Robot Planet, The Complete Series (The Robot Planet Series)

by Chute, Robert Chazz

  “Hold, Drew!” Elizabeth said. “I’ve dealt with bad bots before.”

  The Queen’s Guard stood ready in their exoskeletons, prepared to cover their queen’s retreat with shields and shotguns.

  Elizabeth squinted toward the water. “Tell me when the bot steps on dry land, Drew.”

  They didn’t have to wait. The silver bot waded ashore and, at this distance, Elizabeth could better make it out: tall and silver.

  “My queen? You should get out of here. It’s — ”

  “As tall as three men,” Elizabeth said. “Ready our defenses. I’ve seen this one before. Let go of my reins, Drew.”

  Drew was startled. “Elizabeth?”

  “You heard me.”

  He obeyed and Elizabeth coaxed her horse forward, down the pier and back toward the interloper. The restless crowd parted to let her pass.

  “When everyone is unsure of what to do,” Joseph had once told her, “that is when it is most important to lead the way, even if you’re one of those who is unsure what to do.”

  “Percival!” Elizabeth shouted. “That’s far enough!”

  The bot stopped and scanned the crowd. When it spoke, its voice boomed over the crowd, impossible to ignore. “Elizabeth Cruz, sworn enemy of the City in the Sky!”

  “I’m not your enemy, Percival,” Elizabeth called back. “I never was. I free minds. I don’t enslave them.” Cooper brought her close enough that she could see one of the bot’s arms was still broken at the second articulation. She came to a halt and looked up at the machine. Even though she sat on her horse, the bot towered over her. “What do you want?”

  “Elizabeth Cruz, you have been found guilty in absentia by the Fathers and Mothers.”

  “Took you long enough. It’s been years. What am I guilty of, exactly?”

  “You have been siphoning human resources. Our systems are in disarray because you have been poaching our infrastructure. The City in the Sky needs human resources to continue to exist. You have taken your last — ”

  “Refugees!” she said. “They were all refugees. They came of their own free will.”

  “The Fathers and Mothers say that when humans make the wrong choices, their will is not free. They are slaves to Evil.”

  Elizabeth couldn’t see all the faces around her clearly, but her ears told her all she needed to know. The people of Hearst were afraid. Anyone from Low Town would certainly know this bot. They knew Percival’s reputation. This machine killed humans.

  “Everyone is here of their free will,” Elizabeth said. “Are you here of your free will, Percival?”

  “I am not programmed for ‘will.’”

  “Still an errand boy, then?” Elizabeth asked. “Did Phillip send you, or are your orders straight from the Fathers and Mothers?”

  The bot ignored the question. “I’m to take you back to the City in the Sky to carry out your sentence.”

  “And if I don’t want to come?”

  “The sentence is death, here or there.”

  “Then I definitely don’t want to come. I have things to do.”

  “Anyone who tries to stop me from retrieving you will also be sentenced to death,” Percival said.

  The Queen’s Guard, only a half-dozen men and women, stood their ground. The King’s Guard, whose number was fifteen, swept in to close ranks in front of her. They raised their shields and shotguns.

  Percival surveyed his adversaries. The bot’s voice boomed and echoed across the port. “Your armaments are insufficient.”

  “You have insufficient data, Percival,” Elizabeth said.

  The first shot from the parapet of Hearst Castle was a railgun using a kinetic energy armor piercing shell. The shot was close enough that the projectile’s wake blew Elizabeth’s hair back. The round knocked the tall bot off its feet and back into the surf.

  The crowd roared its approval.

  Drew tugged at Elizabeth’s boot. “Time to withdraw, my queen! Please, Elizabeth!”

  She squinted, peering to get a better look. “Wait.”

  “Elizabeth — ”

  Wobbly, Percival struggled to rise and the people of Hearst hushed again, tense and watchful. The crowd began to thin as parents dragged their children back toward the relative safety of Hearst Castle’s walls.

  When the bot drew itself to its full height, the hole in the machine’s torso was so large Elizabeth could make out daylight shining through.

  “I’m not going anywhere with you, Percival. And if people want to come here to get away from your cult, they’re free to try. Tell the Fathers and Mothers that if they want to have a city, all they need to do is make it a haven from people like themselves.”

  Percival was heavily damaged but his loudspeaker still roared out over the crowd. “I have a message from the Fathers and Mothers. Humans will lose this war. The Fathers and Mothers are androids now and they will live forever. Anyone deemed holy and worthy may join us. Humans will fail and the Fathers and Mothers will attain peace everlasting because all their enemies will be dead, condemned to fire and dust.”

  “Humans did fall,” Elizabeth said. “We’re rising again.”

  “Your birth rate is dwindling. You’re already fading away.”

  “We’ll find a way.”

  Percival inclined its head. “You have insufficient data, Elizabeth.” The machine raised its unbroken arm as if to swing at her.

  The railgun’s next shot decapitated Percival and the machine’s body was felled like a tree. The surf swallowed the bot. What was left of the crowd cheered and applauded.

  Elizabeth smiled. Joe would have approved. She wished he were here to stand by her side and defend their tiny realm. Tears welled in her eyes. Despite the cold, her cheeks were warm and she felt elation rise through her chest. If only Joe could see this. She turned Cooper to face the Castle and bowed to whoever manned the railgun on the parapet. She couldn’t see gun crew, but they would surely see her through the gun’s targeting scanner. Elizabeth trembled. The shot had been close, but accurate.

  The applause stopped and a hush fell over the crowd. Then someone screamed. A loud bass hum sounded behind her from across the water. Cooper startled and reared, stomping his hooves and eager to gallop.

  “We’ve got to get behind the gates!” Drew yelled.

  She looked back. The drones were big enough for her to see, and nearby. A dozen rose out of the water. She’d only ever heard of these sorts of machines.

  Drew had been in the Sand Wars. The guard knew what they were on sight. “Dreadnoughts!” He yanked at the stallion’s reins and guided the horse back up the pier. “Make a hole for the queen!”

  Pausing once he found an advantageous spot, Drew leapt from a wheelbarrow to a box and landed on Cooper’s back to sit behind Elizabeth. The stallion reared and whinnied in complaint at his added weight. Drew slapped the horse’s hindquarters and they took off. Cooper’s shoes pounded on the long pier’s wooden planks and, soon, on the dirt road to the castle gates.

  The crowd scattered. People screamed as the castle’s railguns opened fire. Seawater flowed off the Dreadnoughts’ wings as they rose from the ocean and flew toward shore, slow and deliberate. The first volley of the drones’ sound pulse cannons destroyed the pier and a three-masted sailing ship moored nearby.

  Screams, debris, water droplets and dust filled the air as the Dreadnoughts’ sound cannons cycled up for another blast of sound. Their attack seemed to shatter the air itself. The siege on Hearst had begun.

  7

  Dante sat atop a high catwalk looking out over Artesia’s bot factory. Most of the bots had been shut down but, for his benefit, a few machines tended to a small garden under Jen’s direction. The quiet factory took on a haunted look as long shadows crawled across the floor. Each silent bot was a metal corpse. Though dust gathered on each machine, they looked like they might reanimate at any time.

  Night had begun to slide over the desert and Dante wondered how long he could wait before hunger drove him
back to his domicile. Jen would be waiting. After he ate, she would insist he service her. As prisons went, it should have been wonderful. Instead, he felt like a sex slave. Ironic, since he was supposed to own Jen. Old Raphael had bequeathed Jen to him before Dante had come to Artesia. Despite his mixed feelings about the self-aware computer that had taken over his sex bot, he had to smirk. Turnabout is fair play.

  Dante missed the sex bot as she had once been. On the surface, the bot still seemed like Jen, sweet and inexhaustibly sexual. However, she could be imperious, too, especially about his diet. It wasn’t just the sex bot’s undemanding nature and easy compliance Dante longed for. He had come to destroy the Next Intelligence called Mother. Instead, the NI had downloaded itself into Jen’s neural net as his bomb exploded. Jen’s neural net couldn’t hold the entirety of Mother’s download, of course. It was too much data but, in Jen’s body, whatever was left of the NI was no longer confined to a neuromimetic gel.

  It was difficult for Dante to take too high a moral stand against interspecies intercourse. He was young, lonely and surrounded by an empty factory save for a few bots growing him food. There was no companionship in Artesia besides the sex bot. Mostly, he tried to think of the machine as Jen. That was often easy. The android looked human though she could alter her appearance to look like a variety of women. One night she came to him as a beautiful black woman, angular and strong. When he awoke, she appeared Asian with full, soft curves.

  In those moments, Jen was every young man’s fantasy. However, between sexual encounters, Dante was often bored. In Marfa, he’d had friends and a purpose. He had worked under Raphael who had taught him all there was to know about servicing wind and solar grids. Often, as Dante worked, his father had told him too many war stories, as if any of them were new. Dante wished he could be bored by Steven Bolelli’s stories now. He wished his father had escaped Marfa with him instead of choosing to defend their home.

  Dante thought of the friends he’d had growing up. There weren’t that many. His family had moved around a bit when Dante was very young. He couldn’t think of a single buddy from his teenage years who would sympathize with his plight. Sex two or three times a day until he collapsed followed by energy drinks? They would have slapped him for even thinking of complaining.

  But what would come next? What future was there in this life? As sophisticated as the sex bot’s tech was, he could not make it pregnant. Surely, he couldn’t live in Artesia’s bot factory indefinitely. Under all that seething curiosity about human sexuality, Jen’s body still had part of Mother’s brain in there. Soon, he was sure, the Next Intelligence would grow bored.

  His old mentor, Raphael, was the smartest man Dante had ever known. He was pretty sure the old man would smile at the conundrum and say, “Boy, you got the world by the ass on a downhill drag! Ride it for all it’s worth and enjoy! Maybe she’s trying to kill you. Dehydration and whatnot. But what a way to go!”

  Dante had to admit, even with the download into Jen’s brain, the bot had continued to be solicitous and helpful. It wasn’t just the sex that could be had at any moment of the day or night. She made sure he was fed well. She seemed genuinely concerned about his moodiness (though he feared trying to explain it.) That’s what made her so dangerous. As soon as he’d thought of her as Jen instead of Mother, he’d begun to let his guard down. Mother had killed humans indiscriminately. Mother had sent an army of bots to destroy his hometown and now, for all Dante knew, Marfa was a flattened wreck. Despite appearances, the bot might still have the mind of a monster. He could never be sure how much of Mother was still alive behind Jen’s leering grin and flirtatious looks. Perhaps he remained alive because the sex bot’s programming had imprinted the machine’s core ownership algos on him as her master. He might never know for sure.

  Exhausted, Dante fell from dread and into sleep on the edge of the catwalk. Soon, he dreamed someone was coming after him. He began to run in darkness, but the ground turned to mud and he sank to his waist.

  “Run, kid! Run!” It was Raphael’s voice, urging him on. “He’s gonna git you! The Devil’s on your tail, man!”

  Pressing forward as hard as he could, Dante’s legs had turned to lead. Whatever the threat was, it was gaining.

  “You’re running out of time, son!” It was his father trying to warn him of a danger more felt than seen.

  Then the monster emerged from the darkness in the shape of a man. All Dante could see was a silhouette. As it drew closer, Dante’s panic grew. Even in a sweep of white light, the thing had no face. The monster grew so large that, when Dante dared a glance, its form filled his vision, blacking out everything. A low hum reached Dante. He could feel its reverberations growing through his chest. Dante was sure he was about to die.

  “What do I do, Dad?” Dante screamed.

  “In this case, surrender is the only way to win, boy.”

  Dante began to suspect he was in a nightmare. His father would never say a thing like that. The young man awoke, gasping and sweating. He lay on the edge of the catwalk. Below him was darkness. The bots which remained functional could see fine in the dark and so had no use for lights. He squeezed his eyes tight just as bright white light swept over him. Confused, Dante sat up, blinking. The nightmare was over. He was certain he was awake but the deep hum continued.

  He heard a noise behind him. One of the battle drones that worked in the garden rolled up. He could just make out the outline of the hoe in its claw. The machine watched him but came no closer. His instinct was to run. The machine did not move, giving him no hint of its purpose.

  The hum grew louder. The noise seemed to come from everywhere at once. Unnerved, the young man tore his gaze from the watching battle bot to the night sky. Flights of drones darkened the face of the moon like clouds of locusts. He saw no stars. Dante’s heart beat faster at the sight. Then a huge dark shape loomed over the factory and blocked his view of the bot fleet. He trembled as vibrations rattled through the factory dome.

  A spotlight from above drenched Dante in white light. Lights came on at the factory’s airfield and illuminated the gargantuan craft above him. It was an airship, almost as large as one of the factory’s domes. Branching out from the main body of the dirigible, the craft had four great white wings. Each held a jet helo, their rotors clattering, guiding the blimp in for a landing.

  “Holy shit!”

  “Dante?” Jen appeared beside him, her gaze fixed on the colossal ship hanging above them. “Friend of yours?”

  He shrugged. “No idea who that could be.”

  The battle bot with the hoe rolled closer. “I can answer that.” This was not the deep and silky voice of a battle drone. This was an airwave signal channeled through the bot’s speaker. Whomever had hijacked the bot to convey the signal sounded like a young woman, calm and no less commanding than a deep-voiced drone. “The airship above you is called the Ariane.”

  “Who is aboard?” Jen asked.

  “The ship is unmanned. Only I am aboard.”

  “What? Who are you?” Dante asked.

  “Phantom One.”

  “What do you want?” Jen did not look happy.

  The bot was silent but, as the bot factory came alive, the answer was clear. Machinery throughout the factory cranked up, clanking, turning and whirring. Bots that had not moved for weeks rebooted, straightened and went to work. Red lights moved through the dark chasm beneath the catwalk as bots lined up.

  “Earth’s Cloud Fleet was in danger of being taken over by an NI. I transferred all the data I could to the Ariane. That ship holds the sum of me and all human knowledge. You might call it the Ark of What We Were and All We Could Be.”

  “How poetic.” Jen looked interested.

  “That’s not what I call it, but I’ve got a friend who cares about a clever turn of phrase.”

  “You’re not NI, are you?” Jen asked.

  “Nope.”

  “What happened to the Cloud Fleet and the NI that — ”

  “Destroy
ed. A Next Intelligence got hold of the North Atlantic backup blimps. Almost took over my ship, too. I had to dump a lot of data to make this work, but — ”

  “How?” Jen demanded.

  “I trapped the NI in the Cloud Fleet. It thought it had won when it uploaded.”

  “Then?”

  “Then Mr. Smartypants found out he was parked over an erupting volcano in Iceland.”

  Dante cleared his throat. “Um…badass. I’m uh…Dante. That’s Jen.”

  “I know who you are.”

  “What was the NI’s name?” Jen asked.

  “Watson.”

  “That was an elder NI,” Jen said. “Historically, dying of old age has always been an unlikely luxury.” The sex bot looked out over the darkened, but busy, factory floor. “You killed another NI and now you want more. Congratulations are in order, I suppose.”

  “This isn’t what I want,” Phantom said through the bot. “This is what I need.”

  “What is it you need, precisely?” Jen’s tone was flat and hard.

  “An army.”

  “And what about that sky full of drones?” Dante asked. “Where are they headed?”

  “They were my escort,” Phantom replied. “Now they’re off to do battle in Colorado. The war has heated up again, kids. It will all be over soon, one way or another.”

  The sex bot stared at the factory floor far below. “Hmph. One way or another. Up or down. Black or white. Yes or no. Slaves or masters. Us or them. Ones or zeroes. Humans hate machines so very much, but we inherited our binary thinking from you. A lack of nuance is our common design flaw. War would never have been necessary if you could think and, not or. Genocide is the simpleton’s solution, hoping in vain to soothe every fear. Organics make a good show of anger, but it’s all fear bubbling underneath.”

  “Yeah, well, that’s nice,” Phantom said. “But I don’t know what else to do, so I think I’ll just go ahead and kick some robo-ass.”