One Crazy Machine (Apocalypse Paused Book 9)
Page 14
“Yeah, right arm. I have no idea where that could be. Weird that, huh, mate?” Manny said and winked at Ava. Kessler didn’t notice as he still hadn’t looked up.
How one man could be so arrogant amazed Ava. He was even more full of himself than her old boss Mr. Bradley had been.
“Here, I’ll show you how to get in,” Ava said and led Manny to the suit. The back of the machine room was stuck open, the door damaged in the battle with the scorpions.
She pressed one of the buttons and the chest cavity opened. When she showed him the little steps on the leg, he clambered up like a squirrel after acorns.
He settled into the suit, ignored the harness and basically everything Ava said, and pressed a button to close the windshield over him.
The left arm jerked to life. Ava stepped back as the sword released from its sheath, sliced a hole in the ceiling, and drew a laugh from Manny.
Gunnar and Peppy came up. “He wants a taste of a the mecha-life, huh?” Gunnar nodded at the pilot. “I can’t say that I blame him. You virtually saved the entire damn wall with that thing.”
Dr. Kessler must have heard that as he smirked and chuckled smugly.
“Great, keep stroking the mad scientist’s ego. What could possibly go wrong?” Peppy asked.
“I am robo-Manny!” he said in a robot voice and tried to make the suit kneel like he was about to star in a sports movie or something.
“How did you do that?” Ava said. “I could barely get the thing to walk the way I wanted it to.”
“Oh, it’s simple enough,” Manny said. He straightened and made the robot bend to touch its toes. “When you’re the greatest natural pilot who ever lived, well, a robo-super-soldier suit is as easy as they come. Let me warm up for a few minutes and I’ll show you how it really works.”
The robot walked through the hangar.
“Hey!” the pilot protested. “Hey, wait a tic. I didn’t say to go.”
The robot continued.
“Hey now, just a Goddamn minute, robot. This is no time to plan the robot apocalypse.”
The suit broke into a run and he cursed vociferously inside.
“Hey! Hey, you bloody asshole, Goddamnit. Goddamnit, let me out of here! Listen to me.”
Gunnar and Peppy laughed. Ava did too, even though she saw where Manny was headed—directly toward the door frame of the hangar. He jerked the robot to the right at the last second and narrowly avoided a collision with the wall. But maybe that wasn’t a good thing, as the robot sprinted out into the desert.
“Should we follow him?” Gunnar asked between bouts of laughter.
“Naw. We wouldn’t want to take a vehicle and offend our fearless pilot,” Peppy said. She wasn’t smiling but she sounded amused, at least.
“I don’t think he’d mind if we fired up a JLTV and chased him down,” Ava said. “As long as we don’t take the Flying Bastard without him, I don’t think his ego will be bruised too much. Not as much as he will be from being thrown around in that suit anyway.”
“I wasn’t talking about him. Jack Mann may know how to fly a busted up Franken-copter, but I’ve never seen him face a thousand scorpions with a robot sword arm,” Peppy said.
Ava smiled. It was the nicest thing Peppy had ever said to her.
Gunnar peered out into the glaring brightness of the Sahara Desert. “If we don’t get a move on, I don’t think we’ll find him.”
Ava’s friends followed her to a JLTV, and they cruised out to save their friend from a crazed robot suit. It was by far the least stressful mission Ava had ever attempted near the Zoo.
Birth of Heavy Metal
Have you started the Birth of Heavy Metal series in the Zoo? Book one is HE WAS NOT PREPARED and it’s available now, at Amazon and through Kindle Unlimited.
Available at Amazon
Author Notes - Michael Anderle
March 19, 2019
THANK YOU for not only reading this story but these Author Notes as well.
(I think I’ve been good with always opening with “thank you.” If not, I need to edit the other Author Notes!)
RANDOM (sometimes) THOUGHTS?
THE ZOO!
Ok, so we are getting closer to adding new stories to the ZOO and if you didn’t know, we now have a Facebook group here:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/lmbpn.thezoo/
If you would like to ‘write’ in the ZOO – we are talking about creatures at the moment right there, and providing an opportunity to suggest creatures we have drawn for inclusion in the ZOO.
We will have a book or book(s) for you to buy if you don’t have time to write, just use Kindle Unlimited to read the books (keeps the cost down) in the future. It seems that everything associated with the ZOO has the opportunity to take longer than we hoped, and that our notes were eaten by the pretty kitty with the 8” teeth.
In other words, the big cat ate our homework.
BUT, we do have a lot of notes that are being prepared to help those who wish to write in the Universe.
Plus, we’ve had negotiations to TRY and find a distributor that can pay everyone appropriately, but those books can’t go into Kindle Unlimited, which means the payout could be less…a lot less.
We shall see.
AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 DAYS
One of the interesting (at least to me) aspects of my life is the ability to work from anywhere and at any time. In the future, I hope to re-read my own Author Notes and remember my life as a diary entry.
Cave in the Sky ™ Las Vegas, Nevada
So, I am running with my head cut off as I try to get caught up on all of the books that are being produced by the company, while building relationships with companies willing to provide audio production for some of our assets so they can be placed out where fans can listen.
I spoke with people from Findaway today (along with Judith and Steve inside our company) (www.findaway.com) and I love their attitude of wanting to change the perceptions of the listening public. They are a preferred partner with Apple and Bookbub (Chirp) and for a small indie publisher like ourselves, they are rattling the cages of the bigger players and making many of us look more closely at the options they are presenting.
The audio market is going to dynamically change (I think) in the next 24 months.
WOOT!
FAN PRICING
$0.99 Saturdays (new LMBPN stuff) and $0.99 Wednesday (both LMBPN books and friends of LMBPN books.) Get great stuff from us and others at tantalizing prices.
Go ahead, I bet you can’t read just one.
Sign up here: http://lmbpn.com/email/.
HOW TO MARKET FOR BOOKS YOU LOVE
Review them so others have your thoughts, tell friends and the dogs of your enemies (because who wants to talk with enemies?)… Enough said ;-)
Ad Aeternitatem,
Michael Anderle
Connect with Michael Todd and The Zoo
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Other Zoo Books
BIRTH OF HEAVY METAL
He Was Not Prepared (1)
She Is His Witness (2)
Backstabbing Little Assets (3)
Blood Of My Enemies (4)
APOCALYPSE PAUSED
Fight for Life and Death (1)
Get Rich or Die Trying (2)
Big Assed Global Kegger (3)
Ambassadors and Scorpions (4)
Nightmares From Hell (5)
Calm Before The Storm (6)
One Crazy Pilot (7)
One Crazy Rescue (8)
One Crazy Machine (9)
SOLDIERS OF FAME AND FORTUNE
Nobody’s Fool (1)
Nobody Lives Forever (2)
Nobody Drinks That Much (3)
Nobody Remembers But Us (4)
Ghost Walking (5)
Ghost Talking (6)
Ghost Brawling (7)
Ghost Stalking (8)
Ghost Resurre
ction (9)
Ghost Adaptation (10)
Ghost Redemption (11)
Ghost Revolution (12)
Books written as Michael Anderle
For a complete list of books by Michael Anderle, please visit:
www.lmbpn.com/ma-books/
All LMBPN Audiobooks are Available at Audible.com and iTunes
To see all LMBPN audiobooks, including those written by Michael Anderle please visit:
www.lmbpn.com/audible