A/N – Thanks for all the kind comments in the reviews for Chapter 13 – that was a toughie that I was both looking forward, and dreading, to write, because I worried about "pulling off" just the right mood for the scene. Just in case there was any lingering confusion about the headband; yes, Sheldon did invent a robot-human brain interface. The was the present he was going to give Jenny back in the cafeteria, before the "marshmallow disaster" messed things up. He snuck it into her backpack, where it sat, forgotten, until Jenny found it in Chapter 13 and assumed it was from Brad. Geez, tough luck Sheldon!


Countdown to Mindshatter

A "My Life as a Teenage Robot" Fanfic

Chapter Fourteen – The Countdown Ends


Sheldon wrapped his clammy hands around the Silver Shell's control sticks as tightly as he could; it was the only way he could manage to keep them from shaking. Right. Left. Right. Left. Even the simple act of walking suddenly felt unfamiliar. He rhythmically rocked the levers back and forth, focusing so hard on his gauges that he occasionally forgot to breathe. Right. Left. Right. Left. Cluster drones scampered past him in both directions; more emerged from a side tunnel, still more poured forth from a set of transport tubes. Large insectoid robots clanked past him, hulking military brutes that matched Smytus in size and girth. If any one of them saw through the Silver Shell's disguise, he was a goner.

Drew concentrated with all the power in his nano-computers to keep the "Smytus" camouflage as flawless as possible. One nervous warble of silver-green, and they were toast. Thanks to Allison's unexpected help, he and Sheldon had pressed further into the palace than he would have thought possible; of course, that just meant they were deeper in danger with every mechanical footstep. The "honor guard" of roach-drones led them down an ornate hallway of gold and platinum bas-reliefs, then down another decorated with bronze statues – all of Queen Vexus, naturally. The corridor ended in a thick set of iron doors, upon which was engraved the Cluster coat of arms.

The lead drone-guard plugged his antenna into the security panel's scanning port, then bowed with an obsequious sweep of his claws. "The elevator on the far wall will take you to your destination, Oh Mighty Commander Smytus," said the drone.

"Uh … nicely done … um, keep up the good work, soldier!" Sheldon slammed his hands over the Shell's boom-microphone. "Should I give him a tip or something?" he whispered.

"No, you nimrod!" Drew's voice hissed with stressed-out disbelief. "Geez! Just go, go, go!"

The iron doors clanked open, and "Smytus" gingerly walked inside, into a high-ceilinged room that looked something like Mission Control for a old-time rocket launch. The walls were alive with viewscreens and maps, and the floor was covered with row upon row of computer terminals. Thousands of drones buzzed around the machinery, interfacing their circuits with the operations consoles. It was Military Command Headquarters, a master control room that coordinated all the fleets of the Cluster, from deep within the Iron Pyramid. And judging from the activity in the room, something very big was going on.

Sheldon lowered his viewing periscope and panned it in the direction of the nearest viewscreen. It showed a large number of angry red dots converging on tiny blue planet. A soft whistle escaped from his lips. "Oh boy, it's that big war fleet we saw taking off a few hours ago. They're just about to arrive at Earth! Gee, maybe we should we do something, Drew …"

"Like what?" Drew whispered back, with a touch of panic in his voice. "There's gotta be two thousand robots in here! Look, Sheldon, just get to the elevators before somebody recognizes us!"

Sheldon winced at that happy possibility, and he put the Shell into a brisk walk across the crowded floor. The drones and officers who took notice of him gave a respectful nod, or even a brisk military salute … not knowing they were but a few feet away from a shivering human teenager. Sheldon turned the Shell's facial expression dial all the way to Snarl; hopefully, that would discourage anyone from starting a conversation. After a gut-churning stroll across the command room, which felt like figure skating through a minefield, "Smytus" finally reached the elevator for the Communications Node, and punched the button for the doors. A pair of maintenance bots gave the commander an odd stare, as he rocked back and forth uneasily, and whistled a nervous tune …

"Hold the elevator!" boomed a pair of deep, synthesized voices. Two giant beetle-robots rumbled up from behind, a red one and yellow one, just as the elevator doors hissed open with a cheerful ping. They barreled into the elevator capsule, bulldozing the disguised Silver Shell along as if he was an obstacle blocking their path. Then the doors slammed shut, and the red beetle-warrior turned his attention to a hand-held computer display, which showed the latest fleet deployment statistics …

Then he turned towards the Shell, and twitched an antenna. "Smytus? Smytus, is that you? I thought you were supposed to be out with the invasion fleet! Smytus, what in Cog's name are you doing here?"


Even from the clouds, it was obvious that the Starship Camp had stepped up to a higher level of alert. Firing teams rushed to prepare the anti-spaceship missiles that had been scavenged from the Cluster spacecraft carrier. Tanks rumbled into defensive positions, and laser artillery cannons pivoted their enormous barrels skyward. Squadrons of fighter-jets roared through the air along with the mighty SkyHawks of Sky Patrol. Jenny streaked past them all and banked into a turn, flying a circle around the starship that gave her and Brad a spectacular view of all the activity. Then she caught sight of a bright yellow lab coat amidst a sea of olive green, and pivoted her jets to come in for a smooth landing.

"No sonic booms, no impact craters … I'd call that a pretty sweet ride, Jen!" Brad slid off of Jenny's booster-wings and grinned at her through his messy mop of red hair. "Looks like you've got that Z-Pack pretty much under control!"

"Was there ever any doubt?" she grinned back, with a mischievous wink. Brad stifled the urge to groan out loud; for now, he chose to ignore the fact that she'd spent the past day moping around town like the spectre of death. The important thing for now was, the old Jenny was finally back. Although he was sure that they'd have something interesting to talk about when this day was finally over …

"XJ-9, at last! Quickly dear, open your deuterium fuel cells and say 'aaah'!" Mrs. Wakeman rushed over to her mechanical daughter, frantically waving a portable roboto-scope. "XJ-9, how do you feel? Have you experienced any further computer damage? Any more uncontrolled bursts of strength? Any coughing, sneezing, or leaky gaskets? Here, plug this into your belly-bolt so I can run a Level One systems test. Oh my, I hope I'm not too late …" Before Jenny could mutter a syllable, her mother stuck a thermometer in her mouth, pulled out a stethoscope, and pressed it up against the turbo-pumps in her chest.

Jenny spat the thermometer out and pushed her mother away. "Thpppt! Mom, what's the deal? Okay, I know I've been acting kind of freaky since yesterday, but I'm really feeling a lot better now."

"It's not you I'm worried about," frowned the doctor, as she listened to the high-pitched whine of Jenny's turbines. She moved behind Jenny's back, and pressed the stethoscope up to the side of the Z-Pack. "Just as I feared," she sighed, shaking her head with annoyance. "Tucker! Tucker, bring me my emergency portable toolkit! Stat!"

Tuck came running from a small military tent, holding a red metallic container about the size of a lunch box. With an excited grin on his face, he set the box down on the ground, pressed a button on its side … and jumped back, as the "lunch box" unfolded and expanded into a fully equipped tool chest with dual oscilloscope screens. "Ready to operate!" he beamed, as he pulled on a pair of oversized rubber gloves. "Can I unscrew the top of Jenny's head? Please?"

"Whoa, time out! Nobody's opening me up!" Jenny instinctively clasped her hands over her precious, un-opened head. "At least not until someone tells me what's going on!"

Mrs. Wakeman rummaged inside the tool chest, and pulled out a hydraulically-powered bolt driver. "It's the Z-Pack, dear. Oh, I should have suspected this from the beginning. The power surges and strange malfunctions you've been experiencing are not due to your supposedly 'obsolete' circuitry. They've been caused by the Z-Pack all this time. It's even partly to blame for your erratic mood swings! Its power output is fluctuating dangerously, and it is growing worse with every passing minute!" With a few sharp blasts from her power bolt driver, the doctor opened up the housing of the bulky Z-Pack, and frantically began to tinker with the wires inside.

"I knew it!" shouted Brad, punching a fist into his hand. "I told you, Jenny! I said you weren't obsolete!"

"B-but all of the tests showed it was working fine …" As much as Jenny wanted to believe her mother, she was still confused. "Mom, how did you figure all this out?"

Beaming with pride, Tuck held up a crumpled set of complex-looking schematics. "I told your mom about these blueprints that Brad and I found last night! See Brad, I told you we should have just taken them over to Mrs. Wakeman!" He stuck his tongue out at his older brother to make his point.

"Found them?" growled a furious voice. "You stole them!"

Phinneas Mogg stormed in their direction, grinding his teeth behind his wiry, ragged beard. His academic lackey, Professor Plink, fell into step behind him, and a pair of burly military policemen flanked him on either side, with humorless scowls on their chiseled faces. Towering over all of them was the granite-faced glare of General Brohammer, who looked very mindful of the fact that an alien invasion was due in just a few minutes. Mogg pointed an accusatory finger at Mrs. Wakeman, and snapped his fingers at the MP's. "There's your evidence, gentlemen. They've been caught red-handed! I've been looking for those stolen blueprints since those pizzas were delivered last night! Those are my property, and they are Top Secret! I want Wakeman and her little collaborators arrested at once!"


"Smytus" drummed his claws together anxiously. Sheldon was trying to think of something to squeak into his sweat-covered microphone; he could see both beetle-warriors staring at him with suspicious looks on their harsh faces. Suddenly the elevator capsule felt very, very small. "Ahh … well see, the thing is … I was supposed to be with the fleet, but then this really, really important thing came up …"

"More important than commanding a warship?" asked the yellow warrior.

"Ah … yes … ah …" Sheldon started to gnaw on his fingernails again … "teeth! Yes, that's it! I forgot I had a dentist's appointment this morning. Heh, heh … look at this big ol' gap in my choppers. You could kick a field goal through them! Now tell me that's not more important than invading Earth …"

"Oh, brother," groaned Drew … "Wait! Secret mission! Sheldon, quick, tell them it's a secret mission!"

"Smytus" folded his arms, and sneered at the two perplexed warriors with a sudden resurgence of bluster. "Insolent fools! I am on a top secret mission from the queen! That totally has nothing to do with dental appointments! So just turn yourself around, and mind your own beeswax!"

"All right, all right," sighed the red beetle-warrior. Smytus had a reputation as an egomaniacal blowhard, but apparently he was a weirdo, too. The warrior robot tapped a few keys on his hand-held computer, and returned to his strategic maps as the elevator capsule silently glided upwards …

Then his computer's display flashed the message Incoming Hyperwave Message … and one second later, a scowling, familiar face appeared on the screen.

Sheldon's jaw dropped open, and if Drew had currently been showing a face, his would have, too.

"This is Commander Smytus, with the Earth Invasion Task Force in hyperspace," snarled the horn-headed, bombastic Cluster warrior. "Strategus-82, you worthless grease-leaking piston pusher, you're late! You should have checked in from the Central Communications Node five minutes ago. In case you haven't heard, we've got this little invasion thing going on today!"

"A thousand apologies, Commander," said the red beetle-warrior, "I'll be there in just a few …"

Then both beetle-robots did a quick double-take, and slowly turned back to face the phony Smytus … with murderous looks in their beady eyes.

"N-n-now, I know what you're thinking," babbled "Smytus", "y-y-you're wondering how that imposter managed to sneak on board the Earth Invasion Task Force!" That explanation, sadly, did not appear to satisfy the two vicious Cluster warriors. Huge jagged spikes deployed from the ends of their claws, and extra robotic arms deployed, brandishing electroshock weapons that glowed a sickly pale yellow. There wasn't much room in the elevator capsule, and "Smytus" quickly found himself clumsily backing into a corner, with no chance of escape …

A silver-green fountain of nano-goo lunged out of "Smytus'" chest, and morphed an anvil-sized fist that landed squarely on the red beetle-warrior's jaw. The unexpected blow spun him around and crashed his face into the opposite wall, but his combat algorithms kicked into gear, and he landed an electroshock jolt into the middle of the shimmering ooze. The blast launched Drew into the ceiling, peeling his liquid body away from the Silver Shell, who was now exposed for both Cluster warriors to see. The yellow beetle-warrior deployed a massive battle-axe from his left arm, and swung it at the Shell's stunned face …

The girlish squeal of terror may not have been appropriate for a robotic hero, but now adrenaline-soaked fear had Sheldon working his control-sticks with a spectacular frenzy. The Silver Shell ducked the attack, and deployed a spray nozzle from the tip of his finger. Sticky oil sprayed into the yellow beetle-warrior's eyes, blinding the robot's optics, and leaving him unprepared for a mighty left hook to the midsection. Then the Shell was suddenly grabbed from behind by the red Cluster warrior – before he was grabbed himself, by coils of silver-green sludge that dropped from the ceiling.

The elevator capsule rocked back and forth from the thunderous impacts of robotic bodies against the walls. Sheldon braced his feet against his consoles, and struggled to work the Shell's defensive controls. Ribbons of silver-green crisscrossed and wrapped around the yellow warrior's massive forearm. Warrior-beetle shells sprouted new hatches, deploying plasma weaponry that whined to life. A punch was landed to an insectoid face with a muffled grunt. A silver-green blade ripped through a leg, filling the car with a spray of hydraulic fluid. A laser beam sliced through the air like a ruby sword. A sonic cannon sang out with a deafening roar, and took out the overhead lights. And the elevator kept climbing, indifferent to the blind struggle of the four mighty robots within it, grappling in the dark.


Mogg couldn't hold back his satisfied smirk, as the military police moved towards Mrs. Wakeman and the boys. Poor Tuck shivered with abject terror; his fertile imagination conjured up visions of breaking rocks in prison for the rest of his life. Brad gave the MP's an innocent shrug, but they didn't seem to buy his explanation that the whole thing had been a harmless prank. Jenny's metal cheeks burned with anger; this was such a stupid thing to worry about, just minutes before a Cluster invasion …

But then Mrs. Wakeman marched towards Mogg and Plink with righteous indignation, waving her power driver and shaking her fist. Jenny had never seen her mother so angry before; she could practically see jets of steam shooting out of her ears. "Arrest me? You simple-minded charlatan, if anyone here should be placed under arrest, it should be you! For scientific quackery! And criminal endangerment! And … and … and for being a loathsome, contemptible guttersnipe!"

The doctor turned to General Brohammer to plead her case. "General, regardless of how I came to be in possession of these blueprints, it's a good thing for all of us that I had a chance to inspect them. There is a serious design flaw in the Zero Point Energy couplers! I've made an adjustment that should keep the reactor from going critical, but I have no idea how long the repair will last …"

"Wha … oh, that's utter nonsense, Nora! Don't blame my invention for your robot's shortcomings! Here, I'll prove that there's nothing wrong!" Mogg saw that Tuck was holding the "borrowed" handheld Z-Scanner; he snatched it back from him, and gave it a quick wave over the Z-Pack. Once again, the Z-Scanner responded with a row of chirping green lights. "You see? Everything's fine."

"Oh, really." Mrs. Wakeman snatched the Z-Scanner back from Mogg, and snapped the cover off the back. The insides of the scanner, where one might expect to find densely packed, high-tech electronics, instead contained nothing … but a brick.

"Heh, heh … now, how did that get in there?" A drop of sweat trickled down Dr. Mogg's face.

"You never let anyone check on the Z-Pack but yourself … and now we know why. Because your safety equipment is rigged!" She threw her power driver to the ground in frustration. "Phinneas, Mortimer, don't you realize the dangers of what you've done here? You've committed a serious breach of scientific ethics. You could have jeopardized XJ-9's very life!"

"N-n-now Nora, we're scientists," Mogg babbled nervously. "We deal in risks with every project we undertake. And I think we would both agree that the minor chance of a small malfunction is an acceptable risk, if my invention can save the world!"

"Bwa-haw, mm-hey, it's simple risk assessment, Nora!" Dr. Plink thrust his shoulders forward, and pushed his glasses back on his nose. "Besides, Phinneas told me there's only a 19.3 percent chance that the Z-Pack will … glah … explode in a blistering atomic fireball of death and destruction … with the burning, and the radiation, and the mutant sewer people who eat the brains … nnn-hey!"

"WHAT! You … you … knew all along, didn't you, Phinneas? You knew this device was faulty all along! Why … why you … ooooh …" Mrs. Wakeman's hair seemed to crackle like a snow white bonfire, and her teeth ground together like tectonic plates. "Phinneas Mogg, it is only my professionalism as a respected member of the international scientific community that provides me with the restraint necessary to keep from … oh, the heck with it!"

And to everyone's amazement, Nora Wakeman balled her bony hand into a compact fist … and plowed it into Phinneas Mogg's stunned face!

Mogg spilled onto the ground and lost his glasses; when his wits finally returned to him, he leapt to his feet, his face beet-red with fury. "General Brohammer, did you see what that needle-nosed thug just did to me! This is an outrage! I insist you do something, right this instant! I demand action!"

The general tilted his head as if in thought, and gave Mrs. Wakeman the subtlest suggestion of a smile. "Very well, then … I'll have Dr. Wakeman brought on as an instructor, for the Army boxing team." His eyes shifted to Mogg's stunned face, and took on a nastier tone. "Now as for you, Dr. Mogg, Dr. Plink … the United States military does not look kindly upon research fraud. Gentlemen … please escort the doctors to the brig."

And as the MP's dragged the scheming scientists away, Jenny rushed forward and wrapped her arms around her mother in a rib-crushing hug. "Mom! That was totally awesome! Wow, Mom, I never thought you had it in you!"

"Um, heh-heh, yes, well …" Mrs. Wakeman rubbed her swollen knuckles, with a flustered look on her face. "He had it coming! Nobody uses my daughter as a guinea pig for dangerous, radical scientific experimentation! … Except for me." Then she placed a motherly hand on Jenny's shoulder, with a look of deep concern in her eyes. "XJ-9, the Z-Pack truly is dangerous. Just consider everything you've been put through over the past two days. If the boys helped, I could have it uninstalled in a jiffy …"

Jenny gave the idea serious thought; she wanted nothing more than to get the horrible contraption off of her back. "Mom, you said you managed to fix the energy coupler thingamabobs, right?"

"Well, yes, but it's only a temporary patch …"

Jenny planted her fists on her hips, striking a heroic pose. "I need the extra energy from the Z-Pack if I'm going to beat Vexus and her big war fleet. Leave it on, and monitor me by remote control. Hopefully I can drive them off, before I explode into a zillion subatomic pieces."

"I won't leave the monitor for a second," said Mrs. Wakeman. She had never felt more proud of her daughter than she did at that moment. "But do remember one thing …"

"Yes, Mom?"

"The 'X' in "XJ-9" does not stand for expendable," smiled the doctor. "Make sure you come back, dear."

Jenny simply smiled back in response, then took a few steps backward, as metal hinges groaned and rotated along her slender back. Powerful turbines whined up to speed, and sleekly curved metal panels unfolded from their storage compartment, extending outwards into a pair of forward-swept wings. Powerful booster engines locked into position, their exhaust ports glowing with the ignition sequence for the fusion engines. With a blast of exhaust, Jenny streaked into the clouds, leaving those behind her in a gust of gale-force wind. Mrs. Wakeman, Brad, and Tuck watched her as long as they could, shielding their eyes until she shrank to a mere speck of light in the sky.


Under the watchful eye of the roach-drones, the engineering droid rolled from one supercomputer to the next, taking readings with a diagnostic tool. A smug smile came to his face; all systems were running with perfect efficiency, the way they always did here in the Central Communications Node. From this room, every citizen of the Cluster was watched over, for the duration of their life, by the perfect efficiency of the Quantum Computer Core. Satisfied with his diagnostic readings, the droid rolled over to his monitoring station to record the latest numbers into the daily log …

The elevator doors exploded across the room with a horrific sound. Foul smoke billowed out from the capsule, setting off shrill alarms that shattered the hypnotic hum of machinery. The engineering droids switched into emergency mode; their programming compelled them to protect the Core at all costs. Panels cracked open in their narrow torsos to deploy fire extinguisher nozzles, and they rushed towards the smoking elevator car …

The first two engineering droids didn't even react as a silver-green hammer swung out of the smoke and took their metallic heads off. Drew sent another pair of droids clattering across the floor before the roach-drones snapped into combat mode, and charged him with their electroshock weapons. The first drone lunged through the air to jab its stunner into Drew's back … but then the Silver Shell emerged from the smoking elevator, and plucked the startled robot from mid-air with a giant clamp.

The chaos that erupted in the Communications Node was brief but intense. The engineer-droids were not combat-equipped, and were quickly reduced to mashed wads of scrap metal. Sixteen roach-drones were stationed inside the room; the two invaders divided them up between then. Drew launched himself into a blur of silver-green fury, sprouting a quartet of swords from his back that shredded through roach-drones like a wheat thresher. The Silver Shell relied on his robotic brawn, along with a well-placed missile and a blast of cherry soda that shorted out another two drones in a fountain of sparks. A swipe from his sawblade attachment sliced the final roach-drone in half, and he tossed its remains into the elevator capsule, on top of the charred leftovers of the warrior-beetles. Then the Shell disabled the elevator's electronics, and welded the doors shut with an acetylene torch.

"That's the last of those mechanical miscreants," he grinned, as he dusted off his hands – then a disturbing thought came to him. "Uh, it does beg the question of how we're gonna get out of here."

"Yeah, I'm kinda still working on that part," fretted Drew, as he rammed a silver-green spike into the annoying fire alarm. "The important thing is, it keeps everyone else out until we're done." It could only be a matter of time until palace security realized that the Communications Node had been breached. He spun around on his heels, wildly looking in every direction. Where was she? Where was she?

The Central Communications Node was filled with the flickering green glow of data monitors, but the dominant light came from a giant globe, suspended from the ceiling by magnetic fields. Mesmerizing patterns of glowing purple dots floated inside, like a swarm of stars in a miniature galaxy. The purple globe must have been important, because all of the twisting cables in the room seemed to ultimately flow in its direction. Drew shook it off; it wasn't important now. On the curved wall in front of him, a holographic display showed all the data traffic flowing through the ClusterNet. A wide semi-circle of monitoring workstations sat in front of the hologram, and in front of the workstations were bulky, metallic chairs that could more accurately be described as couches. Drew rushed forward and looked into the first chair; it contained a squat, faceless, tan-colored robot, who amazingly seemed to be totally oblivious to Drew's presence. The second chair contained a bulb-headed cylinder …

"Over here," said Sheldon, in an ashen tone. The Silver Shell was parked next to one of the metal couches, with its chest hatch opened, so Drew could see the sad look on Sheldon's face …

He sprinted over to the couch with a horrible feeling inside …

It felt like the floor was going to drop out from under his feet. "Oh, Ally … aw, geez."

Allison sat motionless in her heavy metal couch, secured by iron restraints that clamped onto her shoulders and hips. Dozens of cables ran out of her torso and legs like a mess of gray spaghetti, slithering over the floor to plug into yet more equipment. Her forearms had split open like clamshells, deploying special data connectors that she'd used in her normal duties; but now they stretched out to plug into data ports on the console in front of her. Two twisted cables climbed up from the back of her couch like a pair of vipers, and plugged directly into exposed sockets on the back of her restrained head. Drew lifted a shaking hand, and rested it against her dull, gray cheek; Allison didn't twitch so much as a servo in response, but simply stared straight ahead, with an empty, soulless expression on her face. No stars and planets danced in her crimson eyes; she had completely merged with the machinery of the ClusterNet.

Drew wanted to scream, to shout, to punch his fist through a wall … but he knew that none of that would help Allison in the slightest. He slid a hand down to her arm, raging with pain and guilt, but felt no comforting electric tingle to alleviate his grief. He'd flown five thousand light-years, stormed an evil queen's palace, and now was standing right next to the girl of his dreams … and she still felt as far away as the other side of the universe. His hands started to shake, and he looked into her vacant eyes once more. Just look at what you've done to her, you worthless pile of sludge …

"All right," he said, drawing himself together with renewed purpose and intensity. "Sheldon, remember the anti-virus software I asked you to make? Now we see if you're as good as I hope you are." Drew's hand slid down to the end of Allison's arm-housing … and his fingers flowed into long, silver-green wires, coiling themselves around the exposed Cluster wiring …

"Hold up, Drew … I figured you were going to try something like this." To Drew's surprise, Sheldon unreeled a connector cable from the Silver Shell's chest. "Plug this little baby into the back of your head, and I can go into the ClusterNet with you to help out. It'll be just like logging on to World of Warquest! Heh, heh … and you're looking at the guy who made Level Sixty sorcerer in three hours!"

Drew took the end of the connector in his hand, thought about it for a second … and a warm grin broke out on his face. "I guess two is better than one, right? Aw, who am I kidding, I need all the help I can get. But make sure to keep your eyes open for the bad guys out here in the real world, too. I'm probably going to be pretty zonked out once I get myself plugged in."

A connecting socket morphed into existence at the base of Drew's silvery head, and the cable from the Silver Shell slid into place with an easy click. Sheldon cracked his knuckles with a bit of fanfare, then clattered his fingers over his keyboards, like a pimply maestro conducting a symphony of software. Drew finished flowing his nanobots around Allison's exposed data connectors, and felt his adaptive algorithms start to evolve, deciphering their way through the outer layers of the Cluster firewall …

He took one last look into her lifeless eyes. "Hang on, Ally," he gently whispered. "Please, just hang on." Then the room around him vanished into a brilliant whitewash …

And he felt himself falling. Falling into a bottomless, multicolored abyss. Into the ClusterNet.


The last wisps of atmosphere fell behind her, and soon Jenny was accelerating through the vacuum of space. She sped past a scattering of Earth space cruisers that had been assembled as a last-ditch defensive line. Other weapons and spacecraft available, including those which were salvaged from the Cluster spacecraft carrier, but the widely-known, unspoken, nasty little secret was: everyone knew it was all up to Jenny. The army knew, Skyway Patrol knew, and Jenny knew herself. So many of the world's space defenses had been sabotaged by the Omni-droid that there were only enough vessels left to defend low Earth orbit. The best strategy for Earth was to stop the Cluster out in deep space, before they got their giant ships close enough to bombard cities and send down landing craft. And right now, Earth had exactly one deep-space defense weapon. And she had blue pigtails.

Her mother's voice crackled over her internal radio. "XJ-9, do you read, over? My wristwatch says two fifty-nine. Do you see anything yet?"

"Not yet," she answered, as she rocketed past a row of geostationary satellites. She had to admit, she was getting a phenomenal burst of power from the Z-Pack now. And thanks to her mother's repair job, the reactor was integrating smoothly with her own power circuits. But she still detected power spikes coming from the Z-Pack … and her internal temperature sensors were starting to creep upwards. The only question was whether or not she could defeat the Cluster before she turned into a robotic volcano. She pushed the uncomfortable thought away, and continued outwards, past the orbit of the moon …

Everything was cold and empty around her. According to Allison's message, this was supposed to be the place. There was nothing out here but stars …

Then more stars burst into existence, blossoming into rainbow-colored vortices that stuck out against the blackness of space like a field of flowers. There were dozens of vortices. Then dozens grew into hundreds. Then hundreds grew into thousands. They're almost pretty, thought Jenny, as she watched countless holes forming in the fabric of space-time …

Then the hideous war machines poured out of hyperspace, ugly, rust-red, and olive-green. Gigantic, dome-backed Cluster starships, bristling with lasers and missiles and filled to overflowing with millions of drone troops. Jenny could only float and watch as the horde of enormous ships kept coming, and coming, almost as if space itself were giving birth to and endless stream of monster insects. The swarm of starships grew, and grew, and it seemed as if their numbers would blot out the stars. Jenny's eyes flitted left and right, and a horrible feeling started to brew in her wires …

Something wasn't right. There were too many of them.

She converted her pigtails into a pair of radar dishes, and swept the rapidly growing formation. A screen deployed from her forearm to display the count … three thousand … thirty-two hundred … thirty-six hundred … and still more ships poured from the portals, without any signs of slowing down. "Come on, already," she said, with a sense of disbelief. "Did they actually leave any ships back on Cluster, for cryin' out loud?" Four thousand … five thousand …

Then the hyperspace portals closed up, and their riot of colors faded into the starry background. Jenny took a second to absorb the staggering scale of the fleet that had just assembled in front of her.

A fleet that was twice the size she was expecting.

She reverted her pigtails to flight mode, and deployed a pair of massive phased ion cannons from each elbow. She watched the giant warships in front of her open their hatches, and spew clouds of fighters into space like killer bees streaming from bloated hives. Whatever fear or doubt she felt was bundled up into a scrap file, and moved to the recycle bin. This was her moment. This was the reason she'd been built. Cluster Dawn had finally come. She let out a warrior yell, punched her afterburners, and launched herself into the tempest with hellfire blazing from the barrels of her cannons.


Continued in Chapter Fifteen