Steal the Demon: A Science-Fiction Novella by Robert Roth (free novels to read txt) 📕

knife in wonder. It had cut through the Bot’s proprietary composite alloy with almost no resistance. She still had no idea how much it would’ve cost to actually buy it, but she no longer doubted the knife’s value. She reached back to resheath it, when the lift entrance slid open again, and two more Sec-Bots stepped out. The blade probably wasn’t gonna cut it anymore, so Kimiko dove for the nearby body of the still unconscious guard, grabbing their blaster from its holster before slamming into the wall at the end of the deck. She gritted her teeth and ignored the pain, lifting the weapon toward the nearest Bot and firing. But that Sec-Bot was faster than the first one, and ducked away from the blast before knocking the gun from her hand. The gun clattered across the deck as the Sec-Bot lifted a foot into the air. Kimiko quickly rolled away from the wall, tucking herself into a ball to slip past the Sec-Bot’s legs as its foot slammed down onto the deck. She scrambled to her feet as the second Sec-Bot came for her, stomping on the deck where she’d been just a moment before.

The Bots’ tactics had changed. They reacted faster, and attacked more assuredly. Were they learning from her? She needed to get that blaster back, so she ran for it as quickly as she could, scooping it off the deck with a Sec-Bot right on her heels. Reaching around to point it behind her, Kimiko squeezed the trigger multiple times as she fired blind, each blast the shriek of a toolbox being tossed into a metal grinder, with a kick hard enough to nearly knock her over. When one of the shots sounded like it scored a hit, she glanced over her shoulder and saw a Sec-Bot lying prone on the deck, its right arm missing and right shoulder glowing a bright, reddish-orange. But the other Bot was still on her tail, and Kimiko was running out of deck. She skidded to a stop to keep from bouncing off the guard rail, then turned her back to it and started firing double-handed at the remaining Sec-Bot, which somehow danced around her shots anyway. Then the Bot was on her, sending her right over the top of the guard rail with a vicious backhand.

The gun flew from her hands as Kimiko flipped out into the open air and started to fall. She made a desperate grab for the railing in a panic, but she was already too late to catch it. She fell past the deck, her hands slipping down the smooth side of the platform, before she miraculously grasped onto an exposed structural support underneath it, painfully wrenching her shoulder but arresting her fall. Kimiko let out a piercing cry as she reached up with her other hand to grab the support strut she was hanging from. The electro-muscular bands in her suit immediately tightened to strengthen her grip, and an alert flashed up in her virtual display, informing her that the suit’s Emergency-Med function had activated. Cooling numbness soon spread throughout her injured shoulder, mercifully wiping the pain away. Kimiko looked up. The top of the deck was too far away for her to easily reach it. But it was either that, or dropping the thirty meters to the surface below her.

Then one of the Sec-Bots leaned over the railing and looked down on her. “Your presence here is not authorized,” it said, with a deep machine voice. “You will surrender yourself immediately.”

She hung there, her left arm mostly numb, effectively immobilized, wondering what other options she still had left. There was always the knife. Maybe, if the Bot hauled her up to the deck, she could get to the blade before it disabled her. It was a shitty plan, but it was better than nothing. “Looks like you already got me, Joe.” She could hear the strain in her own voice. “Don’t think I can be any more surrendered.”

The Sec-Bot’s head tilted down, then slightly to the side, as if it didn’t quite understand what it was looking at. The gesture was inordinately human and completely unnerving. “You are the intruder working with the one who hacked into my system,” it said mysteriously. Kimiko could hear the difference in its tone of voice right away. “Who are you?”

It must’ve been the station AI, taking over the Sec-Bot to communicate with her. That wasn’t greased up. Not at all.

“I’m the tooth fairy, Joe,” she replied, forcing more bravado into her voice than she actually felt. “Who the hell are you?”

The Sec-Bot leaned even farther over the railing, and Kimiko could see its optic units trying to focus on her. “Your defiant attitude is to be expected. Making it this far into my station must have taken some skill, even if you had assistance.” Then it tilted its head again. It was no longer moving like a Sec-Bot at all. “I am Doha. I run this station. And you should consider answering my question before I’m forced to resort to more aggressive methods of persuasion.” Then the Bot stretched an impossibly long arm down and wrapped a mechanical hand around Kimiko’s wrist. Of course, it had to choose her injured arm.

“Fuck you, Joe,” she spat, as it started to lift her up to the deck.

Then a sudden clamor let loose, like a closet full of buzzsaws, and the Sec-Bot stopped lifting her to turn and look behind it. Kimiko felt the Bot’s grip loosen, but she was already high enough to grab one of the guard railing balusters before the Bot let go of her completely. She heard a fearsome rumble, and felt the deck vibrating through her hands. When she looked back up, a bright orange, half-meter wide claw closed around the Sec-Bot and cleaved it in two with a loud crunch and an explosion of sparks. The Heavy Loading Bot lifted its giant claw, ripping the top half of the Sec-Bot from its