He stopped and looked back. Twilight was falling upon the ground but the last sun rays still played on their metal coverings and he could clearly see them in the distance. He managed to keep his distance from them, but he would soon tire out, and they would come down upon him like vultures. He had to fight them now — it would be more difficult for him when he tired out. He breathed in a gulp of air and looked around. There was no convenient place to set his back against. Only the pile of rocks, waist high, could do. He went to it slowly, saving his energy.

The ugly, metal creatures were getting near fast, with unchangeable speed. They came closer and spread in an arc to encircle him. They were only seven, and that surprised the man, who was waiting calmly for them. He got angry at himself, and thought that he could have exterminated them earlier and spared himself the running. He managed to put down his anger, and stood up. He gripped his sword, stuck into the ground, and pulled it out. He threw it several times from one hand to the other, and waited. He was ready for them.

They were fast. He was faster. His specially strengthened muscles helped him move at a speed he had only dreamt of once. He was alone. They were seven. They did not have a chance.

The first robot was upon him and started lifting its arms. He stuck his sword in its chest, and it could not finish its motion. He put his foot against its armor, and pulled out his sword. Then he spun around, and, using the power and inertia of his motion, cut off the head of the next robot that had crept behind his back. The other five closed the circle, but remained at a certain distance. For a few seconds, they were looking at each other without making any moves. Then he saw that one of them was closer to him than the others, and attacked. He made a false move at the near-by robot, twisted, and stuck the sword in his real target’s chest. The strong blow made it fall to the ground, and he jumped over it, landed by its head, and was no longer inside the circle. There were four left. The one on his right reached for his sword, still stuck in the metal. He had no time to pull it out, and he was forced to repel the attack bare-handed. The flesh proved to be stronger than the metal, and the robot’s wrists were broken by the vertical blow. Then it tried to enfold him with the remains of its arms, but he ducked, and escaped the strangling embrace. He rolled between its legs, stood up, and put his hands to its head. The robot had no neck to be broken, so he just uprooted its head, and left it swinging on a thin cable, accidentally left intact. He stepped aside to make room for the body to fall.

The last three attacked him simultaneously. Two of them grabbed his arms, the third reached for his head, but met a violent kick that bent its armor inside. It was thrown back, landed on its back, and produced squeaking sounds, unable to move. He strained his muscles, lifted the two robots off the ground, and shoved them one against the other, in front of him. They loosened their grips, and he shook them off. He stepped back, and pulled out his sword. His blow was so powerful that it cut through the waists of the two of them together. He went to the squeaking one, and cut its head off. Sounds and motions ended abruptly.

* * *

“Report, A406.”

“Mission incomplete, Main Brain.”

“Casualties?”

“All seven units, Main Brain.”

“Is the target undamaged?”

“Completely undamaged, Main Brain.”

“We are behind our schedule, A406. Send out two times seven units.”

“Yes, Main Brain.”

“Execute, A406.”

* * *

The hamlet was hushed and dark. That was the way after the Fire War. With the falling of the evening, all the families went home, and barricaded themselves. No one went out, not even to go to the neighbors. It was not men the villagers were afraid of — billions burned in the War. The robots, the last creations of humankind, swarmed Mother Earth. Big, ugly, armor-plated, they were invulnerable to common fire-arms. The people were forced to rediscover the long-forgotten art of the blacksmiths. Soon, they started producing blades so sharp, that even the ancient Japanese blacksmiths would have envied them.

And the robots kept on assaulting. They slaughtered some of the people, most were taken prisoners. No one could hide from their omnipotent eye. Their base was on the equator, in the very heart of Africa. It was the starting point of their raids, it was where they kept the prisoners. Slowly, but methodically, they searched every place on the globe. They left a trail of destruction behind them. The small, southern Australian hamlet was the last, still populated, place. The people were not aware of this, but the robots were already on their way to them, to finish their job.

Suddenly, the night became brighter than day. The robots had surrounded the hamlet, and powerful floodlights lit the battlefield-to-be. The light penetrated even through the blankets that the people had put on the windows. It woke up the sleeping, and they realized that the time had come. Men, women and children armed themselves, and waited for the attack. They did not expect any mercy, and did not ask for it either. Death was preferred, than what the robots did to their prisoners, as rumors had it. The rumors were unsubstantiated, of course, because no one had yet escaped from the robot’s captivity, but the rich human imagination had always been the characteristic feature that distinguished men from artificially created life.

A husky voice with metallic notes offered the people to surrender. There was not even laughter as an answer. The robots waited for a few minutes, and then started knocking down the doors of the houses. They rushed inside — and sharpened swords met them. The men had an advantage over the robots — they wanted to damage them beyond repair. The robots were mostly guarding themselves, they needed prisoners, but they also killed when required. They were acting in total opposition of the First Law of Robotics, but what had remained normal after the War?

He realized that they were like trapped foxes in the little rooms. He opened the door at once, darted out on the street, and called to everybody to do the same. Not many people followed him. He was young and strong. He had no wife and children. The adrenaline pulsed in his brain and urged him to act. It was easy to play the hero like that. The hard part comes when one has a family to take care of. One can not throw himself headlong in the arms of Death. The sedated ones thought about their relatives, not about the advantages of the fight in the open, and, naturally, became an easy prey for the robots.

The fight on the streets did not last long either. The perpetual undernourishment after the War had lessened the men’s strength considerably. They were no equal opponents to the well oiled fighting machines. They succeeded in wrecking some of the robots, but the rest broke down their resistance. He received a mighty blow on the back of his head, and darkness fell before his eyes.

* * *

“Report, A406.”

“Mission incomplete, Main Brain.”

“Casualties?”

“All two times seven units, Main Brain.”

“Is the target undamaged?”

“Negative, Main Brain. He has a serious damage in the right thigh, and the left arm is cut off above the elbow.”

“Your orders were to bring him here undamaged, A406.”

“Yes, Main Brain. But he–”

“Enough, A406. Send out three times seven units. In case you fail again, next time you’ll go yourself, too. Execute, A406.”

* * *

The first thing he saw, when he regained consciousness, was the robot towering above him. He tried to raise an arm, and push the creature away, but he was too weak. The strain was too much for him, and he fainted again. The second time he regained consciousness, he found himself lying in something like a crystal coffin. He felt stronger now. He raised his arms, and pushed at the lid. To his surprise, it moved. He pushed it aside, and sat up with a lot of effort. His muscles felt stiff after the confinement — he did not know for how long he had been immobilized. He looked around, and saw hundreds of coffins like his own, arranged in long rows in the vast hall. Most of them held bodies of men. They looked dead, but he saw the ethereal clouds of exhalation from their nostrils. Living corpses, he thought with disgust.

Two robots approached him, and helped him get up. He had not noticed them before that – it was as if they came out of thin air. They did not appear hostile, and carried no weapons. He stared at them, and waited silently. The first turned its back to him, and moved. The other pushed him to follow, and walked behind him itself. They took him to a hall, where there was another surprise waiting for him. The hall was equipped with lots of training gears for body-building. While he was scanning them, the robots walked out through the door, and left him alone. Obviously, his new masters wanted him to regain his physical strength again, but the question was why. They could hardly need slaves for any kind of hard work. It was something else, but what, he had no idea. He decided to postpone the thinking part for some time, and follow the doctor’s advice. He was still alive, and if he wanted to escape, he had to regain his strength. He would never become a willing slave to the hateful robots. He stretched himself, and sat at the first training gear.

That day should have been called Surprise Day. The consecutive surprise shocked him, so that he decided that the time for thinking had come. Something was wrong. He looked at the display of the gear again, and saw the number 100 again. And he had lifted it with such an ease. He surveyed his arms, and they appeared larger. He stood up, and went to the mirror by the door. He looked good. Damn, he looked very good. Even before the War and the famine, he had not had such a muscle mass. They had done something to him while being unconscious. The question “why” returned to his head, but the answer once again failed to appear. He returned to the gear, and dialed 200 on the panel. He tried to lift the weight cautiously, but met almost no resistance. He tried at 300, 400, 500 pounds. His powers betrayed him only at 600. Nevertheless, he smiled almost happily. The escape did not seem so unreal any more.

During the next three hours, he tried all the gears, enjoying his newly acquired strength. His muscles screamed with agony when the robots came back, but he was satisfied. They conducted him between themselves back to his crystal bed. He refused to lie down when they reached it. They grabbed him, and pushed him down in spite of his ferocious struggle. They put the lid upon him, and he fell asleep at once.

When he woke up, they were already waiting for him. They took him to the training hall, and left him alone again. They returned later, and took him back to the coffin.

Every time he passed by his unmoving fellows, he made a silent vow for revenge. He was training till he was dropping of exhaustion, and was biding his time. The return to the coffin turned into a ritual. He always resisted their attempts to put him to sleep, but they still overpowered him. According to his calculations — he counted the wake-sleep cycle for one day — it took him a little more than six months to lift the 2,800-pound weight. That same evening he threw the two robots off himself. He looked at them triumphantly, and lay in the coffin by himself. The time was ripe.

On the next morning, he did not follow his guards. Instead, he stretched out, and assaulted them. In less than a minute they were a pile of scrap. His vows had come to life. He would destroy them all, and free the men.

He went to the nearest coffin. He leaned above it to make sure that the man inside was still breathing. He put his hands upon the lid, and pushed but it was as if nailed. He tried harder, but it still would not move. Then he stretched his arm forward, and hit it in the middle. The lid exploded in a thousand pieces. The man inside shivered, and coughed. He opened his eyes, but closed them at once, and convulsed. His cough ended suddenly, and he was dead. The fresh air was like poison to him.

An alarm filled the air with sounds, but he was deaf to them. He was staring at the dead body, and a tear was rolling down his cheek. He did the same with the next coffin, but he had the same result. He fell into despair, but decided not to leave them in the hands of the robots. He started breaking the crystal tombs in succession. Some robots came in, summoned by the alarm. He was throwing them off himself, as the wild boar scatters the pack of hounds, and kept on demolishing. He had just a few more left, but the robots increased in number. He had damaged some robots, making no difference between them and the coffins. He speeded towards the last one, but five robots blocked his way. Two were easy to destroy, but many more came from behind them. He had to give up. A soul would remain unsaved. He could only notice that it was a woman, before he was forced to turn back and run. Some of the metal monsters tried to stop him. He was pushing them aside, not slowing down. While roving around the corridors, he came upon an armory, and took the longest and sharpest sword. He continued to run, trying every door that looked like an exit. At last he found it, and got out of the building. It was night outside. He glanced at the moon, and barked at it. Then he put the sword in his belt, and moved away. No one followed.

* * *

“Report, A406.”

“Mission incomplete, Main Brain.”

“Casualties?”

“Two times seven units, Main Brain.”

“Is the target undamaged?”

“Negative, Main Brain. The target is destroyed.”

“Too bad, A406. We have to initiate Plan B. Gather all the units in the base.”

* * *

She had hidden herself well. The robots’ censors could not detect her, although she was not far. In fact, she was very close to them. She was standing on the roof of their base, hidden behind a satellite dish. She knew that there was no point of going anywhere, but that didn’t bother her. The mission he had started, would be hers to finish. The robots would be exterminated to the last. By her, personally. Armed with a sword and field-glasses, she was awaiting for her first clash with them — in her new life, as she defined it. She saw a group of robots coming out. She just had to wait for them to return.

They taught her well, better than him. Her strengthened muscles could bear as much as his could, her fighting abilities were second to none. The robots had added to this a vast knowledge about history, geography, physics, literature, philosophy. None of this was of any help to her. They did not teach her the only art she needed. The one that made humans the dominating race on this planet, but did not help them much during the Fire War. The art to survive. The robots didn’t need to teach her that. It ran in her veins. Every move she made, complied with it. And, when the last page of that textbook had been read, the post-scriptum read “Die with honor!”

It was getting dark. The robots were not visible yet. She was patiently scanning the horizon, paying the most attention to the direction they had taken off. Then she saw a blurred group of moving objects. They did not come from the direction she expected them, but it did not matter. Everyone would taste her steel — some sooner, some later. She stood up. She tried the sharpness of her sword on her thumb, and was satisfied with the drops of blood that appeared. She whirled it in the air, drawing invisible circles around herself. Then she went to the edge of the roof, and jumped down. The muscles of her legs absorbed the pressure, and it did not affect the upper part of her body. She ran two miles away from the building, to warm up, and stopped there. She liked the place and waited. Her first victims were coming.

* * *

“To all units. This is Main Brain. Plan A is cancelled. It is impossible for us to ensure the continuation of the human race after the death of the object of the male sex. We are now initiating Plan B. Approximate time for accomplishment — between 100 and 150 million years. Final objective — evolution of the life on Earth till the next coming of our creators, the humans. I order all units to build more purifying stations for air and water in order to restore the ecological balance faster…”

The End