Chapter 9
Maverick sat and waited in his lounge area. The patch a carpet in the middle still bore the scars of his and Brains' little tussle. If his predictions were correct, the Protectors' best agent would be at their base right now. Soon, it would be his turn to take action.
He was sitting silently in his chair, deep in his own thoughts, thinking about the future. When his work was done, he could finally retire. He sure wouldn't need his dreadnought anymore, and his crew he can easily have their memories wiped and sent back to their previous lives, however, he'd never really considered any plans for his own future. Maverick sank lowered in his chair as he fantasised about something nice for his retirement, perhaps a holiday home. He could purchase his own villa somewhere on Earth, somewhere with gorgeous weather, like Spain or Portugal. He could easily construct his own vacation home on one of the many planets he intended to clean. He's read that the planet Oashade - a tropical paradise inhabited by such an uncivilized, unsophisticated race of rag-clad trolls - had lovely, hot days followed by cool night, 26 hours a day, 260 days a year. He could have his own home overlooking one of its eleven seas, and built with a library, classic music collection, 100 inch television complete with his favourite movies, Jacuzzi tub; he could even reprogram that annihilator unit, Friday, to be his personal waiter.
His eyes shot open, Friday and Fred, he had almost forgotten about them in his daydream. He jumped to her computer and skimmed through the applications. As the Captain he had access to every single feature on his ship; engine controls, navigation, star charts, weaponry, shields, the list went on. He went through until he found the security cameras. He had one camera set up in every room on the ship. He easily found the room holding Fred and accessed it.
The room was filled with everything to keep someone busy for hours, if not days. A big television, games, books, a sofa that doubled as a bed, a small fridge filled with a few snacks. But for everything filled in there, there was no Fred. The room was still, unmoving. Maverick traced his eyes across the room, searching for any signs of life, but none of it was there.
Just as it became apparent that he wasn't there, a terrible feeling brewed in his gut. He searched through the cameras until he located the one for the room holding the robot. The screen flickered to life, revealing just as he feared. The glass box, along with the remaining open area of room, was deserted.
It was his biggest fear coming to life before his very eyes. Fred was missing and Friday was nowhere to be seen. Desperately, he flicked through the many camera stationed within the ship, hoping to find something, maybe a clue to their whereabouts. He went through the areas until he clicked on the camera to the hanger. The scene he saw shocked him.
From the grainy feed, he made out the silhouettes of a small boy and a round object. The human figure thrust his finger toward the floating ball of metal and glass, and shouted something in a commanding voice. His dialect was loud enough to be made out on the speakers.
"Alright Friday, we need to make record time. I command you to turn into the fastest, strongest, bestest, awesomest spaceship you can!" The boy's upbeat voice, filtered through a grainy sieve, reached Maverick's ears.
Right after finishing his command, Friday went from nothing to a sudden rapid spin, charging up the energy to make the transformation. After a flash of light, the small, default form had turned into a ship, and it was the most impressive ship he had seen. The ship still bore Friday's characteristics, including his grey skin, round shape, and his two yellow eyes perched at the front like a pair of headlights. The hull was slick and streamlined to reach breakneck speeds within any atmosphere. A sleek spoiler fitted on the back. The ship was only big enough to transport one person.
"Hop in and let's go!" Friday hollered. Without wasting time, he popped open the roof allowing Fred to jump in. Fred jumped in and strapped on the seatbelt.
Maverick pulled himself away from the screen, his eyes wide with terror, and his heartbeat beating in his ribcage. His deepest fears were unravelling before his eyes.
"No…" He whispered. "No." He said. "No!" He cried. "They can't!" He screamed as he punched his terminal, hitting a red button that was connected to the alarm system.
The hanger bay went from tranquil to being drowned out in a haze of red and a screeching noise. Fred swung his head left and right from the confinements of the cockpit.
"Okay, that sounds bad…" Fred murmured.
"All units!" Maverick's familiar tone, spiced with a rage unknown to the two until now, boomed on the speakers. "Fred Luckpuig and the annihilator unit are escaping! Man the EMP cannon! Do not let them get away!"
"This is our queue to leave, Friday!" Fred pointed towards the bay opening. "Punch it!"
Friday went from zero to a thousand miles in a matter of seconds. Fred was thrust back in his seat, sinking deep into the cushions. He had serious doubts that his seatbelt, probably better suited in an average, four-wheeled car, would properly secure him if they were to make any sudden stops. The massive, dark lair began to shrink from behind them. The planets off in the distance hardly seemed to move, remaining where they were like paintings on a canvas.
As they were leaving, the dreadnought slowly began to rotate its big, sharp nozzle. The ship was suddenly pointed in their direction, the front aimed at them like the arrow on a bow being drawn. The ship began to chug behind them, following their move.
"Please tell me they can't catch us…" Fred looked back at the incoming ship.
"Don't worry, man. They may be fast…" Friday propelled forward in a powerful burst, clearing a massive distance between the two cruisers. "But I'm faster!"
Maverick watched as the robot zipped further and further from his sight. His frown turned upside-down as a message came through.
"EMP cannon is fully charged, sir." The voice informed.
"Fire." Maverick said.
Friday felt in tingle in his circuits. He twitched slightly, jerking up ever so slightly. Fred, however, still felt the hiccup.
"Whatever that was, something tells me it wasn't good." Fred stared down at the dashboard, the only thing he could look at that he could associate with Friday.
"You better believe it wasn't good." Friday replied. "I'm detecting a huge build-up of energy coming from back there."
Fred reached to the left-hand side of the windscreen and peers back at their pursuer. Upon looking at it, Fred realised that you didn't need to be a robot to figure out where the energy was coming from. The front of the ship, underneath the colossal arrowhead, a ball of white light - like an orb – was drastically growing and pulsating as steady as a heartbeat. The orb continued to grow, looking ever more sinister for every second it lasted.
Fred gulped. "I think that's the EMP he was talking about."
"And I think we're in for a bumpy ride, folks." Friday said. At the moment, Fred's seat came to life with even more seatbelts. They protruded from every available nook and cranny, the headrest, the armrest, and even the leg rests grew pairs of reinforced restraints. They wrapped around the entirety of the boy's body. Fred now had first-hand knowledge of what a mummy left like. Breathing felt difficult. "Please keep all hands and legs inside the ride at all times."
All of a sudden, Friday instantly went from flying straight to flying down. The planets on the imaginary horizon shifted from their view. Fred felt his internal organ shift from side to side as Friday span and dodged in the empty void. The boy screamed in the same way one would scream on a rollercoaster.
The dreadnought orb shot out, blasting through space. The white beam travelled at incredible speed. In slow motion, one would be able to see the thick beam bristle with crackling electricity, its very atomy caused the vacuum of space to vibrate. Friday had just managed to bank up, followed by a corkscrew twist. He narrowly managed to dodge the incoming attack. The air inside the cockpit rumbled long after the beam missed them. The EMP continued on its course, disappearing off into the black distance. Who knows where that beam will end up? Will it ever stop? Will it hit something in hundreds or thousands of years from now, or will it vanish off the end of the universe? Those questions were not the concern at that moment as more EMP blasts were on their way. Friday continued to duck and weave as even more lasers came their way.
"Geez, what did you do to tick this guy off?" Friday asked in-between twists.
"Apparently," Fred began. "It was by… being myself."
"The annihilator unit is taking evasive action, sir." The henchman said.
Maverick leaned closer, clasping his hands under his chin. He watched as Friday span and swooped, avoiding the EMP beam shot at him.
"Keep firing." Maverick ordered. "They can't keep dodging forever. They're bound to slip up very soon."
The cannon fired another volley. He watched as the little, grey cruiser just barely managed to turn at the last possible moments, moving out the way of the EMP's path.
Friday swerved to the right. The ray skimmed passed his view and darted off into nothingness, just like all the others. He could feel his engine heating up, his mechanisms starting to seize.
Friday panted. "I'm not going to lie, this is pretty exhausting. I don't know how long I can keep this up."
"Can't you just lose them in an asteroid field or something? That's what all the cool heroes do!" Fred managed to say over the rumbling.
"Look around, Fred!" He stopped as another shot missed its mark. "Do you see an asteroid field anywhere?"
From where his head was pinned, he could only manage to roll his eyes around. Nothing but empty space around them for millions of miles, a simple trip to the nearest planet would take fifteen minutes to reach at least.
"Well, when you put it like that-" Fred felt another shimmer run through the robot's foundations, interrupting his sentence.
Suddenly, Friday felt it. A tiny particle of the EMP had just caught the pointy end of the spoiler. The minute surge of electricity travelled down the stem, through the hull and straight into his components, sending pain shooting through him. Friday had been caught executing a barrel-roll and was now spinning out of control. His circuits flickered, struggling to stay active. Fred was constantly thrown left, the planets and stars delegated from being upright to upside-down to being upright again to being upside-down again in a full 360 cycle. For all his speed and handling, he was now careening in a straight line, easy pickings for the next shot, which would undoubtedly hit them and make them immobile.
The grin continued to widen on the ex-Protector's face as Friday span out of control. They thought they could escape from him? They thought they were smart enough to outwit the ultra-genius? They thought wrong! And now they were going to feel just how much that stings, both mentally and physically. The robot was practically flying straight, not even a blind monkey could miss hitting that.
Maverick pointed his finger upwards. "Ready the final shot." He lowered it down to point at the target on-screen. "Aim." He lined up his digit with the ship, aiming it like a gun. He bit his lower lip, elongating the first letter of the next word about to leave his mouth.
The lights flickered.
Maverick stopped in his tracks. The lights had dipped and the screen had momentarily experienced static. The fleeing duo continued to cycle further and further away, but there was not another EMP blast heading toward them.
"What happened?" He questioned.
"Sir?" The guy at the other end sounded nervous. "The EMP cannon just went offline."
Maverick slammed against the keyboard. "What?!" He hissed, sputtering drips of drool across everything. "What do you mean it went offline?!"
"We've lost all power, captain. Maybe there's a fault in the engine room?"
The engine room? Maverick thought. Immediately, he resorted back to the surveillance system, easily finding the camera he needed.
The engine room was easily the biggest room in the entire ship, and for very good reason. The dreadnought was a massive energy sink. The dual engines took up almost the entirety of its space, but looked like they needed to bigger allotment in order to house them. They looked like two cylinders, held horizontally by a series of wires and tubes. The interior of the cylinders glowed blue. The metal heart pumped more than enough juice through the copper veins to make everything function. There was a catwalk halfway between the floor and the ceiling, and spanned the entire radius. The entire area was cared for the engine around the clock by technician staff, and a handful of security personnel.
Maverick gaped at the camera feed. The technicians were fleeing, and the guards were knocked out. There were two men dressed in the uniforms, but not wearing their helmets. They were tinkering with the controls, pressing random buttons that controlled power to all sections. Maverick laid his eyes on them and realised that they were the two men he instructed to escort Mr Luckpuig to his quarters. Everything made sense now, and it frustrated the man to his core.
He flicked the camera back to the fleeing robot, who was now almost a speck on the camera. He could still order his ship to chase them, but his deepest concern was the power. If they manage to shut down the engines, then the power would be cut off, which would lead to all the systems on-board going offline. The thrusters, lights, life-support, cameras, stealth systems…
Maverick felt his heart almost stop when he thought of the next system to fail: the mind control.
He took one last look at Friday before he disappeared from view. He was gone, and there was no way he could catch them without placing his entire plan in danger. He darted out from his lounge and made haste towards the engine room.
I guess I have to do everything myself, it seems. Maverick thought bitterly.
Friday finally managed to shake the charge out of himself, gaining enough control to stop the spinning. Fred's vision continued to spin, he'd hurl up the contents of his stomach if only he had something to chuck. He held his breath, awaiting the next blast that would strike them. However, it never came. He managed to glance back, the dreadnought was rapidly shrinking behind them.
"They're… they're not firing." Fred uttered. "They're not firing."
Friday wasn't listening, he was just veering straight ahead with his eyes closed, awaiting an awful shock. He popped one eye open, followed by the other one, and realised he was fine. He slowed to a halt and glanced back. Maverick's dreadnought was so far away it blended into the background. The orb had disappeared.
Friday was puzzled. "Really? They just stopped? I don't get it. They had us right there."
He undone the belts restraining the boy. He could finally breathe freely. "Maybe they could have hit a snag?" Fred pondered on it some more. Another possibility appeared. "Unless those two guys, Jake and Greg had something to do with this. They did say they were going to buy us some time."
"Then let's make it count." Friday spun back around and shot off at full speed.
"Step on it, Friday." Fred leaned forward, his face brim with determination. "There's no time to lose."
With that said, Friday and Fred sped through space to their next destination where they would unfortunately face one of their most difficult and unexpected adversaries: Agent Brains.