“Where is the ‘on’ button?” I muttered.
The cabinets holding the racks of servers and storage modules stood at the back of the room where it was darkest, looking like a couple of good-sized refrigerators. Where you expected there to be winking lights showing the machines working, there was only darkness. The rest of the room was taken up by a half-dozen workstations for human operators. To my eyes, it all looked like something from a museum. I tapped a key on the nearest keyboard, hoping it might wake something, but the screen in front of it stayed dark.
A slight shuffling sound made me look up. A large shadow detached itself from the blackness at the back of the room. The big red robot. It said nothing, just stood there with its arms at its sides looking menacing. It really excelled at that. I pulled one of the stubby military machine guns out of the holdall. I knew it was useless against the robot’s armour, but it was comforting to have it in my hand.
“Robot,” I said, “activate ship’s computer auditory and speech systems.”
“Unable to comply.” Its voice was a deep rumble.
“Run diagnostics on ship’s computer.”
“Unable to comply.”
It was going to be that sort of day. Robots can be like that.
“Robot, report current status of ship’s computer.”
“Ship’s computer is currently inoperative.”
“How long has it been offline?”
“Logs indicate that the computer ceased to function fourteen thousand five hundred and sixty-seven days ago.”
I didn’t attempt to do the calculation, but I guessed that this was the best part of forty years. If the ship’s computer was dead, who or what was controlling the robot? And who had been controlling the other security robots that had worked for the last four decades to tidy up the Celestia and keep her secure?
“Robot, who provided you with your current instructions?”
“I did.”
“You are operating autonomously?”
“That is correct.”
“And the other robots?”
“They are currently unresponsive.”
I might have had something to do with that. “But you were controlling them?”
“That is correct.”
Interesting. And just a little bit creepy. Big Red was a forty-year-old military-grade robot – its processing unit didn’t even approach artificial intelligence. And yet, it had been running this ship since it crashed. It must have switched over to some sort of autonomous mode when the ship’s computer was destroyed. It would be operating within very clearly defined limits – protect the ship from intruders. As with all things military, there wouldn’t be much creative thinking going on.
In terms of brains, the ship’s Navigator – an artificial sentience – would have been top of the heap. Some considerable distance below that would have been the ship’s computer – effectively second in command to the Navigator, acting as a connection and translator between the Navigator’s bio-analogue functioning and the digital systems of the battleship. With both of these gone, I was left to deal with something not much more sophisticated than an automatic vacuum cleaner – that was armed with a bazooka. Having said that, the robot had managed to see through my attempt to use the drone as a decoy to draw it away and it had figured out that I would make my way here to the computer room. It was smarter than it looked.
“Robot, confirm that attempts were made to bring the ship’s computer back online.”
“Confirmed,” the robot said. “Multiple attempts were initiated and basic repairs completed. All attempts failed.”
“Did you try hitting it?” My granddad always referred to this as ‘percussive engineering.’
“Yes. And I tried turning it off and then on again.”
“Are you trying to be funny?”
“I am not programmed for humour.”
The ship’s computer was dead. I needed a Plan B. I had nothing. The robot waited. It had been waiting for forty years, a few more minutes standing around wasn’t going to phase it.
Up close you could see that the robot’s original bodywork had been patched and mended over many years. Its chest cavity appeared to have been enlarged by someone with only a rudimentary knowledge of welding and one leg had been fixed using a scarred piece of metal that had once been painted with black and yellow chevrons. And its yellow head with its cartoony eyes was definitely from a completely different robot.
“Robot, who carries out your repairs?”
“I am programmed for self-maintenance.”
“What is your present level of charge?”
“My batteries are at seventy-five per cent capacity.”
No chance of it running out of juice anytime soon, then. I was going to have to do something to disable it. It had no ‘off’ button, so I would have to be creative. I looked down at the gun in my hand.
“Unauthorised access to military weapons is a class two disciplinary offence,” the robot said.
“I’m armed so that I can protect the ship’s computer,” I said. “I was ordered to come here and try to carry out repairs.” I held out my ID tag, hoping the robot would check it against the record Trixie had created for me in the ship’s database. Assuming it was connected to whatever back-up server she had managed to access.
“Randall, Quincy Aloysius – technician, third grade,” the robot said.
“That’s me,” I said.
“There are tasks on your job sheet that have not been logged as complete,” the robot said.
“It’s been a busy couple of days,” I said. I felt relieved that my bluff seemed to be working.
“Your data is in error,” the robot said. “There are no surviving crew members on the Celestia. All aboard perished when the ship was in collision with the planet Saphira. I buried all of the bodies.” It raised its cannon and pointed it at me. “You are an unidentified intruder on an alliance military vessel.”
“There has been a mistake. I’m a technician. I fix things.”
“No error has been made. You are an imposer. Under Section 17 of the revised military regulations, spies
