Robots Versus Humans (The Robot Planet Series Book 2) by Robert Chazz Chute Page B

She pushed a button and slid a silver lever forward. The train began to move east.
    Raphael, suspended above the ground by Bob’s arms, was fading fast. “You can let go, Bob.”
    “But if I let go you will be injured further, Raphael,” Bob said.
    “I can’t be hurt now, Bob…I’m finally like you.” The bot did not let go. Raphael gasped as he pushed at Bob weakly. “It’s okay, Bob. Mind Dante now…it’s cool.”
    Bob’s head spun and the bot’s smooth happy face looked to me. “Dante? I am concerned Raphael’s judgment may be impaired.”
    “Let him go, Bob,” I said.  
    Bob dropped Raphael. I was pretty sure the old man was already dead. Not absolutely sure, but pretty sure.
    “Close the door, Bob.”
    Bullets hit the train as my tears fell. “Emma? Can we go faster?”
    She shoved the silver lever farther forward and the train jolted under our feet. Emma and I fell backward. Bob caught Emma and Jen caught me by the shoulders. She saved me from getting slammed into the engine’s back wall.
    I couldn’t see much from the ports down the side of the engine. However, there was a remnant of the design specs from when humans ran the train. A spiral staircase led to a maintenance hatch in the roof.
    “Emma! I need you. Jen, drive the train.”
    “I am not programmed in that area,” the companion bot said.
    “It’s a train,” Emma said. “Keep going that way. Watch the track ahead. Suppress any impulse to steer.”
    “May I be of assistance, sir?” Bob asked.
    “Bob, stand there and look pretty,” Emma said. “Dante, pop that hatch.”
    I was first to the stairs and Emma paused behind me. “Everybody watch your toes!” The exo-stilts were collapsed almost as far as their length allowed and Emma was still a head above me. She released a lock lever and the metal legs fell to each side with a heavy crash. Emma slipped her sensory harness over her head and pushed me up the spiral staircase.
    I was prepared for a hot blast of wind. However, when I slid the trap door aside, a low, transparent dome covered the hatch. I poked my head up but I couldn’t see my father. We were already racing too far away from him.  
    To my right, a huge crane bot lumbered forward, heading for the crash site.
    “Emma? How fast can the big ones go?”
    “Not fast enough to catch us,” she said. “For all the good that will do us. We’re speeding away from one doom and into the teeth of another.”
    “Let’s try to keep it down to one catastrophe at a time,” I said.
    I craned my neck but I couldn’t get any higher and soon it would be dark. The crane bot was little more than a towering silhouette with flashes of orange sunset outlining the length of the giant machine’s arms.
    I searched the shadows among the solar panels but I couldn’t see my father.
    “Emma! I need your eyes up here.”
    There wasn’t room for two so I pulled back and squeezed down the stairs. Emma took my place at the hatch.
    “What do you see?” I asked. “Do you see Dad?”
    “We’re pulling away fast. Tell Jen to slow down. We’ll be too far for me to see much of anything in a minute. It’s Vivid, not magic.”
    “Slowing down would not be advisable,” Bob said. “Your father left instructions, sir.”  
    I was startled. Bob had already spoken more in the last few minutes than I usually heard from him in a week. “Bob? Why would slowing down be inadvisable?”
    Then the strangest thing happened. It was even creepier than Raphael talking about messing around with his sex bot. My father’s voice came out of Bob’s speaker.  
    “Dante, once you’re on that train, you get the hell out. Keep going, don’t look back and don’t worry about me.”
    “Jen,” I said, “don’t slow down.”
    The companion bot looked back at me and smiled in a way that I suppose was meant to be reassuring. “Oh, I wasn’t going to, honey bear. Raphael left me instructions, too, in case this happened.”
    “Great,” Emma said. “Keep