Manic Monday: (Dane Monday 1)

by Dennis Liggio

  Outside, the demon was shaking apart and falling forward. Hooved feet would not hold a massive building without magic. The green fire was gone from the wings and the demon was off balance. For nearly a minute it wavered, as if some small part of Carmichael's will was leftover to hold it straight. It might have held longer, but the reversion to simple building materials allowed Honnenheim to finally yank the Omega's fist out of the building. Pulled by this movement, the demon-building fell forward, falling down on the smoking crater that once was Avalon's Hope.

  As it fell, it came apart. Rather than falling as a singular mass, it fell like a jumble of pieces. Floors and rooms separated. The Terminus rained down on the crater as an upended toybox or the worst game of Towers of Hanoi ever. Only the base of the Terminus fell in something resembling one piece. The crater filled up with the broken parts of the Terminus, one of Carmichael's failures poured into another.

  "I don't like how cramped it is in here," said Jameson. They were in a narrow vertical access tunnel that was designed for maintenance robots only. Dane was at home in this tight space, but Jameson's wider shoulders made this an even less comfortable fit.

  "Are you claustrophobic, Agent Jameson?" said Dane.

  "No, I just don't like being in spaces where my options are limited," said Jameson. "I like enough room to have a fighting chance. Particularly in dangerous places."

  "That last robot didn't seem to cause you any trouble," said Dane.

  Jameson had already broken one of the maintenance robots with a forceful hit after Dane lacked any means of disabling it. Dane had then pulled the robot apart looking for useful components. He was now using a dismembered robot arm as an adhoc passcard on the locks.

  "Can we just stop this thing?" said Jameson. "You do know how to stop it, right?"

  "I have some ideas," said Dane.

  "I assume you mean you have no ideas at all and you're smug in your recklessness?" said Jameson with a sighing eyeroll.

  "It's like you know me well, but this is only our first date!" said Dane with a smile, opening a horizontal hatch for them to crawl through.

  "Then what's the reason we're crawling around in here?"

  "I'm hoping we find something significant," said Dane. "Generator, control system, computer brain, maybe Honnenheim himself."

  "But you have no idea if any of those are around here," suggested Jameson.

  "Generally you put that stuff in the bulkiest part of the robot, which is the direction we're heading - the Belly of the Beast... err Chest of the Robot," said Dane. "Besides, at least I'm working with this. If we left it up to you, you'd just punch or shoot it. And right now, bullets would just bounce all over, so that'd probably be a bad idea."

  Jameson sighed and followed. He did have Kripp's gun, so they weren't completely defenseless. But Dane was wrong that Jameson would fire it wildly. If only he had the right target...

  They went through another hatch. "This looks interesting," said Dane.

  The area beyond the hatch wasn't a maintenance tunnel. This was a full sized compartment made for a human being to stand in. It resembled an airplane kitchen, as it had the essentials for someone to eat, drink, and dispose of the trash. There was a small door which appeared to go to a toilet. There was a much larger hatch on the opposite end of the room. That hatch was well-reinforced.

  "I'm almost positive that this goes to the cockpit," said Dane. "Nobody would put their food and bathroom that far from piloting."

  "Can you open it?" said Jameson.

  "Absolutely," said Dane. He walked over to the hatch's control panel and swiped the dismembered robot arm. Nothing happened. "Maybe. You wouldn't have an Enochian Omnitool, by any chance?"

  Inside his cockpit, Honnenheim was fixing his systems and celebrating his victory. Once he successfully pulled the Omega-6's fist from the demon, his opponent had fallen forward and collapsed into the crater. He smiled about that; in the end it had fallen just like all of his foes. There was something satisfying to see his rival scattered on the street in front of him, even if he did not get to see the defeated face of his enemy first hand.

  He had a bottle of cognac waiting in the galley to toast that success. A quick drink to savor the feeling of victory, then it was on to subjugating the city. He admitted that the city would probably be harder to subjugate than his original projections, mostly since the demon's appearance and the subsequent fight had allowed the city, state, and national resources to organize a resistance against him. Those would all fall easily, it just would take more time.

  But before any of that, he had to repair the arm. While it was now free from the Terminus, the arm itself was still malfunctioning. The servos were only working at 60%, which was still useable, but since there was now a brief downtime, he needed to order maintenance robots over there and figure out a way to reroute functions to avoid what was likely a broken coupler.

  In a few minutes, the maintenance robots were reporting that they were working on the repair. They estimated another two minutes to swap the part out and allow Honnenheim to return to full functionality.

  "Wonderful!" Honnenheim said to himself, which is why he didn't hear the hatch to his left open. "Soon the city shall feel my wrath and it shall know its new master!" His own maniacal laughter followed.

  An element of surprise was lost when Honnenheim's laughter was interrupted by, "No, you can't just shoot him!"

  Honnenheim turned to see Dane trying to wrestle with Jameson's arm, which held a gun pointing straight at Honnenheim.

  "Monday! You sneaky interloper! I see you have brought a thug to finish what you have always been too cowardly to end!"

  Dane let go of Jameson's arm and stood up. "Honnenheim, this is it! Surrender yourself and the Omega robot! Otherwise we will be forced to stop you!"

  "Stop me, Monday? And how do you expect to do that? This is my megarobot! I command all here! I hold all the power -"

  In these close quarters, the sound of the gunshot was deafening. It was as if thunder had struck right in the small cockpit. One of the large displays behind Honnenheim exploded in a rain of glass. The professor looked over to Jameson's smoking gun.

  "You're going to come with me or things are going to get a lot messier in here," said Jameson.

  Honnenheim's mind quickly ran over all the possibilities. There was a sonic disruptor under the dashboard, but he had no chance of grabbing it and aiming it before Jameson shot him. He could send a signal to his maintenance robots, but none were in the area and again, Jameson would probably shoot him as soon as he touched the keyboard. A voice command?

  "Robots, this is Honnenheim, prepare -"

  Another screen exploded.

  "I told him about your voice activation," said Dane.

  "Curse you, Monday!"

  "Oh, it's always curse me! Never anyone else! It's not always my fault."

  "I don't know this man's name," said Honnenheim. "I can't curse an anonymous stranger."

  "Special Agent Jameson," said the agent flatly, his gun not wavering.

  "Well, Special Agent Jameson," said Honnenheim. "We shall meet again!" Honnenheim slammed his hand down on a big button. Before either of the other two men could react, automated systems encased Honnenheim, his chair, and the controls in front of him in a metal pod. The entire deployment took less than a second, so Jameson's inevitable bullet ricocheted off it, thankfully missing Dane. The professor's pod had windows, so they both see and hear Honnenheim say, "I will have my revenge on you both!"

  The ceiling above the cockpit opened up, revealing that all the layers of the robot above this were opening to the sky. In a moment, jets began firing. Dane grabbed Jameson and pulled him back into the galley and the to the left, so they were not directly in front of the open hatch. A second later the jets fired, filling the cockpit and the hatch entry with fire as the pod was ejected straight up into the air above the Omega-6. A half second later wings extended and the rear thruster kicked in. Honnenheim's pod began flying away.


  "Revenge!" the professor shouted in the pod, his fist shaking, but he had no external sound capabilities, so no one heard him.

  Inside the robot, Dane and Jameson stood up. Their clothes were slightly singed, but they were otherwise unharmed.

  "Thanks for that, I guess," said Jameson, brushing soot off his arms. "What now?"

  Dane looked into the cockpit and saw that the parts that hadn't left with Honnenheim were now melted and sparking.

  "That's never good," said Dane. "But provided it was just a room of terminals and not the primary functions, we should be okay."

  "Systems failing," said a robotic voice. "Control command console no longer within range. Lockdown commencing. Systems engaging destruct sequence."

  "That's really not good," said Dane.

  "Destruct sequence? Is this thing going to explode?" said Jameson.

  Around them, they could hear small explosions that came from within the robot. Next to the gunshot and other explosions, they seemed almost pitiful. "Oh, not at all," said Dane. "He's not destroying the whole thing, just the systems themselves are shutting down and destroying themselves so nobody can get any of this technology."

  "Oh, that's better then," said Jameson with some relief.

  "Yeah, it only means that the robot's going to shutdown and fall over," said Dane.

  "That's not much better than an explosion," said Jameson. "What do you propose?"

  "Hold on?" said Dane, wrapping his arm around a galley handhold as the whole room started to lean forward.

  The Omega-6 had a few minor internal explosions before falling silent. It stood straight, a deactivated robot with smoke billowing from various joints. Then it too began to fall forward, its descent almost a parody of the demon's just a short while earlier. Rather than hitting the ground in a chunky, broken mess like the disassembling Terminus, when the Omega-6 struck the street, it merely cracked the asphalt.

  When nothing else happened for moments after, there was a sigh of relief from everyone: from the assembled onlookers on the street, from police, from Mitch Mendelson in his chopper, from Tug Johnson in the studio, and from the audience across New Avalon. They were glad after all this chaos, that it was all over, and that the robot had fallen and simply deactivated. They had no idea that a few moments later, the robot's power generator, located in the robot's reflective metallic lower posterior, went into overload. Honnenheim was not around to hear the warnings nor to direct any maintenance robots to stop it.

  Then the robot exploded.

  Epilogue

  Night had already descended by the time the area was deemed safe enough and emergency services were organized into a plan. Government and rescue helicopters circled North Egan, their spotlights trying to illuminate the important features for the ground teams. The lights seemed feeble as they tried to show the two titanic masses. Whenever the spotlight passed it, the Terminus's head, turned sideways by the collapse and at the edge of the Avalon's Hope crater, loomed out of the darkness like some evil colossus. The rest of the Terminus Hotel was a collapsed pile of floors and buildings. Some of it was surprisingly intact, while other parts of it had been practically disintegrated in the crash.

  The Omega-6 was still burning, smoke rising upward. The fires at this point were minor; the Avalon Fire Department performed its job like a well-oiled machine. Once they were cleared to act, they descended upon the wreck and worked put to it out; much like they had done for so many fires across Avalon in the past few years. However, since it was a burning robot, it was taking longer than expected. They focused on putting out the dangerous fires.

  Out in the light of the burning robot, emergency teams found a small crowd - the survivors of the Terminus Hotel. Bruised and bleeding, covered in soot, and bathed in the light of flickering flames, the Terminus workers stood in an almost protective circle around the wounded - those injured in the escape and the guards shot by Will Voss. The young agent stood in front of the group, his badge at hand, ready to answer any questions that emergency teams had. Within three steps was Kripp, his wrists handcuffed. As soon as law enforcement showed up, Voss handed off the captured security chief.

  As soon as they were allowed, news reporters rushed in, kids in a candy store. This was the story of the decade, and they were going to get it. At first, it was a smorgasbord as their camera crews had so much destruction to film. They had rubble, a now mostly extinguished giant robot, and wounded people. Visually, it was stunning, it was the aftermath of a catastrophe. But then the problems on the reporting side kicked in. What did they actually know? They were at a loss for information in the face of a public that were hungry for news.

  Channel 5's Jack Steadman was the first major network reporter on the scene, mostly due to his competitive nature and his ability to shove other reporters out of the way. His head bandaged and his aviator jacket ripped, Jack rushed as close to the wrecks as he could, trying to setup a shot for his cameraman with as much rubble and fire behind him as possible. His new cameraman, sent from headquarters to meet Jack at the site with a specific agenda, framed the shot and started filming. As Jack began to report, something was clear to both the cameraman and the exec that watching the footage as well as talking in the cameraman's earpiece - this wasn't news. Besides the fire and Steadman's bandage, this just wasn't worthwhile. This wasn't an exclusive. What they had was already reported and was continuing to be reported on all other networks. The information Jack had was the same information Tug had - Tug could have done the same story from the anchor desk. In fact, Jack might know less than Tug; Jack had been unconscious for a while after his chopper crash and had missed some of the events. Steadman talked in vague terms about the event. Not only was it lacking in new information, it was actually somewhat boring.

  This wasn't exclusively Channel 5's problem. All the networks were finding they lacked information. Police, government, and rescue teams were still too busy doing their jobs and pushing reporters away. No official statements were given, no officer had time to leak information. All the networks were running on repeated information. They could describe what they were seeing, but that was it. There was much they could conjecture, but that was always tricky in a major event. You could get ratings initially, but when it came out that you were misleading the public with false information, there would be backlash. On this one, the network execs had directed the reporters to not overstep their bounds. So they were keeping their stories conservative and therefore the public was very hungry.

  As Steadman struggled through his weak reporting, retreading the same information in the same vague way, the cameraman noticed another reporter. This young redheaded woman was reporting on the catastrophe, but she didn't seem associated with any network. Her hair was messy, her arms covered with bruises, and her face was streaked with ash from where she tried to wipe it away. She didn't even have a real cameraperson. For some reason, that same federal agent Will Voss was holding a small consumer grade camera to film her. At first the professionals who saw her just scoffed at the amateur. But then they noticed the strangest thing. This girl seemed to actually know things about the catastrophe. She was talking about facts that were plausible and likely but which no one, not the police, government, or emergency workers had told anyone. This girl seemed to have the inside track, something that had more credence considering she had a heroic federal agent as her adhoc cameraman. While all the other reporters had ideas, this woman seemed to have been there.

  Though she was noticed by other reporters, it was really Mitch Mendelson from Channel 8 who decided to take the risk and go for the new opportunity. He knew when to defer to someone else. He broke off his own reporting and gestured to his cameraman. He walked over to the redheaded woman and with a mouthed, "Is this okay?" he put his mic in front of her. She was immediately flustered, but smiled and nodded without breaking the flow of her reporting. The Channel 8 cameraman immediately framed Abby and started filming. Once Channel 8 did this, all the other networks, local and national, realized this was a gr
eat idea and moved their mics and cameras to the girl. With dismay, Jack Steadman noticed that in the middle of one of his sentences that his own cameraman turned to film the girl at an order from the network. With even greater dismay, Steadman recognized who the woman was - she had been asking him for advice about journalism jobs just weeks ago. Now she was upstaging him, and there wasn't a damn thing he could do about it. He let the arm that held the Channel 5 mic drop uselessly to his side and wore a scornful frown.

  And for this one moment, this one evening, Abby was a national star. Until the networks had facts directly from city or federal officials, the networks were willing to just film this girl and her groundless facts. The networks wouldn't risk their credibility, but they were completely willing to air Abby. If her claims ended up false, they could just say she was an eyewitness, not a reporter. And either way, it was good television. She was a survivor and audiences would eat up everything she was saying whether it was the truth or the ravings of someone in shock. For now, the text beneath her just said, ABBY CONNORS, EYEWITNESS.

  And that's how Abby ended up reporting the news on every channel, telling the story everyone was fascinated by but no one would ever truly believe.

  Not far away, Dane and Jameson watched Abby reporting the story. Both men were covered in soot and ash. Both were exhausted. After the Omega-6's power generator exploded, they had pulled themselves out of the twisted metal that once was the megarobot. They were lucky that the compartments near the cockpit were heavily shielded. This was by design - Honnenheim wanted to increase his own chance of survival should his generator explode. The professor had built enough Avalon Brass machines to build in explosion failsafes. In this case, that design had saved the lives of his enemies.

  That's not to say it was easy. Though they didn't get caught in the fires or explosion, they were bruised. As they wriggled out of the wreckage, they cut themselves a few times on sharpened metal. The robot's innards also started to fill with smoke and then barely got out before they choked to death on acrid fumes. Freedom and fresh air felt like heaven. And now, not too long after, they could finally breathe without coughing. A certain tired serenity fell over the men.