A/N – By the way, a big thank you to everyone who wished me a "happy birthday". I didn't even realize that I'd been writing these MLaaTR fanfics for a year now until La Miseria y la Muerte reminded me. I've been writing these things for a year?!? Jeez, what is wrong with me?

Escape From Paradise

A "My Life as a Teenage Robot" Fanfic

Chapter Fifteen – Under Siege

Steam and vapor blasted into the air as the giant machine presses of Slave Factory Forty-Six spat out an endless stream of weapons parts. Oil and grime dripped from the ceiling girders, and white-hot sparks from the welding stations danced across the floor like fire droplets. Ten-foot ant-bots clanked along their elevated walkways, snarling down at thousands of pathetic human slaves toiling on the assembly lines below. Under the influence of their obedience collars, they labored silently in the service of the Cluster Empire, without so much as a whimper of protest. They were making thousands of weapons for the mighty Cluster army, an army that would soon eliminate every last infestation of humanity from the galaxy. The ant-bots thought the irony was marvelous.

The humans were no threat to the Cluster, but the cruel guards still delighted in reminding them of their place every now and then. One of the ant-bots noticed a gaunt-looking man step away from his wrenching station, grope for a tin cup, and dunk it into a barrel of warm drinking water. That assembly line's water break was not scheduled for another six minutes; such an outrageous breech of discipline simply had to be punished. The ant-bot smirked with a sadistic grin, and deployed a hissing, crackling energy whip from his forearm. It swished though the air like a bolt of lightning …

Then the factory's far wall exploded inward in a blast of concrete, shrapnel and plaster dust. The ant-bot snapped his head up just in time to see the front grill of a runaway prison van screaming right at him like a doomsday meteor. The crashing hover-van plowed into the guard and hurtled through a curtain of steam-vents, ripping through pipes and cables and large steel girders. It bounced twice, and finally slammed into a stack of cargo pallets, flattening the hapless ant-bot into a metallic tortilla.

While the smoldering van hissed its dying breaths, two stunned human teenagers extracted themselves from a doughy blob of silver-green gel in the front seat. With the structure of his nanobot body altered, Drew actually made a pretty decent air bag. Sheldon tried to stop his head from spinning, and Brad dusted off his hands, grinning proudly at the wrecked dashboard of his latest joyride. "Man, that was so awesome! I have gotta get me one of these. I could get to school in, like, fifteen seconds!"

Drew's head sprang up from the shiny goo, and gave Brad a nasty look. "Okay, we're getting you a bus pass when we get back home. How's everyone in the back?"

"Ready to send some Cluster goons to the scrap heap!" shouted Jenny. She shot out of the van on the twin flames of her pigtail-jets, grinding her fists in righteous fury. The sight of countless human beings reduced to mindless zombies made her wiring sizzle with rage. The evil Cluster guards were on full alert now, and dozens of ant-bots were charging towards the wreckage. "Come and get it, you jerks …"

Four massive ant-bots deployed their plasma cannons and took aim … but with a blast of exhaust, a pale blue blur streaked into action. An amazing right cross sent two Cluster guards sailing through the air, and they crashed senseless into a steel girder. A vicious uppercut from the titanium teen sent the third ant-bot rocketing into the ceiling lights like a bottle rocket. And the fourth one got a Jenny judo-throw special – landing in a giant recycling machine, which ground him up into scrap metal.

A silver-green worm catapulted across the room and wrapped around the waist of another baffled Cluster guard. The ant-bot shrieked in agony as Drew dissolved his body into two halves that clattered to the floor in a puddle of gushing hydraulic fluid. Another guard attacked with his brutal electro-whip, but Drew flexed his body out of the way, and shot out another silver-green tentacle. It wrapped around the guard's whip-arm, and melted it off at the elbow.

But the remaining guards had a nasty surprise for the would-be rescuers. The lead robot deployed a microphone from his chest, and a pair of speakers ratcheted out of his shoulders. "Attention, pitiful human slaves! Attack the intruders! Your Cluster masters command you!"

In eerie unison, every human slave in the factory backed away from their assigned stations at the conveyor belts. They had spent the last twelve hours assembling laser rifles, and there were thousands of completed weapons lying at the ready. Jenny gulped hard as a room full of emotionless human puppets each picked up a rifle, and pointed them towards her and her friends …

A hurricane of laser fire opened up, and Jenny had to backflip like an Olympic gymnast to get to safety behind the prison van. She cringed beside Brad, Sheldon, and Allison as a deluge of energy fire ripped into the van, vaporizing it bit by bit into metallic dust. A silver-green puddle flowed behind the van with them, and re-formed into a nervous android. "Someone wanna tell these idiots we're here to save them?" Drew shouted, straining to be heard over the gunfire.

"They can't help it!" screamed Jenny, as a laser blast zinged by, just above her pigtails. "The obedience collars are making them do this!" She peeked around the corner of the van to see thousands of soulless eyes slowly advancing towards them, a mind-controlled army that would overrun their hiding place in a matter of seconds. She even recognized the faces of her classmates from Tremorton High! But they were all just innocent slaves – and she couldn't fight back against them!

Allison winced as a shower of shattered glass rained down on her head; the poor girl had never been shot at before in her life. Suddenly, in the middle of her bolt-numbing terror, she got an outrageous idea. It went against everything she'd been taught as a Cluster robot – but she trusted her new friends now, more than she trusted the Cluster. She gathered her nerve, and spun her hair-foil into a parabolic dish, establishing an uplink to the ClusterNet. Her forearms unfolded into a pair of small transmitter dishes. Then she climbed to her feet, even as laser fire scorched holes into the van, only inches away from her body. Jenny tried to get her to take cover, but she just shook her head. "Guys, I think I can make them stop," she said tensely, "if we can distract them for a second!"

"Done and done," said Drew, launching himself into the air. A fountain of nano-goo sailed above the prison van, spinning itself into a giant silver-green bowling ball. The mesmerized humans pivoted their weapons upward, pelting Drew's malleable body with blasts of laser energy. Allison gulped hard, and jumped out from behind her hiding spot …

And transmitted a radio code-signal throughout the entire factory. The humans saw her out in the open, turned their rifles and … stopped firing. Their bodies shuddered with muscle spasms, and their faces grimaced with unleashed emotion. Then with a wave of sharp metallic clanks, every obedience collar around every neck in Slave Factory Forty-Six simultaneously unlocked. Moans of pain and agony arose from the stunned human crowd. They blinked their eyes and rubbed their heads, as if waking from some horrific collective dream. Then, as the realization set in that they were free from the mind control, they yanked their collars from their necks and hurled them to the floor. Now the factory was filled with three thousand free human beings … all armed with high-powered laser rifles. The ant-bots didn't have a chance to blink before they were mowed down by revenge-driven laser fire.

Jenny flew to Allison's side with a huge grin on her face. "Allison, that was amazing! You did it! You saved us all without firing a shot!

Allison blushed and shrugged her shoulders, as her body's systems reverted to normal. "I just logged on to the ClusterNet and looked up the instructions for the obedience collars, Jenny. I do stuff like that at my LSN job every day ..."

Her voice trailed off, as a crowd of excited human teenagers swarmed around them. Jenny's classmates shouted with happiness and wept from the horror of their experience – but mostly they were overjoyed to finally be free of the horrible collars. Jenny sighed with relief as familiar faces rushed to her with thanks; the students looked dirty and exhausted, but nobody was injured, and the prospect of freedom had everyone feeling a whole lot better. Miguel and Jarvis gave her a pair of high-fives, each swearing that her robot kung-fu routine had been wicked cool; Tamika and Ashley gave her a pair of tear-soaked hugs, thanking her for freeing them from their waking nightmare. Even Chloe wrapped her arms around her with a grateful embrace; suddenly she didn't seem to mind having a robot freak for a classmate.

Then a familiar accent wailed towards her like a broken police siren. It was none other than Brit Krust, crying like a preschooler and making a scene to end all scenes! "Jenny! Oh, Jenny, thank goodness! It was horrible! Absolutely horrible! They made me do … sob … manual labor! You've got to get me out of this wretched, wretched place! Look!" Jenny had to suppress a chuckle, as Brit held up an ungloved hand. "A blister! Those nasty robots made me get a blister! Do you know how much moisturizer it's going to take to fix this in time for the prom?!? Oh, the humanity!"

Her cousin Tiff was right behind her, waving her arms frantically. "An' look at all this funky sweat an' grease all over our clothes! Look at my tee shirt! Ah've got pit stains! Pit stains, I tell ya! Like I was a stinkin' truck driver! Oh, I'm gonna hafta burn this shirt! I needs to get me to a mall, pronto!"

Jenny allowed herself a little smile at the Krusts' expense. "You'll have to forgive these two, Allison. They're not used to sweating anyplace outside of a health spa …"

But Allison wasn't listening to Jenny just then … she was staring in wonder at a group of her classmates, still feeling uneasy to be around so many "wild animals." Then one of the kids got brave enough to shake her hand and thank her for getting rid of her collar. Then two more added their thanks, then three, and soon Allison was overwhelmed with gratitude from the students.

"It's incredible," she mumbled, reaching out to touch Pteresa on the forehead as if she couldn't quite believe she was real. "You can all talk … you can all think, and feel … just like robots!"

"Of course they can all talk and think and feel," said Drew, wobbling towards the group. "See Ally, I told you there wasn't as much difference between humans and robots as you thought …"

Every face turned and gasped in unison at Drew; fresh from his stint as a distraction, his body with riddled with hundreds of small, smoking holes, from the countless laser blasts he'd been hit with. The poor fellow looked like he was made of silver-green Swiss cheese. Jenny just had to shake her head at him; she knew he could take a lot of punishment, she'd seen him do it many times before.

But Allison hadn't. She rushed to him with fear and concern in her eyes, and grabbed his arms, as if she were afraid he might collapse at any moment. "Drew! Omigosh, Drew! Are you all right?"

He placed a silvery hand on her shoulder with a weak chuckle. "I'm fine, Ally … really, don't worry. I'm built to take abuse. Give me a few seconds, and I'll ooze right back to normal."

To his amusement, she looked like she couldn't decide whether to be relieved or furious. "Don't you ever do anything that stupid again!" she shouted, pounding her fist on his shoulder. "You could have gotten yourself killed, you … you big squishy jerk!" And before Drew could come back with another wisecrack, she crashed into his chest and flung her robotic arms around him in a crushing hug. To his astonishment, a single tear flowed out of the corner of her eye, and her voice spoke in a shaking whisper. "You could have gotten yourself killed before I had a chance to say … I was sorry for running away."

Did she just say … what I think she just said? A crooked smile wrenched its way onto his face, as he realized that this was more than just concern for his safety. This wasn't the kind of hug you gave to a hideous freak; there was emotion in her embrace, like the kind he had felt from her last night, at Festival Square. A fantastic warmth coursed through his circuits as he wrapped his arms around her tiny waist, and squeezed her tight … then he heard an unexpected snickering sound, coming from all around him. With a sinking feeling in his innards, Drew suddenly remembered that he was surrounded by his high school classmates. A few of them were pointing and giggling, and he felt his cheeks flash an involuntary shade of green – all this social attention was completely uncharted territory for him.

"I hate to break up this little Kodak moment," laughed Brad, "but now that we're all back together again – isn't this the part where we fly very, very, very far away from here?"

Jenny was deriving an immense amount of entertainment from Drew and Ally's little soap-opera scene, but she grudgingly had to admit that Brad had a point. "Right, and we don't have a lot of time to waste. Drew, fill us in on the escape plan."

"Drew's going to get us all out of here?" asked Miguel, disbelievingly. "Jenny, can't you just like … I dunno … transform yourself into a rocket ship, or something?"

She shook her head. "No, we have to get away from Cluster Prime in a spaceship."

"You guys found a spaceship to fly us back to Earth?" Jantrice asked excitedly.

A perplexed look came over Allison's face. "How in Cog's name did you find a spaceship that can carry three thousand humans all the way back to your home planet?"

"What the …?" Drew did a double-take, as his nanobots finished repairing the holes in his body. "Three thousand?!? Ally, there's only, like, thirty kids in our class!"

"But what about all of them?"

Allison slipped away and gingerly walked towards the factory floor … where thousands of newly-freed human slaves were hugging each other, slapping each other on the back, and smashing their obedience collars to bits with hammers. Freed slaves were guzzling down buckets of water and chomping down the last of the food rations. Their disheveled clothing, long ratty hair and unshaven faces gave them the look of desert island castaways; their difficult slave life had given them lean, wiry muscles. Allison trembled a bit as she approached them; these humans certainly did resemble a pack of wild animals, just like she'd always been taught. She fought back a stab of panic as one of the slaves drew closer.

A burly, square-jawed human, an adult male of perhaps fifty years, strolled up to her and extended his hand. "Colonel Jack Crawford, Space Marines," he grinned, shaking Allison's hand vigorously. "Don't right know who y'all are, or why in tarnation a Cluster robot is helping us, but right now I don't much care. Thanks for getting those dang monkey collars off me and my men!"

Jenny and Drew walked over to stand with Allison, as she stared at the Colonel in amazement. "You … you were not born in the human stables here on Cluster Prime … were you?"

The colonel shook his head. "Hell no, missy! Our star cruiser was on deep space patrol five years ago when we ran into a fleet of Cluster starships in the Gamma sector. We gave 'em what for, but they had us completely outmanned and outgunned. They boarded our ship, took us for slaves, slapped the collars on us, and brought us all back to this charming little slice of heaven." The grizzled military man gestured to the boisterous crowd behind him, with a scowl on his face. "Most of these slaves are crewmen from captured spaceships, just like us. Some of 'em have been here a lot longer than we have."

"You were captured and brought here as slaves … taken away from your families …" A look of fierce determination came over Allison's face. She gave Jenny and Drew a resolute stare. "We have to get them out of here, too, guys. We have to."

"And we are sure as shootin' ready to get out of here," beamed the colonel. "I can't believe the brass back home finally got the nerve to launch a raid on Cluster Prime! It must have taken hundreds of warships to blast through their defense systems! Ooh-rah! So where's the landing zone? Where's the staging area? Where's the task force?"

Jenny awkwardly clutched the back of her head, and gave the colonel a girlish giggle. "Eh heh heh … well, there really isn't what you'd call a 'task force', if you want to get technical … heh-heh …"

The colonel tapped his hardened jaw. "Roger that, it's a special ops mission. Hush-hush! And you're some kind of new top secret military commando robots, right?"

"Well, not so much commandos," gulped Jenny. "We're … um … high school students."

The colonel blinked his eyes a few times. "High school students."

Drew chuckled awkwardly. "And we don't actually … uh … have a starship."

After that little bombshell, thousands of angry eyes turned to glare at Drew like police spotlights.

"I was sort of thinking we could sneak off the planet … as … uh … cargo. Heh-heh. Y'know, like overnight delivery? Or your money back?"

The colonel leaned forward until his chiseled face was mere inches from Drew's nose. "Are you telling me that we're stuck on the most heavily fortified planet in the entire galaxy, surrounded by billions of evil robot killers … and you figured that you were just going to mail us all home?"

"W-w-well, it seemed like a good idea ten minutes ago," babbled Drew. "Of course, that was when there was only going to be thirty of us …"

Suddenly they heard a shrieking roar overhead, and the sound of high-powered engines whining in circles around the factory. Then another pair of engines screamed by. Then another. Then a dozen more, circling over their heads like jet-powered vultures.

"… uh, and we still had the element of surprise," he gulped.

Everyone's shoulders sunk in defeat, as one of the colonel's men came running up to him with the bad news. "Sir, the whole gosh dang factory's totally surrounded by Cluster troops, sir! There's fighter ships and hovercraft flying around overhead, and a whole bunch of hovercars and troop carriers pulling up on all sides of the building! There's gotta be three platoons of those metal cockroaches out there … and we can see a column of hover-tanks coming down the street, approaching our position!"

"Well that's just great," growled the colonel, snarling at Drew and Jenny with disgust. "You led half the Cluster army here, and you don't have so much as a flying taxicab. And you call yourselves a rescue party? What is your major malfunction, you metal maggots?!? I doubt we're going to have much luck sneaking past those roach-drones in a giant UPS box! What's your contingency plan? Do we dress up as pizza delivery boys and walk out the front door carrying large pepperonis with extra cheese?!?"

Brad patted his stomach. "Man, I could really go for a large pepperoni right about now …"

Another of the colonel's crewman shouted a warning. "Colonel! Colonel, two squads of roach-drones are advancing on the front door!"

A wave of gasps and groans rose up from the freed slaves, their short-lived happiness evaporating as they realized that their would-be rescuers were nothing but pretenders. But Jenny balled her fists in steely determination and hovered into the air; she was fed up with the Cluster, fed up with being chased and hunted, fed up with the colonel's patronizing attitude. She deployed a giant bullhorn from her arm, and shouted loud for everyone to hear. "Everyone, quick, listen to me! Grab one of those laser rifles, and hold off those Cluster soldiers! Keep them out of the factory for as long as you can! Believe me - we will think of a way to get everyone out of here!"

The colonel didn't appreciate a teenager giving him orders, but in this case she had the right idea. "You heard the little lady, men! Grab a weapon and shoot anything that looks like a giant robot bug!" The freed slaves roared their approval, and scrambled to take up defensive positions along the wall of the factory, each toting a laser rifle with a fully charged energy clip. Some of them were ex-military; many were civilians who had worked on cargo ships, or were stationed on outposts and colony planets. Most of them didn't think they had a prayer of escaping. But they had all suffered terribly under the whips of their evil Cluster masters, and they were very eager to give the robots a little payback.

Jenny dropped back down to the floor, landing alongside her friends. "Okay, I told them we'd think of a way to get everyone out of here. Gulp. So … anyone have any ideas?"

The three robot teens exchanged uneasy glances; Allison looked like an idea was brewing in her processors, but she wasn't sure if she speak up or not, for fear of sounding stupid. "Umm … well, if we need some kind of starship, the place to look is out at the spaceport," she said. "Except that there isn't a commercial spaceliner big enough to carry three thousand people at once. I'm not sure it's even possible … well, except maybe for … no, no, you'll think I'm crazy!"

"What is it, Allison?" asked Jenny, trying to encourage her. "Look, nobody's going to laugh … we're short on ideas and short on time! What's your idea?"

"There are some ships that could carry three thousand people … at Base Zero-One. The military base."

Jenny's eyes lit up as her memory banks kicked into high gear. "Those huge spacecraft carriers … I remember Smytus' ship flew over a bunch of big giant starships, when he brought us here two days ago! They were humongous … they could carry all of us, no problem! They looked like they were still under construction, though …"

"But they're ready for flight," said Allison. "I know … I had to straighten out some problems with the shipyard computer over at the base a few days ago. Those ships are going to be used to launch a Liberation Mission to free the robots of a barbarian planet in five days …"

"Five days?!? Vexus is going to attack Earth in five days," gasped Jenny, clasping her hands to her mouth. "Those giant ships are going to be used to invade my home planet …"

"Man, I have to give you this much, Ally," Drew said with a whistle. "You're not afraid to think big. So now all we have to do is figure out how to steal a spacecraft carrier. That's sitting in the middle of the biggest military base on Cluster Prime. Hoo boy."

"Wait a second," grinned Jenny. "That's not going to be a problem at all! Guys, we've got a whole bunch of Space Marines with us now! If we could get to the base, they could help us take over one of the giant starships and fly it back to Earth! Now all we hafta do is figure out how to get over there …"

"No, there's one more very important thing," Allison said in a somber voice, rubbing her forearm. "You need a get a set of special security codes from Space Traffic Control, to send to the automated Defense Stations up on the ring. If you try to fly off without them, forty-eight giant plasma cannons will blast the ship into atoms as soon as you get out of the atmosphere."

Jenny rolled her eyes in frustration – it was just one thing after another. "And how are we supposed to get these codes?"

"You won't need to get them," she smiled. "I'll just do it myself, once I'm on board."

There was a moment's silence as Jenny and Drew digested what Allison had just said. Drew fought back a heavy lump in his throat. "Ally … are … are you saying you want to come with us?"

The robot girl shuffled back and forth nervously, struggling with the biggest choice of her young life. "All of these humans … they've been stolen from their homes, their friends, their families … just like my family has been stolen from me." She looked up at Jenny and Drew with quivering eyes and a shaking voice. "I'll never be safe on Cluster Prime again. I know the truth now. I know that everything I ever believed about humans, and the Cluster, and Vexus, was a great big fat lie. And for learning the truth, Vexus has already reprogrammed my parents … and she was going to do the same thing to me, before you guys rescued me. Now that I've been classified as a criminal, there's no place I could ever hide from her here on Cluster Prime. The queen is all powerful. The Cluster is everywhere. The Cluster is everything …"

She heaved her shoulders with a shaking whirr, trying to sound braver than she felt. "I may not have a future here anymore, but maybe I can have a future … on Earth. And maybe these humans can have a future too, back with their families. I always wanted to do something more important with my life than just plug myself into traffic computers. Maybe … maybe this is my chance."

Drew wrapped Allison's hands in his, stunned by the magnitude of the decision she had just made. She was going to risk her life to help get them back home. And she wanted to come … with him. He stared into her magnificent ebony eyes, filled with excitement and terror and nervousness, all at once. "Ally … I … I don't know what to say ..."

"Say you'll buy me a silicone smoothie once we get to … 'Tremorton'," she giggled.

He broke into an enormous grin, and plunged forward, surprising both of them as he cupped her cheeks in his hands, and brought his silvery face to rest against her smooth forehead. The buzz-tingle pulsed through Ally's circuits instantly, bringing soft gasps of pleasure from her voice box. The mind-kiss felt even more natural to both of them now, and their thoughts began to interweave more deeply, seamlessly flowing into a magnificent whole, caressing each other's mental circuits with bits and bytes and flickering electric impulses. He soothed her troubled microchips with a hundred whispered things he dare not say in public, telling her she was beautiful and heroic and the bravest person he'd ever met. He stroked her emotion algorithms reassuringly, and made her a solemn promise: As long as I live, Vexus will never, never lay a finger on you. I won't let her hurt you, Ally. His mind bubbled with fireflies of delight when that promise made her cheeks blush with a lavender glow.

The students surrounding them looked on with puzzled curiosity, as the robots gently nuzzled their foreheads together, but a few of the girls figured out what was going on … including Jenny, who had to deploy a pair of wipers over her eyes …

But the tender scene was disrupted by a burst of laser fire erupting from the near wall. A group of cargo pilots had opened up on a squad of Cluster roach-drones, driving them back from the factory entrance. Then another staccato blast of lasers rang out from the opposite wall. The humans ducked for cover as a hail of crimson laser fire ripped through windows. Scattered gunfire began to escalate into a full-fledged battle; the Cluster soldiers were launching an all-out assault on the slave factory.

With a lightning-fast series of clicks and snaps, Jenny deployed a plethora of laser cannons, machine guns, particle beams, and missile launchers from a dozen hidden compartments on her robotic body. "Looks like we just ran out of time, guys," she frowned, as her pigtails rotated to business mode. "Drew, you'd better come up with some way to get us to Base Zero-One, fast!" Her fusion turbines blasted to life, and Jenny shot off to help the Space Marines fight off the Cluster attackers.

"Man, oh man, oh man," grimaced Drew, flinching from the screech of laser gunfire. "Ally, can you think of any other way for us to the base from here? Maybe a subway tunnel that runs underneath the factory? An abandoned pipeline? Anything?"

She crouched down as another laser bolt sizzled over her head, just missing her antenna. "No, there's nothing within a mile of this building! The only way to get there is by hovercar, or by bus, or maybe by monorail. I might be able to send instructions to have a train diverted to the nearest station … of course, um, that leaves the tiny problem of actually getting to the nearest station …"

Drew clenched his eyes and pounded his fists against his head, desperately trying to brainstorm a way to get them out of this mess. But he wasn't coming up with any decent ideas at all! Allison knew all about the Cluster and its defense networks, Jenny had awesome strength and firepower, and even the human slaves were pitching in to fight for their collective freedom – the only one who wasn't pulling his weight around here was him. His nano-computers buzzed furiously, trying to come up with a solution. How were they supposed to get to the military base? How do you move three thousand people over ten miles, when you're surrounded by the Cluster army? It was impossible –

"Grenade!" shouted a panicked voice, and suddenly a softball-sized metal sphere sailed through the window and bounced along the floor, heading straight for the high school students. Drew gasped in horror and instinctively flowed into action, throwing out a silver-green tentacle that wrapped around the Cluster grenade on its third bounce. He sucked the tentacle back into his body and absorbed the grenade, and everyone plugged their ears for the horrible explosion … which never came. The atoms in the grenade, and even the chemicals in the explosives, had been broken down and absorbed by Drew's busy little nanobots. He smiled and patted his stomach, actually feeling a little better after the quick snack. Sometimes he forgot just how versatile those nanobots could be. They could eat just about anything.

Anything at all.

Suddenly an amazing idea came to him. He nearly fell over backwards, such was the enormity of its stupidity; but desperate times called for desperate measures, and insane times called for insane measures. He ran a quick series of checks through his computers, and couldn't immediately think of a reason his idea wouldn't work. Well, except for the fact that it was just plain nuts.

"Drew?" asked Allison. "What is it?"

The slaves unleashed another volley of withering laser fire on the Cluster drones, filling the air with high-pitched shrieks, and making it difficult to hear himself think. "No time to explain!" he shouted. "Go find Jenny, and tell her I'm gonna need five … no … ten minutes! If she can hold off Vexus and her goons until then, I think I can get us to the base!"

"How in the world are you going to do that?"

Drew told her.

Allison's face twisted into a stare of disbelief. "You've got to be joking!!!"

"Just find Jenny! I've got to get started … if I wait any longer, we're going to run out of time!"

The bitter firefight raged on, as the Space Marines hosed down dozens of Cluster roach-drones with their laser rifles, and Jenny swooped overhead with her laser-limbs and particle beams, holding off the tanks and the fighter-wasps. The whole factory shook from the impact of energy beams and heavy weapons fire; cracks ran along the walls and the ceiling, and each deafening blast shook loose a fresh shower of dust and plaster. Drew sprinted past his cowering classmates, past the factory's giant machine presses, past the conveyor belts and the welding stations, until he reached the very center of Slave Factory Forty-Six. A group of towering vertical pipes stood in the middle of the floor, rising up to the ceiling like a grove of stainless steel tree trunks. The piping twisted and looped all over the factory, carrying energy and material to every corner of the building. There was a large valve at the bottom of one of the tall pipes, sticking out like a giant water faucet. Drew took a moment to calm himself, and his body began to shimmer with rippling patterns of silver-green. He softened and morphed into a pillar of silvery liquid … then with a syrupy schwerrrp, he flowed inside the valve and disappeared from sight.

Continued in Chapter Sixteen / Five Days to Cluster Dawn