The kitchen was pretty basic, the sort of thing you’d find in a fast food place on dozens of inhabited worlds. It was designed for preparing the usual fried high-carbohydrate goodness plus whatever tasteless proteins a food synthesiser could concoct. The grease in the bottom of the fryer looked like varnish, but I turned on the heat anyway. I also fired up the toaster and the rings on the stove. The robots’ heat detectors would see these as bright spots and in comparison, I’d look cooler. In these situations, it’s always important to look cool. There was an old fan beside the stove – maybe the cook couldn’t stand the heat. I tore off the protective mesh and switched it on. The blades weren’t quite a flicker, but they were motion that the robots would have to check out and discard. For the same reason, I opened a refrigerator and a cupboard door and placed cans of beans to stop them closing properly. The doors tried to swing shut and when they encountered the cans, they swung open again. Then they tried to close and started the process all over again. I also set the whisks on a food-mixer whirling.
I was checking another locker, hoping to find a can of cooking oil that I could spread across the floor in the canteen’s seating area. A greasy floor might slow the robots down and even if it didn’t, I could set light to the oil and make things difficult for them. But I didn’t get a chance to put this slick plan into operation. Gnat was looking out through the glass panel in the door and he flashed a silent warning. Our guests had arrived.
I set more canned goods on the ground, ready to set them rolling as visual and audio distractions – and then I opened the door on the food synthesizer so I could cook up a little something else.
Gnat’s video feed showed me the three robots coming together in the corridor outside. They stood motionless for a moment, engaged in silent communication with the ship’s computer, and then separated. One headed towards the gymnasium. The other stomped towards the latrine – probably muttering to himself that he always got the crappy jobs. The third robot headed towards the canteen door. Finding the door mechanism jammed, I expected that the robot would apply brute force and smash his way in. But it stepped back and raised its rifle.
Gnat sensed the danger and with a high-pitched whee! sped backwards out of the line of fire. The door exploded inwards, shrapnel and shards of glass filling the air and smoke billowing behind them. The robot stepped in through the smoke, scanning the room. I had ducked behind the stainless steel serving counter before the robot fired the rifle. Gnat was hiding in the shadows, still transmitting video.
The explosion had drawn the attention of the other two robots and they entered and took up positions behind the first, rifles held ready to fire. They stood in their eerie motionless way and then their heads began to sweep left and right as they scanned the room. I rolled a can of prunes across the floor. The nearest robot swung its rifle and the explosion splattered preserved fruit and bits of metal against the far wall. The smell made me think of Christmas.
Moving as silently as I could, I crawled to the opposite end of the counter and lobbed a can of carrots over-arm into the air. The explosion splattered orange pulp across the suspended ceiling and took out a couple of the tiles.
Again I shuffled to a new spot, knowing the robots would try and track back to the spot where the canned goods were being launched.
There was a loud click and then an amplified robot voice echoed around the canteen. “ATTENTION UNIDENTIFIED INTRUDER. THEFT OF THE SHIP’S NAVIGATOR IS A CAPITAL OFFENCE. USE OF LETHAL FORCE IS AUTHORISED. SURRENDER OR FACE THE CONSEQUENCES. YOU HAVE TEN SECONDS TO COMPLY.”
The ship thought I had managed to steal the Navigator? That was flattering. And also massively inconvenient, since it meant the robots wouldn’t give up their pursuit and would do anything and everything to recover the missing Navigator. The military didn’t go a bunch on all that ‘a robot must not harm a human being’ stuff. Not for the first time, I wondered who had taken the Navigator. Whoever had done it had been smart enough to hide the fact that it was gone – until I had gone blundering into the vault.
My ten seconds was almost up and the robot was waiting for my response. “Trixie,” I whispered, “help me target the middle robot’s rifle.”
I raised my pistol above the edge of the counter without looking. It would have been more or less invisible to the robots, I hoped, due to the thick black smoke that was billowing up from the fryer. Crosshairs appeared on my retina and turned green when I had the gun pointed at the target. I squeezed off a round. I thought that a direct hit might trigger the rifle’s own explosive cartridges – perhaps even generating enough force to disable one robot and knock the other two off their feet. I’ve always been an optimist.
The explosion was deafening and the blast was so bright it temporarily whited out the drone’s video. As the image re-stabilised, I could see that my optimism had been misplaced. The two outer robots stood unmoved – they were obviously heavier than they looked. The one in the centre had been pushed backwards by the blast but was now recovering and stepping forward again. There were scorch marks on its breastplate and its gun and right hand were gone, but otherwise it looked unharmed. The three robots took one step towards me in unison – it was quite menacing. I was going to need a bigger explosion.
The two-armed robots opened fire, their explosive rounds
