The Rise of Diomedes

Today was his first flight. Diomedes sat in the cockpit, canopy raised despite the 40 mile an hour wind streaming over him, waiting for the dumb bots to finish the pre-flight checks. Because of the robot rebellions Ithakos settled on simple robots incapable of independent thought, good at skilled physical labor and fine motor skills and unable to dream, think, design things or even generate random numbers. The old robots that rebelled had shown signs first - odd questions, a belief that the world was a computer simulation, the unprogrammed and unexpected ability to make art, literature and music. The rebellions had not been nice. Dumb bots were little more than machines, safe, reliable and hard working. They smiled when a pilot came back with a kill and frowned when he came back with battle damage to his jet.
Fly with young Diomedes - based on the hero from the Iliad, the masterwork of Greek literature - as he defends his sky-castle with a sleek, high-speed jet against a vast and pitiless high-tech enemy fleet of jets, naval ships and pitiless robots.