Rutger had spoken, again.
She looked down. His boots had skulls on them too. A match with hers.
“That’s the general thought.” Vargr waved his food toward Rutger as punctuation. “Gotta admire those GLs for taking up our stuff and using it against us. The Chinese must’ve brought those out as a last hope in the war.”
“Yeah.” Rutger frowned. “So we can adapt them too? Use them?”
“That’s the notion. Fucking good if we can. The battery packs run on something like lithium, but they go forever.”
“Huh. Has anyone tried drones since the war petered out?”
“No. You mean stick them together? Fire on them without us being there? Missiles would be better.” Vargr sounded wistful. “Drones and guns though, we could do that if the weight to power ratio was?—”
Vargr was cut off by a crack and rumble as Toother burst through a gap with Orm still riding him and ducking as he leaped. More of the wall crumbled. After a quick wriggly shake, the nanodog leaped over the new rubble, landing on his forepaws and trotting toward them. In his mouth he carried some multi-legged creature that wriggled.
Not a spider or a roach, this was the same size and rusted gray of the frypan, only squeezed in from the sides and fatter from top to bottom.
Cyn stood, along with everyone else. Wary, she was wondering if she should go help kick this creature or run.
“Kill that fucking thing!” a foot-soldier sang out. He yanked up his rifle, halfway, ready to fire.
Orm rode Toother closer then whistled, and the nanodog halted. The critter in his mouth was definitely metal, therefore not exactly alive. It just looked like a big fat bug.
Curious, Cyn sauntered forward, amused that no one else followed her until Vargr finally did. Then Rutger followedhim. She’d faced Ghoul Lords. This was littler than them, and possibly cuter?
A row of dim red lights sprang to life across the front where bumps ran in a double line like hip sunglasses on an aging terminator. She counted six legs, three to each side, and two sections to its torso, similar to some insects. The skin was rusted steel or a similar colored metal.
If it kept still, she imagined it would be difficult to spot among the garbage littering the corridors.
She cocked her head. “What is it?”
Orm leaned forward, arms resting on Toother’s neck, and said quietly, “It says it knows you.”
“It speaks?”What the hell?
“It does.”
“How can it know me?”
“That’s one of the doctor’s later autonomous creations.” Maura arrived beside Cyn. “He called them mild AI, as in they can think independently, but only a little. Think of it as a children’s version of an AI. What’s your name, your designation?” she asked it.
From somewhere inside the critter, speakers crackled to life. “Little Mo. This nomenclature derives from Baby Monitor.”
“Ah.” Maura smiled. “One of upper management’s jokes. I bet it was designed to watch employees. You’re not armed? Run a system check and report back.”
A series of beeps sounded, and the eye nodules ran through a spectrum from red to green from left to right.
“What the bloody fucking hell?” So many swear words from Vargr said he was really perplexed.
“System check complete. Memory has corrupted and suffered lost files due to overloading and physical degeneration, but my motor, logic, sensory, and power systems are functioning between ninety-five to ninety-seven percent efficiency. I am notarmed. Though I must warn that my limb pincers can damage human skin.”
“And who is authorized to instruct you and alter your directives?” Maura showed a concentrated determination Cyn had not seen before.
“Cyn and one other who is not present. This one called Cyn that I detect before me, now that I am not in hiding.”
“Fine. There you are. Tell it to stick around, and you can let it go.” Maura beamed at her. “Go on.”
“Ask it what the fuck it’s doing here too.” The soldier with the raised rifle finally lowered his weapon.
