Astro stared up into the clouded sky just before dawn, fog haloing the street lamps.
Being robotic could be kind of handy at times like these: no matter how worried he might be, he simply let the computer do its thing, and he was asleep for six hours to 'compile and archive'.
He wasn't perfect—no kidding, right? The Creator had told him that he would perfect whatever Astro had begun, so this was a great time to see how that worked here in the real world: there were all kinds of ways things could go horribly wrong in the next little while.
How would Orkan's military respond to what had happened yesterday? No doubt they had spy satellites up there, and there wasn't much he could do about them—it definitely wasn't worth the trouble to find out how many there were, what orbits they were in, and then go and knock them out of the sky. Not to mention information on them was probably buried under several layers of secrecy.
No, the immediate threat lay in the robot reconnaissance aircraft that would probably start showing up once the fog had cleared to give them a view of the ground. Them he could handle.
"That's right," he said a few days later to Mayor Johnson in front of the coffee shop. "I'd better take a look out there and see what they're up to. They haven't sent any recon planes out since Tuesday."
The mayor nodded. "Yes, you're probably correct. I suppose they must be thinking we have some kind of surface-to-air missiles, since you were able to take those four down so easily, and that also makes us appear to be a lot better armed than we actually are."
"Sure. I'll go now, and be back soon with a report." He blasted off and started a sweeping pattern over the landscape, staying close to the cloud bases for cover.
An hour or so later, he noticed a large number of military vehicles gathered in several parking lots in a small city some forty kilometres south of Creekhollow. As he checked things over with his super-vision, he suddenly saw a small missile heading toward him, and shot off to try and evade it. However, it followed him closely, so he blasted it with his arm cannons when it was really close, then tumbled into the trees below, hoping to make it look like he had been destroyed.
"Hey Dragon," he radioed as he came in for a landing.
"Hello, Astro," the robot responded from the warehouse, using the radio that Joe Arammis had installed the day before.
Astro sighed: it just wasn't Luna. He clenched his fists. Where was she? Was she even alive? How long could he go on without her?
Whatever ... He had a job to do, so he plodded over to the coffee shop.
"Okay," said Mayor Johnson after Astro had reported his findings. "So the military's preparing for a fight." He gazed around at the assembled people. "Are you ready to die for your freedom?"
"You sure don't mince words, Mr. Mayor," said a man in the back.
"Well, that's what we're up against. We can get the mothers and little children and old folks out of town by tomorrow noon, but, according to what Astro's told us, that's all the time we've got for sure." He turned to a heavy-set man in overalls.
"How did you make out with the big robots?"
"No problem. They run real smooth and are easy to handle. Arammis got the weapons mounted and wired in okay, so they can be in position first thing after the fog breaks."
"Good. Joseph, you got the two-way hooked up?"
"Yes, and each captain has a hand set. We're as ready as we're going to be."
The mayor nodded and sighed. "This is it, people. May God have mercy on us."
There were some muttered 'amens' as people got up to leave.
That evening, Astro sat with Will on his front porch, gazing at the quiet, tree-lined street. "Does it always get so foggy at night around here?" he asked.
Will shook his head. "Nah; only at this time of the year, when the wind comes out of the south. It gets so bad sometimes that nobody dares go out in it in case they get themselves lost."
"I've noticed."
Will lowered his voice. "And we get scared of spooks then too, you know."
Astro checked for the meaning of the unfamiliar word. "Ah, you mean ghosts."
"Yeah. Everybody but old Joseph is scared stupid of them."
Ghosts, huh. Astro got the glimmering of a plan.
"Mr. Arammis?" Will tapped on the old plywood door to the rusty, steel-clad workshop.
There was some clattering inside, and then the door cracked open. "Will? Astro?" said Joe. He opened the door. "It's a bit late, boys, but come on in. What can I help you with?"
Astro closed the door behind him. "I was wondering if you could help me get a bunch of robots from the junk yard running." He sketched out his idea.
Arammis chuckled when he finished. "That's rich, that is, Astro." He turned to Will. "We're going to need help here, lots of it. Get all the other kids out here to help first thing in the morning. We'll have to work fast if we're going to pull this off."
Will wrung his hands nervously. "Yeah, um, I'll see what I can do."
"Just tell 'em we're fixing to pull a big joke on Leader Orkan. That'll bring 'em out."
"Okay, I can do that."
Every kid left in town was outside Joe Arammis's workshop the next morning wondering what was up, and Joe was quick to drive them over to pick up whatever robots and rags they could find in the piles of junk. By lunch time, there were about fifty derelict robots scattered about on the gravel parking lot and grass outside of the workshop, being painted black or white, and then draped in old clothes when the paint had dried. Astro took the completed robots into the shop where Joe repaired them enough that they could at least walk straight and not fall down, and hot-wired them into an old recharge station—Astro wished he'd known about that before, for Dragon's sake.
When everyone else broke for lunch, Astro headed into the sky to check on the military down south, and saw that they were moving out of the city where they had assembled. They would probably be camping out somewhere near Creekhollow in preparation for an assault in the morning. Yes!
As evening fell, Astro stood up the last of the robots in a field just east of the workshop. It was an odd gathering, dozens of figures standing unmoving as the breeze caused their rags to flutter eerily.
"Well done, everybody!" said Joe to the crowd of kids. "Now get on home, because we may have a fight on our hands come morning."
Once they were gone, Astro shot off into the twilight to confirm where Leader Orkan's troops had set up camp for the night.
He stayed at the workshop and caught some sleep, awaking at three in the morning.
"Okay, Dragon," he radioed. "Get into position."
"Yes, Astro," replied the robot. It rose up just above the trees and flew off into the fog.
[Master request: walk forward] [Complete], Astro commanded on the robot channel, and the army of robots began to walk or stagger or hobble after Dragon, creaking and rattling as they went.
Astro ran ahead to the large farm field that Orkan's men had chosen, and parked himself in a tree just outside the camp perimeter to observe how things would play out in the fog.
"Okay God, let's see you perfect this," he muttered.
A few minutes later, the robots caught up with him and advanced into the camp.
"Who's there?" snapped someone. A light came on, but it only lit up the dense cloudiness, making the robots caught in it seem very ethereal. A shot rang out, followed by a lot of shouting and calling. More shots were fired, and everything seemed to descend into chaos as far as Astro could tell by the noise. There were screams, followed by vehicles being started up and driven, with gunfire everywhere. An explosion ripped the night, off to his left.
What have I done? Astro wondered anxiously, and he hopped down out of the tree.
"Dragon, are you okay?" he radioed.
"Yes, Astro, but it would appear that many of our robots have been destroyed."
"That's alright. What about the soldiers? Can you see any of them?"
"Yes, Astro. Many of them appear to have been destroyed as well."
"What? How?"
"They have shot each other."
At that, Astro tore off through the fog toward Dragon's location, but soon was forced to pull up to avoid tripping on the bodies lying everywhere.
He gaped at the carnage, overwhelmed by the sheer numbers of casualties, then was suddenly knocked over by gunfire from behind. Pulling a bullet out of the back of his head, he looked around. He could hear a gun clicking behind a truck, its ammunition spent. He dashed over and confronted the soldier.
"Die, damn you!" the man said as he fumbled to change the ammo magazine.
Astro snatched the gun out of his hands and snapped, "Stop it already!"
Startled, the soldier stood frozen for a minute, gaping, then sagged to his knees and began to cry. "What have I done?" he moaned.
"Yeah, uh, what have you done?"
The man shuddered and took a deep breath. "I heard gunfire. We're under attack, I thought, so I grabbed my gun. A ... a horrible ... thing came towards me, and I shot it. But it wouldn't stop, just kept coming. The noise!" He clutched his head. "It finally stopped, but there were more. I shot at them too, and they stopped." He looked around at the bodies. "Oh no. No. No!" Staggering to his feet, he approached one of them. "Tom? Tom!" He went down on his knees and checked its pulse, then let out an agonized wail.
Astro staggered in horror and leaned against the truck. Everyone here must have panicked and started shooting at anything that moved! Is that what humans do when they're scared?
He numbly tuned in his radio to sweep the normal military channels, but all he got were a few incoherent messages and one clear voice that was trying to raise any kind of intelligible response.
Sinking to the ground, he started to cry for all the dead and dying around him. He hadn't meant for it to end like this—his fault again. How many had he killed this time?
God, you were supposed to perfect it!