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LOCKDOWN

Episode 5: Robot Wars

Outside the Absolution, nothing appeared to have changed within the last thirty minutes. The ether was still black and starless, its nebulas remained a rusty orange, and every object within range of the trash compactor, including Toonami's Deep Space Explorer, continued to float in almost the exact same position as before. But at the nucleus of the interstellar junkyard, inside the giant trash compactor itself, the situation had never been more intense.

"Diagnostics have been completed," Sara informed TOM as he stepped onto the Absolution's bridge. "A few systems are still offline, but at least the engines are functioning."

"Great, so then at least we'll have mobility," said TOM. "If and when we get out of this thing."

"If and when indeed," Sara agreed. "At the moment I'm calculating a sixteen percent probability that the DOKs can defeat the sentry robot. Both Clydes are sending us a live feed of the battle, but it doesn't seem to be going well."

"Oh, great." TOM felt his spirits sink. The third Clyde hovered up next to him and watched as two of Sara's holographic windows lit up with flashing weapons and shredding metal.

From two different angles they saw the sentry robot, its optic receptor glowing an angry red, as it lurched and pivoted, cutting down waves of attackers with all eight of its bladed arms. It slashed through their armor, sliced off arms or thrusters, and frequently cut them completely in half. And in addition to slashing them apart with indestructible scalpels, the sentry droid persistently alternated between pumping them full of holes with armor piercing rounds from its machine gun and overloading their innards with its electro-cannon, causing them to explode. The steel floor of the chamber was littered from corner to corner with the corpses of DOKs, all of them motionless and occasionally bursting with dying sparks. As TOM, Sara, and Clyde looked on, the sentry robot backhanded a sneaky DOK that had tried to slip around back, hurling it into the solid metal wall where it crunched like a Pepsi can.

"Jeez ... Would you look at that thing? They'll never win!"

Sara said, "I tried to relay your teaming up advice to the mystery guest. Remember how I told you that he can only operate a small number of DOKs at a time?"

"Yeah? Don't tell me ..."

"He's at maximum capacity as we speak," she said.

"So unless one of them gets a lucky hit, we're not going anywhere," TOM concluded.

"Plus, that sentry robot is very heavily armored," Sara added. "The odds of finding a weakness or taking it out by chance are extremely unlikely."

"Okay, then let's think of something else." TOM began pacing the bridge, his brain working furiously. Returning the engines to working order had gotten his hopes up, but now things had become a lot harder all thanks to somebody's sadistic idea of a security device. "Relying on luck never works during boss fights anyway," he said. "Have you come up with any ways to outsmart it?"

"He's attempted at least half a dozen different tactics, but that thing is simply too destructive and too hard to breach. There's no luring it away from its defensive position and no sneaking past it by any other means."

"Well, that shoots down two of my ideas, including the one I hadn't thought of yet," TOM grumbled. "Damn thing should be a quarterback ... Hey, maybe the mystery guest would let me into his ship so I can have a crack at that big beastie. I'm used to holding a game controller, but it's the same principle, right?"

"That is also very unlikely." An alert caught Sara's attention. She tilted her holographic blue head to acknowledge it, then said to TOM, "There's more bad news."

"Are you serious?"

"Yes, completely. The power supply you pugged into his ship earlier is running low. He won't be able to keep the fight up for much longer."

"So I'd better get out there and hook him up with a new one, huh?"

"That would be ideal."

TOM sighed. "I was feeling pretty good about five minutes ago."

"Well, feel better. Now you can get some more fresh air."

Once again, TOM swerved and darted through the debris-clogged vacuum as fast as the jetpack could carry him with a power supply clutched in one hand. He considered running the briefcase joke through his mind again, but decided it was getting old. That, and he didn't have the time for jokes; the mystery guest's star cruiser was dead ahead.

Sara was speaking to him. "Between the time you disconnect the old supply and the new one starts feeding into his ship, the DOKs will be inactive for a few seconds. I'll alert him ahead of time."

"I could probably find a way to bypass that," TOM suggested.

"There isn't enough time, Tom. We're down four hundred and twenty-two DOKs already."

"Yeah, but in the time it takes for them to come back online—holycrap!"

Without warning, the cruiser let loose a salvo of laser-fire from four of its gun ports. With a surge of whatever substituted for adrenaline in his mechanical body, TOM pulled up and away from the ship. He arced backward to find cover behind a junction of metal plates shaped like a lily-pad. The red laser beams scorched his makeshift bunker for several more seconds before they ceased fire.

"That was a close call, whatever happened."

"What did happen?"

"Guy just shot at me. I thought he knew I was helping him. What's going on?"

"I've alerted him of the incident, but this is a one-way connection we have," Sara responded while TOM took hold of a protruding piece of metal to keep himself in place. "My guess is, you triggered a security measure that was automatically activated once he had enough power running through his ship."

"I wish everyone's security measures would stop giving us such a hard time," TOM complained. "So he's gonna keep throwing the DOKs into that security robot until it tears up every last one of them or until they start floating around aimlessly again."

"There isn't much else he can do."

TOM groaned in frustration, rubbing his hard, metallic head with an oversized hand. "Are you sure you can't give him a hand with the DOKs?"

"I would love to take up some of his slack," the AI replied. "But as long as most of my processing power is still being used to fight the jamming signal that's trying to shut down our entire ship, I can't move an inch."

"And there's no other way to override that signal?"

"No. It's embedded in the tractor beam. Nothing can be done until it's shut down by the DOKs."

"Which aren't much more than target practice," TOM murmured. "So it all boils down to whether or not we can come up with a creative way to take out that security robot." In the desolate vacuum, surrounded by the dead, he tried to think of a way to beat this. With a small jolt of surprise, he realized that the answer was as simple as it was dangerous. He felt like smacking himself.

While it was true that his repair work and Sara's analyses had improved their situation and brought them farther than anyone else in this mass grave had ever come, that wasn't the way to go about things anymore. The time to get physical had finally arrived.

He raised his head and looked at the vast, terrifying trash compactor in the distance. "I think we need an ace in the hole."

"What are you talking about?" Sara inquired suspiciously.

"I'm talking about an ace named Tom. Send Clyde to the armory, Sara ... I need a weapon."