Star Wars_ Tales of the Bounty Hunters - Kevin J. Anderson [8]
The individual IG-88s kept their computer minds linked as the plan proceeded. The defense systems of Mechis III were antiquated, installed long before the droid world became too important a commercial enterprise for anyone to consider sabotage or destruction—but IG-88’s needs were of a different order entirely.
Using the newly forged connection to the global security systems, IG-88D instantly downloaded full details of Mechis III: the industrial complexes, the assembly factories, the amount of human interference, a map of the planetary surface in various portions of the electromagnetic spectrum and, most important, a complete linear mapping—like a neural diagram—of the brainwork of the computer systems that ran Mechis III.
IG-88A took the lead and transmitted his self-replicating sentience programming into the main hubs on Mechis III, secretly taking over the vast electronic complexes and giving the immensely powerful computers something they had never conceived before—self-awareness … and loyalty.
Less than a minute after their arrival in the system, IG-88 was pleased to see that the groundwork for his total takeover had been laid.
• • •
The assembly line was boring as usual.
A career worker on Mechis III, Kalebb Orn had never understood why a human presence was required here, of all places. It seemed to serve no purpose. The droid manufacturing lines had gone without a glitch for at least the last century, but still company mandates required a human operator in some small percentage of the operations. Such as this one, chosen at random.
Kalebb Orn watched the big robotic crane arms moving, ratcheting from side to side and picking up heavy components with grasping electromagnetic claws. Everything from sheet metal and bulky armor plate to precise microchip motivators emerged from other parts of the kilometers-long facility, endlessly manufactured to never-changing specifications.
The self-designing assembly lines had grown so vast over centuries of operation, with new subsystems added, old ones enhanced, new models introduced into the production schedules and old obsolete versions phased out. Kalebb Orn did not have the mental capacity to comprehend all the manufacturing systems on Mechis III. He wasn’t sure anyone did.
For the last seventeen years he had watched bulky worker droids being assembled by the thousands. Heavy-duty engines strapped to moveable arms and legs, worker droids required nothing more than a hulking torso, a not-too-bright droid brain, and immensely strong arms. The squarish droids were amazingly strong, but after all this time Kalebb Orn was no longer impressed. He just wanted his shift to end so he could go back to his quarters, have a large meal, and relax.
Kalebb Orn’s shift ended early—but not in the way he had hoped.
Receiving a mysterious independent signal, four new worker droids, freshly lubricated and with sharp serial numbers emblazoned on their sides, rose up from the storage corral at the end of the assembly line. They used their enormous pincer claws to rip apart the corral walls.
At his supervisory station Kalebb Orn sat up, surprised and confused. He was ostensibly here to take action in case anything unusual happened—but nothing unusual had ever occurred before, and he wasn’t sure what to do.
The renegade droids plodded across the floor, their heavy footpads thundering with their enormous weight. Their squarish heads and torsos pivoted from side to side, searching for something.
Searching for him.
“Uh … stop where you are,” Kalebb Orn said when the worker droids stomped toward him, extending their bulky metal arms and clamping pincer claws. He dug through his workstation, looking for a manual that might tell him what to do next. When he couldn’t find the manual, he decided to run.
But over seventeen years Kalebb Orn had done so little exercise that his flabby legs