A Forest of Stars - Kevin J. Anderson [47]
But his captors wouldn’t allow that. No, DD would never get away from them.
Focused on their ominous goals, the three Klikiss robots on the archaeological expedition had simply dragged DD away. His master Louis had commanded him to fight the treacherous alien machines, but DD was unable to access military or defensive programming, incapable of wielding weapons. He had been useless.
DD knew that Louis had tried to defend himself, to gain his wife time to escape. Something had happened with the weird stone window, the Klikiss transgate. Then Louis had screamed. And when the screams cut off, DD had known that his master was dead.
He had failed. Utterly.
Within weeks of their violent revolt, the alien robots had salvaged sufficient machinery from the lost cities to fabricate a small starship devoid of life-support systems and food. The Klikiss robots had then loaded DD aboard and left the blood-tainted archaeological camp behind, with the whole Spiral Arm in which to hide.
Unaccountably, the three robots had expected the compy to be cooperative—to become their ally even after he had witnessed their murderous intent. The very idea was unsettling and illogical.
“You will understand,” Sirix had told him in a buzzing binary common language. “We will continue explaining until you understand.”
DD didn’t know how many more “explanations” he could endure.
They transported him to an airless moon, far from the warmth and light of any sun, where numerous Klikiss robots had established a secret beachhead far from prying eyes.
Frightened and alone in the enclave of tunnels and chambers, DD wished to return to his interesting work with humans. But he had to listen while the Klikiss robots gloated over their intricate schemes.
“We are willing to go to great lengths to accomplish our goals,” Sirix told him. Gesturing with several articulated limbs, he directed DD through an airless tunnel into a garishly lit chamber hollowed out of the moon’s rock.
Inside the analytical chamber, surrounded by machinery and probes, diagnostic systems and autonomous power sources, DD saw another captive compy of Terran manufacture. Its motor systems had been deactivated so the Klikiss robots could poke and prod without the compy’s interference.
“This is necessary,” Sirix said, his black hulking body close to DD’s, ruby optical sensors glowing. “Observe, DD.” He turned his focus to the horrible dissection.
Four other Klikiss robots used delicate instruments attached to their jointed legs to cut squares out of the compy’s exterior plating. Precision tools and claws peeled back thin sheets of the hapless compy’s metal skin, exposing its circuitry and programming modules. The captive compy could not struggle, but its distress was plainly visible.
“Why must you do this?” DD’s thoughts were in turmoil from what he saw, and every moment seemed to grow worse. He had to tap into the vocabulary of extreme human emotions he had learned to imitate during his years of service. “It is horrific and unnecessary.”
“It is necessary,” Sirix said, “for your eventual freedom. At present, compies cannot understand.”
The robot surgeons amputated the captive’s extraneous limbs and concentrated on the AI computer core. The hulking black machines moved with a blur of small, delicate tools, opening the compy’s most deeply embedded systems. Lights flashed; circuits sparked.
“If you find a way to explain what we do not understand, perhaps it will not be necessary to continue with our experiments,” Sirix said to him. “Unfortunately, so far you have been unable to provide the data we need.”
A high-pitched whine like a scream came from the doomed robot, and foul-smelling smoke curled upward from burned modules. Melted metals and plastics mixed with spilled lubricants like clotting blood.
DD wished that the captive’s cognitive systems had been deactivated so the poor compy would not be aware of what was happening to it. Instead, the dissection