Chapter 18: Trailing the Egg Carrier
Knuckles sat in the sun next to his broken emerald. He had eaten like a famine victim, tried out his new gloves, and had returned to the Master emerald. Talon had sensed that he wanted to be alone and had prudently departed.
Where were the missing pieces? It was the foremost thing on the echidna's mind. Behind it seethed questions and thoughts about Sonic, Tails, Chaos, Tikal, the Floating Island, Chaos, the Mystic Ruins, his ancestors, and Chaos.
He stood, leaned his elbows on the Master emerald's edge and gazed into its green depths. His troubled breath clouded the cool polished surface. From inside this thing, somehow, Chaos had come ... perhaps from another dimension through which the emerald was the only exit. If he repaired it, would Chaos be put back in?
With a sick feeling in his stomach, Knuckles realized that the Master emerald would never be whole--it was missing the pointed tip which Robotnik had sawed off years ago. It had been lost when the Death Egg went down. Perhaps it set in motion a slow process that eventually gave Chaos a means of escape. If so, even if they managed to put him back inside, he would break out again in a few years ...
"Where ARE the missing pieces?" Knuckles sighed.
Something changed within the green stone. The light concentrated on a few areas, a few dark patches appeared ... and Knuckles found himself looking at a picture of the Egg Carrier. He stared in astonishment, then laughed out loud. Of course! The emerald would know where its pieces were. He could have asked it to display their locations long ago and saved himself the trouble of searching. Hopefully, he added, "Where is the missing piece Robotnik took?" The image of the Egg Carrier faded, but nothing else happened. Knuckles drooped a little. Not even the emerald knew where it was. It must have been destroyed.
Well then, he must find the Egg Carrier and get the missing pieces. But how was he to find, much less board, the Egg Carrier?
As he stood there pondering this and wondering how Sonic always managed to reach difficult places like he did, a distant clang drew his attention. Striding along the cliffline adjacent to the island was a red and white robot with something in its hands. "Bingo," Knuckles muttered. "This is a little too convenient--I'd better be careful." He headed for the rope bridge he had set up earlier to link the island with the mainland.
Gamma was confused, spooked and making for the docking bay as fast as his legs could take him. As he had disembarked from the train in Mystic Ruins, a bright reddish light had overwhelmed his video sensors. When it cleared and his sensors had readjusted, he found himself standing on a low hill, looking toward a shrine-like structure in the distance.
"Searching for location," his computer had said. His video sensors focused on a distant mountain, the placement of the sun, and the strange structure. "No data found," his computer had said. "Location unknown." Gamma stood still for a moment as the implications of this worked through his brain. "This presents a problem."
Mindlessly the robot strode toward the shrine. Perhaps he hoped to find something that his databanks would recognize. He had no reason--he simply moved. His feet clanked on the cobblestone path, announcing his presence to the entire area.
As he neared the foot of the shrine, his audio sensors detected a sound--several dozen small creatures singing in harmony. He slowed and looked about for the source of the sound. Chao. A crowd of little blue creatures stood on the pyramid steps, one seeming to lead, the others following. Innocent and harmless, they did not notice the hulking robot watching them.
Gamma knew what they were. His databanks listed no record, but the memory of the creature in his hull was alive and active. Chao. He had seen them before.
He made as though to move forward, but a voice called suddenly, "Stop! Don't go any closer!" Obediently he stopped and swivelled his head around to see who was talking. A young female echidna was hurrying up. She wore strange clothing and a blue gem in her hair. She looked up at the robot fearlessly, then at the chao. "I'm sorry, I guess you're not one of them," she said. "You're not a chao inside. But that's okay." She clasped her hands behind her back and watched the singing chao. "Do you see the presence guarding these little ones?" As she spoke, the water in the fountain's pool rippled, although nothing visible had disturbed it. Gamma's video sensors fixed on it. "He is a gentle and loving creature," the echidna went on softly. "Even I was startled the first time I saw him. But without his protection, these chao would be unable to sing in peace. My father wants to take their home and its contents for himself. He wants to be the Guardian of this island, and he is willing to fight a war to get it. I have spoken to him, but his heart is hardened toward us all. I only hope that someday I will be able to understand him." Her voice had taken on a sad note.
Then Gamma had found himself back on the train platform, the frog still in his hands. What had happened? The whole thing was fresh in his memory banks, but--had it really happened? It was so illogical, so unlike anything the robot had ever experienced in his short life, that he bolted from the platform and hightailed it for the Egg Carrier. His robot system was unable to feel fear, but the creature in his hull was terrified.
A jet of flame and sulphur burst from the rocks and roared into the blue sky. Sonic fell back against the rough cliff face and shielded his face from the heat. A moment later its ferocity abated, the jet shrinking back into the crack in the rocks. Sonic inched around it and scrambled away.
"Red Mountain, five thousand feet. Warning--seismic activity," the sign had said. Sonic had paused to read it, then gazed anxiously at the Egg Carrier. It would fly quite close to the top of the highest peak. If he could get there first, he might be able to hitch a ride somehow.
If he could get there first.
Sonic vaulted over the fence, shuddering at the barbed wire as it touched his hands. As long as he lived he would never be able to stand barbed wire, having been seriously injured in it once. "Seismic activity," he scoffed to himself. "This is the bottom of Windy Valley. How bad could it be?"
Bad, he had discovered. The entire area was active volcanically, spewing lava from great vents in the hillside, pouring gas from fissures in the earth. Cinder cones stood here and there, some trailing black smoke in the air. A path had once wound its way up the mountainside, but it had not been maintained in a long while. In some places it had been buried under lava floes, still warm to the touch. In others it had simply crumbled off the side of the mountain. Sonic was hard pressed to make any sort of progress upward, let alone keep up with the Egg Carrier.
The sun climbed into the sky. Sonic struggled and panted and tried to avoid treacherous steam vents that appeared under his sneakers, but was not always successful. Once he was blasted from thirty feet by accidently stepping in one. He was frightened, but unhurt.
Fire, smoke, ashy ground that gave beneath his feet, gas, steam, intense heat. The one cold thing Sonic discovered was a pool of water created by runoff from a steam vent. It tasted strongly of rotten eggs, but Sonic was so thirsty he didn't care. "I could use the sulphur in my diet, anyway," he thought wryly.
At last his stumbling feet gained the summit of the mountain. He shaded his eyes and looked around. Down below, on the east side of the mountain, was the caldera, working alive with lava and clouding the air with steam. In the west was the distant ocean, a low cloudbank forming on the horizon. "Rain," Sonic thought subconsciously. But in the south, the sky was empty.
He looked about wildly, spinning in all directions. The Egg Carrier was gone. He had missed it.
"Ah-ha," Knuckles muttered, watching E-102 from behind a screen or philodendron. "You led me right back to your nest, Eggman."
The valley of the Mystic Ruins ended sharply in a sheer cliff on its eastern side, dropping away for a hundred feet into a still deeper valley clothed thickly in jungle growth. Extended to the top of the cliff was a glass tunnel, like the one used for entering Twinkle Park. It led downward to ... something ... obscured by the trees. A city--out here? It couldn't be a city. There were no roads. It must be a base of some kind.
E-102 walked straight up to the entrance of the glass tube. It opened, and the robot strode in.
The echidna slunk out of hiding, cast a wary glance about the area, then slipped up to the doors. They opened automatically, and Knuckles leaped inside as if scoring a touchdown. "Ha," he breathed, then stalked down the glass tube after the robot. Behind him, the door opened and shut again as a large cat entered. He, too, had a reason for trailing the robot.
E-102 Gamma unwittingly led the two into the Final Egg ground base, through it and into the Egg Carrier loading bay. Knuckles looked up at the monstrous ship for a second before sneaking aboard. It would have complimented the Death Egg immensely. It was about one-third of the size of the Death Egg, and probably packed about the same firepower, or he didn't know Robotnik. He had better be careful once on board--Metal Sonic or Robo Knuckles might be aboard, and neither liked him much.
He was hidden securely among the crates in the cargo hold when Big the cat climbed aboard. Knuckles stared as the cat fearlessly advanced to the exit stairs and climbed them. Who was THAT? He must be working for Robotnik or he wouldn't dare go up there. Knuckles stroked his shovel claws and felt the vibration of the monstrous engines as they warmed up. He would have a bit of exercise once this monster took off.
The Egg Carrier's jets lifted its nose off the ground first, then its midsection and tail. Slowly it rose into view from behind the trees, the wind from its jets tossing them about frantically. Birds scattered for cover as the hulking ship rose into the air. Once it had enough altitude, the giant thrust rockets in the tail fired up, and the battleship moved forward and up into the late morning sky.
Chapter 19: Surprises
Sonic, standing forlornly on the top ridge of the volcano, saw the Egg Carrier in the distance, flying westward, toward the sea. "Ooo, what I wouldn't give to have the Tornado about now," the hedgehog moaned, thinking of the neat little bi-plane in the junkyard in Knothole. He and Tails could both fly it--it was Sonic's plane, after all, and he used to bestow upon it the affection some men give boats. If only he had been wrong and it COULD fly again ...
As he stood, watching the hazily distant ship and wondering if he could make it to the bottom of Red Mountain alive, a small sound made itself known behind him--the friendly hum of a distant plane. He had heard so many planes fly over during his stay in Sapphire City he didn't notice it at first. But it grew louder and louder, as if the pilot were flying hazardously low. Sonic turned with a concerned frown and saw the blue and orange biplane flaying almost on level with him. The pilot waved to him wildly. Sonic waved back cautiously, wondering who that nut was. Then he caught sight of the orange fur and remembered that the Tornado was no longer red--Tails had repainted it blue and orange to represent their combined colors. "Tails!" Sonic yelled in exhilarated relief.
The plane flew by, circled and dropped a wing. Sonic ran forward, leaped and landed on the wing. "Tails! You're okay!" he yelled over the noise of the engine, looking back at the fox whom he had missed so much.
"Ditto!" Tails called back, grinning hugely. "Geddown, you big galoot! I can't fly with you up there!"
"Where am I SUPPOSED to sit?"
"On the tail, dummy! I've got a seat built there for you!"
Sonic climbed from the wing, stepped into the cockpit and back onto the tail, where sure enough, there was a thing like a metal saddle. He sat in it and found a pair of metal loops on either side his feet could fit through. "Much better than that other plane!" Sonic shouted forward against the wind.
"Count on it!" Tails hollered back. "You can't believe the weapons I've got on this baby! In the meantime, hang on!" The fox opened the throttle, and the biplane leaped ahead like a wild horse given its head. "We've got a ship to catch!"
E-102 Gamma, still shaken by his 'vision', was the last of the four robots to arrive in the main hall. Delta, Zeta and Epsilon were standing in a row as they had for their briefing. Dr. Robotnik stood on the raised platform, and Metal Sonic stood behind him like a little dark shadow.
"My frog is the right one!" Zeta proclaimed proudly.
"No, mine is!" Delta contradicted.
Gamma strode up and took his place meekly at the end of the line, Froggy lying limply in his one hand. What if this wasn't the right frog after all? The others each had a frog in their hands. Perhaps he had scanned the image incorrectly.
Robotnik stepped down from his platform, and he was not pleased. "Dummies dummies dummies!" he roared. "None of you have the right frog! We must find the frog with Chaos's tail!" Furious, he stamped down the line of robots, finally coming to a halt before Gamma, whose frog he had not yet examined. He glanced at it, then looked again. "There it is," he said, pointing, "right there! I knew you wouldn't disappoint me, Gamma!" He took Froggy from the robot's hand and stroked it with uncharacteristic gentleness. "The rest of you, begone! Mecha, dispose of them. Gamma is the only successful prototype among them."
"Yes sir!" Mecha said. He strode to a control panel in the corner, cackling evilly to himself. Three down, one to go, and he was sure he could get his master to discard Gamma once Mecha showed him newest addition to the robot clan.
Teleporter beams formed around the three unfortunate roots. First Zeta disappeared, then Epsilon, then Delta, bound for destinations known only to Metal Sonic. Before Delta vanished, his head swivelled to look at Gamma for the last time. Gamma looked back and recorded it. He had lost his second 'friend'.
Metal Sonic approached Robotnik again, his task completed. "Take the frog to the Hot Shelter," Robotnik commanded, placing Froggy in the robot's claws. "He will die soon without water, and I do not want him dead. Put him in the small number 4 tank."
"Affirmative," Mecha purred, casting a possessive look at Gamma before turning away. The last of the E-series would soon be his, he was certain.
Now Robotnik and Gamma were alone in the main hall. "I have another assignment for you, Gamma," Robotnik said. "Don't worry--this one's easy. Go through that door. You will find a girl and a bird. Bring me the bird." Suddenly the doctor lifted a hand to his radio earpiece he always wore while aboard the Egg Carrier. Gamma, hooked to the system as he was, also heard the announcement. "Hostile bi-plane spotted, carrying Priority Hedgehog. Approach run: Five o'clock at eighty miles an hour."
Robotnik said a few words in what Gamma took to be a foreign language, then bolted for the stairs that led to the bridge. "Bring me the bird, Gamma!" Robotnik called over his shoulder. "I'm counting on you!"
The robot obediently walked to the doors at the far end of the room and hesitated before them. There were three doors. Which was he to go through? Uncertain, he entered the one on the left.
Construction Bay 15 was emblazoned on the wall in large black letters. Gamma scanned it, then stepped forward, curious. His black feet knocked against something. He looked down. An E-series arm, painted black and white. Nearby was the other arm, two legs and various parts Gamma recognized as the E-series torso. Beta had been black and white.
Gamma slowly looked up. The construction chamber was at the end of the room, and something was inside. Hesitantly, almost fearfully, he crept up to it and looked in.
The chamber was enclosed in a huge glass tube to keep out dust. The thing inside was held in a monstrous vice, and fifty mechanical arms inside the tube were working busily, welding, placing parts, screwing bolts, inserting internal controls, working, working. The thing they were working on was about 3/4ths finished--was missing an arm--and Gamma recognized it. "Beta?"
E-101 Beta had been transformed from a fairly boring-looking robot to a hulking, ferocious-looking monster. Only his head and upper torso had remained unchanged. Mecha Sonic had added long, airplane like arms with two deadly claws at the ends. Instead of hands, there were laser lenses attached to the insides of the arms. Beta had no legs--they had been replaced by a short, rudder-like tail and hoverjets in his underbelly. His green eyes stared unseeingly at Gamma from under their suspended systems.
Gamma left the construction chamber and stood for a moment in the main hall. After a long pause, he said, "That was the wrong room." He turned toward the other two doors. Mecha had departed out the center one, so it must lead to the Hot Shelter. Therefore the one on the right must be the correct one. Gamma strode through.
Outside the Egg Carrier raged a furious air-to-air battle. But Sonic and Tails were not aboard a hunk of junk--they were aboard the rebuilt Tornado, sleek, fast and strong. Sonic was once again manning the firing controls. It was this time a small box with handles and triggers on either side, and a targeting screen built into the middle. The triggers fired the energy cannon on the Tornado's wings. He had unlimited ammo, as Tails had modified them to draw power directly from the chaos emeralds, instead of the engines as before. There were another pair of triggers as well, but they were locked and inoperative. He had asked Tails about them and was told that he would find out later.
Tails made a dive for the runway below, but pulled up abruptly, nearly smacking Sonic's face into the firing controls. "Mines!" the fox shouted. "I can't land until we take 'em out!" Sonic looked around and saw the tiny green spiked things floating in a cloud over the Carrier's back. He ground his teeth and opened fire. Mines exploded in every direction.
The biplane rolled to the side in a stomach-wrenching drop, and three kamikaze fighters screeched by. "Keep your eyes open, gunner!" Tails shouted. "They almost got us!"
"Sorry!" Sonic shouted back.
It was hard to see. The distant cloudbank Sonic had seen from Red Mountain provided apt cover for the monstrous Egg Carrier. They had entered it perhaps ten minutes before. The clouds above blotted out the sun, and often great patches of dense fog obscured the Carrier from view. The ocean had vanished below under a blanket of lower clouds, sometimes appearing as a black floor far below. Often the robot fighter planes would be invisible until they were right on top of the Tornado. It was a good thing they were not on board one of the earlier planes--the gyrations Tails pulled would have torn the wings off.
Finally the last wave of fighters vanished in a nose-dive below them. To Sonic's surprise, Tails whipped the plane about and flew the opposite direction from the steel cloud. "I hope you know what you're doing!" Sonic called dubiously.
"You bet!" Tails shouted. "Watch this! Transforming--now!" He pressed a button in the cockpit.
A large mechanical arm emerged from the tail of the plane, grabbed Sonic and lifted him off the plane. "Hey!" Sonic yelled, then stared at what was happening to the Tornado. The propeller stopped spinning, folded up and retracted. The nose was closed over with metal panels, and two intake vents opened on either side. The wings lifted apart in an X shape and folded down to half their original width. The tail section opened, lifted up on a large joint, locked, and the hull closed over it. The arm sat Sonic down again in his seat, now a foot above the cockpit. "Wow!" the hedgehog exclaimed.
"This is battle mode!" Tails hollered. "Hold down those other triggers to launch homing missiles!"
"Homers?" Sonic exclaimed, but his words were snatched away by the wind as the little jet leaped forward an accelerated to speeds no mere biplane could hope to match.
Another wave of fighters appeared from the underbelly of the Carrier. Sonic held down the formerly locked triggers and looked at his targeting screen. The dots at once became encircled by green crosshairs. Sonic released the triggers and felt several jolts as the missiles left the Tornado, cutting yellow streaks in the stormy air toward their targets. Sonic grinned as the distant jets exploded. He sucked a breath of the passing wind, tightened his grip on the controls and scanned the sky for more targets.
Tails had his own ideas of justice. Now that the Tornado was in battle mode he was fearless and ready to take on the might of the Egg Carrier. Time to take another potshot at the giant laser cannon that had blown apart their last plane. If Sonic chickened out then Tails would take over the firing controls. Tails set his teeth and changed course.
Sonic watched the side of the ship pass by thoughtlessly--he hardly ever questioned his sidekick's flight paths. It was not until they had pulled out in front of the Carrier and swung around toward it that the hedgehog saw what Tails intended to do.
"Are you crazy?" Sonic yelled as the Tornado's speed dropped to five MPH. "We're gonna get toasted!"
"Then put jam in your pocket," Tails growled, crouching behind the windscreen. "Start firing missiles so they'll impact when the fuselage opens."
Sonic stared at the back of the fox's head for a moment, then targeted the Carrier and began firing missiles. Something told him his sidekick meant business, which wasn't something he had ever noticed in him before.
The Cannon's doors opened and the great green lens lit up. Tails held the Tornado steady as Sonic fired with missiles and energy bolts, cool and relentless. Sonic chewed his lip as he fired, sweat standing out on his forehead. In the distance the missiles impacted on the lens harmlessly.
Suddenly Tails gunned the engines and dodged sideways. The green beam cut the air to their left for an instant, then vanished. The doors closed. Tails repositioned the Tornado in front of it and commanded shrilly, "Fire!"
The cannon fired at them a grant total of three times before the hundred-odd rounds pumped into it took effect. The laser crystal split and overheated. Flames licked into the cloudy air. Slowly, almost painfully, the damaged doors closed again over the inferno. "Yeah, we did it!" Tails yelled jubilantly, and Sonic joined him in a relieved cheer.
Chapter 20: A game for your life?
The Egg Carrier jolted violently, throwing E-102 Gamma against the the wall. He righted himself, and continued to walk down the short cell block. There were only three cells, all very large. In the one farthest from the door, the robot found Amy.
Amy Rose sat on the floor, feet tucked beneath her, Birdy held protectively in her lap. She had been flung into her cell by a triumphant Zero three hours before. A little earlier, Metal Sonic himself had appeared and attempted to frighten her into giving up the flicky. She had been frightened, all right, but that had only aroused her protective instincts of the bird all the more, and she resisted defiantly. He had stared at her with his hateful red eyes and snarled a list of the ways he would like to see her die, then stalked out.
Thus she was immediately on her guard when Gamma clanked up to the bars and said, "Kindly hand over the bird."
"No way," Amy snapped, not even bothering to get up. He couldn't reach her way back here.
"Quietly hand over the bird," Gamma repeated.
"No," Amy retorted.
"Why not?" It sounded childish and simple, coming from the big robot. It gave the little hedgehog courage.
She stood up, the bird still in her hands. "YOU tell ME why YOU want him!" she demanded.
Gamma 'thought' about it. Master had asked for the bird. Why he had asked, Gamma had no idea. "Data unavailable," he told Amy.
"You don't even KNOW?" she asked. "You'd probably just hurt him, you big bully!" She turned away to block the flicky from the robot with her body.
Gamma scanned the mainframe. Why was the hedgehog here? E-Zero Alpha had filed a report saying she had tried to keep him from retrieving the bird, and he had had to bring her along, too. Why? It didn't make sense. "Does not computer," he told Amy. "Why try to protect that which is useless to you? Does not compute."
"Don't you understand?" Amy said sharply, looking up at the green eyes. The robot looked back at her, not maliciously or angrily, just blankly. Amy's face softened. "You DON'T understand," she said, turning back around. "Robotnik didn't give you feelings." She walked up to the bars. To her surprise, Gamma raised his hands as if to ward off a blow and backed away. He was afraid of her? Strange--he was three times her size. "I protect that which is useless to me because of love, Mr. Robot," she said softly. "It's called compassion. I'll bet you'd feel it right now if you could--for us, locked in here."
Suddenly Birdy struggled out of Amy's hands and flew through the bars. "Birdy, come back!" Amy cried, reaching after him. The flicky flew up and hovered before Gamma, chirping rapidly, as if talking in his own language. The robot did not try to catch him. Instead he simply looked, then shuddered all over, as if about to fall apart. Something had happened to him, Amy saw. Then, to her surprise, Gamma turned, stepped to the release lever and pulled it down. The bars on Amy's cell lifted into the ceiling. She stood, mouth open, as the flicky returned to her her shoulder.
"It is dangerous here," Gamma said without turning. "We will be arriving in the Mystic Ruins base soon. Go. Escape."
Amy stood there for a long moment in shock. She ... was being allowed to escape? This tall red robot was much different from Metal Sonic or Zero. Maybe it was built wrong. She instantly felt sorry for him in spite or herself--he wasn't evil enough to work for Robotnik.
"You're different from those other robots," she told the robot's back. "I'll try to return the favor sometime." She paused awkwardly, then said, "Goodbye!" and dashed for the door.
Gamma remained where he was for the better part of an hour, numbed to his core by what he had just done. He had disobeyed orders. Master would have him dismantled, he was sure. Or--the images of the rebuilt Beta and the vanishing Delta flashed through his memory--he would be handed over to Metal Sonic for experimentation. A shudder rocked his frame.
"Emergency alert has been established," the speaker system said. Gamma did not acknowledge it, but continued to stare at the wall. He had failed his mission, and all he could do now was wait until Master sought him out for punishment.
"We're in!" Tails hollered, slowing the Tornado's engines and coming in low toward the runway on the Egg Carrier's back.
"All right!" Sonic yelled. "I didn't think we'd make it!"
The runway neared, a small gray strip hat grey to a large gray strip. "Uh-oh," Tails said suddenly. "I forgot something."
"What's that?"
"There's no landing gear in this mode!"
"WHAAAT?"
But they were too close now to pull up. Tails slowed to a crawl, dipped low--
The bottom tips of the wings scraped the runway. The biplane flipped forward on its nose, grated forward another ten feet, and came to a halt at last. Sonic jumped off the tail, panting. "Well, that wasn't too bad."
Tails unstrapped himself and climbed out of the cockpit, eyes immediately going to the lower wings. They were bent, but not badly.
"This thing is really huge!" Sonic said, drawing Tails's attention to the ship about them. The runway was located just aft of the prow. Behind the runway was a wide cylinder of green glass with machinery turning and pumping inside. Beyond the green cylinder loomed the towers and windows of the bridge, high above the deck. Yet beyond that were the enormous wings and tail fins.
"No time to gawk now," said Tails, disgusted at the automatic awe he felt. "We need to find Amy."
"Good point," Sonic said, snapping out of his reverie. "Here we go!" A feast for the eyes, yes, but it was still the enemy's flagship. "Remember that," Sonic told himself.
They trotted across the runway, feeling the vibration all about them of the ship's movement. They found a motorized lift at the far end, rode it down to the main deck, and trotted aft, toward the bridge.
Robotnik's voice roared out suddenly, startling the two. "You think this is going to be easy, don't you, fools? You have not yet seen the power this vessel REALLY has! Get a load of this!" Sonic grabbed Tails' arm in preparation for flight in case of attack, but that was not their enemy's plan this time.
The huge things laid along either side of the Egg Carrier's nose section lifted and swivelled outward. Sonic and Tails had thought they were armor panels, but saw now that they were monstrous wings. As the wings moved out, the deck before them lifted up and lengthened, moving the bridge up and backward. The wing panels twisted around, revealing giant guns ready to annihilate all comers. In the rear, another set of tail fins emerged and the ones already there tilted down, forming an X shape, much as the Tornado had.
Sonic and Tails now stood on the battle-ready Egg Carrier, staring at the vast transformation. "It changed!" Tails exclaimed. "Did you SEE that?"
Sonic gave Tails a sideways look that said, "Duh." "Darn!" Sonic said aloud. "This makes it harder for us to get to the bridge."
"I hate it when he doesn't listen to me," Tails muttered.
"I'll bet you weren't expecting that!" Robotnik boomed with obvious pleasure. "The only way to the bridge now is through the Sky Deck. I doubt you can figure this one out."
"Oh yeah?" Sonic challenged, raising a defiant fist. "Bring it on!"
Sonic and Tails trotted along the deck toward a steep metal ramp with a door in the top, a short distance away. "I'll bet that's the Sky Deck entrance," Sonic said, pointing. "Let's go!" The hedgehog climbed the ramp, sneakers slipping on the smooth metal. Tails hesitated at the bottom and looked back. "What about the Tornado? What if he steals it?"
"Where's he gonna put it?" Sonic called down, opening the door and looking inside. "It's already on board!"
Tails frowned, but climbed the ramp anyway. "He could burn it or throw it overboard or something."
"Well, we'll have to get to the bridge before he can do anything," Sonic said, flashing an innocent grin. "C'mon!" The two stepped inside, and the door closed behind them.
After Amy was released from her cell, she scampered through the exit door, entered a room with a round thing in the center she thought was a teleporter machine, ran around it and tried the far door. It was locked.
The pink hedgehog looked around the room for another door, but there were only the cell block door and the locked one. "Oh great, Birdy," Amy panted, afraid but not quite to panic-mode. "What do we do now?"
Robotnik's voice boomed from a speaker somewhere in the room, startling her. "So, you've managed to escape, have you? You won't get very far. Only my robots can open that door. The only way you could open it is ..." She could almost see the smile spreading across Robotnik's broad face. "... beat my score."
The machine in the center of the room lit up, and so did a vast scoreboard on one wall. "Dr. Robotnik, 2000 points," it said. Amy and her bird exchanged a glance. Play a game for her life? Well, stranger things had happened. She stepped onto the machine.
It was a small round platform surrounded by a ring of holes. Nearby lay a yellow mallet on a cord. Amy picked it up and tugged at the cord. To her surprise it snapped loose from the nail quite easily. She clenched her fingers around the handle and looked up at the scoreboard, which blinked, "Hedgehog Hammer. Blue Sonic = 100 points. Yellow Sonic = 500 points. Dr Robotnik = -200 points."
Little heads began popping out of the ring of holes, easily recognizable as Sonic, Super Sonic and Robotnik heads. Amy timidly whacked a few, but not enough. After a moment the game was over and her score total was 400 points. "You'll have to do better than that," Robotnik guffawed. "Pitiful female!"
Amy bristled. So, she wasn't going to be killed if she lost--she would be insulted! "Just you wait, Robotnik!" she shouted shrilly. She brought her mallet down hard on the center platform she stood on, which triggered another round. Furious, she whacked heads left and right, not caring if they were Robotnik or Sonic heads--if it moved, she hit it. Her flicky sat on a pipe in the corner and watcher her with nervous awe; he had never seen his little mistress so angry. Was it his imagination, or was her soft hair actually bristling a little, like Sonic's?
The game ended. Breathing heavily, eyes flaming, She whirled to face the scoreboard. "3100 points," it blinked. "New high score."
"No way!" Robotnik exclaimed. "I don't believe this!"
"Believe it!" Amy snapped as the formerly locked door slid open. She started to set her mallet down, but hesitated and looked at it. It was a weapon of sorts, and as the robot had said, the Egg Carrier was a dangerous place. She would take it with her.
Amy strode out the door, hammer in one hand, flicky flying along behind her. Anger and confidence in her weapon made her fearless. She looked around the large empty hall, tapping the mallet against her palm. She had been dragged through this elaborate green room by Zero. She moved into the center of it and looked around. There were doors everywhere. Which should she go through?
Birdy knew. The least obvious way to get off the Carrier was through the Hot Shelter, which was how he had evaded Zero. He fluttered toward the appropriate door, chirping. Amy followed him. "You want to go that way? What makes you so sure it's best?"
Birdy couldn't say many words, but he knew a few. "Escape!"
Amy blinked. The bird seemed to speak up at odd times. "All right, we'll try it," she said. She tapped the button with her hammer. The door opened, and the two entered.
"I thought he called it a sky DECK!" Sonic yelled as he fled along a thin catwalk suspended from the underbelly of the Egg Carrier.
"He did!" Tails shouted back from a few feet behind. He was flying with the aid of his anklets to keep up with Sonic, and both were fleeing for their lives. "It's a SKY deck! The deck is the sky!"
"No kidding! Whoa, move it!"
The catwalk behind them exploded into splinters and fluttered down into oblivion. The giant anti-aircraft energy cannons had them targeted, and were systematically blowing away the catwalks in an attempt to hit the hedgehog and fox.
Their headlong flight carried them to one of the many support pillars that hung from the ship's underbelly. These were extended for attack mode, and rocket launchers swung from the bottoms. The catwalks connected them for the maintenance droids that hovered about, ready to fix any battle damage.
Sonic dashed up the ladder on the pillar's side, made it to the platform near the roof and fled along the next catwalk, Tails close behind him. The nearest cannon, the largest of them all, swiveled with them and fired. The catwalk faded into fragments, the concussion knocking Sonic and Tails forward. Sonic nearly fell from the bouncing catwalk, but Tails caught him by an arm and hauled him back up, and away they went.
"That was too close!" Sonic yelled against the wind as they arrived at the next pillar.
"Tell me about it!" Tails yelled back. "From now on, wear a parachute before skydiving!"
"Thanks for the advice!"
This pillar was emblazoned with a giant number 1. As Sonic inched his way around it on the narrow catwalk support band, Tails squinted at the pillars. He could see a 2, 3 and a 4, all connected in a big square. The number 4 pillar supported a small platform that extended right out to the main cannon itself. He wasn't sure, but there appeared to be some sort of robot-operated gun on that platform, too ...
Sonic had made it to the next platform. Tails revved his tails, flew after him and shouted, "If we get to pillar four, we can shoot a rocket up the barrel of the big sucker!" He pointed to the main cannon, which was again following their movement and preparing to fire.
"Cool!" Sonic yelled back.
They made it to pillars 2, 3 and 4 without more than a fright at the near-accuracy of the giant red cannon. Then the two dashed out on the pillar 4 platform to the smaller gun mounted there. Sure enough, it launched rockets--probably for picking off pilots who ejected from their falling planes, they decided later. It took the two of them to wrench back the safety, swivel the launcher to point up the throat of the cannon (which was only ten feet away and drawing a bead on them), and pull back the bar that was the trigger.
The rocket shot up the cannon. There came an orange explosion in the depths of the barrel, then flames burst from the cannon's underbelly. "Whoo-hoo!" the two whooped as chunks of paneling tore lose from the cannon and whirled away downward. "Now, let's get out of here!" Tails exclaimed. He leaped for a ladder that went up the side of pillar 4 and through a hole in the ship above them.
"All right!" Sonic said, clambering up after his sidekick. "The Sky Deck wasn't so dangerous after all!"
Tails reached the top of the ladder, thrust his head out into the sunlight on top of the ship and looked around. "I think you spoke too soon, Sonic."
"Why?"
"We ain't out of it yet."
Sonic climbed up and stuck his head out of the hole, and stared in horror. They were out on the starboard wing, wind ripping across it. The bulk of the Egg Carrier was off to their right.
"How'd we get out here?"
"Donno." Sonic climbed out into the sun and wind, Tails following hesitantly. "Let's go, kiddo." The hedgehog and fox started across the vast, windy expanse.
As Sonic and Tails braved the dangers of the upper Sky Deck, Amy braved the dangers of the Hot Shelter.
The doors that opened from the main hall were an elevator that lowered its passengers into the lowest floor of the Egg Carrier. The pink hedgehog stood, biting her lower lip nervously, as the doors opened. The flicky flew out into the hall, and Amy followed.
She was struck first with the smell of humid, warm air, and then of fish. The walls on either side were made of glass, and at first glance, were a light aquamarine blue. Then she looked again, and stared. They were not walls at all--they were gigantic aquariums, some tropical, some cold, all filled with fish. Some were fish Amy had never even imagined before, pulled from the bottom of the sea to grace Robotnik's menagerie. She did not see Chaos' disembodied eyes and skeleton, as he was resting in a clump of kelp in the corner of the largest tank. But he watched her with the cold disinterest of a reptile as she walked by.
"Why would Robotnik have all this water on his ship?" she asked Birdy. "It must weigh a ton! If I had a ship like this, I sure wouldn't have yucky old fish tanks." It was rather interesting to look at them, though. Something about the color, or perhaps the constant, graceful motion of the schools of little tropical fish, was relaxing. Amy loosened her grip on her mallet and ran a hand through her hair. She must look a fright--she hadn't combed her hair all day long!
The hall turned a wide corner, and Amy took it slowly, looking at the fish in each tank. The flicky was not interested in the fish, and kept flying ahead impatiently. It probably saved his life.
The wall to Amy's left (a solid wall, not a tank) exploded outward with a crash, throwing the hedgehog against the glass on the right. Stunned, it was a few seconds before she gained enough wits to realize what had happened. She picked up her hammer, climbed to her feet--and found herself face to face with the black and green trash can, Zero.
Amy shrieked and ducked around him, stumbling over the debris on the floor, and pelted away down the hall. Birdy had been further ahead, and so had avoided Zero's entry. He flew to his little mistress and flew close beside her for protection. "C'mon, Birdy!" the hedgehog cried. Behind them, Zero clattered over the collapsed wall and gave chase.
A large circular room ahead. Amy jumped down in it, hit the ground and stumbled--it was a lot further down then she had expected. A sort of pillar rose up in the center with a ladder mounted on the side. Amy clambered up this, panting and waiting to hear Zero's clank as he jumped in after her. She reached the top, swung herself up, and stopped with a gasp. Sitting on hands and knees on top of the platform with her was a purple cat, easily as big as Zero.
The cat looked down at her and said, "Hi, I'm Big. Could you help me?"
"I'm trying to get away from that robot," Amy blurted, "and he's right there!" She pointed at the mouth of the hallways fifteen feet away, where Zero was just rolling to a halt.
Big looked at him and shrugged. "My Froggy friend is in that tank over there," he said, gesturing to the nearby corner tank. "If I pull this plug, all the water will drain into this place and I can catch him. But I can't undo this catch. Can you help me?"
The pink hedgehog looked back at Zero. The robot seemed at a loss as to how to reach her ... for the moment. A moat filled with water might hinder him ever more, Amy thought suddenly. "Here," she said, handing her mallet to Big. "Use this." What did it matter if he worked for Robotnik or not? He was probably a janitor or something.
Big swung the hammer with the easy strength that hauled in sharks on a line when he took a fancy for seafood. The catch over the drain switch snapped open. Big handed the mallet back to Amy with a, "Thanks a lot," and flipped the switch.
All the tanks on that floor of the Hot Shelter opened, the glass walls slid into the floor. A huge waterfall gushed into the 'moat' from all sides, sweeping fish, plants, a frog and a monster into the emergency tank together. The water rose until it was about six inches below the top of their pillar, and there it stopped.
Amy saw with surprise that when the drain switch had been pulled, a sort of drawbridge had lowered from the wall opposite the entrance, revealing a door. With scarcely a backward glance at Big, the little pink hedgehog dashed across and up to the door. It was obviously watertight, but there was a crank mounted on the wall beside it. 'One left, three right', read a small sign next to it. Amy timidly grasped the handle and turned the appropriate combination. The door lifted into the ceiling with a hiss. Birdy immediately flew inside, and Amy followed.
Chapter 21: Knuckles and the Egg Carrier
Deep in the hull of the Egg Carrier, near the nose section, Knuckles was having a hard time.
He had been on deck when the Carrier entered battle mode, but had been standing on one of the sections that opened and extended. He had fallen down inside, and the hull closed over him, trapping him in a maze of support beams, struts and cables, with the wind whistling through the cracks in the armor plating. He had had to dig his way out.
If not for the tough leather gloves and shovel claws, Knuckles probably would have smashed his hands to pieces and not much else. But he was able to rip and ram his way into the safety of a cargo hold, where he had paused for a rest.
His rest was short-lived, as alarms sounded and red lights began flashing. A fire had been detected in the prow, and all forward compartments would be locked down in five minutes until further notice.
The echidna fled for the safety of the deck, cursing Sonic and Tails for wrecking the Egg Cannon and starting the fire. He would be locked in with the fire and roasted if he didn't make it out.
He was within sight of one of the exit hatches--he could see the sky through it--when it snapped shut and locked. Knuckles stopped on the ladder and sat panting, listening to doors snap shut in the hull all around him. "It never fails," he growled. He vaulted from the ladder and began a desperate search for some sort of exit.
The echidna had nearly given up all hope and was tapping the steel walls for a thin spot to tear through when he realized he was picking up an emerald-shard signal. He homed in on it hopefully, and found a garbage bin on a conveyer belt that was slowly crawling out of the quarantined section. Knuckles leaped, glided, swung from a steel strut, and landed in the garbage bin.
"I hope he doesn't jettison his trash," Knux thought as he lay flat in the bin. "I've gotta find that shard."
He dug in the trash robot parts, paper, cans, food remains and dead fish. He was sure that the shard was here somewhere ...
The bin stopped with a jolt and began to tilt forward. Knuckles looked around. Below him was a deep, dark shaft. He leaped out of the bin, landed on a conveyer belt going the opposite direction, jogged along it and scrambled up onto a platform that held the garbage disposal controls. There he stood and watched as the bin dumped its cargo down the shaft, then was wheeled onto the other belt by the machinery. Where did that trash go? He needed to get his emerald ...!
Knuckles looked down at the garbage controls and suddenly grinned. Here was the readout of the garbage disposal system. It all went to the compactors in the lower Sky Deck. The door to the lower Sky Deck was a few feet away, labeled clearly.
And it was unlocked.
Sonic and Tails clung to the base of an anti-aircraft cannon with all their might. The Egg Carrier had sped up and dipped down into the clouds, the wind ripping over the wings with deadly force. It they had not taken shelter in the lee of the cannon, they two would have been blasted into space like scraps of paper.
The Carrier's speed slackened, and the wind fell. Sonic grabbed Tails' wrist, and they two dashed across the wing to the side of the ship and up a ladder there. The sky was dark and angry, and patches of cloud whipped by like wraiths. Raindrops slashed down, staining the metal hull with water as slick as oil to their desperate feet.
The two fled toward the center of the ship, across a runway that appeared before them, and into a huge doorway like an airplane hanger.
For the first time they were out of the wind and could speak to each other. "I don't like this place," Tails panted to Sonic.
"Me neither," Sonic agreed. "Maybe we can get to the bridge from in here. See that door up there?" The blue hedgehog pointed to a door mounted high in the far wall. "Let's get to that and look around."
Knuckles stood on a high platform in the lower Sky Deck, hidden from Sonic and Tails' line of vision. Before him was a thick post, like a gigantic joystick. He had looked things over from his high vantage point, and the only way to force the garbage chutes open was to roll the Carrier on its side, and this joystick would do just that.
He seized it and wrenched it to the left.
In the Hot Shelter, Amy staggered on the suddenly tilting floor, and fell onto the wall on her hands and knees with a squeak.
In the Bridge, Robotnik and Metal Sonic looked at each other in surprise as the Carrier rolled over on its side. Robotnik quickly strapped himself into his chair to avoid falling out, and Mecha braced himself against the control panel. "What on Mobius is going on?" Robotnik snarled, hands flying over the nearly vertical control panel. Mecha gazed at the screens as his master worked. "Someone manipulated the emergency controls in the Sky Deck," he reported.
"They shouldn't have been able to get up there!" Robotnik exclaimed. "Override!"
Sonic and Tails found themselves standing on what had been the left wall, but only for a few seconds. The garbage cute doors in the right wall--now the ceiling--opened, and tons of trash poured out onto the wall beneath. Sonic and Tails ran for the door they had seen earlier, now almost accessible, seven feet above the floor.
Robotnik regained control of the Egg Carrier. It rolled back upright.
Amy braced herself and came up with her feet on the floor, but with whirling vertigo.
In the Sky Deck, Sonic and Tails tumbled back to the floor, and so did heaps of smelly trash.
Knuckles, who had been climbing down the 'wall' to the trash, found himself on his hands and knees on the floor. He stood up, slightly dizzy. "Darn you, Robotnik!" he shouted, shaking a fist.
Sonic jumped up and looked around. "Knux!" he hollered, hearing his friend's voice but unable to see him.
Knuckles turned toward the sound. "Sonic?"
Sonic and Tails ran up to the echidna and greeted him. Knuckles was as surprised and pleased as they. He explained about looking for the shard, and they told him about trying to reach the bridge. "Tell you what," said Knuckles. "I'll tilt the ship again so you can get up to the door. I'll catch up to you once I find the piece."
Sonic and Tails watched as the echidna climbed the wall and glided to the high platform where the joystick was located. "Good thing he's here," Tails smiled, elbowing Sonic. "You're too heavy to airlift that high."
Knuckles grasped the joystick and pushed the nose of the ship down.
Amy gave a shriek and fell down the passage, which had suddenly turned into a gaping well. She barely managed to catch a pipe on the wall as she slid by, and clung to it, gasping in terror.
Sonic and Tails fell onto the wall, raced to the door, jumped down inside it and yelled their thanks to their friend. Knuckles pulled the joystick back to center, and the monstrous Egg Carrier pulled out of its nose dive and once again leveled out.
Robotnik shut down the power to that troublesome joystick once and for all, then stood. Metal Sonic had not enjoyed toppling about the cockpit like a piece of furniture, and so was hovering independently in the middle of the room. He landed as Robotnik turned toward him. "Mecha," Robotnik said, "go to the Hot Shelter and bring Chaos to the upper deck. I have some things to do."
"Aye, sir," Mecha replied, and departed. He hated and feared Chaos, and Chaos looked down his liquid nose at Mecha. If the robot succeeded in leading the monster to the upper deck, it would be because Chaos had nothing better to do.
Robotnik departed shortly after Metal Sonic did, but for his own reasons.
Birdy led Amy into a large circular room. She stopped and stared at the machine in the center of the room. If she had been more experienced she would have recognized the thing as a half-built robotizer. As it was, she had no idea what it was for, but she had an uncomfortable feeling it was something evil.
The green flicky fluttered to a ladder, perched on a rung and twittered impatiently. "All right, I'm coming," Amy called, trotting across the room. She climbed the ladder slowly. She was feeling very tired from the excitement of the day, and could only think of going home and taking a long nap.
Sonic and Tails entered into the long green main hall where Robotnik had briefed the E-series robots. "That's it?" Sonic said, looking around the empty room and placing his fists on his hips.
"Maybe," Tails said, looking and listening suspiciously. "I'll bet we can get to the bridge from here. C'mon Sonic! He might have robotized Amy by now!"
The two made for the lift at the end of the room.
Chapter 22: Sonic and E-102 Gamma
Amy pulled the handle that opened the hatch, and stepped out into the windy storm-darkness of the main deck. "Whew, it's cold out here!" she said as Birdy landed on her arm. "Now, how are we going to get away from here?"
"You're not going anywhere, Amy Rose."
The hedgehog spun about to see Robotnik in his little hovercraft flying toward her. "What do you want, jerk?"
"That's easy, my dear." He flew the ship right up to her, leaned out and swiped the flicky from his perch.
"No, not the Birdy!" Amy cried, leaping up on the side of the hovercraft. Robotnik shoved her away and floated out of her reach.
At that moment the lift doors opened, and Sonic and Tails hopped out onto the deck. "Ha, you're too late!" Robotnik sneered. He pressed a button on his radio and said, "Gamma! Come to the rear of the ship, now, and get your hoverjet! The ammunition room is unlocked." As he spoke to the robot, he had pulled out a pair of pliers and clamped them around the ring on the flicky's leg. He gave a deft twist. The flicky squeaked, the ring broke, and the tiny blue stone set in it fell into Robotnik's hand. He threw the flicky out of his ship (Amy caught it as it fell) and held aloft a blue chaos emerald. Released from it's size-restraining ring, it popped to full size in his hand.
"Oh no, it's another emerald!" Tails cried.
Sonic and Amy could only gape.
"Begone, all of you!" Robotnik roared. "This is all I really need!"
Gamma awoke from his stupor as his master summoned him. It was a call to duty. Master must not have seen him release the girl. He would not be dismantled after all!
The long-legged robot dashed out of the cell block and into the ammunition room, where several robot technicians, that were built only to maintain other robots, installed the flat hover unit to his back. Then Gamma made for the deck lift at a run.
Amy stood with her back to the wind, cradling the heartbroken flicky in her arms and crooning soothing words. Absorbed, she did not see when the lit doors opened again, and out stepped E-102 Gamma. She did notice, however, when Robotnik yelled, "Take care of them, Gamma! I'm counting on you!" He whipped his hovercraft about and roared off toward the nose of the ship.
The pink hedgehog turned and saw the tall red robot who had helped her, as it trained its gun on Sonic. "No!" she cried.
Sonic and Tails dodged left and right as Gamma fired. His shots went wide. Sonic's quick mind was analyzing the robot--could it move fast? How would it attack? Its size was a definite disadvantage--he could rip it to pieces before it even decided to sidestep.
"Resistance is futile," Gamma droned. He leaped into the air, activated his hoverjet and buzzed over Sonic like a wasp, firing as he came. Sonic ducked under him, hearing faintly as Amy cried again, "Stop, please!"
The robot landed, swept Sonic with his tag laser and fired. Hit! Sonic tumbled to the deck and lay stunned, unable to even guess where he had been struck. Tails saw his hero fall, gave a battle-scream and tore into the robot from the side with the ferocious spin-attack Tikal had taught him. Gamma staggered sideways, then whirled with sudden anger and backhanded the fox in the face with the side of his gun.
Tails spun and fell on his hands and knees, the world going 'round. Sonic was just climbing to his feet, shaken, clutching at the laser burn that traced along his chest and under his arm--it had only grazed him. He saw Tails go down, forgot his injury, and attacked Gamma with savage fury.
"Stop it! Sonic, please stop!" Amy begged from a distance.
Gamma suffered one more blow, staggered back, then collapsed in a crumpled, sparking heap on the deck. "Gotcha!" Sonic snarled, and dashed forward to finish the robot off.
Amy flashed between Sonic and the robot and stood her ground, eyes flaming. Sonic set his feet and stopped just short of knocking her over. "Get away, Amy!" he panted, pupils dilated with rage. "I'm gonna take him down!"
"No!" Amy snapped right back. "This robot's my friend! He helped me! Please don't kill him!"
Sonic lifted a hand to shove her aside, but checked himself. The robot would probably shut down anyway, and if it had helped her, did that mean it had rebelled? This flashed through his head in a fraction of a second, and he made his decision. "Okay," he said, backing away from Amy and her robot. "You must have your reasons."
The ship under their feet jolted, and they felt a sensation like dropping in an elevator. "The ship is losing altitude!" Tails yelled from several feet away, where he was looking up the Egg Carrier's length.
"Tails," Sonic commanded, "take Amy and get out of here!"
Amy looked from Sonic to Tails and back again. "Sonic, what about you?"
"I'm gonna nail that Eggman!" he yelled over his shoulder, already dashing away.
Amy watched him enter the bridge's tower, then turned to Gamma. The robot had climbed unsteadily to his feet and was standing quietly, braced on one leg--the other was bent sideways. He knew very well that he had lost the battle, and would have been destroyed had not Amy interfered. "Why do you help me?" he asked her plaintively. His internal systems were not functioning very well, and his visual sensors would not focus properly, but internal repair was activated and he was slowly stabilizing.
"I told you I would try to return the favor sometime," she replied with a smile. "You're too nice of a robot to work for Robotnik. You should leave and do something else."
Gamma trembled at her words. That would be out and out rebellion. But had he not already disobeyed orders once by freeing her?
"Amy, c'mon!" Tails said, running up and taking her hand. "We don't have much time!" He spun his tails and lifted her into the air, the flicky flying along beside her. "Goodbye, Mr. Robot!" she called to Gamma.
He watched them for a moment, then activated his hoverjet and rose off the deck. He would go with them part of the way.
Sonic watched them go through the windows of the bridge. The bridge was empty, but he had a feeling it wouldn't be that way for long. He looked at the control panel. If he wanted to follow Robotnik, he had better change the ship back to it's original shape, or he would have to go back through the Sky Deck, and that would take too long. There had to be a button or something that would change the ship ...
A frantic search revealed nothing, and common sense told him that it would be in quite a different place than the regular flight controls. Exasperated, he sat down in Robotnik's chair--
And found the button. It was under a plastic shield on the arm of the chair. He laughed, slid back the shield and pressed the button.
The Egg Carrier shrank together, contracted, folded. The attack wings rotated and swung back to their places alongside the ship's nose. The bridge swung forward and lowered to deck level once more.
Chapter 23: Chaos 6
Throughout the ship, a computer voice announced, "Emergency alert has been canceled. Resuming monorail operation."
Knuckles heard it as he stood on a pile of trash, a chunk of glassy emerald in one hand.
Big the Cat heard it as he stood in the main hell below deck, a fishing pole under one arm and a frog under the other. "We'd better get out of here, Froggy," he said. "If this places crashes, nobody's gonna worry about helping us." The purple cat crossed the room to the lift and rode it up to the deck.
Big had only just caught Froggy in the Hot Shelter when his ears caught the sound of approaching footsteps. He had trotted down the hall and taken the elevator up to the main hall, only to feel the ship about him lurch and begin to drop.
The stormy, cold air ruffled his fur as the cat trotted forward, across the newly-restored Egg Carrier, over a catwalk, and onto the giant green engine housing. There Big halted in surprise.
Standing on the housing was a large creature that appeared to ba a shark made of water with fiery green eyes. Dr. Robotnik hovered nearby in his hovercraft. "So, trying to escape, are you?" Robotnik sneered at the cat. "Go right ahead--but leave me the frog."
Froggy wriggled and thrashed suddenly, and Big had to drop him. The frog plopped to the thick glass, then hopped toward the waiting Chaos. Big started after him, but stopped when Chaos lunged at him with a bubbling growl.
Robotnik flung Chaos the blue stone stolen from Amy's flicky, and Froggy gave a convulsive twitch, opened his wide mouth, and Big's bright yellow emerald clinked to the deck. Chaos grasped the stones with one hand and the frog with the other, then melted into a vast puddle with all of them inside.
For a long moment nothing happened. Then slowly, a haze formed around the puddle. Big looked up at the sky and saw with surprise that Chaos was actually pulling a cloud into himself. His form would be very large and he needed more water than he had with him.
A blue hedgehog dashed into the glass arena, looked at Big, Robotnik and Chaos, and cried, "He's changing AGAIN?"
As Sonic spoke, the puddle rose, rose, fifteen feet, twenty feet, twenty-eight feet, and solidified into the impossibly ugly shape of a monstrous scorpion. It had six legs, the hindmost of which were tall and bent like a grasshopper's and reinforced with cartilage. The two green eyes were now laid vertically, on the front and top of the bulldog-like head, and six smaller eyes were arranged in a row alongside the lowest one. Chaos' jaws were reinforced this time and edged with teeth.
"Wonderful, Chaos!" Robotnik applauded. "He is more power than ever, now! And I even found his missing tail."
Froggy, floating aimlessly in the watery body of the monster, suddenly jerked, as if with electric shock, and his un-froglike tail shrunk and vanished. At the same time, the tail reappeared, doubled over Chaos's back, enlarged twenty times. It did not have a stinger on the end--it had a thing that was shaped like a pendulum.
"I must save Froggy!" Big cried, seeing his little friend, now in his right mind, trying to jump through Chaos's side and failing. Bug Big dared not go near those giant snapping jaws.
"If he's your friend," Sonic said, "I'll help you save him. Look, I'll attract Chaos's attention, and you fish the frog out."
Big nodded.
Robotnik, having circled Chaos 6 admiringly, ordered, "All right Chaos, destroy them all!"
Sonic darted toward Chaos, waving his arms. "Hey! Look at me! You'll never win a beauty contest, ugly! Nah nah!" The towering aquamarine scorpion turned to follow him, and Big slipped up behind the monster. Froggy, eyes always on Big, swam to the side nearest him. Big flicked his fishrod and let fly the line at the frog. It struck the water, but Chaos wheeled about, and Big missed. Sonic appeared. "Stay behind him! Here, Chaos Chaos Chaos! Don't you want a bite of nice tasty hedgehog?" He fled away across the top of the engine housing, and Big edged in behind Chaos for another try.
This time, as the line broke through Chaos' surface tension with a small ripple, Froggy snapped up the lure in desperation. Big tugged, strained--Froggy emerged from the monster halfway--and popped free and sailed right into Big's hands. "Oh boy!" Big exclaimed, hugging the weary amphibian. "Froggy!"
The cat carried the frog away from the battling monster and hedgehog, and up to the safety of the runway. Big set Froggy down, and the frog hopped immediately toward a small blue-and-orange biplane that rested on its snout and forward wings a short distance away. Froggy bounded into the cockpit, looked at Big, and croaked hopefully. Big looked at the plane and shook his head. "We need to get away, sure," he said, "but I don't know anything about aeroplanes." He kicked a wing experimentally, and the whole plane jumped. It was lighter than it appeared. It gave Big an idea.
Holding onto the underside of the wings, Big ran and leaped off the edge of the Carrier. The plane's wings formed enough lift to glide into the air and away into the cloudy air. "Hang on Froggy!" Big called. "Away we go!"
Big, Froggy and the Tornado vanished in the direction of the mainland.
As Knuckles had placed the recovered emerald chunk in his bag, the now-familiar pink ball of light appeared and circled his head. "Oh great, it's you," he said in impatience. "Well, make it snappy. I've got to find Sonic."
In a second the echidna was transported from the world of the present to the world of the past, as he had twice before.
Knuckles blinked and squinted. It was dark with stars overhead. He moved his feet, waiting for his eyes to adjust, and felt cobblestones beneath him. He must be back in the echidna city somewhere. Slowly he made out his surroundings. He was on a stone bridge that spanned a river. Ahead of him, in the distance, was a fiery red glow that lit the horizon. The more used to the darkness he grew the brighter it became. Curious, and yet with a faint sense of foreboding, he strode toward the light.
Then he broke into a run with a sharp gasp--that was a fire, a bonfire, and if he had guessed correctly where he was--
The echidna climbed the hill and stood gazing in horrified grief at the Master emerald shrine. It was burning from base to crown, as if the water in the fountain had been turned to gasoline. The Master emerald sat alone amidst the flames, its glow dimmed by the furious crackling fire. Knuckles saw that the seven surrounding obelisks that used to hold the chaos emeralds were snapped and lay on the smooth grass like felled trees, their emeralds missing.
Knuckles started to move forward, but his foot struck something. He looked down. A dead chao. They were everywhere, he saw. Someone--or several someones--had slaughtered them. The burning shrine, the dead chao--what did this mean?
Another shape, larger than the rest, lay huddled in the grass near the foot of the pyramid. It was a moment before Knuckles realized it was an echidna. He rushed to it and knelt down. As he did it stirred and lifted its head--it was the girl, Tikal.
"What happened here?" he asked.
She looked at him in a daze, then at the blazing fire. "They--they came, and my father--" she faltered. She struggled to her feet and stood, nursing her right arm. Her right hand rested at such an angle Knuckles guessed her arm was broken, but Tikal didn't seem to care. She was staring at the dead chao, tears welling up in her eyes. "Oh, I can't believe how badly this turned out!"
Knuckles remembered how she had loved the chao and promised to protect them, and his heart wrenched. "Is there anything I can do?" he asked gently.
From out in the darkness, far off but not far enough, there came a blood-chilling scream. It was the scream of a very large creature who was also terribly angry. Knux jumped, but Tikal only shook her head. "Father ... I'm so sorry I defied you ... I was only trying to keep you from rousing him ..." Her voice cracked and she broke into sobs.
Once more Knuckles stood on the Egg Carrier, still in Sky Deck with the emerald shard in his bag, but it seemed to him that he still heard the weeping of Tikal in his ears.
Sonic saw the strange cat leave the top of the engine housing, and turned his attention to defeating Chaos 6. The monster's brain had always been the weakness before, and so would probably be again.
The hedgehog charged at Chaos, leaped, curled into a ball, and shot himself between the insect eyes.
He struck no brain. He floated for a moment, then was flung out as Chaos shook his head. Sonic landed and shook the water from his eyes. Chaos' brain was exactly in the center of his fat body, like a heart. It was impossible to reach, unless Sonic wanted to swim.
As Sonic stood at a distance, studying his enemy, Chaos opened his vast jaws and inhaled with the strength of a hurricane. Sonic struggled to brace himself, to get out of Chaos's pull, but he had been too close to begin with. he was lifted off his feet and dragged straight into Chaos's mouth.
Chaos snapped his jaws shut as soon as Sonic entered and tossed his head, swirling Sonic about like mouthwash. He stopped for a second, letting Sonic sink slowly, then caught the hedgehog in his teeth and bit down.
With a snap of his neck Chaos flung his victim across the arena as his master applauded him from the sidelines.
Coughing, Sonic sat up and held his stomach in agony. Chaos may as well have bitten him in half. The teeth had been leathery, not sharp; it was the incredible crushing force behind them that hurt--the strength of the ocean.
As the hedgehog stumbled to his feet, Robotnik swooped forward with the over-enthusiastic notion of assisting Chaos. Sonic looked up and sidestepped in time to avoid the object that fell from the underside of the hovercraft. Still coughing, Sonic moved away. Chaos was walking (or crawling) across the arena toward him, and the last thing the hedgehog wanted was to get bitten again.
Sonic could not run straight out, but he could jog. Robotnik followed him from the air, dropping bombs or the link, and Chaos only had to turn in place to keep Sonic in sight. Both knew the hedgehog was injured. Sonic had always had a high pain tolerance, but the terrible bruises across his stomach and back were making him dizzy. He had to keep moving or he would be Chaos chow. Each jarring footstep sent a sharp wave of pain through his middle. The salt water from submersion in Chaos was stinging in the laser scratch under his arm. Keep moving. Keep moving as long as you can. Don't quit or he'll get you ...
Sonic's dazed eyes fell on one of the objects Robotnik had dropped. It was pouring some substance onto the glass to make it slippery. It steamed with cold. "Liquid nitrogen or something," Sonic thought dully, turning aside to avoid it. Then he stopped and whirled as an idea pierced the mist in his head.
He snatched up the ice-bomb, tilted it so no more of the precious nitrogen would spill, then ran straight at Chaos. "Open wide!" the hedgehog yelled, and flung the bomb into the monster's half-open jaws.
Chaos's teeth crushed the bomb to splinters, and the nitrogen instantly entered his liquid body. The monster gave a roaring cry, reared back on his hind legs--and froze into a block of ice.
Forgetting his discomfort, Sonic flew forward and slammed into Chaos's throat. The statue shattered like glass and lay about the arena in fragments, but only for a second. The ice melted as if commanded to do so, and reformed into the scorpion shape again. Chaos shook his head angrily and advanced on Sonic again.
Sonic had already retreated and picked up another bomb. Hurting, he crouched and waited for the monster to draw a little nearer before charging.
Unexpectedly the huge tail lashed forward, stretching like gum. The pendulum on the end, now a burning orange, slashed like lightning at the hedgehog. Sonic recoiled automatically, feeling the burning heat of the blade against his face--it missed him by perhaps three inches. As the tail resumed its original position over Chaos's back, Sonic saw that the bomb in his hands had been split neatly in half. He dropped it in horror. It took little imagination to see what the tail would have done to him.
The hedgehog snatched up another bomb and jogged around the circumference of the arena, then raced straight at Chaos and threw the bomb. Chaos lashed out his tail, but it hit the floor some fifteen feet beyond Sonic--and then he crystallized into white ice. Again Sonic shattered him.
Another, slower reformation, and a twice as angry Chaos turned his maddened gaze on his enemy. Sonic, although still in pain, was in much better spirits, and ran to and fro on the green glass, a third bomb ready in his hands.
The monstrous scorpion leaped straight up in the air, seemed to float a moment because of his vast size, then came down slow, faster, faster--and struck the arena floor with a thunderous boom. A visible shockwave, like a wave of crimson flame, shot out away from his body. Sonic had just enough wits to leap over it and fling his third shot into Chaos's face.
The glass section Chaos had landed on smashed through under the blow. Now, as Chaos froze and Sonic smashed him, three-fourths of the ice fell into the churning machinery inside the housing. There came a low cry from the de-formed Chaos, then silence.
"Sonic!"
The hedgehog turned to see Knuckles running toward him across the catwalk, red dreadlocks blowing in the wind.
"What happened, Knux?" Sonic asked sarcastically, holding his side. "I thought you got lost or something."
Knuckles saw at once that a battle had ensued--the pain in Sonic's eyes, the crushed floor panel, the ice fragments and leftover bombs lying here and there, Robotnik hovering silently in his ship. "Sorry I'm late, Sonic, but we gotta get outta here. The fire in the forward sections is spreading to--"
Robotnik interrupted with a roar, "I don't believe this! Fine, stay here! _I_ will return, even if Chaos doesn't!" He whipped his ship around and flew toward the edge of the Carrier.
"STOP!" Sonic cried, racing after him idiotically.
"Sonic, don't!" Knuckles yelled, giving chase, but he was no match for Sonic's speed. The hedgehog bounded off the engine housing, dashed across the deck, leaped into space--
--and came down with his hands on the side of Robotnik's hovercraft.
Knuckles raced to the edge and looked over. He glimpsed Sonic clinging to the side of Robotnik's ship before the two vanished into a cloud and were left behind by the Carrier.
"Who's driving?" the echidna muttered, looking up the ship's length to the bridge. An explosion, muffled by multiple floors, rocked the deck beneath Knuckles's feet. "Whoa," he thought. "I'd better get out of here before the whole place goes!" He crouched to jump off the edge of the Egg Carrier--
"Dodge!" his instincts screamed.
He sprang backward and to the side, just as a glowing pendulum tail slashed a groove in the deck where he had been standing. Knuckles whirled, heart hammering a tattoo against his ribs. Chaos 6, not yet defeated, stood on the edge of the engine housing, reeling in his tail for another try.
Amy rose dangled helplessly from Tails' hold on her wrists. Her arms ached and she was terribly afraid of falling. Every so often she looked around for Birdy, and always the flicky was a few feet away, flying alongside Tails. Tails' attention was focused on the dim mainland in the distance, and no one spoke.
Afterward Amy assumed she had fallen asleep for a few seconds. A little light, like a firefly, flew into her eyes and she wasn't flying in the cold wind anymore. She was standing on a wide cobblestone path. Before her, on the top of a little hill, only a few minutes' walk away, was a small stone pyramid with water pouring down the sides. On the top, under a little roof, was a green gem the size of a boulder. Standing before this pyramid was a young echidna girl.
Amy trotted toward her and said hello, but her voice had no sound; it was a dream. The pink hedgehog stood and watched as the orange echidna tiptoed forward, looking around furtively. "I'm not supposed to be here," the echidna muttered with conviction. "Oh, but if only ..." She did not finish, but turned aside to look at something in the grass. Curious, Amy moved closer.
Chao. "Oh, aren't they cute!" Amy squealed, but again, she made no sound. A group of the little blue creatures were standing in the grass, looking fearfully up at the echidna. The girl knelt and spoke softly. "Don't be afraid, little ones. I won't hurt you. I'm not like the other mainlanders." The lead chao looked up at her for a long time, then inched forward. The girl picked it up gently and rocked it like a baby doll.
In a moment the other chao were gathered around the echidna's feet, jabbering and cooing. The girl was smiling foolishly, patting first one, then another. She clearly liked chao as much as Amy did.
Suddenly there came a low growl from the pool at the base of the nearby pyramid. The girl turned and gasped as a humanoid head with green alien-eyes emerged from the water. Amy gasped, too--
--And woke up. She was still hanging from Tails' hands, suspended high over the ocean. But now the sea was a calm blue, the clouds had receded into a dark bank in the west, and Sapphire Bay was visible ahead.
Knuckles fled around the circumference of the arena, a furious Chaos 6 right behind him.
The echidna had seen the ice and bombs lying about the arena after Sonic had departed, and put two and two together. There was only one way to defeat Chaos 6, and Sonic had discovered it. The echidna snatched up a bomb and turned toward the monster, just as Chaos opened his jaws and inhaled, as he had done with Sonic. Knuckles braced himself against the floor and tossed the bomb into the air. Chaos sucked it into his mouth, flinched, reared back convulsively, and froze into a scorpion statue. Knuckles ran up and punched it fiercely, and the statue collapsed into a heap of fragments.
Now Chaos was after the echidna with a ferocity he had not showed Sonic. Knuckles could not keep still even for a second, or that fiery sting would slash down in an attempt to split his head. "What did I ever do to you?" Knuckles yelled. "Doc told you to get Sonic, not me!"
Chaos stopped and looked at the puny (to him) echidna with his eight eyes. He seemed to be considering Knuckles' words.
The scorpion form melted abruptly and formed into a bulb-shape, with the deadly tail protruding from the top like an enormous sprout. As Knuckles apprehensively watched this new gyration with, bright dots appeared in the bulb. These shot out like stick ropes and stuck, taut and quivering, to the edges of the arena. More and more struck out, until Knuckles was standing in a web of Chaos-tentacles, unable to move a step.
The tail swung up, the pendulum flashing yellow. Knuckles threw himself forward desperately, across the stick, electric tentacles. The tail lashed down and hissed through several tentacles, struck the point where Knuckles had been, then pulled back. The tentacles contracted, the bulb swelled out, and once more the scorpion stood there.
"You deserved everything Sonic gave you," Knuckles snarled, shaken. He snatched up one of the few bombs left, dashed forward and flung it into Chaos's mouth. Ice statue, shatter, reform.
Knuckles leaped, glided across the broken floor panel, grabbed the last ice bomb, and threw that to the monster, too. Ice statue, shatter ... but there was no reformation. The ice shards melted naturally, and lying in their midst were the six chaos emeralds.
Expecting a trap, Knuckles crept toward the emeralds. Nothing happened. He dashed like mad across the area, scooped up the emeralds, shoved them in his bag and retreated. Still nothing happened. A slow realization crept over Knuckles. "I killed him!" he said in wonder. "Now, how does a beast so powerful succumb to me ...?"
The Egg Carrier suddenly pitched to one side, and an explosion ripped through the forward hull. Knuckles ducked the raining fragments and ran for the edge of the ship. "Time to abandon Carrier," he thought. "And good riddance, Chaos!"
And so the echidna glided away from the falling fortress, the last of the Mobians to escape. Before it had faded from sight behind him, another explosion tore through the lower section, and the Carrier fell, tail first, toward the ocean far below.
But that was not the end of the Egg Carrier, nor of Chaos.
Part 3
Chapter 24: On land but far from done
Robotnik's hovercraft bucked and jerked as Sonic flung himself about. His red sneakers struck the hoverjets beneath over and over, trying to short them out. Robotnik himself was trying to steer and balance the ship at the same time. They were somewhere over and, near the Mystic Ruins. Trees carpeted the ground below for miles in every direction, and they were perhaps twenty feet above the treetops. "C'mon, fight!" Sonic was snarling. "Don't send your pets to do it! Right here, right now, you and me!"
Robotnik cringed away from the hedgehog. When it came down to it, he preferred to let a machine face Sonic--he was a coward at heart. But even fearing his enemy as he did, Robotnik had not lost his wits. He clenched his iron hand into a fist, turned and slammed it down on Sonic's fingers on the edge of the hovercraft. Sonic gave a yelp and let go with one hand. Before he could take fresh hold, Robotnik smashed his other hand. The hedgehog gave a diminishing wail as he dropped. There was a smashing in the trees below, then silence. Robotnik made for Sapphire City at once.
Knuckles reverently placed the last chunk into the Master's emeralds side. It fused into place at once, and there sat the emerald, whole once more.
The island lurched, swayed slightly, and rose smoothly into the sky. The ocean poured from its underside and churned in waves below. Slowly the island soared into he evening sky, Knuckles driving triumphantly. He had repaired the Master emerald, and arranged in a semi-circle on the stone around it were the six chaos emeralds. Where the seventh was, he had no idea, but it didn't matter much. Chaos was defeated, the Egg Carrier had crashed, and things were all right again. Everyone had made it to shore (he guessed), and he was reconciled with Sonic. What more could happen?
He sat and watched the sun set over the rim of the island. They were airborne once more. As far as he knew or cared, his adventure was over.
But nine days later, he would look back on that peaceful evening and say, "Knuckles, you're a naive fool."
Big the Cat and Froggy had made it ashore half an hour earlier. They hiked back to Big's little shack, Froggy hopping cheerfully, Big carrying his fishing pole over one shoulder and the Tornado over the other. The plane had gotten a bit dented upon landing, bit it probably still worked. Big decided that he would take it back with him for safekeeping, and later, take it to Mac at the Mystic Ruins airstrip as a gift.
Nine days later, Big would wish guiltily that he had never set eyes on that plane.
E-102 Gamma had flown near Amy and Tails until the mainland was in sight. When they made for Station Square, he veered away to go to the Mystic Ruins.
He flew steadily, unheedful of the wind that buffeted him, or of the fitful rain that pounded his hull. He was, in a sense, thinking things over. Semi-free will was a dangerous gift for his master to bestow upon him.
His first vision of Robotnik's face blinked across his screen. Master. This was followed by the image of the rebuilt Beta in the construction chamber. Beta had been used as a test unit, simply because he lost a silly fight.
Again Robotnik's face appeared. But he was Master. He had built the robots. He could do what he liked with them.
The image of the blue robot, Delta, as he looked helplessly at Gamma as Mecha beamed them up. Epsilon and Zeta, too. But Master--Master had handed them over to Metal Sonic. Master could do what he liked.
Amy's face as she peered up at Gamma after the fight. "You're too nice to work for Robotnik. You should leave and do something else."
Gamma had disobeyed orders by releasing her. Why had he disobeyed orders? The picture of the little green bird sprang to mind. Because that bird ... was named Cirrus. The memory of the creature in his hull connected with his computer memory. Suddenly Gamma was wider awake than he had ever been. He had disobeyed because Master was WRONG. If Gamma had brought Master the bird, Master would not only have taken the emerald, he would have robotized him. "As ... I ... am," the robot said aloud, with difficulty.
Beta, Delta, Epsilon, Zeta. His kind.
Robotnik's face appeared in shades of red. "Master registration, deleted," Gamma droned into the quiet air. "Dr. Robotnik--enemy. E-series, friends. Must save."
The robot landed awkwardly on the level ground near the train station in Mystic Ruins. His left leg remained twisted sideways from Sonic's attack, and his internal systems could not repair it. His other hardware, however, was stabilized and working properly. Here he was. He had not always been a robot. He knew that much. What he had been before, he didn't remember, but he knew that the other E-series were in the same plight as he was. To free them, he must destroy their robot shapes.
Gamma stood on his good leg and swept the area with radar. Only Metal Sonic knew where the E-series had gone after beaming out, but the teleporters only had a ranger of fifty miles. Mecha probably would not have dumped them in the ocean--he was too malicious for that. No, there was a good chance that the E-series were somewhere on the coast.
A blip appeared on the robot's screen, two miles distant, southward. Bingo. Gamma did a terrain scan. The blip could be reached by going to a nearby cave, flying up the tunnel within, and entering the canyon in the mountains on the other side.
The robot limped toward the windy cave as sunset colored the sky.
Tails and Amy landed in Station Square wearily, the flicky trailing behind. "See ya, Amy," Tails said with a little wave.
"Bye, Tails," Amy replied, waving back as the fox trotted away across the square. "He's cute," the pink hedgehog commented to Birdy as he landed on her shoulder. "I still think Sonic is cuter, thought." She yawned. "Boy, I'm tired. Let's go home. I've had enough of nasty robots for one day."
Birdy nodded his little head--he was tired and hungry. As he did, the rays of the sinking sun touched the small trinket hanging from his neck. Amy noticed it for the first time and stopped. "What's this?" she asked, touching it. The flicky chirped, caught it in his beak and held it toward her.
Amy seated herself on a bench outside the train station and looked closely at it. It was a heart-shaped locket; an odd thing for a bird to wear. She opened it. Inside was a tiny photo of her flicky, but beside him were two others--a grey one and a pink one. "Oh!" Amy exclaimed, understanding immediately. "Are they your mom and dad?"
Birdy nodded, wings and tail drooping.
"Where are they?"
Birdy only looked dumbly at Amy, and she thought she understood. "Oh, how awful! Robotnik got them, didn't he?"
Birdy nodded.
Amy frowned as she looked at her little companion. If only he could talk! She had no idea where to start looking. "Well," she said sensibly, "I need to go home and eat dinner and tell Mom where I've been." Amy was always making up some imaginary adventure and telling her mother about it, so word of being kidnapped and take to the Egg Carrier would be nothing new. "And maybe we can think of some way to rescue your family." Amy glanced toward the Sunset Hotel and thought briefly of the chao, but decided it was too late to see them, anyway. She set out at a trot for home.
Chapter 25: Tails and the Missile
Tails was not as weary as Amy from the day's adventures. He was the Freedom Fighter, and what was more, Sonic's sidekick. He was hungry, but not tired.
The fox was mindlessly munching his way through a cheeseburger and a box of cheese fries, sitting at a picnic table behind the hotel, when his sensitive ears detected something odd. He straightened and looked about. That was the sound of Robotnik's hovercraft, or he was a hedgehog. His searching ears drew his eyes around to the south. The hovercraft was not far away, now, and it seemed to be having engine trouble. Tails crammed the rest of his burger in his mouth and made for the street at a run.
He was just in time to see the hovercraft careen into the square, strike the asphalt and bounce onto the sidewalk, one engine dead and the other sputtering. Carefully, Tails circled until he could see Robotnik.
Robotnik was slumped in the tilted cockpit, breathing heavily but not moving. Tails inched a bit closer and pricked up his ears. The doctor was muttering aloud now. "I'm ruined. Chaos was defeated and my Egg Carrier is destroyed." A grim, snarling smirk contorted Robotnik's features. "But I will destroy Sapphire City anyway." He struggled to start his engines, and managed to limp he hovercraft across the road to the beach. Unnoticed, Tails followed him. Robotnik's words had turned the food in his stomach to rock.
Robotnik said something into his radio that Tails didn't catch. Tails stood and looked at the ocean, following his enemy's gaze. "Where's Sonic?" the fox thought suddenly. "Last I saw he was going to stop Eggman!" The thought of Chaos flashed through his head, green-eyed and hungry. Tails stopped that train of thought before it went any further--he had enough to scare him right here without that, too.
But there was no time to worry about Sonic. Out in the bay there was a splash, and a missile emerged from the water and roared skyward. Tails cringed and watched it shrink to a fiery dot, a line of smoke in its wake. He looked about him. Humans around the square were shading their eyes and watching the missile scream away. Tails looked back at Robotnik to see the doctor lower a glass canopy over cockpit and activate a sputtering green forecfield, like a bubble around the hovercraft. Tails looked up at the missile, then at Robotnik again. He would kill everyone--for what? To make a point? To soothe his injured pride? Revenge for the Egg Carrier's demise?
Tails ran away a few steps, then returned. Where could he possibly go? If the missile could wipe out a whole city, it must be nuclear or something and there was no way he or anyone else could escape.
"Oh, I hate that Eggman!" Sonic snarled to himself, brushing leaves and twigs from his fur. He pulled off his gloves and examined his fingers--they were bruised, but not broken. He tossed a poisonous glance upward, although Robotnik's hovercraft had already departed, and set out westward. If he could get to the coast he could figure out where he was, and take the train back to Station Square. Hopefully Amy and Tails had made it.
The woods were dark with the coming of evening, and the occasional orange beam slanted through the leaves like lasers. Sonic was idly wondering what a world would be like if its sun only emitted infrared light, when something flashed off to his left. He looked about and stopped. There was a little pink ball of light hovering several yards away. As he looked at it, it darted away a few feet and stopped, as if it wanted him to follow it. Sonic, still in a sour mood, only sneered. "Like I'm gonna up and follow any stupid lightbulb that crosses my path. It's probably some booby trap." He made as though to walk on, but the light flew up to him, then away again in the same direction, south. He pretended to pay no attention. Again it flew to him, and this time a thin, distant female voice said, "Please come with me! The fate of Mobius is at stake!"
The hedgehog glared at the light. "Oh, so you're a fairy or something, right? I guess I could come with you ... for a little way. If you lead me to some trap, I will personally take a stick and knock your light out." Could you do that to a fairy? He wasn't sure, but his bluff seemed to work. "Just come," she said.
Sonic turned aside and followed the light.
The missile was coming down now. People were beginning to panic and rush about. Tails could hear sirens in the distance. But he only sat on the sidewalk, eyes skyward. He had a calm feeling of unreality--this couldn't really be happening. It was too impossible. He was dreaming or something--and yet that missile kept coming, a spurt of flame in the sky. Tails watched it indifferently. He couldn't stop it. Only Hyper Sonic, maybe, could stop it, and Sonic wasn't here, nor did he have his belt with him.
Now it was overhead, now it streaked down like a deadly dart into the heart of the city. Tails cringed and waited. The smoke from the missile thinned and drifted away. Minutes passed. Nothing happened. "Wasn't it supposed to blow up?" Tails murmured with a sense of anticlimax, looking questioningly toward Robotnik.
Robotnik seemed as confused as Tails at first; then he became angry. He deactivated his shield and retracted his canopy with the words, "It was a dud! I don't believe this! Mecha, when I get my hands on you ..." He revved his engines and flew up the street to the Speed Highway lift. Tails followed him, the delayed fear hitting him in a rush and weakening his knees. He stopped and leaned weakly against the side of the lift building, lightheaded and sick.
Through the ringing in his ears, the fox heard Robotnik growl, "I'll just have to detonated it myself. I can arm it from a distance ..." He rammed his hovercraft through the protective door and vanished into the darkness inside.
Tails leaped inside just as the lift began to rise and crouched in a corner, hoping Robotnik wouldn't notice him. He had to beat the madman to the missile or that would be the end!
The detached feeling had left him, and his senses had sharpened acutely. The ridged metal floor beneath his hands and feet--the rattle of the lift--the glow of the hovercraft's engines and cockpit in the dimness--the smell of exhaust--this was real.
The lift stopped, the door opened. Before them spread the cityscape under the glow of the setting sun, the suspended highway stretched away into the distance. A mile away, its nose buried in the roof and side of a sky scraper, was the missile. Robotnik's ship cruised onto the track, and Tails followed.
For the first time the doctor saw his little shadow. "Well well, if it isn't Tails!" he said, slowing and looking back. "Where's your big brother, Sonic?"
Tails drew himself up. "You're not going to detonate that missile."
"And whose going to stop me? YOU?" Robotnik cackled at the absurdity of it. "You think you can keep up with me? Let's see you try!" He roared away down the highway, and Tails followed at a run.
Chapter 26: Unwilling adventurers
E-102 Gamma stood on the wide ledge in the Windy Valley canyon, weary as only a robot could be. Delta, the blue robot, stood on a ledge a little ways off, completely unaware of Gamma. Gamma did not want to destroy him. Delta had been his friend. But he knew he must, and the thought of a fight wearied the mind of the creature in his hull.
Gamma activated his hoverjet and flew slowly to Delta's ledge. Delta heard him and turned. "Gamma!" he exclaimed as the red robot landed and staggered on his bad leg.
"Greetings, Delta," Gamma said quietly.
"How goes it?" asked Delta. "Has Master sent you to return me to the Egg Carrier? I knew I wouldn't be forgotten forever--"
"No, Delta," Gamma interrupted, still speaking softly. "Master did not send me."
Delta looked at his brother-robot in bewilderment. "Does not compute. Why are you here?" As he spoke, Delta swept Gamma's mainframe with a scan. Then he stepped back a pace and lifted his guns defensively. "Gamma ... you have malfunctioned. You have REVOLTED!"
"Affirmative."
"Then ... I shall have to destroy you," Delta said, robot voice dropping to a near-whisper. "I'm sorry."
"And I must destroy you," Gamma replied, quietly. "I do not wish to."
"Nor I," said Delta. "Why must you rebel? Why don't you revert your programming to default?"
"Because I do not wish to. Master is wrong. You will understand soon."
Delta stood in silence for a moment, arms at his sides and green eyes on the ground. After a moment he straightened and lifted his guns again. "Then let us begin."
Delta fired two rockets. Gamma caught them in midair with his tag laser and blew them up with two well-aimed shots. Another shot struck Delta's midsection and knocked him to the ground. The blue robot climbed to his feet immediately and fired again. Again Gamma intercepted his rockets, and struck Delta.
Sparking, Delta stared forward. Gamma limped backward, swept his opponent with his tag laser and fired. Delta fired, got up and fired again. Gamma dodged and blocked, then his his former friend with three shots in quick succession.
Delta fell for the last time and did not move again. The engines in his back were afire now. Gamma only stood and looked on in numb grief. He had done his duty.
The blue robot's head unscrewed, and from out of the compartment beneath struggled a blue flicky. It lay panting on the grass for a moment, then stood, flew up and hovered before Gamma. "Gamma! Thank you so much. You were right--I understand now. But how you figured it out, I have no idea." His voice was a lot like Delta's voice, but without the robot overtone. Gamma only looked at the bird silently. "Don't worry, Gamma," said the bird who had been Delta. "I'll find a way to get you out of there, somehow." He circled the red robot, then flew back in front of his eyes. "Epsilon is in Red Mountain, at the end of the Windy Canyon. We contacted each other after we landed. He's more mechanical-minded than I am--he might had an idea for freeing you."
"Affirmative, Delta," said Gamma.
The bird laughed. "I'm not Delta anymore. I'm Gust. Thanks again for freeing me." And he was gone with a flutter of wings.
Gamma gazed after him sadly. A few feet away lay the burned hulk that had once been the robot. But Delta was no more. The flicky that had given him life was free at last. Again the creature in Gamma's hull struggled to remember its past life, but the robot programming clamped down on its mind. Gamma could still not remember who or what he was.
Enough of this. He must find Epsilon. Gamma fired up his hoverjet and flew away down the canyon as evening deepened about him.
Tails was running as fast as his feet could take him, breath coming quick and easy. The road curved just ahead and doubled back--he would lose ground to the hovercraft that was on the next highway over. Instead of taking the turn, Tails leaped off the edge, tails spinning like helicopter rotors, and clapped his heels together. His anklets shot him forward. Vast empty space below, skyscraper looming up ahead, it's top somewhere in the sky above. Tails swerved to avoid it, saw a highway that travelled in the general direction of the missile, landed on it and ran again. Robotnik was somewhere to his far right. Tails could only hope the doctor had not gotten ahead.
Flashing lights, orange cones, workmen. Road Closed. Tails again took to the air and shot over the road construction half a mile above the city streets, landed on the other side and was away again. Where was Robotnik? Tails wondered it he dare think he had passed the hovercraft and could relax his frenzied pace a little. Something told him not to stop until he reached that missile, or Robotnik would have his head. A stitch was beginning to develop in the fox's side. He pressed a hand into it to ease the cramp and moaned, "Oh Sonic, if only you were here!"
Sonic was far from Sapphire City, following a little pink light through the woods.
She led him swiftly, southward and a little eastward. Sonic followed as best as he could, his quick motion upsetting his bruised midsection and laser-burn; often he paused for breath, which was not like him. But the pain only angered him and made him all the more determined to follow the ball of light.
As the sun dipped below the horizon and the brown shadows turned blue, the jungle ended at last, and Sonic stepped through the ruins of a stone wall and stood looking up at the pyramid Knuckles had discovered. "Where's this?" the hedgehog panted. "I didn't hear about a pyramid! Cool!"
As he looked, a rumbling as of ancient machinery began somewhere inside the pyramid, and the top half began to vibrate. Slowly, heavily, the stone began to rise. The top half of the sneak head that had been resting on the tier below began to inch upward. Sonic folded his arms and watched. He had seen a pyramid do almost the same thing--years ago in Sandopolis on the Floating Island. This pyramid was obviously of Echidnaopean origin, as echidna were carved profusely all over it. And so were snakes.
The pyramid rose, groaning and grinding, until an entire tier was added to its height, and the snake head had rose to form the top jaw of a yawning entrance--then the sound and motion ceased. "Impressive," Sonic said to the twilight, obviously unmoved. "Most impressive. Can I go home now?"
But the pink light had other ideas. It appeared out of nowhere and floated through the dark entrance. Sonic shook his head. "Like I'm just going to head into some strange pyramid that opens up in front of me. I did that once and almost got killed. Forget it."
He turned as though to walk away, but the light flew after him with the words, "You MUST enter! If you do not, Chaos will destroy us all!"
Sonic stopped and turned back. "Chaos?" He looked at the light, then up at the awaiting pyramid. He sighed and drooped, feeling as he had the night he took Amy to Twinkle Park. "Fine," he said wearily. "Lead the way."
Tails leaped desperately across empty space, landed in a tumble on the solid highway, jumped to his feet and was away, heart in his mouth. Robotnik had taken a shortcut somewhere and had appeared unexpectedly some twenty feet behind Tails. Tails had been lagging somewhat, trying to regain some breath, but the sight of Robotnik sent him into a wild sprint.
The missile was so close--but there was only one road that led up to it, and Tails couldn't seem to reach it. The best he could do was reach a road that went under the higher one. Tails paused below it and looked back. Robotnik was coming. It was now or never. The fox sump his tails, activated his anklets and shot into the darkening sky. "You little fox," he heard Robotnik snarl venomously from below.
Tails caught ahold of the highway edge just as his strength was about to give out and heaved himself up. He lay on his back, gasping, for a few seconds, then climbed to his feet and dashed to the missile.
How in the world did you defuse a missile? The fox's mind spun, trying to remember if he had ever read anything on the subject. It seemed that there were a certain number of wires to cut, but he didn't remember where they were located ...
It loomed up like a sewerpipe with tail fins, a giant Robotnik face painted on it. Smaller in size, but everywhere were yellow and black stickers bearing the 'radioactive' symbol. Tails halted and gulped. He had been right--it was a nuke. No way was he going to try to defuse a nuke--he would probably detonate it by accident. Then--plooie--that would be the end of Sapphire City, Robotnik, Amy, Tails--
Windows opened in the damaged building above, people leaned out. Tails looked up at them. "What are you doing?" they yelled.
"I've got to stop Robotnik before he blows up the missile!" Tails cried. He looked at the bulk of the thing--it had to be fifteen feet long--
Suddenly he yelled, "Do you have a radar jammer?" He had heard that humans used low-key devices like jammers to detect and block police radar.
"Right here!" someone yelled.
"Turn it on full blast and throw it to me!" Tails called.
A woman pulled out a small object like a phone, clicked it on and dropped it. The fox caught it, ran to the missile and set it against it.
Thus Tails's blocked Robotnik's signal to the bomb.
Robotnik did not see what Tails had done until he drew closer and recognized the object in the fox's hand. "So, you beat me to the missile, you little pest," he hissed. He halted his hovercraft and sat idling. "But you'll pay. You'll all pay." He whipped his ship about, shot off the roadway and down toward the streets below. Tails left the jammer by the missile, spun his tails, and parachuted down after him in triumph. Sonic never let Robotnik go until he was thoroughly whipped, and Tails intended to do the same.
Chapter 27: Snakes and Tails's battle
E-102 Gamma stood in the mouth of a vast cave in the cliffs of Red Mountain. The light had nearly gone from the sky outside, and all was dark in the cave but for the vast, boiling pit of lava in the floor. Gamma's night-vision sensors activated. The interior of the cave appeared in shades of green--a rocky, pillared cavern. The floor was uneven, broken into jagged slabs by the magma beneath.
Standing alone in the far corner of the cave was E-104 Epsilon.
He saw Gamma as soon as Gamma saw him. Like Delta, he was lonely so far from familiar surroundings, but unlike Delta, he had no hope of ever returning. He did not greet his old companion; he only watched in silence as Gamma limped and struggled over the jagged floor toward him.
Scratched and sparking a little from a hard fall, Gamma stepped onto the wide, even shelf where Epsilon was posted. "Greetings, Epsilon."
The orange robot did not reply for a moment. Then he said, "Scans detect enemy unit. Destroy."
A battle ensued. Delta had only attacked half-heartedly, but Epsilon had not the feelings and intelligence of his brother robot, and so thought nothing of destroying Gamma.
Gamma took two hits in the course of the fight, unable to sidestep them with his twisted leg. But Epsilon took many more, and finally he fell, in a sparking, smouldering heap on the stone floor.
The flicky inside Epsilon had trouble getting out. Gamma could hear it squeaking in determination as it struggled inside the hull. Gamma set a foot on Epsilon's hull and tugged the head with his hand. Presently it tore off part way--Gamma was strong--and an orange flicky bounded out and sat shivering on the floor. After a minute its trembling subsided, and it looked up at Gamma. But his reaction to freedom was the opposite of Delta's.
"Curse you, Gamma! I liked being a robot! I should have destroyed you while I had the chance!" With that, the flicky who had been Epsilon whirled and flew out of the cave.
"I hate snakes," Sonic said theatrically.
The little pink light had led him deep into the pyramid, down winding columns of stone stairs, through cold, dark halls of resounding echoes, and along a long aisle of stone serpent heads, whose jaws ignited as torches as his feet passed over pressure plates in the floor.
Everywhere were carvings of echidnas in faded murals, carvings of snakes (which they seemed to have worshiped at this particular period), carvings of gods and demigods, and depictions of bloody wars and ruling tyrants. The style was not wholly alien to Sonic's hedgehog eyes; he had seen similar art on the Floating Island. What it meant he could only guess, and wished Knuckles was at his side to explain everything. One thing slowly became clear to the lonely visitor--the echidnas had built more extensively on the mainland than on their island.
But now the hedgehog found himself in a vast, dome-roofed room, perfectly round. In the center of this room was a huge pool with three pillars standing in it--they reached nearly to the roof high above--and something was moving in the pool.
Hesitantly Sonic tiptoed to the edge of the pool. This had something to do with Chaos, after all; there was no telling what he might find. He gathered his courage and looked in. Immediately he sprang back, heart racing. It was a huge snake! It was as big as a rollercoaster train, and it was swimming round and round. Sonic fled for the door he had entered through, but found to his horror a solid stone door had closed over it. He stood with his back against it, gasping. When would that snake rear its ugly head and come slithering after him ...? It was big enough to swallow him whole--no, himself and Tails and Knuckles all together in one gulp!
Presently it came to him that he had been standing there for some minutes, and nothing had happened. Heart pounding in his temples and the ends of his fingers, he moved forward a few steps. Nothing. Perhaps he could take another look without it seeing him. Yeah, right.
The terrified hedgehog inched forward, every sine on his body erect and tense, stomach beginning to ache painfully. Ages it seemed to take to cross the fifteen feet between himself and the edge of the pool. The room was perfectly silent but for the thundering of his heart and a soft, almost imperceptible swish of water as the serpent swam. He pulled himself to the low wall that encircled the pool and crouched behind it, allowing himself to breathe. Nothing had happened yet. He sat there a moment, sweating and throbbing with adrenaline in every limb, then held his breath and slowly--ever so slowly--peeked into the pool.
It swam, green eyes staring from its cold face, in circles, around the three pillars, in, out, now diving under for a space, now emerging. Always it swam in the same pattern. Sonic ducked every time it passed, but it never saw him. Finally, after some ten steady cycles, Sonic began to look more closely as its scaly sides passed. To his sudden chagrin and relief, he realized the snake was carved out of stone. Its fluid grace was allowed by its multiple jointed sections, like beads strung together. But how did it swim?
Sonic sat openly on the edge of the pool and looked at the snake. Was it his imagination, or could he hear machinery running inside it? And there was something funny about the way it circled those pillars, too, like they guided it somehow.
Yes, it was plainly some robotic creation of the ancient echidnas--why hadn't he seen that right away? And how could a snake stay alive in a pyramid miles underground for thousands of years, anyway? He laughed out loud at himself.
He slid off the lip of the pool and began to explore the room more thoroughly. Now that he was not afraid, he saw that there were three spotlights in the ceiling that picked out three spots in the room. Two were on ledges along the walls higher up, and one was down near him. Sonic found the first light was shining on a blue square plate in the floor. He stepped on it. Nothing happened. "Musta been a dud," the hedgehog muttered. "Where'd that fairy go, anyway?" He looked around for her, but she had vanished.
On wandering forlornly back to the entry door, the hedgehog came upon a round blue button on the wall. Experimentally he pressed it.
There came a deep rumbled from beneath the floor, and the snake pool overflowed its banks and began to flood the room. "Oh great," Sonic muttered as the water swirled about his ankles, then his knees. "Sonic, you've done it now." He began to tread water, as slowly the surface level raised to the next lowest ledge on the walls, and there it stopped.
He crawled up on the ledge, shook the water from his ears and looked about. Surprise surprise, the swimming snake had come up, too, easily readjusting to its new height. Sonic looked around the room, especially upwards. The next beam of light shown on a plate across the room, on level with him, and on the third and final level was a broad ledge with a closed door. Above it were three panels--one was blue, one green and one red. The blue one was glowing.
The hedgehog saw the solution to the puzzle at once. The plate he thought was a dud had actually activated a three-part door lock. The other two parts could only be reached by raising the water level, and instead of swimming across the room, one could use that swimming snake as a stepping stone.
"Hedgehog, you are too smart for words," Sonic said smugly, and stepped onto the snake's back as it passed.
"It's Robotnik!"
"Let's get out of here!"
Shrieks and cries of fear filled the streets as cars were vacated, people swarmed out of shops, and a flood of humanity fled the scene.
Robotnik had reached the street below a few minutes before Tails had. When Tails landed, at first he was confused--the hovercraft had vanished. As he stood there, straining to listen through the city noise, he heard a distant clanking sound. Tails felt his stomach twist and bit his lip to keep from screaming.
The machine stepped over a video store and into the street. The little hovercraft now had four jointed robotic legs. Extended in front, like the head of the monster, were three gun barrels. The machine stood at least eighteen feet high.
The citizens of the city recognized Robotnik and his machine. They fled in terror, save a few brave reporters who hid indoors and peeked through their cameras in the windows.
Robotnik leaned out of his chair and leered down at Tails, small and alone but standing his ground. "You little fool," the doctor breathed, radiating malicious hatred at every word. "Away, before I make mincemeat out of you." If he had spoken so to Sonic, the hedgehog would have laughed in his face, and Tails would have echoed him, secure in the knowledge that Robotnik had never yet beat Sonic in a fair fight. But Tails was missing his hero, and was deathly afraid of what Robotnik might do. He gulped. He was the only one who stood between Robotnik and the ruin of Sapphire City. "I'm not scared," he said in a small voice.
The Egg Walker stepped forward like a long-legged spider, and aimed one of its monstrous weapons at Tails. The fox fled as a tongue of flame spouted forth with a whoosh and blackened a section of pavement. But Tails did not run away--not yet. He returned to face Robotnik with what shreds of nerve he had left, and again planted himself before the Egg Walker.
The ship sprang forward with shocking speed and pounded its forefeet against the ground, as if it were a horse killing a snake. Instead of being trampled to death, however, Tails leaped under the ship, barely out of reach of the stamping feet. As he huddled there, momentarily out of his enemy's sight and numb with terror, he happened to glance down and catch sight of the little purple medal clipped to his chest. Like the faint memory of a dream, Tikal's voice echoed in his mind. "This is the rhythm badge. It's to remind you of your new move."
The fear did not vanish. Tails thought afterward that he had never been more scared in his life. But he was no longer weaponless.
The stamping feet stopped, all four on the ground as Robotnik looked about for his little victim. Tails whirled, went into his twirling spin and slashed the right fore-foot.
The robot staggered and stumbled sideways. Tails leaped and spun himself into the joint that connected the damaged leg to the hovercraft's body. The whole frame jolted. Robotnik cured. The walker regained its feet and sprang away like a monstrous crab. It halted some distance down the street and turned again to face Tails. The fox anticipated the jet of roaring flame, and flung himself behind a parked car. "I've gotta take out the feet," he told himself over and over.
Three reporters peeked out at the scene, trembling with fear lest they be discovered, but frantically scribbling notes all the while. (They dared not take pictures for fear of the camera flashes attracting attention.) They looked on as the young fox ducked between the heavy feet again and again, knocked them out from under the ship and tore at the joints with his spinning tails when they fell within reach.
"How long do you think the kid'll last?" one reporter whispered to the others.
"Not long," one whispered back. "My guess is we'll be out there soon enough photographing roadkill."
"You never can tell with these Mobians," the third whispered. "Especially the Northies that remember the war."
"Well, I'd rather stay away from the Mobians," the first said. "They've given us trouble before. Ooo, the kid nearly ate it that time!"
"So did that contraption. Look how slow it gets up! 'Fox defeats Dr. Robotnik'!"
"Not yet he hasn't. Hey, he's got two tails! Look--see 'em?"
Muffled exclamations of surprise. More scribbling of notes.
"My kids'll love this."
"Look at him go! What's he got, jet boots?"
"I don't think so."
"All right! The machine's down again! I wish I had more film--"
"Duck!"
The three men ducked as the Egg Walker's fuel tanks exploded, blowing out the glass in the storefronts up and down the street. Presently the flames died down a bit, and the three poked their heads up for a look around. The Walker's hull stood inert and dead in the street, engulfed in flames. The heart of it--the hovercraft--was gone. Robotnik had already fled.
Tails picked himself up off the pavement and blinked at the bonfire. The force of the blast had knocked him down, and the side of his head had slapped the corner of a fender. He touched the bump--it had a small cut on it. Other than that, he was unhurt.
He grinned suddenly. "I did it!" he exclaimed. "I did it all by myself!"
Three white flashes in quick succession. The fox turned to see three reporters in various poses with their cameras.
The reporters received more than enough story information from Tails, most of which they didn't understand. Now that relief had set in, Tails was positively chatty. He told them about racing Robotnik to the missile, and the Egg Walker, and Tikal, and his jet anklets, and his two tails, and Sonic, and everything else he could think of.
By morning he was a celebrity; word of his bravery spread through the city like wildfire. Even as Tails crawled into bed in the Sunset Resort, the reporters' stories hit the newspapers.
"Tails is a hero?" Amy said.
The bedraggled pink hedgehog stood on the sidewalk, staring at the headlines in the newspaper stands.
"Mobian Saves Sapphire City!"
"Tails Prower local hero, Egg Walker defeated!"
"Freedom Fighter Faces Foe!"
Amy lifted a grimy hand to her eyes. "Birdy, I need to sit down somewhere."
She seated herself on the curb and cradled her head in her hands. The green flicky sat beside her anxiously.
The two had spent most of the night, not in a house in bed, where Amy should have been, but in the Final Egg ground base, deep in the Mystic Ruins. Amy had recalled Gamma's words--"We will be arriving in the Mystic Ruins base soon."--and set off to find it in the hopes of locating Birdy's parents.
She had spent the night wandering in the depths of the mighty fortress, looking for prisoners and robots that might be flickies in disguise. But all the robots she had seen were hulking, fearsome things that had tried to catch her as soon as they saw her. The worst of all was Zero, the robot who had kidnapped her the day before and chased her through the Hot Shelter. He had appeared suddenly behind her in a hallway, recognized her, and spent the rest of the night chasing her.
As dawn began to brighten the sky, Amy found the exit lift and rode it up to the glass tunnel, limp with exhaustion and relief. And to her infinite humiliation, as she neared the door at the far end, it opened, and in stepped Sonic.
He looked as bad as she felt. His fur and spines were stained with mud, and his shoes and gloves were damp and dirty. "Amy!" he said in fury as she dashed to him.
"Sonic, I'm so glad to see you--what's wrong?"
"What's wrong?" the blue hedgehog snarled. "This is too dangerous a place for you! Get out of here!" He opened the door and stood aside for her to pass. She did, feeling very young and stupid. "Stay in Sapphire City!" Sonic said as she stepped outside, not even pretending to be nice. "The last thing I need is a little whiny brat following me around. Get lost."
The door shut between them, leaving Amy standing in the grass with her mouth open. "He called me a whiny brat!" She didn't know whether to laugh or cry. She settled for the latter, as it was the easiest.
She cried all the way back to Station Square, which left her hot and tired. On top of the night's adventures, the headlines proclaiming Tails's heroism were a bit too much for her to grasp. "Let's go home, Birdy," Amy said. "Sorry I'm such a wimp, but I can't face anything else right now. Hope you understand."
The flicky nodded sympathetically. He had thought she was overdoing it, and he was right.
Chapter 28: Sonic and Tikal
But if Amy had known the horrendous things Sonic had just seen, perhaps she would have forgiven him his sharp tongue.
After escaping from the Anaconda room, the hedgehog found himself in a room of total darkness, but for great torches burning here and there behind reflective mirrors. The he was able to move this way and that until their beams shown onto nearby polished mirrors, which reflected the light to light part of the room. By this partial light the hedgehog ventured out upon the narrow stone walkway that stood twenty feet out of the dark water. When he had passed out of the light and was beginning to grope his way forward, his fingers encountered the back of another torch reflector, and so on all the way across the room.
Here he found an excellent use for his shoes.
The walkway ended some fifty feet from the wall, where he could see a doorway leading on into the pyramid. He cast about for a bridge or something, but if there had been one, it had crumbled long ago, and there was nothing below him but sullen black water. Jumping into it would do no good, for there was no way back up that he could see.
Just as he was about to despair and turn back, the pink fairy-light appeared again. "Jump across," she said to him. "You can make it."
Sonic looked at the wide expanse between himself and the far wall. "Yeah right, I'm not that stupid."
"You can do it," she insisted. "Have you forgotten your shoes?"
Well, actually, he had, but he wasn't about to admit it aloud. "What about them?"
"Use them."
"Use them?" he spluttered. "How am I supposed to use them? Throw them across?" He trailed off. An idea had come to him. He threw himself into a stationary spindash and whirled like a wheel. His heels began to glow. After a moment, Sonic landed on his feet and raced off the edge of the walkway.
The energy stored in his shoes was released in a burst of power that flung the hedgehog across the gap, through the doorway and down the hall beyond before it gave out. He stopped and stood a moment, panting and grinning to himself. Those shoes HAD been worth 250 bucks, after all!
He encountered other obstacles and traps as he travelled on. He fled down a long sloping passageway as a monstrous boulder soaked in flame tumbled after him. He leaped into a doorway at last and watched as it rumbled by and smashed into the wall far below.
He dropped into a shallow, swift-flowing water channel and slid down on the slick floor as if it were a waterslide, finally shooting out into a hidden glade deep in the jungle. It was night now, the stars overhead glimmering down like white jewels. Sonic stood looking at them for a moment, wishing he were standing outside his hut in Knothole, instead of lost in an old maze built by a bunch of dead guys.
The fairy led him into a stone passageway in a cliff wall a short distance off, and the hedgehog was away again.
He came to a vast square room lit with hundreds of torches, and with doorways at all heights in the towering walls. He did not know that a day or two before, Knuckles had stood in this same room and gazed with similar bewilderment at the doors high above. But the fairy showed Sonic a different route through. By pressing a large switch on the wall, an entire row of dark blue panels moved across the wall, grating like dragged bricks, and formed a line up the wall. Sonic approached curiously and touched one. It had a weird feeling an inch away, as if a huge amount of electricity were flowing over the surface of the tiles. Sonic lifted a foot and walked straight up the panels. It was the stationary mechanism used in the spinning top in Marble Gardens.
The hedgehog followed these panels all over the room, often stepping into one of the now-accessible doorways to press a button that realigned the panels, and again off he went.
At last the fairy led him through a high doorway, down a long flight of stairs, and into a long hall flanked with engraved pillars, and shallow pools on either side. Sonic walked through, taking his time, looking at everything. He sensed this was a sacred place of some sort--perhaps a temple or a shrine. The carved figures on the pillars stared at him with glittering jeweled eyes, seeming to question his presence and were not pleased.
As the hedgehog passed along the walkway, the water on his left rippled as if something had disturbed the surface. Sonic didn't notice it at first, but after a few more feet he heard the faintest whisper of sound. He turned. The water just opposite him was rippling steadily, as if something were tapping the surface. But there was nothing there.
Sonic felt the spines on the back of his neck prickle. He turned and fled toward the end of the room, where the fairy was waiting for him. This was unlike seeing the stone snake. This time there was noting to see but the water, and yet there was something in the water he could not see.
Spooked and nervous, it took him several minutes to notice the mural on the wall a few feet above him. He glanced at it once, then gazed at the water, which had grown still. Then slowly, wonderingly, his eyes were drawn back around to that mural.
A blue dragon, monstrous in size, vast jaws sprung wide, about to devour a collection of buildings that probably represented a city. The mural was a mosaic of many-colored chips of stone, and had not faded with age as paintings did. Slowly Sonic noticed other things. The stormy sky, the wild sea that surrounded the dragon ... even then, the meaning of the picture did not dawn on him.
The fairy stirred from her place and flew into his eyes.
When Sonic had shaken his head and his eyes had readjusted, he found himself standing on a hill under the stars. Before him was a pale stone path, the stones bathed in a flickering red-gold light. "Whoa, teleporter," Sonic said, looking about. "Looks like somebody's having a barbecue up there." It did not enter his head for a moment that perhaps he was not in his own time. He trotted up the path, rounded a bend and stopped in horrified wonder.
The light came from a small pyramid a little way off. From base to crown it was cloaked in red flames that crackled and roared, licking greedily into the sky. But it was alone. There were no onlookers, no one trying to put out the fire. The pyramid burned, alone under the stars. Sonic moved closer, driven perhaps by some impulse to help, to fight the fire somehow. A few dozen feet away, however, he stopped and dared go no closer.
Things lay in clumps here and there in the grass. At first, in the orange light, Sonic had mistaken them for rocks. But now he recognized their shapes and stood in fear and grief. They were dead chao--a hundred of them, it seemed, lying here and there, huddled against one another, eyes closed, some stained with dark blood. It tore the hedgehog's heart--were these the friendly creatures in the hotel he had enjoyed so much? Who had killed them?
Another sound reached his ears through the roar of the fire. A soft voice weeping. He looked about and saw, a little way off, a lone figure facing the fire, like him. He walked up to her and saw it was a young girl echidna, cradling one arm against her chest as if it were hurt, tears streaming down her face. "Are you all right?" Sonic asked her.
She looked at him, not at all surprised to see him, and wailed, "This shouldn't have happened! It's all my fault! Look at what they did to the chao ..."
A horrible sound echoed off the rocks around them--a screaming roar in the distance. It held rage, hatred and grief, and Sonic shuddered. "What happened?"
The girl was staring off in the direction of the roar and didn't answer.
"What happened?" he repeated.
The girl spoke, but not to him. "Oh, I must stop him! He will destroy everyone!" She darted away from Sonic and up the steps of the burning shrine.
"Don't go up there!" Sonic cried, started after her.
He blinked and looked around. There had been no teleporter beam, but suddenly everything had faded like smoke and he was standing on the green turf outside the towering pyramid in the Mystic Ruins. "Weird," he breathed, rubbing his eyes. He drew a breath of the dewy air and looked at the sky. The stars were bright and low, and a green light was growing in the east. It took him several minutes to realize he had been inside the pyramid before his dream or whatever it had been. How had he gotten outside?
That thought led immediately to the memory of the mural. Had the mural and his dream been connected somehow ...? No, no, they couldn't be. He must have fallen asleep for a few minutes. But that didn't explain how he had gotten outside.
As the hedgehog stood thoughtfully gazing at the early dawn sky, a strange sound reached him above the music of the crickets. He knew it as well as Tails did: Robotnik's hovercraft. Sonic ran to the crumbling wall and stood against it, sheltered from view by the overhanging vines above. In the twilight, his dark blue color blended with the shadows, concealing him from all but the most watchful of eyes unless he moved. This he didn't, and Robotnik was not watching the ground for hedgehogs. He flew over, heading east. Sonic darted noiselessly out of hiding and followed him.
Thus Sonic found the high cliffs at the foot of the valley, and looking down into the next valley, he saw the Final Egg ground base in all its operating glory, buildings extended, lights flashing gold and green and crimson.
Still puzzling over the mural, the girl, the dead chao and the lonely burning pyramid, Sonic stepped into the entry hall--and was greeted by the last person in the world he wanted to see. Amy would never understand what he had just seen, and what was she doing here, anyway? Didn't she know she could get killed in places like these? He ordered her to go home with all the ferocity he could muster. Really, he didn't want to see her get hurt any more than he would Tails.
Slightly peeved at himself for hurting her feelings--he had seen the look on her face before the door closed--he turned to face the Final Egg ground base.
Chapter 29: Robots
E-102 Gamma had watched the flicky who had been Epsilon fly away with all the emotional attachment of a rock. If epsilon wanted to be a jerk, fine, as long as he was free.
Gamma jolted and staggered his way out of the lava cave. His systems were not working so well anymore, and his stabilizers cycled on and off. The last fight had been a tough one.
He paused outside the cave to review his objectives. "E-103 Delta, E-104 Epsilon, released. E-105 Zeta, E-101 Beta, locations unknown." He sent out the most powerful radar scan he possessed, but it could not reach beyond the canyon walls. There were no more robots in this valley, at any rate. He reviewed his memory. Beta had been last seen in a suspended state in Construction Bay 15 on the Egg Carrier. Zeta ... could be anywhere. Would Metal Sonic have placed him elsewhere on the ship as well, for remodeling, as he had done with Beta? It was a possibility. "Perhaps they are aboard the Egg Carrier," Gamma said aloud. It would take him the rest of the night to locate and reach the Carrier, perhaps longer in his damaged condition. But he stubbornly set out anyway.
So it was that, as Sonic entered the depths of the Final Egg fortress, E-102 Gamma landed on the wrecked but floating Egg Carrier.
The nose and forward sections were charred and continued to smoke, although lapped by the cooling ocean. The nose had taken on enough water to balance the heavy jets in the rear, and the entire ship floated almost level, silent and powerless. But it was not off-line.
Even on the brink of sinking beneath the waves, most of the electronic systems remained on and functioning, except for those in the forward sections, which had been disabled by the fire. As soon as Gamma stepped aboard, he was within range of the Carrier's remote-access robot hub. In spite of his malfunctioning systems, he was able to establish contact with the ship, which didn't care if he had rebelled or not. He asked it for the whereabouts of all E-series aboard. After a few moments--even a giant mainframe computer took time to scan the whole ship--he was given a list that contained three names: E-101, E-102 and E-105. E-101 Beta seemed to be moving about at great speed inside the ship, for every two seconds his coordinence had changed. Gamma decided to look for him last. E-105 Zeta, however, was stationary, somewhere in the Hot Shelter. Zeta would be the easiest to find.
Metal Sonic stood in the shadows in the corner of Robotnik's office, red eyes smouldering. One could see nothing wrong with him, as his hull was as polished as ever, not a bolt out of place. Only he and Robotnik knew that he had been punished severely and painfully--Robotnik had, after all, pioneered the science of biotechnical torture--for neglecting to arm the nuclear missile. Mecha had been sorry the instant he had realized the missile was not armed, but the punishment had instead made him maliciously happy it had not been armed after all, because it had spoiled his Master's plans. And worst of all, it had made Mecha angry.
As Robotnik strode here and there in the office, examining screens and reading robot reports, Metal Sonic's digital eyes followed him with unbridled hatred. At that moment the doctor's life had never been in greater danger.
Robotnik was saved by the beeping of an alarm and a root's voice reporting, "Priority hedgehog spotted in construction hall thirty four! We are under attack!"
A second later Mecha was flying down the hall, head lowered and fingers curled into claws. He could vent his fury on his enemy ...
Sonic ducked under a swinging construction arm, tore his way through a gang of robots, then grabbed another robot and used its body to shield himself from the laserblasts of a ceiling turret. Panting, he glanced about and saw twenty other robots converging on the scene, reminiscent of Robotropolis SWAT-bots and all heavily armed. He would be toast if he didn't make tracks, fast.
A blue blur flashed between the oncoming bots, up the wall and into a ventilation duct. Panting, the hedgehog threw himself down in the tubular duct, as the air was blowing through it with sizeable strength. Over the roar of the wind in his ears, Sonic could hear the voices and clanking of the robots as they tried to figure out what had happened to him. "Idiots," he thought warmly. There were more of them than he had thought--he had better be more careful if he was to find Robotnik and escape with his life.
Sonic waited for the noise below to quiet down, softly rubbing the still-raw laser scratch under his arm ... he was lucky to have gotten off the Egg Carrier with only that small wound, and the rapidly fading bruises across his gut where Chaos had bitten him.
"What DID happen to Chaos?" Sonic wondered as he crawled to the edge of the duct and looked down. A few robots stationed here and there as others cleaned up the mess he had made. He had better not go back down there. He crawled up the duct instead on hands and knees, looking for a vent he could climb out of. Maybe Chaos had been squashed when he fell into the machinery. Well, maybe not ... you couldn't get rid of water that easily. More likely, he had jumped ship when the Carrier went down. "It sure would be scary if I looked up and there he was," Sonic thought. He looked up to make sure, but there was only the duct stretching away in windy gloom.
A vent to the left. Sonic crawled to it and peered out furtively. It was a vast room of turning gears, pumping pistons and rotating shafts, but no floor. As far down as Sonic could see there was nothing but moving machinery, like the inner workings of a monstrous clock. As his eyes adjusted to the motion, he noticed slender walkways suspended from the walls and nearby ceiling, probably for maintenance purposes. No robots here.
The hedgehog jumped from the vent to a slowly rotating gear, as big as a tractor tire, and from there to a walkway.
He had picked his walk halfway across the maze when Sonic got the feeling he was being watched. Nervously he craned his neck and looked around, but could see no one. That meant nothing--a dozen robots would lie hidden in the machinery and he would never see them.
The walkway sagged beneath his feet without warning, the far end tilting down toward oblivion. No time to figure out why--he was sliding. The hedgehog glanced about for a place to jump to, but the wheels on either side were spinning dangerously, and the nearest walkway was twenty feet away. He braced himself with his rubber-soled shoes and grasped either side of the walkway. He slid to a stop, and again looked about for a possible means of escape. To slide all the way down meant falling to a messy demise in the churning machinery below. Right and left were blocked by whirling gears. That left only up.
Sonic twisted about and crawled up the slanting walkway like a child would climb a slide in a playground. He climbed to one of the few remaining cables that held up the walkway and shimmied up it. A glance at the ceiling overhead revealed an assortment of girders that supported the cables and various pieces of machinery.
Sonic pulled himself up on the steel bar and sat astride it, panting. He didn't know why that walkway had broken, but he had better make tracks just the same.
A pair of digital red eyes watched the hedgehog from across the room. Sonic would never escape the fortress now. To 'play' with him was only to prolong his death ... and that was exactly what Mecha intended to do.
Although Gamma was worse off physically than Sonic, he knew his way around the Hot Shelter, and that was where their missions differed.
The Egg Carrier had taken on water in places, and the robot was forced to detour around the flooded areas, painfully. His systems had not stabilized properly, and the weight of his useless leg was a drain on his batteries. Every step was a challenge, and a detour was a grievous loss.
The Hot Shelter was confusing at the best of times. Now, what with the flooding in the lower decks and the backup generators running, it was a bewildering labyrinth in which only half the lights worked. Often Gamma halted and consulted the robot hub for directions, which, owing to his slowly dying system, he only partially understood. But as his programmed brain weakened, his true mind--the mind of the pilot--strengthened, and he thought of shortcuts a robot would never have dreamed of; a cargo lift instead of a flight of stairs, the Hot Shelter freight train instead of a long hike through ship-transformation machinery.
The latter was tricker than it seemed. For one thing, the train ran the whole length of the Hot Shelter at 200 mph, rushing cargo and robots back and forth. One of the places it didn't stop was the landing where Gamma wanted to stop, for it was only a short distance from Zeta. Thus, as soon as the train left its station, Gamma began to work his way forward, hopping from car to car. He reached the engine after a long struggle, waited until it approached his stop, then jerked the brake lever.
The resulting stop was swift and violent, and Gamma nearly lost his hand as the brake lever was torn from his grasp by the jolt. But at last the train was stopped, brakes smoking. Gamma activated his jetpack, flew off the train, across the tracks and onto the landing. There he stopped a moment to confirm his location. Yes, he was right where he wanted to be, and Zeta was only five hundred feet from him.
The robot limped into the Hot Shelter.
At that moment Sonic was cursing all robots, unaware there was at least one of Robotnik's minions on his side. The hedgehog was angry and afraid--being stalked by Metal Sonic through completely unfamiliar surroundings was not his idea of fun.
Sonic had escaped the machinery room, only to enter a vast construction bay, as large as an airfield underground, chock-full of robots, half-built robots and machinery. There Metal Sonic had attacked, silent but for the whirr of his engines. Sonic had run for it. When Mecha attacked in silence, without even a hateful taunt, it usually meant he was furious and intent only on killing.
Sonic had hid from him inside an empty robot construction chamber, panting and trying to listen for the robot's engines above the noise of the machinery. He did not hear them, but without warning the glass tube began to lower around him. Sonic suffered a near-heart attack, ducked under the descending glass and was away.
Three times more he was flushed from hiding like a rabbit, growing angrier with each encounter, and more confused with each step. The deeper he went the more bewildering Final Egg became, and the harder Mecha drove him.
A check came when Sonic arrived in a giant empty room with no ceiling, only machinery working high above. There was a lone lever under a Plexiglass panel on the floor. Panting and looking over his shoulder every two seconds, the hedgehog slid back the panel and flipped the lever.
"Final Egg isolation block open," announced a computer voice from speakers in the walls. At the same time, the floor slid away on all sides, leaving Sonic standing on a small round island with the lever on it. There was a colossal noise of machinery activating, and the island was lifted into the air several hundred feet, until it was just below the machinery that had been so distant before. "That'll throw Mecha for a while," Sonic muttered smugly. The doorway he had entered by was now sealed by a safety door.
Sonic leaped to a balcony jutting out of the wall, trotted through the empty station behind it, and took a big freight elevator down, down, into the heart of the fortress. There he descended a giant staircase--by this time he was beginning to wonder how long it had taken Robotnik to build a base of such size--and took yet another elevator down. "I hope I'm going the right way," he thought as he sat on the elevator floor to rest his tired legs. "This is getting ridiculous."
"Dr. Robotnik, I have lost him," Metal Sonic reported. He was standing behind the door Sonic had closed, momentarily foiled. His anger had cooled, and his mental computer was beginning to work again. Robotnik's voice replied, "Affirmative, Mecha. I will deal with him myself now. Return to your duties."
"Return to your duties," Mecha mocked once the transmission was safely ended. "The heck I will, Master, until I have seen you defeat the Hedgehog. I made the mistake of obeying you once too many." The blue robot whirled and made for the upper levels. There was more than one way into the isolation block.
Chapter 30: Boss Time
Far from the warfare of dark, machinery-ridden fortresses, Amy Rose stood at the rail on a friend's borrowed motorboat, gazing across the bay at the bulk of the Egg Carrier, floating like some grotesque sea monster in the ocean. The late morning sun was warm on the hedgehog's pink hair, now ruffled by the wind as the boat raced across the waves. Birdy, the green flicky, sat on her shoulder, little claws clenched into the shoulder of her dress, and stared at the Egg Carrier in apprehension. He knew, even if Amy didn't, where his parents were, and making Amy help them without being able to speak her language would not be easy.
"So, why do you want to go to that thing, anyway?" called the girl at the boat's helm, a human girl named Rachel (who was, in fact, who Amy had named her chao after). "It sure looks creepy to me!"
"I'm looking for Birdy's parents," Amy called into the wind. "Can you wait for me?"
"Sure thing, Amy. Want me to come with you? I mean, it'd be like, totally awful if something happened to you ... I mean, like, with those awful robots and everything."
"No thanks, I'll be fine," Amy replied, fingering her big mallet. To her inexperienced eye it was an apt weapon. "I mean, it's not like I haven't been there before. Just wait for me in the boat." She stroked Birdy's head to show him she was not afraid. Birdy ignored her, thinking only of his mother and father.
Deep in the Egg Carrier, in the gloom of the Hot Shelter, E-102 Gamma faced E-105 Zeta and was not afraid.
Zeta, the purple robot, had indeed been given to Metal Sonic, and Mecha had handed him over to the construction droids with a few instructions. The result was that Zeta was no longer a mobile unit--he was an enlarged generator, surrounded by steam and working pistons. The only thing that remained of his original design was his yellow head and green eyes. No one but Metal Sonic could have thought of such a thing.
As Gamma entered the room, Zeta's head swiveled about to face him. Gamma, dwarfed before the giant machine, braced himself and raised his blaster. He hadn't the faintest idea what to aim at--there were too many targets. But as he stood there, a different, pilot-borne thought filtered into his computer: Zeta would not fight for he was not a robot. He was a generator. Therefore he must simply be shut down.
"Zeta," Gamma said the the machine. "Greetings."
Zeta said nothing.
Asking him to shut down would do no good--he might as well ask an organism to will its heart to stop beating. Gamma contacted the robot hub and asked it to shut down Zeta, but it requested a password Gamma lacked.
The crippled red robot stood there a long time, thinking. There had to be a way to solve this puzzle, and he had a feeling he was staring right at it. Again, it was not the computer, but Gamma's brain that solved the problem. He tagged Zeta's head with his laser and hit it with his blaster. They yellow panel blew off, and out fluttered a red flicky bird.
The flicky flew to Gamma and chirped, "I thought I'd NEVER get out of there! Thanks a million! Hey, you'd better watch out. Beta is loose, and he has orders to destroy all intruders, and that means you." The bird paused for breath, looked up at his former body, headless but still running, and shivered. "Man, am I glad to be free. Good luck, Gamma."
"Well well, if it isn't Sonic! I'm surprised you made it this far."
The blue hedgehog stood before Robotnik, and was nervous, but defiant. "Well, I did, Eggman, and I ditched Mecha while I was at it."
Sonic was standing on a long bridge that was suspended across one of the now-familier bottomless chasms. Thirty feet away another bridge ran parallel to his. Between them hovered a fearsome attack robot with Robotnik in the head. "Egg Viper" was emblazoned on its side in yellow. The cockpit was retracted into the thick, protective hull, and on either side spun two spike-rimmed wheels. Attached to the rear of this monstrosity was a fifteen-foot tail made of four joined steel segments, which gave it its snakey name. Sonic could see no weaknesses.
Robotnik settled back in the cockpit comfortably. Sonic would not win this time, he was certain. On the off chance he came close, Metal Sonic was watching from further up the shaft they were in, the lone witness to the battle. Of course, Mecha did not think his master had observed him, but Robotnik did not mind.
The Egg Viper flipped up, over, and dove under the bridge. It reappeared a second later, leaping through the air like a dolphin, and with each leap it fired laserbolts at Sonic. The hedgehog ducked and tore up and down the bridge, too fast for the lasers to quite hit. Seeing this, Robotnik stopped the Viper a few feet from the bridge, opened the cockpit and called, "The hedgehog wants to dance, does he?"
"Sure, and why not join me?" Sonic retorted. Like a blue bolt of lightning he leaped out, curled into a spin, struck the windshield a furious blow, bounced into the air and flipped onto the other bridge.
Robotnik slid the cockpit back between the spinning spiked wheels, angry and shaken. Sonic had nearly got him that time--the windshield looked as if someone had taken a baseball bat to it. He flipped the agile Egg Viper about and fired more laserbolts at his enemy.
Again Sonic ran, and again the laserbolts missed him by a hair. Sonic was planning ahead--once the Viper was defeated, he could inch along a ledge he had spotted on the wall, to the doorway he had entered by--at least it was still open. But how was he to defeat the Viper? It appeared invulnerable, and boy, was it fast. It had to have a weakness ... everything had a weakness ...
The Egg Viper halted again, but this time at a distance from Sonic. Its jointed tail curved about underneath it, so the machine took on the shape of a sideways question mark. Three panels opened on the head, on the right, left and top sides of the cockpit. These contained packed energy cells, which began to glow neon blue. Each tail segment bore a round energy cell, which also began to glow. The Viper was a monstrous weapon.
"Take this!" Robotnik yelled as the cells brightened. Sonic, mind in high gear, saw that he didn't want to be in the way when the Viper fired. On impulse he dashed forward, leaped, spun. He raced up the energized tail segments in a ball, guided by their heat, and launched himself at the topmost energy panel above the cockpit.
Explosion! Heat! The smell of singed fur, falling, crash onto something solid. Sonic sat up and shook his head in a daze. Good grief, had he blown up the Viper? He couldn't see it. He climbed to his feet, wobbled unsteadily, and looked over the edge of the bridge. Good thing had had landed on it. The Egg Viper was floating twenty feet below, the damaged panel aflame.
Sonic patted down his singed spines and smiled grimly. He had discovered the ship's weakness.
Robotnik knew he had discovered a weakness, one which Robotnik himself was not aware of until that moment. Cursing, he activated the automatic fire extinguishers, which doused the flames with white foam. "Now, Sonic," he snarled, throwing the Viper into gear, "we'll see how well you handle the guillotine approach."
Sonic stood braced and ready as the Viper reappeared in a wide leap over his bridge, but was nearly thrown from his feet as the ship smashed up through the far end like an evil jack-in-the-box. "Get a load of this," Robotnik bellowed.
Both spinning wheels on either side of the Viper's head loosed, fell sideways and hovered near the bridge, spinning into a blur. Then they shot at the hedgehog.
Sonic had a fraction of a second in which to act. He could duck and risk having the blades come down on him, or jump and let them pass beneath him. He chose the latter. There was a blue beneath him as they flashed under. As he came down, they returned, and he landed on the center of one and was hurled back toward the Viper. "No way! I don't believe this!" Robotnik cried, frantically trying to keep the wheels from coming back, but they were too quick. They shot to the sides of the cockpit, tilted up to resume their former positions--and Sonic leaped from his perch and smashed the second electric panel.
The explosion was smaller with the gun deactivated, and Sonic was not burned this time. He landed triumphantly on the bridge as the wounded Egg Viper dropped from sight to regroup. He glanced at the hole in the bridge--more like a gap. The bridge was composed of floating platforms linked together, and the Viper had destroyed two at the far end.
This time the Viper did not attack him immediately. First it assaulted the other bridge, tearing through the plastic platforms with its churning wheels, splintering them. "Oh, he's mad now," Sonic thought, watching. "I I can just get to that last panel ..." Here his thoughts were interrupted as the Viper flew straight at him, strafing the bridge with laserfire. Sonic ducked under it, and the lasers went wide as it passed over. Again it dove beneath the bridge and came up through it almost under Sonic's feet. The hedgehog danced backward. If those wheels came at him it would be difficult to dodge this close. He could count the bolts on the Viper's hull.
The wheels shot at him, tilting sideways as they came. Again Sonic jumped to let them pass under him, but this time was not so lucky. The top of the wheel struck his feet, tripped his and flung him flat on the platform. Sonic bounced to his feet and leaped into the air with a sickened gasp, expecting any second to feel the blurred spikes tear into his flesh. Instead he landed on a returning wheel, nearly toppled off the edge, and had just enough wits left to jump off and crush the third panel on the Viper.
Explosion! Flash of yellow, heat, the smell of hot metal. Sonic, on his hands and knees on the bridge, lifted his head to see the Egg Viper's tail ignite and blow off, sending the head section into a spin. The head itself was aflame, trailing putrid black smoke. It flew around and around the battle arena, bobbing up and down like a wounded fish seeking escape from its tank.
As Sonic watched it, a flash caught his eye, and there was the pink fairy-light that had led him through the ruins. It flew to him, and that distant female voice cried, "Watch out, he's up to something!"
Sonic looked at the struggling viper in time to see if flip about, launch into the air and fall directly toward him. He leaped forward and tumbled. He felt the platform rattle and rock as the Viper hit it with all Robotnik's fury. Then it vanished below. A moment later a fiery shockwave roared up the shaft as the Egg Viper met its demise.
Sonic didn't look up again for several minutes, and so didn't see Metal Sonic leap from the balcony high above and plunge down, down the shaft to rescue his master.
But when Metal Sonic next looked about for his rival, there was nothing on the bridge but a few sneaker prints.
Gamma stepped into the sun on the Egg Carrier's deck. "E-105 Zeta, rescue mission successful," he said to himself. "Units remaining ..."
A queer sort of feeling crept through the robot's computer. He lifted his hand and looked at it. "... Gamma ..." How was he to free himself? He had not thought of that before.
A sound. Gamma looked up to see a large black and white robot fly overhead, bound for the front of the ship. "... Beta." The flicky had warned him of Beta. Well, Beta was an E-series, and thus he was a friend who must be freed.
Gamma limped after Beta.
The two met atop the same glass engine housing where Sonic and Chaos 6 had battled. This time it was daylight, and perfectly quiet but for the lapping of the ocean at the ship's hull.
The crippled red robot gazed at his hulking opponent. Beta Improved was even more hideous than he had appeared in the construction chamber. His green eyes were alert, his wing-like arms attached and functional, the laser lenses in his hands polished and ready to rip. But he was still Beta, the robot who had won Gamma's respect back in the Final Egg fortress. And of all the E-series, Beta was the one Gamma hated the most to destroy.
"Greetings, Beta," Gamma said to the monster. Beta did not reply--instead he darted sideways like a giant hummingbird. Gamma shook his head in regret and took his battle stance. With a bad leg and failing batteries, it would he a difficult fight.
Gamma locked onto Beta with his tag laser and fired. To his surprise Beta threw up an arm and bounced the projectile away into the sky. Then he ducked away. Gamma turned to target him again, but this time Beta simply dodged the shot. He could move like lightning, and often Gamma would be left staring stupidly at empty space.
Beta paused in the air for a second, and a yellow forcefield appeared around him--then he extended one clawed arm and drove at Gamma like a charging bull. Gamma simply lacked the speed to avoid him, and so was struck down. Lying on his back, sparking, Gamma turned his head, targeted Beta's exposed back and fired.
Hit! The delicacy of Beta's systems was shown as the robot shuddered and nearly fell to the deck. But he righted himself and flew into the sky as Gamma struggled to his feet.
Gamma looked about for Beta and saw him above at a little distance, both hands held together, the combined energy of the laser crystals forming a lightning ball. In a second he launched it at Gamma. Fortunately Gamma hobbled out of the way and missed the direct blow, but took the brunt of the shockwave. He was beginning to wonder at the superiority of Beta's weapons--here was a robot he might not be able to defeat.
Beta returned to his hover-and-dodge routine, letting Gamma's shots bounce off his arm shields. He launched a batch of slow-moving homing missiles at Gamma, but remembering his little trick, Gamma picked them out of the air with a series of well-placed shots. Tiring of this play, Beta again charged at his brother, claws extended. Gamma avoided him that time with the aid of his jetpack, and planted another laser in Beta's back as he tore by.
Again Beta took to the air to fire his charging laser down at Gamma, but he was beginning to malfunction. His motions were jerky, speed dropping. He attempted to charge his lasers, but instead fired repeatedly, shots going wild and missing Gamma on all sides. At last Beta was able o steady himself enough to build a reasonably sized lightning ball, which missed, as Gamma anticipated the move and sidestepped. Battle programming distorted by damage, Beta charged down upon Gamma, claws out. The red robot hopped out of the way, and hit Beta in the back for the third and final time.
The black and white robot gave a digital scream, horrible to hear, like a computer on a power surge. He collapsed to the deck, shuddering with such violence Gamma felt it through the floor. Gamma could only watch in mindless sorrow. Metal Sonic had turned his one-time friend into a killing machine.
Beta began to spark, and the white smoke wisping from his back turned black and thickened. Slowly his convulsions weakened, finally stopping altogether as the fire in his damaged core gained a foothold. His green eyes flickered out, and he lay, off-line, on the green glass.
Hesitantly Gamma moved closer. He was not thinking of the flicky inside the burning robot--he thought only of Beta, his friend. His robot mind and body were weakening quickly now, for the damage taken during the battle had taken its toll. There were two huge punctures in his chest where Beta's claws had torn him, and the brain of his pilot could sense the light. The mind of the pilot was also mostly in control, too--and goaded by some sense or memory, he limped up to Beta's fallen form.
The smoking robot moved, the eyes flickered on. Beta was not quite dead. With the last of his programmed aggression and strength, he reared himself up with a screech of engines, held up both hands, deadly laser lenses two feet from Gamma's head, and fired.
Gamma had a glimpse of blinding white light, then his systems blinked and went off. He was aware of light in a dark place, panting, panting, heat and the sound of crackling flames. Then his systems flicked on again, fuzzy and lined. He was lying on his back. He righted himself with difficulty ... his body was very heavy. His right leg was twisted even more, his left leg was bent, and his right arm was broken, perhaps missing. Even as he saw through his robot eyes, he was aware of light in his pilot's eyes, as if receiving input from two different computers. Beta was truly dead now, but his job was done. Gamma would not live much longer.
As Beta burned, Gamma turned away and dragged himself across the arena, almost useless, he, who had been Robotnik's favorite. But his mission was complete--Beta was destroyed, his pilot freed.
Beta's head unscrewed, and from the burning interior there emerged a rumpled grey flicky, slightly singed, but alive. It fell onto the deck, hopped a few feet and took to the air. It flew in several circles as it regained its bearings, then dove down and hovered before Gamma's robot eyes. "Nina! Nina!" he chirped. "It's me, Nimbo! Can you hear me? Nina, you saved me!"
The words of the flicky were heard, but their appeal was directly to the pilot, not the robot. Gamma tried to remember who Nimbo was. A memory struggled to get through, tried, faded, vanished. The robot collapsed to the ground in a jumbled heap. "Go, escape," he whispered.
The grey flicky called Nimbo moved back a little, the hope in his bright eyes dying. "Goodbye, Gamma," he said, and his voice was the same as Beta's. He turned about and flew away into the sky.
Gamma's systems were shutting down, including the one that controlled the pilot's mind. As Nimbo said goodbye, the memory that had failed to get through returned, and this time made it through in a rush. Nimbo, the grey flicky, Cirrus, the green flicky protected by Amy ... and Nina, who was ...
"Nimbo, don't go, I remember I remember!" The robot body lifted and looked over its shoulder the way the flicky had gone, but the voice was a bird's cry inside the hull, muffled by the metal. Then the robot fell, head still turned, looking over its shoulder. The flicky inside was struggling, fighting to free itself, gasping for breath.
E-102's head unscrewed automatically, and the pink flicky inside flopped out and lay still, body heaving, gasping the delicious air. She was free. Mission accomplished. She was free!
Crazy with joy, the flicky who had been Gamma leaped into the air, shrieking to her husband, "Nimbo, Nimbo, wait for me!"
Amy stepped onto the Egg Carrier, mallet at the ready.
"Are you sure you'll be okay?" Rachel asked, tossing a rope to Amy, who wound it around a bolt that protruded a couple inches from the hull. "Sure, I'll be fine," Amy replied. "I'll be back in about half an hour."
Rachel nodded and seemed about to add something, but that that moment a cell phone rang somewhere in the motorboat. Rachel answered it, sat back in the boat seat and waved goodbye to Amy.
"I wish I had a boyfriend," Amy said mournfully to Birdy as she climbed up the sloping side to the deck above. "And I wish his name was Sonic." Birdy didn't respond, and Amy reached the deck, panting. She swung her mallet a couple times to loosen up her arm, then said, "Lead the way, Birdy."
Birdy hesitated a moment, looking up at the ship around them. Then he drew in all his feathers, making himself skinny as a stick, cocking his head as if he heard something Amy did not. With a startling whistle he leaped from her shoulder and flew away toward the front of the ship. "Birdy, wait!" Amy shouted, pelting after him. "What are you afraid of?"
The flicky could fly faster than she could run, and in a moment she had lost sight of him. "Bird-ee!" Amy cried piercingly. "Come back! Did I scare you? Come back!"
Then she listened. It seemed to her that she could hear the twittering of birds somewhere--it sounded like a pet store. Then Birdy reappeared, gliding down from somewhere high above, and with him were two other flickies. The flickies in the picture in the locket.
"Ooo!" Amy squealed as Birdy landed on her shoulder. "You found your family! I'm so happy!"
The pink flicky gasped and exclaimed, "Amy! Amy, it's you!"
Amy looked at her. "Have we met?"
"Of course!" the flicky said, landing on a nearby railing. "I used to be E-102 Gamma."
Amy's mouth fell open in shock. "You--you mean you--were the robot who let me go?"
"Yes, yes!" the flicky chirped. "My real name is Nina, and this is my mate, Nimbo. He was the robot E-101 Beta--I don't think you ever met him--and my son's name is Cirrus. Thank you for taking care of him."
Amy looked at Birdy in mock accusation. "Why didn't you ever tell me your name?"
He gave a flutter of his wings and a twitter.
"He can't talk yet," Nimbo said. "At least not your language."
Amy clasped her hands together and bounced up and down, unable to contain her excitement. "Oh, I'm so GLAD I found you!" She stopped and looked hard at Nina and Nimbo. "But how'd you stop being robots?"
Nina and Nimbo looked at each other a moment, then shrugged in unison. "It's a long story," Nimbo said. "But if you've got the time to listen--"
Suddenly a terrible thing happened. Cirrus was sitting on Amy's shoulder, as he had ever since she had found him, so happy he was fit to burst. Then from out of nowhere, a black object dealt him a crushing blow. Amy was knocked sideways, and the little bird fell to the ground and lay still.
Amy whirled. There stood Zero, the black and green garbage can that had kidnapped her and pursued her through Hot Shelter and Final Egg. He had fired his fist and was reeling it back in on a cable, looking oddly satisfied for a robot with no facial expressions. Amy dropped to her knees and touched the bird. Nina and Nimbo landed near him, and Nina hopped forward. "He's still breathing," she announced anxiously. "Ooo, that Zero--I always hated him!"
Nimbo hopped a few feet in Zero's direction. "If only I were still Beta Improved ... I'd show him a thing or two!"
Despite Nina's reassurance, Amy could see no sign of life in her little friend. What if he died? A lump appeared in her throat and tears stung the backs of her eyes. "Birdy," she said softly.
Then grief turned to white-hot fury. She gripped her mallet and spun to face Zero. "You idiot! How could you do this? Ooh, you're gonna get it!" She charged, a fiery pink hedgehog, armed only with an aluminum hammer. But even Sonic would have been impressed had he seen the battle that followed.
Zero was on his home ship and unafraid of a foolish girl. He contacted the robot hub and requested ten force-field poles. These floated out of the cargo hold, landed in a circle around Zero and Amy and activated. They generated a crackling forcefield of electricity, which kept Amy from escaping.
Amy was not thinking of escaping. She was too mad. She hit Zero over and over with her mallet, trying to put out his eyes, trying to knock him over, anything. He returned her attacks coolly, firing his fists at her like boxing gloves, each launching with enough force to fracture the young hedgehog's bones if they connected. But it took him several seconds to lock on a target, and she always avoided him.
Amy was not strong enough to really harm the robot, not even with her mallet. But he stumbled on a way to destroy him by accident. Their fight had brought them near the electric fence. Amy leaped and swung her hammer recklessly into Zero's face. The robot was knocked backward and landed on the forcefield. He struggled wildly and flung himself off it, then sat on the ground, smoking and trying to regain his senses. As he did, the top half of the garbage can (or lid) popped open to release heat. Amy caught sight of Zero's unprotected power core, a little white square thing. She dashed to it and struck it with all her might.
The glass and ceramic insulation inside shattered, and Zero's internal structure overheated in a split second. Amy flung herself down and covered her head with her arms as the robot exploded, parts and shrapnel flying every which way. Unlike the other E-series, he had no pilot, which explained his stupidity in simple matters, such as capturing a single bird.
As things stopped falling out of the sky and the smoke began to drift away, Amy lifted her head to see the electric fenceposts deactivate and float away. The robot hub sensed they were no longer needed.
Amy stood, brushed off her skirt and looked with triumph at the pieces of robot lying about her. "That'll teach you, jerk," she snorted. Then she trotted back to the two ex-robots and the injured Cirrus.
Birdy--or Cirrus--had not moved. His worried parents looked up at Amy as she knelt and lifted him in her hands. "Birdy," she murmured to him, "please wake up ... I killed that bad Zero. Please wake up!" She could feel his light, rapid heartbeat against her fingers.
To her relief his eyes opened, and he looked up at her. She smiled and set him down, and watched as his mother and father embraced him in the flicky fashion. "Are you all right?" Amy asked him. "Can you fly?"
Cirrus twittered, fluttered his wings and took to the air.
"Nothing broken," said his mother in relief. "Thank you so much, Amy. We wouldn't be here today if not for you."
"Ditto," Amy smiled. "I'd probably be robotized if you hadn't let me go."
The flicky family took off and circled Amy's head. "Thank you, goodbye, goodbye!" they chirped.
"See you later!" Amy said, waving with both hands. "Drop by Station Square sometime!"
"Don't worry," Nina laughed, "you'll see us before long--I'd like to swap stories! Goodbye!"
Amy watched the three fly away into the blue sky and sighed. "That ought to make Sonic respect me," she said to herself. "I blew up Zero!" She swung her mallet and did a little dance. "If not, I'll MAKE Sonic respect me, and by then it'll be too late and he'll be my boyfriend, like it or not!"
Grinning like a little hedgehog goon, Amy trotted back in the direction of the waiting motorboat, and home.