Author's Note: Thanks to Deadeye1 and Coyoteloon for commenting on the prologue, it means a lot to me knowing that people support my writing. Anyway, on with the fic. I'm gonna recycle the Stealth Wasp concept and other such concepts from my other MLAATR fic in this and later chapters.
Disclaimer: I neither own MLAATR nor Star Wars.
Story Title: Metal Army
Chapter Title: The Discovery
Wakeman residence, TremortonA bead of sweat trickled down Dr. Nora Wakeman's brow as she carefully made adjustments to a device that seemed to be some sort of weapon. She took a wrench off her worktable and slowly tightened a valve in the device. The doctor was so engrossed in the task that she didn't notice the single bead of sweat until it struck her right eye. She blinked in irritation and her hand reflexively jerked as if to wipe the sweat out of her eye, the very same hand that held the wrench.
The sudden yank of her hand caused the valve to bend and rupture. The result was instantaneous. She was vaguely aware of a bright flash, a loud boom, and the sensation of being thrown backwards. The next thing she knew she was that she had her back to a wall, covered in soot, and her white hair singed. She sat there for a moment, stunned, before she wiped the soot of her thick, red glasses. She shook her head to clear it then stared at the spot she head been only seconds ago.
In place of her worktable was a crater that was surrounded by scorch-marks. Immediately next to that was shattered window with cracked and blackened shards of gas clinging to the frames. She picked herself up and staggered toward the broken window. She looked out of it and, sure enough, saw the burnt and twisted remains of the device she had been working on lying out on her front yard.
She sighed. "Looks like the plasma-thrower needs a tad more work."
She dusted off most of the soot clinging to her before she grabbed a pair of heat-resistant gloves and proceeded out to the yard. She muttered under her breath as she carefully picked up the still hot weapon. As she started back to her house, her left foot caught on a stone causing her to trip. The weapon flew out of her hands and landed on a birdbath, boiling the water and scaring away two birds who had been drinking off it.
Dr. Wakeman cursed as she blindly searched around the ground for her glasses. Just as her hand brushed against her glasses she heard the distinct sound of a vehicle stopping in front of her yard. She turned around, still without glasses, and saw a white blur about the size of a van. She saw what had to be a doors opening and saw two human-shaped blurs of white climbing out of them. At the sight, her expression soured.
"Oh no," she said, frustrated. "Not the Mental Hospital again."
"Are you Dr. Nora Wakeman?" one of the men in white asked.
"Now see here," Dr. Wakeman said indignantly as she put her glasses back on. "Just because people refer to me as a 'mad scientist' does not mean I am mentally unsta—"
She stopped in mid-sentence as her vision came back to focus. While the two men were dressed in white, their clothes were clearly military fatigues and not the usual coveralls of an asylum's attendants. Also, the men were wearing military-style blue berets on their heads and had armbands with the letters "UN" printed in blue. She shot a look at the vehicle and saw that it was a blocky, white, armored jeep also marked with "UN" on the doors. The doctor turned to looked back at the soldiers with a sheepish expression on her face.
"Heh heh, my apologies," she said. "I thought you were… um… someone else."
The soldiers' expressions were blank. One of them stepped forward. "Dr. Wakeman, I am Captain James Burke of the United Nations Extraterrestrial Response Unit. I'd like you to come with us, please."
"Extraterrestrial Response Unit?" Nora frowned. "What's going on, is it the Cluster? Or maybe another space biker rampage? I could call XJ-9 to handle any problems with the Cluster or space bik—"
"It's not the Cluster, ma'am. Nor is it space bikers" Replied Ct. Burke.
"Not either of them?" the doctor was surprised, usually any extraterrestrial problems the Earth had were from either rowdy space bikers or the considerably more dangerous Cluster. There were those very predictable Menusians, but they weren't scheduled to invade anytime soon.
"I am not at liberty to say what exactly is going on, Dr. Wakeman," the captain said. "All I was ordered to do was to find you and the Global Robotic Response Unit and bring you along with us. Speaking of which, where is the Global Robotic Response Unit?"
"I'm not sure where she is, but I can call her."
"Very well."
The doctor quickly walked back to her house and made her way towards XJ-9's communications monitor link. Whatever extraterrestrial situation was afoot, it had to be significant to warrant a house call from the UNERU. She reached toward the communications monitor and flipped it on.
Somewhere in the South Atlantic Ocean, a few hours later
"I still don't see why I have to come along." Jenny griped for the umpteenth time as she stared glumly out the jet chopper's window.
"XJ-9," Dr. Wakeman sighed in exasperation. "A call from the UNERU is not something I can just excuse you from because you'd rather waste your time at some silly mall."
"But Mooom, I am seriously missing some quality mall-hopping because of this! If you wanted me to take care of some aliens I could have just flown there and kicked the snot out of them in a few minutes and then spend the rest of the day doing what I want to do." The teenage robot complained. "Instead I'm being dragged along on some stupid, time-consuming military thing."
"XJ-9 have you considered that the reason I didn't send you out to 'kick the snot out of some aliens' is because this mission might involve something other than doing so?"
"If it involves something other than that then it shouldn't involve me!"
"Teenagers…" Mrs. Wakeman grumbled. In the front of the chopper jet, the pilots exchanged amused, knowing looks. Beside Jenny and the doctor, were Ct. Burke and his men. Though if the had reaction to the two's conversation they were keeping them hidden behind blank, dispassionate faces.
Jenny, in the meantime, had stopped complaining and instead watched sulkily out the jet chopper's windows. The sulky expression quickly changed into one of grudging awe as Jenny caught sight of the quarter-mile long aircraft carrieand it's accompanying battle group.Though Jenny had seen and fought many alien vessels and machines far more sophisticated than all the ships in the battle group combined, a quarter-mile long warship was nothing to take lightly.
She saw more and more of the aircraft carrier as the jet chopper slowly came in to land. She saw the color-coded flight deck crew bustling between fighter craft and jet choppers arrayed on the flight deck. As they came closer and closer, Jenny saw that the jet choppers she had seen were not in the dull gray shade of Navy aircraft but a dirty white. Her eye lenses zoomed in and managed to make out the letters "UN" on the sides of the craft. Some of them seemed to have just landed and she saw some people in civilian clothes along with the UNERU people who were wearing white BDUs (Battle Dress Uniforms).
Looks like me and Mom weren't the only ones who were called up. Jenny thought as the swivel jets of the jet chopper reoriented to a vertical position and landed on the carrier deck with a slight bump. Immediately she, Dr. Wakeman, and the soldiers unbuckled themselves and made their way toward the rear of the jet chopper.
The jet chopper's rear door opened and Ct. Burke and his men instantly poured out of the vehicle, not even bothering to wait for the other two passengers. Jenny and her mother followed suit and were met by a twenty-ish man in Navy khakis.
"Welcome to the USS Renzetti." The sailor greeted, yelling over the sound of the jet chopper's engines. "I'm Petty Officer Robert Carr, your guide. Will you follow me, please?"
"What, exactly, is going on here?" Jenny asked as she and Mrs. Wakeman followed Robert.
"I really can't say, robot." Replied the petty officer. "And frankly, I don't really know. We were just assigned under UNERU several hours ago."
"The name's Jenny." The blue robot said, peeved that someone had referred to her as 'robot' like she was just a thing.
If Petty Officer Carr heard the remark, he didn't show any sign of it. He just kept on walking towards the access ways to the lower part of the carrier. In the background, the roar of jet engines announced the arrival of yet another jet chopper. Jenny turned to the new jet chopper and saw soldiers and a disheveled looking man in civilian clothes.
Geeze, this sure is a lot of hubbub. Maybe this really is serious… Jenny thought, frowning.
"Where are you taking us?" she asked.
"Down to the briefing room. Now, come on, we better hurry."
Jenny wanted to push for more information, but a look from her mother discouraged her from doing so. They just kept following the sailor, both wondering what all this was really about.
Cluster Stealth Wasp, altitude: 500 ft. above sea level"I don't like this," a red roach drone said to his partner inside the cockpit of a cloaked, wasp-like recon craft. "There's too much firepower here. I mean, sure, they're primitive, but there are a whole lot of 'em."
"Yeah, me too." agreed his partner, a green roach drone. "But Queen Vexus ordered us to keep tabs on XJ-9, and I'd rather take my chances here that disobey the Queen's orders."
"You got a point there." The red drone agreed. He remembered all too well the last robot that had the gall to disobey the Queen. He had ended up melted down and turned into rivets. The drone cringed, that was not a way he wanted to go. Compared to that, the possibility of being shot down by humans seemed almost palatable.
He turned backed to the monitors and zoomed in the camera. XJ-9 and her human creator seemed to be following a human military drone. Oh, wait, thought the red drone. Do humans call their soldiers "drones"? The drone shook his head. Such thoughts were irrelevant.
"Could you zoom in on one of the white-uniformed human soldiers?" came the green drone's voice, snapping the red drone out of his thoughts.
"Why? We're supposed to be monitoring XJ-9."
"I know, but there's something familiar about those soldiers."
"You've seen one human you seen 'em all." The red drone remarked. Nevertheless, he moved the camera away from XJ-9 and zoomed it into one human soldier.
"Okay," the green drone said. "Now zoom in to the emblem of that blue thing he's wearing."
"You mean the beret?"
"I don't care what it's called! Just zoom in!"
The image blurred as the lens refocused. But as the image cleared, both drones saw a symbol of what looked like a wire frame representation of Earth with "UN" in the middle. Around it were the words "Extraterrestrial Response Unit".
"I knew it!" the green roach drone exclaimed. "I knew they were UNERU troopers. I saw 'em once when we raided a primitive human starship."
"Oh yeah, I remember that raid." The red drone smiled. "One of the UNERU guys we captured later ended up as the star attraction of the Ringing Brothers' Human Circus."
Then the red drone's expression became serious. "But aren't UNERU responsible for responding to threats from outside Earth? Namely, threats like us?"
"Yeah, and XJ-9 plus those guys cannot be good news. We'd better send a fly probe to find out what all this is about."
"Got it covered." The green drone said as he pressed a button from the Stealth Wasp's control panel. A small panel opened on the bottom of the cloaked vessel and a tiny, fly-like robot flew out of it and sped towards the USS Renzetti.
Briefing Room, USS Renzetti
There was a slight murmur in the briefing room as the gaggle of scientists from around the world seated within talked amongst themselves. Though the chatting was said in different ways and in different accents, all were basically saying one thing: What in the blazes are we doing here?
The murmur was immediately silenced as the door to the briefing room opened. Jenny, Mrs. Wakeman, and all the other people turned to see who had come in. It was a man around late forties of age wearing a UNERU uniform and blue beret. He had broad shoulders and tough, grizzled features, with a confident, disciplined cadence to his walk to match. All of that would have made him an intimidating man. Would have, except for the fact that he was less than five feet tall.
"Napoleon strikes back." Jenny smirked, earning a glare from her mother.
The man walked to the front of the briefing room and turned to address the occupants. When he spoke, it was with an English accent. "Greetings, ladies and gentlemen, I am Colonel Terrence Little of the United Nations Extraterrestrial Response Unit."
"Well whadda ya know, he lives up to his name. Or should that be lives down?" Jenny heard someone behind her to comment, causing her to giggle.
"XJ-9!" hissed Dr. Wakeman in warning, silencing her daughter.
The Colonel didn't notice any of that and continued to speak. "I'm sure most of you are wondering what you're doing here, so I shan't beat around the bush. Yesterday, on oh-nine hundred hours, Pacific Standard Time, a drilling operation chartered by a scientific research institute uncovered this" the Colonel pushed a button on a projector "under 500 meters of ice in Dome Circe, Antarctica."
The projector projected an image of what looked like a partially uncovered sphere with some sort of structure sticking out the top. This immediately caused a murmur—louder than the murmur earlier—to rise from the gathered scientists. Jenny, however, was unimpressed. So? It's just another alien ship. She thought.
"Further scans reveal more of the ship's structure," continued Colonel Little. A new image was projected onto the screen. It was a CGI image of a sphere just like the one shown earlier, but this one had a rim around it. Also, it had a cluster of boosters on what seemed to be the back end and a gap on the rim in what seemed to be the front end. "The approximate length of the ship has also been revealed from these scans. Roughly 3000 meters."
Instantly the news caused an uproar. Everyone in the room suddenly seemed to get the urge to yell. Even Jenny seemed to be stunned by the news. Sure, she had seen and even fought alien ships before, but none that were three kilometers in length. Now, she had an idea why she had been called to this. A 3 km long starship on the planet Earth was nothing to sneeze at.
In all the noise, no one seemed to notice a single fly hovering in the middle. It watched the screen intently, recording everything.
Author's Note: Well, that was chapter two. I'll try to get the next one up soon. In the meantime, please R&R this one.