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Wielding a long staff tipped with an explosive sonic-discharger bulb, Yazra'h shouted and threw herself against one of the towering machines. When she struck the robot, it was as if it had been hit with Thor's hammer. With a thunderous boom, the black machine crumpled to the ground, its internal circuits crushed.

'I told you this would be glorious, Rememberer Anton!' she called over her shoulder, then led the way into the debris-strewn streets of what had been Secda. 'Follow and observe.'

In a show of confidence, Yazra'h had given Anton a projectile launcher that shot metal spikes as long and thick as his forefinger at supersonic speeds. Vao'sh carried an electronic scrambler, though he didn't seem to know how to use it. One of the black robots flew overhead cradling an angular device, presumably a weapon, and Anton lifted his launcher. He fired one of the metal spikes and somehow, perhaps by accident, the supersonic projectile struck the robot and shattered its exoskeleton like a windshield struck by a heavy rock.

'Excellent, Rememberer Anton!' Vao'sh sounded somewhat nervous. 'I will include that in my retelling of this tale.'

Anton helped the old rememberer with the electronic scrambler. 'Thank you, Vao'sh - now do something that you can brag about yourself.' He helped the old historian blast two robots that came chittering at them.

An alarm signal crackled from the landing party's communicators. Adar Zan'nh's voice was crisp and startling. 'A Klikiss fleet has returned and they intend to attack. Prepare yourselves for additional ships.'

Yazra'h tapped her earpiece as if she hadn't heard correctly. 'Klikiss? Do you mean more robots?'

'No - the original Klikiss. Stay away from them. They have also come to destroy the robots.'

Anton looked up to the sky. 'I thought the Klikiss were extinct.'

'Alas, once again the truth as recorded in the Saga of Seven Suns is… somewhat inaccurate,' Vao'sh said.

Before Anton could get his mind around what the Adar had said, a flurry of ships dropped through the sky, hundreds of small identical vessels. A meteor storm of geometric dropships struck the ground, each one opening like a metallic seedpod as soon as it had landed. Insectile creatures climbed out, looking like a paranoid sculptor's approximation of the Klikiss robots. Just as compies had been designed by humans to have familiar bodily characteristics, so too the Klikiss race had built their robots to resemble themselves.

Warriors swarmed out of the dropships in sacrificial numbers, advancing into the remnants of Secda. Seeing the return of the dead race, the black robots went into a frenzy, as if someone“ had poured gasoline into a hill of fire ants. The Klikiss hurled themselves upon the robots and tore them into scrap metal.

'Talk about a grudge match,' Anton said.

The remaining robots fought back vigorously, turning their violence against the Klikiss rather than the Ildirans. Anton fired his projectile gun several more times, shattering three enemy; robots and saving the lives of Klikiss fighters, but the insect creatures were fixated entirely on the robots and took no notice. Though hundreds of Klikiss warriors were destroyed in the battle, they fought with wild abandon.

* * * * *

Within an hour, all of the remaining black robots had been eradicated.

The Adar summoned Yazra'h's ground team back to the warliners. Fifty Ildiran soldiers had perished in the process of destroying nearly ten times that many black robots. Before reboarding the troop cutters, Yazra'h glanced at the smouldering ruins of Secda, the smashed and dripping exoskeletons of the Klikiss, the black debris of their robots. 'Remember this, Anton Colicos. Remember the details, that you may tell the story in all of its grandeur.'

They flew back to the warliners in orbit. As soon as they returned to the command nucleus, sweaty and grimy, Anton sensed the tension there aboard the ship. Adar Zan'nh faced the screen on which a large