“It does to me,” Zenna said. She patted me on the shoulder. “Poor Baxter, you can be so naïve sometimes…”
“Well, if it is a trap, we don’t have any other choice,” Elvin said. He walked over to the door that led to the ladder. It was dangling on its hinges; apparently my shuttle crash had damaged it. He tossed the door to the floor. The bottom section of the ladder had been mangled.
“Oops,” I said.
“That’s okay, Baxter,” K-999 said. “It’s not like I could have taken the ladder anyhow…” K-999 paused for a tic. “SC, open the lift door please.”
“As you wish.”
The door slid open.
We all aimed our energy weapons at the lift. It was empty. K-999 sniffed the air and stepped on to the lift. He turned to us.
“Come on, squads, let’s get this over with.”
We all joined K-999 on the lift. The door shut and lift started to rise.
“I assume you want to go to the conference room on the first floor,” SC said.
“Very good, SC,” I said.
“Are there still life signs there?” K-999 asked.
“Yes, sixteen human and sixteen Aquarian.”
The lift stopped. We all pointed out weapons at the door. The door slid open to reveal a huge conference room. Sure enough, there was a group of adult humans sitting on one side of a long table and a group of adult Aquarians sitting across from them. None of them were looking at each other. Each of them were concentrating on a TVTron sitting on the table in front of them.
“Well, at least we came to right place,” K-999 said.
As we entered the conference room, none of the humans, Aquarians or TVTrons paid any attention to us. The walls of the conference room were giant display screens filled with static.
“This is weird,” I said looking at the static. “They don’t seem to care that we are here…”
“Greetings, young and annoying beings, I am UHF-1,” a voice said from the wall display screens.
We all looked up at the screens. The static became clearer and clearer until it was replaced with the image of a TVTron. This TVTron looked much like the others except it had the image of human face on its screen. It appeared to be a male with a big smile and bigger eyes. He reminded me of a deranged talk show host of the past.
The princess glared at the screen. “I want my people back!”
“Not going to happen,” UHF-1 said.
“That’s what you think!” the princess said. She aimed her energy rod. The TVTrons were positioned in two straight lines on the table. The princess fired. Her first shot ripped through one TVTron, then another, then another, then another, until the first row was destroyed. The princess aimed and fired at the second row. Once again her one shot channeled through each of the TVTrons, destroying them.
The princess turned defiantly toward the screen. “I took out all your creatures in two shots!”
UHF-1 yawned. “Yes, bully for you,” he said. “Excellent shot! I’m sure our viewers will be pleased.”
“Your viewers?” I said.
“Yes,” UHF-1 said. “When we first encountered your people we were quite content with having you watch us. But now we have decided it is much more entertaining to watch you. You see, we have evolved from entertainers to producers and consumers.”
“I don’t know if that can really be classified as evolving,” Elvin said.
UHF-1 ignored him. “You see, we have learned from your history that wars are great attention grabbers and score well in the ratings. So we have decided to start a war between Earth and Aqua.”
“Not going to happen,” the princess said. “We’ve destroyed your drones and now we will return to our planets and tell our people the truth!”
The face on UHF-1’s screen just smiled. I didn’t like that smile one little iota.
“I will give you that; you have destroyed my drones, as you call them. The superduper thing is, the drones had already served their purpose.”
“Uh oh,” I said. “I don’t like the tone of that…”
“As you will soon see, much to the joy and anticipation of our audience, the drones no longer entertain, they reprogram,” UHF-1 said.
As the UHF-1 finished saying that, all the people at the table stood up and turned to us.
“We will not return to our planets,” they said in one voice. One very creepy, sort of robotic voice.
We slowly backed up.
“We can’t shoot our own people,” Kymm said.
“We could stun them and have Zenna carry them to our shuttles,” Chriz suggested.
“Yes, that might work,” UHF-1 said. “It would certainly make for exciting, almost nerve-tingling viewing!”
A group of our people and Aquarians were slowly moving toward us. We opened up fire on them. The jolts from our energy rods sent them staggering backwards maybe a step. They shuddered, then began moving forward again.
“We found we could not only program you organics but we can also increase your strength and physical endurance,” UHF-1 said. “They will happily ignore your low-powered energy-stun blasts. You would have to use deadly power to stop them.”
“We can’t use deadly power on our own people,” the princess said. “Well, maybe we could on humans, but certainly not on mine.”
I had to give the princess some credit. She always put her people first. Of course she needed to work on her interplanetary relation skills, but I guess that would come with time.
“Even if we could, we couldn’t,” K-999 said. “These energy rods have stun-only modes.”
I had to give K-999 his kudos. No matter what the situation he always had his good old canine sensibility about him. (Unless of course the situation involved chasing bunnies or an old sock for him to play with.)
“I’ll slow them down,” Zenna said. She leapt forward toward the swarming artificial zombies. “I don’t want to hurt you, but I must stop you.”
Zenna grabbed a human diplomat who was leading the crowd. He was a short bearded man who must have been in his forties. The man reacted by hitting Zenna with an uppercut to her chin. The blow was surprisingly effective. It sent Zenna reeling back a couple of steps.
Two other attackers, a skinny Aquarian man and an older human woman leapt forward and dragged Zenna to the ground. Zenna struggled to break free, but she couldn’t.
“We found we can also stimulate an area in the brain to make you stronger,” UHF-1 said proudly. “As you can see, our R&D boys have been working hand in hand with our producers to give our audiences a complete experience.”
“Fall back into the lift,” K-999 ordered.
“But, Zenna,” Elvin said.
“Fall back,” K-999 barked.
Everybody but Elvin moved quickly to the lift. When I saw that Elvin was just standing there staring helplessly at his struggling sister, I moved toward him. He may not have been the bravest guy in the room but he didn’t want let his sister down. The thing is, action wasn’t Elvin’s strong point. He was a thinking kind of guy. Getting himself captured wasn’t going to help anybody.
“Come on, Elvin,” I said. “You won’t be any good to Zen if you get caught.”
Elvin still didn’t budge. A mob of programmed zombies was staggering toward us. I yanked Elvin toward the lift. At first he resisted, just staring at Zenna. Finally, his survival instinct kicked in.
“You’re right,” he said, reluctantly.
We turned and rushed into the lift. The door to the lift closed right behind us, just a few tics before the programmed zombies slammed into it.
We all breathed a little sigh of relief from the lift. Of course it was only a very little sigh as our planet mates were on the other side pounding at the door.
“Now what?” Chriz asked.
“We head back to the Searcher, then to Earth to warn them,” K-999 said.
“No!” the princess and Elvin both said.
“If we get captured, then…”
“Then, Lobi and GiS will have to go warn Earth and Aqua without us,” I said.
“But without the princess, Aqua may not believe it,” K-999 insisted.
Elvin pulled out his communication device/mini-computer. He entered in some calculations. “I think I can use SC to send some feedback over the signal the TVTrons used to control our people. I think I can break their hold.”
“You think?” K-999 said. “I need more than a hunch…”
The TVTron-made zombies started pounding loudly on the lift door.
“I can’t be certain,” Elvin said. “I haven’t run any simulations. But it’s kind of like what I did to the bots earlier.”
“SC, what do you think?” I asked.
“E=MC squared. The shortest distance between two points is a straight line. What goes up must come down unless it breaks free from the gravitational attraction of the planet. Of course some people don’t think I technically think.”
Okay, I wasn’t sure if it was me or not, but SC seemed to be getting stranger and stranger. I didn’t know if it was some form of TVTron attack on him or the stress from defending us against the attack.
“What do you think about Elvin’s plan?”
“Oh, it might work.”
“Can you be more specific?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“Will you please be more specific?”
“Of course. I deduce there is a 48 percent chance of success,” SC said.
“Actually, I calculate it’s more like 46.89 percent,” Elvin said.
“I was giving you the benefit of the doubt,” SC said.
“Thanks,” Elvin said. “I found the frequency, but we don’t have a way of delivering it to the victims. We’re being blocked from computer access.”
“That is correct,” SC said.
“Then we have a problem,” K-999 said.
“Maybe not,” Chriz said. “We have the energy rods. Sound is just another form of energy.”
Elvin’s eyes lit up. “I can modify the energy rods!” he said. He pulled up his shirt just a bit to unveil the utility belt he wore around his waist. He pulled out a tool that looked like a four-prong tuning folk with circuits on the tips. “I actually experimented with this once, back a few years ago, for an extra credit project.”
Elvin popped open the base of his energy rod to reveal the circuits under the handle. He hooked up the energy rod to his wrist scanner and started tweaking the rod by waving the fork-shaped tool over it in different directions at different speeds. As he moved the freaky fork back and forth, the energy rod made a series of high-pitched noises. “I knew this would come in handy someday!” he said proudly. Making some adjustments on the fork with his fingers, he then used it to tweak another energy rod setting while he looked at the screen on his wrist scanner. He smiled.
“That should do it!” he said happily.
“That fast?” K-999 said.
“Hey, when you’re a geek, you’re a geek,” Elvin said.
No truer words had ever been spoken.
“Are you sure it works?” K-999 asked.
“As sure as I can be, without spending weeks on simulations.”
Okay, it wasn’t exactly a ringing endorsement, but it was good enough for me. After all, I didn’t see a whole lot of other choices here. Something had to be done and fast. I had learned to trust the instincts of my crew.
I took the energy rod from Elvin.
“I’ll test it out,” I said.
Princess Amana stepped toward us. She handed Elvin her power rod. “Convert mine too,” she ordered. “Baxter will need backup.”
Elvin took the princess’s energy rod and popped the handle open. The look on his face could only be described as pure joy. He was helping the cause by doing something he was good at and loved doing. I guess that’s about all a person, any person, can ask out of life.
“I should have this one converted even quicker than Baxter’s,” he said with unmitigated glee. “Once you do this once, it’s easy.”
“Good,” I told him. “The rest of you should keep your weapons as is. Just in case we run into more bots or TVTrons. The two of us should be able to unzap the brains of all our people.”
K-999 had a worried look on his face. You know a dog is really worried when you can tell by just looking at him.
“Don’t worry, Commander,” I said to him, “this is going work.”
“Well, it better,” K-999 said, “because I don’t see a lot of other options besides putting our tails between our legs and running.”
Elvin finished making the modifications on the princess’s energy rod. He handed it to her with a big grin.
“I’ve increased the area and effective range of the rod,” he said. “You don’t even have to hit your target. It should work on any target within a three meter area.”
The princess shook the rod up and down in her hand. “It feels exactly the same,” she said.
“As well it should,” Elvin said.
The princess and I exchanged glances. We were both ready to rescue our people from the control of the TVTrons. I winked at her. She winked back. I leaned over and gave her a kiss.
”What was that for?” the princess asked.
”Just in case,” I said.
”In case?”
”On the off chance we don’t survive, now I’ll have no regrets,” I told her.
Now Kymm chimed in. “I hate to break up this love fest, but what about me? With my bionic eye I’m at the very least as good a shot as anybody here.”
I was actually surprised Kymm had taken so long to speak her piece. She was a pilot like I was. She wasn’t used to sitting in the back. I was going to have to appeal to her pilot’s personality to get out of this smoothly. “We can’t risk both our pilots out there,” I said. “If something happens to me, it will be up to you to get everybody back to the Searcher and then back to Earth.”
Kymm just looked at me for a tic or two. On some level she knew I was only saying what I said to make her happy. On another level though she knew it made sense. Of course her pride would kick in.
“It’s not easy being me,” she said, “being the best pilot and the best shot.”
“Yes, it must be a terrible burden to bear,” Chriz said, not being able to resist sucking up.
“Oh, yes, lucky for all of us you are such a wise and wonderful person,” I said.
Kymm shot me a grin. “Damn straight,” she said.
K-999 cleared his throat, subtly. Which isn’t easy to do if you’re a dog. “Uh, folks, we have a mission to do,” he said.
Not that any of us could have forgotten that with the constant pounding and moaning on the door. But he was right. The prepping and the ego boosting were done. It was time for action.