Free Tides of Light by Gregory Benford Page B

bright.
    “Took those mechs clean,” Toby agreed.
    Besen nodded. “New kind mechs, too.”
    “You noticed,” Shibo said approvingly, passing a platter of mustard-laced ship’s biscuits.
    Toby looked insulted. “Why, course we did. Think we can’t remember, can’t tell a navvy from a Snout?”
    Besen said mildly, “Those were Snowglade mechs. Why should here have same mechs?”
    Toby answered, “Mechs’re ever’where, that’s why.”
    Loren was taller than Toby but thinner, and this gave the steep planes of his face a look of studious care. “Who says?”
    Toby snorted. “Family lore. Mechs’re all over Galactic Center.”
    “Maybe they’re adapted for each star,” Loren said reasonably.
    Toby had no answer to this, but Besen pursed her lips and observed, “Mechs could adapt faster on a planet, sure. It’s life
     that has a hard time.”
    “Life?” Toby asked indignantly. “We can zig and zag faster’n
any
mech ever did.”
    “No,” Besen said patiently, “I mean
real
adapting. Changing the body, stuff like that.”
    Killeen gave Shibo a veiled look of approval. For midshipmen they knew a lot more than he had at that age. “How were these
     mechs here?”
    Toby snorted. “Slow as sundown.”
    Loren said more judiciously, “They seemed disorganized. Couldn’t form up right.”
    “Don’t think they were fighters,” Besen said.
    “They sure fought enough,” Toby said. “I ’member
you
dodgin’ plenty bolts.”
    Killeen leaned forward quizzically. “Besen, why you think they weren’t fighters?”
    She paused, aware that the Cap’n had been letting them pour forth their own ideas, and now suddenly feeling self-conscious.
     “Well…they had grapplers, screwjacks, poly-arms. Work ’quipment.”
    “They tried fryin’ us,” Toby pointed out.
    Besen held her ground. “Those microwave disks were prob’ly comm gear, not weapons.”
    “How ’bout that thing almost caught us at the main-mind?” Toby pursued.
    Besen paused reflectively. “I’m not sure.”
    Killeen watched her carefully. Whatever had been lurking near the mainmind had disintegrated when the cluster charges went
     off. The Family had found only meaningless fragments. There had been chunks of fleshy stuff, but mechs on Snowglade had used
     compounds which mimicked the self-repairing chemistry of life.
    Besen went on, “Don’t think we’ll savvy out the answer till we meet the mechs who made the station.”
    “C’mon, you’re just inventin’ boogeymen.” Toby chuckled.
    “I know navvy-class mechs when I see ’em,” Besen said.“That’s all we saw in the station. The higher-class mech was at the mainmind.”
    “You dunno that,” Toby said. “We never got a good look.”
    “Stands to reason.” Besen gave Toby an affectionate, bemused look. “Station was already damaged. Prob’ly some mech faction
     took it from another. We caught ’em before they could build up defenses again, I figure.”
    Killeen watched Toby wrestle with the idea. The boy was bright but he let his enthusiasm cloud his thinking—or replace it.
    Toby began, “Even if it was a manager mech or some-thin’, we were faster.”
    “We got lucky, is all,” Besen said.
    “
Luck?
” Toby looked insulted. “We were quick!”
    “If Cap’n hadn’t made us drop everything and run, we’d be mechmeat.”
    Killeen was glad to see Besen not meekly following whatever Toby said. There was in the Family a regrettable tendency of adolescent
     females to accept their boyfriends’ views of the world. The generations of sedentary life in the Citadels had somehow instilled
     that. The Long Retreat after the Citadel Bishop fell had seemed to erase this, but a scant few years aboard
Argo
now threatened to bring such customs back. He wanted his midshipwomen to give no ground to the usual swaggering male self-assurance,
     to develop their burgeoning ability to lead. In a battlefield crisis, such timidity could prove fatal.
    Killeen shared the