[ 32 ]
The Kraken drew closer to the Argent, gaining on her. The singleships had engaged the ship by flying close and thus forcing Billy to slow and alter his course. Each singleship pass of the Argent was the implied threat of another crash.
Solomon Grundy cursed as a mort led its craft directly into the Kraken’s path. At the last instant a tentacle brushed the wayward singleship aside and he felt his own ship shudder at the impact.
“Crazy sonsabitches,” Grundy cursed and desired fervently to issue an order. What was he thinking, going into space with no atmosphere on his bridge? There was nothing but a gaping hole where the forward window once stood. At least he’d thought to don his helmet. The problem was that the vacuum on the bridge made communication between him and the two corts at the helm impossible. He may as well be dead for all the good he was doing. The corts were essentially in command.
Grundy sat back in his chair. “They know what to do,” he said to himself, his voice bounding back to him inside the helmet. He wondered absently how much air he had in the pack beside his chair.
The Argent grew closer, no more than a hundred yards, and the singleships continued to buzz it.
Why aren’t they shooting them? he thought. Then he saw Titan on the outside upper hull.
“My job just got easier,” Grundy whispered to himself. He crossed his arms and waited.
In the distance, the space station Ozymandias hove into view—with its full complement of insane Jack the Ripper-looking morts, and not a cort amongst them. Solomon had spent time enough aboard that hellhole.
“Never again,” Grundy whispered. “Never again.”
On the outer hull of the Argent, Titan stood and turned.
Grundy watch, mesmerized, as a figure emerged from inside the ship. It stepped onto the top of the ship and stood facing Titan. Whoever it was, it wasn’t wearing a spacesuit. There were only two possibilities. Either the figure was a cort, or it was another robot. The figure was too perfect to be a Westinghouse model.
“Well shit,” Grundy said. “Looks like I got a front row seat for an old-fashioned showdown. That there is a Tesla.”
[ 33 ]
A light winked on in the center of Guthrie’s brow and began flickering Morse code at the Westinghouse robot facing him.
“I accept your surrender,” the light communicated as eloquently as words, and just as quickly.
The hulking Westinghouse model turned its full torso toward Guthrie, who noted the Westinghouse emblem on its chest—a series of ball electrodes connected by lightning bolts in the shape of the letter “W”. A small slot slid aside in the robot’s chest plate and its light began winking back at Guthrie, “Does not compute. Non-human. Destroy.”
“That is the longest sentence you have probably ever said,” Guthrie stated in flashes of amber light.
Two more portals opened in the Westinghouse robot’s chest and a pair of stubby gun barrels protruded.
Guthrie recognized the weapons as single-shot versions of the Greener ten-gauge shotgun. He moved desperately quick, and both shots missed–barely, then watched as the gun barrels disappeared inside the robot. It was reloading—an action that would take approximately seven seconds, which was an eternity for a robot. Guthrie charged the Titan and faked going for its head, then dropped to skim the metal surface of the ship and knocked the Titan’s magnetic feet from the Argent. The robot floated beyond the front of the ship as it reloaded the guns and ignited its foot rockets to close with Guthrie and finish the Tesla robot once and for all.
As the Titan floated to a stop, it glanced at the spaceship only twenty feet away and saw Billy aim the Howitzer barrels toward him and fire.
The three cannon rounds blew Westinghouse’s mechanical pride and joy from the sky in a bright yellow shower of sparks.
“You should have surrendered,” Guthrie’s light winked at the floating, hand-sized pieces of the Westinghouse robot. “I could have reprogrammed you to be useful.”
Guthrie turned and saw the Kraken approaching rapidly, its two tentacles writhing as if in anticipation.
[ 34 ]
John Carter had no idea of what to do with the instrument board in front of him. The dim and distant stars outside the window whirled around as Billy moved his yoke to and fro, and the small one-man fighters dodged around the ship.
“I get the feeling,” Billy said, “that I’m being herded.”
“Tell me what to do. I want to shoot, but I’ve got no idea...HOW!”
Another singleship darted into view and appeared to hover directly ahead. The ship turned slowly about until its forward window hung directly ahead. The ship moved closer and Billy and John Carter could make out the figure within.
“It’s one of the Brothers Cort,” Billy said. “Two of them followed me, Ekka, Dakota, along with Pat and Guthrie all the way from Waco out to our house.”