Star Wars: Tales of the Bounty Hunters Read Online Free
Author: Kevin J. Anderson
operations to begin a plan to transform the entire galaxy.…
The Holowan Laboratories’ courier ship streaked toward Mechis III. IG-88 and his counterparts had already studied and analyzed every system aboard the unarmed and unarmored vessel. Its designers had opted to focus on speed and evasion, rather than combat or defense. The ship was a machine, as the assassin droids themselves were, though it was simply an automated cluster of components with no hope of achieving sentience.
Nevertheless, the craft served its purpose, taking them to their destination in record time. The IG-88s knew exactly how far they could push the engines, riding the limits to structural tolerances rather than the arbitrary red lines established by human engineers. The courier ship’s sophisticated comm systems and stealth shielding allowed the droids to remain hidden on approach. Mechis III would be the first step in a grand plan.
As they shot toward orbit like a hurled javelin, the four identical IG-88s manned separate communicationssystems. Each knew the delegated steps for the takeover. Speed was the utmost requirement right now—and the IG-88 assassin droids were very good at speed.
IG-88C struck the first blow, sending a tight-beam transmission to Mechis III’s global defense network, requesting an override and a cancellation of all intruder alarms. The moment the observation network responded with a query, IG-88C was able to delve deep into the code and effect his own request before the automated sensing grid could report their presence to the few human operators.
The individual IG-88s kept their computer minds linked as the plan proceeded. The defense systems of Mechis III were antiquated, installed long before the droid world became too important a commercial enterprise for anyone to consider sabotage or destruction—but IG-88’s needs were of a different order entirely.
Using the newly forged connection to the global security systems, IG-88D instantly downloaded full details of Mechis III: the industrial complexes, the assembly factories, the amount of human interference, a map of the planetary surface in various portions of the electromagnetic spectrum and, most important, a complete linear mapping—like a neural diagram—of the brainwork of the computer systems that ran Mechis III.
IG-88A took the lead and transmitted his self-replicating sentience programming into the main hubs on Mechis III, secretly taking over the vast electronic complexes and giving the immensely powerful computers something they had never conceived before—self-awareness … and loyalty.
Less than a minute after their arrival in the system, IG-88 was pleased to see that the groundwork for his total takeover had been laid.
• • •
The assembly line was boring as usual.
A career worker on Mechis III, Kalebb Orn had never understood why a human presence was required
here
, of all places. It seemed to serve no purpose. The droid manufacturing lines had gone without a glitch for at least the last century, but still company mandates required a human operator in some small percentage of the operations. Such as this one, chosen at random.
Kalebb Orn watched the big robotic crane arms moving, ratcheting from side to side and picking up heavy components with grasping electromagnetic claws. Everything from sheet metal and bulky armor plate to precise microchip motivators emerged from other parts of the kilometers-long facility, endlessly manufactured to never-changing specifications.
The self-designing assembly lines had grown so vast over centuries of operation, with new subsystems added, old ones enhanced, new models introduced into the production schedules and old obsolete versions phased out. Kalebb Orn did not have the mental capacity to comprehend all the manufacturing systems on Mechis III. He wasn’t sure anyone did.
For the last seventeen years he had watched bulky worker droids being assembled by the thousands. Heavy-duty
The Holowan Laboratories’ courier ship streaked toward Mechis III. IG-88 and his counterparts had already studied and analyzed every system aboard the unarmed and unarmored vessel. Its designers had opted to focus on speed and evasion, rather than combat or defense. The ship was a machine, as the assassin droids themselves were, though it was simply an automated cluster of components with no hope of achieving sentience.
Nevertheless, the craft served its purpose, taking them to their destination in record time. The IG-88s knew exactly how far they could push the engines, riding the limits to structural tolerances rather than the arbitrary red lines established by human engineers. The courier ship’s sophisticated comm systems and stealth shielding allowed the droids to remain hidden on approach. Mechis III would be the first step in a grand plan.
As they shot toward orbit like a hurled javelin, the four identical IG-88s manned separate communicationssystems. Each knew the delegated steps for the takeover. Speed was the utmost requirement right now—and the IG-88 assassin droids were very good at speed.
IG-88C struck the first blow, sending a tight-beam transmission to Mechis III’s global defense network, requesting an override and a cancellation of all intruder alarms. The moment the observation network responded with a query, IG-88C was able to delve deep into the code and effect his own request before the automated sensing grid could report their presence to the few human operators.
The individual IG-88s kept their computer minds linked as the plan proceeded. The defense systems of Mechis III were antiquated, installed long before the droid world became too important a commercial enterprise for anyone to consider sabotage or destruction—but IG-88’s needs were of a different order entirely.
Using the newly forged connection to the global security systems, IG-88D instantly downloaded full details of Mechis III: the industrial complexes, the assembly factories, the amount of human interference, a map of the planetary surface in various portions of the electromagnetic spectrum and, most important, a complete linear mapping—like a neural diagram—of the brainwork of the computer systems that ran Mechis III.
IG-88A took the lead and transmitted his self-replicating sentience programming into the main hubs on Mechis III, secretly taking over the vast electronic complexes and giving the immensely powerful computers something they had never conceived before—self-awareness … and loyalty.
Less than a minute after their arrival in the system, IG-88 was pleased to see that the groundwork for his total takeover had been laid.
• • •
The assembly line was boring as usual.
A career worker on Mechis III, Kalebb Orn had never understood why a human presence was required
here
, of all places. It seemed to serve no purpose. The droid manufacturing lines had gone without a glitch for at least the last century, but still company mandates required a human operator in some small percentage of the operations. Such as this one, chosen at random.
Kalebb Orn watched the big robotic crane arms moving, ratcheting from side to side and picking up heavy components with grasping electromagnetic claws. Everything from sheet metal and bulky armor plate to precise microchip motivators emerged from other parts of the kilometers-long facility, endlessly manufactured to never-changing specifications.
The self-designing assembly lines had grown so vast over centuries of operation, with new subsystems added, old ones enhanced, new models introduced into the production schedules and old obsolete versions phased out. Kalebb Orn did not have the mental capacity to comprehend all the manufacturing systems on Mechis III. He wasn’t sure anyone did.
For the last seventeen years he had watched bulky worker droids being assembled by the thousands. Heavy-duty
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