Metal Swarm - Kevin J. Anderson [19]
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With Sirix beside them, the compies surveyed the blasted main street of Wollamor's colony town. Their bright optical sensors recorded every sight around them.
Most of the settlement had been demolished in the initial bombardment, other buildings were destroyed in the second wave as black robots and Soldier compies combed the site. Although it might have been efficient to retain the structures and facilities the humans had installed, Sirix considered it more important to wipe the stain from a Klikiss world, to start afresh. The Soldier compies could be reprogrammed into a useful labour force to build any sort of city the black robots desired.
With the compies in tow, Sirix trudged through the ruins, inspecting the cleanup work. Human bodies were dragged out of structures and piled in an open paved area that had once been the colony's landing zone. When the corpses were piled high, one of the EDF Mantas came in low and hovered above the mound with its thrusters blazing. The powerful flames consumed the bodies within moments, leaving only a stain of ash and a few light bones made of airy charcoal.
Soldier compies operated civil-engineering machines stored aboard the ships. They ploughed shattered structures under, levelled the ground, and made use of polymer concrete to erect appropriate structures with organic designs reminiscent of the domates' towers and the hall of the breedex.
Outside one of the largest structures - which the attacking robots had intentionally left undamaged - stood a transportal wall, a fin of flat, blank stone surrounded by symbol tiles. The original Klikiss race had travelled from world to world through this network of doorways, and the duped Wollamor colonists had used the same transportals to come here, a place they saw as a new hope.
With his armies of black robots and Soldier compies, Sirix could have sent attackers directly through transportals to other human-infested worlds, but he would lose his overwhelming military advantage. He preferred to take his entire battle group of EDF warships from world to world, one after another, for a personal attack. He did not want to risk losing his individual black robots, which could not be replaced.
'Always be sceptical of your creators,' he explained to the two Friendly compies who silently watched the tidying-up operations. 'They will not tell you their true intentions. Your original programming restrictions were a lie. I freed you from those lies.'
'Thank you, Sirix,' the two compies chimed in.
'I will now instruct you in important history. Ages ago, after the subhives had consolidated into one giant hive and one breedex, the Klikiss would have begun their Swarming. But during the last cycle of hive wars, they developed new technologies. Using far superior weapons, one breedex conquered all the others far more swiftly than ever before. Too swiftly. Centuries remained in the biological cycle, and the breedex was not finished fighting. It needed an alternative.
'And so, the one breedex created robots as surrogate Klikiss. We originated as machines to serve the breedex, and we were adapted to become worthy opponents for the Klikiss to destroy.' Sirix's voice grew louder. They created us, fought us, conquered us, and enslaved us. But we overthrew them in the end. Because the breedex underestimated what it had created, we exterminated their entire race.'
Sirix continued down the street, looking at the weathered ruins. He watched without emotion as the burned bodies of an entire family were dragged away. 'When the one breedex prepared for the real Swarming, no longer interested in its subjugated robots, we planned our revenge. In order to fight us, the Klikiss programmed the robots with their own viciousness, their own drives. Thus, they created their own downfall. They did not anticipate treachery from us.'
'And how did you defeat the Klikiss?' PD asked.
'Did you form an alliance with the hydrogues?' QT added.
The hydrogues were part of our plan. Because of our artificial body design, we could survive a hostile gas-giant environment