“All right,” Elvi said, shifting until she could see the robot and the darkness both. “Turn about thirty degrees to your left.”
The robot shifted with the speed and sharpness of a startled insect.
“The boundary’s about half a meter in front of you. Why do you need to be close to it?”
“Well, the thing I’m part of? It may not be conscious, but it’s not stupid. When I do this, pretty much all the tools its got are going to know what I know, and they may not take a forced shutdown well. Whatever else this thing was designed to do, it likes still existing until it finishes its job. It’s a survivor. I’m pretty much the opposite of that.”
She thought she heard a smile in the thing’s voice. Where had that come from? The patterns and habits in a dead man’s brain? Or was that fatalism another good move in design space? Did the universe evolve eyes and wings and sense organs and bitter amusement at the prospect of death all the same way?
“Okay,” Miller said. The robot shifted, hunkered down, prepared to spring forward. “We’re going in three. Two. One.”
The impact was like being in the heavy shuttle again as it crashed. Elvi’s world contracted to a small space inside her own skull, and then slowly bloomed out again in pain. She struggled to sit up, trying to see straight. Trying to think. Had Miller exploded? Was she dead? The cacophony of shrieking metal and violence made it hard to get her bearings.
She was against the wall. All around her, mechanisms were crawling down from their niches. Many of them were failing—legs scraping at the walls without the strength to pull themselves forward or landing on the ground only to crawl in a panicked, spasmodic circle like insects dying from poison. The air was thick with the mindless chittering of their joints. Three massive machines had pinned the Miller-robot and were pounding it while Miller’s voice shouted shitshitshitshit. One of the attackers caught Miller’s claw and pulled, ripping the appendage off in a shower of sparks and bright fluids. He wasn’t going to make it. There was no way.
A small winged machine with a bright blue margin on the knifelike edge where a beak would be swooped down from above, passed through the darkness, and fell clattering and rolling to the ground. Elvi ran to it, picked it up. It was light enough to carry, as long as her forearm, and sharp at the front. With a howl, she charged the machines that were piling on Miller. The impact stung her fingers. Something struck her across the back, and the world narrowed again, but she lashed out with what strength she still had.
One of the huge machines turned from Miller toward her, its claws splaying out three meters to either side. She jumped back, fell, scuttled. The pulsing, malefic blackness of the dead spot was on her left, and she crawled around it, trying to keep it between her and the massive attacker.
The robot skittered toward her, its claws swinging like scythes until it reached the margin of the blackness and crumpled down dead. Inertia rolled its corpse across the floor, legs and claws flopping and limp. The chittering in the room paused. The attention of the artifacts turned toward her. She put her foot on the fallen monster, lifted her fists, and howled. Miller twisted, driving his remaining claw up and through the body of one of the two machines that were still at his side. The chittering began again, even more overwhelming than before. The sound itself felt like an attack, battering at her ears, robbing her of her balance.
She was in the center of an invisible waterfall, a thunderstorm, a tempest. Adrenaline more than conscious will lifted her up over the body of her fallen enemy, and she skirted around the dead spot. Another machine fell from a higher niche, smashing itself on the ground before her. She stepped over it as it writhed. The last remaining fully functional attacker swung at Miller, the blades of its claws plunging deep into Miller’s carapace. As Elvi came close, it tried to turn toward her. The claw still inside Miller bound with a deep creaking sound. Miller’s remaining claw fastened on the other robot’s wrist, holding the attacker’s claw close, pulling it in, deeper. A viscous fluid poured out of Miller, filling the air with the stink of petroleum and acid. Elvi scooped a length of fallen robot’s leg and slammed it into Miller’s assailant, striking sparks. The blows had no effect other than to confuse the thing. She could no more have injured it than she could will herself to fly up into the air and lift the falling ships by force of will. But the moment’s hesitation was enough.
Miller pulled himself under the remaining attacker, on his back. Four of the six articulated legs started digging at the robot’s undercarriage. Belly. She didn’t have a good model for this. The unencumbered claw smashed down, knocking shards of metal from Miller’s side, but with Miller mostly underneath the attacker, it couldn’t get an angle that would let it deliver a killing blow.
A thin-limbed, spindly robot skittered through the opened wall, sprinting toward the battle. Elvi grabbed it as it passed and knocked it into the dead spot. Bits of plating began to peel off the attacking thing’s belly, and Miller burrowed up into it. The filthy and stinking ichor started pouring out in a flood. It was an ugly death, slow and violent and unpoetic. When the attacker had stopped moving, Elvi came close. The dead robot was on top of Miller. The pool of thin liquid all around stung her eyes with its fumes.
“Well, that could have gone better,” Miller said.
“Did it work? Are you connected?”
“Yeah,” Miller said. “Not sure how much good that’s going to do. There’s another wave of these things coming, and I’m not seeing how I get from here to there.”
Elvi put her shoulder under the dead robot, pushing as hard as she could. The tendons in her neck ached. She imagined she could hear them creaking. She put everything she had into the effort. There was nothing to hold back for. No later that mattered. Keeping anything in reserve was a waste of resources because there was no future left. She screamed with the sheer physical effort.
The robot didn’t even shift.
She fell to her knees. With a groan, Miller put his claw out, resting it gently on her arm. When he spoke, his voice sounded distant, muffled. Words from a grave.
“Okay, this is going to be tricky,” he said. “I’m going to need one more favor from you, kid. And we don’t have much time before they get here.”
“Yes,” she said. “Whatever.”
“Okay, stand back a little. I’m popping the seals on this thing.”
She slid backward, the slime on the floor flowing up to the ankles of her pants. There was a hiss like steam escaping from a holed line, a deep, meaty click, and Miller came apart, the plating and scales of his body collapsing. The thing on top of him rolled away and lay dead on its side.
Elvi stood over Miller’s corpse. It looked like nothing so much as a huge insect smashed under a giant’s heel. The chittering all around her rose to a shriek.
“What do I do?” Elvi shouted. “What am I supposed to do?”
Miller’s voice came from deep inside the mess. “There’s a unit in here. It’s about a meter long, bright blue, and there’s a row of seven… no, eight dots along the side. I need you to dig it out.”
Elvi stepped forward. The plating was all knifepoints and sharp edges. She felt the sting where it cut her palms, and the burning where the robotic fluids flowed into the wounds.
“I don’t mean to be that guy,” Miller said. “But you also need to hurry.”
“Trying,” she said.
“Just saying there are more bad guys and they’re getting a little closer than I like.”