Escape From Paradise
A "My Life as a Teenage Robot" Fanfic
Chapter Seventeen – For The Common Good
Massive cannons on the base's perimeter erupted with white-hot plasma, spraying the blood-red skies of Cluster Prime with blazing rivers of death. Railguns lobbed shells at air-shredding speeds, forming a protective curtain of projectiles. Jenny zigzagged madly through the fountains of gunfire, pushing herself to the very limits of her flying abilities. Pale-blue beams shot out from her laser-limbs, sending a pair of defense towers skyward in roiling fire-clouds. But she knew her weapons were pitifully insufficient; she was sorely outmatched by the firepower amassed at Base Zero-One, and she knew that she didn't stand a chance against it. Fortunately … they weren't actually aiming at her.
The Cluster munitions screamed upwards to slam into the surface of an impossible monster, a silver-green android that towered a mind-boggling five thousand feet into the sky. Drew had absorbed billions of tons of wreckage in his path, converting it all into fresh nanobots and carbon mesh. Each of his legs rose higher than a skyscraper, and each step he took wiped out ten city blocks. With another half-mile stride, his mountain-foot slammed down on the vast concrete tarmac, obliterating five star cruisers with a ground-cracking impact and a gust of hurricane-force wind. Countless streams of gunfire ripped into his body, carving out flaming gouges that showered the base with hailstones of silver-green debris.
Jenny curled around her friend's immense back, trying to protect him from aerial assault. Sixty Cluster ships swarmed menacingly overhead, diving down towards the mile-high intruder to launch withering laser and missile attacks. Jenny shot a salvo of guided missiles at a formation of six light cruisers, blotting five of them out of the sky; but the sixth one got a shot off with a particle beam that punched a fifty-foot hole clean through Drew's shoulder. He winced from the blow, then swung his good arm around as his attacker sailed past, swatting the cruiser from the sky with a glance of his hand. A burning fireball tore into the base of a mile-high sensor tower, which toppled over and destroyed eight more starship hangars.
And to the north of those burning hangars was their objective – the Shipyards. Twenty ladybug-shaped spacecraft carriers, each half a mile long, sat on a gigantic expanse of tarmac, surrounded by tall cranes and construction scaffolding. Drew rocked from the impact of sixteen cruise missiles on his left leg; he felt a crack form along his knee, and raced to repair it with a hundred thousand gallons of fresh nanobots. Another pair of colossal strides brought him to fifty yards from the nearest carrier. As Jenny chased away Cluster fighters, and beam-weapons burned clouds of silver flakes out of his titanic body, Drew slowly bent his knees and stretched his hands underneath the giant starship, spreading his fingers out like the tines of a forklift. Then with a Herculean effort, he lifted the carrier off the ground, raising it up to chest level.
Even through a hundred-foot-thick slab of nanobot material, the noise inside of Drew's chest was almost deafening. So many weapons were slamming into his body that individual explosions were indiscernible; a constant thunder reverberated through the walls, and a steady stream of silver-green dust rained down on their heads. Even so, escape now seemed tantalizingly close; certain death was just outside, and yet a flicker of foolish hope seemed to take hold in the humans for the first time. For the first time, the slaves started to believe they were getting out of here.
With a gurgling roar, the nano-sludge on the front wall began to swirl with activity. A silver whirlpool formed in the wall, growing deeper and deeper until it turned into a wide tunnel. The Space Marines checked their weapons and moved to the mouth of the tunnel; the Cluster drones on board the carrier would have to be dealt with. Three thousand humans watched the boarding tunnel grow, and got ready to run in behind the Marines. Another round of high-explosives pounded Drew's back, sending visible shock waves rippling through his body. That tunnel couldn't grow fast enough.
Allison gazed at the quivering silver-green walls with a touch more concern than the humans around her; she was just as worried about escaping, but she was anxious about Drew's safety, too. She couldn't believe that he could take this punishment much longer …
Suddenly a burly human, the Space Marine who called himself Colonel Crawford, grabbed her by the arm and started to drag her towards the tunnel. "They tell me you're going to get us past the Ring Guns. Is that true, little lady?"
Cluster Prime's artificial ring had forty-eight giant plasma cannons mounted around its rim; without proper clearance, they would automatically fire on any ship that tried to fly past them. "Th-that's right," stammered Allison, feeling a bit intimidated by the colonel. "I'm an LSN droid ... I can log on to the ClusterNet and transmit a set of clearance codes."
"All right then, you're coming in first, with us," he ordered. His eyes burned into her with an intensity not matched by most robots she'd ever known. "We need you to get the ship's main dish up and working as fast as possible. Don't worry, robot, we'll protect you. 'Cause if you don't get those ring guns shut down, we're all gonna fry like Momma's Sunday chicken."
Allison crouched behind the colonel, shaking with nervousness – and racked with guilt, as her thoughts drifted again to the humans' ordeal on Cluster Prime. It had been nothing but torture for all of them, from the very moment they'd arrived. Something in the look on their faces convinced her that they would rather die than return to a life of slavery. She had never thought about things like that before, but now that she knew the truth, the evil of her beloved home chilled her to her very circuits.
The tunnel kept growing out of Drew's colossal chest, a thirty-foot-wide corridor that stretched out like a giant soda straw and pressed up against the side of the spacecraft carrier. It docked with a large access hatch on the command deck, and a silver-green tentacle plunged into the electronic lock – and seconds later, the hatch swung open with a hiss of compressed air. The Space Marines barreled through the tunnel with a fearsome yell and a blaze of rifle fire, and charged inside the Cluster starship.
Three medium star-cruisers strafed the mile-high android with their laser cannons, sending up geysers of silver-green ooze along the length of the right arm. The Cluster ships made a 180-degree turn, and began another attack – then suddenly the lead ship started to shake, like a rag doll in a dog's mouth. Jenny had swooped up underneath the cruiser, and rammed her hands into its metallic belly. With a superhuman burst of strength, she flipped the star-cruiser end-over-end into the two ships that were flying behind it. A huge fireball blossomed into the sky, but more ships hurtled in from the southwest to replace the losses; their numbers seemed to be endless, and even more were on the way from neighboring bases.
Drew was completely vulnerable to attack, straining to remain stationary as he held the spacecraft carrier steady in his forklift-hands. Jenny could see his body frothing and churning to repair itself, sealing up cracks and repairing craters with millions of gallons of nanobot sludge. She unleashed another barrage of rockets into a squadron of heavy fighters, smiling with satisfaction as they dove into a row of fuel tanks like flaming daggers. Then she then pulled into a steep climb, up to Drew's eye level, picking off stray fighters along the way. "How much longer till everyone's on board?" she shouted.
Artillery shells tore into Drew's upper leg, blasting out chunks of silver-green rubble. "I think the last ones are in the tunnel," boomed his world-shaking voice. "Jenny … I can't keep this up much longer –"
A single proton missile streaked out of the sky, and slammed into the middle of Drew's enormous back. A miniature sun flashed into existence, bathing the base in a blinding light and sending a shock wave ripping through the air. The horrific explosion sent a dozen fighters corkscrewing into the ground, and reduced nearby buildings into cinder skeletons. Jenny was shielded from the worst of the blast by Drew's body – but the shock wave flung her through the air like a forgotten newspaper, and she bounced off the spacecraft carrier with a sprawling clang. She lay against the hull with smoke drifting from her tips of her pigtails, scorched and battered, trying to unscramble her sensors as she ran a quick self-diagnostic …
Then she felt the carrier shaking underneath her back, and saw something horrible start to happen to her giant friend. The proton missile attack had proven to be too much for even Drew's gargantuan body to withstand. With the roar of ten thousand waterfalls, silver-green foam began to churn over his enormous feet. Then they lost solid form, turning into massive, amorphous piles of nano-sludge. The deterioration slowly climbed his shins and raced for his knees. The mile-high android was losing his structural integrity – transforming into a towering, trillion-gallon geyser of thick shiny goo.
Frantic gunfire lit up the corridors as the Space Marines swarmed over the Cluster roach-drones. The crew had been racing to finish construction in time for the invasion of Earth, and most of the robots onboard were engineers, not warriors. Ex-slaves burst into the engine room and onto the command bridge, igniting vicious battles for control of the ship. The Cluster robots fought back with their trademark mechanical relentlessness; but they were sorely outnumbered by the organic barbarians. Hundreds more laser-armed slaves poured into the carrier, leaving a trail of scorched robotic husks behind them.
Colonel Crawford led the attack on the bridge, destroying five roach-drones as he raced forward like a blitzing linebacker. Allison was running in a low crouch behind him, fighting to keep her composure as laser blasts rang out all around her. She squealed in surprise as the colonel threw his body on top of her, knocking her to the deck just as a stray laser beam baked the air above her antenna. He quickly rolled to his knees, and eased off a pair of perfectly-aimed shots that dropped the final roach-drone like a falling anvil. "Told you we'd protect you," he grinned through his jagged teeth.
Allison gulped nervously and whispered thanks, then climbed to her feet and examined the vast control consoles before her. She didn't know the first thing about reactors or hyperdrive, but she did know her computer systems. Come on, 1482, don't mess up now. As the battle was pushed further away from bridge, Allison finally found what she was looking for. She powered up the dormant communications board, and the fingers of her left hand plugged themselves into a data socket …
Sweaty and exhilarated, Brad surprised her from behind as he rushed onto the bridge with the rest of the students from Tremorton High. "Oh yeah, we boosted one of Vexus' big bad warships! Woo hoo! I call shotgun! Come on, Allison, this thing's gotta have, like, a zillion horsepower under the hood. Let's open 'er up and pop some wheelies in hyperspace …"
She briefly pondered whether to quiz Brad on the calling of "shotgun" or the definition of "wheelie" … but quickly forgot about it as the floor seemed to drop out from beneath their feet, sending everyone reeling against the railings and panels. The carrier was falling towards to the ground. The engines still weren't powered up, but somebody managed to activate the giant viewscreens that hung from the ceiling, and they got their first good look outside …
"Holy fudgesicles," gasped Brad, in slack-jawed wonder. Allison didn't know what a fudgesicle was, so she assumed it had something to do with the end of the world.
Jenny had deployed her booster wings, her leg-rockets, and the absurdly giant engine stored in the middle of her back; but even at a hundred and ten percent of her maximum rated thrust, there was no way she could support the enormous mass of the spacecraft carrier. As she strained to keep the ship aloft, she gaped in astonishment at the scene of destruction unfolding beneath her. Her android friend was collapsing like a summertime icicle … and he was wiping out Base Zero-One as he did.
Drew's towering body was reverting into a liquid state, rushing towards the ground and spreading outwards in a monster lava flow. Roach-drones stared upwards in terrified stupor as a thousand-foot silver-green tidal wave swept over the Shipyards. Starships literally melted under the onslaught of ravenous nanobots, and broke into giant chunks of flotsam hurtling along in the silver floodwaters. Churning rivers of silver molasses spread over the hangars, and the barracks, and the armories, filling the air with a sickening gurgle, and the screech of dissolving metal. The great tower of nano-sludge grew shorter, and lost any semblance of humanoid form. Drew's head was the last part of him to liquefy, flashing into a torrent of free-flowing sludge with a deafening grunt of agony.
"Hold on!" Jenny screamed at him, as she struggled to squeeze a few more tons of thrust from her engines. If the carrier dropped into the frothing, all-devouring silver-green lake, then it was game over. "Pull yourself together, just for a few more seconds!" The carrier's belly dropped dangerously close to the splashing waves. Her rocket exhaust was kicking up a spray of nano-goo …
But then Jenny heard a magnificent whine reverberate through the hull of the carrier, and seconds later, she felt its mass lighten in her hands. The anti-gravity turbines had started, slowing the carrier's downward motion, and then finally pulling up and away from the shiny, slopping waves of silver pudding …
When a spindly fountain of syrup sprouted up from the silver-green ocean, struggling into the air like a malnourished sunflower, twisting and stretching directly towards Jenny. She balled her fists in hope as the fragile silver tubule strained to get closer to her … then the end of the syrupy cylinder began to morph into something that looked like the hand of a drowning man, grasping for rescue …
Jenny's arm-extensions ratcheted out and grabbed the silver hand, and she pulled on it with all of her robotic might. Then the silver-green cylinder suddenly snapped in half like a strand of taffy. Jenny rolled over backwards in a crazy somersault, and sprawled onto the hull with a blob of thick, metallic dough spread across her belly. The blob continued to shimmer and shift its shape, and it gradually grew a familiar, bewildered, exhausted face that flashed her a thankful smile. As Drew morphed a pair of legs and arms, Jenny helped him towards the hatch on the outside of the carrier's command deck.
Everyone on the bridge stared in amazement, as the viewscreens displayed the eerie blot of silver-green that was erasing Base Zero-One from the Cluster landscape. A shimmering wave of nano-ooze cascaded over the buildings and flowed around the fusion reactors. It sloughed over the gun batteries and knocked over the sensor towers. Every ship and structure on the military base was sinking into the gooey lake like butter on a hot griddle. Allison began to worry whether anything would stop the insatiable nanobots … but then the lake's surface rippled with staccato flashes of yellow self-destruction, and the nanobots degenerated into trillions of tons of inert, harmless gray ash. But still, that left the largest military base in the Cluster Empire buried in a layer of ash fifty feet thick.
"Whoa," gasped Brad, mesmerized by the surreal destruction on the viewscreen. "Drew just took the biggest dump in the history of the universe!"
A weary voice broke into laughter behind him, and he turned to see Jenny and Drew limping onto the bridge, with smoke wafting from their battle-scarred bodies. "Man, does that ever feel better," Drew chuckled, picking up on Brad's joke. "That's the last time I eat Mexican this early in the day."
"Gross!" sneered Jenny. "Could you two possibly be any more immature?"
Allison watched Brad and the students celebrate Jenny and Drew's successful return, and was overcome with relief that her new friends were safe. And she felt a sense of awe towards them, too – they were willing to sacrifice themselves to save these humans, and to save her, a Cluster robot, someone they'd only known for a few days. She grimaced at the scorches that covered Jenny from head to toe, and the frantic self-repair activity of Drew's heavily damaged body. And if I don't come through, she thought to herself, it'll all have been for nothing. I can't let that happen …
The spacecraft carrier climbed faster as its main engines burst to life, and the crimson Cluster skies swiftly darkened into a star-speckled blackness. The Space Marines barked orders over the giant ship's PA system, racing to warm up the all-important hyperdrive engines. As the capital shrank beneath them, radar indicated that hundreds of ships were speeding in their direction from other bases around the planet. They had only minutes to complete their escape. The impromptu crew brought the nose of the carrier around, and increased speed towards the huge brass-colored planetary ring …
"Warning, unauthorized ship," blared a synthesized voice from the communications console. "You are not cleared for ring transit. Stop your engines, or you will be destroyed."
Allison's free hand frantically danced over the keyboard on her left arm housing. She put together a phony flight plan to convince the space traffic control computers that they were simply on a routine mission. The forged authorization codes flowed out of her electronic brain, through her fingers, into the carrier's communications array …
The windows glowed with a brilliant crimson light, as if the Cluster sun had exploded. The carrier shuddered and groaned from the thunderous impact of an enormous ball of plasma slamming into the upper hull. The ring guns were firing on them.
Allison mashed a flurry of buttons on her keyboard, and a terrible cold gripped her wiring as her computer screen displayed frustration after frustration. Irritated humans glared at her in disbelief, and she felt herself shrinking under their disapproving gaze. Jenny and Drew raced to her side, eager to offer any help that they could … even if that help was only motivational.
"Allison, what's the problem?" blurted Jenny. "Is there any chance you made a mistake? Maybe they changed the codes?"
"No, I triple-checked all my codes and passwords …" Her shoulders slumped, as a new screen of text came up on the control panel. Allison unplugged her hand from the data socket with a dejected sulk. "Something's wrong with the carrier's main communications dish," she groaned. "I'm not getting a signal through to it. It could be damaged … or maybe it hasn't even been wired up yet."
And just like that, as it seemed that they were moments way from freedom, one stupid malfunction doomed them all to a gruesome death in the void of space. In spite of the heroics of Jenny, Drew, and the thousands of slaves that had stormed the carrier, one unlucky fluke had sucker-punched them, and snuffed out their fragile hope for escape. A doom settled over the bridge like a winter sleet, and a roomful of morbid faces turned upwards to watch the approaching attack ships on the giant viewscreens. Allison pounded her fist on the console, furious at the sheer unfairness of it all. There had to be something she could do for them. There had to be something …
"Wait a minute!" she cried out, thrusting her finger into the air. "I can't get a signal to the main dish. That doesn't mean it's not working, it just means I can't get a signal to it! I might be able to send the clearance codes if I access the dish directly!"
"Access it directly?" asked Drew, looking as if he didn't expect to like the answer. "How?"
"Go outside and plug myself into it."
Drew stared at her for a half-beat before flinging his arms wildly into the air. "Ally, are you nuts?!? That's crazy! In case you hadn't noticed, there's lasers and stuff flying around out there …"
They tumbled roughly into the control panel, as the giant carrier shuddered from another massive plasma-ball attack. Allison grabbed Drew by the shoulders, staring intently into his wide, expressive eyes. "Yes, I have noticed. And if we don't do something in the next three minutes, those 'lasers and stuff' are going to vaporize us! Drew, Jenny … please, listen to me on this. If I can transmit the codes through the main dish directly, then there's a chance we can still get you and your friends back home to Earth. I think that's a chance worth taking."
She cut off their protests with a raised hand. "Guys … I just found out that someone else has been making my decisions for me, ever since I was assembled. For all I know, this is the first real decision I've ever made in my entire life. Please … let me do this."
Drew and Jenny exchanged an uneasy glance, but it wasn't like they had any better ideas. The three robots raced for the elevator tubes, and pressed the button for the upper decks.
The circular sections of the airlock door spiraled open with a pneumatic hiss, leading out to an infinite expanse of perfectly black sky. Jenny cautiously stepped onto the curved hull with her magnetized feet, followed closely behind by Drew and Allison. Drew had an arm wrapped around Allison's waist; the nanobots in his feet could cling to the hull's smooth surface, but Allison had nothing to prevent her from floating off into space. She wasn't designed with an arsenal of all-purpose gadgets like Jenny; she was designed to interface to the ClusterNet, and it was time for her to put those talents to work.
The main dish rose from the hull in front of them, mounted atop an eighty-foot metal truss. A flicker of optimism glowed in their eyes; the dish appeared to be in perfect condition. The three robot teenagers walked across the carrier's fuselage, taking note of the spectacular ringed planet floating over their heads. "It's pretty awesome out here," Drew quipped over their internal radio link, "except, y'know, for the flaming balls of death aimed at us."
"The ring guns have stopped for now," crackled Jenny's voice, "we shut down the engines, just like they ordered us to. But those Cluster attack ships are going to be on top of us in no time!"
"Wow, you're an endless fountain of happy thoughts, Jenny," he groaned.
"Then we'd better hurry up," said Allison, tugging at Drew's arm to rush him along. Taking the hint, he stretched his body the rest of the way to the metal tower, and they climbed the girders like the rungs of a ladder. Jenny stayed on the hull, and went through one of her dizzying transformations to turn herself into a blue-and-white turret gun. She scanned the inky void with dishes deployed from her pigtails; already, the oncoming swarm of ships was registering on her sensors. She gave her friends a nervous look, mentally urging them to work faster.
Allison reached the back of the dish, and found a set of input sockets that fed into the transmitter. Her fingers plugged into the sockets, and she flipped open the screen on her arm-computer, madly typing commands to maneuver around the maze that was the ClusterNet. Drew had both arms wrapped firmly around her now, as if he were worried that she would float off like a soap bubble if he relaxed his grip. He gulped nervously, and glanced at the vertigo-inducing sprawl of stars that circled lazily overhead. "Hey, Ally, you can't say I never take you anywhere," he said, with a weak chuckle.
She finished transmitting the clearance codes, then turned to the shiny face with the cute green-striped hair that had first given her chills back at the Galleria. His eyes seemed to ache with empathy and concern – he probably thinks I'm terrified to be out here, she thought to herself. And she was, a bit, but she was even more terrified of letting everyone down. Because she was finally doing something really important. And she was looking forward to seeing this 'Earth' for herself, and finding out what a life of freedom was like. She reached down to his silver-green arm, and gave him a gentle squeeze. "And I thought the view was amazing from Mile High Tower," she giggled …
When a shrill alarm buzzed from her arm-computer. "Oh, sprockets!" she shouted. "The Cluster must have figured out what I'm doing. They're overriding the clearance codes for the guns!" Her fingers resumed their frantic activity on her wrist-keyboard …
Jenny's servos whirred into action, and she swiveled her cannon barrels towards a group of angry, fast-moving lights. "Guys, incoming bogies at eleven o'clock! Allison, forget about it and get down from there! We'll just have to make a run for it and take our chances!"
"No! We'll never get past the ring guns in a ship this size! I can do this!" She redoubled her efforts on her arm-computer, wrestling long-distance with the space traffic control computers …
A salvo of long-range missiles streaked out of nowhere, and plowed into the aft section of the stationary carrier. The hull buckled viciously as if it had been stuck by a giant sledgehammer, and only Drew's steadfast grip kept Allison from being flung off into the cosmos. A group of fast-attack cruisers came into view, and for being the first ships to reach the hijacked carrier, their prize was a screeching blast of high-energy electrons from Jenny's particle cannons. The teen heroine went into full-tilt berserker mode and filled the sky with dozens of brilliant explosions; but for each Cluster ship that Jenny destroyed, three new ones appeared in its place. More fighters vectored in from six directions at once, guaranteeing that at least some of them were going to score hits. Fountains of flame erupted from the carrier's midsection; all it would take is one lucky hit to disable the hyperspace engines …
"Yes! I did it!" Allison shouted triumphantly. "I tricked the traffic computers into thinking that this ship is Queen Vexus' personal space yacht. The ring guns won't fire at us now!"
"Awesome!" grinned Drew. "And the colonel says that his men have the hyperdrive warmed up! They've got a course plotted for Earth, and we're jumping in sixty seconds!"
"Then hurry up and get your butts back inside!" yelled Jenny, as the blasts from her cannons bathed her face in a pale blue light. "I'll keep these Cluster creeps busy while you come down!"
Allison shook her head. "No! I have to keep transmitting until we get away …"
A deep-space wasp fighter swooped around the curvature of the carrier's hull, strafing the armor plating with rapid bursts from its laser guns. Jenny leveled her particle cannons and unleashed a perfect shot that ripped off the fighter's starboard engine …
But now the fighter was cartwheeling through space, and tumbling straight for them at high speed. The fighter's carcass punched into the hull like a burning spear, exploding into a spectacular inferno of flame and smoke and shrapnel. The thick metal plating jumped under their feet like a bucking bronco, and sickening metallic groans sang out from tortured hull for a hundred yards in every direction. The dish-tower suddenly felt as sturdy as a giant pipe cleaner, and shook with insane gyrations …
Then Drew felt a terrible snap vibrate through the tower as its pilings began to fracture. The truss twisted on its axis like a strand of licorice. It was pulling away from the surface of the carrier. His silver-green body shimmered with panic, and he scampered down the tower to coil his arms around the fractured pilings. Laser blasts from attacking cruisers ricocheted all around him, but he was strangely unaware of any danger; as long as Allison was stuck up on the main dish, no force in the universe was going pry him away from that tower.
Jenny dug a set of spike-tipped clamps into the hull, fighting to steady her cannons so she could resume thinning out the ranks of the Cluster Defense Force. Another huge wave of heavy cruisers was approaching from astern, and together, the ships had more than enough firepower to wipe them from existence. She deployed an extra rack of missiles from her back and fired them off; there was no sense in saving them now. C'mon, Jenny girl, you can do it, only thirty seconds to go …
With a spine-curdling screech, a huge crack appeared in the metal plating, where the crashed wasp fighter had punctured the hull …
The robot teens watched in horror as a section of plating the size of a parking lot simply peeled back like the lid on a sardine can. A hurricane of air screamed out into space; the carrier had no emergency bulkheads, and it began to depressurize at an amazing rate. They could hear screams of panic over their internal radios, coming from the carrier's bridge; then the screams started to fade, replaced by the sounds of choking and gasping. The huge strip peeled away some more, and the gash grew even larger …
Drew's mind froze up like a deer in headlights. Jenny had her hands full desperately fighting off Cluster ships – but someone had to do something about the hull, or else everyone inside was going to suffocate – but the dish-tower felt like it might give way at any second –
He made a horrible decision, sprinted from the tower, and dove for twisted flap of jagged metal, stretching his arms and legs out into long, thin cables. Spikes grew from the ends of the cables and drove into the hull, straining to hold down the huge metal flap against the force of the escaping air. He flowed even more cables out of his back, slinging them over the edges of the torn plating, fighting to pull it down and re-establish an airtight seal. He grimaced with all the strength left in his body, and the air leak shrank into an undetectable whisper …
When another laser-blast slammed into the hull. There was a scream of weakened metal.
And the dish-tower broke completely free, so suddenly that Drew barely had time to turn his head around in time to see – eighty feet of shredded metal pinwheeling away from the carrier – and a flash of violet hair-foil, and a pair of beautiful eyes open wide with terror, spinning off into eternal night –
Jenny and Drew stared into space, paralyzed with shock, at the steel truss shrank into oblivion behind them. Then they felt a vibration flow through the hull, up into their bodies, and seemingly out into the fabric of space itself. The sounds of the hyperdrive engines grew higher and higher in pitch, and a cocoon of insane colors built up around the massive starship, distorting the stars into an angry rainbow. Then everything flashed with a blinding white light – and the pursuing attack ships, the artificial ring, and Cluster Prime itself – simply disappeared.
Concluded in Chapter Eighteen / Five Days to Cluster Dawn