A manzanita bush crackled and burst apart with an explosion of red branches. The giant brown sauro George shoved his way through the bush and stopped in a patch of pink-flowering ice plants. A pair of shorter but still very muscular lizards jumped through the bushes on either side of the giant. One held a triangular device in his claws.
George looked at Plastra. “Do you think they think we’re following them?”
Plastra stared down at the tracker. “Why would they think a silly thing like that?”
“Because if I was them, I would think that I was following me. Wait––if I was chasing me, I would think I was them. Wait––”
“Shut up, George.” Astra pointed at the lights of the human village. “We’re following Nistra’s signal, and they’re running away from us in the same direction. It’s just a coincidence.”
George shook his head. “What’s a coing-ka-dink?”
“A coincidence is two idiots that aren’t related,” said Astra. “Your father and mother, for example.”
George grabbed the smaller sauro around the neck with both claws.
“My mother is a saint!” he snarled. “You take that back!”
Plastra smacked George on the shoulder, his yellow eyes wide. “Wait-–what if they’re the ones keeping our dear brother prisoner? They’re running back to finish him off for good!”
George dropped Astra and charged toward the village, his muscular legs churning up and down like pistons.
“Stay alive, buddy!” he roared. “We’re coming for ya!”
WITHOUT TELEVISION, video games, or holographic gladiator matches, the people of 1912 went to bed much earlier than Amy expected.
Three flung her nightgown onto the bed. “I’m not wearing this freaky outfit. I’d rather sleep naked!”
Mrs. Morgan had given the teenagers identical long-sleeved gowns of white cotton. The garments buttoned high on the neck and the bottom hem reached all the way to the floor. Amy had already changed into her gown, and brushed her blonde hair in front of a small oval mirror on the wall.
“Absolutely not,” she said. “I’m not sharing a featherbed with anyone naked. Also, you promised to try and fit in with everyone else.”
“I did? I don’t remember that.”
Amy stopped brushing and turned to stare at Three. The older teenager shrugged.
“Okay, okay. Don’t give me those sad kitten eyes. Hey! Let’s do each other’s braids. We’re sisters, after all.”
Amy returned to the mirror and hair-brushing. “How quaint. Dimensional copies pretending to be twins.”
“No twins here, babe. You’re much better looking. I’ve taken too many elbows to the face to be beautiful. See this nose? Broken twice.”
Amy squinted at Three. “I can’t tell. Your nose looks fine to me.”
“Robotic surgeons do wonders. Just don’t ask them about the weather.”
“Why not?”
Three shrugged. “Bug in their programming. They go berserk and start killing.”
The girls took turns parting each other’s hair and plaiting the blonde strands into two braids. When both were done, they admired each other’s work in the mirror.
“Twins,” said Amy with a faint smile. “Sort of.”
Three pumped her fist. “Yeah! We’re gonna to take over the universe!”
Amy blew out the lantern, pulled the round bedwarmer from under the quilt, and slid under the warm covers of the featherbed with Three.
“Good night. Sleep tight.”
Three rolled onto her side to face Amy. “Hey, kid,” she murmured. “I need to tell you something about me and the other copies.”
Amy closed her eyes. “I’m too tired,” she whispered. “Wait until morning.”
“Fine.”
Amy took a deep breath and let it out slowly, trying to imagine sunshine and a warm country meadow. The house was deathly quiet in the way that only pre-electronic houses could be, with no refrigerator, central heating, or computer systems to hum, beep, or whir. Amy listened to Three’s breathing as it slowed and became whisper-quiet.
Something cracked outside the window. Amy opened her eyes and sat up in bed.
“What was that?”
“Fireworks,” said Three softly. “Or a firing squad.”
“A firing squad? After dark?”
“Fireworks,” murmured Three.
A distant boom rattled the window. An unknown number of horses galloped down the street, their hooves beating the dirt with a rapid clip-clop.
“That’s no firework,” said Amy.
She climbed over Three and crept barefoot to the window. A dull thud shook the glass panes and the wooden planks of the bedroom floor.
“Something’s happening and I can’t see anything,” she said, and grabbed her leather boots. “I’m going outside.”
Three groaned. “Come on, it’s just a cannon or a mining accident or something stupid.”
“I don’t think so. You can stay here if you want.”
Three tossed off the covers and shoved boots onto her feet. “No, I can’t. I’d fall asleep, you’d come back and wake me up, I’d pace the floors until dawn with no sleep and pull out my hair, then jump off a bridge because who wants to live without hair?”
Mrs. Morgan and the handful of other women staying at the Benevolent Society were gathered on the porch. All had been staring at the light show in the west, and turned when Amy opened the door.
“My dear children, I hope you weren’t disturbed,” said Mrs. Morgan. “The Army has decided to try out their new cannons, apparently.”
“That’s what we reckon is the case,” said another woman in a nightgown. “Or a ship off the coast has caught fire. It’s a calamity either way, no bones about it. Will all this noise, none of the cows will give milk in the morning.”
Amy followed Three down the steps to the garden, where the older teenager pointed to the sky.
“Plasma rifles,” she whispered. “Look! Blue streaks against the clouds, definitely plasma. Sounds like it too, if you listen hard enough.”
The clouds glowed orange from a series of rapid explosions, and several of the women on the porch screamed.
“Lord save them,” said a female guest. “Think of the brave young men!”
Mrs. Morgan held up a hand. “Ladies, please. The Presidio is on the hill behind us. It must be an artillery drill.”
Three turned to Amy and lowered her voice. “It’s not artillery, it’s micro-missiles. I’ve heard that fizz-shriek enough times.” She held up a finger. “Wait––that’s impossible. One doesn’t have anything that uses micro-missiles. I wonder if Four bought some military hardware from the cats and never told me.”
The lights of a Model T flashed by as it rattled at high speed toward the blue and orange glow in the sky.
“It sounds like whatever it is, it doesn’t belong in 1912,” whispered Amy. “That evil Amy Armstrong that you call ‘One’ could be there. This is our chance to face her.”
Three stared at Amy. “She’s not alone––she has three ships! Wits Hater, Raw Tithes, and Hare Twist, all packed with cats and dogs and each meaner than the next. You see those plasma bursts and explosions? These cotton nightgowns are about as good as butterfly wings when it comes to deflecting military weapons.”
“I didn’t say I wanted to fight.”
The residents of Pine Avenue stood on their porches along the street watching the show. Eventually the blue and orange flashes stopped and the rumble of explosions faded away, and most of the citizens snuffed their oil lanterns and returned to bed.
“Something’s wrong,” said Three.
“Who won?” Amy asked. “Who was even fighting?”
“Don’t you hear it? The screaming, the horrible grinding. It sounds like a robot with his hand caught in a blender.”
Amy shrugged. “That’s how a Model T sounds backing up.”
“Be serious!”
“I am. Look for yourself.”
T
he black Model T that had driven toward the lighthouse a moment earlier appeared under the glow of a distant streetlight, reversing up Pine as fast as possible and surrounded by fleeing villagers like a horde of lawyers around a recent lottery winner. The frantic crowd overtook the car and dashed by Amy and Three with expressions of horror and shock on their faces.
“Flee!”
“Monsters … monsters!”
An ancient man in red flannel pajamas tottered up the street, his long white beard swaying down to his waist.
“It’s the end,” he moaned. “The end, I tell you. Run for your lives!”
Mrs. Morgan pushed the other women back inside and waved at Amy and Three.
“Girls, come back inside! Hurry!”
“Much appreciated, Mrs. Morgan,” said Three. “But if it really is the end of the world, I want a front row seat.”
The red-haired woman stared at Three for a second with her mouth open in shock, and then closed the door. The drapes at the front window parted and she stood there, mouth moving silently as she spoke to the women behind her.
“You should be nicer,” said Amy. “Especially to someone that gave us dinner and a place to sleep.”
Three crossed her arms and pouted. “I thought I was being nice. I really DO want a front-row seat.”
The crowd of villagers in their pajamas ran past Amy and Three and continued up the street, the women holding up the skirts of their nightgowns as they ran and the men jogging along, urging the ladies faster.
The Model T was never designed to move rapidly in reverse gear, a fact which brought many colorful curses from the driver. At last he jumped out of the car and ran after the crowd, leaving the automobile to putter harmlessly in the middle of the street without a driver.
Amy squinted. “Is that a cat? That’s a cat wearing a helmet!”
A gray tabby shot out of the darkness with an olive-green helmet bouncing on his furry head and brown armor plates jiggling on his back. He sprinted by with a spray of gravel and dust and continued up Pine Avenue. A strange thunder grew in the darkness beyond the last streetlight, and a mob of over a hundred cats and dogs rushed by the two girls, some wearing armor and most covered in sand and blood. A few carried plasma rifles on their backs, but none gave more than a desperate, wide-eyed glance at the two girls as they galloped past the white gate of the Benevolent Society.
Three pointed at the tails of the animals as they fled into the night. “Those are One’s soldiers! And that was a brigade from Two’s ship!”
“If she sent them after us, they’re not doing a great job,” said Amy.
Rapid, loud thumps shook the earth and caused the rosebushes to sway. Amy and Three hid behind the white fence as a steel monstrosity five meters tall bounded out of the darkness and hurtled past in the direction of the fleeing cats and dogs. A pair of dangerous-looking cannon barrels bracketed the large steel sphere above the legs. Irregular green and black horizontal stripes covered every inch of the ball-shaped body and chicken-bent legs. Like the frightened cats in front of it, the machine kept its glowing triangular window-eyes fixed straight ahead, and never turned them left or right.
“You don’t see that every day,” said Amy.
Three scratched the back of her leg under the cotton gown. “What? It’s a walker from Wits Hater, but the pilot barely looked at us. Why would she risk sending walkers to find us? The maintenance on those things is murder!”
Amy stood from behind the fence and watched the walker thump away down the street. “The bigger question is … what’s it running from?”
Three pulled Amy back down. “Watch out!”
The damp grass below Amy’s fingers shook violently, and she would have fallen into a rosebush if Three hadn’t caught her. With a hiss of hydraulics and click of oiled steel, something large and even heavier than the walker passed by. Through the wooden slats of the fence, Amy glimpsed an armored tail and a leg of gray metal.
“That’s Sunflower!”
She jumped to her feet and ran after the limping steel tiger.
“Wait!” hissed Three.
“It’s Sunflower’s cat-tank from Tau Ceti, I know it!” Amy yelled over her shoulder as she ran.
“Amy?”
A voice from behind called her name, but it wasn’t Three. Amy slid to a stop on the packed dirt and spun around.
Philip stood under the light of a streetlamp, his shirt and trousers ripped and covered with dark brown stains that looked suspiciously like chocolate. He stared at Amy, his eyes wide and mouth gaping.
“Amy!”
She ran to him faster than she knew she could run, and hugged him tighter than she had thought she ever wanted to hug anything. The cloth of his shirt was rough on her cheek and smelled of sand and the sea, but mostly chocolate and throw-up.
“I thought you were dead,” she sobbed. Her eyes were wet with tears and she kissed him hard on the mouth.
Philip pressed his rough cheek against hers. “I thought the same! Oh, dearest Amy. One lied to me and said that you had drowned!”
Three walked up to the pair, a hand on her hip. “Hello, sailor. Got a kiss for me?”
Philip glanced at her. “No time for idle chit-chat. Quick, follow Sunflower!”
Nick buzzed out of the darkness. “Run, you silly billies! Oh––hello, Amy. You’re not dead. That’s super great!”
Amy wiped her eyes on a sleeve. “Thanks, Nick. It’s good to see you, too.”
A terrifying roar split the night, followed by a stream of snarls and growls.
“Run!” shouted Philip.
The teenager grabbed Amy’s hand and led the girls in a flat-out sprint after the armored cat.
Chapter Twelve
One screamed and punched a hole through the communications console with her metal arm. She ripped the nearest display off the wall and threw it across the room, where it exploded in a shower of sparks.
“Why can’t you animals do anything right?!!”
Wilson peeked around the side of One’s leather chair. The command center was normally full of navigators, weapons specialists, and communication officers, but now the room was empty apart from the black cat and One.
“It was a Tau Ceti battle tank, my Lady! We never expected to fight a tank on such a backwater planet, not to mention three male sauropods.”
One flung a high-heeled shoe. It missed the cat and bounced under a console station with a dull clang.
“That’s what I pay you for––to expect the unexpected!”
She collapsed into her chair with a sigh, and kicked off her remaining shoe.
“How many transports made it back?”
“A transport of ours and one from the Wits Hater, your worship.”
“The troops on the surface? How many are left?”
“One hundred and ninety-seven, plus a walker. We finally made contact with a couple of brigade officers. They stopped the retreat and are reforming inside the human settlement.”
One combed her short blonde hair back into place with her fingers. She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Her facial scar faded back to a pink vertical slash down her cheek.
“Send the transports back to the surface. Grab Philip, Three, and the copy and bring them to me.”
Wilson gulped hard. “Many apologies, your beautifulness, but the transports need at least an hour to finish refueling and repair the damage, not to mention that we haven’t any soldiers left to do the grabbing.”
The cat spoke slower and slower as he watched One’s face and her scar flush red again.
“Damn your eyes!” she shouted. “I’ll do it myself!”
One jumped down to the helmsman's position below the wall of viewscreens and squeezed into a seat designed for a beagle, or at best, a large cat. She slammed her fists on buttons and cranked levers with the wide-eyed madness of an ocelot cornered by a gang of taxidermy students.
“If you want something done right,” she fumed. “You have to do it yourself.”
/> Wilson grabbed an armrest with his front paws as the deck pitched down sharply. Pencils and dusty pieces of somon candy clattered across the floor, and a plastic collector’s cup from Phobos FunTime City bounced against his legs.
“My Lady, please stop! This is crazy!”
One stared at a black-and-white video feed above her head that displayed a bird’s-eye view of Pacific Grove. The darkness of night and the leafy tops of the trees along the streets hid much of the view. One tapped a button to activate the heat-sensitive camera, and the video zoomed down to a pair of teenage girls in nightgowns. Both were holding hands with a young man and running as fast as they could along a dirt lane.
One clenched her teeth. “Crazy or not, I’m finishing this.”
Amy, Three, and Philip sprinted up the hard-packed dirt of Pine Avenue and away from the growling sauropods. Nick followed, the wings of the tiny sprite buzzing in the cold night air.
Most of the villagers had disappeared inside their houses and blown out their lanterns. Philip ran up to a number of front doors and banged on them but the frightened people only stared at him from the windows and pulled the curtains closed even tighter. The three sauropods had slowed their pursuit and stayed in the shadows behind the teenagers, but that made the giants even more menacing. The ferocious lizardmen roared now and then, but mostly chatted and laughed to each other as they walked, like hunters following a wounded animal.
Sunflower and his massive steel tiger had disappeared into the night, leaving deep paw-prints in the packed earth. A faint clank and hiss sounded in the darkness, but nothing moved under the blue light of the gas-powered street lamps.
Amy cupped her hands around her mouth. “Sunflower! Where are you?”
“Chasing those other cats and dogs, I wager,” said Philip. “How the devil did he manage to get away from us?”
Three wiped her forehead with the back of her hand. “Great, just when we need help. I don’t know if you’ve heard anything about sauros, but they’re big and green and will rip into us like a spicy chicken dinner.”
SpaceBook Awakens (Amy Armstrong 3) Page 16