The Stainless Steel Rat's Revenge

"Keep holding them. They shouldn't try the heavy stuff for awhile since they still hope to get me alive." I waved over the factory owner who seemed ready to go on with her sales talk. "Fayda, will you give me a quick sketch of the ground plan of the building and the immediate area around it."

She drew quickly and accurately, military training no doubt, indicating doors and windows and the surrounding streets.

"What do your robutlers look like?" I asked.

"Roughly humanoid in form and size, the optimum shape for a home environment. In addition—"

"That's fine. How many do you have ready to go, field tested or whatever you call it, with their little power packs charged?"

She frowned in thought. "I'll have to check with shipping, but at a rough guess I would say between 150 and 200."

"That will be just perfect for our needs. Would you be terribly put out—your insurance might cover it—if they were destroyed in the cause of Burada freedom?"

"Every Firtina robutler would willingly die, happily, if it had any emotions for the cause. Though of course they are incapable of bearing arms or of violent acts of any kind."

"They don't have to. We can take care of that. Our robutler brigade will be the diversion that gets us out of here. Now come close girls and I'll tell you the plan."

The old diGriz brain was really turning over at last. The firing in the background only stimulated me to grander efforts, while I was buoyed up on a wave of cheerful enthusiasm. Within minutes the preparations were being made, and within a half an hour the troops were ready to attack.

"You know your orders?" I asked the dimly lit shipping bay full of robots.

"That we do sir, yes sir, thank you sir," they all answered in the best of cultured accents.

"Then prepare to depart. What you do now is a far far better thing than you would have ever done in an electronic lifetime of domestic service. When I say leave, each to its appointed task."

"Very kind sir, thank you sir."

There were over a hundred here in the shipping bay of the factory, our main diversionary attack. They stood in neat rows, humming and eager to go. The front ranks were dressed in all the excess garments we had been able to assemble; some with uniform hats, others with jackets, still fewer wearing slacks. Most of the clothing had been donated piecemeal by the female shocktroops, which fact was not doing me much good in my new marital status. There was entirely too much tanned flesh around for a man to completely ignore. It was almost a pleasure to be with the robots for a change. Their forms were sleek but hard, their dress inconsistent and revealing of nothing of interest. And each of them clutched a length of pipe or plastic or some other object resembling a weapon. In the confusion that was soon to come my hope was that they would be mistaken for human attackers. I looked at my watch and raised the com-radio to my mouth.

"Stand by all units. Fifteen seconds to zero. Bombers stand ready. Keep away from the windows until the last second. Ready, keep low… trigger your bombs… THROW!"

There was a series of dull explosions from the street outside, that would be echoed on all sides of the building, as the girls heaved the bombs from the upper stories. Smoke bombs for the most part, though there were some irritants and sleep gas mixed in with them. I gave the bombs five seconds to maximum density then hit the garage door switches. The doors rumbled up to reveal little other than twisting coils of smoke that instantly began to pour into the garage.

"Go, my loyal troops, go!" I ordered and every left foot shot forward as one, and the ranks of my robot brigade surged forward.

"Thanking you sir!" mellifluously sounded in perfect tones from those metallic throats, and I retreated as they ran by.

There was firing now, from the windows above, echoed instantly by the troops outside. According to plan. I looked at my watch as I ran. Fifteen seconds from zero, time for the second wave. "All other robutler units—now!" I ordered into the com-radio.

At that moment, from the other doors and exits of the factory, into the shroud of smoke and gas, the remaining robots should be going into action. I had not taken the time to try and rig an eavesdropping circuit on the enemy's command net, but I could just imagine what was happening now. What I hoped was happening now.

The building was surrounded, all their troops alert, our stronghold visible in all details in the warm afternoon sunlight. Then the sudden change, smoke, chemical irritants, shrouding the building on all sides. A breakout obviously—and there it was! Dim figures in the smoke, firing, get them, shoot to kill. Zoing, zoing! Take that you rotten Burada guerrilla fink! What fighters these Burada are—men of steel!—shoot them and they don't fall. Panic in the smoke. The word that there are other breakouts. Which was the real one, which a cover? How to mass the troops? Where should the reserves be sent?