A/N – A quick science note before we start. Kar – thermodynamics doesn't quite work like that. In real life, cooling a spaceship or a satellite is a major concern, because there are limits to how fast something will cool off, even in space. The space shuttle has huge radiator panels on its doors that it has to deploy within nine hours of getting into orbit, or else. Remember, space is a vacuum, and a vacuum is the ultimate insulator. That's why there's a vacuum between the walls of a thermos. Okay, Mr. Wizard time is over. Here comes chapter sixteen!


Countdown to Mindshatter

A "My Life as a Teenage Robot" Fanfic

Chapter Sixteen – Reach Out and Touch Someone


Jenny punched through the swirling clouds of combustion, accelerating to a mind-numbing speed to get back to the main body of the Cluster fleet. It was bad enough that there were still thousands of giant warships left; but to make things worse, the Cluster was using their superior numbers so darned efficiently. Vexus realized that Jenny was going to destroy a good part of her fleet no matter what she did; so she coordinated the movements of every starship, fighter, and drone to minimize her losses. If that meant sacrificing fifty warships in a feinting maneuver, then that's what she did. Every move the fleet made was the result of a cold, inhuman calculation. And it was working.

She swooped down towards a heavy cruiser, jinking wildly to avoid a hail of fire from its laser cannons. Roaring low over the bridge, she snapped off half a dozen giant antennas with her powerful hands. Then Jenny's robotic body underwent another amazing transformation, and she turned herself into a gigantic crossbow. The antennas, each longer than a jumbo jet, made for very formidable arrows. With a rapid-fire series of shots, they all found targets in the gaping engine nozzles of yet more Cluster warships, which erupted into fountains of gaudy white-hot flame.

With a blast of her afterburners, she streaked past her latest targets, racing to get to the very front of the Cluster fleet. If she could create some havoc, she might be able to slow things down and gain some time. But then her sensors detected even more inbound missiles, coming from directly in front of her. Which was odd, because the only thing in front of her was the shiny blue Earth …

Whoops … and fingers of white exhaust racing towards her, like a thousand cosmic javelins. The Earth's military had fired off a massive salvo of ground-to-space missiles, which were streaking into space at terrific speed. Their nose sensors scanned for targets – and a few of them locked onto Jenny herself. Her eyes grew to the size of volleyballs, and she swerved into a U-turn. "Hey, watch what you're shooting at!" she yelled over the Earth defense frequency. "I'm on your side, remember?"

She raced back towards the Cluster fleet, with ground-to-space missiles screaming up fast from behind, and interceptor missiles pouring forth from the warships in front of her. Hundreds of explosions bloomed all around her, and suddenly she was caught in a dizzying crossfire, with missiles and rockets screeching past her in both directions. It was like the grand finale on the Fourth of July, times a million. Proton explosions rippled through space, then finally trailed off …

To reveal that the Cluster fleet hadn't slowed down one bit. Missiles, it seemed, were a lot easier to shoot down than a wild-flying robot girl.

The drones re-focused on Jenny with a fresh wave of attacks, swooping down upon her from six different directions at once. As Jenny dodged to evade one attack, she flew right into the path of another. I bet Vexus is getting a real kick out of this, she growled to herself. With a quick snap of her elbows, she deployed a pair of chain guns, and – snap – snitzt – snackt – shuddered like an electroshock patient. More power spikes from the Z-Pack. They were getting worse – the gauges were creeping into the danger zone. Maybe a few minutes left before … Can't worry about that now. Can't let anyone down. Can't let Mom down. Can't let Brad down … she let out a yell, and plunged back into battle with fury blazing from the barrel of her guns.


Blasts of lightning rained down like an artillery barrage, narrowly missing the scrambling robots as they searched for cover on the surreal landscape of Allison's mind. Hovering orbs and geometric solids offered little in the way of shelter on the infinite sprawl of grids and networks. Cluster assimilation software crept across the virtual sky like a crimson fog. Another globe of energy screamed through the air and missed Drew's cheek by mere inches; the force of the resulting blast ricocheted him off a thick bundle of circuit-paths. "Gasp … gasp … quick, over there!" he shouted, rubbing the back of his throbbing head. It was just a squat orange cylinder that looked like it might provide a few seconds of refuge. Drew scooped his arm around Allison's waist and jumped for cover as another bolt of energy crashed down behind them. Seconds later, the Silver Shell dove next to them, wailing like an air raid siren.

Monstrous footsteps thundered relentlessly towards the little hiding spot. Drew and Allison exchanged a frazzled look, then they peeked over the top of the orange cylinder, craning their necks upwards to stare at their attacker in stunned silence. Queen Vexus towered over them like an angry colossus, sneering down with evil smoldering in her eyes – and a blood-red aura of energy flowing from her clawed hand like a supernatural flame.

The robot queen chuckled wickedly, enjoying the look of bewilderment on Drew's face. "Surprised to see me here, Andrew? You sneak back onto my planet, you break into my palace, you plug yourself into my computers, and you're actually surprised to see me here? Not too swift, are you, son? This is the ClusterNet, you small-minded weakling! This is the Great Network that connects me to every computer mind throughout my empire! I not only command it … I am one with it. I am more than capable of guiding my drones to victory from the bridge of my flagship, while a piece of my superior robotic mind deals with an annoying little insect like you. You see, I do not simply rule over the Cluster." Her voice deepened, reverberating from the heavens like a force of nature, and the orb above her head glowed with the brilliance of a sun. "I AM THE CLUSTER."

Drew's jaw nearly fell off of his face. "Holy … schnikey," he gulped, completely in awe of the immense figure before him. "We are so toast."

"Even now, my War Fleet is overwhelming our mutual friend Jennifer. So with all due respect … if I can handle the mighty XJ-9, then I shouldn't have too much trouble with you three." A sphere of energy manifested in her crooked hand, and she launched it into the orange cylinder like a mortar shell.

Allison grit her teeth in pain, and slapped her hand to her forehead. "Yeeeeowch … ow, I think this thing we're hiding behind is one of my memory banks! Ohhh … all of the sudden I can't remember my locker combination …"

Drew suddenly realized that they weren't hiding behind some imaginary computer graphic. Any damage that Vexus did in this cyber-world might cause real damage to Allison's circuits! "Aw, nuts to this," he growled, trying to muster up his last remnants of courage. He grabbed Allison by her shoulders, looking earnestly into her face with pained eyes. "I am so sorry for getting you into this mess, Ally. And I am so sorry for screwing up when you needed me the most. If this doesn't work, then … then only I hope you can forgive me somehow."

And before Allison could ask just what the blazes that had meant, Drew leapt out from behind their hiding spot, and stretched his green phosphorescent body into a stream of shimmering software. The giant Vexus hurled more energy-missiles at him, but his body zigzagged between the blasts, and rocketed towards the queen's feet with reckless abandon. His hands transformed into a pair of glowing energy-blades, and he plunged them into Vexus' leg. The queen let loose with an otherworldly howl of pain. Encouraged by the successful attack, the Silver Shell scrambled out into the open and added his arm-cannon to the assault. Vexus winced as the Shell's anti-virus splattered into her massive chest-plate. It appeared the evil robot queen wasn't invincible after all …

But then a strobe of light raced through Vexus' circuits, washing away the anti-virus code. Powerful beams of energy leapt from her twisted fingertips and slammed into her attackers, viciously shaking them like rag dolls. Blinding sparks crackled over their bodies like a blizzard of firecrackers, and the teen nano-droid screamed with agony unlike anything he'd ever felt before. "So that was your best shot, hmmm?" taunted Vexus, as she turned up the juice. "Kind of pathetic, wasn't it? Well, I suppose I should get this over with, and obliterate you both!"

"NO!" shouted an angry voice. "You get your sick, twisted hands off of them!"

Allison jumped on top of the memory-bank cylinder, and waved her glowing arms over her head. A dozen purple orbs hovering around Vexus began to glow with auras of crackling energy. Then, to the queen's amazement, bolts of purple lightning spewed out of the hovering orbs, and slammed into her body with the force of a dozen combat tanks. She stumbled backwards half a step, releasing Drew and the Shell from their tortures as she shielded herself with her massive forearms. The two Earth robots dropped to the virtual ground with a heavy thud, with their eyes spinning crazily in their sockets.

Vexus quickly recovered, and grew a pair of shields from her forearms to block the lightning. Her regal antennae glowed with angry tongues of flame. But before she could renew her attack, Allison sprinted across the cyber-landscape like a gazelle, covering the distance between her and Drew with amazing speed. She crouched down between the recovering robots, clenched a determined fist, and the tip of her antenna glowed with a soft purple light. Suddenly, just as Vexus unleashed a hideous blast, a shining firewall manifested into existence, directly over their heads! The firewall rapidly spread out and curved around them, cordoning off an area in Allison's mind to form a cybernetic sanctuary. Vexus' blasts bounced harmlessly off the wall, which hummed and pulsed with frenzied, zigzagging stripes.

Allison caught Drew grinning in astonishment at her, out of the corner of her eye. "Queen Vexus might rule the ClusterNet," she smiled, "but we're inside of my mind, and now that I've got my free will back, I'm the boss in here! Nobody's ever turning me into their puppet, ever again! And besides … nnnghhh … I've got a few tricks of my own … nnnghhhh …" She grimaced with intense mental effort, and the new purple stripes on her virtual body shimmered with wild activity. "Sprockets, she's powerful …"

"More powerful than you can possibly imagine, my rebellious little LSN droid." A nasty tone crept into Vexus' booming voice; Allison's traitorous rebellion was more galling to her than Drew's foolish attacks, or Jenny's ignorant rejections. She unleashed a new, withering beam of crimson energy into the firewall, which started to warble and shudder under the strain …

Then the Silver Shell snapped his fingers, and waved to get Drew and Allison's attention. "Ooh! Ooh! Then it sounds like what Allison needs is a little more power herself! Drew, our software attacks don't seem to have much affect on Vexus. But Allison's do! If we combine the power from our computers with hers, we can boost her Hit Points and add Plus Thirty to her attack resistance! It'll be just like playing a Double Power Bonus Zokemon Card!"

"Double Power Bonus …" Allison's face twisted with confusion. "Uh, Drew, what is your friend …"

Drew shook his head in exasperation, and waved off Allison's question. "Believe it or not, he's got a good idea. Hang on Ally, we're going to give you a little pick-me-up."

One of the hovering purple orbs was just behind them. Drew stretched out his arms and morphed his hands into a pair of connectors, then jammed them into the glowing orb. Now the full power of his body's nano-computers was integrated into Allison's neural network. The Silver Shell added his computer power as well, and a new aura of energy flickered around Allison's body, like a violet bonfire. The sudden influx of raw CPU power was an invigorating feeling, and she knew just how to put that power to good use. She waved her hands like a sorcerer, and the protective firewall stabilized, shielding the three robots from the full force of Queen Vexus' wrath. The advancing red tide of Cluster assimilation code slowed down to a crawl, then ground to a halt, leaving a good chunk of the virtual universe under Allison's control. For the time being at least, the robot girl had fought Vexus to a stalemate.

The giant cyber-Vexus punched the glowing shield with her mighty fists, but the firewall held firm. With a contemptuous growl, she brushed off her hands, and regained her royal composure. "So, you've managed to build yourself a little cage to cower in," she sneered. "Well, no matter. All you've done is re-imprison yourself in a slightly more comfortable cell. I may not be able to get in at the moment, but you three cannot get out! Now, if you annoying whelps will excuse me, I have a planet to conquer."

"We'll just see about that," frowned Allison. As Drew and the Shell watched in wonder, she waved her hands once more, and brought a shimmering virtual screen into existence. Her circuits glowed with a soft lavender, and a string of numbers chattered across the screen with a series of electronic tones.


Sparks danced around Jenny's torso as she struggled to recover from the plasma blast. She scanned the seventy-two hunter-killer drones that had circled around her, and rubbed the laser scars on her arm, twisting her elbow to get a loose gear to pop back into place. She looked down at the formations of warships below her, as the grew ever closer to the vulnerable Earth. She noticed deep scratches that had been gouged into her right leg. I wonder if I'll get those buffed out in time for the prom. She rolled her eyes, amazed at what she'd just thought. The prom? I wonder if I'll still be alive five minutes from now. As if on cue, she heard a metallic snap from her back, and the hiss of high-pressure gas escaping into space. One of the Z-Pack's coolant lines had ruptured. Estimated time until meltdown … four minutes. Jenny's shoulders heaved with a deep sigh, and she deployed a pair of high-speed sawblades with a flick of her wrists. "Okay, you big jerks," she growled at the ugly hunter-killer drones. "Come get some."

The hunter-killers each deployed a pair of battle-axes from their shells, then with a burst from their rockets, they descended upon their teenage prey …

When Jenny's eyes flashed like a strobe light, accompanied by a chirping electronic ring. "Auuuughh," she groaned, before making a time-out signal to the confused hunter drones. Her pigtail spun into a parabolic dish, and a microphone snapped out from the back of her head. "Cripes, how many Saturday nights have I spent waiting for the phone to ring, and nothing. But get in the middle of a humongous battle … Mom? Brad? Is that you? Listen, things are like super crazy here right now …"

"They're pretty super crazy where I am, too," said a voice that filled Jenny's circuits with happiness.

"Allison? Allison, is that you? I don't believe it!" Jenny slapped her hands to her cheeks, and spun in giddy circles. The robot girls squealed together in glee, despite the interstellar distance that separated them. "Oh, Allison, I was so worried about you! I'm so glad you're all right!"

"Well, I'm not sure about the all right part," she replied. "Jenny, I'm still inside the ClusterNet. I'm calling you by piggybacking a signal onto the Cluster War Fleet frequency."

A huge smile came to Jenny's face, then … "Wait a second, how did you get free … oh, wow, Allison, does this mean that Drew actually found you?"

"Geez, thanks for the vote of confidence, Jen," Drew's voice shot back over the phone.

"Drew! You stupid, crazy … you're in there too?"

"And so is your Silver Shell friend," said Allison, speaking in a rushed voice. "Jenny, I so would love to gab with you right now, but we don't have time! Listen, I'm hooked into all the Cluster military channels, and I know that the War Fleet is throwing some major firepower at you! Jenny, I don't want your planet to be conquered by the Cluster. So I called to see if there's something we can do to help you out, from inside the ClusterNet! I figured there must be something …"

While Jenny talked excitedly with Allison on her pigtail-phone, a short distance away, two Cluster hunter-killers exchanged an awkward look. "So … shouldn't we be like, I dunno … attacking her, or something?" the first drone asked.

"Maybe we should wait until she's off the phone," replied the second.

"Bah," the first hunter-killer sneered back. His rocket-pack burst to life, and he streaked towards Jenny from behind, deploying a pair of powerful vice-clamps from his claws. With a lightning-quick swipe of his arms, he clamped onto her shoulders …

And brushed against the outer skin of the Z-Pack.

The drone shuddered wildly, as if he had just plugged himself into the core of the sun. A horrific wail of robotic agony rang out, and the hunter-killer's circuitry began to sizzle like a slab of bacon. With an angry growl, Jenny broke free of the drone's grasp, and flung her high-speed sawblades into his chest. Then she ratcheted her arms out to their full extension, and revolved in place like a giant weed whacker. Screaming sawblades ripped through the swarm of drones like a thresher through a field of ripe wheat. Then she reeled her arms back in, and propped her fists on her hips with a self-righteous clank.

"Don't you jerks know it's impolite to interrupt someone when they're on the phone? Sigh. Sorry about that, Allison. Stupid drones aren't even programmed for basic manners!" She had to smirk, however, as a charred fragment of hunter-killer robot drifted by in front of her face. "Looks like this stupid Z-Pack is just as bad for Cluster doofuses as it is for me! Serves him right …"

Then Jenny's eyes sprang open with an epiphany. A light bulb pivoted into place above her head, and blinked on like a shining beacon.

"Jenny? Jenny, are you still there?"

"Guys, I've got an idea!" Warning signals blinked in Jenny's heads-up vision, and she saw six new waves of heat-seeking missiles curling up towards her from the Cluster fleet. "Oh boy, I'm going to get really busy here in a few seconds … Allison, I need to get close to Vexus' flagship! But every time I try to attack it, all the cannons and spaceships and drones fight me off! Is there any way you can, I don't know … give me some kind of distraction?"

Allison started to answer … then the Silver Shell's voice butted onto the line. "If a distraction is what you need, XJ-9, then a distraction is what you'll get! Just leave everything to me!"

"All right then," Jenny smiled, as she creaked and pivoted her damaged booster-wings into position. "I'm going to make an attack on Queen Vexus' ship in exactly … two minutes. Shell, Allison, Drew … I'm counting on you guys. And Drew … don't think I've forgotten about that little sleepy-time trick you pulled on me back in the tent!" Her booster engines screamed to life, almost drowning out the screeching wail that came from the Z-Pack's pressure tanks. Two minutes until the battle that would decide the fate of the planet Earth – and according to her warning sensors, two minutes and thirty seconds until the Z-Pack disintegrated into a nuclear fireball. But now Jenny had a renewed sense of optimism. She had a secret weapon inside the ClusterNet itself. At least, she hoped she did.


Allison's firewall shimmered and flexed like a dam holding back a raging flood. Fingers of blood-red computer code wormed their way through tiny cracks in the barrier, but just as quickly, Allison managed to patch up the cracks with new algorithms of her own. Still, it was taking all the CPU power at her command to hold off Vexus' attacks, and she knew she couldn't keep it up forever. "Silver Shell!" she yelled, as the unusual phone call came to an end. "You say you can provide a distraction for Jenny? Just how are you going to do something like that?"

"The Drone Army's Hive Mind!" said the Shell, clapping his hands with geekish excitement. "That's how they can operate so efficiently in battle. The ClusterNet connects all their minds together, so they think and act as a single entity! Ooooh, just like the Blorg on Star Dreck: The Next Generation! All we have to do is launch a virus into the Hive Mind! Wow, this is gonna be so cool!"

"Well, I might be able to make a connection to the Hive Mind," she mused. "But I need to create a new set of passkeys to get past security. And that'll take me a couple of minutes!"

The Shell's chest swung open, and his sliding drawer deployed once more. "We don't need no stinking passkeys," he grinned. He pulled out a set of building blocks, and started to arrange them into a geometric shape. "We have a direct link into the Hive Mind, right in front of us!"

"We do? Where?" asked Drew, somehow knowing that he wasn't going to like the answer.

The Shell pointed a shining forearm up in the air, towards the towering, snarling, evil form of Vexus, the Supreme Leader of the Cluster Empire. Towards her head. And the brightly shining yellow orb that hovered between the prongs of her tall antennae.

Drew gave the Shell a look of incredulity. "You have got to be kidding me."

The Silver Shell ignored Drew's protest, and kept assembling the building blocks, arranging them into something resembling a hollow soccer ball. "I'm telling you, Drew, this'll work! It's another one of the little projects I was working on while we were cruising through hyperspace. All we have to do is get this custom-made virus into the Hive Mind, and it'll spread to every drone in the army!"

Allison gave the soccer ball a curious look. "This thing is a computer virus?"

The Shell nodded proudly. "It's a little something I like to call … Mindshatter."

Drew's skepticism was growing by the second. "And just what is this 'Mindshatter' virus supposed to do?"

"Anything you want," grinned the big-chested robot. "See? It's hollow! You write down a command, stick it inside the virus, toss it into a network … and the command gets copied and copied and copied again, to every single computer that's connected to the network! See, all I do is write a simple Sleep Command onto this text file." With a flicker of light, a piece of virtual paper manifested in the Shell's hand, out of thin air. "We toss this into the Hive Mind, and every drone in the Cluster goes to sleep! Well, for a few minutes, at least. I think."

"Then that's just what we need!" beamed Allison. "This is fantastic! Wow, Silver Shell, you really are some kind of super robot commando, aren't you?"

Drew just shook his head, as the Shell thrust out his lantern jaw with a heroic grin …

Then all of the sudden, he rocked back and forth, and stumbled to his knees. The Mindshatter virus spilled out of his hands, along with a dozen other files and programs. "Uh oh," he squeaked, sounding much less confident than he had ten seconds ago. "Uh, Drew, Allison … you're going to have to finish this without me. Hoo boy, I think we're gonna have some company out here."

"Company? Out here?" Allison didn't understand. "Silver Shell, what do you mean …"

But the large robot just froze in place … then he flickered a few times, like a bad video signal, and disappeared into a cloud of pixels.


Sheldon finished logging out of the ClusterNet just as the elevator doors cracked open with a metallic screech. A large, nasty Cluster Warrior spilled out of the elevator, along with as many scampering roach-drones as he'd managed to squeeze into the capsule along with him. Just as Sheldon had feared, it had only taken a matter of minutes for the Cluster to discover that the Central Communications Node had been breached, and they'd sent up a team of robot troops to take it back by force. He took a quick glance at Drew and Allison's immobilized bodies, which were still helplessly hooked into the computer systems, and pulled the big lever to slide the Silver Shell's chest panel back into place. He fumbled with his safety harness with one hand, while he yanked down the Shell's microphone boom with the other. "I d-d-don't suppose we can settle this with a friendly game of Rock Paper Scissors," he croaked.

The Cluster robots snarled viciously, and deployed long, sharp swords from their metallic bodies. Only the Shell's proximity to sensitive computer equipment kept them from opening up with their lasers. With a mechanical growl, they charged across the room with their weapons poised to strike …

The Silver Shell desperately looked right and left, whimpering like a lost puppy. There was no place to run, no place to hide … and he still had that stupid computer cable connecting his chest to the back of Drew's head. He needed to unhook himself to get a little maneuvering room. But if he just unplugged the cable, then Allison would lose vital computer power that she needed to fight against Vexus! He needed to move fast. There had to be something else in here to plug the cable into …

Then his eyes shifted upwards, to the large purple globe that was magnetically suspended from the ceiling. All the other computers in the room were plugged into it. Well, why not?

The Shell yanked the computer cable out of his wide steel chest, and rammed it into the bottom of the shimmering purple globe, twisting the plug in deep to get a good connection. Then he picked up a nearby roach-drone carcass, gripped it by its spindly leg, and swung it wildly in front of him like a weapon, to keep the new Cluster attackers at bay.


Drew and Allison exchanged looks of panic as Vexus continued her attack on the firewall. "Drew, where did the Shell go? We need him to finish his virus program! And we have less than a minute …"

Suddenly Drew's body erupted into spasms, as an explosion of staggering computer power flowed through his adaptive nano-circuitry. He twisted into a wild, surreal shapes, and shuddered like he'd been hit with a dozen downed power lines. His body glowed with raw, primal computer power … for Sheldon had just unknowingly plugged him directly into the Quantum Computer Core, one of the most powerful computer processors in existence, anywhere in the Cluster Empire. The Quantum Computer Cores were the very cybernetic hearts that pumped countless bits and bytes throughout the ClusterNet. Drew suddenly found himself connected to a source of processing power that was greater than the sum of all the computers on the planet Earth combined.

And he was feeding that power directly into Allison's circuits.

Allison opened her mouth to scream as she saw Drew writhe with seizures – then she started to shudder herself, and a brilliant cloud of light and energy swirled into existence around her, like a star giving birth. Her jagged stripes glowed an intense violet, and the power in her circuits doubled, then tripled, then tripled and tripled again … and amazingly, Allison started to grow. Spectacular levels of computer power poured into her neural nets, propelling her virtual form to greater and greater heights. Beams of light sprang forth from her eyes and her mouth, and her hair-foil twisted into a tangled whirlwind as bolts of energy danced over her chassis. Drew stared up at Allison, struck speechless with awe and slack-jawed astonishment. By the time her new boost of computer power had leveled off, Allison had grown to twenty times her previous size … and now looked a very startled Queen Vexus right in the eye.

Allison gasped with surprise and exhilaration, and gave a nasty smile to the robot dictator who she'd been forced to practically worship for most of her life. The tip of her antenna pulsed with a purple glow, and the firewall decompiled itself into a flurry of pixels, and disappeared. She stepped forward and stared into the queen's face with an intense glare. "You're trespassing," she said, in a firm voice. "This is my mind. It belongs to me, not some petty, lying dictator that would turn me into her obedient slave. I don't need you. None of the robots in the Cluster needs you. Get. Out. Of. Here."

Vexus ground her twisted claws into blazing fists of ruby fire. "You … insolent … little …"

The giant Vexus swung her flaming claws with rage, but Allison manifested a digital shield to deflect the blow harmlessly off to the side. Then a purple glow built in her slender hands, and she unleashed a blast of blistering energy that slammed into the queen's chest like a cruise missile. The cybernetic titans locked hands, and tried to shove each other backwards by pure brute force. Lightning cracked from Allison's processors, and Vexus countered with blasts from her antenna. The virtual universe trembled under the footsteps of the cosmic combatants, and great waves of red and purple software slammed against each other in an epic battle for control of Allison's mind. It was as if two ancient gods were fighting for control of Mount Olympus …

Allison wrapped the enraged robot queen in a bear hug, pinning her arms against her side, and shouted down to a diminutive silver-green android. "Drew! Hurry up! We only have twenty seconds left!"

He'd been so transfixed by the spectacle before him that he'd forgotten all about Sheldon's virus. And now he had only seconds to finish assembling it! "Oh crap, oh crap … okay, this is the important piece …" – he picked up the hollow soccer ball – "… and Sheldon wrote some kind of command file, to stick inside of it. Nuts, where is it? Where is it?" Then he saw a virtual scrap of paper lying on the ground. It looked like the one the Shell had just generated … he crossed his fingers, grabbed the text file, and stuck it inside of the soccer ball. It glowed with a faint white light. The Mindshatter virus was activated.

Drew scrambled madly and jumped onto a web of network connections, climbing like a monkey speeding up a vine. Then he leapt into space, stretching his arms out to barely grab onto Allison's upper arm. He didn't have time to dwell on how weird it felt to clamber up onto her smooth, glowing shoulder; he was only going to get one shot at this. His stretched his hand out into a virtual slingshot, and loaded the Mindshatter virus into position. Queen Vexus' enormous face loomed in front of him. At this relative size, the burning orb between her antenna looked as big as the moon …

He stretched his sling back, took careful aim, and launched his payload …


Jenny's engines blazed like twin suns as she swooped and swerved through a relentless shower of laser fire and particle beams. Missile volleys erupted from the surrounding warships. Balls of plasma streaked by her, close enough to bubble the paint on her back. And she was still over twenty miles away from Queen Vexus' colossal flagship. This was a desperate gamble, she admitted to herself, because even if she could stop Vexus' ship, that was no guarantee that the rest of the Cluster fleet would call off its attack. But she had to try something. She was running out of options and running out of time …

Her wires burned with spikes and blowouts, as the Z-Pack started to enter its critical phase. New warning messages screamed in her mind. Thirty seconds. Maybe forty-five. Her eyes flitted to the countdown clock at the corner of her vision. Any second now, guys. If Allison and the guys didn't come through with their distraction, she'd be blown to bits long before her Z-Pack exploded …

All two hundred of the deck guns on Vexus' flagship turned as one, and took aim at the approaching robot girl. Jenny swallowed a lump of hydraulic fluid in her throat, punched her throttle, and pressed onward as the barrels of the guns glowed with pinpricks of laser light …

Then they fell silent.

Jenny broke into a cautious grin, and quickly glanced around as she pressed closer to Vexus' city-sized flagship. Spaceship fighters coasted in straight lines, as if their pilots had suddenly become confused. Laser turrets and missile batteries were strangely dormant. Warrior-drones tumbled aimlessly through space, as if they had all collectively zoned out.

She cracked her knuckles, and flew inside the range of the flagship's dangerous perimeter defense guns. Looks like the guys came through …

Then one of the warrior-drones snapped back to attention. Then another. Then ten more. Then a wave of Interceptor Wasps lit up their engines, and turned in her direction. Then the hunter-killer drones ignited their rocket packs and did likewise. In the span of mere seconds, Jenny's sensors registered over six hundred bogeys that had radar-locked onto her and were closing fast. Hatches opened all along the three-mile length of Vexus' flagship, and fresh waves of warrior-drones poured out, too numerous for her to even bother counting.

Her face sunk as she watched her defeat flying towards her at top speed. Whatever it was Allison, and Drew, and the Silver Shell had done – it hadn't worked.


Continued in Chapter Seventeen