A/N – Man, that's one of the longest stretches of time it's ever taken me to crank out a chapter. Sorry about that, folks. I wound up getting absolutely no writing done over the Christmas break; lots of holiday busyness and family stuff came first. I went to visit my sister and nephew, and a wonderful little ankle-biter on the airplane gave me a cold. I'm really just getting over it now. Hope everyone is having a Happy New Year so far. Thanks for continuing to read the stories, and a special thanks (and hello) to some new readers who have just now stumbled over my crazy little fanfics. Glad you like Drew – it really means a lot to hear that somebody enjoys his character. He appreciates it! Now, let's see what kind of trouble that Tuck has gotten our android friend into this time …
The Anywhere Cannon
A "My Life as a Teenage Robot" Fanfic
Chapter Six – Going Commando
It was supposed to have been a nice, quiet afternoon.
Instead, Drew was thousands of light-years away from home, inside of a ten-mile-wide asteroid orbiting an uncharted double-star system. He was smack dab in the middle of a top secret Cluster military base, with death and danger awaiting him at every turn, on a critical mission to help the Underground destroy the most powerful weapon in the known universe. The asteroid held thousands of Cluster robots – vigilant guard droids, heavily armed ant-bots, trigger-happy laser-wielding roach troopers …
Oh, yes. And one precocious, black-haired seven-year-old with a Goop rifle.
Drew dropped to his knees and grabbed Tuck by the shoulders, in full-bore Freakout Mode. "Sweet sassy molassy – you followed me? Geez, Tuck, what the heck do you think you're doing?"
"Me? What do you think you're doing?" Tuck shot back, folding his arms indignantly. "You were gonna leave me all by myself, unsupervised! Tsk, tsk, tsk. Not very responsible of you – I'm very disappointed." Then a monster grin plastered itself on his face, and he spun around in a full circle, his eyes glistening like lights on a Christmas tree. "But none of that matters now that we're finally here! Oh man, I was beginning to think I was never gonna see the new Goop Zone section …"
"Wait … wait, wait, wait, you think that …" – Drew scratched his head – "… you think we're actually at the Goop Zone?"
"I set the coordinates on your teleporter doohickey myself," Tuck said, with a smug smile. "And as long as we're here … why don't you let me borrow it back for, say, an hour or so?"
"Sheesh, talk about a one track mind," Drew groaned, slapping his forehead. This kid was killing him. "Okay, that tears it. I'm going to send you back to …"
His sentence was interrupted by the piercing wail of an alarm. Rotating lights dropped from the ceiling and bathed them in strobing shades of crimson. Drew gripped his chest in panic, certain that they'd tripped some kind of intruder alert – but he didn't hear anyone running down the corridor towards them. And they were still the only two people standing in the observation blister.
Then the PA system clicked on with a familiar swaggering voice – the melodramatic booming of Commander Smytus. "All drones to your stations! Reactors to full power! Activate the aiming portal! Prepare to fire on my count! Five! Four! Three …"
"Oh no," gulped Drew. He pressed his face back to the viewport, where the source of the excitement was now only too clear. The Anywhere Cannon had flared to life, its generators and power conduits glowing with building energy. A dull roar emanated from the huge chamber, as the shafts and pistons of heavy support machinery roared up to full speed. The massive hyperspace portal hummed, and glowed, and exploded to life with a bright double-flash, generating a mesmerizing pinwheel of insane colors directly in front of the cannon's giant barrel. All at once, hundreds of Cluster robots dropped dark protective goggles over their optic sensors. There was a loud snap of powerful electromagnets, a hiss of cryogenic vapor from the cooling coils, and a faint yellow glow …
The blast from the cannon was like a solar flare erupting from the surface of an angry star. Drew darkened his eyes, unable to look directly at the column of fire that screamed from the mouth of the massive gun. Amazingly, impossibly, the fifty-foot-wide shaft of deadly anti-protons raced into the hyperspace portal … and disappeared.
Millions of miles away, drifting high above a swirling soup of purple methane clouds, the sleek renegade starship CSS Free Will was hiding in the shadow of a gas giant planet, impatiently scanning the asteroid belt with its passive sensors. On the starship's bridge, Captain Polaris stared out the windows and winced unhappily, clutching at his gurgling metallic abdomen. All this sneaking around in hostile space was going to give him a rust ulcer. His cruiser was running in silent mode, with its engines and weapons powered down to minimize the chance of detection by Smytus' forces. Even still, Polaris felt as exposed as if he were on the main stage at the Cluster Prime opera house. He marched back to one of the few illuminated screens, where a large scanner display plotted the tracks of hornet fighters on patrol. A large yellow circle in the middle of the screen highlighted the asteroid that housed the Anywhere Cannon. Polaris frowned. The asteroid's powerful force field was still active, and fully charged.
"Maybe your infernal boyfriend got the co-ordinates backwards," he sneered.
Allison huffed, gave him a nasty look, then returned her attention to the scanner master controls. "Oh, my boyfriend can read just fine, thank you," she muttered – but she was starting to grow concerned herself. Missions tossed together at the last minute had a nasty habit of not going according to plan. And the way the hyperwave call with Drew had ended had struck her as being a little … strange. "All right, everyone, let's go over the attack trajectory one more time. It won't hurt to wait a few more …"
She was cut off by a sudden beeping from the sensor display. Her fingers flew over the keyboard in response, and a look of disbelief registered on her face. "That … that's impossible …"
The Underground robots looked on in curiosity, as the screen switched to long-range camera mode. It showed a picture of the innermost planet in the star system, a lifeless ball of rock and iron backlit by the thin gasses of the colorful nebula. An unnatural, swirling vortex of light was growing in form, a few thousand miles above its surface …
Then the vortex pulsed with a blinding double-flash – and a pencil-thin beam of scalding energy screamed out of the vortex, slamming into the planet like shining rapier. Cold, flinty rock instantly glowed with intense reds and yellows and whites … then the surface of the planet shuddered, and erupted with a nightmarish explosion, as if the mass of rock was giving birth to a baby sun. Allison shielded her eyes as the screen flickered, nearly overwhelmed by the brightness of the annihilation. Then the light subsided away, she refocused the scanners … and the fluid in her radiator nearly froze over.
Where there had once been a ball of cold rock, now hung a blood-red, fractured shell of a world with an ugly crater that covered half its face. Glowing rock and clumps of lava from the exposed core of the planet sprayed out into space, like a gigantic, fiery fountain.
"Oh, sprockets," gulped Allison. "That … is a big gun."
"They just test-fired the Anywhere Cannon. And we just ran out of time," added Polaris, as he grabbed a swiveling boom microphone from the ceiling. "Missile room, this is the captain speaking. Fuel the missile and remove the safeties from the anti-matter warhead. And try not to blow my ship up while you do it, okay?" He turned off the microphone and glanced back to Allison. "I hope, for all our sakes, that our little shape-shifting friend gets that force field turned off in a hurry."
"Oh, don't worry about him," grimaced Allison, trying to sound more confident than she felt. "I'm sure that … uh … he's … uh … formulating a brilliant master plan, even as we speak."
Drew's mouth flapped open and shut like a goldfish gasping for air. "Double holy schnikey."
Tuck pulled away from the observation viewport, got down from his tiptoes, and folded his arms with genuine satisfaction. "Those are some mighty impressive special effects!" he grinned. "And believe me, I'm a jaded twenty-first-century kid who's been raised on holographic CGI. Nothing impresses me anymore! I certainly do appreciate solid production values from a theme park."
"Special … effects?" Drew's mind struggled to get back onto its original train of thought. "Oh … riiiight. At the Goop Zone. Yeeeeeeeeahh." His eyes twitched towards the flashing alarm lights, the blinking computer displays on the stone corridor walls, and the huge cavern full of heavy equipment that was laid out below their observation blister. "Which is … exactly where we are. Riiiiiiiiight."
Drew pasted a car salesman's grin on his face; he was still unsure if this was one of his better ideas. It was bad enough that Tuck had followed him through the wormhole. If the little fellow found out where he was, and just how much life-threatening danger he was in, he was liable to go completely mental, and attract all kinds of unwanted attention. From heavily armed, killer robot soldiers. So since Tuck already thought that he was actually at the Goop Zone – Drew figured that the easiest thing to do was to simply feed the illusion. And with a little bit of luck, he could teleport them both back to the real Goop Zone in a few minutes, after his sabotage was over – and Tuck would never know he'd actually traveled halfway across the galaxy. Maybe. Well, it was the only idea Drew could think of off the top of his head. And with the Anywhere Cannon now live and on-line, he couldn't afford to waste another minute with his little wormhole stowaway.
"Tell you what, little buckaroo," Drew said, giving Tuck a pat on the head. "I'm going to head off to look for the … er … um … registration table. Yeah, that's it! Once I get you all signed up, I'll come back with your official tournament kit. You stay here, out of sight, and um … check on your Goop rifle, or something. Gotta make sure your weapon is in tip top shape, right?"
"Well, I did clean the barrel just this morning at the breakfast table." Tuck tapped his chin. "I supposed it wouldn't hurt to field-strip it one more time …"
"That's the spirit! Now just stay right here, okay? Right here. I'll be back before you know it." He stuffed his teleporter into Tuck's backpack. "You hang onto this, make sure nothing happens to it, and I'll be back in five minutes. Got that? Five minutes. Then you can shoot as much Goop as your little heart desires!"
And without waiting for a reply, the teenage android turned and leapt into a long, graceful arc, squirting down the corridor in a bouncing ribbon of silver paste. With a soft gurgling whisper, his surface color changed to mimic the rocky pattern of the tunnel walls, and just like that, Drew suddenly dissolved into the shadows.
Tuck sat down in the far corner of the observation blister and made himself comfortable, feeling quite proud of his accomplishments so far. He'd made it to the Goop Zone – hmmm, it did seem weird that there weren't any other kids around, but, eh, whatever – and he'd managed to have a lot of fun in the process. He pulled his MegaSoaker 400 out of his backpack and pumped the tank a couple of times, checking the action of the pressure piston. Then he reached into his backpack, fumbling for an oil can …
But instead of pulling out an oil can, his hand found the teleporter.
He drummed his fingers together with mischievous glee.
"You know what's even more important than a well-oiled weapon?" he grinned. "Practice! Robot fighting takes lots and lots of practice. It wouldn't hurt to take a few practice shots before the tournament started, would it? Hmmmm. But Drew did tell me to wait right here …"
Tuck gave the matter a few moments of thought, then defiantly pounded a fist into his open palm. "And just who died and made him President, hmmm? So Drew thinks he can give me orders now, like he was my father or something? The nerve! Denying a small child the simple pleasure of shooting slimeballs at a room full of mechanical dummies. He's drunk with authority, I tell you!"
When you were an overexcited seven-year-old, waiting in one single spot for five minutes was a torture indistinguishable from burning coals and hot pokers. The little fellow slung his rifle over his shoulder, clipped on some extra Goop ammunition cartridges, and wrapped a camouflage-colored bandana around his forehead, Rambo-style. A maniac glint flashed in his eye, as he started pressing arrow buttons on the teleporter once more.
"Time to bust me some Bots," he chuckled, as the vortex flashed open.
The lead drone engineer turned from his workstation and gave his commanding officer a proud salute. "All energy readings are perfectly normal, Commander," he grinned. "The Anywhere Cannon is ready for operational duty!"
Smytus grinned at the master viewscreen, which showed the target planet continuing its breakup into a glowing ball of gravel. He thrust his massive fists into the air, as if he were celebrating a ninth-inning home run. "OOOOOH, YEAH! Now that's what I'm talkin' about!" He rubbed his metallic claws together with barely constrained glee. "I have always told Queen Vexus that I preferred simple plans over her complicated schemes. Well, it doesn't get more simple than cracking a planet in half with a giant Death Ray! With the power of this cannon at my disposal, soon Earth will be at my mercy. Then nothing can stop me from conquering the entire galaxy!"
"Um … what about the XJ-9 robot?" asked the engineer.
Smytus snarled down at him. "You are severely harshing my mellow, drone. Believe me, soon that miserable little robot girl will get what's coming to her. Vexus still wants her to join the Cluster? Well, I'll send XJ-9 to her … in an paper envelope."
The great Commander thrust his chest out as if he were posing for a portrait. "Drones! Complete system purge, and initiate re-cycle sequence! I want to be ready to shoot again in ten minutes!"
"Ummm," squeaked a drone, "what's our target, sir?"
A crooked smile grew on Smytus' face. "The planet Earth. North American continent. Set the co-ordinates for the city of Tremorton,"
Quick as a wink, a stream of silver-green goo flowed through the door, and slopped into a messy pile behind a row of large storage barrels. Drew reshaped himself into humanoid form as quietly as he could, but there was little chance of anyone noticing him here. The deafening noise from the spacecraft engines guaranteed that. A nervous pair of eyes stretched above the hiding place like a twin periscopes, observing the contents of the giant, round cavern. It was a Cluster spacecraft hangar, filled with nasty-looking Hornet interceptors and ant-shaped cargo shuttles. Dozens of busy worker drones scampered to and fro, pushing hover-dollies piled high with bombs and missiles and spare parts. Two Hornet fighters slowly crawled towards the center of the hangar, then with a sharp metallic crack and the growl of heavy gears, the roof of the artificial cave split open, revealing the infinite star-speckled cosmos outside. The compact yellow-and-black interceptors slowly hovered up from the floor in the weak gravity, and disappeared into the asteroid belt on twin daggers of hot fusion exhaust.
Okay, let's get this over with, Drew sighed to himself. He put a five-minute timer up in his vision – he'd told Tuck that he'd be back in five minutes, and he didn't feel good about leaving him alone for that long – and crossed his fingers. Quick and dirty jobs like this tended to get exciting in a hurry. But, with a little subterfuge, and a little luck, maybe things would stay nice and quiet this time. Keep it simple, subtle, and the less excitement, the better.
With a near-silent shimmer, the teenaged android boy morphed into an orange-and-yellow maintenance roach, complete with a wrench-laden tool belt hanging around his robotic waist. The first order of business on this mission was to find out where the force field controls for the Cluster base were located, so he could sabotage them. Drew figured he'd pick a drone at random, and use his magic nano-fingers to interrogate its computer brain for information; he just hoped that he could pull it off without drawing any attention to himself. He picked out a suitable target, a ragged, oil-stained worker drone who was wheeling a cart loaded with several dozen quart-sized cans of grease. Drew gulped hard, and then sauntered away from his makeshift hiding place, with the easy manner of a workman on a coffee break.
"Hey, ah, hold up there, buddy!" he shouted in a blue-collar accent, giving the grease-drone a casual wave. "Mind if I ask you a quick question?"
"Make it quick," groaned the worker, with a look of complete disgust on his insectoid face. "I gotta get this stupid grease delivered to a bunch of technicians over at Force Field Control."
Drew double-blinked. "Force Field Control?"
"That's what I said, pal. What, you got a tube blown in your hearing circuits or sumpin'?"
"Tell you what," Drew smiled, patting the surly drone on the shoulder. "I just happen to be heading over to Force Field Control. Why don't I take this grease over there for you?"
The tired drone instantly perked up. "Really? You mean it? Aw, buddy, that would be great! Hey, you're all right. I work down in the hydraulics shop. You ever need your tubing flushed, you come see me, okay? I'll set you up!"
"I'll keep that in mind. Umm … what was the way to Force Field Control, again?"
"Big tunnel over there," the grease-drone said, gesturing with a pair of claws. "All the way to the end. Level Five, Sector Gamma. Can't miss it. Thanks again!"
"No, believe me, thank you," smiled Drew, as he grabbed the cart and wheeled his cases of grease cans across the equipment-strewn hangar floor. Hey, that went easier than expected, he thought, as he swerved around an unloading cargo shuttle. Still, just to be safe, he avoided eye contact with the other robots, especially the heavy drone troopers with the semi-automatic laser rifles. But despite his worries, the other Cluster robots thought that he was just another nameless drone performing another menial task, and in moments he'd traversed the hangar with no problems, and was standing at the elliptical-shaped mouth of a long, smooth tunnel.
"Hey, you with the grease," a military drone called out to him.
Uh-oh. "Umm … yeah?" squeaked Drew. He tensed slightly, wondering if his cover had been blown …
"Could you use a ride?" said the soldier, gesturing to the back of his hover-truck.
"Uhhhhh … sure?"
In a mild state of disbelief, Drew thanked the big soldier drone and wheeled his cargo of grease cans onto the bed of the hover-truck, next to a pair of power transformers. He plopped down against a transformer with a dumb grin, and allowed himself to relax a tiny bit as the dim red tunnel lights flashed by. I half-thought I was going to have to fight and sneak past the soldier drones, and instead, I'm bumming a ride from one! Not only were things going better than he could have imagined, but the guards weren't showing any signs that they even knew an intruder was inside the base!
The hover-truck arrived at the end of the large tunnel, and Drew couldn't help but let out a low whistle. It was the massive cannon chamber, and if possible, it was even more awe-inspiring on the inside. The cavern could have held a downtown city block, and there were enough drones, scientists, and soldiers walking around to populate a small robot town. The massive steel-gray barrel of the Anywhere Cannon sat immobile in the center of the room, pointing at a giant steel-gray portal ring; worker drones swarmed over it like ants over a cob of corn, preparing the weapon for its next deadly firing. That served to remind Drew of the short amount of time he had, and the seriousness of what he was trying to prevent. He quickly scanned the rings of platforms that lined the rocky walls of the cavern. According to his helpful friend, the force field controls would be found on Level Five.
One quick elevator ride later, the counterfeit Cluster drone ambled onto Level Five, counting off the sector markers as he wheeled his grease past stations labeled Defense Lasers and Long-Range Radar. It was just three more sectors to Force Field Control. Now for the last little hurdle – the technicians at the Force Field Control station. How was he going to convince them to allow him to do a little "repair work" on the control panel? He could say that he was doing a routine inspection. Or, maybe he could claim that he'd been given orders to perform preventative maintenance. He could always try the mind-control trick with his trusty nanobots. Worst-case scenario, he could knock them out …
One of the blue technical drones at Force Field Control looked up from his control panel, saw the yellow-and-orange maintenance drone in front of him, and frowned.
"Where the heck have you been?" he growled. "Sheesh, we put in an order for grease, like, an hour ago! I'm dying of thirst here!" The drone grabbed two cans, tossing one to his partner, and cracked the lid. "Bottoms up, Gamma Sixteen! To the enslavement of the human race!"
"Heh-heh, yeah … yay for us," babbled Drew. "Look, I was wondering if …"
"Hey, you," the second technician suddenly growled, pointing an accusing finger directly at Drew's chest. "Stop right there. Don't move a servo!"
A pang of panic stabbed at Drew's nanobot innards. "Me?"
"You're not going anywhere until we finally get this stupid light bulb fixed!" he snorted, pointing to an extinguished light on his complex control panel. "I have been bugging maintenance to get up here for the past three days and fix this. No more excuses, Jack. Now get to work!"
Drew blinked twice, and fought to keep a smile from splitting his face in half. "Why, I can't tell you how sorry I am to hear that," he said, as he started loosening screws on the panel. "I'll get that taken care of for you, right away!" He flipped the panel open and crawled inside, like a mechanic getting underneath the hood of a car. He couldn't believe it! This was the very piece of equipment he was supposed to sabotage, the key to the whole Underground mission, and the Cluster robot had actually helped him flip open the lid! With a happy shimmer, Drew morphed his claw-fingers into an assortment of destructive tools, and stretched his thin appendages in amongst the dense bundles of wires and pipes. He actually struck up a happy tune as he went about his dirty work. With every snipped wire, shorted circuit, and damaged part, the asteroid's force field began to grow weaker and weaker.
Geez, this is a piece of cake, he grinned to himself. Nothing can go wrong now!
While Drew hummed contentedly, the two technician drones started up an idle conversation over their grease break. "Hey, you wanna hear something funny?" one drone asked the other.
"Sure, make me laugh."
"I was flipping through the comm channels a second ago. Remember Omicron 219? That guy from the Reactor Room who won fifty bucks from me in that poker game?"
"What about him?"
"I just saw him on a security dispatch." The first technician drone slapped his knee, chuckling cruelly. "The big jerk was covered head to toe in green, sticky slime! Said he saw some kind of … miniature human running around in the caves, shooting green goop at everyone. What a screwball!"
The entire console shook with a painful THUD.
"OW! Ahh, geez, criminy …" The stammering orange-and-yellow maintenance drone shot out from under the control panel like he'd been hit with a million volts. "Did you just say … human!" babbled Drew, rubbing the fresh dent on top of his dome-head.
"Yeah, little short one," answered the drone, holding his claw about waist high. "Black fur on its head …"
Their conversation was interrupted by the shrill wail of an alarm, screeching from the control panel. "Warning! Warning!" chanted a synthesized voice. "Total power loss on Force Field. Force Field has collapsed. Force Field has collapsed."
The two technician drones nearly jumped out of their metal shells, and looked at Drew with accusing stares. At first, Drew didn't understand why … then he realized that in his startled hurry to pull himself out of the guts of the control panel, he'd unwittingly pulled out two fistfuls of electronic parts and transistor tubes, which he was still holding onto, for all to see.
"Umm … okay, I have a really good explanation for this …"
"WHAT in the name of Sweet Queen Blessed Vexus is going ON up here?" bellowed a furious voice, coming from directly behind him.
The technician drones snapped to rigid attention. Drew winced and ground his teeth together; he recognized the voice all too well.
He slowly turned around, and stared up into the imposing form of Commander Smytus.
Oh, crap.
Smytus planted his metallic fists on his hips, and glared down at Drew with a face full of cold hate. "Good explanation? You had better have a good explanation for turning off my asteroid's force field. Especially since I don't recall ordering it to be turned off!"
"Well, you see … um …." – Drew hid his fistfuls of sabotaged parts behind his back – "… now, what happened was, I had to, uh … that is … would you believe, I was replacing a light bulb?"
Smytus did not look satisfied with the explanation. His eyes narrowed into hateful slits, and he leaned closer to examine Drew's face …
And that was when, with a bright double-pulse of multi-colored light, a chittering vortex ripped open, twenty feet away.
And out tumbled an overstimulated seven-year-old, pumping the barrel of a MegaSoaker 400 Goop rifle.
"WOW!" screamed Tuck, as he spilled onto the platform's metal grating. "Would you get a load of this place! I must have found the Super Robot Challenge Bonus Final Level! Oh, wow, there must be more robots in here than … than there are on all of Cluster Prime! I'm gonna get the high score for sure! Hot ziggety, this is ten times better than Wizzly World! Woo hooooo!"
Smytus stared at the giddy human child in stunned surprise for a few seconds, then slapped his face and shouted in a loud, frustrated voice. "What … is that … doing here? Arrrghhh, you stupid drones, if I've told you once, I've told you a thousand times … no pets on Cluster military property!"
Tuck stared with wonder-filled, twinkling eyes, through sweat-soaked swaths of jet-black hair, taking in the grandeur of the huge cannon chamber. His red cheeks were flush with physical exertion; the kind of flush a young boy gets from running around like a maniac, jumping crazily through alien wormholes, teleporting around inside a hollow asteroid, shooting Goop at unsuspecting Cluster robots. Because Tuck was still convinced that he was inside of the new Goop Zone robot fighting arcade – and he was convinced that it was the most super awesomemest best most fun place in the whole wide world! He spun his Goop rifle in his hands, hot-dogging like a band leader twirling a baton. "Surrounded on all sides by bloodthirsty zombie robots, Ultra Commando Tuck Carbunkle seems doomed to certain catastrophe! But no mere pile of scrap metal can hope to defeat everyone's favorite Bot Buster in combat! Ha-ha! Have at you, vile clockwork villains!"
And with another dramatic flourish, Tuck spun his Goop rifle back to his shoulder, and unleashed a pair of green slime-wads into the chests of the stunned technician drones. The robots were so bewildered from Tuck's routine that none of them budged so much as a servo.
"That's twenty more points for me!" cheered Tuck … then he stared past the three shorter drones in front of him, up at the towering silhouette of Commander Smytus, and clutched his little hands together with rapturous glee. Look at the size of that audio-animatronic robot! It had to be the Battle Droid Supreme Commander! Nobody ever made it all the way to the Battle Droid Supreme Commander! According to the official tournament scoring guide, the Supreme Commander was worth one thousand points! If you added a thousand points to his score, Tuck figured that his point total would come to … um … probably, like, a gazillion billion jillion points! He'd win for sure! Finally, fame and fortune … and getting his picture in the paper … were just mere moments away!
"Omigosh … I made it all the way to the final Boss Level," he grinned. "This is it! I'm gonna be in the Goop Zone Bot-Buster Hall of Fame!"
Smytus arched a perplexed eyebrow. "Goop Zone?"
Drew simply stared straight ahead, with a nervous twitch tugging at his lower left eyelid.
It seemed surreal, happening all too fast to react, yet it was like watching a television scene in slow motion. Tuck pumped the handle on his rifle once, twice, three times, to get a nice high-pressure stream from his weapon. The two blue technician drones cowardly flinched, diving to get out of the way. Drew started to lunge towards Tuck, hoping to stop him before … too late. The little commando sighted his target through the MegaSoaker's aiming scope, his little finger wrapped around the plastic trigger … and he pulled.
"Hasta la vista, baby," Tuck quipped, squinting his eyes.
A blob of green Goop smacked Smytus square in the face like a massive spitball.
"Yesssss!" shouted Tuck, jubilantly thrusting his fists in the air. "Fame and fortune, here I come! All bow before me, King Tucker the First … Master of all Bot Busters! For the record, I'd like my prize paid to me in one installment, not annual payments, please."
Thin jets of superheated steam hissed out of the sides of Smytus' head.
"YEAAARRRRGHH!" he shouted, furious at the insult that had just been dealt to him. Smytus' eyes glowed yellow with near-insanity, burning off the remnants of slimy Goop that obscured his vision. He clenched his claws into massive fists, which started to growl with green plasma energy, and deployed a pair of long, vicious prongs that sizzled like cattle prods. With a snap of his metallic wrists, he took aim at the grinning half-sized human prankster …
"Oh, crap!" Drew instinctively launched himself into a silver-green river of nano-paste, reaching Tuck just as Smytus fired his wrist cannons. The momentum of the shiny goo knocked Tuck into a wild backwards somersault, rolling him and Drew out of the way just as a pair of green plasma bolts blasted a smoldering scorch mark into the metal grating.
"The nanodroid," sneered Smytus, as if the word itself were a filthy rag. "GUARDS!"
The silvery paste reformed into a green-striped android, with a grinning, rifle-toting grade schooler sitting in his lap. "Oh, hi there, Drew!" Tuck chirped excitedly, completely oblivious to the danger he was in. "Did you see what I just did! I slimed the Supreme Commander! I won the Goop Zone tournament! Isn't that awesome? Man, this is the greatest day of my life!"
The teen android flinched with dread, as he heard a telltale whining sound from all around him that could only come from laser cartridges charging up. After that came the click-click-click-click of firing safeties being switched off. Drew hesitantly cracked one eye open, to see that Level Five was now filled with heavy drone soldiers, on both sides of him, each with the barrel of a laser rifle pointed directly at his chest. Another batch of drone soldiers was directly below him on Level Four. And another squad was marching into position on the landing immediately above him. One, then two, then forty-six tiny red dots danced over his body, as the drone troopers trained their laser sights on him. Commander Smytus folded his arms in disgust, and grinned an evil grin down at the two pathetic intruders.
"Huh, I must have gotten a free game," said Tuck. "Gee, could this day get any cooler?"
Captain Polaris paced back in forth on the darkened bridge of the CSS Free Will, quietly impatient, when a soft electronic beep from the master scanner grabbed everyone's attention. Allison's slim metal fingers quickly and efficiently flashed over her console keyboards, filling the screen with a close-up view of the Cluster's secret asteroid base. All the Underground robots looked on, as data windows popped onto the screen, showing reduced power outputs and diminished electromagnetic readings. With a confident smile, Allison slowly spun around in her seat and crossed her long, svelte leg housings.
"Drew did it – the asteroid's force field is down, Captain," she said, with a tight smile. Her eyes delivered the unspoken message: I told you so. "The Anywhere Cannon is now vulnerable."
"About time," grunted Polaris, as he quickly paced back to his command chair. "Missile room, this is the captain speaking. Finalize missile trajectory. Set warhead yield for 7.5 gigatons. Commence ten-second countdown sequence … now."
"Whoa!" shouted Greaser. "Like, the nanodroid dude is still inside that big hunk of rock! And you're just gonna totally wax him? Duuuude, that's cold! Can't we wait for him first?"
"He knows what the plan is," snarled Captain Polaris. "Besides, we've been floating around in hostile territory half an hour longer than intended, already. We're lucky we haven't been spotted by one of the Hornet interceptor patrols. If we don't shoot now, we may never get another chance."
A few robots looked towards Allison, expecting her to challenge Polaris' decision, but she knew he was right. She couldn't play favorites when the fates of entire planets hung in the balance. With a tortured sigh, she closed her eyes, and gave Polaris a nod.
The captain slammed his metallic fist onto a large red button on his armrest …
And the entire hull of the Free Will shuddered with a deep, resonating vibration.
Long doors split apart on the bottom of the star cruiser and swung open, exposing a large launcher platform that swiveled out into space. Metal rings on the platform hummed with a sudden flood of electricity, spawning a powerful magnetic field that grabbed a long, sleek, smoke-colored dart, and hurled it into space with the force of a cannon shot. Silently, the stealth cruise missile glided into the cold, inky black, until it was five miles away from the ship. Then its on-board computer deployed a set of fins and thrusters, armed its warhead, and gave its fusion engine the command to fire. The powerful fusion rocket ignited with the ferocity of a stellar core, washing out the stars with its harsh yellow glare, but just as quickly as it had overwhelmed the senses, it was gone. The cruise missile shrunk into a tiny pinprick of light, traveling at fantastic speed, and curved around the gas giant planet, heading for the asteroid belt.
One certain asteroid, in particular.
Continued in Chapter Seven