A/N – First, a few quick answers: a couple of you wondered how Vexus got that many warships. The way I figure it, Vexus rules over an interstellar robot empire. She has the full resources of hundreds of planets at her disposal. Of course, six thousand ships is still a lot of ships … consider that there were thousands of ships in the D-Day landings back in WW2. Granted, those boats weren't a mile long each. Vehrec – nice catch with that reference from BFW. It was meant to give an idea of the scope of Vexus' mad dream of galactic empire – remember, a galaxy is a very big thing, boys and girls. But I think it's unlikely that any aliens are going to ride to the rescue in this story. As for your other questions … those were very good questions (grin).

Fair warning, this is a super long chapter here. Sorry, but it's necessary for plot reasons. Okay, grab a soda, get comfortable, here we go …


Countdown to Mindshatter

A "My Life as a Teenage Robot" Fanfic

Chapter Fifteen – Cluster Reloaded


Waves of vertigo flowed through his circuitry as he plunged into the abyss, fighting off attack subroutines that raced towards him like balls of flaming plasma. Bolts of lightning lanced out at him as the ClusterNet attempted to defend itself from the unauthorized access. But Drew's cyber-immunity was up to the challenge, and he bulldozed a path through the first wall of energy, then another, and another, as his self-evolving algorithms worked their way through the layers of the Cluster firewall. The falling sensation flipped sideways, then upside-down, then disappeared completely as he rushed face-first towards a brilliant pinprick of color. Then the color exploded in a virtual Big Bang, and a strange new cosmos erupted into existence around him, filled with branching microcircuits and network pathways that stretched off into infinity. Drew's digital essence began to coalesce into his familiar android body, though his zigzagging stripes now glowed with an eerie, ghostly green.

Another burst of light erupted next to him – and a microsecond later, there stood a virtual version of the Silver Shell, who had followed Drew in through the holes in the firewalls. The Shell was bathed in a glowing white aura that gave him a spectral appearance as well; even his chest-spiral faintly glowed with an otherworldly white. "Whoa, cool beans!" he said, taking his first look at the cyber-universe. "Pretty good graphics, intuitive interface … this place could really use a soundtrack, though."

Drew waved his glowing fingers in front of his eyes and frowned. "Man, no matter how many times I wind up in cyberspace, I never get used to it." They were standing on a floating platform in a kind of virtual Grand Central Station, a large spherical room with tunnels running off in every direction. Packets of data screamed in a billion directions, like a hurricane of tiny comets. With a shimmer of light, Drew's hand morphed into a connection jack, and plugged into a query terminal on the platform. "All right, we'd better start looking … no telling how much time we have until trouble comes. One of these network connections has to lead to Ally's mind."

"Consider it found," said the Silver Shell, cracking his knuckles with theatrical flair. His chest swung open, and out came a long sliding drawer, filled with hundreds of file folders – folders from the Shell's hard drive, which held Sheldon's latest and greatest homemade hacking software. He rummaged through the messy files, looking for just the right program. "Bunker buster … naw. Open Sesame … naw. I know I have a super cool search engine in here somewhere … a-ha! Here it is … Uber Spider!"

He pulled out a small glowing cube, sending stray files flying from his messy drawer like scrap paper, and tapped a button on its side. The tiny cube sent out a scanning beam which spun around in a full circle, and projected a holographic map of the ClusterNet into the air. "All right, we're here … let's see, this tunnel leads to the Mainframes, this one to the Backup System, here's the Hive Mind Nexus …"

"Hive Mind Nexus? Wow," said Drew, as he gathered up the scraps of virtual paper and text files. "Any chance you can send a little cyber-stink-bomb into one of those tunnels?"

"Not a chance," said the Shell, shaking his head. "It's got super-high security – triple-quantum encrypted. Without the passwords, it would take, umm … 384.9 trillion years to crack the code."

"Uh … yeah, we don't really have that kind of time. Any luck finding … hey, what the …" – Drew took a second glance at the text file in his hand, which was titled Ode to Jenny. "I love you Jenny, with your pigtails so blue … I'd do anything, just to get snuggly with you … what the heck is this?"

The Shell snatched the file and rammed it back into his chest. "Hey! That's my love poem for Jenny! I was working on it, back in the Stealth Wasp …" – Drew groaned and rolled his eyes, which only made the Shell even more upset – "oh sure, it's silly when we're talking about my romantic needs!"

"All right, all right, focus, dude," grumbled Drew. "Map. Tunnel. Which?"

"Okay, okay," pouted the Shell, turning back to the hologram. "It looks like we take this pathway to her cerebral interface using Tunnel CJ-588, and right on into her brain via her input ports. Wow, there's an awful lot of data flowing through there right now. I mean, it's getting close to overload."

"I noticed," said Drew, with worry in his voice. "I'm eavesdropping on some of the data flying around in here … I think the Cluster fleet just arrived at Earth." Drew and the Shell exchanged a look of concern; they realized that at this very moment, five thousand light-years away, their home was in grave danger, as was their good friend whose job it was to defend that home. Good luck, Jenny …

Six tunnel doors flew open without warning, and a horde of hideous insects poured out, like a demonic swarm of giant hornets. The ClusterNet was unleashing its next round of defenses on them – autonomous search-and-destroy programs. Fifteen cyber-hornets dove at the intruders, kamikaze-style, forcing them to drop to their stomachs to dodge the attack. Suddenly Drew felt a stab of searing pain, as if he was being injected with burning poison; one of the hornets had jammed a stinger into his shoulder, and was pumping a nasty virus into his algorithms …

But his green stripes shimmered wildly, and sent a pulse of newly-evolved software flowing back into the hornet, exploding it into a cloud of yellow polygons. He grimaced and told the Shell that he was all right, but it was the first time he could ever remember feeling pain in cyberspace. More attack programs surged into the switching station; it was time for them to get the heck out of there. Drew and the Shell leapt from the floating platform, and hovered in mid-air, their bodies glowing with crackling, colored auras. Then they rocketed into the network like electrical impulses, weaving through the dense traffic of data packets and Cluster commands. They plunged into Tunnel CJ-588, hurling glowing data-grenades over their shoulders at the killer swarm of cyber-hornets that was hot on their tail.


Titanium-alloy blades ripped through a maze of pipes, spinning at such insane speed that they appeared to blur into a monster drilling bit. Steam and plasma burst into slick clouds of hot, sticky vapor that erupted into an inferno all around the attacker, as she pressed onwards towards the guts of the ship. The blades gouged out a tunnel with terrifying speed, chewing through steel bulkheads as if they were made of wet cardboard, before emerging into the starship's reactor room. Last-ditch laser fire did nothing to slow the attacker down. The coolant lines shrieked and gave way, and the revolving blades continued through the opposite wall, shredding their way back out into space with the ease of a fish swimming downstream. A pale blue blur arced away from the wounded Cluster starship moments before a spectacular explosion snapped the mammoth vessel in two like a mile-long graham cracker. The spinning blades finally slowed down to a speed that the human eye could perceive …

To reveal an extremely dizzy teenage robot girl. Jenny retracted her titanium blades into her elbows and clutched at her forehead, as she watched the first Cluster warship balloon into a maelstrom of fire. Ohhhhh … I'm think I'm gonna barf. Great, only five thousand, nine hundred and ninety-nine to go. She really had to pick up the pace here. The Z-Pack whined with a surge of zero point energy, boosting the thrust in her pigtail-jets by two thousand percent.

Speed and agility. Those were the keys. It was Jenny's unique combination of speed, agility, toughness and firepower that made her the most formidable robot warrior in the world. She could buzz around the Cluster starships like a fighter jet circling a formation of blimps. Of course, these blimps were armed with phased proton cannons that could punch a hole through the moon.

Lasers sliced through space all around her. Missiles curled towards her on white-hot plumes of fusion. Plasma launchers hurled hissing blobs of green energy. Gotta keep moving. Her legs converted into a pair of antimatter cannons, and unloaded a series of blasts into a grouping of four Cluster destroyers. Their cannons fell silent, as massive explosions belched forth from their ruptured hulls. Particle beams screeched at her from the next wave of warships. The teenage superhero dove towards the newly formed debris field, and an extra pair of arms deployed from her back. As easily as if she were picking apples from a tree, she grabbed four pieces of twisted hull plating – each larger than a train car – and her afterburners ignited, accelerating her into a spectacular loop-de-loop. When she leveled out on a collision course for the next wave of starships, she was traveling at over fifty miles a second. With a flick of her wrists, she sent the hull wreckage hurtling towards their targets, and veered away at the last second. At fifty miles a second, the wreckage ripped into the Cluster ships with the force of a hydrogen bomb.

I'll show 'em who's obsolete, she said to herself, as she dodged a salvo of heat-seeking missiles. Another blast of laser fire flew from her palms and tore into the back of a lumbering warship. So many targets, so many threats flying at her all at once, like riding in a clothes dryer filled with hand grenades … she had to focus with all the power in her computer mind to keep everything straight …

She had to focus so hard, that she didn't hear the buzzing of her belly-bolt. Her chest-plate split open and deployed her trouble monitor, which glowed to life with the image of her mother. "XJ-9, I have an update from Deep Space Radar! It appears the Cluster fleet is even larger than we expected!"

A microwave blast crackled to her left, missing by mere feet. Another missile screamed towards her – which she caught, and hurled back at the ship that launched it. "Yeah … kind of noticed that," she groaned, as she deployed a long set of razor-sharp claws from each hand. "Listen, Mom, don't take this the wrong way …" – she dodged another plasma blast – "… but I'm little busy right now …"

"Oh, so I see," gulped Mrs. Wakeman, as she saw a rainbow of energy beams crisscrossing through the heavens behind her daughter. "I'll make this quick then. XJ-9, you must attack the ships as fast as you possibly can. According to my calculations …"

Jenny swooped underneath the belly of another Cluster warship, and plunged her claws into its thick metal hull while cannon fire raged all around her. "Mom, I think I know how to blow up a spaceship, thank you!" She huffed into her monitor as her claws opened up the warship like a gutted fish, leaving a dual trail of sparks and explosions in her wake.

The doctor ground her teeth together. "Young lady, if you would just listen for one second! I'm not sure that you fully appreciate the gravity of the situation! This is very important …"

Suddenly Brad's face popped into the middle of the monitor, rudely shoving Mrs. Wakeman aside. "Jenny! We can see all the explosions from down here! It's wicked awesome! Hey, the Channel Four camera crew is here and they wanna know if you can make a really big explosion for the five o'clock news …"

Then Brad was pushed back, and Tuck's face popped up with a big grin. "… hey, are you talking to Jenny? Hi Jenny! Hey, can you see our house from up there?"

Mrs. Wakeman finally regained control of her monitor, shoving the boys aside despite their protests. Jenny spiraled away from the warship and retracted her claws, scowling at her nervously chuckling mother as the starship billowed into a fountain of flames behind her. "Oh yeah, I can see that this is a really important call, Mom. Look, I've really got to go …"

Her mother recovered from her little embarrassment, and held a clipboard of numbers and diagrams in front of the monitor. "Yes, XJ-9, you most certainly do. As I was saying, according to my calculations, since the Cluster fleet is so large, there's a danger that they might actually reach Earth even if you operate at perfect efficiency! You need to concentrate on slowing them down. Fire at their engines!"

Jenny flinched as a crimson beam of free electrons nearly carved off her pigtails. She made a quick U-turn to get behind four Cluster destroyers, and delivered a particle beam salvo right into their exhaust nozzles. "Oh, I get it … stop them first, then come back and finish them off later …" – a pair of rockets exploded fifty yards away, slamming a shock wave into her stomach like a blitzing linebacker. The universe spun in half a dozen sickening circles, until she managed to bring herself back to a steady hover. "Wow, that was a close one," she coughed, brushing flecks of scorched carbon off her arms. "Mom, I really have to let you go now … I can barely keep up with all these ships out here!"

But to her surprise, she didn't see her mother's face in her monitor any more. There was only hissing static. Jenny swerved left and right around a column of glowing tracer shells, dodging a hailstorm of laser cannon fire that seemed to double in intensity every few seconds. She unleashed another barrage of particle beams into a giant spacecraft carrier, and slapped the side of her monitor to get the picture back. "Mom? Mom, what happened? Is everything all right?"

A cool, evil voice purred out of the monitor. "Oh, everything is wonderful, Jennifer … just wonderful. However, I imagine that things look rather different from your perspective."

Jenny gasped as the static cleared, revealing the arrogant sneer of Queen Vexus on her monitor. "Vexus? How did you … oh, great, now I need to change my phone number. Look I'll save you some time, okay? I've told you once, and I'll tell you again, I'm not going to join the Cluster …"

"Who says I want you to join?" smirked Vexus. She paused a moment to enjoy the surprise on the robot girl's face. "Oh, Jenny, I've given you so many chances to join the Cluster in a peaceful fashion. I've been more than patient while I waited for you to come to your senses. I gave you the chance to rule over this pitiful planet at my side, like a queen. And every single time, you rejected me."

Suddenly Jenny was blinded by countless beams of brilliant light converging on her at once. Dozens of high-powered laser cannons from multiple ships locked onto her simultaneously, and bombarded her with wire-frying energy that made her metal skin simmer and smoke like a barbequed steak. She cracked open her wrists and deployed a reflector shield, trying to buy herself some time to recover from the attack. And still Vexus was on her monitor, smiling a nasty smile.

"And rejecting me was a very foolish thing to do," she said, drumming her spidery fingers together. "So there will be no invitations this time. No, this time … this time I simply destroy you."

Jenny looked up at the convoy of warships that stretched off as far as her sensors could see. Even with all the chaos she had caused, even with all the Cluster ships she had turned into tumbling fire boats, most of Vexus' invasion fleet remained intact. Then her eyes grew wide as she saw one colossal warship dip out of formation and plunge towards her. It was huge. Impossibly huge. It was a flying city, armed with enough weaponry to destroy the planet Earth all by itself. Bursts of light danced along its fuselage as its hundreds of cannons barked to life at once. Bolts of phased electrons leapt from its bow cannons like giant forks of lightning. Dozens of smoke trails sprang forth from its myriad missile batteries. And hordes of Cluster strike fighters streamed out of its dozens of hangar bays, followed by waves of rocket-powered drone warriors bent on her destruction.

"Thought you might enjoy seeing my flagship," smiled Vexus. "It's a big hit with the folks back home on Cluster. Try not to scratch the paint when you blow up, will you? There's a good girl."


Drew grit his teeth and clutched onto the data packet with the tenacity of a bulldog, while sprouting a set of glowing tentacles that wrapped around the Silver Shell's enormous chest. This let the Shell concentrate on blasting the cyber-hornets behind them, while they surfed at breakneck speed through the twists and turns of the network connection. The Shell was firing dozens of fuzzy, glowing globes – Sheldon's best Neutralizer program – that disintegrated the monster insects on contact. But still the hornets drew closer, and closer, with dangerous viral code dripping from their digital stingers …

And suddenly they fell through a portal at the end of the tunnel, and spilled into a huge, new virtual room in the vast cyber-universe. Drew tumbled through space like a man falling off a ladder, before gracelessly plowing into the floor with a dull splat. A split-second later, the Silver Shell collapsed on top of him like a sack of potatoes. Drew blinked and shook his head, completely disoriented; he'd traveled from one surreal cyber-wonderland into another, and it felt like the laws of physics were re-inventing themselves every ten seconds. Where the heck was he now? He was surrounded by a complex three-dimension maze of circuits, all bathed in an ugly blood-red glow; large purple orbs hung in mid-air like planets in space, pulsing with activity as ClusterNet data flowed into them like seething rivers of lava. All the circuits seemed to feed towards the center of the room, where he could see …

His jaw dropped open. Oh my gosh

Where he could see a large glowing web of circuitry, coiling around the arms and legs of a ghostly solitary figure … who was encased in a milky white sphere of energy …

A lavender robot girl … with long, flowing hair-foil, and warm, dark eyes …

And when those warm dark eyes caught sight of him, they nearly leapt from Allison's face. She started to shout his name … but as her mouth opened, her squeal of glee morphed into a shriek of pain. She twitched furiously in her circuit-bonds as raging streams of Cluster data poured into her processors, driving her CPU's far past their safe operating temperature. She braced herself in her glowing manacles, turned her head towards Drew, and managed to silently mouth a single word … Help.

An order from the gods could not have spurred him to move any faster. Drew leapt to his feet, and pulled the Silver Shell upright, almost vibrating with excitement. "We're here! She's here! Sheldon, we did it! We're inside Ally's electronic brain! Hurry up, start spreading that anti-virus software around! I've got to get her out of that torture rack …"

A terrible, familiar buzzing sound ripped through the air, and a swarm of vicious cyber-hornets screamed into Allison's mind through one of her ClusterNet connections. Drew remembered what their lethal virus code had felt like when he'd been stung; but he had the advantage of his unique software to protect him. If any of those foul monsters pumped their poison virus into Ally's mind … "We've got to stop these things! Will the anti-virus work on them, too?"

"Only one way to find out," said the Silver Shell, with a swaggering smile. His right arm morphed into large blaster cannon. Striking a heroic pose, he started launching globes of shimmering white light all around him – spreading the anti-virus code on the crimson circuit-walls, and on the dive-bombing cyber-hornets, too. Back in the real world, Sheldon danced his fingers across his keyboard like a concert pianist, while he mashed the buttons on a Gamestation controller with reflexes forged from years of video games. From his vantage point, he was simply playing the ultimate first-person shooter game.

But it all felt much more real to Drew. As deeply integrated as his computer mind was right now, he was probably fighting for his own life, along with Allison's. The first giant cyber-hornet dove at his chest, and twisted its ugly body to wield its stinger at him. Drew stared down his attacker … and jumped into the air, flipping onto the stunned hornet's back. He morphed a hand around it neck and pulled up hard, forcing the virtual insect into a steep climb. Then he stretched his other arm into a digital sword, and steered the reluctant insect towards another wave of attacking hornets. Ferocious swings from his arm-sword sliced the attackers in half, and they disintegrated into clouds of ones and zeroes.

Allison strained against the withering assault on her processors, watching with fascination as the epic battle raged inside her mind. The mighty robot commando with the spiral on his chest was blowing away cyber-hornets by the dozens, all while spraying a layer of soothing software over her tired, enslaved microchips; amazingly, it was pushing back the Cluster infection, and the grip it held on her brain. And as for Drew … she watched, transfixed, as he fought the hornets like a robot possessed. He charged headlong into the evil horde, shredding anything that was unlucky enough to get near him. To her horror, she saw one of the hornets manage to sting him in the back; but a roundhouse comeback punch sent it hurtling through space, to crash right into the energy-sphere. A bolt of energy incinerated it into digital ash.

Now Drew was wrestling with the last cyber-hornet, which was proving to be much harder to destroy. He wrapped his arms around its thorax, throwing it off balance, and the two robots swerved wildly through the three-dimensional grid of circuitry. The hornet was trying to twist its stinger into its target, and Drew was trying to slice off its wings. Neither one of them realized that they'd curled towards the middle of the room, and were now plunging directly towards Allison. She screamed out a warning, but they hurtled directly into the shimmering surface of the energy-sphere … which spat out crackling bolts of energy to fry the wailing cyber-hornet into a spectacular puff of bits and bytes …

But to her astonishment, Drew fell right through the energy wall, completely unharmed!

And suddenly he was floating with her inside of the sphere, just inches in front of her face … with a fantastic, stunned smile on his face.

They simply stared into each other's eyes for a moment, not sure if they should dare believe that the moment was really happening. Allison felt a warm glow spread through her wiring, and stared helplessly into the deep, dark eyes that smiled at her through the messy mop of silver-green hair. She'd been certain that she would never get to melt into those eyes again. Drew was stricken completely immobile; he couldn't flex a millimeter as he fell into her bottomless pools of mystery, mesmerized by the reflection of the universe that danced in her warm, glistening eyes. It hadn't been that long ago that he'd thought she was dead. Neither one of them spoke a word. Words didn't exist to describe the moment …

"Hi," stammered Drew, with a boyish grin.

"Hi," she replied, in a dreamlike voice.

Drew shook his mind clear, and frowned angrily at the thick web of circuits that wrapped around Allison's arms and legs. His arms stretched out, and he wrapped his fingers around the ugly, rust-colored bonds. A pulse of anti-virus software ran from his fingers, into the crimson web of circuitry … and in a shimmering wave, their dull red color was replaced with a luminescent violet. The anti-virus began to spread, surging outwards from the energy sphere, and into Allison's higher brain functions. Then the circuit-webs twisted and withered like dying vines, and shrank away from her arms. They unplugged themselves from her head and torso. Then her legs were loosened, and she was finally free, free from her shackles, free from her mind-prison for the first time five days …

And in her exhausted condition, she fell forward, right into Drew's waiting arms. He held onto her like a cracked eggshell. "Ally! Ally, are you all right? Are you hurt?"

She saw the worry on his face, and erased it with a smile that glowed like the noonday sun. "Just … give me a few microseconds to cool my processors, and I'll be as good as new." She raised a quivering hand to his cheek, filled with a genuine sense of awe. "Drew … you … you came back for me …"

He slid a hand up, and entwined his fingers with hers. "I h-had to, Allison … I had to c-come back …" – he gulped nervously – "… for the missing half of my soul."

Five days of grief disappeared in an instant, and Allison's face beamed with impossible joy. She flung her arms around his neck with newfound vigor, still wonderfully lost in a mix of bliss and disbelief, feeling like her head was going to dissolve into a wisp of vapor and drift away into the stars. Drew pulled her into his chest with a crushing embrace and heaved a deep sigh of relief and happiness, wishing he could freeze this moment in time and never let go of her again. He ran his fingers through her flowing hair-foil, caressing her head as she rested it against his shoulder. Even the cyber-universe around them seemed to be rejoicing, as brilliant waves of soft lavender washed away the stains of Cluster red from Allison's mind. She coiled her arms around his green-striped chest, then pulled back to stare into the incredibly cute eyes that she wanted to lose herself in for the rest of the day …

Then she blinked a few times, as an urgent thought snapped her from her trance.

"Jenny!" she shouted. "Omigosh … Drew! Jenny's in trouble!"


Omigosh, she thought, I'm in trouble.

Jenny spiraled away from Vexus' flagship with desperate speed, twisting and weaving through columns of scorching laser energy that threatened to overload her optic sensors. She had tried to charge the queen's giant warship, but she hadn't even gotten close to it. Its weapons had driven her off, and now she was flying for her robotic life. Subjecting herself to accelerations that would kill any human, she curled into an impossibly tight turn, frantically trying to outrun the sixty proton missiles that howled through space in pursuit of her. She wasn't having any luck shaking them. And even as strong as the advanced metal in her body was, she didn't think she could survive a blast from sixty missiles …

Transforming as fast as she could, her leg housings unfolded and extended into a pair of giant fusion rocket motors, and she ducked behind the bulk of another lumbering Cluster battle cruiser. Then she drove her fingers into the warship's hull, and her rockets burst to life like a pair of miniature suns. The Z-Pack's circuits glowed with a surge of energy, like a boost of robotic adrenaline … and to the stunned surprise of the cruiser's drone crew, their million-ton ship suddenly pivoted sharply to the left. Jenny literally swung the giant ship at the proton missiles like a mile-long paddle. Fierce explosions rippled across the side of the cruiser, and it burst into a cloud of white-hot debris … showering still more warships with lethal hits from spinning chunks of wreckage. A spectacular chain reaction took out dozens of warships, like a traffic accident on some outer space highway.

But it was still a only a tiny fraction of the overall fleet. So many of them, she grimaced, clutching a hand to a laser burn. So many …

A huge drone warrior slammed into her back with a rocket-propelled tackle, and wrapped its claw-tipped arms around her body in a robotic bear hug. His metallic mandibles clicked menacingly, and a drill-tipped tendril sprang out of his mouth. It whined up to speed, and tried to penetrate the back of her head … but Jenny flung her arms out in a burst of super-strength, and sent the drone warrior tumbling out of control, and into the windshield of a passing cruiser. More drone warriors came at her, brandishing blades and drills and lasers and blasters. Laser cannons continued to scream across the stars in her direction, making it dangerous to float in one spot for more than a few seconds. More missiles leapt from the launch tubes of the next wave of warships. Screeching green bolts flew from a wave of high-speed Wasp interceptors that curled towards her in attack formation.

Another blast of energy from the Z-Pack roared through her circuits, thundering through her wires like an electric earthquake, and she let out a sensor-piercing banzai scream. She flew at the Wasps like a shot from a rifle barrel, and deployed ion disruptor cannons from her arms and legs. As howling waves of charged ions ripped the Wasps to pieces, one voice repeated itself over and over in her electronic mind – the annoyingly smug chortling of Dr. Mogg. She's not powerful enough, he'd said, after writing down his big stupid equation. It's just a matter of numbers. She's not powerful enough to stop the Cluster.

She balled her fists in determination, and curled into another high-speed turn, charging head-on towards a long column of giant Cluster destroyers. Time to break out the big guns, she growled.

And Jenny's robotic body underwent another stunning transformation – she split herself in half at the waist. A brilliant blue column of energy shrieked into existence, connecting the bottom of her torso to the top of her hips. She flung herself at the oncoming massive ships, seemingly on a rocket-powered collision course. Then she pulled her upper body away from her legs, and the column of crackling blue energy quickly grew and grew – until her two halves were over a mile apart from each other. The burning column of energy sliced into the first destroyer with the ease of a hot knife cutting through soft cheese. In seconds, she had flown through its entire length, and the giant destroyer simply split in half like a hot dog bun. Jenny pressed onward, slicing her beam-weapon through the entire column of warships; giant rocket nozzles shattered, engine rooms exploded, thousands of drones were cast adrift into space. With terrifying speed, the teenage superhero carved five percent of the Cluster fleet into tumbling flotsam.

But now the Earth was closer than ever. The titanic battle had started out at the orbit of the moon. Half of that distance had been crossed, and only minutes remained until Vexus started sending down landing parties to enslave the human race. More time. She needed more time. But there was no more time. Her lower body returned to her, and she locked her two halves back together again.

I've only stopped a few hundred ships, maybe a thousand, she frowned. And a lot of them are just blowing right by me to get to Earth. Vexus is sacrificing part of her fleet to keep me busy … I gotta head them off, no matter what it takes …

Fire screamed through her circuits, and her servos shook with uncontrollable spasms. Yeeeeowtch! What happened? Had she been hit? Was it a laser or a missile or a … oh, no. A cold, horrible feeling kicked Jenny in the stomach. Warning messages were flashing in her computer vision. But they weren't damage alarms … they were failure messages. Failure messages from the Z-Pack.

Her mother's repair job was starting to come undone. The Z-Pack was growing unstable, and it was starting to generate dangerous power spikes. And its temperature was climbing. In a hurry.

Six squadrons of Wasp interceptors opened fire with their spread-spectrum lasers, and unleashed nine waves of hunter-killer missiles at her. One hundred and seventy-two fully-armed drone warriors screamed towards her on the flames of their fusion motors. Giant deck turrets on eleven Cluster battle cruisers pivoted in unison to lock on to her, and their barrels burst to life, spewing out a torrent of crackling particle beams. Jenny shook her head and cleared the messages from her vision, telling her systems to ignore the high temperature warnings. Can't take any time to rest, she winced, as her voltage regulators sent out yet more power spike warnings. The Earth is counting on me. I've got to beat Vexus. Got to show everyone that I'm not obsolete. Her booster-wings snapped out sharply, and her engines re-ignited with a white-hot scream. Jenny plunged back towards the front of the Cluster armada, ignoring the fresh warning messages in her vision display … and the faint whining sound coming from the Z-Pack.


The Silver Shell bounded across the virtual expanse of Allison's mind, nearly tripping over a stray circuit-path on the way. He rushed up to the energy-sphere with a frantic look in his eyes. "Jenny's in trouble? Jenny's in trouble? What do you mean, Jenny's in trouble? Oh… wait a second, I don't think we've been properly introduced." The Shell gave Allison a quick bow, and clutched his fist over his chest in a melodramatic salute. "Fear not, good citizen, for I have come to do battle against the forces of evil and injustice! I am … the Silver Shell! There … that's better. Now, then." Then he slapped his hands to the sides of his metallic face. "What do you mean, my Jenny-Wenny is in trouble?"

Allison arched a perplexed eyebrow at Drew, who just shook his head and rolled his eyes. "Believe it or not, he's helping me," he groaned. "I'll explain it all later. What do you mean about Jenny being in trouble? Isn't she beating the stuffing out of Vexus and her little war fleet?"

"Vexus' fleet isn't so little," explained Allison. "The queen changed her battle plans after she found out about that secret message I sent to you guys. She didn't take three thousand ships with her – she took six thousand." She gestured to the crisscrossing network paths that fed out of her mind, and hooked into the infinite recesses of the ClusterNet. "I'm still wired into all of military communications channels, and I've been eavesdropping on their reports. Jenny's fighting as hard as she can, but she's losing, Drew. She's in danger. Your whole planet's in danger!"

"I'll tell you who else is in danger," said Drew, grabbing her by the arm. "Us! Ally, we've got to get your body disconnected from all of this junk, and get out of the palace before more drone goons show up. All right, Double-S, let's see if we can spread this anti-virus to her motor controls!"

The Shell cocked the safety on his arm-cannon, and Drew leapt out of the energy-sphere, once more passing through the barrier without causing so much as a ripple. "Ally, you stay in there where it's safe, in case more of those freaky cyber-bugs show up!"

"No way!" she shouted back, more than a tad annoyed. "I've been cooped up in here for almost a week! I'm helping you guys whether you like it or not." She jumped out of the milky-white sphere of energy that had protected her from Vexus' attacks …

But instead of passing smoothly through it, the crackling energy clung to the surface of her virtual body, shrinking to fit over her form like a sheet of plastic. Drew and the Shell stared, slack-jawed, watching the pulsing patterns of glowing energy wrap themselves around Allison's arms and torso. New layers of software hummed into existence from the bottoms of her feet to the tip of her antenna, running with shimmering, zigzagging patterns – patterns that looked just like the stripes on Drew's body, but which shone with an electric purple instead of a pale green. Allison gasped in wonder and turned her hands over in front of her face, trying to make sense of her virtual self's amazing transformation.

The Silver Shell took a cautious step forward, and examined the new shimmering stripes that covered Allison's forearm like a coat of armor. "It's anti-virus software," he said, with genuine surprise. "And it's much more advanced than stuff I whipped up. If I didn't know better, I'd say this stuff is self-evolving … just like the software in your body, Drew."

"How the heck is that even possible?" shouted Drew, flinging his arms in bewilderment. "That big glowy sphere thing was in Ally's mind long before we got here! Where did it come from?"

"I don't know for certain," said Allison, as she curiously traced the new purple stripes on her virtual arm. "It was just here when I woke up. Wow, it feels … weird … kind of tingly!" Then she folded her arms across her chest, with a look of steely purpose in her eyes. "But that's not important right now. We've got to do something to help Jenny, and stop Vexus from invading your home planet."

"How are we supposed to do that? Everything's happening five thousand light-years away."

"Maybe so," she said, with a scheming grin, "but, no matter how far the Cluster spreads, every part of it still connects right back to here – the Queen's Palace. That's how Vexus controls her soldiers and keeps watch over all the robots in her empire … everyone is hooked up to the ClusterNet, one way or another, just like a big nervous system. And right now, we're right in the middle of the ClusterNet! We've got a direct connection right into the heart of it, as long as my real body stays hooked up into that couch. Drew, I know all the access codes, and now I've got my free will back! We can … well, I don't know, maybe we can sabotage the computers, or send some phony commands to the army … maybe we could even shut the whole network down!"

Drew swallowed hard, unable to hide the worry in his voice. "Ally, you don't have to do this," he said, unable to hide the worry in his voice. "You've already been through so much …"

"That's NOTHING compared to what she's GOING to go through," boomed an echoing, godlike voice.

The Silver Shell squealed in terror like a schoolgirl; Drew and Allison jumped into each other's arms, staring upwards to locate the source of the ominous voice, only to see … fountains of red polygons rushing into Allison's mind, gushing through her ClusterNet input ports as if a dam had broken. Huge, churning clouds of dark red facets swirled into a screeching cyclone. Deafening cracks of thunder reverberated from one side of the universe to the other … then faded away into deep, arrogant peals of laughter. The teenage robots fought back waves of fear; it felt like a virtual apocalypse was unfolding before them. A whirlwind descended from the crimson thundercloud, and the jagged graphic fragments began to meld together into a stunning, towering figure …

A svelte, wasp-like robot … that stood twenty times taller than the rest of them.

"Did you REALLY think it was going to be that easy?" snarled the gigantic form of Queen Vexus, as the blood-red storm clouds spread out to reclaim Allison's mind.


Sheldon stared dumbly into the Shell's on-board computer screen, trying to make sense of the burst of code which had just blown through his firewalls. This new super-powerful Cluster program had seemed to come out of everywhere at once, and now it had both Drew and Allison's minds trapped inside of the ClusterNet. He took a quick swig of cherry soda for a sugar boost, and adjusted his headset microphone. "Oh, wow, talk about your big boss fights! Where the heck did she come from?"

"You're asking me?" Drew's frenzied voice shouted back, through the wall-mounted speakers. "That's Vexus! Oh, fer criminy's sake … it's Queen Freakin' Vexus! How in the world can she be here? She's on her big honkin' flagship, flying towards Earth! What's going on here?"

Sheldon pushed a greasy strand of hair out of his eyes, and started madly typing on two keyboards at once, desperately trying to find some answers. "I … I don't know yet. I mean, it looks like Vexus … and the voice match routines say that it's Vexus …"

On the monitor that displayed the virtual world, Drew and Ally dove for cover as a crackling lightning bolt shrieked down from the storm clouds and nearly fried them. "Dude, she's trying to re-assimilate Allison's mind! We've got big problems in here!"

Suddenly a loud, metallic clang broke the silence in the Central Communications Node.

Sheldon leaned out of the Silver Shell's chest, looking past the motionless husks of Drew and Allison's bodies, towards the thick metal doors of the elevator shaft. Clang. A small bulge formed in one of the doors. Clang. Another one formed, slightly cracking the weld that sealed the doors shut. Clang. The tiny crack grew a little bit wider … just enough for the tips of a metallic claw to force their way through.

"We've got big problems out here too," he gulped.


Continued in Chapter Sixteen