Mike Stackpole - Ghost Book Two - The Death Machines

“Ninety percent!” shouted Thrasher.

The tool arms were closing up the robot on the slab and tightening things down. The only thing left was the ribbon cable that stuck out of the back of its head.

“Ninety five percent!”

The bigger robots were pushing through the door now, and these were armed with xenon laser cannons, which were burning the metal tables and computer stations the others were hiding behind like they were made out of paper. I made to swing the meson cannon their way, but Vargas saw me out of the corner of his eye and snarled at me.

“No! Keep it on that one! We don’t need to be attacked from behind too.”

I grunted and ducked down behind the table, but kept the cannon trained on the robot.

“Ninety seven percent!”

Angie shouted and fell back from her cover, her shoulder armor cracked and bubbling. She scrambled for another desk. Ace melted the head of the robot that had hurt her. It spasmed and spun, shooting at random and crisping spiderbots.

“Programming complete!” shouted Thrasher.

I whipped my attention back to the robot on the table just in time to see it reach up and remove the ribbon cable from the back of its head, then sit up and look at me.

“Hi, my name is Vax, human–cyborg relations. How may I be of assistance?”

“Hi Vax,” I said. “You can be off assistance by killing those fucking robots!”

Vax’s head swiveled around and took in the scene behind him. “It would be my pleasure.” He stood. “Excuse me a moment.”

“Uh, sure.”

He didn’t look like much, not compared to all the other robots, with their spikes and chainsaws and laser eyes — just a tidy little armored humanoid without any visible weapons, but then he walked into that seething mass of murder and started shooting them point blank in the joints and sensor arrays with a laser beam that shot out of his palm.

It was a massacre. Not only did Vax seem to know exactly where to shoot for maximum damage, the other robots — at least at first — didn’t shoot back. It was like their programming didn’t recognize him as an enemy or something. They just let him step right up to them and start blasting, and they fell apart all around him, limbs severed, power cells exploding, heads smoking and blind. Only after he had murdered more than a dozen or so did they start to react to what he was doing, and by that time it was too late.

Vargas and the others had regrouped and were backing Vax up like they had been working this way for years, gunning down his leftovers and picking off the robots too far away for him to reach.

Less than a minute later, it was all over and he turned back to me and bowed.

“I hope that was satisfactory, sir.”

I blinked. “Uh… yeah. Great. But why are you asking me?”

“Forgive me, sir. I will explain. I am programmed to imprint upon the first person who gives me orders, and that was you, sir. I am now yours to command.”

Angie laughed. “Ghost’s got a buddy.”

I shrugged. “Okay, then. Uh, do you know the layout of this place?”

“Yes, sir,” said Vax. “It is part of my basic knowledge pack. I can path to any point in this facility and to many localities in Arizona as well, if you so desire.”

That bit about Arizona gave me a little chill down my spine. All the robots built here knew their way to any point in Arizona? Of course they did. It was just an unnerving thing to hear.

“Yeah, we don’t need to go anywhere in Arizona right now, but can you show us the way to the consoles that fit our self–destruct keys?”

“If you mean the Quasar, Blackstar, Nova, and Pulsar Keys? I would be happy to. This way, please.”

I gave the others a questioning look as Vax turned toward the moat room.

Hell Razor didn’t look convinced, and I noticed he still had his remote control trigger in his hand, ready to blow off Vax’s head at a moment’s notice.

Vargas just shrugged. “So far so good. But keep an eye on him.”

“And the cannon,” I said, training it on Vax’s back as he led us into the moat room.

It was a nervous game of hop–scotch jumping from half–submerged robot to half–submerged robot across the moat, but we made it, then headed straight back the way we’d come. Turned out the ladder we needed to go down was right next to where the slip–n–slide had dumped us out. We’d just been running a little too hard for our lives to notice.

But with Vax in the lead we raced through the facility, down ladders, through twisting corridors, and across strange rooms, cutting down any robots that got in our way. And there were plenty. Six–legged spiderbots dropped on us from dark ceilings, laser beams shooting from their eyes. Hulking slicers and dicers and shooters on treads blasted us with guns and swung chainsaw hands at us, but Vax carved through them like a hot knife and we cleaned up whatever he had trouble with.

Unfortunately, pretty soon the robots weren’t just in front of us. As we got closer to our goal, more and more started flooding in behind us, and we were fighting as hard on our rear as we were on our front.

Finally Vax lead us to a room with sign on the door labeled “Combat Simulator.” He turned to open it as we fired at the robots behind us.

“Just through here, sirs and madam.”

“Are you fucking kidding me?” growled Hell Razor.

“Please tell me that means the guns are fake,” I said.

“Oh no, sir,” said Vax. “They’re quite real. This room is used to test the armor and the agility of the robots.”

Angie groaned. “You’re out to kill us, aren’t you, Vax.”

“Not at all, madam. But there is no other way.”

He opened the door and we backed in, still firing behind us, then swung around to see what kind of shit Vax had dropped us into.

More robots on treads, all turning their guns toward us and growling forward. Fortunately the room was made up like some kind of old–timey battlefield out of a black and white photo, with grass instead of a floor and rustic stone walls everywhere for cover. There was even a pitchfork and a butter churn. We dove behind the walls and started blasting.

“Vax!” I shouted. “Can you lock that door behind us? Permanently?”

“Of course, sir. Fusing the circuit will take but a moment, though I’m afraid the door will not hold for long.”

“Anything to buy us some time.”

It bought us about five minutes. By the time we had melted the robots in the simulator to slag, the door behind us was buckling from the constant barrage laid down by the ones out in the hall.

“Where to, Vax?”

“The far side of the room, sir.”

We zigged through the maze of low walls and found the door behind a simulated haystack. Vax opened it and we went through into a tiny room with a ladder in the center just as the simulation room door exploded off its hinges and the robots flooded in.

“Down the ladder if you please, sirs and madam,” said Vax.

We slid down the ladder as fast as we could go and found ourselves in another small room, this one with a titanium steel door.

Vax came down the ladder last and stepped to the door, then opened it. “It will be much more difficult for your enemies to breach this door, sir. You should have plenty of time to use the keys.”

“Fantastic,” I said, and we ran in.

More robots.

“Goddamn it, Vax!”

He turned from perma–sealing the door. “Forgive me, sir. I should have said. There are still the local security units to deal with.”

Despite my bitching, it went pretty smoothly at first. We were in a central lobby area with four corridors branching from it, and with Vax’s help we cleaned up the patrol robots without much trouble. Until, that is, the AI sicced the Octotrons on us.