All right, here we go … I said I'd write the original version of this story, if you guys asked for it. Never let it be said that CoyoteLoon was a welcher! Ummm …. let's just forget the first aborted attempt at telling this story, okay? Also, I'm going to assume that you're familiar with the characters of Teenage Robot (which I totally don't own), and with my series of fics featuring the shape-shifting, human-turned-android, Drew Nabholtz. Especially the Cluster Dawn Trilogy.
Okay, this story takes place after the events of Cluster Dawn, which saw our heroes taken to Cluster Prime, run for their lives, fall in love, escape from near death, and save the Earth from a massive Cluster invasion. These events all transpire before the start of Season Two, in my version of the show's continuity. Now, even though we've seen the "Escape From Cluster Prime" movie, Teen-Bot creator Rob Renzetti himself has said that it was supposed to be the lead-in for Season Three (Nickelodeon got its episode broadcast schedule screwed up; they haven't even finished showing Season Two episodes yet). This story takes place before the one-hour movie, during the course of Season Two. So don't be surprised to see references to Season Two events.
Most importantly, Vexus is still the all-powerful, evil despotic ruler of Cluster Prime. And nobody's self-destructed, or splattered on a space trucker's windshield yet. The Cluster is still a major threat to the Earth. Heck, just consider all the Season Two episodes that have featured Cluster plots to take over the planet. Okay, everyone down with that? Just remember … Queen Vexus is still large and in charge, and the Cluster is still mean, hostile, and eager to make life miserable for our teenaged protagonists. In fact, they're up to their old tricks even as we speak …
THE ANYWHERE CANNON
A "My Life as a Teenage Robot" Fanfic
Chapter One – Minor Annoyances
The driver shrieked in terror and yanked his steering wheel hard, sending his sleek blue station wagon careening into the plate glass window of a fine clothing shop – barely missing the massive fireball that plunged from the sky and slammed into the road, right between the skid marks he'd left behind him. The middle-aged man abandoned the crumpled vehicle, and bolted in a random direction with a dozen other panicking citizens, all of them madly dodging the tumbling clumps of red-hot asphalt kicked up from the fresh blast crater. Another globe of fiery combustion screeched down from the clouds and slammed into the remnants of the station wagon, sending its charred husk hurtling skyward on an ugly orange and black plume of burning fuel. Fearful pedestrians looked skyward, following the trail left by the deadly fireball projectile …
To see an evil, ten-foot-long robotic insect, swooping overhead on the pounding staccato beat of its four knife-like wings. Its rust-red head and thorax scanned for targets below while swirls of flame churned in its bulbous, translucent body; it grinned cruelly towards a quivering human mother just a hundred feet away, who was trying to calm her crying baby. A nozzle affixed to the robot's glowing abdomen pivoted to take aim, and with a powerful squeeze of its hydraulics, a fresh ball of hellfire spat out and hurtled towards the pathetic meat creature below. The young mother cringed with fear as the fireball approached …
But at the last second, a pale-blue inch-thick shield unfolded in front of her, and the blob of fire bounced harmlessly off to the side like a fifth-grader's spitball. The mother opened her eyes to see not raging flames, but the shining metallic figure of Tremorton's very own robotic guardian angel.
"Get yourself inside," Jenny smiled to the mother, as she tickled the baby's chin. "Things are about to get a little messy out here."
She retracted the clamshell shield back into her torso, and leapt into the air on twin daggers of rocket exhaust. One sliver of time later, she delivered an uppercut to the chin of the offending insect-bot, sending it cartwheeling backwards into a squadron of its fire-belching brethren. The arsonist shook the loose gears in its head, then regrouped next to its robotic master, a broad-shouldered lummox who was enjoying the fiery mayhem from the perch of his personal hover-scooter, high above the downtown square. The green-chested robot commander let loose with a self-indulgent bout of evil laughter, thrusting his ostentatious forehead-horn upwards to strike a pose ripped from a bad B-movie theater poster.
"So, little XJ-9," sneered the braggadocious Commander Smytus, "what do you think of my new firefly troopers?"
"Eh, you know what they say, Smytus," Jenny grinned back at him. Her forearm split open to re-configure into her trusty laser-limb. "If you play with fire … you're gonna get burned!" And on that perfect cue, a blast of blue laser energy leapt out and sliced one of the firefly troops in half like a banana. A microsecond later, it detonated with a spectacular explosion, showering Smytus with flaming shrapnel to the delight of the human crowds below. Jenny smiled, letting the cheers feed her already considerable confidence.
Smytus clenched his metallic claws in fury, glowering back at the smug robotic teenager. With a wave of his arm, he commanded his full squadron of fireflies to attack en masse. "All right then, little girl, let's just see if you can … take the heat! MWA HA HA HA HAAA …"
"Oh brother," laughed Jenny, mocking the pompous Cluster commander. "I can take the heat, but I can't take much more of your lame dialog. I should have your little firebugs taken care of in about, oh, sixty seconds." She cracked her knuckles with a touch of showmanship. "And I'm not even gonna muss my hair!"
She bumped up her pigtail-jets to full combat thrust. A trio of fireballs screeched across the sky to converge on her position – but with a dizzying blur, she slid out of their way in a twisting loop, coming up behind the clueless clunkers that the Cluster Empire had sent her way. So many weapons, so many choices, she smiled to herself … I'm feeling a little creative today. With a twist of her left arm, a crossbow-device deployed and locked into place. The teenage super-heroine casually adjusted her trajectory to come up behind the nearest firefly. With a loud twang of the bowstring, six ninja stars sliced through the Cluster attacker's glowing abdomen, puncturing it like a balloon. Before that explosion even died down, she re-configured her arm into a screaming buzz-saw. Jenny corralled another firefly-drone in a headlock, like a rodeo cowboy bulldogging a steer – then she sliced its fire-belly section off, turned it around 180 degrees, and stuck the glowing fire-nozzle right into the stunned drone's own mouth. The look on its face was priceless as it blew itself to smithereens. Now, for her next victim …
"Jenny! Jenny!" yelled a familiar, youthful voice. "Hey, over here! Jenny, it's an emergency!"
Jenny slapped her forehead in frustration. "Oh, for the love of …"
She quickly scanned the street below, and sure enough, there he was, a little wide-eyed, black-haired boy down on the broken sidewalk, jumping wildly up and down to compensate for his short stature. Tuck had been following her all day long, and he was proving to be harder to shake than bad case of rust. "What in the world does the little squirt think he's doing?" she grumbled, clutching her pigtails in frustration. "If he's not careful, he's going to get himself hurt!"
And naturally, Murphy's Law picked just that second to assert its sadistic self. One of the vulgar firefly-drones peeled out of the clouds and dove for the pedestrians, its belly-nozzle shimmering with liquid globs of flaming fatality. And it was heading right for the street corner where Tuck was standing, a perfect human target. In a superhuman blur, Jenny shot over the chaotic street in a tall parabola, coming down fast behind the flapping wings of the dive-bombing Cluster attacker. As they both hurtled towards youngest Carbunkle, she gripped the alien robot's wings by their joints and ripped them free, filling the air with foul sprays of pressurized hydraulic fluid. With another burst of sensational speed, she streaked to the street below, and flipped the lid off of a manhole with a kick of her heel. The doomed firefly-drone plunged into the manhole, detonating in the sewer with a deep reverberating barooom.
With that catastrophe avoided, Jenny rushed over to tend to her animated, and bothersome, little friend. "Okay, Tuck, what's the matter? What's the big emergency?" He didn't seem to be injured. In fact, the little squirt had an excited smile on his impish little face …
"There's something important I need to ask you!" said Tuck, filled with earnest.
Flames flickered from a nearby mailbox as Jenny raised a suspicious eyebrow. "Which would be …?"
He pulled a notepad and pencil out of his comically large Johnny Zoom backpack. "I lost track. Did you do the double-loop behind that first Cluster robot before, or after you shot the stun grenades at him?"
Jenny's fists quivered with barely-constrained anger. Not this again. "Look, Tuck, I'm going to tell you the same thing I told you five times this morning. I'm not going to …"
A roaring fireball from an attacking drone caught her from the side, catapulting her slender blue-and-white form fifty feet down the street, where she plowed into the engine block of a semi truck like a rag-doll cannonball. Woozy, scorched, but still dangerous, Jenny popped out of the tangled aftermath of the truck, massaging a nasty dent in the back of her head. With a flick of her wrist, her arm telescoped out into a fishing pole. A powerful swing sent a line of unbreakable carbon filament sailing into the air. It looped around the surprised drone's body, and Jenny hauled the obnoxious bug out of the sky … to land butt-first on top of a nearby fire hydrant. A violent hiss of steam launched into the air, and a geyser of water reduced the fires in the belly of Cluster minion to a moist, smoky mess.
Jenny brushed a layer of soot from her torso … and the fine dust cleared to reveal Tuck standing next to the shattered truck, eagerly jotting notes onto his pad with the enthusiasm of a cub reporter. "Interesting technique," he said, tapping the pencil to his chin. "Allowing yourself to be attacked, in order to draw your enemies within firing range. Seems a little reckless, if you ask me, though. Hey, can I have your battle log tapes after you're done with these guys?"
Jenny's right arm ratcheted out at super-speed, stretching fifty feet away to take the head off of another firefly-drone with a nasty right cross. And all the while, her tired gaze never left the persistent little tyke's pleading face. Her shoulders sank with exasperation. "For the last time, Tuck … I am NOT going to teach you how to fight robots. It's too dangerous for a little guy like you to take on the Cluster!"
"Well DUH, of course it is!" blurted Tuck, laughing at mere suggestion of such a thing. "I don't want you to teach me how to fight Cluster robots!"
Twin water nozzles deployed from Jenny's wrists, and she frantically rotated about her hip joints like a giant sprinkler, squirting high-pressure jets of water to extinguish incoming fireballs. She was growing more angry with Tuck than she was with the Cluster attackers. "Then why are you …"
Anticipating the question, Tuck reached into his backpack … and pulled out a lime green MegaSoaker 400 water cannon, softly stoking it like a beloved pet. "I want to you teach me how to fight the robots down at the Goop Zone!"
If it hadn't been bolted on, Jenny's jaw would have dropped clean off her face.
"They've got a new game room called 'Bot Buster'!" he shouted, whipping himself into a state of jittery excitement – and happily oblivious to the smoking Cluster drone wrecks that plummeted into the street all around him. "It's so cool! You run around in a big room with lasers and smoke and obstacles, and zap these freaky audio-animatronic robots with your Goop Gun to score points! All the kids at school are talking about it, and they're going to have a big tournament there later this afternoon for the grand opening! Will you take me there, Jenny? Huh? Pleeeeeeeeeeze? You just gotta, Jenny …"
Her right arm underwent another fantastic transformation, producing a revolving cannon barrel and an ammo magazine filled with large blue corks. She unloaded a volley of corks into the sky with a loud thub-thub-thub, and with a sniper's accuracy, they smacked into the flame-nozzles of another group of firefly-drones. The drones experienced a quick and very unpleasant bout of constipation, ballooned up like puffer fish, and filled the air with bright, yellow-orange explosions. Then she turned back to Tuck … who was still staring her down with his best puppy dog eyes. She cradled her forehead in frustration. "Tuck … I'm kind of busy here ..."
"But you just gotta help me win," he pleaded, in a tone of voice that was approaching whiny. "The winner of the tournament gets a great big trophy, and his picture in the paper, and a year's supply of Super Chocolate Frosted Sugar Bombs …"
Another firefly-drone landed behind Jenny with a heavy thud, and locked claws with her in close-in hand-to-hand combat. The two robots grunted and panted as they circled each other like wrestlers, but Jenny still had to deal with the additional distraction of a grade school pest that couldn't take no for an answer. "Can't your … nnnghh … parents … errrrghh … take you? Or how about … unnnghh … Brad?"
"Nahhh, my Mom and Dad went to some stupid all-day rhumba lesson," he huffed, still apparently ignorant of the fact that Jenny had much better things to do at the moment than gab with him. "And Brad … pffft, what does he know about fighting robots? Sure, he thinks he's hot stuff, but he couldn't beat up a robot if it was made out of wet cardboard. That's why …"
"Arrrgh … just hold that thought for a second, 'kay?" Jenny shifted her weight and flipped the Cluster drone over her hip, pile-driving it into the pavement head-first. She'd grown tired of dealing with two annoyances at once, and figured that she had a much better chance of getting rid of Smytus before she'd ever get rid of Tuck. She vaulted back up to the rooftops to face off with the Cluster attackers, and with a series of whining clanks, underwent one final transformation. Her midsection expanded, lengthened, and rounded out, and her forearms converted into two giant, conical nozzles. As the startled remnants of the attack force looked on, Jenny completed her conversion into a giant fire extinguisher. Twin fountains of hissing foam sprayed across the sky, bathing the sputtering Cluster drones in a thick layer of frothy white chemicals. The effect was like tossing a barrel of water onto a bunch of tea candles. The last of the firefly drones pathetically fizzled out, and dropped to Earth like drowned robotic rodents.
The relieved masses of Tremorton filled the streets with a hearty cheer, an emotion not shared by the snarling hulk that watched the battle wind down from his hover-scooter. Commander Smytus glowered down at his fallen army with a gap-toothed sneer, then shook a clawed fist at his teenaged foe, in classic supervillain form. "My precious firefly troops! Nooooo! Curse you, XJ-9!" He pointed a threatening claw at Jenny's sweetly smiling face. "Mark my words, you may have defeated my invasion, and you may have destroyed my newest weapons, and my newest drone troopers, and you think you have bested me in combat here today … okay, and you have … but mark my words! Before the sun sets on this puny little town, I will have the complete and total victory that I so justly deserve!" His eyes squinted with deadly seriousness, as if he believed he could terrify the puny robot girl into surrendering by the sheer force of his will alone. "Complete and total victory!"
"Jeez, everyone's trying to talk me to death today," Jenny snickered, as she opened up her extinguisher-nozzles for one final blast. To her great delight, she scored a direct hit on the bloviating Cluster lunkhead – coating him with a layer of foam that transformed him into a ten-foot metallic snowman! Sputtering and hurling clichéd curses, Smytus wiped the foam from his eyes, and activated the portal generator on the front of his hover-scooter. A tear in the fabric of space-time shrieked into existence, and with a pulse of his engine, the military thug beat a hasty and familiar retreat into the mouth of the wormhole, speeding back to Cluster Prime to lick his wounds.
With the latest lame-o Cluster attack taken care of, Jenny re-configured herself back to normal, and dusted her hands together with the satisfaction of another job well done. She dropped back to street level to a chorus of cheers, and to acknowledge the waves of the grateful townspeople of Tremorton …
And Tuck sprinted up to her as if the whole battle had been nothing more than a irksome interruption. "Okay, you beat the Cluster, saved the day, blah blah blah. So now that you're not busy any more … you can show me all about fighting robots and you can take me to Goop Zone so I can win that trophy this afternoon, right? Huh? Right? Huh? Right?"
Jenny groaned and massaged her stainless steel temples; the idea of spending an afternoon with Tuck in tow, when he was in one of these moods, was not something that held a lot of appeal to her. Besides, she was in serious need of a post-battle wash and wax. "There has got to be someone else who can take you. How about Sheldon?"
"Naw, he said something about having to catalog his fungus collection." Tuck clasped his hands together as if he were pleading for a new kidney. "C'mon, Jen, you've gotta help me win that trophy. Everyone knows you're the best robot fighter in town. Listen to all those people cheering!" He almost stifled a wicked little grin; the flattery was just another strategy to crack through Jenny's iron resolve. "I mean, you even managed to teach Drew how to fight … hey, that's it! Why don't get him to do your stupid world-saving stuff for you? Then you could take me to Goop Zone this afternoon!"
She rolled her eyes, amazed at the little pest's persistence. "Tuck, you know he doesn't fight bad guys any more. His parents made him stop after we got back from Cluster Prime. They even made him get a part-time job." That was a real shame, too, she sighed to herself. It had been nice having help defending the Earth every now and then; quicker battles meant more mall time for her. But, she'd saved the world all by herself long before Drew and his nanobots had come along – it just meant that things were back to normal now. Jenny mused, for what must have been the hundredth time, over the cruel irony of it all. She was a robotic teenager with fantastic powers whose overbearing mother insisted that she had to save the world, and who refused to let her shuck that heavy responsibility. Drew's problem was the exact opposite.
Tuck folded his arms with a loud harrumph, not bothering to mask the contempt he felt towards Tremorton's number two robot teenager. "Oh, yeah … right. Mister 'Wonder Weenie'. Geez, what a waste. All those freaky robot powers, and instead of doing something big and important … all he does is hang out at the mall and make hot dogs. Wow, how lame can you get?"
Half a galaxy away, against the blood-colored disk of a massive sun that licked at a stainless steel horizon, an unnatural slice opened up in the middle of the air like a hellmouth spewing forth a metallic demon. The spine-curdling chitterring of warped space was drowned out by the whine of anti-gravity engines, and a moment later, Commander Smytus' hover-scooter flung itself out of the vortex, back into the crimson skies of Cluster Prime. His growls and curses were scarce heard below as he accelerated into a tight turn, leaving a faint trail of white foam behind him, and flew towards the giant slate-colored trapezoid that rose above the hard grey surface like a Mayan pyramid. The bright colors of the capital's skyscrapers twinkled to the east, looking more beautiful than ever as a rainbow of holograms and neon lights fought off the lengthening shadows of the approaching dusk. But there was no such festivity to be seen anywhere on the wide, harsh territory of Base One Zero.
The new and improved military installation, which replaced the unfortunate Base Zero One, was a humbling testament to the still-fearsome might of the Cluster Empire. Roach-drone barracks and weapons armories sat in ordered rows for miles, cluttering the landscape with thick, brooding buildings of riveted steel. A dozen giant frameworks sprang up out of the cold smooth ground like metallic skeletons; the progress of the new construction evidenced by the twinkling of fifty thousand arc welding torches. Insect-shaped fightercraft, their rocket engines screeching with blinding nuclear fire, howled over swarms of CPAF wasp troopers flying on patrol. Attack cruisers larger than city blocks eased into carefully controlled landing patterns, touching down at the hangars to take on fresh troops and supplies. A rumbling hummmm reverberated from the hard surface of the central parade ground, as if it had been transformed into a giant bass speaker, by the thundering transit of six hundred heavy attack hover-tanks. The screech of turbines and sharp clank of machinery were omnipresent, as was the choking odor of ozone and petrochemicals. And layered over the activity was the constant, mechanical rhythm of metallic footsteps. The perfectly synchronized rhythm of thousands of marching robotic soldiers, outfitted in full field kits and battle armaments. The military base was a dystopian vision, the ultimate symbol of the robotic might and brute strength that fueled the Cluster's dreams of galactic conquest.
A column of seven-foot-tall heavy drone troopers marched mindlessly past the endless line of growling hover-tanks, clomping in perfect unison towards the starship hangars that blistered the horizon. They turned in sync, like the teeth of a gear, and wove through three battalion-sized formation of drones headed in three different directions for field maneuvers. And this was a light day of activity on the base. The hangars were on the other side of Base One Zero, and the quickest way there was to march past the front of the gargantuan, uninviting slate-colored pyramid. The one with the scowling special guards out front, at attention underneath the cast-iron sign which read Base One Zero Headquarters. Taking no notice of the building, except for use as a navigational checkpoint, the column of assembly-line-produced soldiers tramped onward, their footsteps pounding the ground with relentless monotony.
All, that is, save for the very last drone. Who slipped out of line, and quickly but casually made his way to the side of the headquarters building.
He seemed to be inspecting a dumpster-sized power distributor. But he was really assuring himself that nobody was paying attention to him. Convinced that nobody was, he slipped behind the distributor, to one of the thick power conduits that ran up the side of the pyramid like a drainpipe.
And he flowed himself up the conduit, his seemingly solid body transforming into a fluid, silver-green python of shimmering goo.
Quickly and silently, the silvery tentacle ascended the power conduit like a vine climbing a tree, until it reached a small ventilation duct half-way up the sixty-story complex. With a soft gurgle, the tentacle nudged itself between two of the slats in the six-inch-wide duct cover, and disappeared inside.
From another duct cover inside the building, a thin stalk poked out inside of a darkened room. It checked to make sure that the room was empty – as expected – and then the full mass of shiny goo poured itself out of the ductwork, slopping into an amorphous blob on the floor. Then it sprang up to mold itself into the form of a green-striped, teenage android boy. Who was trying very hard not to let his complete terror get the best of him.
A tiny antenna grew from the side of Drew's head, and tuned itself to a secret, encrypted frequency. "I'm inside," he gulped, trying to keep his voice as low as possible. He examined the signage on the walls, and the regular rows of floor-to-ceiling shelving. "Room … twenty-nine eighteen, it looks like. Spare Parts and Supplies. Nobody's in here, but I can hear voices coming from the corridor."
"Got you – you're right where you're supposed to be," answered a reassuring female voice. "And they didn't see you come in; I killed the sensors in the room thirty seconds ago. Commander Smytus just landed on the roof, so most of the guard drones are distracted right now. Oh yeah, and I planted a rumor on the military channels that he was coming to conduct a surprise inspection. Y'know, just to mess with their heads," she giggled. "Looks like everything is a go."
"Lucky me," he half-chuckled, rubbing his hands with nervous energy as he pondered his sanity.
"Drew …" – the tone of the voice grew instantly serious, and softened with concern – "… please, be careful. There are drones and mantis everywhere. If something goes wrong …"
"Hey, I'm inside of Cluster Military Headquarters, surrounded by two hundred thousand troops and half the Cluster fleet. What could possibly go wrong?" His mouth flinched with a tiny smile, imagining how she must have been rolling those cute dark eyes of hers on the other end of the link. "I'll be careful, Ally. I promise."
"Good luck," she said, then the link fell silent. They'd need to keep radio silence from this point on.
He took advantage of his moment of solitude to corral his racing thoughts. Yesterday, he'd sworn that he'd rather be anywhere in the universe other than fifth period Physics. Be careful what you wish for, nimrod, he groaned to himself. Well, Ally and the other underground leaders had told him this job was supposed to be extremely important. Then again, that's what they always told him. Okay, just like the plan. C'mon, Nabholtz. In and out, three minutes tops. Easy as pie. You've done stuff like this before.
A wave of distortion washed over him, squashing and stretching his body like chrome-colored plasticine. Long feelers reached up from his forehead to form antennae. A moment later, Drew assumed the plain rust-red coloration of a standard-issue, dome-headed military roach-drone. The Cluster Empire was filled with millions of them; nobody was going to notice one more. Hopefully.
He slid the door open with one of his slim, angular claws, and slipped into the brightly-lit steel corridor. A thin smattering of roach-drones shuffled by in either direction, some giving him a brisk nod, others a rough synthesized greeting. Every robotic eye and surveillance camera pointing his way felt like a searing laser, a blazing spotlight on the verge of piercing his disguise and sounding the alarm … but nobody gave him a second look. Drew dodged around a robotic mail cart and ambled down the hallway, trying to look like he actually belonged there, and took note of the passing room numbers with quick glances out of the corner of his now-beady eyes.
He pulled the mission folder from his memory banks, and opened the stolen schematic of the pyramid's twenty-ninth floor. Allison had copied the map during one of her frequent cyber-raids on the ClusterNet; it was downright spooky what she could get into with her assimilation-resistant hacking abilities. She could tell you what brand of gasket grease that Queen Vexus had for breakfast that morning. But there were still some ultra-secure computers on the ClusterNet that even she couldn't crack into. And one of them was about twenty yards away.
It was impossible to miss the door to Data Lab Three. It was the only one with two heavily-armed guards standing at either side of it. Actually, the guards' arms were 'arms' in the literal sense; which was to say, they were rapid-charge fifteen-megawatt UV lasers. The guards didn't look much for friendly banter. So Drew just breezed up to the glowing keypad next to the door and started tapping.
If they'd changed this entry code in the past six hours, he was royally screwed. His black pincer tapped in the last of the thirty-two digits. For a horrible second, nothing happened, as if the door was thinking it over. Was that guard nudging his laser-arm in his direction? Suddenly, with an electronic chirp, the door split open, admitting him inside with a cool, comforting puff of overpressure. But he still felt like he was being impaled with a billion needles. He wasn't used to this stuff yet. He doubted he ever would be.
The walls were lined with phone-booth sized glass tubes, filled with gurgling yellow fluid that kept the powerful computer cores inside constantly bathed in a stream of coolant. Rivers of thick black cables snaked their way to a donut of consoles at the center of the room. Twenty roach-drones tended to the equipment which cared for the hideous superbrains, while scientist droids worked efficiently at their consoles, running invasion simulations and designing new terror toys for the Empire. Three of the consoles were unused at the moment. Drew only needed one. Look like you belong here. Well, he did look like he belonged there. And he'd used the correct entry code. As far as anyone knew, he was just another throw-away roach-drone running some mindless errand.
He walked to the console, becoming acutely aware that there was only one door leading in or out of the room. It already felt like that door was ten miles away. The teenage trespasser sat down in front of a large flat screen, avoiding eye contact with the robots on either side of him. A blinking cursor prompted him to enter his unit designation and authorizing password. He had something else in mind, though.
As non-chalantly as he could manage, the faux roach-drone raised his claw to the console's input socket. With an imperceptible shimmer of silver-green, it morphed it into a customized plug, and made a direct connection with the circuitry behind the console. Hundreds of millions of nano-computers pulsed inside of Drew's synthetic body, making short work of the security firewalls. The flat screen burst to life with full system access, and filled with a rapid-fire series of charts and windows, complete with schematics, base layouts, camera locations, fleet deployment, police records … a virtual all-you-can-eat buffet of Cluster secrets. Fighting to keep his nervousness in check, Drew pulled up a "shopping list" of files that Allison had prepared for him, and he started downloading.
He unconsciously drummed his other claw on the console, trying hard to look like anything other than an enemy of the state. The scientist-droid next to him was noisily hammering at his keyboard with four set of appendages. He paused, noticing the volumes of data flying by on Drew's screen. The droid's bulbous head turned slowly towards him, giving him an interrogating look.
Drew cracked a weak smile. "Just, ah, checkin' on the old fantasy football team," he croaked.
The droid turned its head slowly back towards its own work, and resumed its assault on the keyboard.
Resisting the urge to gasp with relief, Drew returned his attention to the sixteen downloads he was currently pulling into his body's computers. While each of them contained a bounty of information for the underground, he still hadn't found the primary target. The file that someone decided was important enough to risk an insanely dangerous stunt like this …
Bleep. A new window popped up on the screen, and Drew allowed a small smile to tug at his insectoid mouth. Encrypted file found for Project "Anywhere Cannon". Commencing download …
Yes! This was the big important whateveritwas that had everyone in the underground in an absolute panic. It must have been important, because the operating system suddenly thought it was strange that a mere drone was requesting a copy of it. Drew's nano-computers told the console, using an obscure dialect of binary computer lingo, to shut up and keep downloading. Twenty percent complete …
Now he was at his most vulnerable. But fortunately, the roach-drones and scientist droids seemed to be focusing their attention elsewhere. Some good luck, for a change. Forty percent complete …
He glanced at a clock readout on the console. He'd been inside the room for a little over four minutes, a little longer than they'd planned. Sixty percent complete …
There was a commotion on the other side of the door, and he heard the sharp clank of claws against chests. Voices in the hallway grew louder and nearer. What were the drones doing? The attitude of the robots seemed to change; there was a hint of tension in the air. Well, at least it was taking the attention away from him. Eighty percent complete …
Stomp. Clank. Stomp. The heavy door slid open. The drones in the room stood ramrod straight, and snapped their claws to their chests in perfect mechanical synchronization. Drew found that to be a bit bizarre … then his eyes shrank to the size of tiny, frozen pencil points as he realized what the other robots were doing. They were all saluting.
Commander Smytus blasted into Data Lab Three like a raging storm, brushing a few remaining globs of fluffy foam from his angular chassis. "… for the last time, I didn't call an inspection!" he roared, towering over a quivering drone like a hateful god. "And I don't care how shiny your armor is!"
He was in an especially foul mood. The drones recognized that mood instantly as a post-defeat tirade. None were foolish enough to point it out.
Smytus spun around melodramatically, and flung a clenched fist into the air. His fist blaster crackled with electric green energy; megalomania and madness danced in his eyes. Satisfied that he had commanded the full attention of everyone in the room, he addressed the drones with a martial fervor. "Now stop standing around like worthless piles of scrap, there's work to be done! My latest attack on Earth has … softened up that insolent brat, XJ-9. Thanks to my brilliance, we now have a window of opportunity to eliminate that pig-tailed whelp, once and for all! The time has come to deliver the killing blow. Weeks of preparations are finally complete. Send out the orders!" He thrust out his broad chest, enjoying the sound of his own voice as it filled the lab. "Let history record today as the day of the beginning of the decline to the end of the human race, and the end of the beginning of the rise of the start of the beginning of the completion of the Cluster Empire!"
A couple of drones exchanged confused looks, unsure if they should clap or not. Smytus rolled his eyes and grumbled. "Today we blow up Earth real good," he growled. "For today we unleash the awesome, unstoppable, cosmos-shaking power of … THE ANYWHERE CANN …"
Bleep! His monologue was rudely interrupted by an electric tone from one of the consoles.
Smytus hated interruptions. "WHO WAS THAT!"
He glared in the direction of the pathetic rust-red roach-drone, the lone robot in the room who was not standing and listening to his speech with rapt attention. That kind of insubordination from a lowly roach-drone was inexcusable. "Excuse me," he shouted, "am I bothering you? Do you have something more important to do that to listen to your Supreme Commander? Because if you do …"
Something was odd. The red roach-drone seemed to have his lower right claw plugged into the console with a strange, silver-green cable. And he was as nervous as an obsolete droid in a recycling yard. And there was a blinking message on the flat screen in front of him which read Download Complete …
Smytus drew his shoulders back, and dropped his fists to his sides, still softly crackling with lethal green plasma. "We need to have a talk, soldier," he snarled.
Continued in Chapter Two