"A useless ball of ice and rock? I think not, pathetic humans!" Zim shouted as he lifted off from Pluto, his plutonium safely stored in the Voot's side pods.
He started the Voot's surprisingly powerful thrusters, and within a few minutes he was passing Neptune. He clasped his hands behind his head and let the Computer fly. After twenty minutes, he was already approaching Jupiter. He'd be home in no time.
The console suddenly started beeping. "Mass anomaly." Zim's antennae perked up. "Large object blocking current course," the Computer reported.
"Eh?" Zim leaned forward to see. On the screen was a 3-D diagram of the object. It was spherical and had five large cones on one end. "Computer, identify object," Zim barked. "Object identified as planetoid/vessel Mars." "I thought so." Zim sat back and placed a gloved claw on his chin. "Why is Mars near Jupiter? Last I saw it was flying out of the system. Not to mention it was heavily damaged by the asteroid field." He leaned forward and placed both hands on the console. "Computer, take us in for a closer look."
The Voot altered course slightly and headed toward the red planet. Zim looked for the Face as they approached, but he couldn't find it. He equipped his space suit and force field helmet as the Voot came down for a landing.
The cockpit eased open, and he stood up on the rim. The bleak, dusty landscape had changed little since his last visit. He jumped from the Voot, letting the weak gravity carry him. After Mars jumping for a while, he came to where the Face on Mars was located. Or used to be.
It was gone. Not even it's wreckage was left.
Zim bent down to examine the area. He pulled a small scanner from his PAK and swept it over the red soil.
The ground suddenly shook violently, making him drop the scanner to catch himself. He looked around nervously, then slowly got to his feet, but another tremor rocked the ground beneath him. The ground started splitting in front of him, causing him to scream and run away. He hid behind a rock until the tremors stopped.
He poked his head out and slowly walked over to examine the fault. As he approached, however, he was surprised to find the fault was a perfectly square hole. He came to the ledge and found that it wasn't a fault at all, but a large shaft, going down further than he could see and big enough to fit eight Voots side by side.
"Interesting, whoever is flying Mars must be using a command deck under the surface. Eh? What's that?" He squinted to see.
A glint of silver emerged from the darkness deep in the shaft, and it quickly grew as it approached at high speed. When it finally reached the top of the shaft, Zim saw it was a large robot, easily ten feet tall. It's body was a huge cylinder, with four smaller cylinders attached as arms and legs. A spherical head with a single red eye sat on top. It's legs were spouting jets of flame that reminded Zim of pathetic human spacecraft.
The shaft closed beneath the robot, and it dropped down, landing with an enormous thud. It looked down at Zim. "Subject identified as Zim." It's voice was cold, devoid of any personality, programmed or otherwise. "Directive: Terminate."
The robot's arm swiveled up to point at Zim. The end opened up and three rotating gun barrels extended out. Zim gasped as the weapon warmed up, glowing red and spinning.
Zim extended his spider legs straight down, pushing himself up in a massive Mars jump as the robot fired. Rapid-fire crimson pocked the Martian soil, then followed him into the sky.
Zim activated his zero-gee jets. They weren't enough to fly, but they were enough to push him over his foe's head.
He landed and sprung forward to attack the robot's back, but it's head and arm pulled a 180 on their joints to face him. Zim suddenly found his body being crushed by a pincer claw that had replaced the chain-gun. He was thrown down to the ground, and he barely had time to extend his spider legs before a large foot came crashing down.
He scurried over behind a boulder and crouched down. His comm piece extended over his head down to his mouth. "Computer! I'm under attack! Bring the Voot!-"
The sound of grinding rock filled his... Irken sound receptor organs... and his comm dropped to his feet. He looked up and saw half a boulder, a stump where his comm arm should be, and a massive buzz saw. His antennae flattened to his head in fear.
The robot lifted it's buzz saw arm over it's head and started to bring it down. Zim jumped to the side as what was left of the boulder split in half. The spinning saw kicked up clouds of red dust, and the robot's red eye shone through dramatically.
Zim started to run. He didn't care where, as long as he was away from that robot!
The Voot was coming up on the horizon. He grinned and leaped through the air, using his jets to maneuver to the ship's open cockpit. He was almost there when something shot past his head. It dug into the Voot, and Zim saw it was a harpoon. The harpoon's cable went taught, and the Voot was pulled out from in front of him. He watched as the robot spun the Voot in a wide circle like a tether-ball. As the Voot completed it's arc, Zim's eyes bulged as he realized he had drifted into it's path. He started his jets, but it was too late.
The cruiser slammed into him, and the centrifugal force pinned him to the pink hull. Around and around he spun, the gee forces starting to crush him. Red dust smacked against him at high speeds, sandblasting parts of his suit and making his helmet shimmer. "COMPUTER!!" he screamed over the howling wind. "FIRE THE CANNONS!!"
The Voot's cannons lit up and spewed green blobs toward the center of the circle. Zim forced his head to turn and look. He couldn't see through all the dust clouds, however. If the shots were impacting, they weren't doing much. Zim saw a bolt brush the cable, however, giving him an idea.
He wriggled a single spider leg from his PAK. He could hardly move it, it was pinned to the hull like he was, but it slowly squirmed into position. He fired off a laser from the tip. It missed the cable. He fired again. Closer, but still missed. Again. This bolt grazed it, shearing off layers from the cable, but it held. He inched the leg farther, and fired again. Another grazing shot. What was this cable made of?!
Suddenly, the cable seemed to twist, then disappeared, as did the Voot. Zim kept flying however, and seconds after disappearing, the Voot reemerged from the dust in front of him. Zim screamed as the ship collided with him once more, this time smacking him away like a home run slugger. The robot had reversed it's spin.
Zim's body ached, but he was too busy flying into orbit and screaming to notice. He looked down and saw that the Voot was coming up to meet him, trailing a frayed cable behind it. The cabled had snapped, conveniently sending the cruiser straight at him. He reached out and grabbed hold of the ship, then pulled himself inside. He started the engines and the ship stabilized. "Ha!" Zim yelled triumphantly. "Inferior robot! You could not defeat the almighty ZIIIIIM!!"
As if on cue, the ship rocked violently, knocking Zim back to his seat. The robot was clinging to the Voot, and it started trying to rip through the hull. Panicking, Zim jammed the controls to the left, sending the cruiser into a spin. The robot tightened it's grip, but the spin was working against it this time. It held on for a moment before being thrown back to Mars.
Zim gunned the Voot as fast as it would go. He checked the rear camera to see if the robot followed him. He didn't see anything for a moment, but then the robot reappeared and charged at him. It rotated it's arms to face the Voot, and two chain-guns appeared. Zim winced as it open fired, sending a hail of blazing red bolts at the cruiser. The ship shook under the strain, and warning sirens blared. The Voot was quickly losing hull integrity.
Zim took evasive action, throwing the cruiser into rolls and dives, but the laser fire was relentless. A small explosion rocked the ship, and the Computer reported, "Warning. Left pod ruptured. Chain reaction initiated. Plutonium detonation in 7, 6, 5..." Zim's eyes widened. "Computer!! Empty the pod! Dump the Plutonium!!" The Computer obeyed, and Zim watched the Plutonium fly into view of the rear camera. His eyes narrowed and his mouth curled into a zipper-toothed grin. The Plutonium flew straight at the robot and detonated.
Zim laughed his maniacal laugh. "My ingenious plan to drop the Plutonium like a bomb worked! I AM ZIIIM!!" he shouted. "Warning," the Computer started once more, interrupting Zim's gloating. "Missile lock detected." Zim narrowed one eye and glanced at the camera screen. The robot was still on his tail, though it looked battered, and rocket cones had extended from it's arms. The projectiles fired out of it's arms and rapidly gained on the Voot.
Zim gritted his teeth and forced the cruiser past it's safe speed. He started zig-zagging and rolling to slow down the missiles, but they were going to catch him. He tried to find another option, and he realized he was headed for the asteroid belt. He figured his best bet would be to use the asteroids for cover so he could escape or retaliate.
Unfortunately, he would have to beat the missiles there.
He threw the ship into more complex maneuvers, and the cruiser groaned under the stress. He was doing fine, until he overlooked something in his path. His maneuvering had brought him on a collision course with an object slightly smaller than the Voot, and he was too busy watching the missiles to notice it.
-
Tak finished the last chocolate bar in the pod and tossed the wrapper back to float around. Now that all the sugar and fat from the snacks was in her system, she was feeling a lot better, physically at least.
The increased energy and healing bruises didn't stop her imminent doom, however.
She had contemplated using her self destruct mechanism, or maybe removing her PAK and letting the loss of life support kill her. But she decided against those actions, they showed cowardice. If she was going to be crushed by the intense pressure of this planet, then she would stand and face her fate. She wasn't going to take the easy way out, and that gave her some pride, even in these last hours.
The Computer beeped. "Warning. Incoming ship on collision course. Recommend evasive action." Tak scowled at that last sentence. She looked out the windscreen to see what was going to hit her. She immediately wished she didn't.
Zim's Voot Runner was barreling right at her.
It was the last thing she wanted to see right now. Zim just couldn't leave her alone, even when she was going to die soon. His very presence taunted her. She noted the rockets chasing the cruiser, however, and her mood lifted slightly. Maybe she would get to see Zim's death, even as she plummeted to her own, on a path he sent her down. How deliciously ironic that would be.
If she survived the collision, that is.
She extended her spider legs in an X formation and dug the tips into the walls of the pod. The Voot slammed into Tak's escape pod at top speed. The pod was thrown into a vicious spin, but Tak's legs held her in place. She could feel the strain being put on them after a bit, so she pulled them back to keep them from snapping. She tumbled around the pod with the rest of the debris. One of the oxygen tanks in the back suddenly broke off and flew at her. She had nothing to push on to get out of it's way, so she braced herself as it crashed into her head. She spun out and hit the wall, holding on to consciousness as long as she could. Her head was in terrible pain, and pink globules of blood floated around her. Her sight was getting blurry, but she caught a glimpse of the tank as it continued through the air, right towards the windscreen. She tried to reach out for it, as if she could reach it, but her hand wouldn't move. The blow must've paralyzed her, at least partially. She could only watch as the tank smashed through the screen. The atmosphere started to rush towards the the opening, pulling her out into the vacuum of space. The air was literally sucked from her squeedly spooch as the air pressure in her body tried to equalize with that of space. She started to suffocate, gasping in the airless vacuum, and she could feel the cold freezing her alive.
She managed to cough out three more words, unheard in the emptiness of space, "Curse you, Zim..."
-
Zim flew out of his seat as the Voot crashed into Tak's pod and tumbled through space. He struggled to grab the controls, eventually reaching them and stabilizing the cruiser. He looked at the rear camera and found that the missiles had fallen behind.
"Uh, YES!! My brilliant plan to bounce off that..."
"Tak's escape pod," the Computer supplied.
"DON'T INTERRUPT ZIM!! Where was I? Oh yeah. My BRILLIANT plan to bounce off Tak's escape pod to confuse the missiles worked!"
Zim spun the cruiser around to face the missiles. He laughed maniacally as he fired the Voot's cannons. The energy globs hit the missiles, detonating them.
"BWAHAHAHAHA!!" Zim bellowed triumphantly. Overconfidence restored, he searched for the robot that had attacked him. He found nothing.
"THAT'S RIGHT, COWARD!! FLEE FROM THE MIGHTY ZIIIIIM!! Computer, take us home!" Zim folded his hands behind his head and repeatedly congratulated himself all the way back to Earth.
-
The figure watched the fight from Cyclops' point of view.
That little Irken is putting up more of a fight than I expected. Good. That means I can toy with him longer.
Cyclops chased after Zim's ship, his chain-guns blazing. "Don't kill him, Cyclops. We need him alive for now."
"Yes Master," the robot's voice came through the screen.
The battle played out to the point where Cyclops took the Plutonium explosion. The figure frowned, not at his robot's damage, but at Zim's. His ship was about to fall apart. "Give him a little scare to remember us by. Launch your missiles, and keep them close enough to convince him he's in danger." Cyclops complied.
The figure smirked at Zim's wild maneuvering. His smirk disappeared as Zim neared Tak's pod, however. "Well, this is unexpected. We'd better hope he doesn't kill himself." He chucked a bit at the thought.
The two ships collided and flew in opposite directions. He watched to make sure Zim stabilized, then he turned his attention to Tak.
"Cyclops, examine the object Zim hit. It appears to be some kind of vessel." Cyclops flew away from Zim as he destroyed the missiles.
As Cyclops approached the now wrecked pod, the figure spotted something interesting among the debris. "Well, this is a fortuitous development." He grinned in the dark, already modifying his plans.
A/N: Okay, it took me an extra day to update. This chapter took a bit longer to write, sue me. Anyways, just a quick heads up to whoever cares, I have to work on another project for a while, so my future updates will be less... punctual. O teh noes (Parden my Leetspeak). As always, review or don't.