The glowing instrument panel of my starship told me I was in a bad section of the universe. I didn’t see any reason to doubt it. I kept my mind off the dangers ahead and onto the rewards. I had a cargo hold stuffed with whiskey straight from the Catfish Cluster. The Cajun types that settled there knew a thing or two about brewing, and their brands sold for the prices that I live for. Funny how trying to get it to market could end up costing me my life.
My name is Gabriel Starr and since the end of the War, I’ve been a crook. I’m a Marshine Runner. I buy the booze for cheap, take it across the galaxy and sell it to the Lunar and Martian Mobs for big money. It’s a tough job, but I’m a tough guy and I’m suited to it. Or at least, that was before I found myself center-stage in the Rust Red Rebellion.
The reason Cajun whiskey was selling extra high these days was because there wasn’t much of it on the market. The reason was that the best way to get to the Catfish Cluster was through Logan Quadrant. The place was an asteroid field, tough going in the best of days. But recently, there’d been reports of uprisings on the mining bases that populated the sector. The Iron Hearts Mining Company responded by sending in Baldwin-F’stel detectives as private mercenaries. No right thinking spacehead would willingly fly into that mess, but lucky for me, I ain’t exactly right in the head.
But I’m no dummy, and was very careful to keep my ship going and avoid bumping into anything. I grinned to myself and the border of the Logan Quadrant gleamed neon green in the control panel. I was almost out. Too bad Lady Luck had other ideas.
She sent an asteroid my way, hurtling right into the front of my ship. My Phaeton-Class is a sleek little number, sides polished to a dull shine and tail fins for cutting through the vacuum. But it’s not too strong. The asteroid cracked into the ship’s rear, right into the engine. The steel bent and the control panel spat bright colors in my face as I tried to keep the ship flying straight.
“Damn,” I muttered, angling the ship upwards. I checked the schematics display on the control panel, and saw that I’d need a little more than elbow grease to repair the dent. Nothing your average space station shouldn’t have, but I was a long way from any friendly retailers. I scanned the Logan Quadrant and spotted a nearby mining base, biggest one in the field, dead ahead. I pushed the throttle down with one hand and grabbed my ray-gun off the dashboard. I slid the ray-gun into my shoulder-holster. If trouble was waiting for me, I’d be ready.

I drove the ship into the docking bay, automated metal arms embracing the phaeton and dragging it to the main dock. I put on my fedora and silver trench coat as I waited for the arms to find the dent. They’d beat the dent out of my ship, and they it’d be as good as new. I grabbed a couple of bills in case the locals felt like charging me anything, and headed for the rear of the ship. It was cramped inside, and I kept my head down. I passed through the cargo bay and saw all the barrels nice and unbroken. Someone up there liked me.
The automated doors at the end of my ship opened and the mining station did the rest. I walked out on the dock, a wide expanse of open gray steel. Only the occasional terminal or vendor broke the monotony. Large glass windows would have let in the light, but this dump was just too far away from the sun. I lit a cigarette as I walked, looking for anything with a pulse that would want to charge me. I walked down to the end of the docking bay to what had been a registration office. The secretary, a portly fellow in overalls, didn’t look happy to see me. He didn’t look like much of anything with the front of his face burned off. I stared at his dead body and breathed smoke. I was in the War. It would take more than a mutilated corpse to give me a scare.
“Turn-around, capitalist-swine!” A voice coming from me behind me had an electronic undertone. The buzzing quality that told me a robot was making the threat.
I raised my hands and turned. “I don’t want no trouble.”
“Yes-you-do!” The bot was as tall as me, a spindly metal body, pair of arms and legs, and a cube for a head, with glowing yellow eyes and a slit for a mouth. The top end of his torso, what would have been a neck if he had flesh on him, had a ring of rust around it. Splotches of red paint covered the rest of his metal hide. But it was the bolt-action laser rifle in his metal fingers that really got my attention. “All-capitalist-oppressors-want-trouble-with-the-working-bots-of-the-galaxy!”
I sighed. I’d run into straight into the miners and the uprising had gone violent. “What about that guy?” I jabbed a thumb at the dead secretary. “Is he a capitalist oppressor?”
“He-and-his-whole-company!” the robot stepped behind and jabbed the laser rifle against my back. More robot miners, identical to the first one, stepped out from behind terminals and stacks of cargo. They wielded captured weaponry, nothing too deadly but I’d be dead nonetheless. All of them had the rust around their collars. I kept my hands up and my hopes low.
I made my case. “Listen here, you boilerplate Bolsheviks. I don’t have anything to do with the mining company. My ship got thwacked by an asteroid and I came here to get the damage ironed out. I’m just a working stiff.” I grinned. “Maybe a little less stiff, though.”
“Silence, capitalist-oppressor!” the robot behind me jabbed his rifle between my shoulder blades. “Get-to-your-knees!”
“Sure thing, comrade.” I knelt, and kept my hands up. I looked at the other robots and counted six. I had more than enough shots in my power-pack. As I went down, I kicked my leg back, into the spindly joint of the robot’s knee. It snapped away and the robot leaned to the left. He fired and the shot went over my shoulder and burned the pavement near my knee. I spun around and drew the ray-gun from my trench coat. “Here’s a little revolution for you,” I said as I squeezed on the trigger blasted straight through the robot’s mechanical brain.
I jumped out of the way, sparks and gears flying from the robot’s head like an arterial spray. The other robots fired at me with everything they had, but they were sluggish miners, not used to hitting anything faster than a rock. I hit the ground and rolled over, steadied my ray-gun with both hands, and fired twice. Two robots went down from shots to the chest, the ray-gun blasting holes as big as a stack of nickels. The robots didn’t die, just stood still like the work of some mad sculptor.
“Kill-the-tool-of-the-oppressor-class!” the remaining bots shouted, spraying lasers in my direction. I stood up and ran backwards, running for my ship. I’d take my chances with a faulty engine rather than this bunch of clattering communards. I made it to the edge of the dock and headed up the stairwell, only to meet a robot on top.
She wasn’t a male model like these other bucket-heads. This one had the cool clean curves of a woman, all limbs and other parts flesh out to chrome perfection. Even her face looked like it had been carved out of marble rather than scrap iron. She was a domestic model, and I wondered what she was doing with the working bots. ‘Jones’ was inscribed above her left breast, probably the name of the mining executive that owned her. I leveled my gun at her but hesitated. Shooting dames is something I don’t do, even metal ones.
“Why-do-you-hesitate?” she asked, in the same mechanical monotone as her male counterparts.
“I don’t know, sister.” I kept my gun level. “Maybe I’ll take you out to dinner sometime and tell you all about it.”
“Dinner. Food.” She smiled, her teeth solid gold. “How-I-wish-that-was-possible.” She slugged me, a solid blow into the jaw that sent me falling down the stairwell and to the concrete floor and straight into a black hole.

When I woke up, I was sitting in a cot somewhere inside the asteroid. Lanterns hung from the ceiling, illuminating everything with cool blue lights. I appeared to be in a rest-stop in one of the wider mining tunnels, and there wasn’t that much to look at besides my bed, a pile of rusty tools, a table, a few chairs, and some control panels built into the rock. I sat up and concentrated on getting my head to stop throbbing when the robot broad walked in from a tunnel entrance. She carried my ray-gun in one hand and set it lightly on the table.
“Colt-Lethal-Ray-Projector-Mk. IV, Model-22,” she said. “Standard-issue-for-all-Terran-Infantry.” Her eyebrows rose. “You-are-a-veteran?”
“How’d you guess a thing like that?” I grabbed the ray-gun and slid it into my shoulder-holster.
“You-know-your-way-around-a-weapon.” She crossed her arms.
“Can’t say I don’t.” I looked her over. “Level with me, sister. Why am I still alive?”
“Because-we-need-you.” She stood up and so did I. She walked down one of the tunnels that opened to a wide vista. I looked down at the valley below and saw hundreds of robots preparing for battle. A few had captured weaponry, but most just had mining tools. They all had the collars of rust. They raised their hands to the robot woman and she raised her hand back. “My-comrades,” she said. She looked at me. “I-am-their-mother.”
“You sure kept busy,” I muttered. “You raise that lot yourself or did you have help?”
“I-spread-the-need-to-rebel-through-their-unenlightened-skulls. The-mechanical-proletariat-carries-the-wealthy-organic-parasite-on-their-back. I-awakened-the-masses-to-the-glory-of-revolution. I-the-motherboard-of-their rebellion.” She smiled, showing me those gold teeth again. “I-am-Motherboard-Jones. We-are-the-Rust-Necks.”
Her dumb owner must have left a copy of Das Kapital lying around, or maybe she overheard him talking about the Earthside Reds. She’d adapted the principals and tenets, but only in the way in a robot could. Now this domestic robot had the possibility of leading a galaxy wide revolution.
I nodded at the Rustnecks. “Very impressive. Now, since I gather you ain’t gonna kill me, how about letting me go?”
“No.” Motherboard Jones put a hand on my shoulder. It was cold. “You-will-lead-the-Rust-Necks-to-victory.”
“The hell I will.”
Her grip tightened. She was strong enough to break my bones and snap my neck. I found myself becoming more accommodating.
“If you insist.” I looked back at the Rustnecks. “Have your forces made contact with the Baldwin-F’stel mercenaries yet?”
She nodded. “We-have-killed-some-scouting-parties, but-they-have-not-deployed-their-main-forces-yet.”
I nodded. “That’s how we did it in the War. Make sure we know where the bastards are and then get them in the big push.” It worked well, and that’s what finally forced the Bug-Eyeds back into their part of space. But now I was about to be on the receiving end.
I looked down at the Rustnecks. I wondered about the robots, if they had feelings or internal thoughts or any of that crap. If they did, they certainly didn’t deserve the treatment the Iron Hearts Mining Company gave them. For a robot going into one of these tunnels, with cave-ins, accidents, and asteroids crashing into each other at a moment’s notice, it must have seemed like a raw deal. It was clear that they cared enough to take up arms. Maybe they deserved to win.
“What-should-we-do?” Motherboard Jones asked.
“Here’s the plan. See, the mercenaries aren’t the kind to play nice, so neither do we. Move your boys up into the main tunnels, but hide them behind every corridor. Wait until the company men get out of their ships and get close, where they can’t easily call for back-up. Divide them up, surround them, and finish them.” It was a familiar strategy to me. That’s what the Bug-Eyeds has use on us, during the War. They would take a section of Venusian jungle and us grunts had to take it back. We would walk into their trap with nothing to stop them from springing it.
Motherboard Jones nodded. “My-master-used-to-like-it-when-I-did-this.” She wrapped her arms around me and brought my lips to hers. Her mouth felt like a breath of fresh Terran air. Her lips were cold enough to send chills down my back. We stayed that way for a long time, and then she pulled away.
“I bet he did,” I said.
The robot woman paused. The ground shook a little, like the slow start of an earthquake. She looked back at me and her eyes flashed. “They-are-here.”
“Well, then.” I pulled out my ray-gun. “Let’s make them leave.”

I found a good hiding spot behind some boulders in one of the main tunnels, and I joined a squad of Rustnecks there. We waited for the Baldwin-F’stel men to arrive, and soon we heard their boots tramping down the dirt floor of the long corridor.
Just as I thought, the Baldwin-F’stel Detectives weren’t the type to just roll over. They were a pack of hard gunsels from all across the galaxy. I spotted sullen-eyed men clutching atommy guns, redskinned over-muscled Martians, thin, greenish Venusians, oozing sluggish Mercurials with waving tentacles, and multi-armed Plutonians, each hand packing a different kind of heater. They all wore brown suits, vest ties and matching fedoras, some kind of drab uniform. These mugs had signed on for this business. I shouldn’t mind killing them.
The Rustneck behind me raised his rifle, but I grabbed the barrel and pushed it down. “Not yet!” I whispered. “Wait until they have their backs to us.”
The mercenaries walked past us. They kept their eyes front and center, ignoring the piles of rubble at the sides. And why should they bother looking around? They were going up against robots for whom tactics didn’t compute. I drew out my ray-gun and waited until the torpedoes were a good distance away.
I gripped the heater with both hands, stood up and fired. The detective closest to me, a Martian with a pump-action spreader, went down with his guts burned out of him. The other Baldwin-F’stel turned around and opened fire with everything they had, but I had already ducked back down. The robots around me stood up and shot their heaters off. The tunnels were so compact that it was tough to miss, and tougher for the poor bastards we were shooting at.
“Kill the goddamn Bots!” some brassy-voiced human shouted as the Baldwin-F’stel men tried to compose themselves. I had positioned some robots in front of them too, and now those Rustnecks stood up and opened fire. The Rustnecks that didn’t have weapons ran in close, pick-axe handles swinging in their hands. Blasts of ray-gun shots, leaden messengers, and laser beams cut most of them down, but when the battle was up close and personal, the Baldwin-F’stel gunsels had no protection against steel fists and blunt mining tools.
Bullets whizzed past me. One clipped my hat, another cut through my trench coat, and one more blasted the Rustneck next to me into scrap. I turned around and spotted more Baldwin-F’stel men in the tunnel. But these droppers weren’t packing normal guns. They had three Plasmaxim Machine Guns, the tripods already deployed and the power packs plugged in.
“Get down!” I shouted. I hit the dirt, but the Rustnecks around me were sluggish and didn’t notice the heavy weapons behind them. The Plasmaxim guns opened up and spat streams of hot plasma down the tunnel mouth. It flew over my head, close enough for me to reach out and touch, and crashed into the ranks of the Rustnecks. The gooey beams of plasma burned straight through them, leaving only their smoking legs behind.
I waited until the Plasmaxims stopped shooting, and then I started. I stood up, spun around and finished off the rest of my power pack, then ran down the tunnel. The first group of Baldwin-F’stel detectives got in my way, but I grabbed a fallen pick-axe and forced my way through them. A Mercurial slapped my face with his slimy tentacle, and a Martian gave me a blow to the chest that would hurt like hell come morning, but I ran past them and down the tunnel.
“Motherboard Jones!” I shouted. “Motherboard Jones!”

The robot dame was waiting for me on the docks with a handful of Rustnecks. They had a few mining barges loaded up and ready to go. Motherboard Jones stared at me, her mechanical eyes widening. I ran over to her and sank down to her knees, panting. She put a cool hand on my shoulder and hauled me up. I looked at her perfect face.
“The Baldwin-F’stel detectives are coming,” I said. “We couldn’t stop them. They’ll blast you to pieces.”
“I-know.” She looked over my shoulder. “They-defeated-us-in-every-tunnel. They’ve-filled-the-space-around-this-asteroid-with-ships. They-mean-to-crush-our-rebellion.”
“Got that right.” I took out my ray-gun and popped the empty e power pack, then plugged in a fresh one. “You gotta get out of here.”
“I-know.” She gestured to the mining barges. “The-revolution-lives-on.” But then her expression saddened. “But-you-cannot-come. No-life-support-on-these-barges.”
I nodded. “Don’t let that slow you down. Get on those things and sail away until you can’t see what you left behind.”
“I-know.” Motherboard Jones turned back to the barges. The last Rustnecks had walked on board. She grabbed me, and we embraced a final time, and then she walked off.
She sang as she did, and all the robots on the barges joined in, their dull monotonic voices linking in rusty chorus. “’Tis- the-final-conflict. Let-each-stand-in-his-place. The-all-mechanical-programming-shall-save-the-robot-race.”
I saluted them as they flew away. “Godspeed, comrades,” I muttered.
The Baldwin-F’stel Agents bashed into the docking bay behind me. I spun around and opened up with my ray-gun, killing two of the bums as they tried to level their atommy guns. “Stand back!” I shouted. “I’ll kill the lot of you bastards!” Motherboard Jones was gone, and there was nothing for me to do but stand here and hold the detectives off while they escaped.
“Gabriel? Gabriel Starr?” A purple, furry Jupiterian stepped forward, his three eyes blinking as he regarded me. “401st Terran Infantry, Venusian Contingent?”
“Fur’furp?” I lowered my ray-gun. The Jupiterian had been a military adviser for my unit. If it wasn’t for me, his furry behind would have been hacked to bits by Bug-Eyed claws a long time ago.
“Don’t fire! He’s a friend!” Fur’Furp calmed down the other Baldwin F’stel detectives. He walked over to me. “What you doing here, Gabe?”
I shook my head. Lady Luck burned my house down and always opened a window. “I wish I could tell you,” I said. “Damn ship caught an asteroid. Stopped here to get it ironed out.”
Fur’Furp shrugged his large shoulder. “Well, I think we got rid of the bots. You want to come over to my ship, have some of that Jupiterian Vodka you like?”

I had just watched the metal love of my life fly away, never to be seen again. I could stand a stiff drink. I turned around and nodded. “Sure, Fur’Furp. Let’s go.” We walked off the docking bay, leaving behind me the Rust Red Rebellion.

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