Buck Rogers in the 25th Century: Far Beyond the World
Part XXXVI - Acid Test
In the no longer vacant Nexus Core vault...
The horde of reprogrammed Ambuquads, a three foot high sea of silver-and-copper casings and furious glowing yellow eyes, closed in around Buck Rogers, Elias Huer, Twiki and Dr. Theopolis.
"BUCK ROGERS MUST DIE!" was their battle-cry and their raised graspers sparkled with the deadly blue power needed to carry out the termination order.
"Yeah, imitation ain't the sincerest form of flattery." muttered Twiki, the only sane Ambuquad for miles.
"Tell me about it, pal!" replied Buck Rogers as he swung up his blaster rifle and took aim for the closest of the reprogrammed drones, "I hope you don't take offense to this, Twiki!"
"Bidi-bidi-bidi! Do what ya gotta do, Buck! And so will I!"
"Nice to hear!" and the Captain fired, hitting the drone in the chest and blasting it apart.
"Crichton reprogrammed them to do his bidding!" exclaimed Dr. Huer as he swung around to face the drones coming at them from the back of the vault. He raised his own rifle and started shooting.
"Ya think?" growled Buck as fanned his rifle to the left, gunning down three more Ambuquads with shots to their heads, "Way to state the obvious, Doc."
But the small robots kept on coming, unphased by the scrapping of their synthetic brethren, and they all raised their graspers which crawled with sizzling blue power.
"How many of these guys are there!" Buck was firing over-and-over now, blasting without aiming anymore, the robot pack was thick now and closed in around them, tightening the circle of death.
Theoplolis volunteered an answer, "Each Directorate Building maintains a legion of-"
"Legion?!" Rogers didn't like that word at all. Nope, not at all...
"-a legion of three hundred drones."
"Yep, I knew I wasn't going to like it..." Buck sighed, then a drone managed to get past his guard and clamped a grasper onto the barrel of his rifle and zapped it with a charge.
"Owww!" Buck was forced to let go and staggered back a step, eyes flashing, "You little bugger!" and he sprang forward and drove a kick into the drone, sending it hurtling backwards to bowl over three of it's friends.
"We're a wily bunch, yeah! Bidi-bidi-bidi!" Twiki was swinging his graspers this way and that in a blur, blasting off blue charges that struck the faces and chests of his fellow bots, sending them crashing over onto the floor and into each other.
The other Ambuquads were fast but Twiki was even faster, he sent two of them pitching over backwards with opposing charges, then sprang forward into the fray, zapped another down, spun back and delivered a hard chop to the neck of another, decapitating it in a crackle of circuitry.
"Go Twiki!" cheered Buck as he bashed in the domed skull of a drone that was snapping it's graspers for his arm.
"Twiki!" gasped Dr. Theopolis as the drone bearing him ducked fast beneath twin charges that instead struck the two bots trying to nail him, "How are you doing this?! You shouldn't be capable of such complex martial arts!"
"I know Kung Fu!" replied the Ambuquad in his deep baritone as he delivered a wicked blow to one drone, then bent to the side and kicked the arm off another, "And Karate! And Taekwondo! Plus lots of other Asian words!" and he drove a spangling grasper into the face of a charging copper drone and punched straight through and out the back, "Bidi-bidi-bidi! Yeah, Baby! Bruce Lee ain't got nuthin on me!"
Buck shook his head in wonder at Twiki's deadly acrobatics then grunted as a charge licked his hip, he whipped around and drove a punch into the chest of the offending drone, downing it, then saw three more charging toward him, yelling for his blood, and raised his fists, but a blaster shot struck each of them in fast succession and they were blown apart.
"Thanks, Doc!"
"Anytime, Buck!" replied Huer and he gestured at the exit, "It's more or less clear now! Make a break for it, we'll handle this."
"Gotcha!" and Buck squared his shoulders and bending low charged forward like a quarterback, bowling drones out of his way as he frieght-trained for the door, sending them flying in all directions.
"Wait for me, pal!" called Twiki and he sprang over a pile of downed drones and landed beside his running human friend who grabbed him up and lept over the threshold into the corridor.
Buck shot down the passageway, weaving around grasping Ambuquads, reached the elevator and kicked a bloodthirsty drone out of the way then sprang inside, spun back around and slapped the control panel.
"Watch your back, Doc!" he shouted back down to the vault.
"Don't worry about me, deal with Crichton!" replied Huer, then the lift doors slid shut and Buck, Dr. Theopolis and Twiki were shooting upwards.
"Bidi-bidi-bidi! Is he gonna be okay?"
"Don't worry about the Doc, Twiki. He can handle himself. Just like you can, apparantly." Buck frowned down at his sidekick.
"I don't know what came over me! It's like I knew just what to do."
"You were channeling a ninja warrior, is what it seemed."
"It just made me so mad, Crichton turning those guys on us like that! Bidi-bidi-bidi!"
"I found what you did very unnerving, Twiki." scolded Theopolis.
"You would, hippie." snorted the drone.
"Please do not do it again."
"A guys gotta do what a guys gotta do."
"Where are we going?" the Quad asked Rogers.
"Where Crichton went."
"And that would be?"
Buck looked upwards, "Don't you feel it?"
"I am incapable of feeling anything." replied Theopolis.
"Well I can sure feel it. The whole building is shaking like Jello in an earthquake." he watched the numbers rise and rise on the elevator's screen, "Whatever Crichton is up to, it's coming to fruition on the roof."
And the Captain was right, because twenty seconds later the elevator car chimed and came to a stop, opening it's doors to the open air of the towering top of the Defense Directorate Building, and across the white-tiled surface of the roof they saw a pack of slaved Ambuquads carrying the large crystal-and-chrome apparatus of the Nexus Core.
"There! It's Crichton!" shouted Twiki, "Bidi-bidi-bidi! There he is!"
But Buck only had eyes for the sky above.
Oh...my...god...
And the flaming wedge of the Draconian Star Fortress screamed down upon the Inner City, it's Warlord pilot unconscious at the controls...
To be continued...