Chapter 12
The robots gathered at 4 gathering points which Bas-Ra had designated. They wasted as little time as possible, then headed towards the objective.
That resulted in a less-than-optimum distribution of forces, but as General Patton had said "a good plan executed right away is better than a perfect plan executed later", or something like that. Boz could never remember the exact words. But he believed the idea was sound.
He had wanted to hit the objective from all directions at once, and hit fast and hard, with no notice, just like with the bank rescue. They'd lost only a Duplicate of Big Tom there.
And, in one way, circumstances were favorable to that: Teleport rescues had been scattered all over the city, and so were the robots remaining from those rescues. But they were not evenly distributed. Nor did he think they could afford the time to distribute them better.
So Squirrel Force - S for South, since that's the direction they'd be approaching from - had the 'lion's share' of his assets: 3 combat robots and 4 GP robots.
Nut force, coming from the North, was the smallest force, with only one each of combat and GP robots.
Wombat Force from the West had one combat robot and 5 GP robots.
And Egg Force from the East had two robots - one combat and one GP - running ahead of 4 jeeps, 3 of which were driven by GP robots, with the last one driven by Bas-Ra himself.
Despite his desire to surprise the enemy, there had proven to be no way to do so.
The brothel - an abandoned hotel - had thickly-populated gang territory for at least 6 blocks on all sides of it. Sensors showed that population to be mostly, though not entirely, hostile and well-armed, though the area was so busy it was hard for the sensors to pick up useful specifics on those armaments - too much "noise" to be able to pick up much useful "signal".
They couldn't just shell the area flat, since it was clear that many regular people lived there, in addition to plenty of gang thugs.
They couldn't sneak in with that many people doing that many things all scattered all over the area.
And they didn't think they had time to execute, much less try to think up, some kind of clever distraction to get folks out of there and thus enable some kind of sneaking.
So Bas-Ra was hoping to rely on the fact that his robots were durable, expendable, and had earned a reputation in this town.
All 4 groups would go in as boldly and directly as possible - right down the middle of their respective approach streets.
Such open and simple frontal assaults had been mocked, from time to time down through history, using phrases such as "hey diddle-diddle, straight up the middle".
That was deservedly so - frontal assault was usually the worst possible approach, and generals who could think of no better approach usually deserved to be mocked by such means as nursery rhymes implying their infantile levels of thought.
In this case, Bas-Ra felt the approach justified on the basis of the expendability of all his troops, and because of the effect such a charge would have on the enemy's morale. He hoped that the effect of seeing the robots coming - these robots, who were already well-known to be really effective in combat - would be like being a medieval swordsman standing before an oncoming charge of heavy cavalry: demoralizing.
These gang members had plenty of places to run and hide if they lost their nerve to fight.
Boz had the groups going in gathered together - for maximum shock value - moving at their best shared speed: 22 miles per hour, which was as fast as GP robots could run. But if they started taking fire the combat robots were to accelerate to their best speed - 40 mph - straight at the enemy with all or most of their guns blazing.
A lot of people would be shocked by such sudden violence and would flee.
They'd see if that worked on the ABB gang thugs.
He figured that, at worst, they could teach the gang that keeping their captives would cost them more than it could possibly be worth to them.
A rattle of gunfire pulled Bas-Ra's thoughts back to the present.
The 2 robots a block in front of his 4 jeeps had been hit, ineffectively, by rifle fire.
The combat robot sprinted forward, towards the shooters sheltering in a doorway, who were reloading.
As the robot ran, it was firing 2 autocannons, an automatic shotgun, and its grenade launcher. All its weapons were gyro-stabilized, and most of its shots hit, chewing that doorway to powder and ending the shooters there.
If the streets hadn't already emptied on sight of his force, they would have emptied now.
"So far, so good" thought Bas-Ra. "I hope anybody watching will spread the word and they'll all just leave us alone."
He hadn't reckoned on opponents who were more-or-less used to facing super-powered 'capes'.
They were not so easily frightened by displays of overwhelming force.
And, in the middle of their territory, they had special reserves for use in cases like this.
Bas-Ra saw, through the eyes of Bas-Ket - who was currently at the ships visual scanners - two gang toughs simultaneously stand up in the dumpster they'd been hiding in.
Each aimed an RPG-7 light antitank rocket launcher at a combat robot in Squirrel Force, and fired.
The robots charged, firing as they went, and both gang toughs died before the rockets even hit.
But the rockets continued onward.
One rocket fell short and hit the ground in front of the robots. It's 5.7 pound HEAT (High Explosive Anti-Tank) warhead had a shaped-charge designed to use as much as possible of the explosive force from it's 1.6 pounds of explosive, to form a pencil-thin jet of super-fast and super-hot gasses that could penetrate as much steel armor as possible and so defeat a tank. A consequence of focusing the blast like that was that there was much less explosive force going out in all directions and damaging things other than what was hit directly.
So the warhead gouged a narrow but deep hole in the road and sprayed the robots with shrapnel and a little asphalt, which did not harm the robots at all.
The explosive force also failed to hurt the armored robots, even though the RPG-7 had 4.3 times as much explosive in its warhead as a standard fragmentation hand-grenade.
The other rocket hit a combat robot right in the center, punching a hole through it's armor, some control systems, and it's central processing unit. That robot ceased functioning completely, even though it still looked mostly intact.
As if that were a starting signal, other gang members began popping out all over and shooting various weapons at the 4 robot groups.
Bas-Ra saw, through the eyes of Captain Basil, who had sent some of the output from the ship's visual scanners to the main display screen at the front of the command center, Wombat Force get attacked by three anti-tank rifles at once. One had hidden behind a wrecked car, another was behind some concrete stairs, and the last was in some bushes, which lost their leaves when the gunman fired.
Two GP robots were hit and destroyed, as the big bullets went in one side and out the other.
Two of the three anti-tank rifle teams died instantly to return fire. The third rolled behind the concrete stairs and lasted a few moments more before those stairs were pulverized by 20mm autocannon fire.
But there were more where they came from.
Bas-Oon had his reference works open and soon identified the anti-tank rifles as Russian-designed, WWII era, PTRD-41 14.5mm rifles, which could theoretically punch through as much as 40mm of steel armor.
And even though the design was old, the single-shot rifles were still in use in many parts of the world.
There was also a semi-automatic version - the PTRS-41, and as he was reading about that, one of those fired from a rooftop and took out another Wombat Force GP robot.
Then Nut Force lost it's only GP robot to a roadside bomb.
Bas-Ra had no time to think about that - motion had caught his eye as 3 windows opened in the upper stories of 3 different nearby buildings.
Under the circumstances, that seemed likely to be a threat so he wasted no time in saying "Egg Force, probable threats in 3 windows I will identify with laser pointer", while rapidly designating the windows, one after another, with the laser pointer held in the hand that wasn't on the steering wheel.
That took very little time, yet as he was designating the third window, he saw a large gun muzzle emerge from it slightly.
He immediately said "Egg Force, fire at those windows."
His robots fired before the mostly-hidden anti-tank gunners at the windows did.
Multiple shells from 20mm auto-cannons hit one target and shredded all within that room.
Two 40mm grenades from rotary grenade-launchers did likewise to a second target.
And a plasma blast from a GP robot went through a window and part of the wall next to it like a brick through a soap-bubble, melting the gun barrel as it passed and continuing on into the room and starting raging fires.
Ron's voice spoke in Bas-Ra's ear "We saw that gun melt and Beth is now instructing all robots to try to destroy anti-tank weapons as well as the gunners, by using whichever type of weapon they have that's most likely to do so. Every anti-tank weapon we destroy is one closer to them running out."
Bas-Ra nodded, but had no time to reply.
Gang punks were popping up everywhere, with all manner of weapons.
They either had no fear of death, or they feared their leaders even more.
They appeared in doorways, and from around alley corners.
They showed up in windows, and on rooftops.
They rose from behind cars, stairwells, low walls, and piles of all sorts of junk.
They arrived from all sorts of places, fired whatever they had, and then took cover - those who survived to do so - to reload.
Bas-Ra saw all the aspects of the fight, through the eyes of his Duplicates watching various display screens back on the battleship.
All 4 of his forces were being attacked.
He saw the combat robot from Wombat Force get hit several times and explode as it's own ammunition detonated. The two remaining GP robots in that force saw the PTRS-41 gun team that did it, hiding in a storm drain somehow. They put so many grenades into that storm-drain that the nearby manhole cover - from which the gang punks had probably entered in the first place - was tossed into the air by the explosions.
Bas-Ra had rigged his grenade launcher to hang, mostly suspended by bungee-cords from the roll-bar, so he would be able to fire it one-handed.
It was a bit awkward, but a lot better than nothing.
He saw movement in a dumpster and fired a contact-fused fragmentation grenade at the wall just above the dumpster.
He could tell that one was going to miss, so he rapidly sent two more.
They hit in various places, detonated, and sent fragments all over that alley, including down into the dumpster. Movement there ceased.
Some crazy tattooed man wearing a grinning metal mask but no shirt left a building, stood boldly in the street ahead of Bas-Ra, and yelled "I am Lung!" before a burst of M60 machine-gun fire took him down.
Bas-Ket saw a PTRS-41 set up in a window behind Nut Force, and warned the remaining robot in that force, but it was too late. While the robot swiveled 180 degrees at the waist to fire at the threat, it got hit 4 times.
Two of the hits were at bad angles and bounced off.
But the other two pierced it's armored head and destroyed critical circuitry, shutting the robot down.
Nut Force was no more.
Bas-Ra was shooting at another de-facto bunker made from a dumpster when they passed an intersection only 4 blocks from the objective, and got shot at from down that side-street.
The gang goons had set up a Chinese Type 54 heavy machine-gun behind a low wall, and they let loose a storm of fire when the jeeps came into view.
They hit the last two, shredding both the jeeps and their GP robot drivers.
Bas-Ra was no longer in line of sight, but he fired his grenade launcher anyway, trying for a bank-shot off a building to see if he could get a time-fused grenade to the vicinity of the enemy.
He tried twice before he had to return his attention to driving.
A bomb thrown from above as they passed took out the other jeep in his force, as well as its driver.
The GP robot running ahead of Bas-Ra fired its grenade-launcher twice on a high arc to try to land the grenades on the top of the building - where the bomb was thrown from.
But while it's attention was elsewhere an RPG-7 rocket hit it right between the shoulder-blades, taking it out.
While Bas-Ra took out that rocketeer, he heard, behind him, another crazy man yell "I am lung!".
He looked in his rear-view mirror and saw the man - a bit larger than the first crazy man to yell the same thing, but also shirtless, tattooed and in a metal mask.
The man flexed his muscles and then got shredded and taken down by a burst of 20mm auto-cannon fire from Bas-Ra's combat robot.
When they were 3 blocks from the objective, Bas-Ra saw, through Bas-Ket's eyes, a coordinated group of 8 gang punks all step out of their hiding places at once and fire RPG-7's at Squirrel Force.
Two of those punks were killed immediately by the back-blast from their own rocket-launches - a hazard with firing such weapons from enclosed spaces.
Four of the rockets got good hits, taking out, between them, 2 GP robots and both combat robots.
The remaining robots of Squirrel Force - just two GP robots - took down 5 of the 6 rocketeers. One got away.
But while the GP robots were busy, a small crowd of gang punks rushed out at them with tasers, nets and ropes, apparently trying to capture them.
It was not a bad idea, since the surge of electricity from tasers could easily disable electronics, and that would leave most robots helpless, if not destroyed.
But they had not reckoned on the Faraday-cage-like effect of the robots' steel armor, which effectively kept all the electricity on the outer skin of the robot, allowing none to reach the vital electronics on the inside.
So the robots got shocked, to no effect, while they both popped tear-gas canisters right at their own feet, and, according to default programming, switched to non-lethal arms to respond to a non-lethal attack.
Some punks, affected by tear-gas, fled. Others stayed and tried to entangle the robots in nets.
Then the robots each started firing rubber bullets at the punks. Soon all were fleeing, while being hit by rubber bullets.
The fleeing, crying punks, barely able to see due to the tearing effects of the tear-gas, fled in such disarray - like the keystone cops - that the crowd watching in the command center of the battleship gave a collective chuckle.
Ron, speaking to the display screen showing the fleeing punks, quipped "Hey guys, remember, 'if at first you don't succeed, try try again'."
That got another chuckle.
Abe, just arriving from the Duplication chamber, asked "What did I miss?"
Ron answered "We have 2 GP robots left in Squirrel Force and the gang just made a hilariously bad attempt to capture them."
Abe looked at the screen, which showed the 2 robots tearing off the last of the nets. The robots were strong enough that the thin nets tore like tissue paper.
Something flickered at the edge of the screen.
"What was that?"
"I think it was a man, but he appeared and disappeared so fast I'm not sure."
Just then a man appeared right next to the 2 GP robots.
He was wearing an all-black ninja costume, with a black demon mask, and his black belt and black bandoleer were festooned with knives and grenades.
When he appeared, his hands were already on the pins of two of his grenades.
But he didn't pull the pins, as it appeared he had been ready to do.
Instead he put his hands on his eyes and began rubbing, to try to fix the irritation that the invisible yet still very present "tear gas" - actually a CS gas variant Grandpa had found and liked - was causing.
But rubbing your eyes is exactly the wrong response to tear-gas. This made them even more irritated and watery.
Soon the man couldn't see at all, and stumbled away from the robots, fleeing into a nearby alleyway by foot, while the distracted robots both fired at a distant PTRS-41.
Abe sounded disgusted as he said "All black again. The five bad-guys I ran into in town were all wearing black. And so is this guy. Doesn't anyone in this town wear any color but basic black?"
Ron's personality was such that he could not resist such an opening.
He commented, as deadpan as possible, "Of course you jest! 'Basic black' indeed! That one was wearing midnight black, with deep black edging, blacker-then-black accents and light black highlights. Learn your colors, you fashion-cretin."
That got another chuckle from the room, as hoped.
Abe said, "yah yah, have your laughs now while you can - it's your turn in the Duplication chamber. There's no time to lose - the ferries with the second wave of our attack have already launched, loaded with vehicles and robots. Our Duplicates will catch up to them in speedboats, but the timing is tight, so go, and say hello to your toothache for me."
At the edge of the command center, Dinah looked up at Simon and asked "Wave two?"
Simon said, "Yah, this wave started with 17 robots and a Duplicate. now it's down to 5 robots and a Duplicate. It doesn't look like it will succeed, so we're sending a second wave. We don't give up."
"Oh, that's good." Dinah giggled, "Oni-lee gave up just now - that was him in the all-black plus some-more-black costume who appeared and then ran away. Most times other people run away from him, 'cause he's real dangerous. He teleports anywhere he can see, and leaves behind a copy of himself that uses grenades to explode and blow up others with him. How did you make him run away?"
Simon laughed, "the answer is there in what you just said - he doesn't blow up, just his duplicates do. And he leaves those behind when he teleports. And he teleports wherever he can see. But what you didn't notice is that he could no longer see. He was standing in a cloud of tear-gas. That makes your eyes water a whole lot - so much you can't see. So his whole trick was spoiled. Too bad he got away - it sounds like he is a really bad man."
"Yah," Dinah agreed, "He has killed lots of people who didn't do anything to him."
She got quieter, "you guys kill people too, but only when they deserve it. There's a big difference!"
Simon smiled, "Thanks Dinah. That's right - we try real hard not to hurt anybody who doesn't deserve it. But we don't fool around when they do deserve it: the world becomes a little bit better place every time someone who enjoys hurting others gets put down."
Dinah had become distracted partway through that last bit. Her eyes were fixed on the screen and she said "ooh, pretty!"
The screen was showing a view from the front - looking west towards the approaching Wombat Force - of the old hotel where the captive crew-members were being held.
Filling the screen were some flower-beds, a green lawn, a brightly-painted pagoda by the street, and several multi-colored glass statues of dragons, all of which decorated the business-entrance side of the establishment.
Even brothels do better business when they look nice, or so the gang had apparently thought.
From the side Bas-Ra and Egg Force were approaching, all they could see of the objective was a parking lot full of cars that were mostly junk.
On the main display screen showing the front of the objective, the small decorative pagoda by the sidewalk suddenly dropped some false panels, revealing the firing ports of the bunker the pagoda really was.
Abe turned and left the battleship's command center, saying "don't hold up the second wave for me - I'll catch up to you."
The pagoda-bunker was already firing.
Captain Basil split the main display screen, so the left half still showed the view down the street from the hotel just as it had a moment ago. But the view on the right half of the screen now slid towards, and then into the pagoda, so all in the command center could see the two gang goons there operating a heavy machine-gun as it shot at the two remaining robots of Wombat Force, a mere two blocks away.
Those two GP robots were each hit multiple times, and most of the hits penetrated their armor. Before they went down, they hit the bunker's firing port with a plasma blast, destroying the gun and the people there.
It wasn't pretty.
Captain Basil shut off that half of the display, then changed it to show Squirrel Force, which was down to two GP robots.
Then, since nothing was left of Wombat Force, he switched the other side of the display to show Egg Force, which was down to a combat robot and Bas-Ra in his jeep.
Bas-Oon, looking at his reference works, announced "That was a Chinese W85 14.5mm heavy machine-gun and it was firing SLAP, or Saboted Light -Armor Penetrator, rounds. This gang seems to use mostly Chinese copies of Russian military gear."
All in the command center heard someone yell "I am Lung!" and turned to the screen showing Egg Force.
On that screen, yet another crazy tattooed man, shirtless and masked, though bigger than the former two and somewhat scaly like a snake, now stood in the middle of the street yelling at Egg Force.
Bas-Ra drew a pistol, twisted in his driver's seat and looked over his gun sights at the crazy man behind him. He took careful aim, and fired his disintegrator.
The green disintegration ray hit the crazy man square in the chest, and turned that into powder. Some of the powder - the temporarily-neutral electrons - fell straight down. The rest - the positively-charged nuclei - vigorously repelled each-other in a rapidly expanding cloud, with an accompanying burst of lightning.
What was left of the crazy man dropped to the ground.
This kind of driving would have been far more dangerous to do, but Bas-Ra could still see what was in front of the moving jeep, by watching through the eyes of his Duplicates, who were themselves watching it on the command center's view screen.
He wasn't used to it, so the jeep wobbled a little before he turned back around. But he didn't lose control.
The second crack of lightning came, indicating the electrons temporarily suppressed by the disintegration ray had regained their change and then had repelled each-other like the protons had before them.
Then suddenly Bas-Ra was swerving like a madman, careening all over the road, in an effort to dodge the incoming missile his Duplicates had seen on screen, approaching him from 500 yards behind him.
His combat robot activated a smoke grenade, in response to Bas-Ket's order to do so.
Bas-Oon had identified the missile as an AT-3 Sagger anti-tank missile, and those could sometimes be defeated by making the person guiding the missile lose sight of the target.
Then the combat robot fired everything it had at the missile's origin point, since that could hit and kill the operator, and, failing that, could sometimes make the missile operator flinch and miss.
The combat robot was accurate - it could see through the smoke with both radar and infrared sensors - yet the Sagger's operator had used the full length of the 15-meter lead wire to get away from the launcher and yet still guide the missile.
The Sagger is slow for a missile, taking almost 5 seconds to fly 500 yards, so Bas-Ra's wild dodging and the robot's shooting seemed to go on forever.
Bas-Ra's jeep moved almost 60 feet during that 5 seconds. He steered by watching the battleship's display screen - which was switched to infra-red so it could see through the smoke - through the eyes of his Duplicates.
The missile did not hit the jeep - not directly.
The 26 pound AT-3 missile hit the combat robot and it's 7.7 pound HEAT (High-Explosive Anti-Tank) warhead burned a hole through the middle of its target, destroying sensitive electronics there and disabling it completely.
The blast also sent quite a bit of shrapnel in all directions, despite focusing much of its force onto one point.
Bas-Ra had been behind the combat robot, but was about 40 feet ahead of it when the Sagger missile went off.
A hand-grenade can be lethal at that range, and this missile had several times as much explosive as a hand-grenade does.
Some shrapnel went through Bas-Ra and his jeep and destroyed both.
Egg Force was wiped out, leaving only Squirrel Force.
Captain Basil adjusted the main screen, but left the displays on the ceilings and walls as they were for now, even though the forces they'd been focused on were destroyed.
The main screen now showed just Squirrel Force. It's 2 remaining GP robots were still running towards the objective and only a block and a half away from it.
A moment later, a PTRS-41 opened fire from an alley. It hit one GP robot 3 times before the other GP robot disintegrated the PTRS and its crew.
But while the last robot was focused on the PTRS, a man with an RPG-7 came out of a doorway behind the robot, and fired at it.
The Rocket-Propelled Grenade hit the only remaining robot in the head.
And just like that Squirrel Force was no more.
In the Agamemnon's command center, Dinah looked up at Simon, and said, quizzically, "You lost?"
Simon smiled down at the 12-year-old, "Don't look at it that way my friend. Think of it, not as a failed rescue attempt, but as a successful probing attack. We learned a lot about their defenses, took out some of those defenses, and doing so cost us nothing but a little time. They've lost things they can't replace, and we haven't."
"Speaking of defenses," Ron piped up, "what is it with crazy people willing to take insane risks for the opportunity to yell 'I am Lung!'? Is that some kind of suicidal battle-cry like 'Banzai'?"
Dinah laughed, "No, he really is Lung, all three of them were. He regenerates, and gets bigger and stronger the longer he stays in combat."
"So, he relies on physical strength to attack his foes?" Ron asked.
"Yup!" Dinah nodded.
"Well, no worries, then." Ron smiled.
"Well, that plus fire." Dinah added.
"Does the fire go out very far from him?"
"Nope."
"Still no worries then. We don't need to wrestle him. We have guns."
As if on cue, the sound of gunfire came again from the display screen on the left wall, which had gone silent when the last robot in Wombat Force was destroyed.
Now that screen showed a series of rockets coming from above and hitting the pagoda-bunker in front of the objective.
At almost the same time, the screen on the right-hand wall started showing rockets coming from the sky and hitting the AT-3 Sagger launcher.
Captain Boz adjusted the main screen to look skyward.
After a moment of panning around, he found what he was looking for.
Six Me-163 Komets were diving on the city.
Half were currently just gliding, so they moved slowly and could hold their laser designators on the targets longer.
The other three were firing laser-guided rockets into the recent combat zones.
Grandpa had fitted them with 70mm rocket pods, with 19 rockets tubes per pod, under each wing
And it looked like they intended to use them all, to further weaken the gang defenses before Wave Two got there.
The original Abe, seated in his usual spot at the main console, smiled, "I've always wanted to actually use those, and this seemed like a good chance. So I sent in 6 Duplicates, each with a Komet, to take out known defenses and targets of opportunity. When they run out of targets or ammo, they'll fly above the ferries carrying Wave Two, dismiss the Komets, and skydive down to the moving ferries to join the rest of us. I said I'd catch up - that's how."
Dinah said "that sounds hard - what if you miss the moving ferries?"
Abe laughed "Little girl, I was a skydiving instructor for a long time before coming on this trip. This will be a piece of cake."
"Not if we keep dawdling," Captain Basil interjected. "Come on folks. 'All ashore that's going ashore', as they say. Everybody to your speedboat, Wave Two is up to bat!"
All the Duplicates of Basil, Ron, Simon, Abe, and Big Tom left the room, leaving the originals, plus Beth and her Duplicates, to operate the ship and its consoles.
"What's going on?" Dinah asked.
Simon answered from the Determine Destiny Console, "Three ferries full of combat vehicles and robots left for shore a while ago. Ferries move kinda slowly, so a speedboat launched about now will reach them just before they get to shore. So the Duplicates will get to the ferries, crew the vehicles, and be able to just drive down the ramp, ready for combat. They'll drive to the objective - the old hotel where the gang is holding our crew-mates captive, and free those captives, then drive back to the ferries to come to the ship."
"I thought the Captain said that just driving straight in was dumb," offered the confused girl.
"Yes," Boz offered from where he sat at the visual scanners, "frontal assault is a great way to take lots of losses, because you'll be facing the enemy's best defenses. But we're sending a stronger force this time, and we've already weakened them, so this may succeed, and it costs us nothing but time to try. And," he grinned, gesturing at the repair robots working on the Teleportation Console, "pretty soon we will be able to open teleportation portals again, and when we do, all the enemy's defenses will be focused on defending from frontal assaults. That should make it a lot easier to pop in, grab our folks, and go."
"What's that", said the distractable girl, pointing at the screen on the left-hand wall.
Half a dozen gang members were attaching ropes to a disabled combat robot, while a flatbed tow truck backed up to it.
"It looks like they like our robots and want to take them somewhere, probably to disassemble them, and learn how they work, so they can make their own." Simon said.
Another screen showed a gang member taking the disintegrator pistol from a broken robot.
"Naughty-naughty" Boz commented, as he changed consoles. "I don't think you folks can be trusted with those, so I'm going to have to take them away from you."
He set about dismissing all the Replicated robots, weapons, and vehicles not currently in use by his own forces.