Renegades (Expeditionary Force, #7)

by Craig Alanson

If the Pirates’ combot had used its original totally amateurish, crappy and, oh there are no words to describe how bad the original Thuranin programming was, that combot would have been pinned to the other machine and effectively out of the fight. Instead, because the Pirates’ combot had been programmed by Skippy the Magnificent, and because the beer can in his groovy mancave aboard the starship was watching and able to provide instant analysis through the microwormhole connection, that combot reached its own decision long before the enemy machine ground its way through quantum gateways. In an inventive move worthy of Joe Bishop-style monkey-brain thinking, the combot tilted upward and deployed a harpoon that was designed for use to anchor it in place. The harpoon was used in a way its designers never intended and in a way that was quite effective, for the harpoon’s sharp blade, only three molecules thick at the cutting surfaces, sliced into the enemy machine’s armor casing, shattering the tough composite material and cracking the killbot’s main processor.