by R. E. Rowe
“I’ll take out as many of those Atilla gorillas as I can during their approach,” Parker said. “I’ll use my armor-piercing blasters on their backsides. One last thing, I found a laser splash control. I’ll paint a red dot on the targets.”
“Good. All we need to do once G-striker paints targets is launch our missiles,” Jayden said. Snap! The missiles would find Parker’s red dots then . . . boom, baby. “Use the purple button to fire missiles.” He wiggled his fingers like he usually did playing online. “On my mark. Zebraguts and Knifetango, far side across the way, pronto. BBgun and I will stay put.”
“Remember, only paint targets with red X s on them!” Jayden yelled at Parker.
Parker nodded, his face beet red and dripping with sweat.
Jayden, took a breath and held it, trying to will his heart back into his chest. He was determined not to freak out. The situation was not only nuts, it was totally confusing. Working the controls, moving the pod, firing weapons. His head pounded.
“Go, go, go!” shouted Parker.
“Ten-four, G-striker,” Zebraguts added. “Game is full on.”
“I’m right behind you, Zebraguts,” Knifetango said. “Pedal to the metal, boys. These pods are way awesome.” He let out a whoop, and his robo arm punched the air.
Zebraguts and Knifetango moved out and took positions in the alley across the street. The alley was a mirror image of the one BBgun and Jayden were in with towering golden skyscrapers all around.
Jayden’s eyes shifted, and his fists flexed as he slapped the control panel entering commands. He jerked his head around to keep his gaze fixed on the approaching army of Atilla machines painted with red X s.
The robo pods moved gracefully. It was incredible to Jayden considering their massive size, and hard to believe other boys like him were sitting in comfy leather chairs inside the belly of each one.
Jayden found a control panel for an array of mortar rounds and guided missiles. He peered around the corner of the alley into the street. Rows of Atilla-monster minivans marked with red X s moved toward the alleyway. The Atilla machines had filled the street and were destroying every Space Command robo pod they encountered.
“In position,” Knifetango reported.
“Targets painted!” shouted Parker.
“On my mark,” Jayden said. “You ready, BBgun? See the weapon controls that G-striker talked about?”
“I see them. I’m ready.”
“Blast ’em!” Jayden yelled. “Fire! Fire! Fire!”
They unloaded a rain of pain on the approaching Atilla as more Space Command robo pods joined their battle.
“Let those pods go on ahead,” Jayden commanded. “Hold your position and keep firing at red X s.”
Jayden and BBgun blasted Atilla from one side. Knifetango and Zebraguts blasted them from the other side. Parker shot at every metal monster within two football fields of the alleyway. Explosions rocked the gold skyscrapers as Atilla machines exploded into metal fragments.
It was working! The five of them had helped other good-guy robo pods move forward, forcing the Atilla to retreat.
The battle raged with explosions all around them. Jayden gazed up and down the street. Dang, he thought.
For every Atilla blown up, two more Atilla replacement machines appeared. But Jayden’s clan stayed put in the alleys and continued firing down upon the Atilla from their positions.
After what seemed like an hour, they had blown up all the Atilla they could see, and the Atilla reinforcements had stopped coming. Space Command reinforcements had ceased as well.
As the smoke cleared, Jayden surveyed the area. Destroyed Atilla machines and Space Command robo pods were scattered all around them, making the street look like a junkyard. What a mess, he thought.
Suddenly, his stomach dropped. Two massive armored vehicles with red X s painted appeared from around a corner and moved toward them.
More Atilla arrived. Each one shaped like a massive industrial robot with tank tread feet and guns for arms.
These Atilla machines were bigger than the other Atilla pods they had been fighting and twice as large as Space Command’s robo pods.
The two giant pods fired laser bursts out of their gun turrets. They easily vaporized everything in their way, clearing a path toward Jayden’s position.
“Killgeek, we’re made!” Parker yelled. “I’m taking ’em out!”
Parker returned fire with his missiles and scored a direct hit! Both Atilla machines blew up in a tremendous ball of fire.
Jayden let out a sigh. “Nice going, G-striker.”
“Any time,” Parker said. He fired his rockets to move back to Jayden’s position while shooting down the long street at new Atilla machines joining the fight.
Jayden was impressed. Parker had obviously mastered the controls of his robopod. With a steady barrage of firepower, Jayden, Parker and the rest of the squad pushed the new wave of Atilla pods back.
Suddenly, Zebraguts screamed, and Jayden heard explosions getting closer.
Jayden zoomed in on Zebraguts’s and Knifetango’s robo pods. He saw Atilla pods firing at them from the far side of their alley a half-mile away. The Atilla were closing in on them fast. Jayden felt a chill when he realized Zebraguts and Knifetango had nowhere to go.
“Killgeek,” Zebraguts said, “An electronic voice inside my pod is identifying itself as Atilla. It’s telling me I should give up or be destroyed.”
“The voice is telling me the same thing,” Knifetango said. “It wants me to egress.”
“Can anyone else hear it?” Jayden asked.
Parker and BBgun both shook their hologram heads no.
“Is there any way we can help them, G-striker?” Jayden asked Parker.
Parker’s voice cracked. “Sorry . . . afraid not. We’re pinned down too.”
“Surrender then, Zebraguts and Knifetango.” Jayden let out a huff. “We’ll blast our way out of here and circle around to rescue you . . . You read?”
“Roger, Killgeek. Cross your fingers we don’t get eaten. Zebraguts out.”
“Ten-four. Knifetango out.”
“BBgun, G-striker, point your guns that way and follow me this way,” Jayden said, using his hands to point in two different directions.
As they blasted the approaching Atilla, the three of them retreated. Jayden searched for a way to circle around the block to rescue Zebraguts and Knifetango. When they reached the far end of the alley, Jayden made a right turn and abruptly stopped his pod. Parker and BBgun stopped behind him.
A new line of Atilla pod reinforcements approached from the opposite direction. It was obvious to Jayden that moving their pods around the block to rescue Zebraguts and Knifetango was no long possible. They were screwed.
“We’re blocked,” Parker said. “No way we can circle back to get them now.”
Jayden clenched his teeth and yelled. “Dang it!” He pointed to a two-story pile of destroyed robo pods. “G-striker, over here! Let’s regroup behind that massive metal pile.”
Seconds later, Jayden, Parker, and BBgun huddled together behind the crumpled pile of metal as the Atilla continued marching closer. Jayden’s stomach spun. There was no place to run.
“Knifetango, Zebraguts. Do you read me?” Jayden shouted.
No answer.
“The Atilla just keep coming,” Parker groaned.
“They got us pinned too,” BBgun said.
Jayden’s tablet vibrated behind him in his shirt. He’d forgotten he even had it on him. It vibrated again. He quickly reached down, lifted up his Space Command shirt, and snatched the tablet from the hidden pocket of his t-shirt.
A picture of a galaxy rotated on the tablet screen. Weird, he thought. He had never seen that before.
Portrait of our Milky Way Galaxy - Art©www.jonlomberg.com
Suddenly, a white beam of light flashed from the tablet like it had back in Jayden’s bedroom. But this time, the flash transformed into a soft white light beaming from the tablet.
The beam changed before his eyes into a hologram floating at face level. At first, it looked to Jayden like a glob of moving colors: blue, purple, red, and then yellow, every color of the rainbow. The glob of colored light rotated in a circle as though it were a Fourth-of-July sparkler. Around and around it went. The colorful flashes grew bigger, and brighter.
“What in the—?” Jayden muttered. “Are you guys seeing this?”
The glob of colors morphed into the figurine of a doll-sized girl with bright eyes, a petite nose, and thin face. Jayden closed his eyes and shook his head, but when he opened them the doll-sized floating pixie was still there. She blew Jayden a kiss, then winked one of its large eyes. He heard a high-pitched whisper. “It’s time for you to go now.”
“See what?” Parker asked.
Jayden rubbed his face in shock. Go? Go where? The only explanation that made sense was he had to be losing his mind. Then, just as suddenly as she’d appeared, the fairy-sized hologram disappeared, and the tablet blanked out.
“This can’t get any weirder,” Jayden mumbled. “Time to go?”
“Killgeek?” Parker shouted. “Go where?”
Jayden put the tablet back into his t-shirt. His attention shifted beyond his pod. The Atilla closed in on them. It can’t end this way, he thought. No way did Jayden want to become an Atilla snack.
“Game over.” Jayden sighed. “Be proud, boys, at least we set a new record for how long we lasted.”
Jayden, Parker, and BBgun positioned their pods as close together as possible. Each one faced each other.
Jayden could see Parker and BBgun’s long faces in the heads-up display.
Parker held his head low. “Sorry, Nora.”
BBgun sat up tall with his ears at attention. He didn’t look like the frightened little boy Jayden had first met. The one who wanted to run away at Nuk’ana’s briefing.
Jayden’s pulse slowed. “G-striker, you remember our smoke-a-bloke?”
Parker straightened his back and squared his shoulders. “Roger that.”
“The what?” BBgun asked.
Jayden located the buttons to release all his remaining blasters. “Prepare to fire all your weapons when they get up on us. Begin self-destruct sequence on my mark. No way the Atilla are capturing us—”
Before Jayden could finish, a crackle blasted over the communication channel. “G-striker, Killgeek, you read me?”
The girl’s voice sounded familiar.
It couldn’t be, Jayden thought, could it? He reflected on what the pixie girl had said, and now he heard Nora’s voice? “Guys, stop the sequence,” Jayden yelled. “Disable!”
Large explosions hit the Atilla that had been approaching them. “G-striker, Killgeek, you read me?” the voice asked again. “Come in. Over. I can’t push them back for long.”
“Nora?” Parker asked.
“Roger, we read you!” Jayden shouted.
“Zeekmo here to save your skinny rear ends. Egress and prepare for pick up. I have you in my laser sight.”
“You’re alive?” Parker asked. “You’re alive!”
“So far, but hurry. Bad guys are kicking our butts up top too. They’re getting close. An Atilla spacecraft is closing in on my position. I only have about thirty seconds. Get a move on, boys.”
BBgun and Parker hit the egress button, and then Jayden pressed his button. The belly of the pod opened, and he jumped out and landed on a large block of solid gold metal the size of a truck near Parker and BBgun.
Jayden felt seriously small. Towers of crumpled debris and mangled skyscraper surrounded the pods. The air was thin and smelled of burnt tires and gunpowder mixed with cotton candy. Gross. It was hard for him to breathe.
Explosions rocked the skyscrapers and knocked the three of them onto their butts. Jayden felt like an ant next to the towers of destroyed Space Command metal pods and crushed Atilla monster machines. He jerked his head up towards a flying UFO like the one from the observatory.
A white beam of light shined down on them.
The next thing Jayden knew, the three of them were inside the hull of the UFO standing on a glowing white circular platform. A spiraling metal staircase ascended on both sides of the circular room. He saw stars from portals along the circular wall.
Parker sprinted for the stairs with Jayden and BBgun at his heels.
When Parker reached the top, he let out a whoop and punched the air. Jayden did the same. Nora was sitting in a black leather bucket seat in front of a wooden steering wheel. She looked like a Formula 1 racer, and wore the Space Command’s black uniform with a black cap on her head. Her tan had faded, but her bright eyes and cute sideways grin reminded Jayden of home.
Cleo, the girl Jayden and Parker had met at the observatory, sat next to Nora. She wore a similar Space Command black uniform and matching cap.
Nora played a drum solo on the controls of the UFO. “Welcome, Space Fighters,” she said. “You were about ten seconds from becoming pop jolly.”
“I found Nora,” Cleo said with a smile on her face. “She saved my rear, big time.”
Nora hit the keyboard again and jumped out of her seat. She gave Parker a giant bear hug. “You crazy twin brother of mine. What do you think you’re doing? Trying to get yourself killed or something?”
“Glad to see you too, sis.” Parker took a step back. He grabbed Nora’s hat, yanked it off, and froze.
Jayden didn’t say a word. Nora’s head had been completely shaved. He couldn’t help but stare, although it didn’t matter. She still looked awesome in Jayden’s opinion, no matter her hairstyle.
“All the girls got buzzed,” Cleo said, and lifted up her hat to show off what had become of her pixie cut.
Parker started to get teary-eyed. “I thought I’d never see you again, sis.”
“I know, right? When they took me, I figured I was burnt toast.” Nora snatched her hat back and flipped it onto her head. “Once I got here, I wasn’t about to fight in some ridiculous alien war.”
Nora smiled at Jayden. “Hola, Surfer Boy.” She walked over and gave Jayden a big hug. “Guess we’re all in the Hair Club for Space Kids clan, huh?”
Jayden smelled jasmine, and his voice box seized.
“Thanks for coming after me,” she said.
Jayden cleared his throat and took a deep breath. “How’d you find us?”
“Well, first, Cleo found me. She said two crazy cute guys were looking for me. One looked like a surfer, and the other wore a black leather jacket and a cap with “Pop Star” printed on it—”
“Basically, I saw the wasp birthmark,” Cleo interrupted.
Nora shot her a grin, then continued. “I heard rumors that Space Command was sending all the boys into hand-to-hand combat. I picked up on some chatter about a squad headed to the front line with no training. I checked the uniform tags. Sure enough—your names popped up. Then I hacked one of Dione base’s control panels, hitched a ride on a transport, and then stole one of these badass flying saucers. The rest is history. Some idiot named Sanders broadcasted a message to all commanders in the area telling them he didn’t figure you’d last ten seconds. He told them not to waste resources rescuing you.”
Jayden smirked. “Winning.”
“You saved us,” BBgun said. “We were all but cooked.”
Cleo and Nora stared at the BBgun’s giant radar-dish-sized ears. Jayden could tell Nora was about to make a comment, but Parker stopped her with a discrete shake of his head.
“This is BBgun,” Jayden said. “The other two guys in our squad . . . well—” Reality started to sink in, and Jayden looked down at his shoes. “I think they were captured.”
Nora made a face. “I heard over the comm. I’m sorry I didn’t get here earlier.”
Parker coughed. “Hey, you hacked a control panel, hitched a ride, and stole a UFO. That’s pretty darn awesome for a newb!”
BBgun gazed at Nora with a stupid grin. “You’re amazing.” His ears turned purple and wiggled.
&nbs
p; No kidding, Jayden thought.
“I admit I was a tad nuts,” she said. “But it wasn’t hard to do once I found the Ga training manual. They use a big binder to train the officers.”
“The manual was in English?” Jayden asked.
“It was in about twenty different language sections, like one of those product manuals back home. I just read the section in English and used what I’d learned from hacking your dad’s tablet to figure out the Ga encryption scheme. The control panel was way more complicated, but not completely different either. Long story short, I’m here.”
“Are we going home now?” asked BBgun.
“Wish it was that simple,” Nora said. “It seems like it should be as easy as driving to the mall.
Unfortunately, I need coordinates to get there. At the moment, I’m still working on that.”
“So where are we headed now?” Parker asked.
Jayden stared out a long viewport window that surrounded the circular room above their heads.
Nora sat back down and flipped a switch and the entire metallic top of the UFO went transparent and filled with bright stars. Jayden couldn’t believe they were flying around in space.
“Nice viewport, huh?” Nora asked.
A nearby red planet reminded Jayden of Mars. Three colorful moons floated around it. He was having trouble getting his head around everything that was happening. The city battle was far away, but it didn’t feel like they’d moved at all.
“Right now, we’re on the dark side of the second moon orbiting that red planet,” Nora said. “Every other place around here is crawling with either Atilla, shape-shifting Zepar, or Space Command grunts like us.”
Jayden shook out his hands in relief. They had Nora and the tablet! Next stop: home. He could almost smell Rosa’s chicken and coconut rice. “Once you figure out the coordinates, how long will it take to get back to Earth?” he asked.
“Sorry, not possible,” Cleo said. “Afraid this little flying thing doesn’t have the range.”
“This UFO won’t make it home?” Jayden asked Nora.
Nora shook her head. “Nope.”
So much for home cooked Columbian anytime soon, Jayden thought. His stomach churned again as he clawed the high back of Nora’s seat to steady himself. “So how do we get home?”