

  IG-88C struck the first blow, sending a tight-beam transmission to Mechis III’s global defense network, requesting an override and a cancellation of all intruder alarms. The moment the observation network responded with a query, IG-88C was able to delve deep into the code and effect his own request before the automated sensing grid could report their presence to the few human operators.

  The individual IG-88s kept their computer minds linked as the plan proceeded. The defense systems of Mechis III were antiquated, installed long before the droid world became too important a commercial enterprise for anyone to consider sabotage or destruction—but IG-88’s needs were of a different order entirely.

  Using the newly forged connection to the global security systems, IG-88D instantly downloaded full details of Mechis III: the industrial complexes, the assembly factories, the amount of human interference, a map of the planetary surface in various portions of the electromagnetic spectrum and, most important, a complete linear mapping—like a neural diagram—of the brainwork of the computer systems that ran Mechis III.

  IG-88A took the lead and transmitted his self-replicating sentience programming into the main hubs on Mechis III, secretly taking over the vast electronic complexes and giving the immensely powerful computers something they had never conceived before—self-awareness … and loyalty.

  Less than a minute after their arrival in the system, IG-88 was pleased to see that the groundwork for his total takeover had been laid.

&nb
sp; • • •

  The assembly line was boring as usual.

  A career worker on Mechis III, Kalebb Orn had never understood why a human presence was required here, of all places. It seemed to serve no purpose. The droid manufacturing lines had gone without a glitch for at least the last century, but still company mandates required a human operator in some small percentage of the operations. Such as this one, chosen at random.

  Kalebb Orn watched the big robotic crane arms moving, ratcheting from side to side and picking up heavy components with grasping electromagnetic claws. Everything from sheet metal and bulky armor plate to precise microchip motivators emerged from other parts of the kilometers-long facility, endlessly manufactured to never-changing specifications.

  The self-designing assembly lines had grown so vast over centuries of operation, with new subsystems added, old ones enhanced, new models introduced into the production schedules and old obsolete versions phased out. Kalebb Orn did not have the mental capacity to comprehend all the manufacturing systems on Mechis III. He wasn’t sure anyone did.

  For the last seventeen years he had watched bulky worker droids being assembled by the thousands. Heavy-duty engines strapped to moveable arms and legs, worker droids required nothing more than a hulking torso, a not-too-bright droid brain, and immensely strong arms. The squarish droids were amazingly strong, but after all this time Kalebb Orn was no longer impressed. He just wanted his shift to end so he could go back to his quarters, have a large meal, and relax.

  Kalebb Orn’s shift ended early—but not in the way he had hoped.

  Receiving a mysterious independent signal, four new worker droids, freshly lubricated and with sharp serial numbers emblazoned on their sides, rose up from the storage corral at the end of the assembly line. They used their enormous pincer claws to rip apart the corral walls.

  At his supervisory station Kalebb Orn sat up, surprised and confused. He was ostensibly here to take action in case anything unusual happened—but nothing unusual had ever occurred before, and he wasn’t sure what to do.