The Fire Planets Saga Books 1-3 by Chris Ward

Author:Chris Ward
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: AMMFA Publishing

32

Harlan5

The poor dead engineer had enjoyed tinkering, although Harlan5 hadn’t realised until later that Stomlard had been practicing on what he considered an inferior machine, lest he make a mistake with the Matilda. Compromised with a Barelaon virus that had slowly ate away Stomlard’s reason as it took over his mind, the engineer had needed the Matilda in good working order, but a simple maintenance droid was expendable.

However, the Boswell GT, had its surprises.

The little cannon built into its chest cavity wasn’t designed for defense. In fact, its sole purpose was for breaking up larger pieces of trash which could then be compacted manually. It had limited mobility and blast speed, but was far more powerful than most inbuilt droid weapons systems. The Boswell, with its simple memory, would never have considered it for an alternative use, but Harlan, who had seen all kinds of combat situations most maintenance droids rarely experienced, was a little less innocent, as a human might have put it.

Now, as he stood in a corner, ignored by everyone while the drama played out, he considered his options.

The captain, having given the order not to fire on the attacking soldiers, had been compromised. The pilot was technically second-in-command, but he had been compromised too. Harlan5 delved into his remaining databanks to consider the appropriate protocol in such a situation.

The captain was screaming with distress and rage as a diminutive man on a projector threatened to murder two people he had named as the captain’s husband and son. Harlan5 found this situation difficult to comprehend, having believed the captain’s family to be dead. He understood that while it was considered currently impossible in known systems to revive someone from the dead, it was extremely easy to create lifelike representations or visual images. The captain, however, seemed to be in total belief, so much so that she had compromised their original mission.

And what had that been? Harlan5—who was feeling a little under the weather, perhaps as a result of something viral—deduced from what he had overheard that something needed to be transmitted. Some codes of some kind.

The Boswell’s memory began to overheat with the strain of everything, and Harlan5 realised he needed to do something quickly before it was too late.

What would a human do?

The captain would certainly get drunk.

And the pilot would do something reckless.

The overheating was making Harlan5 feel a kind of robot-drunk. And what would be reckless?

No one was watching him, not the enemy commander nor his Evattlan soldiers, because as a simple trash compactor robot, Harlan wasn’t even worth looking at. Hoping the sound of the Boswell’s chest cavity opening wasn’t audible over the shuffling of the guards, Harlan5 engaged the trash compactor’s cannon, training it on the control terminal in the room’s centre, aware that on destruction, a database like this likely had an emergency transmitter to prevent the important data from being lost.

And then he tried to think of something heroic to say, something gung-ho that would make a human cheer or cry out with excitement.

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