One Good Reason

A "My Life as a Teenage Robot" Fanfic

Chapter Five – Siege Mentality

The crowd in front of the Wakeman house gasped in unison, with their eyes riveted on the robot invaders, simply too stunned to move.  To Vexus, the terror on their faces was something to be savored.  That was how it always should be; wretched humans quaking in fear before their robotic betters.  She allowed herself a second to enjoy the moment, returning their stares with a sinister grin – then the orb between her antennae glowed a soft yellow, as she issued a silent command to her "news truck".

Just as the CNS "reporters" were not what they seemed, neither was the truck.  It housed the remote holographic link that Vexus had used to taunt Jenny, thousands of miles away.  And now, two panels on the roof swung open, revealing a pair of pneumatic launchers.  With a rapid series of bangs, they jettisoned large metallic barrels, shooting them dozens of yards in every direction.  As the crowd scrambled out of the way, the barrels began to unfold and expand.  The air was filled with the sounds of cogs ratcheting, gears grinding, and motors whining.  In seconds, the barrels had transformed themselves into Cluster roach-drones, encircling the human mob with their stun-ray antennae deployed.

One of the olive-green robots approached Vexus and bowed its head.  "Your Highness, the humans have been taken prisoner, and the perimeter is secure."

"Good work," she smiled.  She swept her arm towards the crowd.  "Drop everything, and get down on your hands and knees, like the vermin that you are!"  She took a few steps towards a pot-bellied, middle-aged man who was paralyzed with fear.  She laughed, took his protest sign from him, and read it aloud.  "'Save Tremorton From XJ-9!'  I have good news for you, primate – you don't have to worry about XJ-9 showing up today.  Be careful what you wish for, pathetic fool!"

Her gloating was interrupted by the wail of sirens roaring towards the house.  Twelve police cruisers screeched to a stop fifty yards away, and body-armored SWAT officers quickly deployed around the front of the Wakeman residence.  Each cruiser carried an extra surprise – a heavily-armed police-bot that deployed from the trunk, and rapidly wheeled to a pre-assigned position.  The police department now had their own perimeter, surrounding the Cluster drones, the human prisoners, and Vexus herself.

The police captain raised a megaphone.  "Attention robot invaders!  This is the Tremorton Police Department.  Release your hostages and surrender immediately!"

Vexus seemed amused, and struggled to keep a straight face.  Rising into the air, she gracefully glided towards the semi-circle of policemen, with a silent, dangerous smile.

The SWAT teams and their police-bots trained their weapons on her, and the captain continued.  "Slowly now!  Slowly, raise your hands in the air!"

"Why, anything you say, officer."  She lifted her mighty forearms, showing her empty hands –

And rapidly fired a series of small black darts from her palms.  Before anyone could react, the darts struck the large armored chests of the police-bots, and burrowed inside their bodies, overriding their internal circuitry.  Twelve police-bots briefly shuddered with spasms of electrical sparks – then turned on their human partners, obeying their new Cluster programming.  They quickly disarmed the astounded SWAT officers, adding them to the group of prisoners.

Vexus descended next to one of the seven-foot police-bots, as it led the police captain away at gunpoint.  She ran a long, twisted finger along its blue-painted chest.  "Ah, there's just something about a robot in uniform," she purred.  "Now for that annoying doctor …"

But as she walked back towards the Wakeman house, she was startled by a jarring metallic clatter.  A series of thick metal shingles cascaded down from the roof, covering the walls and windows, each layer interlocked with the previous one.  Sheets of metallic plating ratcheted across the rooftops.  With a few final kachunks and clanks, the house was encased within a protective cocoon of metal shielding.

Vexus' mouth twisted into a frown.  If it hadn't been for that irritating yellow-haired human, the doctor would've been drugged with hypnotic obedience serum by now.  Now this metal shielding would slow things down further.  She did not like delays.

Brad peered out through a slot in the metal plating, taking stock of the chaos that had erupted on the front lawn.  The situation was bad and getting worse by the second.  "Thirty, thirty-one … I count thirty-two Cluster robots out there.  Plus, that Vexus chick took care of the police all by herself, and now she's controlling their robots too!"  He gave Mrs. Wakeman a nervous look.  "Are you sure these metal plates can hold up against all of that?"

"The storm shutters will give us some protection," said Mrs. Wakeman, dabbing her forehead with a folded handkerchief.  "I built them to withstand a Category Four hurricane.  Granted, there hasn't been a hurricane in Tremorton in over sixty years.  Oh, people told me I was crazy to put retractable metal panels on a two-story Victorian, but who's laughing now, hmm?"

"Mrs. Wakeman!  A little focus here!"  Brad clutched at his spiky red hair.  "We've got to call Jenny!"

"Yes … yes, of course!"  She ran over and hopped into her swivel chair, and start madly typing away on her computer keyboard.  "Oh my, that girl had better not have her monitor turned off, or the Cluster will have our guts for garters!"

Brad leaned back against a table and tried to slow down his racing heartbeat.  "Okay … everything is totally cool, folks.  Jenny's going to be here in a few minutes, and then we'll have front-row seats to some big-time Cluster butt-kicking.  Won't that be cool, Tuck?  Tuck?"

"O-o-over here," squeaked a trembling little voice from the living room.

"Tuck, come out here," said Brad, shaking his head.  "Don't be such a big fraidy-cat!"

Tuck's head popped up from behind the sofa.  "Hello – there's an army of bloodthirsty metal cockroaches with an evil robot queen on the front lawn.  I think my complete and utter terror is totally justified."

Drew's head popped up next to Tuck's, his face as pale as a sheet.  "I have to go with the little guy on this one, Brad."

"Oh, come on!"  Brad folded his arms with disgust.  "Drew, you're a robot, for crying out loud!  With all those freaky stretching and morphing powers – you can just do some of that robot kung-fu chop-sockey on those Cluster drones!  Don't tell me that you're afraid."

"Ha!  If I still wore underwear, they'd need changing by now."  He jumped up, waving his arms.  "This Vexus woman – robot – whatever.  She's the head of the whole Cluster outfit, right?"

"Far as I know, yeah.  She's the queen."

"Well I've been hearing her voice in my head for the past three days now," Drew gulped.  "Aren't these Cluster thugs all about kidnapping and assimilating robots into their big collective electro-brain, or whatever?  Hey, I've kind of grown attached to the whole 'free will' thing, thank you very much, and I'd like to hold onto mine for a while longer!"

"W-well, I know what they think of humans," shivered Tuck, thinking of the time he and his brother had been held captive during their first Cluster encounter.  "They want to make us all their slaves!"

"Pfft, you two are a couple of old ladies," smirked Brad.  "Jenny'll be here soon to mop the floor with these losers, and then we'll have a good laugh about the whole thing during Geometry class."

"I wouldn't start laughing just yet," said Mrs. Wakeman, in an ashen voice.  The boys realized that she was about to deliver bad news, and they huddled around her workstation monitor.  "I cannot raise XJ-9 on any of her emergency frequencies."

"Oh, just super," huffed Tuck.  "Jenny picked a fine time to throw a hissy fit."

"It's not that," the doctor explained.  "I am not able to send or receive any transmissions from XJ-9 because all communications are currently being jammed.  I can't even make a telephone call.  See for yourself."  Just as she had said, the computer monitor on her workstation was filled with crackling, hissing static.  "A powerful Cluster jamming signal is being broadcast from somewhere very close by – most likely from the antennas on that phony 'news van'."

"Jenny has no way of knowing that we're in trouble, then," gulped Brad.  They let that unpleasant realization sink in for a few seconds.

Mrs. Wakeman was curious about something.  "Andrew, did I hear you say that you've been hearing Vexus' voice in your mind?  Is that the reason that you came here this morning asking for help?"

Drew nodded.  "I've been hearing her on and off over the past three days – in my dreams, even when I'm awake.  I actually hear her right now," he grimaced.  "Didn't know who it was, but when that reporter lady walked in, I recognized her voice, and something in my brain just screamed 'danger'."

"Hmmm … fascinating," she mumbled.  "The nanobots in your body – which are Cluster technology, after all – are sensitive to Cluster communication frequencies.  Perhaps it's something left over from your conversion into an android.  Your subconscious appears to be picking up Vexus' control signals."

"What does that mean?!?" asked Drew, his eyes frazzled.  "This 'Vexus' is taking over my mind?!?"

"You certainly seem to be your normal self right now," said Mrs. Wakeman, "but there's no way of knowing whether that will remain the case.  Of course, it's all a moot question if we cannot contact XJ-9 before those Cluster robots enslave us."  She rubbed her hands together fretfully.  "Oh, I must find a way to re-establish a link with her!  It's the only way to …"

"Wakeman!" shouted a bone-chilling voice, from the front lawn.

They moved over to the window, and looked out through the narrow gap in the metallic shutters.

Vexus stood a mere twenty feet away, glaring at the shielded house with aggravation.  "An interesting little feature you've added to your nest, mammals.  Although it hardly makes a visitor feel welcome."

She gestured towards a dozen Cluster drones, with laser-stalks deployed from their shells, taking aim at the house.  "I could simply have my drones blast away until your little home was filled with holes, but there's an easier way to settle this."  She snapped her fingers, and half the drones turned around, training their weapons on their human prisoners.

"Now, doctor, you have five minutes to collect all of your blueprints and diagrams of XJ-9, and walk out of the house to surrender yourself to me.  Otherwise, I shall pick one of these miserable meat creatures at random every sixty seconds, and have them disintegrated into carbon dust."

A chorus of gasps washed over the crowd, as they realized the deadly seriousness of their situation.  Mrs. Wakeman recoiled in shock, appalled that Vexus would vaporize a hundred people just to get to her.  Why on Earth would she want her …?

"She wants me and the blueprints," gulped the doctor.  "She doesn't simply want XJ-9.  She wants to build an army of XJ-9's, no doubt to use in a mass invasion of the Earth."

Brad swallowed the lump in his throat, and pounded his fist into his hand.  "Don't worry, Mrs. Wakeman.  We'll protect you as long as we can.  I'm not going to be some robot's houseboy on Cluster Prime …"

"Wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute," said Drew, desperately trying to think.  "Doc, can't you figure out a way to break through the jamming, and get an emergency call off to Jenny?"

"Well of course I can," she replied, as if it were an insult to her abilities as a scientist.  "It is simply a question of increasing the power to the transmitter.  Yes … yes, that's it!  Increased power!  My experimental reactor in the basement would provide more than enough power to burn through the Cluster jamming signal.  I'll have to get started right now – but it will take more than five minutes for me to set it up, I'm afraid."

"But if you don't surrender, Vexus is going to start zapping people into charcoal," said Tuck.

"Then she'll just have to do both."  Drew's shoulders heaved with a deep, shaking sigh, and patterns of softly rippling silver-green waves started to flow over the surface of his body.

Jenny strained with all of the power in her phenomenal robotic body, and tried to lift her right hand just one inch off the floor.  But the powerful electromagnet held her motionless, as if she was welded to the deck.  She tried to deploy a set of rocket boosters, but the motors in her leg housings were disabled by the magnetic field.  Her pigtails wouldn't rotate, and she couldn't turn her head from side to side.  Just about the only part of her body that could move was her eyes, and right now they were focused on the Cluster drone holding the control-chip injector pistol.

He smiled mockingly.  "So where do you want it?  Left side, or right?"

"What do you think you're doing, you sniveling peon!" bellowed a deep, sneering voice.

The drones backed off to let a massive robot bull his way through the crowd.  His V-tapered body towered over twelve feet tall, and the roach-drones shrunk back under his scornful glare.  From the elaborate pattern of dull greens on his body, and the way the drones reacted to him, Jenny figured that he was the starship's commander.  But more than that, there was something familiar about him; maybe his arrogant sneer, or that ridiculous hair, sticking out from his head like a unicorn's horn.

He strutted over and snatched the injector pistol from the hands of the cowering drone.  "Do you think that a common bucket of bolts like yourself should have the honor of capturing XJ-9, instead of your glorious Commander?"  The drone silently shook his head no.

Jenny studied the Cluster commander's face, trying to place it.  I'm sure I've seen this clown before.  He sure is full of himself … you'd think he'd try to do something about those ridiculous gap teeth.

The big robot struck a melodramatic pose with the injector.  "Now, when the history records are written, and future generations celebrate our total conquest of the planet Earth, one name shall be above all others.  Today, every robot in the Cluster Empire shall learn the name of …"

"Oh, for criminy's sake," sighed Jenny.  "Is that you, Smitus?"

"Argh – don't interrupt me!" bellowed the Commander.  "And the name is Blitus!  Blitus, not Smitus!"

"Well, sor-ry," she smiled sarcastically.  "You sure do look like him, though."

"Smitus is my older brother.  Oh yes, big brother Smitus," he growled.  "Came off of the assembly line ten minutes before I did.  Graduated from the Cluster Academy six months ahead of me.  He always was Mom's favorite.  But where he failed miserably in battle, I now stand victorious!  Blitus, Captain of the Resupply Fleet, Procurer of Spare Parts, Writer of Very Strong Memos … and Annoyer of Worlds!!!"  He paused a moment.  "Hmm, 'Conqueror of Earth' is really going to jazz up my title."

Jenny rolled her eyes.  "Sheesh, what a dweeb."

"Am not!" he shouted.  He shot a nasty look at a drone that was fighting back a chuckle.  "Enough talk!  Now, XJ-9, prepare yourself for defeat at the hands of Blitus!"

"All right, all right, you win."  Jenny winced with mock fear.  "But do me a favor?  Could you put the control chip in my hip?  I don't want it stuck on the side of my head.  It'll look like a giant zit."

"Foolish teenager, even now you're worried about your complexion," sneered Blitus.  "Very well, then.  Let me just … ungh … reach over here …"  Jenny's hips were pinned down in the center of the magnet-trap, and Blitus had to lean over a bit to reach them …

And he leaned directly over the ultra-strong magnet.  It yanked his arm to the floor with a loud clang, pinning it motionless with the chip injector stuck in its hand.  Blitus grunted in frustration, and struggled with all his might, trying to pull his hand free; but he was stuck as thoroughly as Jenny was.  Finally, with a burst of strength, he pulled one last time – and dislocated his robotic arm at the elbow.  He fell over backwards with a metallic thud, his forearm still securely pinned to the magnetized floor.

A few Cluster drones couldn't help themselves, and snickered at the pratfalls of their almighty Commander.  Blitus grew furious, and shook his remaining fist at the genius-bots manning the engineering panels.

"Well don't just stand there, you worthless piles of junk – turn off the magnet so I can get my arm!"

The genius-bot raised a sheepish finger.  "Uh … but Commander, if we turn it off, then …"

"That's an order," hissed Blitus, his eyes glowing red with fury.

The genius-bot pulled a large knife-switch, and the hum of electricity in the floor died down.  Blitus reached down, grabbed his dark green forearm, and gingerly reattached it to his elbow joint.  He flexed his fingers against the handle of the injector pistol, and smiled with relief.  "Everything seems to be functioning normally.  All right, let's get back to business.  Where were we, XJ-9?  Umm … XJ-9?"

Jenny smiled down at him, hovering on her pigtail-jets, her arms converted into a huge plasma cannon.

Blitus' face sunk in dejection.  "Oh, poopy."

He dove for cover, as Jenny opened fire with multiple blasts of fiery blue plasma bolts.  Cluster drones scattered into the air and bounced off the walls, as she looked to dish out some payback.  Plasma ripped into the floor, and tore gaping holes in the control panels.  Monitors and sensor panels crashed from the ceiling, flattening a couple of genius-bots.  Severed claws, limbs, and antennas were littered all over the bridge.  Jenny spun around in tight circles, dodging return fire from the drones, enjoying the chance to vent a little frustration on some Cluster stooges.  She scanned the room, looking for Blitus –

And found him hiding under a radar display.  She dropped to the floor, and converted her arms back to normal.  "Looks like it's just you and me, Commander," she grinned.  Jenny pulled Blitus up to his feet and slammed him against a wall control panel.  She deployed her power fist, and pulled back her arm, scowling at him.  "Now tell me where Queen Vexus is, right now."

"Not in the face!  Not in the face!  All right, I'll tell you."  Blitus raised an arm to shield his head, and pointed at a large black lever on the control panel.  "That control operates our tactical scanners.  Turn it on, and you'll see the location of every Cluster robot on Earth."

"Thank you very much."  She pulled the lever, and the picture on the overhead monitor changed –

But instead of a map, or a readout, all she saw was an exterior camera shot of the starship.  Dozens of large retractable doors were slowly swinging open, all over the rounded hull.

Blitus started laughing maniacally, as a loud series of motorized rumbles vibrated their way through the hull.  Then the rumbles were joined by the high-pitched whine of rocket engines.  Dozens of engines.  Hundreds of engines.  Jenny looked around in confusion, trying to figure out what was happening.

"Foolish XJ-9!  You've just launched our full compliment of Cluster attack robots," gloated Blitus.  "They're flying at top speed towards the human city, even as we speak."

"What?!?" she gasped.  That no-good louse tricked me!  "Oh, no …"

On the overhead monitor, a dark swarm of robots streamed from the launch bays of the ship.  They had the appearance of ten-foot locusts, slicing through the air on swept-back wings, with three sets of menacing claws dangling from their bellies.  Their heads were topped by long, flexible antennae; and those antennae were fitted with laser blasters.  Two hundred locust-bots sped towards the city, and started to take random shots at buildings and vehicles.  Already, a panic was taking shape in the streets below.

"Well, XJ-9, what will it be?  Revenge against me, or save the pitiful humans in the city?"  Blitus enjoyed a hearty laugh; he already knew what she was going to do.

And so did Jenny – which just made her all the more frustrated.  She tossed Blitus aside, and blasted a hole in the ceiling, flying outside at high speed.  She had to catch up with the swarm of Cluster locusts before Sydney was reduced to a heap of rubble.

Continued in Chapter Six