FuturAstrorama
VII.
Earth-Moon System
The entire crew of the Nimbus sat in the brig tied up with silly string.
"You traitorous coward!" Kif scowled at Zapp Brannigan. "How could you just allow those robots to be beamed aboard the ship and take control of it!"
"Easy Kif!" Zapp replied. "It's all part of my master plan! I now have them just where they want us!"
"Oy vey!" Kif replied.
The Planet Express ship was halfway to the moon when the collision alert warning began to beep.
"Bring up the forward long range viewer!" Leela said.
Fry activated the controls from his console and the screen slowly focused and the image of the Nimbus appeared.
"Not that idiot, Zapp again!" Leela sighed. "I'm sick and tired of his High School sexual advances on me! I'm going to take some evasive actions and get away from him pronto!"
Leela went to full throttle and changed course, but the Nimbus quickly reacted and kept pace with the Planet Express Ship.
"They're hailing us!" Fry said, as he brought up the ship to ship communications on the main screen.
Instead of the scourge of DOOP, it was the image of the Master Cylinder that appeared on screen.
"Attention Earth ship!" the can shaped robot demanded. "Surrender, or prepare to be destroyed!"
Leela made a quick 180 degree turn and hit the throttle.
"Oh Crap! They're gaining on us!" Amy Wong cried from her navigation station.
The Nimbus fired several rounds of laser blasts, but Master Cylinder's soldier bots hadn't quite yet figured out the Nimbus's weapons systems and they missed by a good margin. Astro stood up in front of the view screen.
"That guy kinda looks familiar to me." he said.
The laser blasts were getting closer.
"I think they're getting the hang of the ship" Leela said "I don't think we can stay ahead of them for much longer. Any ideas?"
"Just one." Astro said. "Get me out of this ship!"
"Allow me!" Bender said. He grabbed Astro and carried him towards the back of the ship and into the torpedo room. He opened up the loading door to tube #1 and stuffed Astro into it.
"Firing rear torpedo!" Bender cried and slammed his fist onto the firing button.
Astro blasted out of the rear torpedo tube heading straight for the Nimbus.
"I can't just destroy the ship," he thought "there are innocent people on board being held captive by those robots."
Leela kept dodging the laser fire from the Nimbus. Suddenly three photon torpedoes appeared on the radar screen.
"Oh Crap!" she yelled as she yanked the ship around to avoid the incoming missiles.
The Nimbus fired another salvo of torpedoes. Astro flew toward the cluster of missiles and hit the first of them with a right uppercut knocking it off course. He kicked the second of the group into the third and the two torpedoes exploded a safe distance away. Now getting close to the Nimbus he headed straight for its torpedo port and smashed his way into the weapons bay. Fighting his way past a group of the can shaped robot soldiers, he used his arm cannons on the weapons control panel.
Suddenly the salvo of laser fire and photon torpedoes from the Nimbus stopped.
"I bet Astro just took their weapons systems off line." Bender said with some pride.
Astro made his way through the ship and headed for the brig. He had to fight his way past another group of soldier bots that suddenly surrounded him at the junction of four intersecting corridors. Astro wheeled quickly about on the balls of his feet, his butt guns blazing. Within a few seconds the floor was littered with out of commission soldier bots.
Astro reached the brig and used his finger lasers to cut open the locked doors, freeing the men of the Nimbus. He untied a few of the crew, including Zapp and Kif.
"Who are you? and thanks for coming to our aid." Zapp replied.
"I'm Astro, a robot from New Tokyo." Astro said.
"Look out, behind you!" Kif cried out, too late!
Suddenly two heavy claws grabbed Astro from behind by the neck. He found himself being throttled by a giant can shaped monster robot. A magnetic laser beam hit him and he felt his energy being drained.
"NOBODY DEFEATS THE MASTER CYLINDER!" came the voice from behind Astro.
Zapp Brannigan and Kif watched in horror as Astro fought against the power drain of the magnetic laser being fired at him, and the grip of the two heavy claws around his neck. He slumped forward, and fell limp. Master Cylinder shut down his magnetic ray and was about to toss Astro's limp form aside when suddenly he was hit by a hail of armor piercing shells. Astro extended the two hip guns from his butt and emptied both clips into Master Cylinder!
Both of the huge robot's arms were shot off, and his power supply shorted out. Master Cylinder fell to the floor and started sparking and smoking.
The crew of the Nimbus ran out of the brig and quickly shut the doors behind them, leaving Master Cylinder inside. Just as the heavy doors of the brig snapped shut, the large robot exploded.
Zapp Brannigan led the crew of the Nimbus toward the transporter room.
"I'm volunteering all of you for a detail to beam back down to Lunar City to free the city from what remains of Master Cylinder's army. With their leader now dead, we should have an easy time of it!"
As the crew grouped themselves onto the transporter pads, Kif yelled to his commanding officer.
"You don't really expect that you'll find the Master Cylinder's army that easy to overpower do you?" The second in command asked.
"Certainly!" Zapp replied. "they are now leaderless, and confused. We must hurry before we loose that advantage!"
Astro motioned to Kif, who stepped off the transporter pad just as the beams were energized.
"Put on a spacesuit." Astro told the slender green officer. "We'll fly over to the base and sneak in thought the back door, so to speak."
Astro and Kif watched as Zapp and his soldiers dematerialized from the transporter and were beamed over to the very same point on the moon base where they had first arrived.
The Nimbus boarding party materialized in the middle of the Lunar City grand concourse to again find themselves surrounded by armed robot soldiers. This time both armies had their guns drawn to a Mexican standoff.
"Surrender, we've got you surrounded!" Zapp yelled out.
"No, YOU surrender, we've got YOU surrounded!" a deep electronic voice called out from behind where Zapp Brannigan was standing.
Zapp quickly turned his head to see Master Cylinder standing behind him, holding a rather large anti-matter ray gun.
"What are you doing here?" Zapp asked. "You blew up on the Nimbus!"
"I've been here all this time." Master Cylinder laughed. "My clone beamed up to your ship to take it over. No matter, we can simply try the matter all over again.!"
Kif held on tightly to Astro with his arm gripped around his neck while the boy robot flew towards the Planet Express ship. Strapped to his back was a duffel bag containing firearms from the Nimbus. They entered through the rear airlock behind the cargo bay.
"How did it go?" Leela asked as the two of them entered the ship's bridge.
"Astro over powered the Master Cylinder and the crew quickly captured the robot army that had taken over the Nimbus." Kif explained. "Only now my duffus CO is about to beam back to Lunar City, right into the middle of the lion's den."
"It's obvious that the Master Cylinder that I destroyed on the Nimbus was a clone of the the one on the moon." Astro said. "Zapp was too full of himself to consider the possibility."
"Tell me about it!" Leela face palmed. "So now what do we do?"
"Take the ship in for a landing on the far side of the moon." Kif explained. "There is an abandoned base there that has a tunnel connection to Lunar City. With any luck the robots will not have discovered it, as it has been abandoned for centuries."
"Right, we can surprise them." Leela agreed.
Uran remained behind with little Chi-tan, while Cobalt joined his brother in the assault. Leela, Amy, Fry, and Zoidberg donned spacesuits as the old tunnel had been depressurized for years. Astro took the point position and lead the small army through the abandoned tunnel. He illuminated the way through the dark passageway with his eye searchlights. Each member of the contingent carried a laser rifle Kif had brought with him from the Nimbus arms locker. Bender carried the largest one, a monster that looked like a cross between a cannon and a tuba. Clamped in the obnoxious robot's mouth was a big fat cigar. He also had put an NRA badge on his chest.
The army finally reached the airlock leading into the old section of Lunar City. Bender tried to crank the door lock open, but it was rusted shut.
"Let me give you a hand with that." Astro said. Astro added his 100,000 HP to Bender's and the two of them cracked the door open.
"We make a great team!" Bender laughed, punching Astro on the shoulder.
Once inside the city, the humans stripped off their spacesuits, and Bender lit his cigar.
"Must you?" Leela moaned, coughing from the smoke.
Astro's feet squeaked quietly as they snuck towards the city jail where the robots had imprisoned the city officers. There was only a small group of robots guarding the jail and they quickly overpowered them with minimal gun fire (except for the tremendous blast from the BFG Bender was armed with).
"Why the hell did you bring THAT thing along?" Leela asked Kif, pointing to the huge melted pile of robots in the middle of the corridor.
"You never know." Kif answered.
"Now we need to find where the crew of the Nimbus are being held." Cobalt pointed out. "I hope that Master Cylinder hasn't transported back over to the Nimbus."
"That isn't going to happen." Kif said proudly. "Just before Astro and I left the ship, we disabled the transporters on the Nimbus and activated the cloaking shield. The only way back on board is though the airlock that we exited from."
Kif pulled out a tricorder from his pocket. "Each member of the Nimbus crew has a nano tracking device implanted under his skin." He explained, "I've got my tricorder tuned to Zapp's right now. Follow me."
Kif lead the way along the back corridors of the Lunar base. They soon approached the Grand Concourse where they had first beamed down earlier. Once again, the crew of the Nimbus had been disarmed and tied up by the robot army. Master Cylinder stood with his back facing where the advancing column was hiding from view.
"Now what are we going to do?" Leela asked.
"I actually think that Zapp had the right idea." Kif said. "Knock out the leader and the rest of the robots will be helpless without direction."
"All right, then." Astro smirked, morphing his left arm into a particle beam cannon, "He's not getting the drop on me again!"
Astro aimed and fired a quick blast at the huge robot. Master Cylinder was stunned, but he quickly turned around. Bender opened fire with the BFG at the same time that the other members of the Planet Express crew fired their laser rifles. Cobalt took careful aim with the weapon he had been issued, hitting Master Cylinder squarely in the ass where his recharge port was. The giant robot started glowing red hot.
"Great shooting Tex! Kif cried out. "He's going to explode!"
Astro flew forward and grabbed Master Cylinder, blasting through the roof of the building. He dropped the now white hot enemy about fifty miles from the base and flew back to join his friends, just as Master Cylinder self destructed with a 20 Kiloton detonation.