A/N – Again, thanks for the reviews, folks! I've finally got the story pretty much plotted now, and despite what I said after "Escape", it looks like this'll be another 18-chapter monster. Yeesh.


Countdown to Mindshatter

A "My Life as a Teenage Robot" Fanfic

Chapter Eleven – Ready Or Not, Here We Come


Tuck thrashed and punched with all his might, trying to beat back the horrific alien attackers, but their numbers were far too great, and they had him backed into a corner with no hope of escape. He couldn't see anything within arm's reach that he could use as a weapon. The hideous glowing yellow eyes peering at him from out of the darkness grew closer … and closer … and closer. Their overwhelming body odor and putrid breath smelled of rancid fish. The lead alien smiled down at Tuck, and slithered his long, slimy tongue between his fangs, coating his green swollen lips with disgusting digestive fluid. The little fellow kicked furiously, but the alien horde had him pinned to the floor. He could hear their ragged breathing, their terrifying growls … and the creepy music that played just before they ate your skin.

Cool slime drizzled down onto his face. He could feel the enzymes dissolving away his tender young flesh! "AAAUUUGGGHHH! Get back, you Martian mutant scum! Back, I say! You won't be feasting on grammar school student tonight …"

Then he opened his eyes and realized that he was flopping around on the bedroom floor, wrapped up in his Peter Proper bunny blanket … and the alien death slime was dripping from the corner of his big brother's mouth, who was snoring away. In one lightning-fast motion, Tuck leapt to his feet, vigorously rubbing his face dry with his shirttail. "EWWGHHH! BRAD!"

Brad snapped bolt-upright in his bed, sending papers and blueprints scattering in every direction. "GAAH! Benjamin Franklin crossed the Delaware in 1492 to defeat Saddam Hussein at Pearl Harbor … huh? Wha? Tuck? What are you doing in history class?"

"Right now, I'm drowning," sneered Tuck, as he wiped his hands against Brad's bedspread. He was upset at himself for falling asleep halfway through Martian Mutants IV – the little TV in Brad's bedroom was just showing static now – but apparently, Brad hadn't lasted much longer with his "scientific analysis" of Dr. Mogg's blueprints. "It's morning. You fell asleep while your 'razor sharp intellect' was studying those plans for the Z-Pack. So, have any luck figuring out all that complicated science junk and stuff? Or do I already know the answer to that question?"

Brad rubbed the sleep from his eyes, and frowned at the smug little smile of his irritating younger brother. Tuck could be such a pain sometimes. More so when he happened to be right. Brad had zonked out sometime around four in the morning, barely able to pronounce the scientific terms on the Z-Pack's schematics, let alone understand the design. The plans were unbelievably complex – just a little more complex than the blueprints he'd drawn up for Tuck's soap box racer the previous summer. "For your information, shrimp boat, it just so happens that I'm on the verge of a major …"

"… You got nuthin'."

"… I got nuthin'," sighed Brad, as he tossed the last of the blueprints aside. "Who would have thought that a quantum flux energy reactor would be so complicated?"

"Why don't you just take the blueprints over to Mrs. Wakeman?" groaned Tuck, for what must have been the hundredth time since last night.

"Why don't you go downstairs and get me some coffee?" snapped Brad. He dragged himself to his feet and wiped the sleep from his eyes. "Stupid gizmo … why is it giving Jenny so many power surges? Maybe it runs on DC, and she runs on AC …"

"You know, Brad, there's always the possibility that Jenny might not be able to handle all that extra power, just like the scientist guy said." Tuck's eyes bugged out in alarm at that thought, and he clasped his hands to his cheeks. "Ulp … that means she won't be able to stop the Cluster when they attack today. And if Jenny can't stop them, then Skyway Patrol can't stop them! And if Skyway Patrol can't stop them, then we're all gonna be Cluster slaves tomorrow! And if we're all gonna be Cluster slaves tomorrow …" – his face lit up with a huge grin – "… I say forget about the cholesterol, I'm having pancakes and bacon for breakfast! Last one downstairs is a Martian mutant!"

"Whatever," groaned Brad, as Tuck disappeared in a puff of smoke. He didn't feel like listening to his little brother's neurotic yammering right now, anyway. He ran a hand through his disheveled coppery hair, and gave his armpits a quick sniff. "So what if I couldn't make sense of these stupid blueprints! Jenny and Mrs. Wakeman spent the whole night working out the bugs in her new power pack. I'm sure they've got all the wrinkles ironed out by now."

The words had barely escaped his lips when he heard a colossal crash come from the Wakeman house. That in itself wasn't terribly unusual, but it did signal that Jenny and her mother had emerged from the basement, and it gave him an excuse to head over to see what was going on. He slid on his black vest, took the stairs three at a time, and before his mother could ask him if he wanted some pancakes, he was out the door and halfway across the lawn. He leapt over the fence like an Olympic hurdler, filled with excitement for what was sure to be an action-packed day. His little brother may have been worried about Jenny's ability, but Tuck got nervous about unfamiliar flavors of ice cream. Brad had no such doubts in his mind. Jenny was a superhero, and he'd never seen her back away from a threat. There was no challenge she couldn't handle …

He was only three steps from the front door when the refrigerator slammed into the walkway like a ballistic missile, punching into the concrete a mere six inches in front of his toes. It had dropped out of the sky, seemingly out of nowhere, and had come terrifyingly close to squashing him like a grape. Even a calamity like this wasn't completely unusual when you lived next door to the Wakemans, but it did take Brad a few seconds to get his heart beating again. With newfound trepidation, he tiptoed around the crumpled appliance and opened the front door.

He cautiously walked inside. "Uh … Jen? Dr. W? Uhhh … did you know your refrigerator is running?"

Then his eyes nearly shot out of their sockets. In spite of his best efforts, Brad couldn't stop himself from gawking at Jenny like something that had just walked out of circus sideshow. Her body was covered with long steel needles, at the end of each spun a small metal disk, like a propeller. They were jutting out of her head, her shoulders, her elbows and knees, the surface of the Z-Pack … there was even one stuck right between her eyes, all spinning like gyroscopes. He had never seen anything like it before; it was freakish and strangely hypnotic all at the same time. It actually took him a few moments to realize what an absolutely miserable mood Jenny was in.

She didn't notice him, though; she was staring straight up, through a series of holes that led up to the blue morning sky. "I think it's safe to call that yet another failure, Mom," she said sullenly, "unless you'd like me to send the dishwasher into orbit, too."

Brad then noticed that the kitchen looked as if an army division had used it for live ammunition practice. Charred holes had been blasted into the floor and the walls, and a couple of small fires were burning on the counter top. The stove had been melted down into an unrecognizable lump of slag. Mrs. Wakeman's bleary eyes squinted out from her soot-covered face, fussing with the settings on a remote control. It was apparent that she hadn't gotten much sleep last night, either. "Now, now … do try to calm down, XJ-9, or you'll only make things worse! I'm fairly certain that if I can just find the right frequency, we can bleed off the Z-Pack's excess energy. It's just a matter of trial and error …"

"More like a comedy of errors," huffed Jenny, who looked plenty tired herself. "I'm not even going to comment on how hideous I look in this acupuncture getup. I resigned myself to mega-freak status hours ago. I don't even think the kids at school are going to laugh at me. I think the very sight of me is going to give them all brain seizures." Then she finally glanced down, and saw Brad in the kitchen doorway, with his jaw hanging open like a Pez dispenser. "I rest my case," she moaned. "Hey, Brad."

"Jen!" said Brad, shaking his head clear. "What's going on? Early morning combat practice?"

A pair of black, smoking eggs dropped from the ceiling, landing on Brad's head with a dusty thump.

"No, I made breakfast," sighed Jenny. "Or at least I tried to. But I guess I can't even do that without messing up nowadays."

Mrs. Wakeman slipped on a heavy glove, and snatched the eggs away with a pair of tongs. "Careful … I suspect those eggs may be emitting hard gamma radiation."

"You did all this trying to make breakfast?" It wasn't the most supportive thing Brad could have said, but he was still amazed by the astonishing destruction unleashed upon the kitchen. He figured he'd better change the subject. "So what's the deal with all the spinny things?"

Jenny's pigtails drooped to her shoulders, and her eyes sunk back into their sockets. "These are my mom's eighth try since last night to make my old, obsolete power circuits compatible with the Z-Pack stuck on my back! And as you can see, they work like a charm. I'm as graceful as a ballerina."

"The power dampers should work, in theory, XJ-9," said the doctor, desperately trying to calm down her daughter. She worked the dials on her remote, trying to set the spin rate of the disks to a frequency compatible with the Z-Pack. "We need to find a way to get this equipment working properly, or else the planet Earth is …" – she heard a soft ding, and glanced at her watch – "… toast!"

Brad arched an eyebrow at Mrs. Wakeman. "Well, I admit the stakes are high, Doc, but …"

"No, Bradley … TOAST!" The doctor dove across the kitchen and tackled Brad to the floor …

Just as Jenny's chest-plate flipped open and ejected a pair of white-hot objects that shot through the air, shredding the front door into flaming splinters. The projectiles screamed across the street and sliced a telephone pole in half, before embedding themselves into a brick wall a quarter mile away. Only then were they remotely identifiable as smoking, carbonized slices of toast. Pumpernickel, to be exact.

"That's IT!" shouted Jenny. She balled her fists and grimaced with effort, and with a bright flash of light, all of the spinning disks and needles popped off of her body and ricocheted around the room. Brad and Mrs. Wakeman took cover under the remains of the kitchen table as Jenny launched into one of the most spectacular eruptions of emotion that either of them had ever witnessed. "I can't control all this power! I can't even make eggs over easy! Face it Mom, nothing you install on me, or plug into me, is going to make me compatible with this reactor! Mogg was right … I'm obsolete! I'm old technology! You might as well take off the Z-Pack. Maybe I'm still good for collecting ticket stubs at Wizzly World, but I won't be able to save the Earth. I'm gonna get my butt kicked today! I'm useless!"

And before Brad or the doctor could say anything to her, she stomped through the remains of the front door and slumped off towards school, pounding cracks into the sidewalk with every stomp of her feet. The tips of her pigtails flipped open, and sprayed a dark fog over her head, which formed into her very own personal cloud of gloom. Brad rushed to the door, stunned by what he'd just seen and heard. He had never seen Jenny this depressed before. Certainly not about her fighting abilities …

Mrs. Wakeman gasped for breath as she watched her robotic daughter trudge out of sight. Then she grabbed Brad by the arm. "Bradley, XJ-9 will listen to you – this is very, very important. I'm afraid she's developing a dramatic lack of control over her powers, and it's causing her to lose confidence in herself. She has convinced herself that she is obsolete. You've got to snap her out of it, somehow. There's a danger that a negative feedback loop will develop in her neural nets. As her confidence in her power drops, so will her self-control … which will, in turn, cause her confidence to drop even further. If Jenny believes that she's useless, then for all intents and purposes, she will be. It's the same problem I ran into when I was field testing XJ-7. Robotic psychology can be a very delicate thing, you know … and her being a teenager does not improve matters."

Brad snapped a crisp salute to the doctor, and took off in a sprint down the sidewalk, trying to catch up with his best friend. Mrs. Wakeman swabbed a blotch of soot from her cheeks and wiped it off on her lab coat, then sighed with frustration, and wrenched open the door of her shattered refrigerator. If XJ-9's neural nets collapsed into a negative feedback loop … in theory, she could turn herself into a babbling robotic vegetable. And just in time for the Cluster invasion. The doctor pulled out a crumpled carton of orange juice, turned back towards the house, and then realized that she wasn't alone.

Tuck was staring at her from the other side of the fence. "I missed something really cool, didn't I?"

"Quite the contrary," replied Mrs. Wakeman, in an ominous tone. "I'm afraid we find ourselves in the midst of a dire situation. XJ-9 cannot defeat the Cluster fleet without wearing the Z-Pack, but she cannot function as a global defense robot if she does wear the Z-Pack. It appears we have been unsuccessful in correctly integrating the reactor with her power circuits."

"Hmmph." Tuck just stared blankly at the scientist for a few seconds, and took a long sip from his juice box. "Maybe the magnetrons on the trans-dimensional electron tap doo-dad aren't lined up correctly."

"No, I'm certain that they …" This time is was Mrs. Wakeman's turn to be confused. She stared in amazement at the little fellow while he took another sip from his drink box. Finally, she got the nerve to ask. "Tucker, how on Earth did you know what those things were?"

Slurrrrrrrp. "Blueprints up in Brad's bedroom," he quipped. Slurrrrrrp. "Want some pancakes?"

She blinked a few times, and gave Tuck a inquiring stare. "Blueprints?"


Drew leaned against the wrought-iron balcony and stared out from the seventieth-floor observation platform, marveling at a stretch of spectacular thousand-foot skyscrapers that lined the grand boulevard. Each tower had one wall that was free of windows, and was instead engraved with a fifty-story high fresco, bearing the likeness of a famous robot general or leader. The blue-tinted stainless steel portraits glistened like jewels when the rays of the crimson sun managed to break through the pale purple overcast. And they must have been an even more amazing sight for the robots in the hovercars that whined up and down the boulevard like a swarm of metallic hornets.

"Cluster Prime," he muttered to himself, as he gazed out at the amazing robot city. "I can't believe I'm actually back on Cluster Prime. Geez, Drew, what are you thinking?"

They'd already been on the ground for several hours, but standing here, back in the Cluster capital and surrounded by robots of every description, the reality of his situation hit him square in the face. He scratched the back of his bronze-colored head – he'd randomly shape-shifted into a different-looking robot, for obvious reasons – and realized just how lucky they'd been up to now. The would-be rescuers had landed the Stealth Wasp dozens of miles outside the city – ironically, hiding it in a recycling yard filled with old derelict spaceships. The capital was so heavily populated that they didn't dare try to land any closer that that. From the recycling yard, they'd made their way towards the towering spires of downtown, staying on foot whenever they could. Sheldon had offered to use the Silver Shell's rockets to fly them into the city, but Drew wanted to stay as inconspicuous as possible. He didn't want to buy a ticket for a hover-taxi or a monorail that could have left a traceable electronic trail. Right now, he didn't think there was such a thing as being too paranoid.

So by slowly and carefully winding their way through the east side of the capital, they'd made it to this outdoor observation deck, with its panoramic view of the city's steel towers. It was a decent place to pause and plan, although the view would have been much better from Mile High Tower. Drew allowed himself a quick glance skyward – it felt like just yesterday that he and Ally had gazed out over the city, together – then he shook away his daydreams, and focused once more on the horizon in front of him. Because right in front of him was the main reason he'd come here. This observation deck was only three miles away from the imposing, jagged silhouette of the Iron Pyramid – Queen Vexus' palace fortress.

Drew grew his eyes out a few inches, magnifying on the square-mile of fenced-off courtyard around the pyramid, and frowned at what he saw. Ten of thousands of drone guards. Twenty-foot tall sentry robots, armed with insanely large arm-cannons. And he could only imagine how many cameras and defense lasers there were that he couldn't see from here. No, directly approaching the palace would be suicide …

"Hey, look at this!" shouted an excited voice from behind him. Drew slapped his forehead in frustration, and turned to see the Silver Shell standing at a souvenir stand, playing with a tiny snow globe that held a replica of Mile High Tower. "Hee hee hee, look, it changes colors the harder you shake it! Wow, I bet Jenny would love something like this! Can you change a twenty?"

Drew snatched the snow globe out of the giant steel robot's hands, and set it back on the display shelf. He glared into the Shell's big, smiling face. "Having fun?" he growled.

"I'm having a lot more fun than I did the last time I was here!" he answered, apparently not catching on to Drew's sarcasm. He held out a set of colorful pamphlets and booklets he'd picked up from the sales counter. "Check it out! Holographic comic books! Coupons for thirty percent off admission to the new amusement park! And I … heh-heh … think the robot girl at the counter wants to give me her phone number." He nervously glanced back at the cashier, and she gave him a wink and a wiggle of her antenna.

Drew's eye twitched in disbelief, then he smacked the Shell in the side of the head and pulled him aside. "C'mere, knucklehead!"

"Ow! Ow! Hey, chill out!" The Silver Shell swatted Drew's bronze hand away. "What's your problem? We've been walking around looking at stuff for half the day already. I thought the whole idea was to stop and rest our tired servos for a few minutes!"

"Okay, first of all, neither one of us actually have any servos. Second of all, we are not here on vacation, okay? And third of all, we came up to this platform so you could see if anything looks familiar to you!" Drew glanced left and right to satisfy himself that none of the other robotic tourists were paying any attention to them. "Sheldon," he whispered, "you said that you and Brad were taken underneath the palace by some kind of underground tunnel. That might give us a way to sneak inside. So do you see anything out there that even remotely looks familiar to you? A building, a tower, something you saw just before you went into the tunnel?"

"You know, now that I think about it, I remember that we were in cages before they loaded onto some kind of subway car." Sheldon shrugged his shoulders inside his exo-suit, and the Silver Shell did likewise. "I couldn't really see much of anything outside the cage."

"Well, that's just great," groaned Drew, rolling his eyes. "I am so glad you came along with me."

The Shell folded his arms with an angry humph. "Look, why waste our time wandering around the city like this, when I can just hack into the ClusterNet and download a map of all the tunnels! It'll only take me a couple of minutes."

Drew tapped his chin nervously. "You're sure you can do this without them detecting you?"

"They're not going to detect me," the Shell said, with a broad grin and a dismissive wave of his hand. "Just leave it to me, all right? You're talking to the boy genius who hacked into Skyway Patrol's central computer and erased all of Jenny's outstanding arrest warrants!"

"You did that? Sigh … all right, then …" Drew looked around, searching for anything that might be used as a computer terminal. All he saw were telescopes and souvenir stands, and a modest crowd of excited sightseers. In fact, hundreds of robots were now crowding towards the balcony, ooh-ing and aah-ing and pointing towards something high over their heads. Then Drew heard a faint roar coming towards him from a distance, almost like an ocean wave crashing on some distant shore. After a few seconds of confusion, he realized that it was cheering – the sound of millions of synthesized voices cheering excitedly, all at once. He leaned over the balcony and looked down into the streets below, and saw that they were filled with throngs of celebrating robots. What the heck was all the cheering about?

"Uh, Drew …" The Silver Shell tapped him on the shoulder, and pointed straight up … as a giant shape blotted out the sun.

A titanic, cigar-shaped gold-and-bronze starship coasted over the towers of the capital, filling the air with a vibrating thrum from its mammoth anti-gravity engines. Hundreds of antennae and gun turrets jutted out from its fuselage like the claws of a giant centipede, and six inconceivably huge fusion rocket nozzles protruded from the rear of the ship, each large enough to hold the Iron Pyramid inside of it. The starship was over three miles long, triple the size and fifty times the mass of the spacecraft carrier they'd flown back to Earth. It was a floating island that dwarfed even the tallest towers and grandest buildings. And it was making a dramatically low and slow flyover of the capital, creeping in the direction of the Royal Palace Complex. Sheldon felt an instinctive stab of fear, being directly underneath such an impossible mountain of a vessel, but still he stared upwards in slack-jawed astonishment, unable to break his gaze.

A robotic father standing next to Drew hoisted a small, bulb-headed bot onto his shoulders and pointed at the unfeasibly large starship. "Look, son! Look! It's the queen's flagship! Queen Vexus is preparing the fleet to liberate another one of the barbarian planets!"

That would be Earth, Drew thought to himself, with a twinge of guilt. Maybe he should have stayed back home, to fight by Jenny's side … then he shook those thoughts from his mind. One silver-green mush-ball of an android wasn't going to make any difference to a whole planet. Especially not against something like that monster. But he might make a difference for one imprisoned LSN droid.

Drew rapped the side of the Silver Shell's torso. "Sheldon, now's our chance," he whispered. "Everyone's paying attention to Vexus' flagship. You see anything that looks like a computer you can hack?"

The Shell looked around and … "Bingo," he smiled. At the side of the balcony stood a tourist information kiosk that robots could use to get street maps, monorail schedules, and other useful facts about the capital. If the kiosk was connected to the city's computer network, then they were in business. While the crowd stared skyward, Drew and the Shell nonchalantly slid over towards the information terminal. Drew's bronze finger morphed into a silver-green cable, and slid into the kiosk's data port to plug into the network. Then a finger on the Shell's right hand flipped open to reveal another computer plug, which he stuck into the back of Drew's head. Now with the computing power of Drew's nanobots at his command, Sheldon cracked his knuckles and got busy on one of his computer keyboards.

"Hmmm … quantum security firewall," said the Shell, as complex code symbols spewed onto the kiosk's small display screen. "But no mere firewall can stand before the might of the Silver Shell, and his hard drive of justice!"

"Sheldon! Sheldon!" hissed Drew, his paranoia growing at an exponential rate. "Quiet! Zip it! Less talky, more hacky!"

Then a chorus of synthesized trumpets poured out from thousands of PA speakers, located all around the city, including one that had deployed directly above the observation platform. A split-second later, there was a flash of light from the top of Vexus' palace. Four huge virtual screens sprang to life in mid-air, each hundreds of feet tall, slowly rotating around the apex of the pyramid. More holographic screens blinked into existence on the surfaces of the skyscrapers, and public gathering places all throughout the capital. And on every screen was the sweet, smiling face of the beloved Queen and Supreme Leader.

"Citizens of the Cluster," boomed Vexus' voice, from everywhere at once. "This will be a glorious day for you, and for all robot-kind throughout the galaxy. For today, we go forth into the cosmos with our Great Liberation Fleet, to free another planet from the chains of organic oppression!"

A deafening roar rose up from the streets. "All hail Vexus! All hail Vexus!" Billions of robots, enthusiastically chanting her name, all totally convinced that Vexus was the good guy. Standing among so many brainwashed robots gave Drew the screaming willies … the Cluster was, in a weird way, the universe's biggest cult.

"After our victory today, the floodgates of robotic liberation will be thrown wide open, and night will fall upon the Organic Age!" The queen stretched her arms to the heavens, encouraging the crowd to cheer even louder than ever. "Nothing will be able to stand in our way! Nothing will be able to deny us our rightful destiny! Our noble liberators will spread peace throughout the galaxy, from one spiral arm to the other … and the Age of Robots will finally begin! Today, you are witness to history! You are witness to the shining dawn of a Greater Cluster Empire!"

And as the cheers of her adoring citizens filled the city, Vexus glowed with a purple aura, and disappeared into a shimmering transportation beam. The purple column of light leapt from her reviewing balcony on the Iron Pyramid, and streaked up to the massive flagship. Then the ship increased power to its colossal anti-grav generators, and started a gentle climb above the clouds, to be joined by four more giant warships that took up escort positions alongside her. The virtual screens stayed locked on the Royal Flagship, showing long-range camera views of the receding formation as they rose above the atmosphere and entered the blackness of space. They were flying towards the artificial ring, to join up with the thousands of warships that Drew and Sheldon had seen earlier. In a matter of moments, the so-called Liberation Fleet would make the jump to hyperspace.

Drew glanced back towards the Silver Shell. "This might actually work for us, Shell. If Vexus is heading off to Earth with all of her first-string goons, that means there's less of them in the palace for us to worry about." He gulped hard, and looked back at one of the giant virtual screens. "Wow, that's … that's an awful lot of ships. You think Jenny can really handle them all?"

A confident smile came to the Shell's face. "I think Jenny could handle ten times that many."

"I hope you're right," said Drew, before turning back to the gibberish on the information kiosk's screen. "C'mon, c'mon, how much longer is this going to take? Can't you make this go any faster …"

"You two! What do you think you're doing?"

The deep, sinister voice felt like a punch to the back of Drew's head. His syrupy innards swirled around with sickening anxiety. Because the voice sounded eerily, unfortunately familiar.

Drew and the Silver Shell slowly turned around to see who was standing behind them.

The robot wasn't as tall as the Shell, but in its all-black paint with crimson trim, it looked far more intimidating. Tall and lean, with a tapered body, its twin red eyes peered angrily at them from the recesses of a dark, beak-shaped face. Its jet-black antennae swiveled in their direction, their tips glowing with a faint ruby light that hinted at the powerful lasers contained within them. It was instantly recognizable as one of the elite Black Mantis police-bots.

"You are making unauthorized use of Cluster computer hardware," sneered the Black Mantis robot. A panel unfolded on his forearm, and he pointed an electric stunner at Drew and the Shell. "State your names and serial numbers, immediately!"

"My … uh … my serial number?" babbled Drew. "Uh, right, serial number. My serial number is … ah … hang on, my serial number is …"

Sheldon whimpered and munched his fingernails nervously, looked at Drew's tall, bronze disguise, and blurted out the first thing that came to his mind. "C-3PO! His serial number is C-3PO. Right. Uh, which would make me … uh … heh-heh … R2-D2."

The Mantis robot deployed a spike-shaped computer probe from his other forearm. "Disconnect yourselves from that terminal immediately, and prepare for mind scan …"

In one smooth motion, Drew pulled his arm out of the kiosk, swung it towards the Mantis robot … and morphed it into a silver-green blade with a perfectly sharp edge. The Black Mantis robot actually had a moment to look surprised before it realized that its torso was no longer connected to its legs. Then a roundhouse punch from the Silver Shell's forearm crushed the insectoid robot's head into its neck, giving it the appearance of a mechanical turtle. Drew morphed back to his default silver-green self, grabbed the Shell by the arm, and sprinted for the doors that led back to the elevators.

"Hopefully, he didn't get a chance to send off a message," Drew shouted over his shoulder, "because if he did, our lives just got a whole lot more interesting!" The Shell nodded in understanding; they had to put as much distance as possible between themselves and the disabled Mantis robot, as fast as they could. And it was slow going trying to weave through the still-cheering crowds of robots, who were fanatically jumping and waving and pumping their metallic fists into the air. The would-be rescuers pushed their way back inside the building and struggled to get closer to the express elevators. Above the elevators, holographic display screens were floating, showing the mighty Cluster armada fully assembled against the starry background of space. Then thousands of brilliant pinpricks of light blossomed into existence all at once, and the warships of the fleet flung themselves into three thousand swirling vortices of color. The leap to hyperspace was completed just as the express elevator showed up. Drew and the Silver Shell squeezed in, feeling as small and powerless as two hunted teenagers could possibly feel.


Continued in Chapter Twelve / Six Hours to Cluster Dawn