by John Zakour
We plodded forward, Zenna pushing and the rest of us watching her back. It was an impressive sight. We actually weren’t going that much slower than we would have been if we had been walking unimpeded.
The princess was impressed. “Are all human females this powerful?” she asked.
“This is nothing,” Elvin said. “You want power, wait until she takes her boots off!”
My confidence was growing with each passing step as we pushed closer and closer to the lift. This was turning out to be easier than I expected.
We heard rustling from the floor above us. The rustling stopped and was replaced by the sound of sawing. I should have known better than to think this was going to be a cakewalk. I actually had no idea what a cakewalk was but I knew this wasn’t going to be one.
GiS pointed up toward the sawing sound. “Drill bots,” he said. “They are going to use the ducts to drop in behind us.” Sure enough, almost on GiS’s words the ceiling tile above and behind us fell to the floor. A big drill bot dropped behind us. This was the type of bot used for deep space mining, basically two huge drills on the top of tank tracks guided with sensors. These drills were meant to bore through solid rock crusts of barren planets. They were now spinning toward us. Each drill head was bigger than each of our heads.
Elvin and GiS were both guarding the rear so they were the two closest to the approaching drill bots. Elvin was trembling as he aimed his energy rod. In fact he was so scared by the approaching bot, his first shot sailed over its head. GiS’s shot was much truer. It hit the bot directly in the drill. Unlike the other bots though, this bot kept coming.
Elvin gulped. “These bots are built to operate on planets with heavy electrical storm activity,” he said as only a geek could. “Our energy rods won’t stop them.”
“Not if we use them like energy rods,” GiS said.
He grabbed Elvin’s energy rod as he leapt forward at the attacking bot. The bot bore its drills down at GiS. GiS jumped over the drills to behind the bot just as the drill heads bore down on the floor. Sometimes it pays to be a chimp.
GiS pointed his energy rod at the bot, but instead of firing at it, he jammed the rod into the bot’s tread. Drill bots may have been built for tough terrain but they weren’t meant to stand up to an attack from an intelligent chimp. The bot lurched forward, now totally off balance thanks to the energy rod jammed in its treads. The bot tipped forward embedding its drills into the floor and wedging itself stuck. GiS smiled and hopped back over the bot.
Two other drill bots dropped down but it would take them a while to get past the wedged-in bot.
“Come on! Let’s move!” GiS shouted.
We pushed forward until we reached the lift door.
“Okay, SC, open the lift,” I shouted.
“You don’t have to shout,” SC said. “I can hear you just fine over your communicator.”
The door popped open.
The princess went in first, followed by Elvin and GiS.
“Okay, Zenna, we don’t need the shield anymore. Push the door down on the bots and jump in.”
Zenna pushed the door forward. The door tipped over, crushing the nearest bots. She dove into the lift. A couple of the bots just behind the reach of the door managed to get off energy blasts at her. One of the blasts nicked her in the arm. I finished the bots off with two quick energy blasts of my own and then jumped into the lift.
I fired off a few more shots just as the door zoomed closed.
“I assume you want to go to the shuttle bay,” SC said.
“That would be quite logical,” I said.
I turned and looked at Zenna. Her uniform was torn at her shoulder and she was bleeding a bit. She was covered with sweat. She had never looked better to me.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
“I’m fine,” she said. “It will take more than a bunch of buggy bots to stop me.”
“That’s our Zenna,” I said.
“Okay, everybody hold their breath,” GiS ordered.
We all inhaled.
“Life support off, lift on,” SC said.
We felt the lift descending. The lift stopped its descent. We all looked at each other.
“We have reached the landing bay,” SC said. “Life support is back.”
We exhaled. The door popped up.
“Wait!” I yelled to SC. “Don’t open the door until…”
“No need to yell or worry,” SC reassured us. “The bay is bot free.”
Sure enough, as we carefully peeked out over the bay, the place looked empty. Our shuttle was sitting there all alone, nice and peaceful. It was freaky.
We stepped out into the bay. Weapons drawn, ready for anything. But we found nothing.
We headed toward our shuttle.
“It’s quiet,” Elvin said. “Too quiet.”
We all glared at him. Elvin smiled. “I always wanted to say that.”
We moved closer to the shuttle. Zenna was in the lead, followed by the princess and me with GiS and Elvin bringing up the rear. We reached the shuttle. Elvin pointed his scanner at the shuttle.
“My readings don’t detect any bot activity in there,” Elvin said.
We walked up to the shuttle door. Despite Elvin’s assurances, it still didn’t feel right. We all just looked at the door’s access code panel. It was a weird feeling. We certainly didn’t want to stay here. But it just seemed too easy to be able to get on the shuttle and fly out of here.
Elvin shook his head. “I told you guys it’s clean!” He walked up and entered the door’s access code. The door slid open. Elvin ducked in.
“Greetings, Humans,” a robot voice said.
“TVTrons!” the princess shouted.
Chapter 16
A beam of light hit Elvin in the face before any of us could do anything. Elvin sat on the shuttle floor with a goofy smile on his face. “Entertain me,” he said.
The rest of us rushed into the shuttle. There were two TVTrons in there, one in front of the other. They looked identical, big old-fashioned TV screens with a projector on top. The TV “head” sat on top of a little wheeled base with claw arms sticking out of it. They looked far more ridiculous than threatening. We aimed our energy rods at the TVTrons. A smile appeared across the lead TVTron’s screen.
“Good humans,” it said, in a high-pitched voice. “Now, you WILL be entertained!”
“Not quite,” I said. I pointed my energy rod at the TVTron and pressed the fire button.
“Your shuttle deactivated all your weapons,” the TVTron said cheerfully.
It was right. I had forgotten that. Zam! A good leader doesn’t forget details like that, even if they only heard them once in a class a couple of years ago.
Elvin just sat there staring at the static on the screen of the lead TVTron.
“You will now all be entertained,” the other TVTron said.
“You forgot, I am immune to your ray!” the princess said.
“You forgot we captured you once; we will capture you again, “ the TVTron said.
Zenna moved forward and raised her fist.
“Nobody takes over my brother’s brain!” she shouted.
The lead TVTron aimed its projector at Zenna. The beam hit her in the eyes. Zenna smiled. She opened her fist. She sat down, legs crossed and started staring at the screen.
“See,” one of the TVTrons said, “resistance is futile.”
There are times when you have to think before you react. There are times when you have to react without thinking. This was one of those times. I raised my energy rod over my head and then threw it like a make-shift spear at the lead TVTron. The rod pieced right through its screen. It shattered; the TVTron went limp.
My mom always told me that throwing the javelin on the track team would pay off for me someday. Who would have ever thought she was right?
“That’s not how this plot is suppose to go!” the remaining TVTron shouted. “The producer will not be pleased!”
Before the TVTron
could do anything, I grabbed GiS’s energy rod and flung it through its screen. The TVTron stopped shouting. It curled over and fell to the floor.
Elvin and Zenna both shook their heads and came out of their trance.
“What the…?” Elvin said.
“It was like a dream, a weird dream,” Zenna said. “And I have some weird dreams.”
I tapped them on the shoulders. “Come on guys, stand up,” I said. “We’ve got to get out of here, pronto.”
Elvin looked at the shattered TVTrons. “What happened?” he said.
“I canceled their show,” I said.
Elvin scanned the deleted TVTrons with his sleeve communicator (which also functions as a scanner, calculator and music player). “No signs of life,” he said.
“Should I throw them out?” Zenna asked, standing up.
“No, their frames might be useful to us,” GiS said.
“What?” the princess said. “How can you want to keep them?”
“GiS’s right,” I said. “We can learn a lot from these.” I moved past the dead trons and took the pilot’s seat.
The princess smiled. “If you say so, Baxter, then I will go along,” she said.
“Come on, let’s get out of here!” I said.
My crew took their seats and the princess sat in one of the shuttle’s extra seats. I could tell she wasn’t happy being in the back of the shuttle, but she was smart enough not to complain about it, at least for now. I fired up the engine. I was anxious to get out of the Explorer to the quiet peace of space. I maneuvered the shuttle around so it was facing the bay door we came in through.
“Okay, SC, open the bay door,” I commanded.
“As you may recall I can not completely open the door,” SC said.
“Just do what you can as quickly as you can,” I said.
The door slowly drew open. Well, not totally open, of course but half open.
I eased the shuttle forward toward the door. Before we got halfway to the door, it started to close. I should have expected it, but I was still surprised.
“SC, we’re not out yet! Don’t close the door,” I said.
“I am not in control of the door,” SC said.
I looked at the door. It was closing much more rapidly than it had opened. I hit the throttle. The ship rocketed forward.
“You’re going too fast!” GiS shouted.
“I don’t see any other options,” I answered calmly, keeping my ship steady.
We shot through the door, a brief tic or two before it slammed shut. I looked at my aft view screen. As the Explorer grew smaller on the screen, I was growing more confident. We had done it! We had found a way to stop the war. We could take the princess back to Earth and let her explain to everybody what had happened. We could then let Earth Force take care of the TVTrons.
“I can now establish communication with the Searcher,” SC said.
“Put her through,” GiS said.
“Shuttle Sigma, this is the Searcher. Nice to see you made it out,” K-999 said,
“Nice to be out,” GiS answered.
“SC tells us you’ve picked up a friend,” K-999 said.
“We’ll be on board in less than five minutes and you can all meet her,” I said.
For once in my life I was happy with the way things turned out. Of course I knew my happiness couldn’t last long.
Chapter 17
When we landed on the searcher, we were greeted by the entire Kappa team. As soon as I got out of the shuttle, K-999 gave me a paw pat on the back.
“Nice job, boy. I always knew you had it in you,” he said.
K-999 looked carefully at Princess Amana. He bowed his head. “Princess.”
I could see the princess wasn’t any more comfortable with K-999 as she was with GiS. Still he was being polite to her so she decided to at least acknowledge him.
“Dog,” she said, trying at least a little to hold back the contempt in her voice. “You may address me as Your Highness…if you have to.”
Lobi and Chriz just ogled the princess while Kymm gave her the once- or twice-over. The princess walked up to Lobi and Chriz. They both put their hands behind their backs and stood there like lovesick schoolboys (which I guess they were).
The princess looked at Kymm. “Do these two talk?”
“Usually I can’t get them to shut up,” Kymm said.
The princess looked at them. “For some reason I like it this way. You should keep them like this.”
“Now that you are back and with the princess we can get back to Earth and stop this war!” K-999 said.
The princess stopped in her tracks. “No!” she shouted. “I will not go to Earth…”
“Why not? Earth is a nice planet!” Zenna said.
“I’m sure they will return you to Aqua,” Kymm said, being more helpful.
“I will not go to Aqua either,” the princess said, pounding her foot into the floor. “Not when my people are prisoners of those TVTrons!”
“But princess, if we don’t get back soon there could be war,” GiS said.
The princess shook her head. “We have time,” she insisted. She looked at me, with those big brown eyes and batted her lashes. “Don’t we, Baxter? After all, your people are missing too.”
I thought about what she said (trying not to take her looks into account). She was right; we did have people lost and chances are they were somewhere in this sector of space. Still, we could send the army here. It was more up their line.
The princess smiled at me. That was it.
“I think we can hang around a day or two longer,” I said. “Maybe we can find our people.”
“How do you propose we do that?” K-999 asked.
Okay, I didn’t have an answer for that one. Lucky for me, Lobi did.
“I think I found them,” Lobi said meekly.
“What,” Chriz said. “How?”
“With the information SC was able to give us about Explorer’s systems I was able to find them.”
“Really?” GiS asked.
Lobi nodded. “I need another hour or two before I’m sure.” He pointed at Elvin, “plus I could use Elvin’s help.”
“You’ve got it,” GiS said. “We will meet in conference room 1A in three hours. Until then, Baxter, Zenna, the princess and I can freshen up.”
“What about me?” Elvin asked. “When can I freshen up?”
“After the mission,” GiS said.
“Man, the price I pay for being a brain,” Elvin sulked.
One of the bots rolled up to the princess. Before the bot could do anything, she grabbed my energy rod and shot it. The bot burst into flames.
“Ah, princess, uh, Your Highness,” I said, cautiously. “Here on this ship we still have control of the bots.”
“Oh,” she said, looking at the wrecked bot. “Sorry about that.”
“What the bot was going to say is, we’ve assigned her the room across from Baxter’s,” SC said.
The princess smiled. “That will be fine.”
She offered me her arm. “Now you may escort me to my quarters.”
I took her arm. I liked it. Walking away I felt Kymm’s eyes on me too. I liked that also. Man, who would have thought fighting evil TVTrons would have been so good for my potential love life? For now though, I had to concentrate on saving two worlds. I escorted the princess up the lift and to her room.
I entered the access code into her door and the door popped open. I showed her the room much like a game show host would show a contestant a prize they had won.
“Not exactly the royal suite,” I said.
She smiled. “As you Earth people say, desperate times call for desperate actions,” she said.
We both entered the room. “Now remember, Your Highness, the bots on this ship are under our control so you don’t have to destroy them all.”
The princess sat down on the bed. She bounced on it softly, checking how firm it was. “Ha ha,” she said, “you are very funny, like your planet’
s Jerry Lewis.”
I gave her a blank look. “Who?”
“Have you not heard of him? He is probably your planet’s greatest gift to humor. He was very popular one hundred of your years ago.”
“Sorry, I don’t watch the ancient stuff.”
She shook her head. “Too bad, you lose so much of your culture that way.”
I couldn’t be sure she was serious, but I was pretty certain she was.
The princess and I just sat there and talked as the time flew by. I knew I should have been sleeping or resting but I wasn’t tired. In fact I felt exhilarated. I don’t know if it was from freeing the princess or from hanging out with her. But whatever the reason, I felt better about myself than I had in a long time. If not better than I had ever felt.
The next thing I knew, it was time to head to the conference room.
* * * *
I was surprised to see that the princess and I were the first ones in the conference room. As surprised as I was, though, I think GiS and K-999 were even more shocked when they walked in a few minutes after us.
GiS looked at me like he couldn’t believe his eyes. K-999 even sniffed the air to make sure it was really us.
“Why are they looking at us like that?” the princess said.
“They’re not used to me being early for a meeting,” I said.
“Ah, so you are always late because you are busy planning your strategy,” she said earnestly.
“Yeah that’s it.”
Kymm, Zenna and Chriz entered the room. Each of them had a look that was a cross between amazement and bewilderment on their faces.
“Oh man, we’re late,” Kymm said.
“No we’re not,” Chriz said pointing to the digital holographic clock on the wall. “Baxter was just early.”
Zenna just smiled.
The three sat down. Zenna just kept smiling at me. Kymm was smiling too, only it was a less sincere smile. Chriz wasn’t even pretending to smile. It was eating him up that I was getting all this attention.