"Tales Of The Bounty Hunters (Kevin Anderson)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Anderson Kevin J)

words, gnashing her teeth on every consonant. Circular
blue lenses without frames were implanted over her
eyes like frameless spectacles. A credit line slugged
across the image under her ferociously smiling face.
"Chief Technician Loruss, Manager IG Series Proto-
type Project."
"Greetings, Imperial Supervisor Gurdun," she said.
"This report is to serve as a synopsis of the final phase
of our project. As you know, Holowan Laboratories was
commissioned to develop a series of assassin droids
with sophisticated, experimental sentience program-
ming. They were to be resourceful and innovative and
absolutely relentless at carrying out whichever missions
the Imperial authorities choose to program into
them."
She rubbed her hands together. Her knuckles were
very large, like boils in the middles of her fingers. "I
am pleased to report that our greatest cyberneticists
have presented me with numerous breakthroughs, all
of which have been incorporated into the IG series.
Because our timeframe is so short and the Empire's
need is so great for efficient covert assassins, we have
not gone through the usual rigorous testing proce-
dures, but we are confident they will function admira-
bly, though a bit of fine-tuning may be required before
operational status is achieved."
She continued with a long and tedious explanation
of improvements to droid neural pathways, how the
usual inhibition systems had been bypassed. IG-88 stud-
ied all this information, but believed none of it. It was
obvious Loruss didn't know what she was talking about,
but her words sounded technical, and she spoke them
impressively, no doubt to befuddle Imperial Supervisor
Gurdun.
IG-88 closed the file. He could sense that his crack-
ling neural pathways had already progressed far beyond
anything his designers had anticipated.
Now he knew who he was and why he was here in this
laboratory. He and his identical counterparts had been
built to serve the Empire, to fight and kill, to seek out
and destroy the targets selected by Imperial masters.
IG-88's assassin programming was strong and compel-
ling, but he was less pleased that he must follow orders
from these inferior biological beings. He was a special
kind of droid beyond the capabilities of other ma-
chines. Superior.
I think, therefore I am.
By now, five seconds had passed since his awakening.
It was time for action, so he looked at the biological
creatures near him inside the laboratory.