“Now, you all must have misunderstood me,” said Harry. “I never said we were gonna get sent to that asteroid, did I? I said that’s where the robots was from, that’s all. Now, here we are on a planet with an unknown enemy. Who’s to say it ain’t the renegade robots, huh? How you know it ain’t, Street?”
“Hmmm…” Street scratched his head. “Well, you got me there, Sarge.” He looked around at his companions again, fishing for support.
Chocolate Harry didn’t give the moment of silence a chance to linger. “Now, the thing about a robot is, it’s a machine,” he said. “You can’t fight a robot like you would a regular organic sophont. These Zenobian stun rays, they ain’t worth a nickel ‘gainst a bot, no way.”
“I can see that could be a problem,” said Brick, nodding. She’d experienced the stun ray firsthand and was among the company’s best long-range experts with it. Then she furrowed her brow and said, “But it’s only a problem if the robots show up here. How do we know they’re going to show up, Sarge?”
“Well, that’s where an old legionnaire like me can just feel a few things in his bones,” said Chocolate Harry, leaning back and slipping the bayonet back into its sheath. “These Zenobians, they’ve had the stun ray longer than anybody, right?”
“Yeah, I guess so,” said Brick. The others nodded, too. It seemed a logical conclusion.
Chocolate Harry spread the fingers of his left hand and began to count off his points as he made them. “So, they call us here. That’s gotta mean they found an enemy they can’t handle, right?”