Diamonds Are a Robot's Best Friend

A "My Life as a Teenage Robot" Fanfic

Chapter Eleven – Unsheathing the Sword


Jenny grabbed Brad by the shoulders and shoved him into the large chair just below Maximillian Marquis, where Rojack once sat.  Scavenging a pair of steel rods from one of the shattered consoles, she wrapped them around Brad's wrists, securing them tightly to the armrests.  Jenny stared into Brad's face with her frosty blue eyes.  "Now you will stay there, and cause no more trouble."

"And you have certainly caused me a surprising amount of trouble already," hissed Marquis.  "I must admit, you have become a most irritating thorn in my side, and the simplest thing to do would be to jettison you into space, to join your peculiar silver-green friend.  But perhaps … I may have a use for you yet."

The pilot turned around with a look of relief on his face.  "We had a few minor problems there, but all of the Moonsword's systems are still fully functional.  We are on course, and should arrive at Firing Point Alpha in about an hour."

Brad tried to pull his hands free, but the metal bonds were far too strong.  He was sweating nervously, but still managed a smile.  "Don't worry, Jen.  As soon as Drew turns off that mind-control thingamabob, you'll get your free will back, and then you can open up a can of hurt on this fancy-talking creep!  I'm sure everything'll be just fine in a few seconds."


The yellow fireball streaked through the atmosphere, high above the East Coast, growing in intensity with every passing second.  Over one hundred feet of empty rocket booster was starting to disintegrate into a shower of molten stars.  The blunt front end now glowed with a blinding white heat, and huge strips of fuselage were being stripped off by the force of the hypersonic wind.

The left side of Rojack's body was starting to glow, but he was still maniacally focused on one thing – completing his final orders.  Drew still held firmly onto the walking-stick with one hand, and fought to hold off Rojack's paralyzer with the other.  He could feel his fingers and toes starting to get soft.  In another minute or so, the heat would eat right through him.  Eat right through – hey, that's not a bad idea.

Instead of struggling, Drew relaxed and flowed his silver-green fingers around Rojack's left arm.  Rojack grinned, and prepared to deliver a savage blow … then stopped.  Something on his arm felt … strange.  It was being devoured.  Nanobots were starting to eat through the outer casing of Rojack's forearm.

Rojack ripped his arm away, as close to afraid as Drew had ever seen him.  Drew dissolved a six-inch hole in the rocket's fuselage with the nanobots in the middle of his back.  With a surge of strength, he twisted the walking-stick away from Rojack, and flowed himself inside the booster's giant fuel tank, pulling the walking-stick in behind him.

He felt instant relief, and not just from escaping the assault.  It was over a thousand degrees cooler inside the booster.  He could still hear the shrieking and wailing of seething plasma outside, but at least he'd bought some time to fiddle with the cane.  There had to be something stupid, something obvious, that he wasn't trying …

Rojack rammed his arm through the wall, and made a hole large enough to climb inside.  His silver-and-black finish was scorched, and his body smoldered with wisps of smoke.  He lunged wildly at Drew with a flying tackle.  Drew scrambled sideways, running around the inside of the forty-foot wide cylinder.  Rojack pursued him recklessly, running and jumping around the inside of the tank.  Drew managed to stay one step ahead of him …

Until the decaying booster dropped even lower in the atmosphere, which slowed it down, creating G-forces once again.  Caught off guard by the return of gravity, Drew misjudged a jump, bounced off a support beam, and fell backwards – right into Rojack's waiting arms.  He shuddered and writhed as Rojack pumped him full of all the paralyzing energy that he could summon.  His eyes spun in their sockets, then his face dissolved into a formless silver goo.  The paralyzer finally stopped, and Drew's arms and legs collapsed into a pile of ribbon taffy.

Rojack grinned with satisfaction, and collected the silver-green mass together into a misshapen ball.  He walked back to the hole in the tank wall, which had grown larger as the edges flaked away.  Outside the hole was a howling torrent of fiery chaos.  Rojack perched himself at the edge, and raised the silver-green blob over his head, ready to throw it out into the inferno.

A pair of arms shot out from the shapeless mass, latching onto the edges of the hole.  And they pulled down, hard.  Drew used his body like a slingshot, shoving Rojack's torso out into the lethal plasma stream.

Rojack flailed his arms wildly, trying to pull himself back in, but Drew had him pinned tight.  He pounded madly on the fuselage, and beat his fists on the silver-green clamps.  He raised his arm for one more desperate blow … and watched it rip off, and plunge into the raging ionized gas.  His metal skin started to streak away in glowing droplets.  Then he simply ignited like a highway flare.  Rojack slid the rest of the way out, wrapped in flaming hellfire, and drifted away from the booster with a spindle-curdling scream.

Drew flowed backwards and tried to resume android form.  There was no time to celebrate.  His nanobots worked feverishly to perform self-repair duties; he had lost ten percent of his body mass to the fires outside.  He still had Marquis' walking-stick, though.  He might have another thirty seconds to figure it out …

But the walking-stick had been reduced to a charred, useless piece of metallic junk.  Somehow, it had gotten immersed in the plasma stream during the struggle.  No … oh, geez, no …

A loud shriek rolled through the tank; the walls buckled and warped, and the metal started to shear apart.  Now the inside of the booster was glowing bright red.  Nuts, can't worry about Jenny and Brad right now.  Drew scrambled towards the back of the tank, terrified, trying to think.  Okay, what happens in those space missions?  I need a heat shield … heat shield … what the heck can I use for a heat shield?

He clutched onto a support beam as the deceleration increased to two, then three, then five times the force of gravity.  Chunks of tank wall started to tear away, letting jets of superheated air blast in like flamethrowers.  He still held the walking-stick, even though the miserable thing was burnt to a cinder …

All except for the diamond on top.

Holy crap, that's it.  Drew tossed the cane away and felt around the back of the tank, tasting the metal with his fingers to see what it was made of.  Aluminum … this stuff's gonna melt like butter.  He needed steel.  There had to be some steel in here.

With an ear-splitting screech, the fuel tank ripped completely open.  The booster shredded into pieces of melting slag, streaking towards the earth like meteors.  Drew clenched his teeth as the hypersonic gases blasted his body with unimaginable heat.  One, then two fingers melted away from his hand.  He grimaced and climbed down through gaping holes in the wreckage, to the bottom of the booster section.

Where four large rocket nozzles still hung.  He crawled over and tasted one … bingo!  Drew pulled himself inside the nozzle and flowed his body against the metal surface.  The rocket nozzle started to warble with a silver-green color.  Steel was mostly iron, but it did have some carbon in it.  He didn't care about the iron.  But if he could get enough carbon, and if his nanobots could rearrange the atoms fast enough …

The last pieces of the aft booster section finally succumbed to the intense heat and forces of re-entry.  The tank had completely dissolved away; the pipes and pumps of the engine section ripped apart and scattered into the atmosphere.  The large rocket nozzles started to shudder, then they finally broke off, and tumbled into the fires to be consumed.  One nozzle burned with an intense red flame as iron atoms were stripped away … then the nozzle finally degenerated and cracked open …

Revealing a large, sparkling, milky-white diamond.  Drew had built a three-inch-thick, cone-shaped layer of pure diamond around his body.  While the booster disintegrated around him, the diamond-shelled android continued downward, trailing a spectacular tail of fire as he fell towards the Caribbean Ocean.


Brad had been trying to loosen the metallic straps on his wrists for over an hour now.  Not only was he not having any success, but his hands were getting sore.  Frustrated, he gave up and sunk back into the large, padded chair.  Might as well try to relax.  And think.  Drew was gone, and Jenny was still very much under the influence of the mind-control necklace.  So … it was all up to him, a simple high school student.  Prisoner of an evil megalomaniac, on board a secret rocket that was about to destroy the moon.  This would be so awesome, he thought, if it wasn't for the whole die-when-it's-over part.

Things were starting to get busy on the bridge of the Moonsword.  The crew of humans and robots were bringing all of the ship's systems up to full power.  Maximillian Marquis and Brad may have been the only two people on the ship that were actually able to enjoy the view.

And a spectacular view it was.  The moon filled the front windows, shining a brilliant monochromatic white.  Huge craters and vast plains were easily visible on the surface, just like Brad had seen in textbooks and television programs.  It looked like a bleak, desolate place, but it did have a weird kind of haunting beauty to it.  Or at least it would for another ten minutes or so.

Brad turned his head around to Marquis.  "For crying out loud, big shot, why don't you just let Jenny go?  Look out the windows.  I mean, I could hit the stupid thing from here!"

Marquis actually chuckled.  "My simple young friend, if I had simply wanted to destroy the moon, I could have done it from the ground.  No, the Moonsword is not a … a cannon.  It is a scalpel.  Every jeweler knows the importance of making just the right cut."

"You're actually going to do this?" Brad asked, exasperated.  "Whatever you call it, you're still destroying the moon!  Think about what that means!  No more tide charts in the newspaper.  We're going to have to start calling months … er, something else!  And what about everyone who relies on the moon for inspiration up at Lookout Point on prom night?"

"Oh, all great sacrifices, to be sure," laughed Marquis.  "Perhaps after I become the richest man in the solar system, I will have some scented candles sent to Lookout Point."  Marquis grew serious once more, and sat erect in his chair, like a king perched on his throne.  "Prepare for engine shutdown.  All crew fasten harnesses and secure loose items."

"Engines have shut down, sir," reported the co-pilot.  Brad felt his stomach lurch slightly, and his feet started to drift off of the floor.  The Moonsword wasn't using artificial gravity.  He watched, amused, as a ball-point pen drifted by, tumbling end-over-end.

"Deploy the lasers," Marquis said in an ominous voice.

The smooth hull of the Moonsword cracked open, and six sets of long, narrow doors opened up.  Motors hummed and whined as the streamlined rocket began to perform a transformation.  From each of the long, narrow openings in the ship, a metal truss-arm swung outwards.  The arms unfolded like the spokes of an umbrella, and then grew in length.  And at the end of each arm, mounted on a complex pivot, was a perfectly flat, six-sided, quartz mirror.  The Moonsword now looked a bit like a giant octopus, over two hundred feet across, holding a mirror at the end of each of its six metal tentacles.

From each of the openings in the hull, a thirty-foot long laser cannon began to swing out.  Each of the canon barrels pulsed with energy, and had a football-sized, perfectly carved, Jovian diamond mounted on the end.  The laser cannons locked in place, each one pointing directly at a matching quartz mirror.

Marquis turned slightly in his chair.  "XJ-9."

Jenny, sparkling in her diamond-paint, turned around in her seat at the laser control station.  "I am awaiting your orders, Mister Marquis."  The hollow voice was painful for Brad to hear.

"You see, Bradley, my walking-stick was essentially a remote control.  And when it was lost, it was still in the 'active' position.  So Jennifer is still very much my loyal robotic servant."  He leaned forward slightly.  "XJ-9, enter the targeting information into the computers."

"Entered and confirmed, sir."

"Jenny!" Brad shouted.  He stared intently into Jenny's blank face, trying to make eye contact with her.  "Come on, fight it!  I know you can fight it!  You're stronger than him!  You don't have to do this!"

"Position the mirrors for the first cut," ordered Marquis.

The complex mathematics, and degree of control, necessary to aim six lasers beams on the same spot twenty thousand miles away could only be performed by a robot … by one robot.  Jenny's elbows cracked open, and two extra pairs of thin manipulators unfolded from each one – giving her, in effect, six hands.  She started making fine adjustments to the levers, dials, and pushbuttons on her console, while a lightning-fast column of numbers scrolled by on her monitor screen.

There's gotta be something I can do!  Brad twisted back and forth in the chair, trying to gain his freedom, but his forearms were still securely fastened to the armrests.  He planted his feet against the floor, trying to gain some leverage, but that proved difficult to do in weightlessness.

"Quiet down, you," Marquis growled at him.  "I will not be denied the full enjoyment I so richly deserve at this moment.  XJ-9 … activate the laser!"

Jenny obeyed, and fired all six lasers at full power.  A blinding light filled the windows, and darkened shades slid down to protect the crew's eyes.  Six columns of intensely violet laser energy blasted from the barrels of the cannons, deflected off of their respective quartz mirrors, and streaked towards the moon, to a point just a few miles above the surface.  Jenny had done her job exceedingly well, and the six lasers were focusing with perfect accuracy.

"Begin the first cut," Marquis commanded.

"Jen, don't do it!" pleaded Brad.  But she was powerless to act on her own.  That stupid necklace.  If only she didn't have that stupid necklace on, she'd show this miserable old geezer a thing or two.

Jenny steered the six beams until they finally came into contact with the edge of the moon.  There was a blast, and a glowing flash of light.  The laser column incinerated a stretch of rock and ash into molecules, and started carving deeper into the moon, slicing it like a tomato.  Fantastic amounts of laser energy pumped deeper and deeper into the fissure, blasting millions of tons of moon rock into molten slag and vaporized silicate.  Clouds of debris began to shoot from the crack like a geyser.

Marquis fought to contain his excitement as a visible scar began to trace its way across the moon's surface.  Everything was going according to plan …

Brad truly couldn't believe it.  He thought she'd break free from the mind control at the last minute.  Jenny's about to destroy the moon.  Wow, is her mom ever gonna freak.  He flung himself back and forth in the chair, trying to get loose … and felt something hit his cheek.

What the heck was that?  Brad turned his head and saw a smooth, red tile, like a domino, slowly tumbling in the air, a few inches from his face.  It was part of his "winnings" from his little stint at the roulette wheel, earlier that night at the Marquis mansion.  It must have floated out of his pocket.

Jenny focused intently on her monitor, guiding the mirrors as the lasers carved their way down the face of the moon, which now had a deep slice over four hundred miles long cut out of it.

Brad squirmed wildly in his seat, trying to twist his hips towards the right armrest of his chair.  He could just about reach his hand into the pocket of his tuxedo jacket …

The blazing column of laser light punctured the moon like a cosmic dagger.  The laser was making amazing progress, vaporizing a channel through thicker and thicker cross sections of lunar rock, closer and closer to the moon's core, and its diamond shell.

Brad slipped his hand into his pocket and pulled out a red casino tile.  This would be so much cooler if I had a laser in my watch, or a dart gun in my shoe … but this'll have to do.  Okay, Bradster … you're the Tremorton High School paper football champion.  Time to take it to the next level.  He took a deep breath, and focused on his target … the back of Jenny's neck.  Brad could see the clasp of the necklace resting just above the back of the chair.  She was only about twenty feet away.  He pinched the casino tile between his thumb and forefinger, and took careful aim …

Fling!  The tile whizzed across the cabin, flying perfectly straight in zero gravity … and ricocheted off of the back of the chair.

The first cut was almost halfway complete.  Marquis watched enthusiastically, as a lifelong dream unfolded in front of his eyes.  Then he noticed something out of the corner of his eye.  What is that infernal adolescent up to now, squirming about like a landed trout?!?

Brad strained in his seat and got his hand on one more casino tile.  At a thousand bucks a shot, I'd better start making these count.  He lined up his shot once more, and flicked his tile towards Jenny …

The spinning tile smacked directly against the clasp of the mind-control necklace, popping it loose from the impact.  Jenny spun around in surprise, which sent the necklace floating away from her neck.  Her frosty blue eyes blinked in confusion, then started to fade back to white.  She clutched her hands to her head and moaned, as if waking up from a long sleep.

"Through the uprights, and it's good!" shouted Brad.  "Jenny!  Can you hear me?  Are you all right?"

Marquis tried to lunge out of his chair, but his harness was still fastened.  "By the gods, NO!  Impossible!  I will not allow this!  Not now!  Not when I'm so close!"  He reached into the lining of his flight suit …

Jenny was still groggy, and trying to make sense of what she saw around her.  She seemed to be sitting inside some kind of … of space ship.  And outside the window, she could see the moon – being sliced apart by giant lasers?  What's the deal with that?!?  Wait a minute – I think I'm actually the one doing that!  It was slowly starting to come back to her.  "B-Brad?  Is that you?  Brad, what's going on?  What in the world am I doing here?"

"What you are doing, young girl," shouted Marquis, "is putting that necklace back around your precious robotic neck right now."

He was holding a laser pistol, with a diamond-finish handle, directly against the back of Brad's head.  "See, I knew you would come in handy."  Marquis had a look of near-insanity on his face.  "Jennifer, if you are not wearing that necklace within ten seconds, then I am afraid that your annoying friend here … is going to have a very difficult time getting the stains out of his tuxedo."


CONCLUDED (Finally!) in Chapter Twelve


A/N – Holy smokes!  Can I wrap this turkey up in one more chapter?  Had to end it with one more cliffhanger, folks.  Let's see – place pinkie to the side of my mouth, and … MWAAA HA HA HA!  I will only write Chapter 12 if I receive … one meeellion reviews!  Just kidding.  I am seriously jazzed about all the reviews I've gotten in the last week.  Many thanks to each and every one of you!