Disclaimer: I don't own Toonami. Original story and art by Ruben Diaz and J. J. Kirby. Also, it started as a minor gag, but I'd better state that any strangely familiar personalities belong strictly to Rooster Teeth.
Swarm
chapter 0.3: interstellar
Gideon Alpha-12 Automaton Construction Platform.
Once more, and for the last time TOM was sure, the automatons stood abreast of each other in the construction chamber where they had started. The row of eight had been reduced to seven. LARS hovered in front of them, looking as though a weight had been lifted from his thin shoulders. TOM wasn't sure if that made him a jerk, or if something else was going on.
"Betas ... subsequently failures," he said in his fizzy, monotonous voice, "it seems most of them managed to make it back. Incidentally, the trial course was a sixty-two-point-five percent failure ... five duds out of eight betas. Had only one more succeeded, which would have resulted in merely a fifty percent failure, automatons would now be examined for interface malfunctions, refitted, recalibrated, and re-tested. But that is not the case. This entire line of automatons will be disassembled and returned to basic factory floor material so as to be completely reconstructed. ... Except one," he added as he stopped near TOM.
The short blue robot glanced up. "No doubt a much darker fate awaits me."
"Great goin', buddy," the sardonic automaton from earlier muttered to him. "You messed up even more than I gave you credit for. And now you owe me several thousand bucks to cover my arm AND by whole freakin' body ... Nice."
"Well, at least this means we won't be put to work," a robot down the row sighed. "Can I at least take a nap while I'm being physically dismantled?"
"I just hope the disassembly arms are as frisky as our case integrity testing machines were!" a third one said a little too enthusiastically.
An electric shriek drew TOM and RUBY's attention. The overhead construction crane had jerked into motion. It glided to a halt above the group and extended its mechanical arm. Although TOM was fairly sure that most of what was happening could be written off as standard procedure, he couldn't ignore the ominous feeling rising in his gut at the sight of that monstrous mechanical claw.
Another automaton gulped. "That is a really big and scary crane ..." he informed the rest of the group.
"It will be disassembled and melted down to basic materials like the others," LARS stated darkly, ignoring the other units and glaring expressionlessly at TOM, "but the AI matrix is the true defect. That must be wiped completely."
"Wait, that seem a little drastic," he protested, pointing at LARS. In a split second, the arm he was pointing with was suddenly in the grasp of the crane's stainless-steel claw, and he was being hoisted overhead. The remaining automatons watched, but only one seemed more distressed than the others. Swinging from his awkward position, TOM quipped with what he hoped was nonchalance, "Isn't this one of those things where you only get knocked off if the audience doesn't like you?"
"And thus, its expulsion," LARS confirmed to the suspended robot.
The sardonic automaton hollered, "Sucks to be you, dude!"
"Aren't there other options?" implored RUBY, refusing to stay quiet.
LARS's response was as flat as ever. "Protocol dictates."
"Listen, whatever you're singling me out for" TOM started as he began to glide away, but was cut off when the crane braked unexpectedly. His momentum flung him about for a second and he shook his head. He was about to continue before LARS could have him yanked away again, but when he looked down, the O.A.R. wasn't paying him the slightest bit of attention. In fact, he had his back turned to everyone else as well, and was engaged in multiple communication frequencies.
"Which quadrant? Link me with relevant exterior cameras and display the nature of the disturbance."
A pair of enormous view-screens were built into the wall of the construction chamber behind the automatons. They all turned to see them as two instantaneous video feeds from the cameras outside came into focus. TOM and RUBY lingered on each other for a moment before they, too, looked up at the screens.
Outside, Gideon Alpha-12 was still firmly enclosed by its six force field generators. They still held in place the tinted green prism through which the rest of the galaxy could be seen. But beyond that prism was the very last thing anyone working in deep space would ever expect to see.
Outside the space station, in the cold and lifeless vacuum, creatures were approaching. They were in the shape of manta rays, but with gelatinous bodies and a strange leech-like quality. The leech likeness was given credit by enormous mouths that were full of sharp, powerful-looking teeth.
Like a flock of geese, they approached Alpha-12 in a formation: several took point positions, the center one more prominent than the others. The rest of the pack branched away in multiple directions from the point rays. The several hundred creatures behind them dissolved into a mass of luminous blobs content to go wherever they were taken. And they were apparently willing to be taken blindly into the broad side of Alpha-12's force field.
"Identification." LARS ordered through the com freq.
The Bio-Sensor had been analyzing them for the past several minutes. Information scrolled down the side of each screen: Nebula Rays ... classification: cosmozoans; outer space organisms ... consumption: various forms of particle energy ... status: pack creatures; predatory.
As LARS and the automatons watched, the Nebula Ray at the extreme point headed directly for the center of the green-tinted wall. Its aim was too precise to be a coincidence: the ray was targeting the Alpha-12 installation. Work continued around the construction chamber, but there was a lapse in production and a rise in tension as the leading Nebula Ray approached the force field. If it weren't for that one layer of security, the pack would easily swarm the entire colony.
LARS, the automatons, and various other robots with advanced AI's all watched on.
When the lead ray finally struck point zero, it hit the force field like a balloon hitting a hard ceiling. The ray timidly bounced off and drifted backward, leaving Alpha-12's thin protection completely intact. There was a collective sense of relief among the small, nervous automatons ... relief that vanished in a second as the entire force field, on all sides of the installation, suddenly flickered and died.
TOM stared at the theater-sized viewing screens, which loomed in front of him with a perfect panoramic view of the vast sea of stars. They were filled, left to right and top to bottom, with luminous, energy-sucking monsters. Basically: mouths with wings.
An evacuation signal had already been issued. Automatons, mobile doids, and anything with an AI was moving quickly and systematically for the curved outer wall. That side of the station was lined with the rectangular hatches all marked "EEV" to signify emergency escape vessels.
TOM located LARS. The O.A.R. paused briefly to look up at him, and in that short moment, he recalled the VIK's words from earlier in his trial course: ...what the O.A.R. said to do. To not let him finish. "So he does have something against me," he muttered to himself. "That's pretty unprofessional." Abruptly, the crane was flying across the factory ceiling in the opposite direction. He had just enough time to see the Administration robot grab RUBY, who resisted, and haul her off toward the emergency hatches.
A desperate glance under his captive arm let TOM know that he was quickly en route to a wide, smooth chute with waves of heat rising from it. He couldn't resist exclaiming, "Holy chute!" He raised a leg to kick at one of the claws gripping his arm, but it held him firmly in place. At least it did for the next two seconds until it had him dangling over the tunnel of heat. Recalling his zero-gravity exercise, though it wasn't entirely applicable where there was artificial gravity, he flung his weight to one side just as the claws opened and dropped him.
He plummeted, missing the floor by inches but snaring the edge of the incineration chute and slamming against its inside surface. Temporary relief flooded through him as he hung there. Then, remembering the rest of his situation, he decided relief was not the best thing to feel just yet.
Despite being smooth and bulky, his three-digit hands kept a surprisingly good grasp on the chute's edge as he pulled himself up and over it. He gave a silent thanks to the engineers who had designed him to be physically harmless but serviceable. Then he took off across the factory floor at an unimpressive pace.
At the other end of the construction chamber, robots were gathered against the wall, filling up the escape vessels. RUBY, having refused to leave the installation while her friend was on board, was being dragged away by LARS. Her whole arm was clamped in his hand while the rest of her body was bouncing along behind him. She spotted TOM running after her and called his name, waving earnestly from her awkward position. TOM wove through the orderly crowds of robots until he caught up with LARS and RUBY. The four remaining green automatons were lined up next to the emergency hatch, awaiting entrance.
One glanced up and announced at length, "El comediente ha vuelto."
"Aw, he's alive?" replied a now-familiar voice. "That's bull."
TOM came up to them just as the station shuddered. "Hey, tall guy ... who's job is it to send the distress signal? Somebody has to call for help, right?"
"Negative," LARS snapped, half-turning toward him. "No protocols are in place to deal with a biological assault on Gideon Alpha-12."
TOM held up a finger, then froze. He tried to say something, but found himself completely speechless.
RUBY, still in the taller robot's clutch, wasn't. "Are you serious!" she asked incredulously. "Don't you think your 'protocol dictates' state of mind is a pretty lousy substitute for common sense right now?"
"It is in place to maintain order and stability," LARS stated. "Those two factors guarantee efficiency and safety."
"And yet," TOM said, shaking off his bewilderment and gesturing to the screens that showed a swarming fleet of Nebula Rays, "behind door number one we have a living, breathing (somehow) contradiction to your conviction. In my opinion of the situation, improvisation is the key solution."
"The rules cannot be changed at a moment's notice," LARS responded. "There are only eleven circumstances listed that require an emergency distress call, and an attack from biological life forms is not one of them." As the doors of the next available escape vessel hissed open, he pointed inside with his free hand. "In lieu of this unforseen and infeasible circumstance, they must enter the escape shuttle. All of them."
TOM glanced between LARS and the open hatch while the other automatons filed in. "I've got other ideas," he said. LARS didn't react. TOM turned to RUBY. "Someone needs to send for help. I'm not going to run away just because nobody around here can improvise."
"You mean we've got to send for help," she grunted, tugging to get her arm back.
"Only if tall, dark, and authoritative will let you," TOM replied. He stared up at LARS's hard, immobile features, and LARS stared back. It felt like their earlier stare-down in the same construction chamber an hour ago, but with a new layer of tension added this time ... a layer that consisted of differing views of the same situation. LARS didn't even notice when RUBY braced her feet against his side and used her entire body to pull against his grip.
"How about it, Larsy-parsy?" TOM asked steadily while RUBY grunted with effort and uttered a few surprising curses. "We can save a lot of taxpayers' money if you let us go rogue. It worked for James Bond."
"Affirmative," LARS said unexpectedly. "It should not be active anyway. But the blue unit is the only one listed for permanent shutdown and wipe ... the pink unit is not." As he said this, he tossed a startled RUBY into the escape shuttle. TOM watched as a VIK unit reached out and caught her like a teddy bear in a massive grip. She jumped down from his hands and darted for the open hatch, but the shuttle doors hissed shut in front of her, locking her in with the other robots.
TOM dashed up to the window as RUBY pressed her hands against its vacuum-proof glass. For the briefest moment, they both saw themselves reflected in the other's visor. Then the clamps disengaged, the pod launched, and RUBY was yanked backward out into space, into the ever-gathering swarm of monsters.
LARS glared at the back of TOM's head and said evenly, "It's sacrifice will not be recognized or commended."
TOM watched the retreating shuttle for a moment longer, then replied, just as evenly, "... No sacrifice necessary. I plan on coming back alive."
continued in chapter 0.4: "appetite for destruction"